Print Page - George H. Morrison's Old And Beautiful Devotions

Refusing to Go In - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

He Was Indignant with His Brother

I think again this man refused to enter because he was indignant with his brother. He was indignant that one with such a character should have a place at all within the house. It is not likely that he ever loved his brother, and perhaps his brother had never much loved him. There was such a difference between their natures that they could hardly have been the best of comrades. For the one was always generous to a fault, and always getting into trouble somewhere; and the other was a pattern of sobriety, and as cautious as he was laborious. Such Jacobs, and they are found in every region, are always a little contemptuous of Esaus. Secretly they despise them and their singing, and they cannot understand why people love them. And when they find that they are home again, and that all the household is in revelry, then are they angry and will not go in. So was it with this person in the parable. He was not only angry with his father; he was deeply indignant that in the house of gladness a man should be tolerated such as his brother was. And I know many who are standing outside—who are angry and will not go in—for a reason precisely similar to that. I remember a young man coming to me in Dundee to tell me why he would never join the church. It seemed that in the place of business where he worked there was a young woman who made a great profession. And all the time that she was busy in attending meetings and acting as a monitor, she was engaged in pilfering the till. "And he was angry, and would not go in." He was very indignant with his sister. He said, "If these are the kind of people who are in, then it is better that I should be without." And I tell you there are many just like that, who would come in and get their welcome, if it were not for what they have seen in you—if it were not for what they have seen in me. My brother, standing in the darkness there, there is a great deal to justify your attitude. But why do you leave the happiness to us when we are such prodigals and so unworthy of it? Come in yourself tonight out of the cold. Bring your enthusiasm and your courage with you. And not only will you receive a blessing, but you will be a blessing to us all.

He Trusted the Reports of Others

I think again this man refused to enter because he trusted the reports of others. He did what is always a foolish thing to do—he went on the information of the servants. Had he gone right in and seen things for himself, the night for him would have had a different issue. One look at his brother might have softened him, there were such traces of hell about his face. But instead of that he went to the stable door, where the ostler was loafing and listening to the music, and he, the first-born of his father's family, was content to get his information there. Now of course we know that he was told the truth. "Thy brother is come, and they are making merry." But might not the truth be told in such a way as would irritate and rankle just a little? It is always the prodigals whom the servants love. It is always the prodigals they like to serve. And there would be just a touch of pleasing malice in it, when they told the elder brother what had happened. "And he was angry, and would not go in." It was partly the servants' tone that made him angry. He took his report of that most glorious night from men who knew nothing of its inner mystery. And what I say is that it is often so, and that there are multitudes outside today because they have taken the report of others who are incapable of judging rightly. Are you quite sure that your reports of Jesus are taken from those who know Him and who love Him? Are you quite sure that in your thoughts of Christ there is no travesty of what is true? You must especially beware of that, young man, in an age like this when everyone is talking, and when a thousand judgments are passed on Jesus Christ by men who have never touched His garment's hem. I beg of you to believe that in the Gospel there is something that lies beyond the reach of intellect. There is something which is never understood except by those who have experienced it. And therefore if you are in earnest and are wise you will take no verdict upon the cross of Christ, except the verdict of the man or woman who has experienced its saving power.

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Refusing to Go In - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

He Missed What He Most Needed

So far then on the older brother's reasons. Now will you let me show you what he missed? Well, to begin with, you must all agree with me that the man missed just what he most needed. Think of it, his day's work was over. He was coming home in the evening from the field. Like a faithful servant he had been hard at work, driving the furrow or building up the fences. I honor him for that quiet and steady toil, and for being not above the servant's duty. There would be more prosperous farms and prosperous businesses, if sons today would follow his example. Now the labors of the day were over. "The ploughman homewards wends his weary way." And he was hungry and he needed food. He was weary and he needed rest. He was soiled and stained with his day's work, and he wanted a change of raiment in the evening—and all that he needed in that evening hour was stored and treasured in his father's house. "And he was angry, and would not go in. "He missed the very things that he was needing. All that would freshen him and make him strong again, he lost because he stayed outside the door. He was a soiled, weary, and hungry man, and everything was ready for the taking, yet no one forced him to the taking of it when he deliberately stood without. Is not that always the pity of it, when a man refuses the love of Jesus Christ? Is he not missing just what he most needs, and needs the more, the more he has been faithful? For all of us are soiled and we need cleansing; and all of us are weak and we need strength, and all of us are hungering and thirsting, and Christ alone can satisfy that hunger. My brother and sister, I want you to come in not to please me, but for your own sake first. I want you to come in, because just what you need now is waiting you in Christ. I want you to come in because that heart of yours is restless and unsatisfied and hungry; because when you were tempted last you fell, and you are missing the very thing you need.

He Missed the Joy

But not only did the man miss what he needed; he also missed the merriment and gladness. He missed what some folk would not miss for worlds—he missed an excellent dance and a good supper. Think of him, standing out under the stars, a man alone and out of touch with everybody. Have not you felt it when there was some fine gathering, and you were not one of the invited? And then, to make it worse to bear, the sound of the music floated through the yard, and he could see how happy they all were, as the figures passed beyond the lighted window. The man was bitten by the fiercest jealousy. He was hurt; he was offended; he was miserable. Everyone was joyous except him. Everyone was in the light but he. And the strange thing is that in all the countryside there was not a man who would have been more welcome, nor one who had a better right and title to the gladness and the feasting of the night. Ah! what a right some of you have to know the joy and feasting of the Lord! How you have been prayed for since you were little children! How hearts at home have yearned for you in tears! And yet today you are the very one—you who have had an upbringing like that—who stand without, and will not enter in, and miss the gladness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to come right in tonight. You are far more lonely than some people think. I want you to have the gladness of religion, instead of your little petty evanescent gladness. I want you to feel that in the love of Christ, with all its strengthening and all its saving, there is just that deep strong joy that you are missing, and always will miss till you pass the door. "I am the door," said Jesus. "By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved" (Joh_10:9).

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Refusing to Go In - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

He Missed a Chance to Serve

Then tell me, did he not miss one thing more? Did he not miss his chance of making others happy? Although I daresay he never thought it so, his absence was the one shadow on that feast. He was not, I take it, a very lovable person, and for that matter perhaps you are not that either. He was not at all the kind of man we know, who is the life and soul of any gathering. And yet that night—that night and that alone—his presence would have been the crowning gladness; his absence was the one dark shadow upon a happiness which was like that of heaven. Do you think the prodigal could be at peace until his brother had come in and welcomed him? Could the father be happy when there was one wanting, one whom he loved and honored for his toil? And all the time, bitter and angry-hearted, the man outside was missing his great chance, a chance that it is worth living years to win—the chance of making other people happy. Have you ever thought, young men and women, of the happiness you would give by coming in? If you have never thought of it before, I want you to think of it today. What of your mother, who has toiled and prayed for you? What of your father, though he never says much? What of that friend whose eyes would be so different if you were but a faithful soul in Christ? What of the angels in their ranks and choirs who are waiting to rejoice when you are saved? What of Jesus Christ, the Lover of mankind, who would see of the travail of His soul and would be satisfied? I beg of you not to miss your opportunity. It is a great vocation to make others glad. I would call you to it even if it were hard, and meant the sacrifice of what was dearest. But the wonderful thing about our Lord is this, that when you trust Him, and make others glad, in that very hour you become glad yourself, and win what you have craved for all along.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

August 10

The Thing Incredible - Page 1
By George H. Morrison

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life .... No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself— Joh_10:17-18

History Has Come Full Circle

It is strange how often in the course of history the wheel has "come full circle." The impossibilities of yesterday have proved the commonplaces of today. Our Christian faith has always had its elements which powerfully commended it to men, and always there have been aspects of it which were obstacles to its acceptance; but the singular fact which steadily emerges from a growing knowledge of its story is how often the glory of the past becomes the difficulty of the present. One sees that in regard to miracles. Once they were confirmations of the faith. For multitudes the Gospel was authenticated by the signs and wonders of the Lord. And now for multitudes these very miracles are obstacles and stumbling blocks, only making it harder to believe. Today it is the divinity of Christ which so many find it difficult to credit; in the early days of Christianity there was far more difficulty over His humanity. Today we have to battle with agnosticism, which is the denial of all certain knowledge; but in the early Church the conflict was with gnosticism, which, of course, is agnosticism's opposite.

The Change in Attitude Towards Christ's Death and Resurrection

Something of the same kind is seen in regard to our Lord's death and resurrection. Nobody today questions that He died, but many question if He rose again. That He incurred the bitter enmity of men by the fearless proclamation of His message, that the passions He inevitably roused finally brought Him to His death—all this seems so natural to us that no one has any trouble with the cross now, viewed, I mean, just as a fact of history. The problem for us is not that Christ should die; the problem is that He should rise again, with the very body which the nails had pierced and which had known the thrusting of the sword. Multitudes of earnest souls have difficulty in crediting that. This is seen in the various attempts of modernism to explain away His resurrection. No one tries to explain away His death now. It is universally accepted that He died. Nobody finds it a thing almost incredible that at last He was hung upon a tree. The thing almost incredible to many is that on the third day He rose again, in all the power of an endless life.

The Mystery of Mysteries for the Early Disciples

And yet, if I do not greatly err, the opposite was true in the first days. For those who stood nearest to the Lord the staggering difficulty was His death. They had seen Him in conflict with all the powers of darkness, and from every conflict He had emerged victorious. He had challenged evil in all its ugly forms, and as a Conqueror driven it from the field. He had marched on in triumph, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and every foe of full abundant life had been forced to acknowledge His supremacy. Blindness had vanished at His word. Leprosy had departed at His touch. Fevers had fled away, and the withered arm had become strong again. Even death itself, that universal conqueror, had been forced to render up its prisoners at the kingly command of the Lord Jesus. All this they had seen with their own eyes. It was the constant experience of comradeship. They had walked with One who had matched Himself with death and compelled death to acknowledge he was beaten. And to them the thing incredible was this, that He, who had triumphed all along the line, should Himself become a prisoner of the tyrant. For us the resurrection is the staggering thing: the death but the inevitable end. For those who had corn-partied with Jesus it was the other way about. That He should die, that death should conquer Him, that over Him the grave should be victorious, was to them the mystery of mysteries.

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The Thing Incredible - Page 2
By George H. Morrison

Almost certainly some such thought as this moves through the disciples' aversion from the cross. It underlies their incredulous astonishment when our Lord began to speak about the end. That they heard with horror of a death of shame is in consonance with human nature. Mingling with that horror was the agony of losing their Beloved. But perhaps we shall never fully understand their wild and incredulous astonishment till we recall the personality of Jesus. Men find it difficult to associate death with powerful and arresting personalities. From Nero to Lord Kitchener we trace the conviction that the dead are living. And for men who had companied with Jesus and seen the energies of His victorious life, it must have been extraordinarily hard to picture Him under the power of the grave. That He who was the life should be overcome by the opposite of life, that He who was continually giving life should be powerless to retain His own, this was what perplexed those earliest followers mingling with their love and sorrow, whenever Jesus turned their thoughts to Calvary. It was easy to think of Him as living; it was impossible to think of Him as dead. How could death, whom He had faced and beaten, overthrow that radiant personality? And now the wheel has "come full circle," and it is not the fact of His death that staggers anybody; it is the assertion that He rose again.

Christ's Death Was a Glorious Act of Service

And it was then, brooding in the darkness, that the word of Jesus came back to them with power. They recalled how He had told them once, "I lay it down of myself." That death, which was so hard to understand, was not the ghastly token of defeat. It did not mean that He who had raised Lazarus had Himself been beaten by the enemy. It meant that He had given Himself, in the wise and holy purposes of love, into the clutching fingers of the tyrant. His death was not a dark necessity. It was a glorious and crowning act of service. The very love that had conquered death for Lazarus submitted to it for the sake of sinners. So did the death of Jesus for these sorrowing men cease to be an inexplicable problem and become the center of their hope and joy.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

October 17

The God of Hope

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost — Rom_15:13

In the Hebrew language, as scholars know, there are several different words for rain. From which we gather that in Hebrew life rain was something of very great importance. It is the same, though in the realm of spirit, with the names of God in the letters of St. Paul. The variety of divine names there betrays the deepest heart of the apostle. Think, for instance, of the names one lights on in this fifteenth chapter of the Romans, all of them occurring incidentally. He is the God of patience and of consolation (Rom_15:5). I trust my readers have all found Him that. He is the God of peace (Rom_15:33), keeping in perfect peace every one whose mind is stayed on Him. He is the God of hope (Rom_15:13), touching with radiant hopefulness everything that He has made, from the mustard seed to the children of mankind.

The Hopefulness of God in Nature

Think, for instance, how beautifully evident is the hopefulness of God in nature. Our Lord was very keenly alive to that. There is much in nature one cannot understand, and no loving communion will interpret it. There is a seeming waste and cruelty in nature that often lies heavy on the heart. But just as everything is beautiful in nature that the hand of man had never tampered with, so what a glorious hopefulness she breathes! Every seed, cast into the soil, is big with hopefulness of coming harvest. Every sparrow, in the winter ivy, is hopeful of the nest and of the younglings. Every streamlet, rising in the hills and brawling over the granite in the valley, is hopeful of its union with the sea. Winter comes with iciness and misery, but in the heart of winter is the hope of spring. Spring comes tripping across the meadow, but in the heart of spring there is the hope of summer. Summer comes garlanded with beauty, but in the heart of summer is the hope of autumn when sower and reaper shall rejoice together. Paul talks of the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together. But a woman in travail is not a hopeless woman. Her heart is "speaking softly of a hope." The very word natura is the witness of language to that hopeful travail — it means something going to be born. If, then, this beautiful world of nature is the garment of God by which we see Him, if His Kingdom be in the mustard seed, and not a sparrow can fall without His knowledge, how evident it is that He in whom we trust, who has never left Himself without a witness, is the God of hope.

The Hopefulness of the New Testament

Again, how evident is this attribute in the inspired word of the New Testament. The New Testament, as Dr. Denney used to say, is the most hopeful book in the whole world. I believe that God is everywhere revealed — in every flower in the crannied wall. But I do not believe that He is everywhere equally revealed anymore than I believe it of myself. There are things I do that show my character far more fully than certain other things — and God has made me in His image. I see Him in the sparrow and the mustard seed; I see Him in the lilies of the field; but I see more of Him, far more of Him, in the inspired word of the New Testament. And the fine thing to remember is just this, that the New Testament is not a hopeless book. Hope surges in it. Its note is that of victory. There steals on the ear in it the distant triumph song. It closes with the Book of Revelation where the Lamb is upon the throne. And if this be the expression of God's being far more fully than anything in nature, how sure we may be that He is the God of Hope.

Christ, the Gloriously Hopeful One

And then, lastly, we turn to our Lord and Savior. Is not He the most magnificent of optimists? Hope burned in Him (as Lord Morley said of Cromwell) when it had gone out in everybody else. There is an optimism based on ignorance: not such was the good hope of Christ. With an eye that sin had never dulled, He looked in the face all that was dark and terrible. There is an optimism based on moral laxity: not such was the good hope of Christ. He hated sin, although he loved the sinner. Knowing the worst, hating what was evil, treated by men in the most shameful way, Christ was gloriously and sublimely hopeful till death was swallowed up in victory; hopeful for the weakest of us, hopeful for the very worst, hopeful for the future of the world. Now call to mind the word He spake: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father. "He that hath seen into that heart of hopefulness hath seen into the heart of the Eternal. Once a man has won that vision though there are many problems that may vex him still, he never can doubt again, through all his years, the amazing hopefulness of God.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

October 19

The Grace of Happy-Heartedness - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I would have you without carefulness — 1Co_7:32 Cast thy burden upon the Lord — Psa_55:22

There are few graces which the world admires so much as the grace of a cheerful heart. There is a certain perennial attraction in men and women who bear their burdens well. When we see a face all lined with care it often touches the chord of pity in us. We are moved to compassion when it flashes on us what a story is engraven there. But the face that really helps us on our journey is seldom the face of battle and of agony; it is the face which has its sunshine still. None of us is enamored by a frown. All of us are attracted by a smile. We recognize by an unerring instinct that in happy-heartedness there is a kind of victory. And so we love it as we love the sunshine or the song of the birds upon the summer morning. It takes its place with these good gifts of God.

The Charms of Children

Children are possessors of this sunny attribute. That is one reason why the presence of children is such a perpetual solace and so refreshing. Children are far from being little angels as every father and every mother knows. They can be cruel and intensely selfish and amazingly and unblushingly untruthful. Yet when the worst is said of them that can be said, there yet remains in them this touch of heaven which is a greater blessing to the world than all the modem methods of communication. They cry., and then in the passing of an hour the heart that was inconsolable is healed. They scowl (and they are not pretty when they scowl), but so far as I know them they never bear any malice. They bully in the most shocking fashion, when you and I happen to be absent, but if they bully they almost never brood. "I would have you without carefulness" — that is how the great apostle puts it. He was one of these men whose interests were too vast to allow him time for watching little people. But Christ, whose interests were far vaster, somehow or other always had time for that, and so He puts it, not "I would have you without carefulness," but "except ye become as little children."

Frivolity

Of course we must distinguish happy-heartedness from that poor counterfeit we call frivolity. A child may be absolutely irresponsible, but a child is never frivolous. No one is so swiftly touched to wonder. No one is so deeply moved with awe. When our children laugh at what to us is sacred, it simply means that they do not understand. The things that are wonderful and great in their eyes are not at all what we consider so, and note, you never find them mocking at what is wonderful and great to them. Now that is the very hallmark of frivolity. It recognizes what is great and jests at it. It is not an intellectual inability; it is much more truly a moral inability. Some of the most frivolous people I have known had plenty of brains and were as sharp as needles; it was their heart and not their brain which was contemptible. The great instance of frivolity in Scripture is that of the men who refused the invitation. They were by no means intellectual fools, these men. They could do a bit of work and do it admirably. But when this moment came they all made light of it — they took it as a joke though it was kingly —they lost the opportunity of their lives because of their old habit of belittling. Different by all the world from that is the sweet genius of happy-heartedness. It is as swift to recognize the best as is frivolity to have a laugh at it. Indeed so far as my experience goes, frivolous people are commonly unhappy and are very often trying to forget something which is akin to tragedy.

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The Grace of Happy-Heartedness - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Depending upon God

Now I want you to notice — it is very important — the words in which our text is couched. It is "cast thy burden on the Lord"; it is not "cast thy burden anywhere." I think there is nothing poorer or more cowardly than just the desire to be rid of burdens. It is always the mark of meanness in a character and the sorry witness of a contracting soul. For life grows richer by what we have to bear, and sympathies grow tenderer and broader, and the world expands into a richer place through things which we once thought would make us poorer. They say that the Indian by putting his ear to the ground can hear far off the galloping of horses. Erect, there is not a sound upon the breeze. Prone on the earth, he hears the distant trampling. And I daresay there are some here tonight who lived and moved upon a silent prairie until somehow they were bowed into the dust. The Bible never urges any man recklessly to cast his cares away. As soon would it urge the captain of a ship to cast out his ballast when he was clear of port. Knowing the preciousness of what is heavy, it bids us summon to our aid the power of God, and it is that which makes all the difference in the world. Now we know we are in the hands of One who providently caters to the sparrow. Now we know that on the line of duty we shall have strength for all that must be done. Now we can laugh with the children in the thick of it, and have our sunshine even in December, for God is with us and His name is wonderful and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Christ Makes the Difference

In closing I have one thing more to say — one thing I never think of without shame. It is how much easier this secret is for us than it ever could have been for David. "Cast thy burden on the Lord," he wrote — and of course he had first done it for himself. Now tell me, what was that Lord to David- that Lord into whose keeping he committed everything? He was the King eternal and invisible, and clouds and darkness were around His throne, and men looked to the left hand and He was not there, and to the right and lo! they could not find Him. Was not the faith of these old Jews magnificent? Could you have trusted in such a God as that? Could you have believed that the infinite Creator would open His arms and take your burden in? It might have been easy for a Greek to do it for he believed in the divinity of man, but how a Jew rose to a faith like that is to me as wonderful as any miracle.

But do you see how everything is changed now? We have Christ and that makes all the difference. For do you remember how, when Christ was here, men came and cast their burdens upon Him? Everyone did it, and did it as by instinct — it did not matter what the burden was — and "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Run through the gamut of our human burdens, and tell me if there were any that they failed to bring. They brought their sicknesses and they brought their fears. They brought their children and they brought themselves. And the strange thing is that though Christ was angry sometimes, and His eyes flashed in righteous indignation, not in a single instance do you find Him angry because anyone cast a burden upon Him.

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The Grace of Happy-Heartedness - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

We Can Achieve Joy

My brother and sister, if your faith is to be real, shall I tell you what you must always do? You must always carry into your thought of God what you have learned and seen of Jesus Christ. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father:" He is the express image of His person. You must carry up into your thought of God all the revelation of His Son. And I tell you that when you once do that the Fatherhood of God becomes so wonderful that even you, with your weak and trembling faith, are able to cast your burden upon Him. It took a hero to achieve it once. The weakest woman can achieve it now. It was once the act of a sublime enthusiasm. It is now within the reach of everyone of you. So sure are we in Christ of God's deep sympathy and of His care for us and of His love, that there is not a man or woman here who may not know the strength of happy-heartedness. Therefore I charge you in the name of Christ that you are not to let that burden weigh you down. I charge you to remember that you sin if you live in gloom and miserable wretchedness. Never frivolous, but always reverent-happy-hearted just because He knows — I know no better way in this strange world of glorifying the Father and the Son.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

October 20

The Wonder of That Night - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The same night in which he was betrayed — 1Co_11:23

Attention has been directed in these days of ours to what is called the method of suggestion. The power of suggestion to influence thought and conduct is one of the great themes of educational science. We are taught that beneath our consciousness there is a whole world within each of us that lies asleep, and that it depends on the suggestive touch whether it will awaken to evil or to good. Now there can be little question that in throwing in this clause, Paul is acting on the method of suggestion. He is not just stating an historic fact nor indicating a bare point of time. He is conveying to the Corinthian church by the suggestion of the betrayal-night a veiled and delicate rebuke.

Divisions in the Church

Recall the circumstances of that church at Corinth. It was in a sad and pitiable state. It was rent with such unseemly factions that any one but Paul would have despaired of it. A church is always in the most deadly peril when its divisions are felt at the Lord's Table. It is bad enough when they interfere with service; it is far worse when they invade the ordinance. Yet at Corinth that was what had happened, and brotherly love had vanished from the ordinance and pride and selfishness and disregard of decency had reared their heads at the communion table. It was to such a church that Paul was writing when he said, "On that night in which he was betrayed. "Let them but think of that, in all the pathos of it, and it would shame them into a better spirit. How could any of them be proud again, or drunken or scornful of the poor, when they remembered that their feast was instituted in the infinite sorrow of betrayal-night. In other words, Paul flung this clause in to quicken and intensify right feeling. It was not an item of information merely; it was a call to worthier communicating.

The Wonder of Christ's Thanksgiving

One of the great features of the Last Supper was the prayer of thanksgiving which Jesus offered. It had its place, no less than the breaking of the bread, in the revelation which Paul had had from Christ. What was included in that thanksgiving is one of the things which God has hidden from us. We know from the Gospels that the bread and wine were blessed, but no one imagines that that was all. Clearly, there was such an outpouring of the heart, such adoration of the Heavenly Father, that none of the little band in that upper room ever forgot it to his dying day. John carried the thought of it to Ephesus. Peter recurred to it in distant Babylon. It had moved them to a depth of awe and wonder that was vivid to their last hour of ministry. Whenever they met to break the bread again on distant shores and after the lapse of years, swift as an arrow-flight their hearts went back to the wonderful thanksgiving of Jesus.

Thanksgiving Distinguishes the Lord's Table

So powerfully has that been impressed upon the church that thanksgiving has always distinguished the Lord's Table. In every fellowship and throughout all the ages one great mark of the Communion Service is gratitude. One of the oldest names for the feast is eucharist, and eucharist is the Greek for thanksgiving. One of the oldest traditions of the Table is that the poor should be remembered at it. And all this thankfulness expressed in name and offertory is not only the witness of our debt to God, it is the witness also of the depth of feeling that was stirred by the thanksgiving of Jesus. It is that which is written out in after ages. It is that which is testified to in every ordinance. Every time we meet to break the bread, we touch on the wonder of the upper room. We touch on the awe that filled the little company, as with the filling of the Holy Ghost, when they listened with rapt hearts and straining ears to the thanksgiving of their Master and their Lord.

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The Wonder of That Night - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Adoring Gratitude of Christ

Now what was it that made that thanksgiving so wonderful? Well, that is a question we cannot fully answer. It may be that even if you and I had been there we could not have explained why we were moved so. But this is certain, that as the days went on and the disciples looked back upon it all, the thanksgiving grew doubly wonderful to them because of the hour in which it had been spoken. On that night in which he was being betrayed — it was on that night our Lord broke into thanks. Think of it, in such an hour as that, no room for anything but an adoring gratitude! No wonder Peter never could forget it — no wonder John never could forget it — they never could forget that joy in God in the tense agony of the betrayal-night. Had Christ been looking forward to triumph the next day they might more easily have comprehended it. Had He been ringed about with perfect loyalty —they could have understood it then. But on that night on which He was betrayed- that then, in such an hour, Christ should adore, was something that grew and deepened in its mystery the more they brooded on it in the years.

The Wonder of Christ's Certainty

There is nothing more notable in the memorial supper than the perfect confidence of Jesus in the future. No trace of doubt can be detected in Him — no slightest misgiving seems to have crossed His heart- as He looked away from His own little company down through the ages that were yet to be. Like all great moments in our earthly life, the Lord's Supper has a twofold reference. It reaches back into bygone days; it stretches forward to the untrodden future. And one of the singular things about our Lord which has attracted the eyes of every age is that at the Table, looking forward, He was possessed with a quiet and perfect confidence. "This do in remembrance of me," — then He was to be loyally and lovingly remembered. "Ye do show the Lord's death until he come," — then His memory was to last while the world lasted. In loving hearts right through the ages, on and on till the last trumpet sounded, Christ never doubted that His Name would live in warm and powerful memorial. Had He looked with quiet confidence across the past, it would not have arrested us so much. For all the past had been leading up to Him, and He had perfectly fulfilled the will of God. But that with equal confidence, unsullied and serene, He should have anticipated all coming time is something that has always stirred the church.

Christ's View of the Centuries to Come

Of course it is possible to minimize this thought as it is possible to belittle everything about Christ. We are told that He was thinking only of His own here, and that His coming was expected in a year or two. There was no vision of the coming centuries — no thought of you and me on that evening — it was a word spoken to the disciples only till in a dozen years or so their Lord should come again. Of course there is much to be said for that view, or thinking men would never have advanced it. But deeper than any arguments in favor of it is its injustice to the spirit of the scene. And once we have grasped the spirit of the scene and turn to the life of Christ for confirmation of it, we see that it is something more than sentiment which finds the centuries in the heart of Jesus here. We learn from some of His most familiar parables how slowly and gradually the kingdom was to come. It could no more be hurried on than one could hasten the growing of the mustard seed.

We learn, too, that Jesus had an eye which ranged away beyond the bounds of Israel: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." It is that far-ranging and large spirit which you must carry into the upper room. An hour of high intensity like this was certain to be an hour of vision. If ever Christ saw imperially and magnificently, and we know from other sources that He did, would it not be on the eve before that day which was to close His earthly ministry by death? I believe, then, that in the upper room Jesus had an eye for all the ages. I believe that He was looking down the centuries to the table which is spread for you and me. And the singular thing is that with a range like that over the illimitable fields of time, Christ should have shown such quiet and perfect confidence.

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The Wonder of That Night - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

Now do you not feel the wonder of that love afresh as you recall when it was pledged and sealed? That sealing would have been wonderful at any time, but on such a night as that it passeth knowledge. Had it been some Pharisee who was betraying him, we should not have marveled at it so. But it was no Pharisee —no enemy — it was His own familiar friend in whom He trusted. Yet in the very hour of His betrayal when any other heart might have grown bitter, Christ deliberately seized his opportunity to show forth and to seal His dying love. Mazzini, that great-heart of Italy, tells us something of his sad experience. He tells us how bitter he grew — how sick of soul — when the men who had followed him fell away from him. But on that night when all forsook Him there is not one trace of hardening in Christ; on the contrary, it was that hour He chose to institute the memorial of His love. Is not this the wonder of Christ's love, that right through that betrayal it survived? And the question is, have not we too betrayed Him since we last gathered at the Communion Table? God knows we have, yet shall we eat and drink because of a love that has survived our past- that has forgiven everything in mercy, and in mercy will not let us go.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

October 27

The Three Centers of Love

God so loved the world— Joh_3:16

Christ also loved the church— Eph_5:25

The Son of God, who loved me— Gal_2:20

John's Assurance of God's Love for the World

We have first the love of God for the whole world, or, as we should put it, for all the human race. The world of John is not the world of nature, but the teeming world of sinful men and women. Now, the extraordinary thing is this, that such a statement should fall from Jewish lips. The ancient Hebrew was the true aristocrat looking with proud disdain on every Gentile. And it was because this Jew had companied with Christ and drunk deep of His spirit, that there had come to him the rich assurance that the love of God was for the world. Born of a Jewess, made under the law, Christ was the Son of man. For all mankind He lived and taught and died. He was the light of the world. It was in following Him and brooding on His mystery, that the eyes of John were opened by the Spirit to recognize the worldwide love of God.

The Universality of God's Love

The wonder of it deepens when we remember what the world of men is like. The Bible, for all its unconquerable optimism, never gives us a rosy view of man. It is the writer of our text who tells us that the whole world "lieth in the evil one." Like a precious vessel sunk in a foul stream, it is submerged under a tide of evil. And this is not only the view of the disciple, it is the view of our blessed Lord Himself—"the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." I could understand God loving the world of nature where the sunshine is sleeping on the lake. If the human heart is drawn to hill and meadow, how much more the infinite heart in heaven. But that that heart, knowing every secret, should love the teeming millions of mankind lies on the utmost verge of the incredible. It only becomes credible in Christ. It is a dream but for the Incarnation. Unless God gave His only begotten Son, worldwide love goes whistling down the wind. It was because this writer had learned, from personal contacts, the universality of the unspeakable Gift that he awoke to the worldwide love of God.

God's Love for the Church

The second center of divine love is the Church—Christ also loved the Church. And at once this question rises in the mind, why should the Church be singled out like that? Well, when you read the story of the prodigal, you feel that the father always loved that son. When he was far away rioting with the harlots, the father was yearning for him night and day. But only when that prodigal came home could the pent-up love be poured upon the child—and the Church is the bit of the world that has come home. The true Church is not an organization. It is not Episcopalian nor Methodist. It is the mighty company of quickened souls who could never rest content among the swine. Drawn by need, hungry and despairing, they have traveled back to "God who is our home," and found the love that had been always yearning for them. The prodigal was loved in the far country, but there no ring could be put upon his finger. So long as he was there no cry was heard, "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him." To gain these tokens of unwearying love, the poor rebellious child had to come home—and the Church is the bit of the worm that has come home. That is why the Church, and not the family, is the second center of the love of heaven. Some in the family may still be far away, living in utter heedlessness and sin. But no one in the true Church is in the far land. All are brought nigh by the blood of Christ, and love is able to show itself at last in the ring and in the shoes and in the robe.

God's Love for the Individual

The third center of divine love is the individual—He loved me, says the apostle. And it is just here that the love of God so infinitely transcends the love of man. No man can love a multitude with the intensity wherewith he loves his child. No patriot can feel towards all his countrymen as he feels towards his little daughter. But the wonder of the love of God is this, that with a compass that encircles millions, every separate soul is loved as if there were no one else in the whole world. Our Lord was moved to His depths by mighty multitudes. He brooded over them with infinite compassion. He came to be the Savior of the world, and He came because He loved the world. Yet, living for mankind, He gave His richest to the one who fell suppliant at His feet, and, dying for mankind, He gave His heart to the one who was hanging by His side. He loved the world—and gave. He loved the Church—and gave. But all would be incomplete could we not add, "He loved me and gave Himself for me." When we are tempted to doubt the love of heaven for the little unit in unnumbered millions, there comes a gentle voice across the darkness, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father."

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

November 7

The Power of the Resurrection

That I may know…the power of his resurrection— Phi_3:10

The Fact Versus the Power

Of the fact of the resurrection, Paul had not a shadow of a doubt. It was one of his indubitable certainties. He himself had had a revelation of the Lord which had altered the whole tenor of his life. He had known and conversed with those who saw Him in the days that followed upon Easter morning. Whatever might be doubtful to his intellect or might remain a matter of conjecture, his life, both of experience and thought, was based upon the fact that Christ was risen. But the power of a fact is to be distinguished from the fact itself. The power is the influence it exercises in its various relationships to life. And so the power of the resurrection is not the power that raised Christ from the dead, but the increasing pressure upon life of the stupendous fact that Christ is risen. To penetrate more fully into this, to grasp it in its infinite significance, that was the ambition of St. Paul as he made his lonely way among the mysteries. Like some bright star the fact was always shining. It was unalterable and unsetting. His passion was to know the power of the fact.

One thinks, for instance, of its evidencing power. The resurrection was the seal of heaven. In it the stupendous claims of Jesus were guaranteed and ratified of God. The dark hours when He lay buried were to the disciples hours of anguish. They could not reconcile that last indignity with the magnificence of His spiritual program. It must have seemed to them, and seemed to everybody, as if all that they had shared in was a dream now quenched forever by the grave. The fact of death extinguished all their hopes. It invalidated every claim of Jesus. It brought down into a hopeless ruin the building they had thought to be of God. And the first great power of the resurrection, its primary influence upon thought and life, was the power to scatter the agonizing doubts that filled the breasts of those who trusted Him. It gave beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning. It guaranteed the Messiahship of Jesus. It flooded with the authority of heaven the vocation of their blessed Lord. That was why, in the earliest Christian preaching, there was such impassioned and unswerving emphasis on the resurrection of the Savior. It was not an isolated fact. Isolated facts are quite inoperative. It was a fact fraught with a tremendous influence on the whole concept of the Lord. Every word He spoke and every claim He made was charged with new and heavenly significance under the power of the resurrection.

The Resurrection Provided the Intimacy of a Living Friend

Or one thinks again of its sustaining power amid the tasks and burdens of mortality. It gave to men, wherever they might wander, the near presence of a living Friend. The soul thirsts for a living God, and the heart thirsts for a living friend—for one who knows and understands and loves in the intimacy of a present fellowship. And the power of the resurrection is that it answers that steady yearning of the heart in a way no memories can ever do. It gives us a Friend who is alive, closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet. It confronts our lives not with the storied past, but with One who lives and loves us to the uttermost. And the best of all is that this living Friend has sounded all the depths of human life and has "come smiling from the world's great snare uncaught." What the law could never do for Paul was done victoriously by the risen Savior. In fellowship with Him he triumphed, and when he was weak then he was strong. His one passion was to know more fully the resources of that living Friend. That was the power of His resurrection.

The Resurrection Provided for Paul a Pull for Things Above

Or one thinks of its exalting power which was never absent from the apostle's thought. The spiritual power of the resurrection is its steady upward pull upon the life. When one is climbing in our Scottish highlands, there are often places perilous to negotiate. In such places it is a mighty succor when someone above reaches down a helping hand. And the mystical thought that Christ was gripping him from the upper security of heavenly places turned the apostle into a daring climber on the steeps that lead to God. Christ was above him—He was risen. He was stooping down to lift the climber up. Paul felt the urge of the true mountaineer which lies in seeking the things which are above. But for him there was the splendid certainty that he was not going to perish for before him and above him there was Christ. In union with Him there was an upward pull. Paul turned his back upon the lower things. Just because Christ was risen and above him, he must gain in Christ the heights of holy living. Had you asked the apostle, I think he would have answered that that was the dominant thought within his breast when he wrote of the power of His resurrection.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

November 8

The Discipline of Thought - Page 1
by George H. Morrison (Worth The Length)

Think on these things— Phi_4:8

Two Unseen Worlds

When we speak of unseen things, we commonly refer to things that are eternal. We associate the unseen with the world beyond the veil where the angels of God, innumerable, are around the throne. Now it is true that that is an unseen world though the time is coming when our eyes shall see it, but we must never forget that far nearer to us than that there is another world which also is unseen. We live in a day of very strange discoveries and look on many things that were once invisible. By means of our telescopes we see very distant stars, and we can watch the beating of our hearts. But the world of thought, of feeling, of passion and of desire—that world still baffles the finest powers of vision; as surely as there is an unseen heaven above us, there is an unseen universe within. What a mysterious and strange thing is life—a burning point, and round it what a shadow! How utterly must a man fail who walks by sight and who will not recognize the all-embracing mystery! Deep calleth unto deep wherever man is—the invisible deep within to the unseen depths beyond. It is one distinguishing feature of the Gospel that it never makes light of these great and awful things.

Let us turn to the world within, our thoughts. For I believe that most of us give far too little heed to what I might call the discipline of thought. "If there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these things." First, I shall speak on the vital need there is of governing our thoughts. Next, on how the Gospel helps men to this government.

The Government of Our Thoughts

First, then, on the government of our thoughts—and at the outset I would recognize the difficulty of it. I question if there is a harder task in all the world than that of bringing our thoughts into subjection to our will. It is very difficult to regulate our actions, yet there is a social pressure on our actions. It is supremely difficult to order our speech aright, yet speech is restrained and checked by countless barriers. Every time we act and every time we speak we come into direct contact with society, and prudence and self-love and reputation and business interests admonish us instantly to walk with caution. But thought is free—at least we think it is. It is transacted in a world where none can observe it. The law cannot reach us for unclean imaginations. Think how we will of a man, he cannot charge us with libel. All the prudential safeguards which God has set on speech, and all the deterrent motives which surround our deeds, are lacking when we enter the silent halls of thought. It is that—perhaps above all other things—which makes the management of thought so difficult. It is the secrecy—the absence of restraint—the imagined freedom of the world within. And yet there are one or two considerations I can bring before you that will show you how, in the whole circle of self-mastery, there is nothing more vital than the mastery of thought.

Much of Our Happiness Depends on Thought

Think, for example, how much of our happiness—our common happiness—depends on thought. We begin by imagining it depends on outward things, but we all grow to be wiser by and by. "There's nothing either good or bad," says Shakespeare, "but thinking makes it so." Now of course that is only half a truth. There are things that in themselves are forever good, and there are other things that eternally and everywhere are bad—never be juggled out of these moral certainties. But in between these everlasting fixities there lies a whole world of life and of experience, and what it shall mean for us—how we shall regard it—depends almost entirely upon thought. Our happiness does not depend on what we view. Our happiness depends on our point of view. There are men who can think themselves any day into a paradise, and others who think themselves into a fever. Have we not known or met or read of men and women who seemed to have everything this world could give, yet only to look at their faces or their portraits was to read the story of frustration and discontent? But St. Francis of Assisi, the sweetest of all saints, sitting down to dine by the roadside on a few crusts of bread, was so exquisitely and radiantly happy that he could not find words enough for thankfulness. That then is an integral part of happiness—the discipline and the government of our thoughts. Basically, it is not things themselves, it is our thoughts about them, that constitute the gentle art of being happy.

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The Discipline of Thought - Page 2
by George H. Morrison (Worth The Length)

The Unconscious Influence of Our Thoughts

Again I want you to consider this—how much of our unconscious influence lies in our thoughts. Not only by what we do and what we say, but by the kind of thoughts we are cherishing in secret, do we impress ourselves upon our neighbors and help or hinder the little world we move in. That very suggestive and spiritual writer, Mr. Maeterlinck, puts the matter in his own poetic way. He says, "Though you assume the face of a saint, a hero or a martyr, the eye of the passing child will not greet you with the same unapproachable smile, if there lurk within you an evil thought." Now probably there is a little exaggeration there; one thought, flashing and then expelled, may not reveal itself. The totality of saintly character is too great to be overborne by the intrusion of one shadow of the devil. But it is certain that by the thoughts we harbor and let ourselves dwell upon and cherish in the dark, we touch and turn and influence our world when we never dream that we are doing it. There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed—what a depth there is in that one word of Jesus! He is not merely thinking of God's judgment bar tomorrow. He is thinking of the undetected revelation of today. Christ recognized that the kind of thing we brood on, the kind of thought we allow ourselves to think, though it never utter itself in actual words, or clothe itself in the flesh and blood of deeds, encompasses and affects the life of others like a poisonous vapor or like a breath of spring. Your secret is not such a secret as you think. Why are men drawn to you? Why are men repelled by you? Why is it that sometimes we instinctively shrink from people in the very first hour that we meet them? It is because the heart—more powerful than any x-ray—deciphers for itself the secret story, brushes past speech and deed into the hidden place and apprehends the existence that is there. To think base thoughts is a sin against our neighbor as surely as it is a sin against ourselves. To be unclean even in imagination is to make it harder for others to be good. In the interests of our influence then, no less than of our happiness, you see the need of governing our thoughts.

The Power of Thought in Our Temptations

There is only one other consideration that I would mention, and that is the power of thought in our temptations. In the government of thought—in the power to bring thought to heel—lies one of our greatest moral safeguards against sin. You have all read the words of Thomas A Kempis in that immortal book, "The Imitation of Christ." They occur in his thirteenth chapter, Of Resisting Temptation. How does sin reach us? That is his question—and this is his never-to-be-forgotten answer to it: "For first there cometh to the mind a bare thought of evil, then a strong imagination thereof, afterwards delight and evil motion, then consent." First, a bare thought—that is the beginning, and it is then that the government of thought means heaven or hell. For if a man has disciplined himself to crush that thought—which may come to the purest and holiest mind—still better, if he has acquired the power to change the current and to turn his thought instantly into other and nobler channels, temptation is baffled at its very start and the man stands upon his feet victorious. A man will never regulate his passions who has never learned to regulate his thoughts. If we cannot master our besetting thoughts, we shall never master our besetting sins. I think you see, then, that in the interests of morality no less than in the interests of our happiness and influence, it is supremely necessary that we all give heed to the great subject of thought—discipline.

How the Gospel Helps in Governing Our Thoughts

So now in the second place, I wish to ask how the Gospel helps us to that. I wish to ask why a Christian above all other men has powers available for governing his thought. To some of you the mastery of thought may seem impossible—it is never viewed as impossible in Scripture, and the secret of that
Gospel-power lies in the three great words—light, love, life.

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The Discipline of Thought - Page 3
by George H. Morrison (Worth The Length)

Think first of light as a power for thought-mastery. We all know how light affects our thoughts. In twilight or darkness what sad thoughts come thronging, which the glory of sunlight instantly dispels. I have a dear friend who is a terrible sufferer and who rarely has any quiet sleep after three in the morning, and the worst of wakening then, he tells me, is that that is just the time when everything seems melancholy, cheerless, hopeless. We need the light if we are to see things truly. We need the light if we are to think aright. And the glory of Christ is that by His life and death He has shed a light where before there was only darkness. What had the old and beautiful religion of the Greeks to say when a man was confronted by sorrow or disease? It was dumb, it turned away its head in silence; it had no light to shed upon the mystery—till men, having no light to think by, lost all thought-control and wandered into a labyrinth of evil. But the sufferings of Christ have shed a light on suffering. The death of Christ has shed a light on death. Faced by the worst now and called to bear the cross, we can think bravely and luminously of it all. The light of Christ, for the man who lives in it, is an untold help in the government of thought.

Then think of love—Is it not one mark of love that our thoughts always follow in its train? A love that never thought about the loved one would be the most heartless and hopeless of all mockeries. A man who is deeply in love with a good woman thinks of her every hour of the day, and there is no such certain sign of love's decay as the dying out of gentle and sweet thoughtfulness. That sign a woman instantly detects—it is the unuttered tragedy of countless lives—and the sorrow of it springs from the intuition that thought is under the mastery of love. Do you see then how the Gospel helps us to thought-control? At the very center of its message it puts love. It shows us a Savior who lived and died for us and who stretches out His pierced hands towards us. It speaks of Gethsemane and Calvary and at its burning heart reveals a love that passes the love of women. "Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"—that will determine the current and trend of thought. That master-passion is the power of God for bringing every thought into captivity. If the love of a woman can control and purge our thoughts, how much more the love of Jesus Christ!

Then think of life—are not our thoughts affected by the largeness and abundance of our lives? When life is poor and feeble, base thoughts scent us out as the vultures of the desert scent out the dying traveler. Half of the vile or bitter thoughts we think are the children of our lusterless and unprofitable days. Expand the horizon—get a new breath of life —and they take to themselves wings and fly away. Now what did Christ say about His coming? I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly. Life is expanded and filled with undreamed-of fullness when we live in the glad fellowship of Jesus. And that great tide of life, like the tide of the sea that covers up the mudbanks, is the greatest power in the moral world for submerging every base and bitter thought. Do you know anything of that light—that love—that life? What a great deal we miss in ignoring Jesus Christ! The king's daughter is all beautiful within—just because her king is her Redeemer.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

November 21

Christ and the Fear of Death - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage— Heb_2:15

We Face Death with Curiosity

There are two feelings which the thought of death has always kindled in the human breast, and the first of them is curiosity. Always in the presence of that veil through which sooner or later we all pass, men have been moved to ask with bated breath, What is it which that veil conceals? It is as if the most diaphanous of curtains were hung between our eyes and the great secret, making men the more wistful to interpret it. It has been said by a well-known Scottish essayist that this would account for the crowd at executions. You know how the people used to flock by the thousands when a criminal was to die upon the gallows. And Alexander Smith throws out this thought that it was not just savagery which brought them there. It was the unappeasable curiosity which death forever stirs in human hearts.

We Face Death with Fear

But if the thought of death moves our curiosity, there is another feeling which is always linked with it. Death is not alone the source of wonder. Death has ever been the source of fear. How universal that feeling is we see from this, that we share it with all animate creation. Wherever there is life in any form there is an instinct which recoils from death. When the butterfly evades the chasing schoolboy—when the stag turns at bay against the dogs—we have the rudiments of that which in a loftier sphere may grow to be a bondage and a tyranny. The fear of death is not a religious thing, although religion has infinitely deepened it. It is old as existence, wide as the whole world, lofty and deep as the whole social fabric. It touches the savage in the heart of Africa as every reader of Dr. Livingstone knows, and it hides under the mantle of the prince as well as under the jacket of the prodigal. How keenly it was felt in the old world every reader of pagan literature has seen. The aim and object of the old philosophy was largely to crush it out of human life. In the great and gloomy poem of Lucretius, in many a page of Cicero, above all in the treatises of Plutarch and of Seneca, we learn what a mighty thing the fear of death was with the men and women of the Roman Empire.

Of course I do not mean that the fear of death is always active and present and insistent. To say that would be an exaggeration and would be untrue to the plain facts of life. When a man is in the enjoyment of good health, he very rarely thinks of death at all. When the world goes well with him and he is happy, he has the trick of forgetting he is mortal. He digs his graves within the garden walls and covers them with a wealth of summer flowers so that the eye scarce notices the mound when the birds are singing in the trees. We know, too, how a passion or enthusiasm will master the fear of death within the heart. A soldier in the last rush will never think of it though comrades are dropping on every side of him. And a timid mother, for her little child's sake, or a woman for the sake of one she loves, will face the deadliest peril without trembling. For multitudes the fear of death is dormant else life would be unbearable and wretched. But though it is dormant, it is always there ready to be revived in the last day. In times of shipwreck—in hours of sudden panic—when we are ill and told we may not live, then shudderingly as from uncharted deeps, there steals on men this universal terror. Remember there is nothing cowardly in that. A man may be afraid and be a hero. There are times when to feel no terror is not courage. It is but the hallmark of insensibility. It is not what a man feels that makes the difference. It is how he handles and controls what he feels. It is the spirit in which he holds himself in the hour when the heart is overwhelmed.

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Christ and the Fear of Death - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Guard Around the Grave

Nor can we be altogether blind to the purposes which God meant this fear to serve. Like everything universal in the heart, it has its duty in the plans of heaven. You remember the cry wrung from the heart of Keats in his exquisite music to the nightingale. "Full many a time," he sings, "I have been half in love with easeful death." And it may be that some who read these pages have been at times so weary of it all that they too have been in love with easy death. It may have been utter tiredness that caused it. It may have been something deeper than all weariness. Who knows but that some may even have dreamt of suicide? Brethren, it is from all such thoughts and from all the passion to be done with life that we are rescued and redeemed and guarded by the terror which God has hung around the grave. Work may be hard, but death is harder still. Duty may be stem, but death is sterner. Dark and gloomy may be the unknown morrow, but it is not so dark and gloomy as the grave. Who might not break through the hedge and make for liberty were the hedge easy to be pushed aside? But God has hedged us about with many a thorn—and we turn to our little pasturage again. When Adam and Eve had been expelled from Eden, they must have longed intensely to return. It was so beautiful and the world so desolate; it was so fertile and the world so hard. But always when they clasped repentant hands and stole in the twilight to the gate of Paradise, there rose the awful form with flaming sword. Sleepless and vigilant he stood at watch. His was a dreadful and terrible presence. No human heart could face that living fire which stood in guardianship of what was lost. And that was why God had placed His angel there, that they might be driven back to the harsh furrow and till the soil and rise into nobility while the sweat was dropping from the brow. So are we driven back to life again by the terror which stands sentinel on death. So are we driven to our daily cross, however unsupportable it seems. And bearing it, at first because we must, it comes to blossom with the passing days until we discover that on this side of the grave there is more of paradise than we had dreamed. Christ then does not deliver us from the deep instinct of self-preservation. That is implanted in the heart by God. It is given for the safeguarding of His gift. It is only when that fear becomes a bondage and when that instinct grows into a tyranny that Christ steps in and breaks the chains that bind us and sets our trembling feet in a large room. The question is, then, how did He do that? How has Christ liberated us from this bondage? I shall answer that by trying to distinguish three elements which are inherent in that fear.

Fear of Dying

In the first place, our fear of death is in a measure but a fear of dying. It is not the fact of death which terrifies; it is all that we associate with the fact. We may have seen a deathbed scene of agony; it is a memory which we shall never lose. We may have read a story of torment in the closing hours. And it is not what death leads to or removes, but rather that dark accompanying prospect which lies hidden within a thousand hearts as an element of the terror of the grave. I think I need hardly stop to prove to you that this is an unreasonable fear. If there are deathbeds which are terrible, are there not others which are quiet as sleep? But blessed be God, Christ does not only comfort us when we are terrified with just alarms: He comforts us when we are foolish children. Clothed with mortality, He says to us, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow." Dreading the pain that one day may arrive, He says, "Sufficient unto the day is its own evil." He never prayed, "Give us a sight of death, and help us to contemplate it every hour we live." He prayed, "Give us this day our daily bread." Christ will not have us stop the song today because of the possible suffering tomorrow. If we have grace to live by when we need it, we shall have grace to die by when we need it. And so He sets His face against that element and says to us, "Let not your heart be troubled." "My grace shall be sufficient for thee, and my strength made perfect in thy weakness."

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Christ and the Fear of Death - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Fear Lest Death Spells the End of Everything

Secondly, much of our fear of death springs from the thought that death is the end of everything. It is always pitiful to say farewell, and there is no farewell like that of death. You remember how Charles Lamb uttered that feeling with the wistful tenderness which makes us love him. He did not want to leave this kindly world nor his dear haunts nor the familiar faces. And deep within us, though we may not acknowledge it, there is that factor in the fear of death—the passionate clinging of the human heart to the only life which it has known. We have grown familiar with it over the years. It has been a glad thing to have our work to do, and human love and friendship have been sweet. And then comes death and takes all that away from us and says it never shall be ours again, and we brood on it and are lonely and afraid. Thanks be to God, that factor in the fear has been destroyed by Jesus Christ. For He has died, and He is risen again, and He is the first fruits of them that sleep. And if the grave for Him was not an end, but only an incident in life eternal, then we may rest assured that in His love there is no such sadness as the broken melody. All we have striven to be we shall attain. All we have striven to do we shall achieve. All we have loved shall meet us once again with eyes that are transfigured in the dawn. Every purpose that was baffled here and every love that never was fulfilled, all that, and all our labor glorified, shall still be ours when shadows flee away. This life is but the prelude to the piece. This life is the introduction to the book. It is not finis we should write at death. It is not finis, it is initium. And that is how Jesus Christ has met this element and mastered it in His victorious way and made it possible for breaking hearts to bear the voiceless sorrow of farewell.

Fear of Coming Judgement

Thirdly, much of the fear of death springs from the certainty of coming judgement. Say what you will, you know as well as I do that there is a day of judgement still to come. Conscience tells it, if conscience is not dead. The very thought of a just God demands it. Unless there be a judgement still to come, life is the most tragic of mockeries. And every voice of antiquity proclaims it, and every savage tribe within the forest; and with a certainty that never wavered it was proclaimed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Well may you and I fear death, if "after death, the judgement." Seen to our depths with every secret known, we are all to stand before Almighty God. Kings will be there, and peasants will be there, and you and I who are not kings nor peasants. And the rich and the poor will meet together there, for the Lord is the maker of them all. It is that thought which makes death so terrible. It is that which deepens the horror of the tomb. Dwell on that coming day beyond the grave, and what a prospect of terror it is! And it is then that Jesus Christ appears and drives these terrors to the winds of heaven and says to the vilest sinner, "Son of man, stand upon thy feet." He that believeth hath everlasting life. He gives us our acquittal here and now. He tells us that for every man who trusts Him there is now therefore no condemnation. And He tells us that because He died for us and because He bore our sins upon the tree and because He loves us with a love so mighty, neither life nor death can tear us from it. That is the faith to live by and to die by: "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep." That is the faith which makes us more than conquerors over the ugliest record of our past. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

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By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 3

The Living Hope

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead- 1Pe_1:3

One of the glorious things in our religion is the preeminence it gives to hope. There is a radiant hopefulness in Christianity that is discoverable in no other faith. When the Gospel was first preached, the hopes of men were practically dead. As one of the old satirists expresses it, the world had the death-rattle in its throat. And then came the message of the Gospel, and everywhere, like the blossoming of spring, hope began to blossom in the world. As Peter puts it here, men were begotten into hope. The first effect of being born again was the awakening of hope within the heart. Like little children opening their eyes on the face of a mother bending over them, men, reborn, looked on the face of hope. Life was no longer dull and dreary and desperate. Hope touched the bitterest experiences. The song of hope sounded through the night and could not be silenced even by the grave. It is difficult for us to realize the tremendous difference that Gospel hope made in a world whose highest reach was Stoicism.

Begotten Into a Living Hope

Now the interesting thing is that here St. Peter calls that hope a living hope. And in that word living there is a wealth of importance that all our thinking never can exhaust. It implies that other hopes are dying. They grow dim and fade away and vanish. They buoy us up and lure us on, and, having accomplished that, they disappear. But though that contrast was in Peter's mind, and in the mind of every reader of his letter, there was something far more positive than that. A living hope is a hope that answers life. It is a hope that is commensurate with life. It moves triumphant through every sphere of life in which the regenerate man may fret himself. Let life bring with it what it will in the whole range of possible experience, and the shining of the living hope is there. It is always easy to be hopeful when we see the glory of a new dawn. There are times when men are as naturally hopeful as birds are naturally musical. But to be hopeful when things are dead against us and life is cruel and not a star is shining, that is the victory which overcomes the world. A hope like that is never natural. It is something into which we are begotten. It lives in the harshest experience of life. It moves and has its being in Gethsemane. Thus it is called a living hope because it interpenetrates the whole of life and brightens even the darkness of the grave. Such was the hope of Jesus. It shone through every chamber of His being. It was radiant in the agonies of Calvary not less than among the lilies of the field. It was a hope commensurate with life in its whole expanse of suffering and sorrow—and into that living hope we are begotten.

The Certainty of Future Blessedness

Then this living hope, St. Peter tells us, is based on the certainty of future blessedness, and here we must be careful to distinguish. Very commonly, in the New Testament, heaven is set as the object of our hope. It is for that sweet country that the heart is longing; it is the hope of God's elect as the hymn says. But sometimes as in our present passage, heaven is not the object of our hope, but the great certainty from which there springs the new-born spirit of hopefulness in life. Tell me that death ends everything and that my strivings are never to be crowned, and I may still toil and suffer on, "with head bloody but unbowed." But tell me that a fuller life is coming when the broken arc will grow into the circle, and hope sings its music in my heart. The sea shore is a dull and dreary place when over it is nothing but the mist. But when the vault of the sunlit heaven over-arches it, the barren sand becomes a thing of beauty. And only when the mist goes and the blue of heaven is radiant over life, does glory lie on the path of our pilgrimage. Every true believer hopes for heaven. He also hopes just because of heaven. He is begotten into a living hopefulness because some day there is to be a crowning. He does not struggle on despairingly as if everything were to be cast into the void. He is the child and heir of immortality.

Because of Jesus' Resurrection

And then St. Peter tells us that we win that hope by the rising of Jesus from the dead. We are begotten into a living hope by the resurrection of the Lord. Note that the resurrection does not give that hope, for it lies latent in the human breast. In every human heart, when we decipher it, are intimations of immortality. The thoughts that wander through eternity and the shadows that fall upon our hours of triumph and the things on board of us "not wanted for the voyage," and the "forever" graven on the heart of love, all these are stirrings, as of a babe unborn, in the secret places of our being—all these are hints that heaven is our home. The resurrection is not a bestowal. The resurrection is a confirmation. It makes our latent hope a living hope. It brings the struggling embryo to birth. All our human yearnings are authenticated by the tremendous fact of resurrection. We are begotten into a living hope by the rising of Jesus from the dead.

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By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 5

The Cross and Sin

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree — 1Pe_2:24

The cross, though it be a single fact, is a fact with large diversity of meaning. Its significance is inexhaustible. Calvary is the uttermost of service; it is the commendation of the love of God; it is the compendium of self-sacrifice. But we must never forget that right through the New Testament, whatever its other implications may be, it stands in vital relationship to sin. No one will ever understand the cross who does not set it as the Bible sets it in immediate relationship to human sin. The question we have to ask then is this: What does the cross tell us about sin? What do we learn about the fact of sin when we set it in the light of Calvary?

The first thing which the cross tells us is that sin is something tremendously important. God did not just utter warnings against sin; He gave His only begotten Son to die for it. There are many things we are willing to be taxed for, but we should never dream of letting our sons die for them. But some years ago when war broke out, we were willing to give our sons to die for liberty. Fathers gave their sons to die for liberty because liberty is so tremendously important—and God gave His Son to die for sin. It is important in His eyes for many reasons, perhaps most of all because He loves His children. Anything is important in our eyes that keeps our own dear children from the best. And the one thing that keeps His children from the best and tricks them and robs them of their heritage is the dark fact that we call sin. It disables and enfeebles them. It saps their character and wrecks their homes. It lies at the back of every tragedy that we read of in our daily newspapers. We may not "bother about sin," but God bothers intensely about sin—and He bothers most because His children are precious to Him.

Sin Neither Hopeless nor Incurable

Again, the cross tells us that sin is neither hopeless nor incurable. Into a hopeless and despairing world came the thrilling hopefulness of Calvary. When a surgeon is called in to see a patient, his conduct is determined by his hope. If there is hope that the patient can be saved the surgeon proceeds to operate. But if the case is absolutely hopeless and if the seal of death is on the patient, no surgeon worthy of the name will lift a finger. He acts because he hopes. He intervenes because he hopes. If there is not a single ray of hope, he holds his hand and he does nothing. And the very fact that God has intervened and given His Son to die for us on Calvary tells us that sin is not incurable. From the first hour that the cross was preached, that thrilling hope entered the human heart. Despair, which held the old world in its grip, went flying away in the wind. If the heavenly Surgeon had seen fit to operate, then sin was not incurable; there was healing and all the joy of life for the vilest sinner of mankind.

God Entered the Battle With Sin

The other thing which the cross tells us is that if sin is to be grappled with, God must come right into it. I illustrate that from what my eyes have seen among the sick and blind in the jungles of heathendom. If these poor sufferers are to be saved, there must be intervention from a higher realm with its science and its knowledge of the Christian art of healing. It is not enough to send them drugs or medicine. Someone from a higher sphere must come among them carrying in his heart and head and hand the science and the skill of the learned. I have been helped to understand the incarnation by living with doctors in the heart of Africa. If sickness there is ever to be grappled with, some one of greater ability must come into its midst. And if sin is ever to be grappled with, God must come into its midst. And this we adoringly believe that He has done when in the person of His beloved Son He lived our life and died for sin on Calvary.

And if anyone asks how that can save us, let us think of the penitent thief a moment. That thief is a living picture of us all. There he hung suffering condemnation for his undisciplined and lawless life. And then he turned his eyes and saw Jesus of whose beautiful life he had heard a hundred times (Luk_23:41 ). There He hung sharing the condemnation, bearing it in His body on the tree, and it was that which broke the criminal's heart and has broken the hearts of sinners ever since. Jesus did not stand beneath the cross and speak to him sweet and comfortable words. Jesus cried in the freedom of His will, "Hang Me on that cross beside My brother." And there they hung Him and pierced His hands and feet, those hands and feet that had always moved in loveliness—and the dying thief saw it and was saved. God grappled with sin on Calvary by bearing it; by sharing in its condemnation; by taking its agony into His own heart; by letting Himself be pierced by all its arrows. No wonder that the great apostle facing a decadent and rotting world cried "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

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By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 6

Keeping in Love With Life

For he that will love life (lit., he that wisheth to love life), and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile; Let him eschew evil, and do good,' let him seek peace, and ensue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers — 1Pe_3:10-12

What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil — Psa_34:12-13

These words of Peter are not original; they are a quotation from the Book of Psalms. The interesting thing to note is how Peter gives a new turn to the old thought. The psalmist asks, Do you desire life; do you want to live for many years? Peter asks, Do you wish to love life, to find it sweet and delightful to the end? In other words, the psalmist teaches us how to live if we want to reach old age, while Peter teaches us how we ought to live if we want through everything to find life lovable.

At the back of Peter's mind there lies the thought that in youth we are all in love with life. That is an experience, not a problem. To the child life is always sweet in spite of the childish bitterness of tears. To the young man or woman life is thrilling in its morning freshness of sensation. Of course, that very freshness and intensity has its reaction in the realm of suffering and darkens all the stars it sets shining. Still, speaking generally, we are all in love with life at one-and-twenty. We do not need to be taught to make life exquisite. It is fashioned so by Him who commands the morning. The difficult thing is to keep in love with life through all the experience of the years, through the sorrows and trials of the after days and the disappointments which are the lot of everybody.

It is notable that in Peter's answer there is not a word about poverty or hardship. That is one of the silences of Scripture which are as eloquent as any speech. Desperate poverty may make a man rebellious; it may rouse him against the social order; it may fill him with passionate anger at the flaunting of luxury and wealth. But that very anger is a token that poverty has not lost its love for life, for we are never angry about things that are indifferent. Poverty, strange though it may seem, does not throw men out of love with life. Far more often it is the idle rich who have lost the tang of living. I have scarcely ever known a working person for whom life was not sweet. But I have known scores of rich and idle people who were dead sick of everything.

We Must Not Shun the Cross

Nor is it less important to observe that Peter says nothing of suffering or cross-bearing. There is not a hint that we must shun the cross if we want to keep in love with life. One might think that constant suffering would create a loathing against life, or that a hidden cross, borne daily, would transform life into a thing unlovable. As a matter of fact, witnessed by experience, it does nothing of the kind. Suffering is a challenge; it calls out what is bravest in us; it makes us set our teeth and hold on tighter, determined never to be beaten. And who does not know how many a woman's life grows richer and more Christlike by some daily hidden cross she has to bear? Peter never dreams of saying that we must shun the cross to keep in love with life. That would make it impossible for most of us.

Now just here we face the splendid fact that our Lord was in love with life right to the end. To Him it was a glorious thing, and He came to give it more abundantly. Every element was in His cup that might seem to make life unendurable. There was hardship, poverty, misunderstanding; there was infinite and unutterable loneliness. Yet at the end, and in agony, He cried, "Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me," (Luk_22:42) and "this cup" was not life, but death. Buddha said, Life is an evil thing; let us be done with it, and win Nirvana. Christ said, Life is a glorious thing: believe on Me and have eternal life. And yet His life knew all the depths of suffering and was tempted in all points like as ours is and was passed in a loneliness we cannot fathom.

How to Keep in Love With Love

And just here we come to Peter's answer, for do you not see what Peter's answer is? He says, If you want to keep in love with life, then live as the blessed Master did. Keep thy lips from speaking guile—there was no guile upon His lips. Eschew evil and do good—He went about continually doing good. Seek peace and ensue it, and He is the Prince of peace forever in a divided and alienated world. For Him life was not possessions. It was character; it was service; it was love. And do you want to keep in love with it? Then you must follow in His steps. Put first things first. Give primacy to character. Serve your brother.

Walk in love—and you will keep in love with life to the end.

And then remember life was sweet to Jesus because He lived it under the eye of God. He felt, as nobody else has ever felt, the continual presence of the Father. There was no God for Buddha. There is no God for any pessimist. For Jesus, God was Father: He was Friend; He shared in every heart-beat of His child. And does not Peter say, If you want to keep in love with life as Jesus did, right on to the end, then never forget that the eyes of the Lord are on you, and His ears are open to your prayers. When over life there is an arch like that, when underneath are the everlasting arms, when there is a heavenly hand to guide and a heavenly breast on which to lean, then, bring life what it may, a man is able to keep in love with it till the day break and the shadows flee away.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 7

What to Do With Our Cares

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant. — 1Pe_5:7-8

The cares of which the apostle speaks were those associated with persecution. He was writing to those who might, at any moment, be exposed to the fury of the populace. A great deal of pagan trade was intimately bound up with idolatry. Wherever the Gospel came and took a grip, it began to interfere with trade. And for that, as for many other reasons, Christians were never safe. Their life was one of continuous anxiety. Such anxieties are gone now where the populace is nominally Christian. But care remains, haunting the human heart and robbing life of the gladness of the sunshine. And so to us, in a land that is called Christian as well as to those sojourners in paganism, comes the message of the great apostle. The question, then, for all of us is this: How does a man cast his care on God? That I should answer by asking another question: How does a man cast his care on anybody? Our Lord was very fond of that procedure, arguing from the lesser to the greater, and reaching heavenly things through things of earth.

We Cast Our Cares on Someone by Relying on Him

In human life, then, we cast our cares on anybody when we confidently rely on him. We can illustrate that by the captain of a ship. When a wild storm falls upon a vessel, the passengers are naturally anxious. Children cry; women begin to tremble; men look grave and often become silent. And then they see the captain on the bridge relaxed, smiling as he talks to his officer, and they remember he never lost a ship and is reputed the finest captain in the service. The moment they see that their anxieties begin to vanish. Trusting the captain when the storm is raging, they find that they have cast their cares on him. And whenever anyone trusts God and quietly puts his confidence in God, he awakens to the same discovery. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee," and then the prophet adds, "because he trusteth in Thee." Trust is the great antidote to care. It is by simple, quiet, unswerving confidence that we cast our cares on anybody, and just so do we cast our cares on God.

By Talking We Share Our Care

Once again we cast our cares on anybody when we go to him and talk things over frankly. That is one of the benefits of friendship. The chief office of friendship, says Lord Bacon, is the ease and discharge of the swellings of the heart. And then he adds that the man who has no friend is a cannibal of his own heart. That is to say, he eats his heart out because he has no one to whom he can resort to speak of the anxieties that gnaw him. People often approach me for advice, and frequently go away without it. And yet they thank me when they go away and say that everything looks different now. You see, what has helped them isn't my advice; it is just that they have talked the matter over with one who feels for them and is a friend. Friendship is like a lancet; it opens the abscesses which are very painful. And as it is with a true friend on earth, so is it with our truest Friend in heaven. When we go to Him and tell Him all, opening our hearts to Him in quiet communion, how wonderfully do we discover that we have really cast our cares on Him! Be careful for nothing, says St. Paul, but in everything let your requests be made known unto God. And then what happens? Are your requests granted? The wise apostle says nothing about that. But he does say, and it is always true, that the peace of God which passeth understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.

In Faithful Duty We Find Security

Once again we cast our cares on anybody when we do our duty by him faithfully. I think of the public servants of Glasgow Corporation. The dustmen who pass my windows in the morning have their cares just like other men. They are married and have to feed and clothe their wives and children. And yet so long as they do their duty faithfully, they have no need to worry about that. They cast their cares upon the Corporation. Is not that precisely what our Savior meant when He was speaking about care and worry? "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you." Put God first, be loyal to Him daily, live for the happy service of the kingdom, and will God do less than the Glasgow Corporation? If any man is living for self, he has no warrant to cast his care on God. But if he lives for service and not self, he can lean his weight upon the word of Jesus. There is a deeper meaning than we think of in that word of our Lord beside the well, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me."

What Does God Expect of us?

And then when our cares are cast on God, what kind of life does God expect of us? It is here that Peter displays a heavenly wisdom, for he says, "Be sober and be watchful." It is a perilous thing to have a load of cares. It is fraught with manifold temptation. It may make a husband very cross and irritable as many a wife knows. But never forget that to be free from cares may be as perilous as to be burdened with them, and that's why Peter adds, "Be sober and be watchful." I have known people suddenly freed from care by some large legacy of fortune—and that freedom has sometimes been their ruin. God does not make His children carefree in order that He may make them careless. Surely better a thousand cares than that. He makes them carefree that with undivided heart they may give themselves to the service of their brother and to the glory of His blessed name.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 19

Reverence - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead — Rev_1:17

John was a prisoner in the isle of Patmos when he had this revelation of Jesus Christ. He had been banished thither because he was a Christian; and if the early legends can be trusted, he was condemned to the hard slavery of the Patmos mines. But sweet are the uses of adversity. There are some things we cannot learn in Babylon that become plain to us in sea-girt Patmos. There are some sights we are blind to in the markets: our eyes are only opened in the mines. It was not at home that Jacob had his Bethel: it was in the hills, a wanderer and alone. It was not at Pharaoh's court that Moses saw Jehovah in the burning bush: it was when flying from Pharaoh in the desert. It was not in peaceful days that Stephen saw heaven opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God: it was in the hour of martyrdom. And this vision of Jesus, the alpha and omega, the first and last, whose head and hairs were white as snow and whose eyes were as a flame of fire,—this vision came to John, an exile in the mines. "It is adversity," says Bacon in his priceless essays, "which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour."

Reverence

Now there are many lessons in this story. An old and fragrant commentary that I opened on the chapter rises into a height of eloquence, lost in this day and age, over these eyes that were like a flame of fire. But I want to center on one point only. I want to take this falling-down of John as a true instance of a truly reverent spirit. John saw, John worshipped, John adored. And we are living in a world that's full of God, and we have something better than a vision; we have the word of prophecy. And do we stand or fall upon our faces, and are we reverent or are we not? that is the question.

I do not think that the most cheerful optimist would dare to assert this was a reverent age. Of course we shall always have some reverent souls in every congregation, but reverence is not a note of modern life: still worse, it is not a desire. There was a time when to be thought reverent was an honorable thing. Now, to be thought reverent is to be old-fashioned. Men want to be smart and clever and successful, and somehow reverence does not agree well with these. We are all busy: few of us are reverent. Yet without reverence life is a shallow thing, and true nobility of character is impossible; and without reverence we shall be strangers to the end to all that is best and worthiest in our faith.

The Lack of Reverence

Can we explain the comparative absence of this grace? I think we can. It springs from certain features of our modern life, and the first of these is the wear and hurry of it. It is no chance that the most reverent hour in Moses' life was in the desert. It is no accident that John fell down as dead, not in the streets of Babylon, but in the isle of Patmos. It was no whim, though it seems whimsical to us, that a prophet of reverence whom we lost a week ago should have denounced our crowded city life. It is not easy for an overdriven man to keep a reverent heart. It is very hard to feel perpetual reverence when life for thousands is a perpetual rush. When I travel fast enough by train, castles and towns and woods and battlefields flash for an instant and are gone, and the great things are but little for the speed. So in the rush of life, worrying, leisureless, the great things of the soul and of the universe are dwarfed, and it is hard to be a reverent man. There is a certain leisure needed for the cultivation of a truly reverent spirit, a certain inward quietness, a certain detachment from the present day. But do note that leisure is a thing of heart and not of hours. Some of our hardest workers, who never enter a church door, it may be, are far more reverent, and being more reverent are better men, than many a church-goer who never felt the awe of things and never fell down at His feet as dead.

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Reverence - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The lack of reverence too, I cannot doubt, is partly due to the spirit of inquiry of today. God knows that if to be reverent meant to be ignorant, some of us, in the eagerness to know, would say farewell to reverence forever. But is not the keenest teacher sometimes as reverent and humble as a little child? We had three great professors in my day at Glasgow, men known in every academy in Europe—the one for Greek, the other for medicine, the third for natural philosophy —and only to hear them was to be reminded of Sir Isaac Newton who felt like a little child picking some pebbles from the shore and casting them into the infinite ocean of the truth. Still, for all that, it is the truth that an inquisitive age is rarely reverent. And of all inquisitive and critical times, I fancy we have fallen on the worst. We are all eager: few of us are reverent. We are never afraid to criticize, but we have almost forgotten to adore. We can discuss these seven golden candlesticks, and trace the sources of the vision in Daniel, and smile at the strange mixing of the metaphors; but "when I saw Him," says John, "I fell at His feet as dead."

But this present lack of reverence has another source: it is the dying-out from heart and conscience of the fear of God. "Ah, Rogers," said Dr. Dale of Birmingham to his old friend,—"ah, Rogers, no one fears God now." And there can be little question that in the largest sense Dale was right. Man's views of God have changed in the past century. It was the Sovereignty of God that was the watchword once. It is the Fatherhood of God that is the watchword now. And no man can quarrel with that change of emphasis, when we remember how it has flashed new light upon the love of God and kindled into meaning many a page and parable. But things are not right if we can only love God more by reverencing Him less. And who can doubt that something of the majesty, and something of the grandeur, and something of the awesome fear of God is gone in this reiterated insistence on His Fatherhood? I sometimes think God had a special purpose in giving us the Old Testament in our Bible. With all its difficulties, I feel it was preserved to counteract a natural tendency of man. For God in the Gospel comes so very near us, and the love of God shown in the love of Jesus is so brother like, that only to realize it is to run the danger of forgetting reverence and growing very familiar with God. And it takes all the Psalms and all the prophets, with their magnificent Gospel of a Sovereign God, to make us fall down at His feet as dead. O living Spirit, open our eyes and give us back again something of the fear of God! For we shall never love or serve Thee well till we have learned to reverence Thee more!

What Is Reverence?

Now what is reverence ? It has been variously defined, but perhaps the old definition is the best. It is the practical recognition of true greatness. It is my attitude of heart and mind when I am confronted by the truly worthy and the truly great. It does not matter of what kind the greatness is: it may be the greatness of my brother's character, it may be the greatness of this mysterious world, or it may be the greatness of Almighty God; but the moment I see it, feel it, and recognize my place, I am a reverent man.

And that is the condemnation of the irreverent man. He may be clever, but he is always shallow. He may be smart, but he is blind. To live in a universe like this and to find nothing to reverence is to condemn, not the world, but myself. Irreverent men are often amusing, and are always selfish. For not to see and feel what is sublime, and not to be touched by what is truly great, is a true token of a selfish heart. The other side of reverence is humility. The other side of irreverence is pride. It is the curse of the irreverent heart that underneath all lightness and all jest it is a stranger to the humility of Jesus.

Now where does individual irreverence begin? I think that generally it begins at home. When I have ceased to reverence myself, it is the hardest thing in the whole world to reverence my brother and to reverence God. If I am mean, I shall read meanness in my neighbor's heart. If I am selfish, I shall find selfishness in the most Christlike thing my neighbor ever did. We all get as we give. If there is nothing great in you, no hope, no ideal, you pay the penalty by finding the world mean. If there is any glimmering of greatness in you and any passion for righteousness and God, it is wonderful what a grand world this becomes, and what new worth we find in other men, and what a majesty we see in God.

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Reverence - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Reverence of Jesus

Now there are two things in the life of Jesus that arrest me. And the first of these is His reverence for God. Jesus knew God as God was never known on earth before. God was His Father in far deeper senses than He is yours or mine. His intimacy with His Father was complete. He was at home with God. Yet nothing can match the perfect reverence of Christ towards this Father He knew and loved so well. I can always speak of Jesus' fellowship with God. It is a misuse of language to speak of Jesus' familiarity with God. There is an awe and reverence in all the recorded communication of Jesus with His Father that is as wonderful as His perfect trust.

But still more arresting than the reverence of Jesus for His God is the reverence that Jesus had for man. Sometimes you reverence a man because you do not know him well; you get to know him better, and your reverence dies. Christ knew men thoroughly. Christ knew men through and through,—their thoughts, their hopes, their fears, their weaknesses, their struggles, and their passions. Christ saw each sin more deadly and each vice more horrible than the most tender conscience in its most tender hour had ever dreamed of. If you had seen what Christ had seen, you would have spumed your brother. If you had known what Jesus knew, you would have spat on him. The wonder is Christ reverenced him still, still thought it worth His while to teach him, still thought man great enough to live for, still thought man great enough to die for. There never was a reverence so loving, there never was a love so sweetly reverent, as the love of Jesus Christ for you and me, fallen men, yet still in our ruin not without tokens of a heavenly greatness and of the God who made us in His image!

Lessons to a More Reverent Life

So as I think on reverence, and link it with the supreme reverence of Jesus, I learn three lessons that may guide us to a more reverent life.

And first, if we are ever to grow reverent again, we must know more. The reverence of ignorance is gone. Half-knowledge is irreverent: a fuller knowledge will make us reverent again. Jesus was reverent because His knowledge was perfect: we are irreverent because our knowledge is shallow. When we know man, far off, as Jesus knew him, we shall find something to reverence in our most ordinary brother. When we know God as Jesus knew Him, we shall adore. And is that knowledge possible to me? Thank God, through daily fellowship with Christ,

I may follow on to know the Lord.

And then, if we are ever to grow reverent again, we must trust more. If John had never trusted Christ, he never would have seen the vision and never would have fallen at Jesus' feet as dead. I cannot reverence a man whom I distrust, I cannot reverence a God. It wants deep faith to make me reverent. It wants a perfect faith like Jesus had to make me perfectly reverent like Him. I never can be noble without reverence. I never can be reverent without faith.

And if we are ever to grow reverent again, we must love more. There never was a time when so much was spoken and written about Christian love. If we loved more and said less about it, we might revive our dying reverence. Oh, how much of our so-called love to Jesus is spurned by an infinite God because the feeling of reverence is not in it. It is so easy to talk of leaning on Jesus' bosom. It is so easy to forget that he who leaned on Jesus' bosom fell down at Jesus' feet as dead. I plead for more love, not to increase, but to remove that light familiarity that blots our Christian service. For love reveals, love sees, love breaks the bars, love reads the secrets both of man and God. And when I have seen my brother's secret story, and when I have seen into the deep things of God, I never can be irreverent again.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 21

He Knocks - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Behold I stand at the door, and knock — Rev_3:20

We are all familiar with the picture by a well-known artist which portrays Christ standing at the door. It is one of the few pictures on a text of Scripture which has caught the imagination of the people. We see the door hanging on rusty hinges and covered with the trailing growth of years. And we see Christ, clad in His kingly robes, out in the dew and darkness of the night. And in the one hand He bears a lighted lamp whose rays are penetrating through the chinks and crevices, and with the other He is knocking at the door. You know the title the artist gave that picture. He did not call it "Christ knocking at the door." He called it — and there is spiritual genius in the title — "I am the light of the world." For him the wonder of it all was that the light which is life and blessedness and victory should be so near the door of every heart.

And after all, when you come to think of it, that is the most wonderful thing about this text. It is not the knocking at the closed door; it is the overwhelming thought of Him who knocks. Were it some emperor whose word is law to millions, it would be sufficiently awful and impressive. Were it some angel as he who came to Abraham, it would be a very memorable visitor. But when a man goes apart into some silent place and dwells upon the fact that knocking at his heart is CHRIST, I tell you it thrills him to the very depths. Not Jesus, who walked amid the fields of Galilee. He is no longer walking amid the fields of Galilee. He is no longer rejected and despised, homeless, with no shelter for His head. He is the risen Christ, exalted to the heavens, invested with all the authority of glory and yet, behold He stands at the door and knocks. At the door of your heart, my brother and my sister. You know what passions and what sins are knocking there, clamorous rabble — Christ is standing, the living, glorious Christ, and in infinite mercy He is knocking too.

Christ Is Not Far From Any Man

And that just means, stripped of its metaphor, that Christ is not far away from any man. Wherever on earth there is a beating heart, there is a yearning Savior. The best is never far away from men. That is one of the joys of this strange life. God has not hidden what is true and beautiful in inaccessible and distant places. Sunshine and summer and the little children, and duty and chivalry and faith and love, are nearer than breathing and closer than hands and feet. The highest and holiest are never inaccessible. And so do not think of it as a thing incredible that Christ should be very near to you. He is not hidden in the light of heaven beyond the shining of the farthest star. Life is mysterious, and God is wonderful, and the infinite is round about us everywhere, and Christ is not far away from any man. But, Lord, I am a bad man — Behold I stand at the door and knock. But, Lord, Thou knowest that secret sin of mine, and what a wretched, hollow life I have been living. Yes, my brother, He understands all that, and for all that He shed His blood for thee, and now He is standing knocking at thy door. Thy door — thy life — thine everlasting being. He wants to save it into life and victory.

And in what way does Christ knock? I answer, in a hundred different ways. He has a knock that is very imperious sometimes, and sometimes one that is infinitely gentle. He knocks in all the mercies you enjoy, in health and strength and happiness and home. He knocks in the tender memories of childhood of a father's character and a mother's love. He knocks in the thought of all that has been done for you, and of the love that has girdled you from infancy, and of the mercy that has never yet forsaken you from the hour of your birth until today. Sometimes He knocks in the strange sense of loneliness that steals upon the heart on busiest days. Sometimes He knocks in all that deep unrest that craves it knows not what, and never finds it. Sometimes He knocks in bitter disappointments and in bitter regrets over the might have been and in love baffled till the heart is breaking. He is knocking when a man has sinned and hates his sin and loathes himself as vile. He is knocking in the despairing sense that our vices and habits are mightier than we. He is knocking in every business in the hopeless tangle we have made of things, in the sickness that lays us prostrate for a season. He is knocking in the gift of little children, in the worries and trials and gladnesses of home. He is knocking when two lives are joined together. He is knocking when two lives are separated — in the last parting when the grave is dug, and the heart is empty and the coffin full. Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world; always at the door and always knocking. And that is our hope — that Christ is not far away, but that He is here in infinite grace to save. For when He ceases knocking we are lost.

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He Knocks - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Indeed, I have often thought in quiet moments that that is the truest interpretation of all life. When I think of all that life has meant for me, it seems like someone knocking all the time. You remember that famous moment in Macbeth when the murderers hear the knocking at the door. And you recall how De Quincey in his so subtle essay has shown us the dramatic significance of that — how into a room reeking of blood and murder, self-absorbed, oblivious of environment, the knocking came, and with it in a flash the thought of the great world that lay beyond. Shakespeare did not summon any calling voices. He was too consummate a master to do that. Your inferior dramatist who knew not life would have given you shouting and the trampling of men's feet. But Shakespeare gives a knocking at the door — some hand, unknown, knocking — that is all, and the murderers, who had forgotten everything, waken to realize the world again. My brother and sister, if we were left alone we should be always in danger of forgetting everything — we should forget, if left alone, that God hates sin, that death is coming, and that heaven is real. And so, as I look back over my life, it seems to me there has never been a providence that has not been meant by God to be interpreted like that knocking at the door in Shakespeare. In every triumph someone has been knocking; in every failure someone has been knocking — in every hour of pain and call of duty and baffled effort and yearning for the beautiful. Until at last there grows upon a man the sense that life is deep and rich and wonderful; a little chamber red with blood and sin, but round it a spiritual unseen environment. Infinite love is pressing in upon us; infinite grace that can save unto the uttermost; infinite power that can redeem the weakest and cleanse him and set him on his feet. And to all that, out of the selfishness which is our birthmark and our heritage, we are awakened by the knocking of the Christ.

The Door Must Be Opened From the Inside

To come back to that picture of which I spoke in starting, I remember somewhere reading a story about it, and the story was that when the picture was finished a friend came into the studio to inspect it. And he looked at it and admired its exquisite grace and saw at once its spiritual significance. And then he turned to the artist and said to him, "It is very beautiful, but there is one mistake. You have forgotten to put a handle on the door." And the story told how Holman Hunt explained to his visitor that that was no mistake. Had there been any handle on the outside, he told him, Christ would have turned it and would have entered in. But this was a door that had no handle there — a door that could only be opened from the inside. If any man will open to Me, I will come in to him and sup with him.

And that just means, stripped of its imagery, that to the knocking of Jesus Christ each one must individually respond. We must open our hearts to the living, present Christ, and say, "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord." No man has a more profound faith than I have in the absolute sovereignty of Almighty God. I should not be a Scotsman if I disbelieved it, and I should be untrue to all that God has shown me. And yet so intricate are earth and heaven, and so respectful of His children's liberty is God, that till a man lift up his voice and cries "I will," Jesus Christ will never cross the door sill. That is just where so many are making a mistake. They are always waiting for something irresistible. They are waiting for the moment when some power divine will shatter the door and enter in, in spite of them. My brother, I want to tell you quite plainly, that hour will never come. "If any man will open the door" — it is the one condition of all blessing. You must respond. You must open wide your being. You must say to the living Lord and Christ "Come in." And the wonder of the Christian Gospel is just this, that all you have striven and struggled for and failed in becomes a thrilling power and possibility the moment with all your heart you have invited Christ in. That was the message that rang through a dying world and made it hope again and live again. It is no scheme of social reform. We could have that and more without a Christ. It is peace with God and victory for you. The sunshine is a very marvelous creation, but it will never open any blinds for you. You must open them — a very simple thing — and all the mystery of the light will flood the room. And so with Christ — more glorious than sunshine — Christ the living, reigning, mighty Lord — if any man will open, I will come in.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 22

The Rainbow and the Throne - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven.., and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald — Rev_4:2-3

This vision, like all the visions of the Apocalypse, is given for the most practical of purposes. It is not the dreaming of an idle seer. It is a message of comfort for bad times. You know the kind of scenery one meets with in the latter portion of this book. There are pictures of famine and of bloody war, pictures of sickness and of death upon his horse. Here, then, before the unveiling of these horrors we have the eternal background of it all. "And I looked," says John, "and lo, a door in heaven; and I saw a throne, and Him that sat thereon." God's in His heaven, all's right with the world—that was the meaning and purpose of the vision. Let famine come and fearful persecution; let the Christians be scattered like leaves before the wind—there was a throne with a rainbow round about it; and in the heavens a Lamb as it had been slain.

The Permanent Is Encircled By the Fleeting

Now I would like to dwell for a little while on the rainbow round the throne like to an emerald. Do you see any mystical meanings in that rainbow? I shall tell you what it suggests to me.

In the first place it speaks to me of this, that the permanent is encircled by the fleeting.

Whenever a Jew thought of the throne of God, he pictured one that was unchangeable. "Thy throne, O God, is an everlasting throne," was the common cry of psalmist and of prophet. Other thrones might pass into oblivion, other kingdoms flourish and decay. There was not a monarchy on any side of Israel that had not risen and had fallen, like a star. But the throne of God, set in the high heaven where a thousand years are as a day, that throne from all eternity had been, and to all eternity it would remain. Such was the throne which the apostle saw, and round about it he beheld a rainbow. It was engirdled with a thing of beauty which shines for a moment, and in shining vanishes. The permanent was encircled by the transient. The eternal was set within the momentary.

God Has a Purpose for Every Life

The same thing also is observable as God reveals Himself in human life. God has His purpose for every heart which trusts Him, nor will He lightly let that purpose go. We are not driftwood upon the swollen stream. We are not dust that swirls upon the highway. I believe that for each of us there is a path along which the almighty hand is guiding. Through childhood with its careless happiness, through youth with its storm and manhood with its burden, every one is being surely led by Him who sees the end from the beginning. And I looked, and lo, a throne in heaven—and "the kingdom of heaven is within you." And round about the throne there was a rainbow—symbol of the transient and the fleeting. And so it is that you and I are led amid a thousand evanescent things, under the arch of lights that flash upon us, and have hardly flashed ere they have disappeared. It is commonplace to speak of fleeting joys—and our troubles are often as fleeting as our joys. And then what moods we have; what moments of triumph; what bitterness of tears! And often they visit us just when we least expect them, and we cannot explain them as they come and go; and yet, through every mood and every feeling, the will of God is working to its goal.

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The Rainbow and the Throne - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Bow, a Symbol of Mercy

Another truth which is suggested here is that power is perfected in mercy. The rainbow has been symbolical of mercy ever since the days of Noah and the flood. God made a covenant with Noah, you remember, that there should never be such a flood again. Never again, so long as earth endured, was there to fall such desolating judgement. And in token of that, God pointed to the bow, painted in all its beauty on the storm cloud,—that rainbow was to be forever the sign and sacrament that He was merciful. Do you see another meaning of that bow, then, which John discerned around the throne of God? What is a throne? It is a place of power; the seat of empire, the symbol of dominion. So round the infinite power of the Almighty, like a thing of joy and beauty, is His mercy. Round His omnipotence, in perfect orb, is the enclosing circlet of His grace. It is not enough that in heaven is a throne. God might be powerful, and yet might crush me. It is not enough to see a rainbow there. God might be merciful, and yet be weak. There must be both, the rainbow and the throne, the one within the circuit of the other, if power is to reveal itself in love, and love to be victorious in power.

We see that union very evidently in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. One of the deepest impressions of that life is the impression of unfathomed power. There are men who give us the impression of weakness. We cannot explain it perhaps, but so it is. But there are other men, who, when we meet with them, at once suggest to us the thought of power. And you will never understand the life of Christ, nor the bitterness of hate which He evoked, until you remember that always, in His company, men felt that they were face to face with power. Think of His power over the world of nature—He spake, and the storm became a calm. Think of His power over disease and death—"and Lazarus came forth, bound in his graveclothes." Think of His power, more wonderful than either, over the guiltiest of human hearts—"Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee." And I looked, and lo, I saw a throne—wherever Jesus was, there was a throne. But was that all, and was there nothing else, and was it power unchecked and uncontrolled? Ah, sirs, you know as well as I do, that around the living throne there was a rainbow—a mercy deeper, richer, more divine, than Noah had ever deciphered on the cloud.

Might and Mercifulness

The same thing is also true of human character. It takes both elements to make it perfect. When human character is at its highest, its symbol is the rainbow round the throne. All of us admire the strong man—the man who can mold others to his will. There is something in titanic strength that makes an irresistible appeal. Yet what a scourge that power may become, and what infinite wreckage it may spread—all that needs no enforcement for a world which has known the evil genius of Napoleon. Mercy without power may be a sham; but power without mercy is a curse. It is not a throne which is the ideal of manhood; it is a throne encircled by the bow. It is power stooping to the lowliest service; it is strength that has the courage to be tender; it is might that can be very merciful, with the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I sometimes think, too, that this heavenly vision is just a type of what our homes should be. In the ideal home there will be kingship, and yet around the kingship will be beauty. There are many homes today which have no throne. There is no government; there is no subjection. The thought of fatherhood has been so weakened that it has lost its attribute of kingship. The children are the real masters of the home; by their inexperience everything is regulated. And I looked, and lo, a door into the home—and within it, no vestige of a throne. Then in other homes there is no rainbow. There is no beauty; there is not any tenderness. There is no play of color on the cloud; no shining when the rain is on the sea. And the merriment of the children is repressed, and the father does not understand his child; and the child, whose heart is yearning for a father, has no one to appeal to but a king. Surely, if home is to be heaven, we want a vision like that of the apostle. We w ant a throne in token of authority, for without that, home is but a chaos. But if little lives are to be glad and beautiful, and if there is to be radiance on the cloud, we also want the rainbow round the throne.

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The Rainbow and the Throne - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Encircling Radiance of Hope

There is just one other lesson I would touch on—the heavenly setting of mystery is hope.

As the apostle gazed upon the throne, there was one thing that struck him to the heart. "Out of the throne came voices, thunderings and lightnings." Whose these voices were, he could not tell. What they were uttering, he did not know. Terrible messages pealed upon his ear, couched in some language he had never learned. And with these voices was the roll of thunder; and through it all, the flashing of the lightning; and John was awed, for in the throne of God he was face to face with unutterable mystery. Then he lifted his eyes, and lo, a rainbow, and yet it was different from earthly rainbows. It was not radiant with the seven colors that John had counted on the shore of Patmos. It was like an emerald—what color is an emerald? It was like an emerald; it was green. Around the throne, with its red flame of judgement, there was a rainbow, and the bow was green. Does that color suggest anything to you? To me it brings the message of spring time. You never hear a poet talk of dead green; but you often hear one talk of living green. It is the color of the tender grass and of the opening buds upon the trees. It is the color of rest for weary eyes and hope for weary hearts.

Brethren, is not that the message which has been given us in Jesus Christ? When you see God, mysteries do not vanish. When you see God, mysteries only deepen. There is the mystery of nature, red in tooth and claw; so full of cruelty, so full of waste. There is the mystery of pain, falling upon the innocent and bowing them through intolerable years. There is the mystery of early death with its blighted hope and with its shattered promise. There is the unutterable mystery of sin. Out of the throne came thunderings and voices. Out of the throne voices issue still. And we cannot interpret them—they are too hard for us, and we bow the head and say it is all dark. Nay, friend, not altogether dark, for around the throne of God there is a bow, and all the rest of the green fields is in it, and all the hope of a morning in the spring. Have we not Christ? Has He not lived our life? Has He not taught us that the worst and vilest sinner is good enough to live for and to die for? Has he not conquered death?—does He not live today?—is not the government upon His shoulder? A man can never be hopeless in the night who once for all has cast his anchor there. Have you done that? Are you a Christian? Have you cried, "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief?." Why then, my brother, you are in the spirit, and for you a door is opened into heaven. And though for you mystery will not vanish and much that was dark before will still be dark, yet round and round all that is unfathomable, there is the encircling radiance of hope.

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Written by F. B. Meyer

The F. B. Meyer devotions are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being freely distributed with e-Sword around the world.)

December 23

The Feeding of the Lamb - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them — Rev_7:17

The first words which John ever heard of Jesus were words that described Him as a Lamb. When John was a disciple of the Baptist's, drinking in inspiration from that stern teacher, he had heard these words fall from the Baptist's lips, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The apostle was a young man then, aflame with eager hope, and the words of the Baptist sank deep into his heart—so deep that through all his after years he loved to think of Jesus as the Lamb. What experiences John had had and what a vast deal he had suffered when he came to write this book of Revelation! Life and the world were different to him now from what they had been in the desert with the Baptist. Yet in Revelation some twenty seven times John repeats the sweet expression "Lamb of God"—the first words he had ever heard of Christ. How blessed is a life when from its first stage to its last there runs through it one regulating thought! What concentration it bestows on character! What vividness it gives to the perceptions! There are men who are everything by turns and nothing long—unstable as water, they shall not excel. New ideas seize on them powerfully today, and other ideas as powerfully tomorrow. But men like John, grasping some great truth early, hold to it through storm and sunshine, through Babylon and Patmos, till it expands and breaks into a thousand meanings and becomes a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

The Unchangeableness of the Lamb of God

Various thoughts are at once suggested to me by the beautiful and musical message of our text and the first is that Christ in heaven today is the very Christ who walked by the banks of Jordan. "Behold the Lamb of God," said the Baptist there; and "in the midst of the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain." In the opening chapter of this book of Revelation there is a strange and wonderful vision of the Lord: His head and His hairs were white as snow, and His eyes were as fire, and His feet were like fine brass as if they burned in a furnace. There is deep meaning in every line of that description, but perhaps the first thought to arise in us when we read it is that this is not the Jesus whom we knew in Galilee. It is august and terrible—a vision of light and splendor—and John when he saw it fell at His feet as dead, but it is not like Him who agonized in Gethsemane and whose tears fell beside the grave of Lazarus. But here it is the Lamb in the midst of the throne, as in the desert it had been the Lamb of God. Here, in the glory, it is the Lamb slain, as in Isaiah it had been a lamb led to the slaughter. And we feel at once that not all the height of heaven, nor all the inconceivable grandeurs of God's throne, have changed the nature or the love of Him who was pointed to beside the Jordan.

I think we all need to be assured of that, for we are very prone to disbelieve it. Somehow, we think, our Savior in the glory must be different from what He was long ago. We know that He is no longer rejected and despised, and we know that the body of His humiliation has been glorified, until insensibly we transfer these changes from His outward nature to His heart as though death and resurrection had altered that. So we conceive Christ as far away from us, separated from the beating of the human heart; glorious, yet not so full of tender brotherhood as in the days of Capernaum and Bethany. That error is combated by the vision of the Lamb in heaven. Purity, gentleness, and sacrifice are there. The wrath of the Lamb grows terrible just as we remember that that wrath is love rejected and despised. And in the Last Judgment when the Lamb shall be our judge it will not be the majesty of God that will overwhelm us; it will be that we are face to face, at last, with the love and with the sacrifice of Christ.

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The Feeding of the Lamb - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Our Need of Christ in Heaven

Another thought which our text suggests is this, that we shall need Christ in heaven as much as we do here. The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them—even in heaven there shall be no feeding without Christ. I ask you to note how carefully in these verses John distinguishes between Jesus and His Father. Who shall feed the redeemed? The Lamb in the midst of the throne. Who shall wipe away their tears? Not the Lamb, but God. Now I cannot dwell here on the reasons—the deep reasons—why the consoling of heaven is named as the Father's work; what I ask you to note is that the satisfaction of glory is not a thing of course, that comes inevitably—it is entirely dependent on Christ Jesus. The Lamb which is in the throne shall feed them. On the Lamb depends the satisfaction of eternity. Heaven might be heaven, and God might still be there in His eternal splendor; but even in heaven the redeemed would starve, save for the Lamb in the midst of the throne.

We all know in some measure how great and how constant is our need of Christ on earth. There are moments—often moments of distress and darkness—when every true follower can truly say, "Thou, O Christ, art all I want." In the soberest senses it is the Lamb who feeds us here—it is on Him we are dependent for everything that nourishes us—without His love and His sacrifice and His revelation of God, there would be no spiritual pasturage on earth. But do we not sometimes think that death will change all that? Are we not prone to imagine that in the world beyond, the need of being nourished by Christ Jesus will be less? Have we not some dim idea that heaven is like a garden—so fair, so fragrant, and so beautiful in itself, that only to open our eyes there will be rest, and only to wander in its sunshine will be peace? However such an idea may arise within us, remember that it is not the concept of the Bible. The Lamb which is in the throne shall feed them; the need of Christ in heaven is supreme. Every tie that binds us to Him here is strengthened there; all feelings of dependence are infinitely deepened. All that we owe to Him on earth is but a tithe of what we shall owe to Him when we awake.

It is suggested, too, by the words of the original that this feeding shall be a perpetual process. Not once nor for a day shall the Lamb feed the flock; He shall feed them continually and forever. As John looked back on his discipleship in Galilee, one feature of it impressed him very powerfully. It was that the Lamb of God, whom the Baptist had directed him to follow, had taught him everything gradually and slowly. One truth today, one miracle tomorrow, and always and only as the disciples could bear it; little by little, with perfect adaptation, had the Lamb led them into ever deeper knowledge. That was one mark of the feeding of the Lamb, and every year that he lived, John grew more grateful for it. He saw the patience and the gentle constancy with which he had been led into all truth.

Spiritual Progress in Heaven

And now in Patmos John lifts his eyes to heaven, and there are they who came out of great tribulation; and the Lamb is there—a Lamb as it had been slain—and the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them. What did that mean to John? What did it recall to him? It spoke to him of quiet perseverance. There was progress and ever-growing reception of the truth in heaven for John, and there was all that, because the Lamb was there.

Have you incorporated that thought into your view of glory? It is bound up with the true thought of Christ. Just because He is the same yesterday and forever, there will be gradual unfoldings of joy through all eternity. It is true we shall hunger no more, and we shall thirst no more. We shall be satisfied when we awake. Yet John had been satisfied in his first hour with Jesus, but what great and lofty truths had he still to learn! Not all at once shall the mysteries be solved and every truth we have longed to know be taught us. Not all at once shall the full and glorious secret be flashed in its splendor on our awakened eyes. Through all eternity we shall go on to serve. Through all eternity we shall go on to learn. The love of God will expand and deepen endlessly so that every fresh hour will have its sweet surprise. Not God in the first person, but the Lamb—the gradual and patient teacher of the Twelve—the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them.

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The Feeding of the Lamb - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Position of the Lamb

Lastly, and most significant of all, will you note the position in which the Lamb is standing. Be sure it is no chance that the saints are fed in glory by a Lamb who stands, where?—in the midst of the throne. Not in the confines of heaven, not on its distant borders, does the Lamb stand who shall pasture the redeemed. In the very center and seat of power He has His place: He is the Lamb in the midst of the throne. There are few grander pictures in the Bible than John's conception of the heavenly kingdom. It is like one of those drawings by Dore of the Paradise of Dante in which there is circle within circle of wheeling angels. That is the kind of vision which John had of glory, as if from its utmost and dim verge it were filled with ranks and choirs; and as the circles drew nearer and nearer to the center, they were composed of nobler and more glorious beings. In the very center of that mighty confluence was a throne—it was the throne of the immortal and eternal God. And in the very center of the throne, standing in front of it, there was a Lamb. And not any angel from distant rank or choir, not even the flaming cherubim or glowing seraphim—not these, but the Lamb in the midst of the throne shall feed them. That means that the redeemed shall be fed not only gently, but by One who stands in the place of sovereign power. None can gainsay Him there; none can withstand Him; none can contest His access to green pastures. The Lamb who feeds them is in the midst of the throne—the sceptre of universal power is His now.

In this present world of shadows and of sorrow, have we not often longed for an authoritative voice? Are there not mysteries on every hand that press upon us with a terrible insistence on our hearts? And men try to explain these things to us, and such men may be taught of God, yet the noblest explanation leaves a ring of cloud so vast that we can only bow the head and say, Now we know in part and see in part. It is true that God does not leave us in the darkness—His word is a light unto our feet. When we trust Him there is always light for the next step, and it is the next step that is the road to glory. Still, there remains much doubt and much uncertainty, baffling us and sometimes overwhelming us, and these always will remain till one who knows us thoroughly speaks to us from the very center of authority. That is the meaning of the Lamb in the midst of the throne. Before the mountains were created or the hills were formed, that throne was there. From it the worlds were created; from it the nations were fashioned; from it has gone forth the plan of every life. Every shadow was foreseen there, every tear and every grave—and from the midst of that throne the Lamb shall feed them. Does not that illuminate the joy that cometh in the morning? Does it not assure us that we shall be satisfied?

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By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 24

How Science Helps Religion

And the earth helped the woman — Rev_12:16

One hears a great deal from many different quarters of the conflict of science and religion. It might be well if we heard a little more of the various ways in which science has helped faith. Of this help in the realm of applied science one scarcely needs to speak. It was science which built those mighty Roman highways which, at the Advent, carried the Gospel everywhere. And how railways and steamships and cars and planes have been the servants of missionary work is a familiar fact in all Christendom. To the scientific concept of the printing press the debt of the Gospel is incalculable. It has scattered the tidings of the Savior to the remotest corners of the world. And if our missionaries can live and labor now in regions that were once the white man's grave, we owe it to the activities of science. Such facts are familiar to us all, and there is little need to dwell on them. In the evangelization of the world, applied science has been a powerful helper. But there are other and perhaps deeper ways, more vital than such applications in which, in the language of St. John, the earth has helped the woman.

Jesus Had a Scientific Mind

To begin with, modern science has taught us that it is our duty to look facts in the face, never to come to them with preconceptions, never to shut our eyes to anything. In that respect, I venture to suggest that our blessed Lord had a scientific mind. He never came to things with preconceptions; He never shut His eyes to anything. He saw the vultures gathering by the carcass as well as the chickens gathering to their mother. He saw the tiny sparrow falling dead as well as the sparrow happy in its nesting. No man can have the mind of Christ who has not the courage to have the eyes of Christ. He rejected the traditions of men and saw things for Himself. And is not that the method of all modern science by which it has found the wonder of the world—to reject the traditions of the fathers and see things for itself?. Science has done that with nature, and doing it has won her victories. The world has proved itself a thousand times more marvelous than the traditions of the fathers ever dreamed. Jesus did that with men and women, with the Magdalene, with Peter, with Zaccheus, and in a deep sense, we are saved by being seen.

Science and Jesus Teach Surrender

That thought of method may be pushed a little further, and I do so in the words of Huxley. "It seems to me," said Huxley, "that science teaches in the clearest manner the truth embedded in the Christian thought of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before the fact as a little child (the very word is Christ's), be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever end nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this." Now tell me, what is the essence of religion, I mean on the side of the response of man? Is it not summed up in this single word, entire surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ? As evangelical preachers constantly proclaim, it is not enough merely to admire Him. It is not enough, gazing on His beauty, to call Him the Altogether Lovely. You must trust Him, become a little child, yield yourself to Him in full surrender, if peace and power and liberty and knowledge are ever to possess the soul. Now when the preacher proclaims that, there are those who say, "I don't believe it. I'm captain of my soul and master of my fate. I am free. I am going to stand upon my feet." Then comes the scientist (our supposed enemy) and says, "Friend, you're in the wrong, the preacher's right. The only way to peace and power and knowledge is the childlike way of full surrender." So the earth helps the woman. So science corroborates our faith. The scientist finds that he is more than conqueror, in precisely the same way as the believer. And yet men talk, till one is sick of it, of the conflict between science and religion.

Faith Is Basic to Everything

Lastly, science helps religion by the new majesty that it has given to faith. That may seem a daring thing to say: let me explain my meaning. A Christian is a man who lives by faith—as a simple matter of fact we all do that. You cannot mail a letter without faith; without faith you cannot board a train. But a Christian is a man who takes that faith which runs like a thread of gold through all our life and centers it on the Lord Jesus Christ for time and for eternity. Now there are not a few who hold that science is the enemy of faith; that the more you expand the realm of exact knowledge, the more you contract the realm of faith. Whereas the truth is, the more that knowledge grows in a universe which thrills with the Divine, the more does faith become imperative and wonderful. Things do not grow less mysterious, they grow more mysterious as knowledge widens. To Peter Bell the primrose is a weed: to Tennyson the wallcress is a microcosm. The faith of a Lord Kelvin (as I who was his student know) is a thousand times larger and more wonderful than the faith of the untutored savage. When I think of the presuppositions on which the chemist builds, of the postulates demanded by the physicist, of the invisibilities that science reaches when she resolves matter into energy, I feel that science is founded upon faith as truly as the life of the believer. So my hope is that in coming days science and religion will be at peace again. Like righteousness and peace in the old psalm, the dawn is breaking when they will kiss each other. Then with blended voices, they will lift their common praise to Him, Whose we are, and Whom we serve.

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By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 26

Service in Heaven

His servants shall serve him — Rev_22:3

Of the life of the glorified in heaven Scripture does not tell us very much. And not a little of what it does tell is poetically and imaginatively described. There is, for instance, the familiar figure of the harp in the hands of the redeemed. It is easy to make a joke of that and so to turn beatitude to ridicule. But what Scripture is trying to convey is that in heaven utterance shall be music, and therefore self-expression shall be perfect. Music can say what speech can never say. It is more subtle and delicate than speech. It voices the deeper yearnings of the soul in ways that words are powerless to do. And if the utterance of heaven is to be music, then self-expression will be perfect there, and the loneliness of personality will be gone. Here we are all lonely. We long to express ourselves and cannot. There are a thousand things in every heart which it is quite impossible to utter. And the mystical meaning of the harp in heaven is not only that praise will echo there, but that at last we shall be no more lonely, but be in perfect accord with each other.

But if not a little is poetic imagery, there are glimpses that must be literally taken. And all such glimpses are radiant with comfort for the sojourner amid the shadows here. We read that in heaven there shall be no temple, for worship and being will be coextensive. We are told that there are many mansions, for individuality will be preserved. We are assured there will be a place prepared, just as here there was a place prepared when the cradle was ready and the little garments and the nurture of the mother's breast. We do not need to translate these into prose like the harp under the fingers of the glorified. If there is poetry in such expressions, it is the poetry which is the stuff of heaven. And so the words which form our text yield their comfort when they are taken literally—His servant shall serve Him.

In Heaven There Will Be Continuity

Perhaps the first suggestion of the words is that in heaven there will be continuity. The ruling passion of the life on earth will be the ruling passion of the life beyond. A true believer is a man who serves. He does not live for self; he lives for others. He follows One who left His high estate that He might take on Him the form of a servant. And Scripture assures us that our service here, transferred in an instant by the grave, is to be carried on in the land beyond the river. With powers quickened by their earthly exercise, with zeal made warmer by rebuffs, with wisdom gained through many a mistake as we sought gropingly to help some brother, we shall enter heaven to discover that the reward of service is a greater service, and that crowning is really continuance. For such service there will be ample room if heaven is the sphere of endless progress.

The Contrast of Heavenly Service

But if there be the thought of continuity, along with it there is the thought of contrast. As if at last, when the mists have rolled away, His servants shall serve Him. Here our finest service is imperfect; at the best we are unprofitable servants; self mingles with everything we do; unworthy motives touch and tarnish everything. But there where self is swallowed up in love and everything that defileth is excluded, in reality and in spirit and in truth, His servants shall serve Him. Think of some of the things that mar our service here. There is, for instance, the frailty of the body. How tender was that word of Jesus in Gethsemane. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Are there not many who read this little article who would give worlds to be in a greater service, but are debarred by frailty of body? There are the limitations of our ignorance, for here we know so little of each other. We long to help and do our very best, perhaps only to find that we have hurt. And then there is the shortness of our time, and the interruptions of sickness and of night, and the undeviating pressure of the hours. All this the Bible knows. It knows our frame and remembers we are dust. It knows our longings for a truer service than any we have been able to achieve. And then, when heart and flesh are failing and we lament the little we have done, it opens the lattice of heaven for an instant and says, "His servants shall serve him." There shall be no more night. There the limits of time shall all have vanished. There we shall never misinterpret anybody, for we shall know even as we are known. With motives undefiled, with knowledge perfected, with the tireless zest of the eternal morning, at last His servants shall serve Him.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 27

The Beatific Vision

And they shall see his face — Rev_22:4

It should be noted that this beatitude of glory immediately follows on another. It immediately follows on the promise that His servants shall serve Him. We might draw the two into a unity by the suggestion that the glorified continually serve, and serving, continually see. There is a deep sense in which we see through serving. Service is one of heaven's eye-salves. A mother sees more in her child than anybody else does, in the loving patient service of her motherhood. It is when a man serves nature with an entire devotion, such as the naturalist or geologist or astronomer, that he begins to see in her things more wonderful than men had dreamed. The best way to see Christ here is to serve Him. If any man will do, then shall he know. To take one's cross up and to help is the open secret of fellowship with Jesus. And the apostle hints that in the life of glory our service, which shall be perfected at last, is going to issue in unclouded vision. The glorified shall serve and they shall see. They shall see just because they serve. Their vision shall be purified because in heaven their service shall be perfect. Is it not often the frailty of our bodies or the presence of other motives in our service that dims for us here the vision of the Lord?

Where Service and Seeing Shall Be One

Or, again, if we find in seeing all that is implied in contemplation, is it not a beautiful thought that in the life of heaven service and seeing shall be one? Amid the shadows of this lower world, activity stands apart from contemplation. The world is like that blessed home in Bethany where were active Martha and contemplative Mary. It is hard, in multifarious duties, to keep that child-like purity of heart without which no man shall see God. There are those who have so many meetings that they almost forget to meet with Him. How few, immersed in an untiring labor, keep the secret of an unruffled calm. And then John tells us that in the brighter world His servants shall serve Him, and yet in the very thickest of the service they shall see His face. Action will not be divorced from contemplation. The one will never make the other harder. Toiling Martha will never be grudging Mary, whose eyes are homes of silent prayer. The glorified, in utter self-abandonment, will give themselves to the services of God, yet never for one instant will they lose the beatific vision of His face.

Perfect Satisfaction in Heaven

And another implication is that in heaven there is perfect satisfaction. What a thrilling satisfaction to the heart just to see the face of somebody we love! We cherish their photograph when they are absent, and in quiet moments we gaze upon the photograph. They write us letters, and how we long for them. At other times they communicate by phone. But when the door opens and we see the loved one's face, what an exquisite and thrilling satisfaction—and so, says Scripture, shall it be in heaven. Here we have His photograph. Here we have His love-letters. Here, often, do we catch His messages in the silence and secrecy of conscience. But there we shall see Him as He is, face to face, without a cloud between, and we shall be satisfied when we awake.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 28

The Reign of the Saints

And they shall reign for ever and ever — Rev_22:5

I venture to say that with this expression there creeps in a touch of unreality. It is difficult to associate thrones with the immortal life of our beloved dead. We can readily picture them as serving, for they loved to serve when they were here. Nor, remembering how they searched for it, is it hard to believe that they see His face. But to conceive of them as reigning and having crowns and sitting upon thrones introduces a note of unreality. For many of them that would not be heaven. It would be the last thing they would desire. For they were modest folk, given to self-effacement, haunting the shadowy avenues of life. And if individuality persists, they will carry over into another world those lowly graces that made us love them here. We can always think of an Augustine as reigning. But the saints we knew and loved were seldom Augustines. They were gentle souls, shrinking from publicity, perfectly happy in the lowest place. It is hard to see how natures such as that could ever be quite at home in heaven, if in heaven their calling were to reign. But the Scripture cannot be broken. It is revelation, not conjecture. If there is anything in it that offends the heart, we may be certain the error lies with us. So I believe that the difficulty here and the jarring note that grates upon the sensitive lie in our wrong ideas of reigning.

That there is something wrong in these popular ideas is demonstrated by one forgotten fact. It is that the saints do not begin to reign when they pass into the other world. If kingship were confined to heaven, the nature of it would lie beyond our understanding. It would be one of those things that eye had never seen, which God hath prepared for them who love Him. But kingship is not confined to heaven, according to the concept of the Scriptures. It is a present possession of the saints. We do not read that Christ will make us kings. We read that He hath made us kings (Rev_1:5). Loosed from our sins in His own blood, we begin to reign in the moment of redemption. And the reign in glory, which troubles meek souls, is not something different from that, but that enlarged and expanded to its fullness. This harmonizes with the general mind of Scripture in the glimpses it affords of immortality. It pictures it as a completion rather than as a contradiction. It takes such human things as love and service and tells us that in the land beyond the river such beautiful graces are going to be perfected. In what sense, then, do the saints reign here? How is the humblest child of God a king? There is no throne here, nor any visible crown, nor any of the insignia of regality. If we can grasp the kingship of believers amid all the infirmities of time, we have the key to understand the mystery of their reign forever and forever.

Our Reign Will Not Be in the Earthly Sense

And it is just here that a word of Christ's casts a flash of light upon our difficulty. "The kings of the Gentiles," He says, "exercise lordship, but it shall not be so with you." Are not all our common thoughts of kingship taken from the royalty of such monarchs? Does not their state and the insignia of it fill our minds when we meditate on reigning? And Jesus tells us that this whole concept, gathered from the facts of earthly lordship, is alien now and alien forever from the lordship and dominion of His own. He that would be greatest must be least. The monarch is the servant. Kingship is not irresponsible authority: it is love that gives itself in glad abandonment. It is love that goes to the uttermost in service just as He went to the uttermost in service and so reigns forever from the cross. It is thus a Christian mother reigns amid the restless rebellions of her children. It is thus that many a lowly toiler reigns over the hearts and lives of everyone around him. It is thus the Salvation Army lassie queens it over the rough and reckless slum though she carry no sceptre in her hand and her only crown be the familiar bonnet. The kingship of believers here has nothing whatever to do with pagan lordship. At the command of the Lord Jesus we must banish such concepts from our mind. The only kingship of the saints on earth is that of the glad abandonment of love in an unceasing and undefeated service.

Now it seems to me that all our trouble vanishes when we carry that thought into the other world. If this be reigning, then in the life of heaven our dear ones will be perfectly at home. We would not have them other than we knew them when they were with us here amid the shadows. The thought of heaven would be too dearly purchased if it robbed us of their lowly, quiet gentleness. But if the sway they won over our hearts on earth, perfected, be their eternal reigning, then they can still reign and be the same. Reigning will not alter them. It will not render them irrecognizable. It will not touch that lowly loving service which made them so inexpressibly dear. It will only expand it into fullest kingliness, setting a crown of gold upon its head. They shall reign forever and forever.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 29

The Root and the Star

I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star — Rev_22:16

Nothing is more notable in Jesus than the union of apparent contradictories. Qualities of the most diverse characters are brought into a perfect harmony in Him. When we set out to copy any brother, we are wrested from our true development. For other lives, even at their finest, are fragmentary and incomplete. But nobody who aims at following Christ can ever be false to his true self, for the character of Christ is universal. He combines the most opposing temperaments and reconciles diversities of being. Everything that all are meant to be, our blessed Savior actually was. That is the truth which lies in the assertion, so often fiercely combated, that our Lord was not a man but man. Speaking evangelically, it is only the redeemed who are in Christ. Not till we are born again are we in Him as the branch is in the vine. Yet in the matter of ideal character, in all its infinite diversity, there is a mystical sense in which our Savior embraces the whole human race. Nobody becomes anybody else when he aims at imitating Jesus. He grows nearer to his highest self when he becomes more like his Lord. For all the partial ideals of life which give to it an infinite variety blend into a perfect unity in the perfect character of Jesus.

The Union of the Diverse

Now, something of that reconcilement is seen in the imagery of our text. Between a root and a star there is a world of difference, and yet Jesus tells us He is both. He takes objects from two different worlds, and in both of them He finds Himself. He selects things that seem to have no unity, and He compares Himself with both of them. He brings together in a single sentence objects that are utterly unlike, and yet He sees in each of them something that is an image of His being. Take these figures separately and they are rich in spiritual significance. Take them together and they are big with hope for all the diversities of character. Men who are as different from each other as a root is different from a star may find all that they seek for in the Savior.

One notes, for instance, how this twofold figure combines the local and the universal. A root is embedded in a single spot; a star rains its influence on the world. If a root is to grow it needs a certain soil, for there and there alone it finds its nutriment. To that environment must come the searcher if he wants to get his hand upon the root. But in the crowded city and the lonely glen and far away on the solitudes of ocean a man may lift his eyes towards the heavens and be comforted by the shining of a star. The root is grounded in one place; the star sheds its light on every place. The root is fixed in a definite locality; the star is the joy of all localities. And then one thinks of Jesus, born in Bethlehem and growing up in Nazareth and yet today the light of the world. Go to Africa, and there you find Him. Travel to India, and He is them. Multitudes who have never been to Bethlehem have experienced the power of His name. Rooted deep in the rich soil of Palestine, the image of a root is not enough. On sinful men a million miles from Palestine He has shone as the bright and morning star.

The Union of the Hidden and the Evident

Another aspect of this twofold figure is the union of the hidden and the evident. A root is something concealed from observation; a star is conspicuous in its shining. There are roots which lie very near the surface, and there are others which run very deep. But one mark of every root is this, that it shuns the light and moves into the darkness. And just there, between root and star, what a world of difference there is, for a star is something that is seen. Nobody in the brightest day can see a root. It lives and moves concealed from human eyes. But in the darkest night the stars are shining in the wonder of the heavens. And does not one feel at once that it takes both, infinitely diverse though they be, to picture for us the mystery of Jesus? The kingdom cometh not with observation, yet Jesus could not be hid. The mighty world knew not when He came, and yet He is the light of every man. He lives in the secret of the heart and in our hidden being has His dwelling, and yet in the outward and habitual life He reveals the shining of His presence.

The Unity of the Earthly and the Heavenly

And then lastly in this twofold figure we have united the earthly and the heavenly. For a root is one of the children of the earth, and a star one of the glories of the sky. You find the root where common feet are treading, where lovers walk and little children play. You find the star beyond all human reaching in the infinite heights of heaven that are above us. And then we think of Him, whom we discover on our Emmaus roads, while He shines on us from the altitude of glory. One cannot explain these things nor understand them. They are mysteries beyond our fathoming. How can one be here, where the green grass is, and yet radiant in a world beyond our reach? And then we remember how these contradictions were reconciled in the consciousness of Him, who called Himself a root, and then—a star.

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 30

The Gentleness of God—Part I

"Thy gentleness hath made me great." Psa_18:35

It will be generally agreed that David was one of the great men of the race. In his trust and courage and leadership and genius he stands among the heroes of humanity. Now David had had a strange and varied life. He had been hunted like a partridge on the hills. He had suffered disloyalty at home and sorrowed in the death of Absalom. But now, as he looked back upon it all, what stood out in transcendent clearness was the unfailing gentleness of God—not the infliction of any heavenly punishment, though sometimes punishment had been severe; not the divine apportioning of sorrow, though he had drunk of very bitter sorrow. What shone out like a star in heaven, irradiating the darkness of his night, was the amazing gentleness of God. David could say with a full heart, "Thy gentleness hath made me great."

With a like sincerity can we not say it also? When we survey our course and recollect our mercies and recall the divine handling of our childishness, the confession of David is our own.

The Wonder of God's Gentleness

We feel the wonder of the gentleness of God when we remember it is conjoined with power. When infinite power lies at the back of it, gentleness is always very moving. There is a gentleness which springs from weakness. Cowardice lies hidden at its roots. It comes from the disinclination to offend and from the desire to be in good standing with everybody. But the marvel of the gentleness of God is that it is not the signature of an interior weakness, but rests upon the bosom of Omnipotence. In a woman we all look for gentleness; it is one of the lustrous diadems of womanhood. In a professional military man we scarcely expect it; it is not the denizen of tented fields. And the Lord is "a mighty man of war," subduing, irresistible, almighty, and yet He comes to Israel as the dew. The elder spoke to John of the lion of the tribe of Judah. But when John looked to see the lion, 1o! in the midst of the throne there was a lamb. Power was tenderness—the lion was the lamb—-Omnipotence would not break the bruised reed. It is the wonder of the gentleness of God.

Again, the gentleness of God is strangely moving when we remember it is conjoined with purity. There is a kind of gentleness, common among men, which springs from an easy, tolerant, good nature. To be gentle with sin is quite an easy matter if sin is a light thing in our eyes. It is easy to pardon a child who tells a lie, if lying is in our regard, but venial. And when we are tempted to think of God like that, as if heaven were rich in tolerant good nature, then is the time to consider the cross. Whatever else we learn at Calvary, we learn there God's estimate of sin. In that dark hour of agony the judgment of heaven upon sin is promulgated. And when that steeps into our being, so that we measure things by the measurements of Calvary, we are awed by the gentleness of God.

Then to all this must be added the fact of our human provocation. For, like the children of Israel in the wilderness, we are continually provoking God. Every mother knows how hard it is to be always gentle with a provoking child—how likely she is to lose her temper with it and how she longs to shake it or to slap it. But no child is ever so provoking to the tender heart of a good mother as you and I must always be to God. When we sin, when we fail to trust Him, when we grow bitter, when we become despondent, how ceaselessly provoking that must be to the infinitely loving heart in heaven. Yet David could say, as you and I can say, looking back over the winding trail of years, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." Nothing is more provoking to a parent than when a child refuses to take medicine, screaming and fighting against it desperately, though the cup be entirely for its good. The question is, How do you take your medicine? Do you grow faithless, hard, rebellious, broken-hearted? How provoking must that be to our Father. Yes, think on God's power and on His purity, and add to that our human provocation, if you want to feel the glory of His gentleness.

God's Gentleness Implies Our Illness

It always seems to me that tenderness and gentleness implies that we are sick. In our Father's sight we are all ailing children. We have all noticed how when one is sick everyone around grows strangely gentle. There is an exquisite gentleness, as many of us know, in the touch of a true nurse. Even rough, rude men grow very gentle, as is seen so often in war, when they are handling a wounded comrade. When he was well they tormented him; they played their jokes on him and coined his nickname; but when wounded, stricken, bleeding, shattered, they showed themselves as gentle as a woman. And I often think that the gentleness of God, could we track it to its mysterious deeps, is akin to that of soldier and of nurse. We are a sin-sick race. We all have leprosy. We are full of "wounds and bruises and putrifying sores." They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. Love in magnificence may suit the angels. But in the world's great battlefield and hospital, Love binds on the cross and walks in gentleness. "Thy gentleness hath made me great."

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

December 31

The Gentleness of God—Part II - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Thy gentleness hath made me great." Psa_18:35

What exactly may be meant by greatness is a question that we need not linger to discuss. It is enough that the writer of this verse was conscious that he had been lifted to that eminence. That he had been in extreme distress is clear from the earlier verses of this chapter. His heart had fainted—his efforts had been in vain—his hopes had flickered and sunk into their ashes. And then mysteriously, but very certainly, he had been carried upward to light and power and liberty, and now he is looking back over it all. That it was God who had so raised him up was, of course, as clear to him as noonday. He had sent up his cry to heaven in the dark, and to that cry His greatness was the answer. But what impressed him as he surveyed it all was not the infinite power of the Almighty; it was rather the amazing and unceasing gentleness wherewith that infinite power had been displayed. "Thy gentleness hath made me great," he cried. That was the outstanding and arresting feature. Tracing the way by which he had been led, he saw conspicuous a gentle ministry of God.

The One and Only Gentle God

Let me say in passing that that wonderful concept is really peculiar to the Bible. I know no deity in any sacred book that exhibits such an attribute as that. Of course, when one believes in many gods, it is always possible that one of them is gentle. When the whole world is thought to be tenanted with spirits, some of them doubtless will be gentle spirits. But that is a very different thing indeed from saying that the One Lord of heaven and earth has that in His heart which we can dimly picture under the human attribute of gentleness. No prophets save the prophets of Israel ever conceived the gentleness of God. To no other poets save these Jewish poets was the thought of heavenly gentleness revealed. And so when we delight in this great theme, we are dwelling on something eminently biblical, something that makes us, with all our Christian liberty, a debtor unto this hour to the Jewish prophets for bringing this to our attention.

Now if we wish to grasp the wonder of God's gentleness, there are one or two things we ought to do. We ought, for instance, always to lay it against the background of the divine omnipotence. You know quite well that the greater the power, the more arresting the gentleness becomes. As might advances and energy increases, so always the more notable is gentleness. It is far more impressive in the general of armies than in some retired and ineffectual dreamer. The mightier the power a man commands, the more compelling is his trait of gentleness. If he is ruler of a million subjects, a touch of tenderness is thrilling. And it is when we think of the infinite might of God, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, that we realize the wonder of our text. It is He who calleth out the stars by number and maketh the pillars of the heaven to shake. And when He worketh, no man can stay His hand, nor say to Him, What doest Thou? And it is this Ruler, infinite in power, before whom the princes of the earth are vanity, who is exquisitely and forever gentle.

The Wonder of God's Gentleness in View of Sin

Again, to feel the wonder of God's gentleness, we must set it against the background of God's righteousness. It is when we hear the seraphs crying "Holy" that we thrill to the thought of the gentleness of God. There is a kind of gentleness—we are all familiar with it—that springs from an easy and uncaring tolerance. It is the happy good nature of those characters to whom both right and wrong are nebulous. Never inspired by any love of goodness and never touched by any hate of evil, it is not difficult to walk the world with a certain smiling tolerance of everybody.

Now there have been nations whose gods were of that kind. Their gentleness was the index of their weakness. Living immoral lives in their Olympus, why should they worry about man's immorality? But I need hardly take time to point out to you that the one radical thing about the Jewish God—-one unchanging feature of His being—was that He was infinitely and forever holy. He was of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. "The soul that sinneth," said the prophet, "it shall die." And He visits the sins of the fathers on the children, even unto the third and fourth generation. All this was graven on the Jewish heart and inwrought into Jewish history; yet the psalmist could sing in his great hour, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." I beg of you, therefore, never to imagine that the gentleness of God is only an easy tolerance. Whatever it is, it certainly is not that, as life sooner or later shows to every man. Whatever it is, it leans against the background of a righteousness that burns as doth a fire, and I say that helps us to feel the wonder of it.

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The Gentleness of God—Part II - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The same jewel upon the bosom of omnipotence flashes out as we survey the Bible. The Bible is really one long record of the amazing gentleness of God. Other features of the divine character may be more immediately impressive there. And reading hastily, one might easily miss the revelation of a gentle God. Yet so might one, walking beside the sea, where hammers were ringing in the village workshop, easily miss the underlying music of the waves ceaselessly breaking on the shore. But the waves are breaking although the hammers drown them, and the gentleness of God is always there. It is there—not very far away—at the heart of all the holiness and sovereignty; it is there where the fire of His anger waxes hot and His judgments are abroad upon the earth, and men are crying, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Take, for instance, that opening Scripture of Adam and of his sin and exile. Whatever else it means, it means unquestionably that God is angry with disobedient man. And yet at the back of it what an unequalled tenderness, as of a father pitying his children and loving them with a love that never burns so bright as in the bitter hour of necessary punishment. Losing his innocence, in the love of God Adam found his calling and his crown. He fell to rise into a world of toil, and through his toil to realize his powers. So looking backward through that bitter discipline, unparadised but not unshepherded, he too could surely say with David, "Thy gentleness hath made me great."

Or think again of the story of the Exodus, that true foundation of the Jewish race. It took one night to take Israel out of Egypt but forty years to take Egypt out of Israel. And while that night, when the first-born were slain, was dark and terrible with the mighty power of God, what are those forty years of desert wandering but the witness of the gentleness of heaven? Leaving Egypt a company of slaves, they had to win the spirit of the free. Leaving it shiftless, they had to win reliance; leaving it cowardly, they had to learn to conquer; leaving it degraded, as slaves are always degraded, they were to reach to greatness by and by, and looking back on it all what could they say but this, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." Never forget that in its age-long story the Bible. reveals the gentleness of God. Hinted at in every flower that blossoms, it is evidently declared in Holy Scripture. It is seen in Adam and in Abraham. It is seen in the wilderness journey of the Israelites. It is found in the choicest oracles of prophecy and in the sweetest music of the Psalms.

God's Gentleness in Our Lives

I think, too, that as life advances, we can all confirm that that is true. We all discover, as the psalmist did, how mighty has been the gentleness of heaven. In the ordinary sense of the word, you and I may not be considered great. We have neither been born great, nor have we come to greatness, nor has greatness been thrust upon us. And yet it may be that for you and me life is a nobler thing than it was long ago, and truth is more queenly, and duty more dignified, than in the past. We may not have won any striking moral victories, yet our life has leaned to the victorious side. We have not conquered yet all that we hoped to conquer, yet our will is serving us better through the years. There are still impurities that lift up their heads and still passions that have to be brought to heel, yet it may be that you and I are now nearer the sunrise than ten years ago.

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The Gentleness of God—Part II - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

If, then, that is the case with you, I urge you to look back on the way that you have come and think of all that life has meant for you. Think of the temptations that would have overcome you had not God in His gentleness taken them away. Think of the courage you got when things were dark; of the doors that opened when every way seemed barred. Think of the unworthy things that you have done which God in His infinite gentleness has hidden—of the love that inspired you and the hope that came to you when not far distant was the sound of breakers. You, too, if you are a man at all, can lift up your eyes and cry out, God is just. It may be you can do more than that and lifting up your voice say, God is terrible. But if you have eyes to see and a heart to understand, there is something more that you can say, for you can whisper, "To me, in pardoning, shielding mercy, God has been infinitely and divinely gentle." If every lily of the field lifting its head can say, "Thy gentleness hath made me great"; if every sparrow chirping on the eaves is only echoing that meadow music, then I do feel that you and I, who are of more value to God than many sparrows, owe more than we shall ever understand to the abounding gentleness of heaven.

Because He Knoweth Our Frame

Now it seems to me that this gentleness of God reveals certain precious things about Him. It reveals, for instance, and is rooted in His perfect understanding of His children. There is a saying with which you are familiar; it is that to know all is to forgive all. That is an apothegm, and like all apothegms, it is not commensurate with the whole truth. Yet as a simple matter of experience, so much of our harshness has its rise in ignorance that such a saying is sure of immortality—to know all is to forgive all. How often you and I, after some judgment, have said to ourselves, If I had only known. Something is told us that we knew nothing about, and instantly there is a revulsion in our hearts. And we retract the judgment that we passed, and we bitterly regret we were unfeeling, and we say we never would have spoken so, had we only known.

The more we know—I speak in a broad way—the more we know, the more gentle we become. The more we understand what human life is, the greater the pity we feel. And I think it is just because our heavenly Father sees right down into our secret heart, that He is so greatly and pitifully gentle. For He knoweth our frame and remembereth we are dust, and He putteth all our tears into His bottle. And there is not a cross we carry and not a thought we think but He is acquainted with it altogether. And all we have inherited by birth, of power or weakness, of longing or of fear—I take it that all that is known to the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

Our Value in His Sight

And then again God's gentleness reveals this to us—it reveals our abiding value in His sight. It tells us, as almost nothing else can tell us, that we, His children, are precious in His eyes. There are certain books upon my shelves at home with which I hardly bother to be gentle. I am not upset when I see them tossed about nor when they are handled in a rough way. But there are other books that I could never handle without a certain reverence and care, and I am gentle because they are of value to me. And the noteworthy thing is that these precious volumes are not always the volumes that are most beautifully bound. Some of them are little tattered creatures that a respectable servant longs to light the fire with. But every respectable servant of a book lover comes to learn this at least about his master, that his ways, like those of another Master, are mysterious and past finding out. For that little volume, tattered though it may be, may have memories that make it infinitely precious—memories of school days or of college days, memories of the author who was well known to him. It may be the first Shakespeare that he ever had, or the first Milton that he ever handled, and he shall handle it gently to the end, because to him it is a precious thing. So I take it God is gentle because you and I are precious in His sight. He is infinitely patient with the worst of us because He values the worst of us so dearly. And if you want to know how great that value is, then read this text again and again: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish."

_______________________

By George H. Morrison
_______________________

These beautiful messages by George H. Morrison are distributed freely and Internationally in the excellent freeware Bible Study package called e-Sword. These messages are representative of many sweet Christians who want to put excellent Bible Study material in the hands of many, free of charge.

You can obtain e-Sword at:
http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Author: Rick Meyer
(The goal of Rick Meyer is to freely distribute Bibles to every country on earth in their own language, and that goal gets closer by the day. Thanks to countless Christian individuals and organizations with big hearts, many excellent Bible Study tools are also being distributed with e-Sword around the world, free of charge.)

January 10

Known in Adversities

"Thou hast known my soul in adversities." Psa_31:7

One great comfort of assurance in this verse is that such knowledge is always very thorough. When someone has known us in adversities, then he has known us as we really are.

There is a sonnet by Blanco White, familiar to all the lovers of the beautiful, in which he develops the thought that but for the night, we should never know the stars. And so there is a very real sense in which we may say we never know a life till we have seen it in the darkness of adversity. When the sun is warm and all the leaves are green, you can scarcely see the cottage in the forest. But when the storm of winter sweeps the leaves away, then at last you see it as it is. It may be stronger than you ever thought, or it may be more battered and decayed, but always the winter shows it as it is.

Indeed, the revealing power of adversity strips the summer covering away. It shows us not in the setting of our circumstance, but as we are in naked reality. And therefore one who has known us in adversities, and been at our side in sorrow and calamity, knows us with an intimacy that probably nothing else can ever give. That is why the knowledge of a doctor is often more searching than that of any friend. That is why the knowledge of a wife often reaches to an unrivalled intimacy, for she has known her husband not only when all waswell with him and when the sun was shining on his head, but when his heart was wary and his body sick and all his hopes seemed crumbled into dust.

Hidden Burdens

It was a great comfort to the psalmist also that the Lord had pierced through every disguise. That is why he uses the word soul: "Thou hast known my soul in adversities." To the Hebrew, more simply than to us, that word "soul" just meant the real self. There was nothing theological about it. It was a common word in common use. And what the psalmist deeply felt was this: the knowledge of God had pierced through all disguises and known him in the secret of his being.

There are few things more beautiful in life than the way in which men and women hide their sorrows. On the street and in the shops there is a quiet heroism as great as any on the battlefield. You may meet a person in frequent conversation, yet all the time and unknown to you, some sorrow may be lying at his heart. How often a mother, when she is worn and ill, struggles bravely to hide it from her family. How often a husband, deep in business difficulties, struggles to keep it hidden from those at home. How often a minister, called from a scene of death which may mean for him the end of a friendship, has to go to a marriage and be happy there as if there were not a sorrow in the world. Talk of the disguises of hypocrisy! They are nothing to the disguises of the brave—those cheerful looks, that quiet and patient work, when the heart within is heavy as a stone. That Spartan youth who kept a smiling face while the fox was gnawing away at him has his fellows in every community.

But Thou hast known my soul in adversity. That was the joy and comfort of the psalmist. There was one eye that pierced through all concealment, and that was the eye of an all-pitying God. Others had known his outward behavior for in trials there are many eyes upon us. Others had heard his words and seen his actions and wondered at the courage in his bearing. But only God had read the secret story and seen how utterly desolate he was and known how often, in spite of all appearances, he had been plunged into profound despair.

There is a point where human knowledge ceases and beyond which human sympathy is powerless. It pierces deep if it is genuine, but there are depths to which it cannot pierce. And it was just there, in the region of his soul, that the psalmist felt that there was One who knew him and would never leave him nor forsake him. He felt it in the sustainment he received. He felt it in the strength that was bestowed upon him. He felt it in the peace that rested on him, a peace such as the world could never give. And so when the sun shone on him again, as sooner or later it does on all of us, he took his pen and wrote in gratitude, "Thou hast known my soul in adversities."

The Condescension of God's Love

There was one other comfort for the psalmist at which our text hints unobscurely. He had been awakened through the knowledge that he speaks of to the infinite condescension of God's love.

A well-known German religious writer who has brought comfort to multitudes of mourners tells us how once he had a visit from a friend who was in great distress. This friend had once been a very wealthy man, and now he had fallen upon evil days, and that very morning one of his old companions had passed him without recognition on the street. Then Gotthold, for such was the writer's name, took him by the hand and, pointing upward, said, "Thou hast known my soul in adversities."

It is one of the sayings of the moralist that the world courts prosperity and shuns adversity. There are rats in every circle of society who all hasten to leave the sinking ship. But what the psalmist had awakened to was this: the eternal God, who was his refuge, had known him and acknowledged him and talked with him when his fortunes were at their very blackest. Nothing but love could explain the condescension. He had found in God a friend who was unfailing. "If I ascend into heaven thou art there; if I make my bed in hell thou art there." So was the world made ready for the Savior who, when other helpers fail and comforts flee, never deserts us, never is ashamed of us, never leaves us to face the worst alone.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

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January 11

The Reach of His Faithfulness
"Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." Psa_36:5

The faithfulness of God is one of the strong truths of the Old Testament. It is one distinction of the Jewish faith, in contrast with the ancient pagan faiths. Pagan gods were not generally faithful whether in Babylon or Greece. They were immoral, careless of their promises regardless of their pledged word. And the wonderful thing about the Jewish faith was that the God of the Jew was always faithful both to His covenant and to His children.

Such a magnificent and upholding thought sprang not only from personal experience, it was interwoven with the fact that the Jewish religion was historical. The Jew could look backward over the tracts of time and discover there the faithfulness of God in a way the brief life might never show. As he recalled the story of the past, of Abraham traveling to the promised land, of the slaves in Egypt rescued from their slavery, of the desert pilgrimage of forty years, one thing that was stamped upon his heart, never to be erased by any finger, was that Jehovah was a faithful God.

That thought sustained the psalmist, and with him, all the saints of the old covenant. In the Old Testament the word "faith" is rare, but the word "faithfulness" occurs a score of times. And here the psalmist, in his poetic way, and like Jesus, drawing his images from nature, says, "Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds."

The Clouds of Scripture

One thinks, for instance, of the clouds of Scripture in such a passage as the Ascension story. When our Lord ascended to the Father, a cloud received Him from the disciples' sight (Act_1:9). That was a lonesome and desolating hour when the cloud wrapped around Him and He was gone. They had loved Him so and leaned upon Him so that I take it they were well-nigh broken-hearted. Then the days went on, and they discovered that the engulfing cloud was not the end of everything. It, too, was touched by the faithfulness of heaven. He had promised to be with them always, and He was faithful to that promise still. He had said, "I will manifest Myself to you," and that promised word was verified. The cloud had come and engulfed their Lord, and they thought the sweet companionship was over. But His faithfulness reached unto the clouds.

The Clouds of History

Again, one thinks of the clouds of history, for history has its dark and cloudy days. For instance, what a cloudy day that was when the Jews were carried off to Babylon. Exiled to a distant, heathen land, they thought that God had forgotten to be gracious. They said: "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God." It was not the hardship of exile that confounded them. It was that God seemed to have broken His covenant and had been found unfaithful to His promises. By the waters of Babylon they sat and wept. They hung their harps upon the willow trees. How could they sing of the faithfulness of God when He had let them go into captivity?

And yet the day was coming when the instructed heart would rise to another view of that captivity and say: "Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds." Memory became illuminative. Things lost grew doubly precious. Distance helped them to a clearer vision of what sin was and what God was. And then across that dark and cloudy day came the ringing of prophetic voices with the message of ransom and return (Isa_35:1-10). They were not forgotten. They were not rejected. Their way was not passed over by their God. Sunny days did not exhaust His faithfulness. It reached even to the clouds. And of how many a dark day of history (as when we revert in thought to the World Wars) can we set to our seal that this is true !

The Clouds Over Our Lives

Again, one thinks how this great truth applies to the clouds that hang over our human lives. What multitudes can say, in an adoring gratitude, "Thy faithfulness hath reached unto the clouds"? Just as in every life are days of sunshine when the sky is blue and all the birds are singing, when every wind blows from where the Lord is and when we feel it is good to be alive, so in every life are shadowed days when the sun withdraws its shining for a season and the clouds return after the rain. It may be a time of trouble in the family or of great anxiety in business, the time when health is showing signs of failing or when the chair is empty and the grave is full. It may be the time when all that a man has lived for seems washed away like a castle in the sand. It may be the day of unexpected poverty.

How unlooked for often are the clouds of life. They gather swiftly like some tropical thunderstorm. We confidently expect a cloudless day, and before evening the sky is darkened. And yet what multitudes of folk as they look backward, with much experience in life, can take our text and in quiet adoring gratitude claim it as the truth of their experience. You thought (don't you remember thinking?) that God had quite forgotten to be gracious. Possibly you were tempted to deny Him or secretly to doubt His care for you. But now, looking back upon it all, you have another vision and another certainty, just as the experienced psalmist had. If there are any of those who read these lines for whom this is the dark and cloudy day, who are anxious and distressed, who say in the morning, "Would God that it were evening"—have faith. Do not despair. The hour is nearer than you think when you also will say with David, "Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds."

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George H. Morrison Devotions

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January 12

The New Song
"He hath put a new song in my mouth." Psa_40:3

When anybody sings it is an outward token of an inward happiness. Despondent people very seldom sing. When a man sings as he walks the country road it means that he has a heart of peace. When he sings while he is dressing in the morning, it means that he gladly accepts another day. And wherever Christianity has come, with its liberating and uplifting power, it has carried with it this note of singing gladness. The Stoic boasts, when life is harsh and cruel, that his head is "bloody but unbowed." Paul and Silas did far more than that; they sang praises in the jail at midnight. Their religion was an exhilarating business as all true religion ought to be. They had not only peace in believing; they had joy.

Now if you listen to anyone singing at his work you will catch the strain of an old familiar melody. Nobody dreams of practicing new songs when he is walking along a country road. Yet the psalmist, thinking of life's highways and of daily work and undistinguished mornings, says that God has put a new song in his mouth. You see, a song may be very old, and yet to us it may be very new. It may break on us with all the charm of novelty though it has come ringing down the ages. It may be like the coming of the spring which is always new and wonderful to us though every vanished year has had its spring. Generally, the new songs which God gives have come echoing down the corridors of time. Men sang them long ago in days that carry the memories of history. But when they come to us, and touch our hearts in fresh, vivid personal experience, they are as new as the wonder of the springtime.

The Bible, the Song of Heaven

One sees that very clearly with the Bible which is the grand, sweet song of heaven for us. No mere critic can ever grasp the Bible any more than he can grasp the magnificence of Shakespeare. Now the Bible is a book for childhood. It has stories which enthrall the childish-heart. There is the story of David and Goliath in it and of Daniel in the den of lions. And then comes life with all its changing years, with its lights and shadows and sufferings and joys, and what a new song the Bible is to us! The strange thing is it is an old, old song. It is "the song our mothers sang." It is the song that kindled the great heart of Knox and satisfied Sir Walter Scott on his deathbed. Yet when our heart is deepened and our eyes are opened by sin and suffering and loneliness and mercy, a new song is put into our mouth.

We see that this is how God deals with us when we think of the old sweet song of love. For all love is of God, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in Him. Every spring of love in earthly valleys flows from the heavenly fountain. Every spark of love in human breasts is a spark of the eternal fire. The love of home, of parentage and childhood, not less than "the way of a man with a maid," are but the ocean of eternal love creeping into the crannies of the shore. Now the song of love has gone echoing through the world since the first lovers gathered in the gloaming. Joseph knew to its depths the love of fatherhood. Yet when love indwells any human heart, its song is as new as the melody of spring, though since the dawn of time spring has sung its carol. Whenever a heart loves, God puts a new song into the mouth. No love song is a repetition, though the same things have been said a thousand times. And just because God has set His love on us, His old love songs are all new to us when first in the secret of our souls we hear them. God does not need to write new love songs. The old, old love song is the best. The heart is crying, "Tell me the old, old story." But the wonderful thing is that when we hear it, old though it is to us, it is so thrilling that a new song is put into our mouth.

God's Redeeming Grace Is an Individual Love Song

I notice, lastly, that the newness of the song runs down to the mystery of individuality. The song is new just because we are new. We hear much today of mass production. It is because of mass production things are cheap. Had God made humanity by mass production, then human souls would have been cheap. But the very fact that we are individuals and that no two are alike in the whole world is a token that we were never made that way. No two faces are ever just the same; no two temptations ever quite alike; no two joys without their subtle difference; no two heart-breaks indistinguishable — it is this element of newness in the separate life of every man and woman that takes the old song and makes it new. The song was sung by David, but David and you were never standardized. It may be sung by multitudes in heaven, but your experience of mercy is your own. And so, when God in His redeeming love puts the old sweet song of grace upon your lips, the song is new—it is your very own—it seems as if no one else had ever sung it.

January 13

The Thirst for God
"My soul thirsteth for God." Psa_42:2

When the psalmist wrote this he was a fugitive in hiding somewhere across Jordan. He had been driven out by rebellion from Jerusalem, which is the city of the living God. To you and me, rich in the truth of Christ, that would not make God seem far away. And doubtless the psalmist also had been taught that Jehovah was the God of the whole earth. Yet with an intensity of feeling which we of the New Covenant are strangers to, he associated Jehovah with locality. He felt that to be distant from the Holy City was somehow to be distant from his Deity. And so, in a great sense of loneliness and in a thirsty land where no waters were, he cried out, "My soul thirsteth for the living God."

But when a poet speaks out of a burning heart, he always speaks more wisely than he realizes. When the soul is true to its own prompting, it is true to generations yet unborn. In the exact sciences you say a thing, and it keeps forever the measure of its origin. But when an inspired poet says a thing, it endlessly transcends its origin. For science utters only what it knows, but poetry utters what it feels, and in the genuine utterance of feeling there is always the element of immortality. No one worries about the atoms of Lucretius, but the music of Lucretius is not dead. No one feeds upon the Schoolmen now, but thousands are feeding upon Dante. And the psalmist may have been utterly astray in his measurements of the sun and stars, but taught of God, he never was astray in the more wonderful universe of the soul. That is why we can take his words and strip them of all reference to locality, or there is not one of us, whatever his circumstances, who is not an exile beyond Jordan and thirsting for the living God.

Spiritual Thirst Indicates the Certainty of God

Now it seems to me that such spiritual thirst involves the ultimate certainty of God. It is an assurance that is never antiquated, an argument that never fails. I thirst for water, and from a thousand hills I hear the music of the Highland streams. I thirst for happiness, and in the universe I find the sunshine and the love of children. I thirst for God—and to me it seems incredible that the universe should reverse its order now, providing liberally for every lesser craving but not for the sublimest of them all. I don't think, if such had been the case, that Christ would have said, "Seek, and ye shall find." For then we should have sought the lesser things and found them to our heart's content, but when we sought the greatest things of all, would have been hounded empty from the door.

That is why the psalmist also said, "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." But there are men who have said that out of aching hearts and ruined homes. They have said it when love had proved itself a treachery. For sometimes the seeming cruelty of things, and the swift blows that shatter and make desolate, have blotted out even from devout hearts the vision of the Father for a little. God never calls these broken children fools. He knows our frame and remembers we are dust. He is slow to anger and of great compassion, and He will shine upon these shadowed lives again. But the fool hath said in his heart there is no God. He scorns the verdict of his deepest being. He believes his senses which are always tricking him. He doesn't have the courage to believe his soul. A man may say in his mind "There is no God," and God may forgive him and have mercy on him. But only a fool can say it in his heart.

This thirst for God is sometimes very feeble, though I question if it ever wholly dies. You may live with a man for months, perhaps for years, and never light on that craving of his heart. But far away in the ranches of the West there are rough men who were cradled in our Scottish glens, and you might live with them for months, perhaps years, and never learn that they remembered home. But some evening there will come a strain of music—some song or melody—and on that reckless company there falls a quietness and they cannot look into each other's eyes just then: and then it doesn't take a prophet to discover that the hunger for the homeland is not dead.

There are feelings that you can crush but cannot extirpate, and the thirst for the living God is one of these. You may blunt and deaden the faculty for God, but as long as the lamp burns, it is still there. It was that profound and unalterable faith which made our Lord so hopeful for the most hardened sinners of mankind.

Our Rest Is in God

And then remember also that men may thirst for God and never know it. That eminent scientist Romanes tells us that for twenty-five years he never prayed. He was crowned with honor in a way that falls to few—and all the time there was something lacking. It was not the craving of a disciplined mind that feels every hour how much still remains to do; it was the craving of a hungry soul that never knew it was yearning after God. Then, in the embrace of love, they met, and meeting, there was peace. So it often is when souls are restless. They are craving for they know not what. And all the time, although they little dream of it, that "know not what" is God. For as Augustine told us long ago, God has made us for Himself, and we are restless till we find our rest in Him.

January 15

To the Disheartened - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" Psa_43:5

It is one source of the eternal freshness of the Psalms that they tell the story of a struggling soul. They open a window on to that battlefield with which no other battle can be compared—the moral struggle of the individual with himself. And it is well that that story should be told in poetry, for there is nothing like poetry for describing battles. There is a rich suggestiveness in poetry, a rush of emotion, an enthusiasm that catches and conveys the excitement of the field. The dullest war correspondent grows poetical, his words become colored, vivid, picturesque, when he narrates the actions in the war. It was right, then, that for this warfare of the soul we should have the strong music of the Psalms.

Now as we read that story of the psalmist's struggle, one of the first things to arrest us is the likeness of that battle to our own. Ages have fled, and everything is different since the shepherd-king poured out his heart in melody. And yet his failures and his hopes are so like ours, he might have been shepherding and reigning yesterday. We are so apt to think we fight alone. We are so prone to think there never was a life so weak, so ragged, so full of a dull gnawing, as ours. We are so ready to believe that we have suffered more than any heart that ever loved and lost. And then God opens up the heart of David, and we see its failures and we hear its cries, and the sense of loneliness at least is gone. He prayed as we have prayed. He fell as we have fallen. He rose and started again as we have done. He was disheartened, and so are we.

Disheartenment

Speaking of disheartenment, there is one temperament that is peculiarly exposed to that temptation. It is that of the eager and sensitive and earnest soul. If you are never in earnest about anything, you may escape disheartening altogether. To be disheartened is a kind of price we pay for having a glimpse at the heavens now and then.

"The mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain;

And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain."

So the dull pain of being disheartened now and then is the other side of man's capacity for enthusiasm. Give me a flood-tide and I shall expect an ebb. Give me an earnest, daring, generous, loyal heart, and I shall know where to discover melancholy.

And one word I should like to say here—never pass judgments in your disheartened hours. It is part of the conduct of an honest soul never to take the verdict of its melancholy. The hours come when everything seems wrong. And all that we do and all that we are seem worthless. And by a strange and subtle trick of darkness, it is just then we begin to judge ourselves. Suspend alt judgment when you are disheartened. Tear into fragments the verdict of your melancholy. Wait till the sunshine comes; wait till the light of the countenance of God comes, then judge—you cannot judge without the light. But in your darkness, stay yourself on God. Disheartenment is the wise man's time for striking out. It is only the fool's time for summing up.

No doubt there is a physical element in much disheartenment. There is a need of health; there is a lack of sunshine in the hills about it. When we are badly nourished and poorly clothed and live and sleep in a vitiated atmosphere, it is so very easy to lose heart. And all that inter-working of body and soul, with the reaction of a man's environment upon his life, should make us very charitable to our neighbor. If you knew everything, you would find more heroism in a smiling face sometimes than in the most gallant deed out in South Africa. Make every allowance for a disheartened neighbor. Be charitable. Be helpful and be kind. But in the name of the Christlike character you strive for, make no allowance, brother, for yourself. Allowance is merely the pet name for excuse. It speaks of that tender handling of ourselves which is so utterly foreign to a vigorous manhood. I must make no excuse. I must be at it when I feel least like it. It is so much better to live nobly than live long.

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To the Disheartened - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Causes of Disheartenment

Now what are the common causes of disheartment? I think we can lay our hand on some, at any rate. And the first is the long and monotonous stretches of our life. "Variety's the very spice of life, and gives it all its flavor," sings the poet. And when there is no variety at all, no new horizon in the morning, but the same work and the same haunting worry, day in day out, we are all apt to grow disheartened. It is a dreary business walking in the country when the dusty road, without a turn or a bend, stretches ahead of you for miles. If there was only some dip and rise in the road, some unexpected scenery, some surprises, you would cover the distance and never think of it. It is the sameness that disheartens us. It is the dreary monotony of life's journey until we lose all spring and spontaneity, all freshness of feeling, all power to react; and we live and work mechanically, deadly.

Another cause is bitter disappointment. When we have made our plans, and suddenly they are shattered; when we have built our castles, and the gale comes and brings them down in ruin at our feet; when the ties are wrenched and the loving heart is emptied, and in the bitterness of death the grave is full—we are all ready to be disheartened then. For where our treasure is, there shall our hearts be also; and when our treasure vanishes, our heart is gone.

The poet Wordsworth, whose calm, deep verse we should all keep reading in these hurrying days, tells us of the utter disheartening that fell on him after the French Revolution. He had hoped great things from that stormy time. He had hoped for the birth of brotherhood and freedom. He had thought that the race was going to shake its fetters off and proclaim the dignity of man at last. And when these dreams were blighted as they were, and instead of liberty and true equality there came the tumbril and the guillotine and blood, "I lost," says Wordsworth,

"All feeling of conviction, and in fine
Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
Yielded up moral questions in despair."

It was his terrible disappointment that disheartened him. Perhaps it is that, friend, that has disheartened you.

Another cause of the deepest disheartening is this: it is the apparent uselessness of all we do. It is the partial failure, it is the lack of progress, it is the fact that I strive and never seem to attain that lies at the root of spiritual despondency. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" says Andrea. And this very psalm from which we took our text, that thrills and wails with spiritual depression, begins with the cry of the soul after the Infinite "as the hart pants after the water-brooks." It is the other side of my glory, that disheartening. It is the witness of my kinship with infinitude. I am never satisfied: there is always another hilltop. I am never at rest: there is a better somewhere. And so I am disheartened—fool!—because I am something better than a beast and have been made to crave, to strive, to yearn, to hope—unsatisfied—till the day break and the shadows flee away.

Advice Against Disheartenment

Now I shall venture to give some advice against disheartenment (I have received help here from the sermons of Dean Paget), and the first is this: disheartenment can often be dispelled by action.

A friend who knew Robert Browning well has said of him that one of his priceless qualities was that he always made effort seem worthwhile. You came into his presence restless, wearied, with all the edge taken off moral effort by the doubts and criticisms of this troubled age, and you left him feeling that in spite of a thousand doubts, the humblest effort heavenward was worthwhile.

O, how I wish that every young man and woman could feel the same thing! For what we want is not more light. What we want is more quiet fortitude. It is to believe that effort is worthwhile. It is to hold it, though the world deny it, that man shall not live by bread alone. And though it is very easy to preach that, and we read it and sing it like a common thing, there is the power of God in it against moral collapse, and it carries the makings of moral heroism on its bosom.

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To the Disheartened - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And this is my second counsel to the disheartened. Remember, friend, what others have to suffer. Look around you and see the burden of your neighbor and mark the patience and sweetness of the man, until, in that great brotherhood of trial, you ask God to forgive your gloom and bitterness.

In the theater of the ancient Greeks—and the theater was religious, it was not vulgar then—they played great tragedies and brought the sorrows and passions of the noble on the state. And the men and women of Athens went to see them, and by the portrayal of these mightier sorrows, their own so shrank into an insignificance that they went home with something of new hope in them and the determination to be braver now. There are such tragedies today, my friend, and you cannot only witness, you can help. "When you are quite despondent," said Mr. Keble, "the best way is to go out and do something kind to somebody."

And lastly, in your hours of disheartenment, just ask if there was ever a man on earth who had such cause to be disheartened as our Lord. What griefs, what exquisite sorrows, and what agonies!—what seeming failure, what crushing disappointment! Yet on the very eve of Gethsemane and Calvary our wonderful Lord is talking of His joy. And when heart fails and faints, and I lose all will power, and my arm hangs helpless, and my soul seems dead, there is nothing like coming right to the feet of Jesus and crying with Peter, "Lord, save me or I perish." It is then that I take heart again to sing—

"The night is mother of the day,
The winter of the spring,
And ever upon old decay
The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall,
For God who loveth all His works,
Hath left His hope with all."

January 16

The Joy of Jesus

"God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Psa_45:7

For all the sorrows that lay upon His heart and the heaviness of the cross He had to bear, there can be little question that Jesus impressed people as a very contented person. When He spoke about His joy nobody had to ask Him what He meant. It never seemed strange to those who knew Him best that He should talk to them about His gladness. They were so familiar with it in their daily conversation, even when everything was dark and menacing, that the mention of it never took them by surprise. His enemies described Him as a wine-bibber, and that does not suggest a gloomy person. He called Himself a bridegroom, and the ideal bridegroom is a radiant person. We want children to be men and women; He wanted men and women to be children, and children, whatever else they may be, are extraordinarily carefree little beings. How, then, shall we explain this gladness of the Man of Sorrows? How did He maintain, through darkest hours, this unworrying and radiant heart? It is profoundly helpful to meditate on that.

Jesus Never Swerved From His Appointed Task

Supremely faithful to His high vocation, our Lord shone in the tranquil radiance of fidelity. One of the deepest attributes of duty is that the doing of it always leads to gladness. Wordsworth says of the man who does his duty that flowers laugh before him in their beds. To have a vocation and to hold to it, in spite of seductive and alluring voices, is the source of half the singing in the world. In the World War, in spite of all its sorrow, there was more singing than I ever heard before. Millions had something great to live for: something that was great enough to die for. And one of the sources of the joy of Jesus was that something great enough to live and die for had been given Him in the ordering of God. Voices called Him, as they call us all. Sometimes they bore the accents of a friend. He was urged to be careful and to guard Himself and to shun the agony of Calvary. But to all such voices He was deaf; He set His face stedfastly towards Jerusalem, and "flowers laughed before Him in their beds."

The Abundance of His Life

Another source of that joy of heart is to be found in the abundance of His life. We all know how when life is rich and full there comes to us a kind of inward radiance. Seasons arrive when life is at the ebb, and then "melancholy marks us for her own." But when the tide of life comes to the full again, immediately everything is different. The grasshopper has ceased to be a burden; everything is clothed in vivid coloring; in the dreariest period of bleak February we awaken in the morning singing. That is not only true of physical life; it is true of life in every sphere. It is "more life and fuller" if the jarring is to be changed into a song. How profoundly significant it is, then, that Jesus should be the enemy of death and should quietly affirm I am the Life.

All sin in its last results is impoverishing: of such impoverishing our Lord was ignorant. The life of God flowed through Him like a river, unchecked by any barrier of evil. Moment by moment drawing for His need out of the boundless life within His Father's heart, He had a joy the world could never give and could never take away.

Jesus Never Doubted God

The deepest root of all Christ's joy was that He never doubted God. And if ever a child had cause to doubt his father, I make bold to say that it was Jesus. Sent of God, He was a homeless wanderer: the Son of Man had not where to lay his head. Sent of God, men turned their backs on Him: He came to His own, and His own received Him not. Sent of God, He was ridiculed and mocked; He was beaten and insulted, and the nails were driven into His hands and feet. In such a life to trust was victory, and victory always is conjubilant. To live as He did, in a faith unfailing, is the victory that overcomes the world. That is why, right through the life of Jesus, there "steals on the ear the distant triumph song," sung not in celestial bliss but in the shame and agony of our mortality.

Why is a child such an unworried little creature? It is because he trusts his father and his mother. Why is the boat passenger untroubled in the tempest? It is because he absolutely trusts the captain. And the deepest root of the joy of Jesus was a trust in His Father which was perfect and which never faltered in the darkest hour. Why should you and I not live like that? The victories of Christ were won for us. A Christian does not so much win his victories as he appropriates the victories of Christ. Live as He did, trust as He did, keep the heart open to the inflowing tide, and in the dreariest days of February the time of the singing of the birds is come.

January 17

The River of God - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." Psa_46:4

The Bible opens the history of man by showing him surrounded by a garden. It is in the midst of a garden he awakes, touched into life by the creating hand. There he learns his kingship in creation; there he discovers One whom he can love; there he walks in fellowship with God. We read, too, that through the garden ran a river. It flowed from Eden through the midst of paradise. On leaving Eden it parted into four, and its streams went out to fertilize the world. This, then, is the environment of man in the idyllic morning of his days—a garden of perfect beauty and delight made glad by the flowing of a river.

But as the history of man proceeds, of man in his relationship to God, the need arises of some other figure to illustrate the scenery of redemption. As long as man is unfallen, so long is a garden his true environment. There is no sin seeking to assail him, no hostile power bent upon his destruction. He can walk secure amid his garden groves and live without apprehension of assault.

The City

But with the advent of sin, all is changed. There grows an antagonism between man and God. The Church of God separates from the world and lives engirded by a deadly enemy. And just as this antagonism deepens, so does the thought of the garden become dim, and its place is taken in poetry and prophecy by the sterner concept of the city. For modern man the city is the home of commerce and its social life is the measure of its value. But in earlier times the value of the city lay mainly in the security it offered. And all who have seen a medieval city with its high walls and its defended ports will understand how in the day of trouble the city was the stronghold of the land. It was not to gardens that men fled for refuge when the trumpet rang its summons of alarm. They tilled their garden in the day of peace, but fled to the city in the day of danger.

And so as the conflict of the spirit deepened and life assumed the aspect of a war, the garden ceased to represent the Church, and the battlement city took its place. That is why Scripture opens with a garden and closes its long story with a city. Slowly above the dust of spiritual battle there rose the outline of a city's wall, until at last, all that the psalmist hoped for and all that the prophet had declared in faith, was seen in vision by the seer in Patmos.

Now this identification of Church and city was greatly furthered among the Jews by one thing. It was greatly furthered for the Jews by the increasing importance of Jerusalem. So long as the Israelites were villagers and lived a pastoral or rural life, just so long their concept of a noble city was drawn from what they knew of foreign capitals. But as Jerusalem began to grow in numbers and to attract the attention of the world, then the associations of the city took a kindlier and more familiar tone. No Jew could picture a city of his God so long as the greatest cities were all heathen. There must be a capital of his own land to suggest and to inspire the figure. And so it was, as Jerusalem advanced and became the home of government and worship, that both prophet and psalmist with increasing confidence described the Church as the city of Jehovah. It was not just of Jerusalem they thought, though under all they thought about lay Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the sacrament and seal of the invisible city of their quest. Hence John in the closing page of Revelation, when he describes the city of his vision, says, "I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem."

Now between Jerusalem and other cities there was one point of sharp and striking contrast. Jerusalem stood almost alone in this. It had no river flowing by its walls. It was very beautiful for situation; and as a city compactly built together, it occupied a position of great strength, and its walls were a mighty safeguard round about it. Yet one thing it lacked to beautify its streets and to make it a safe shelter when besieged—and the one thing which it wanted was a river. Nineveh had the waters of the Tigris; through Babylon wound the streams of the Euphrates; the city of Thebes rose beside the Nile, and Rome was to win her glory by the Tiber.

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The River of God - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Jerusalem alone possessed no river; no depth of water flowed beneath her walls; all she could boast of, beside her wells and springs, was an insignificant and intermittent stream. It is that which explains the psalmist's exclamation. A river!—the streams of it make glad the city. He sees Jerusalem, yet it is not Jerusalem, for in his vision there flows a river there. Once there had been a river in the garden when the garden was man's meeting-place with God, and now the garden has become the city, and behold there is a river in the city.

What then is this river which the psalmist sees in the city of Jehovah? There is no need for conjecture, for the psalmist himself tells us what it was: "God is in the midst of her," and he adds that it is the presence of God that is the gladdening river. It is Jehovah present with His Church that constitutes its gladness and refreshing.

Living Waters

I need hardly remind you how often in the Scripture God is compared with living waters. We read in Jeremiah, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." Zechariah speaks of the fountain that shall be opened in Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. "And in the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.'" That, then, is the river in the city. It is the gladdening presence of Jehovah. It is God not distant in the heaven of heavens, but moving in the midst of our activities. For in that there is the secret of all strength, the hope of patient endurance to the end, and the gladness which is born of satisfaction of all that is deepest in the soul.

Let us remember, too, what John says of this river, that it proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. It is not without deep significance that John should have added these words—"of the Lamb." There is a presence of God throughout the whole creation, for all things have their being in Him. That river flows from the throne of the Creator. But the river in the city flows from the throne of the Lamb; its well-spring is in Jesus and Him crucified; it is in Christ once slain and now enthroned that the city of God has joy and satisfaction. To His own city God reveals Himself, as He does not and cannot do unto the world. He comes to His own in the love of Jesus Christ, for he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father. And this is the river, not from the throne of God, but from the throne of God and of the Lamb, which flows and flows only through the city. This is that river which is full of water, and by the banks of which everything lives. This is the river which Ezekiel saw and which before long was deep enough to swim in. It is God, but it is God in Christ, the God of pardon and of full redemption. There is a river which makes glad the city, and it flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

The River Speaks of Joy

But now, to carry out the thought a little, let us take some suggestions from the figure. And, first, the river in the city speaks of joy. Between the ancient and the modern city there is one contrast we might easily miss. We view a city as the home of pleasure, as the place where most enjoyment may be had; it is in a measure to escape from dullness and boredom that multitudes leave the country for the town. But for the Jew, the city in itself was not regarded as a place of gladness; there was always something of a shadow on its streets. As a matter of fact, it is in country life that the Bible finds its images of gladness. The city was but a sad necessity in a country which might be swept by war. And the gloomier the city was, the better; for the higher and more impregnable its walls, the greater was the safety it afforded to men who sought its shelter in the strife. Not of a city such as we know today would a Jew think when he read of the city of God. He would imagine one that was impregnable and could defy the siege of any foe. And so says the psalmist, "Lo, there is a river"—the city of God is girded with walls unshakeable—yet through it flows the gladness of the hills and the joy of waters on which the sunshine plays. Safe is the man who dwells within these walls, for they are built by One whose workmanship is sure. His life is more than one of gloomy safety cut off from the liberty of plain and hill. At his very feet there flows a river, clear as crystal, making glad music, and he who stoops to drink of its clear stream is refreshed and made happy by its refreshment.

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The River of God - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

But aren't there many who are tempted yet to think of religion as a life of gloom? They may feel that it is safe to be religious, but that that safety is very dearly purchased. The city of God is but a gloomy place, and some day they shall enter its defenses; but today let them have the gladness of the mountains and the music of the broad and happy world. To all who may be tempted to think so comes the word of the psalmist—"Lo, there is a river!" Not only is the Christian life the guarded life, it is the life that is lived beside the stream of joy. For to know that God is with us in Christ Jesus and that He will never leave us nor forsake us, that, after all, is the unfailing secret of the happy and contented heart. Everything lives where this river flows. The tree of life is growing on its banks. To live with God is to redeem one's life from the worry and the rush that make it not worth living. The city of God is not a gloomy place, however it may look to those without; there is a river in its streets that makes it glad.

The River in the City Suggests Peace

When you read the opening verses of this Psalm, you find yourself in a scene of wild confusion. The psalmist, in a few graphic words, pictures chaos in the world. The earth is reeling in the shock of earthquake; the mountains sink into the depths of the ocean; the waters of the sea rise up in fury and sweep with terrific force across the land. Everywhere there is uproar and confusion, an earth that is shaken to its very base, and men in terror and panic fear as if the end of all things was at hand. Then suddenly the psalmist calls a halt, and another vision breaks upon his gaze. A river! and it is flowing in sweet peace through a city that stands unshaken and unshakable. And nothing could be more striking or more beautiful than that swift passage from the roaring sea to the gentle gliding of that quiet river as it murmurs among the city streets. It is the psalmist's vision of the peace of all who have taken up their dwelling-place with God. This is a peace that the world can never give, for the world is in throes of earthquake and of storm. But it flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb; its source is a Savior crucified yet crowned; and it is the heritage of every man who believes in an enthroned Christ.

The life of the Christian should be like a river flowing through the streets of a great city. In the midst of all disturbance and dismay it ought to be like a picture of sweet peace. For he who has God beside him night and day and who continually stays his mind on God, amid all the disturbing tumult of his lot, has a heart at peace with itself.

The River in the City Suggests Prosperity

We do not need to be told how a city's welfare depends upon its river. It is the Clyde that makes glad the city of Glasgow by bringing a livelihood to tens of thousands. There is hardly a dwelling on any street or terrace that is not influenced in some way by the river. Life may be hard enough for many citizens, but it would be harder and perhaps impossible if the sources of our river were to fail and its bed to become empty of its waters. On the Thames depends the prosperity of London, on the Clyde the prosperity of Glasgow; is it not equally true that on the river depends the prosperity of the city of God? For let the presence of God in Jesus Christ be withdrawn from the soul or from the church, and nothing can save that soul from being cast away or keep that church from the decay of death. No organization will avail if Christ is not present in its congregation. No wealth of learning, no beauty of ritual, is of the slightest use if that is lacking. Unless God is in the midst of her and His grace like a flowing river, the city of God can never hope to see the work of the Lord prospering in her hand. Brethren, for the sake of our own souls, and not less for the church which we belong to, let us covet more earnestly what is in our power, a life of unbroken fellowship with God. That is the victory that overcomes the world. That is the open secret of prosperity. That is the river from the throne of the Lamb that makes glad the city of our quest.

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January 20

The Triumph of Trust
"But I will trust in thee." Psa_55:23

The value of a word and the power that it has over our hearts depends largely upon the man who speaks it and on the circumstances of its utterance. When Paul said to the Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice," how inexpressibly these words are deepened by the circumstances of the Apostle—no longer young nor free, but a prisoner in a Roman cell with his life-work seemingly shattered at his feet. Living words have the quality of life. They are born and bear the fashion of their birth. They may be robbed of meaning, or may be filled with meaning, by the hour in which the spirit utters them. So it seems to me the only way to enter into the grandeur of our text is to learn the circumstances of the Psalm. What kind of man was this who said so confidently: "But I will trust in thee?" What were his circumstances? Was he happy? Was everything going very well with him? A study of the psalm will show us that.

The Psalmist Was a Man Unanswered

First, note that he was a man unanswered. He knew the bitterness of heaven's silence. His opening cry in our deep psalm is this: "Hide not thyself from my supplication" (Psa_55:1).

It is an easy thing to trust in God when swiftly and certainly our prayers are answered. There are some who read this column whose life is a compact of answered prayer. But when we pray and the face of God is hidden, and we are restless because heaven is silent—it is often difficult to trust Him then. Especially is that true of intercession when we have been praying for someone who is dear, that God would spare a life or kill a habit or bring the beloved prodigal home again. To continue trusting when we have prayed like that and the prayers have seemed to go whistling down the wind, is one of the hardest tasks in human life. The splendid thing is that the psalmist did it. He refused to regard silence as indifference. He knew that a thousand days are as one day to God and that sometimes love delays the chariot wheels. Heaven might be silent and the face of God averted and all the comfort of fellowship withdrawn, but "I will trust in thee."

The Psalmist Was Afraid

Observe next, he was a man afraid. "The terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me" (Psa_55:4-5). Now if the writer of this psalm was David, he was one of the bravest souls who ever lived. As a shepherd lad, as an outlaw, as a king, he had given most conspicuous proofs of gallantry. Yet that gallant and courageous heart cries out: "The terrors of death are fallen upon me; fearfulness and trembling are come upon me."

Such hours come to the businessman when he has grappled with some big concern; to the lawyer on the eve of a very important case; to the mother, brooding in the quiet night on the responsibilities of her home and children; or to the pastor, praying for his flock. Suddenly our courage fails for reasons that are often quite inexplicable. Things are not different, duties are not different, but in a strange and mysterious fashion we are different. And men who faced the lion and the bear and were quick to answer the challenge of Goliath experience the fearfulness of David. All of us have fainting fits, even the strongest and the bravest; hours when the strong men bow themselves and when the keepers of the house do tremble. David had them in their full intensity, and the good thing is that when they fell on him, he lifted up his heart and cried, "But I will trust in thee."

The Psalmist Was Imprisoned

Observe next, he was a man imprisoned. "O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest" (Psa_55:6). Now this does not mean that he was in a dungeon. It is evident from the psalm that he was not. It means that he was weary of his lot; he was dead-sick of it; he loathed it. The meanness of things to that great heart had grown intolerable. He would have given worlds to fly away, but that was the one thing he could not do. In the providential ordering of heaven he was bound, as it were, by fetters to his place. And I believe there are few people anywhere, whatever their lot or calling, who have not known the longing to escape. To escape from the bondage of ourselves—what a craving we often feel for that! To get away—just to get right away—from the routine which meets us every morning, how overpowering at times is that desire! It was then that David rose to a better way. The wings of a dove would never give him rest. The thing he needed was to find his rest under the overshadowing wing of God—right there, just where he was, amid the burdens and the cares of kingship, "I will trust in thee."

The Psalmist Was Deceived

Observe lastly, he was a man deceived. Somebody he trusted had proven false, and it had almost broken David's heart (Psa_55:12-14). A man his equal, his guide and his acquaintance to whom he used to turn for loving counsel; a man with whom, on quiet Sabbath mornings, he used to walk unto the house of God; a man whose friendship he had never doubted and on whose loyalty he would have staked his life had played the part of Iscariot to the psalmist. What a devastating revelation! What a tragic and desolating hour! How many people have lost their faith in God when they have lost it in a man or woman? Yet David, amid the ruins of that friendship, deserted by one he clung to as a brother, says, "But I will trust in thee."

January 21

Daily Defilements - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Mine enemies would daily swallow me up." Psa_56:2

There are some enemies which only come to us at interludes. But you will note that it was different with the psalmist. It was not rarely and briefly that his enemies fell upon him to destroy him. What inspired his bitter cry was that every day he lived he was in peril: "Mine enemies would daily swallow me up." He never woke with a heart that was at peace saying, "Thank God all is well today." At any moment he might hear the ringing of the battle cry. And it was that which almost broke his heart and drove him in a wild despair to God and robbed him of all power to be happy.

Now who the psalmist's chief enemy was we don't know, but if we don't know his, at least we know our own. The deadliest enemy we have to fight is sin. That is the power bent on our destruction which we must conquer somehow or be crushed. There are certain sins, like certain enemies, that give us times of rest between their onsets. There are certain temptations which, being foiled today, may not return until a year has passed. But there are others, like the psalmist's foes, whose peculiar characteristic is just this, that every morning when we wake up, we dread them, and every day we live we have to battle with them.

I suppose there is no one reading this who cannot remember a day when he fell terribly. Have we not all had hours when we defied the right and broke down every barrier of conscience? My brother and sister, in whose heart such hours are living in all their bitterness, remember that there are other sins than these. When a soldier is out on a campaign, there may come a day when he is wounded. The bullet has found him and his rifle drops and he cries for water as they lift him, but remember that every day that he marches, and many a day there is no thought of wounds, there is the gathering of dust upon his arms. Let that dust gather, and in a little while you would scarcely recognize him as a soldier. Let that dust gather, and in a week or two his very rifle will be a useless instrument.

And so with us too as we take up the spiritual warfare; there may come a day when we are badly wounded, but always and every day there is the defilement of the march. There is the dust and soil of the everyday road. There are temptations that reach us not like a storm, but like the gentle falling of the rain.

Although seemingly minor and insignificant, these sins of everyday rob us of our present joy and peace. It is these which write lines upon the brow and bring the look of uneasiness into the eye. You may destroy the lute by breaking it in two, and there are homes and hearts ruined like that. But a little crack within the lute makes all the music mute, and so is it with our little sins.

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Daily Defilements - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Blocked Channels

Some fifty or more years ago there came into our country a new weed. It was a pond weed living in the water, and so it found its way to our canals, and it was a little and inconspicuous thing to which nobody except the botanists gave heed. Would you believe it, that in thirty years our canals were being choked by it? It blocked the channel, delayed the passing ships, threatened the very existence of the waterway. And it was far more difficult than ice to deal with for ice can be broken with sufficient pressure, but all the pressure in the world was powerless against this living and compliant tangle.

Brothers and sisters, you may be sure of this, that true peace demands an open channel, an unobstructed way to God if one is to walk with music in his heart. And I say that no tragic fall so blocks the channel between earth and heaven as do these daily little and unnoticed sins that grow and gather in the passing days.

It does not take a wound in the eye to make the eye a source of misery. Lodge only a grain of sand within its orb, and all the pleasure of vision vanishes. And so for multitudes who are not reprobate, who have been saved by Christ, there is no joy, no peace, no song, because of the intrusion of the little sins.

I know a meadow not five miles away where thirty years ago the trees were beautiful, and men would travel to see them in the summer for there were few elms like them by the Clyde. And now half of these elms are dead, and for the others summer is a mockery. And it wasn't a storm that did it: it was the daily pollution of our Babylon. They are still rooted in the finest soil, and you too may be rooted in Christ Jesus. No one would question that your deepest life is hid with Christ in God. But even so rooted, you may miss the joy of your salvation, and miss it because every day you live you are subtly and insensibly defiled.

Little Sins Foster Despair

Such daily defilements have a peculiar power of fostering despair. They are like sickness in that point of view, and you know that sickness is a type of sin. Let a man be stricken with some sudden illness, and my experience is that he does not despair. Doctors will confirm this. It is not then that he loses hope or meditates on death. He summons all the strength that God has given him that he may battle the disease. Or if he is too weak for that, for disease in a day may make us weak as water, then he lies there, not in dull despair, but in a strange and acquiescent peace.

I shall tell you when it is that even the bravest is brought near the margin of despair. It is when every day and all day there is the gnawing away of some hidden malady. It is when a man goes to work and mingles with his fellows in the street, and all the time, like a dull undertone, is conscious that there is something wrong. It is that which leads so often to despair. It is that which makes the thought of death familiar. It is that which is the secret, never guessed at, of many a startling and unexpected suicide. And I feel that in the realm of sin which is so strangely linked with that of sickness, there is something analogous to that. Did you ever know of anyone despairing after a terrible and tragic fall? I never read of any in the Scripture. I never saw any in my ministry. But ah, how many I have seen who come to despair of ever attaining the highest—they were so crushed, so humbled and disheartened by the defilement of their daily sins. It is our little sins and not our great sins which have such a terrible power to make us hopeless. For our great sins cast us upon Jesus, and there is always hope when we are there. But our little sins leave us with ourselves and seem to mock us when we seek the highest, and tempt us to think that what we hoped for once must always be impossible for us.

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Daily Defilements - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

How to Deal With Daily Defilement

One thing at least is clear, and that is that we must never contemplate escape by flight. If God has given us our work to do, then we must continue with it in spite of all the soiling. There can be no escape from daily sin by flying from the path of daily duty. It is such dreams that builds monasteries, and many a monastery becomes like Sodom. You remember how Peter, on the mount of glory, wanted to build tabernacles there. He wanted to live forever in that solitude where all the voices of the world were hushed. And then the Savior led him down again, right into the jostling of the crowd, and Peter learned that life was not given for a hermitage.

What would you think of a man who left his home here and the business he made his living by all because amid our grimy streets his face and hands grew dirty every day? Yet he who seeks to fly from his daily task because of the temptations which it carries and the defilement it inevitably brings is just as cowardly and absurd. Either you must conquer where you are, or you will not conquer anywhere. Flee from the devil, and he will resist you. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Do you recall that hour when Christ washed His disciples' feet? Do you recall the word He said to Peter, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit"? My brother and sister, in that great word of Christ's there lies the Master's answer to our question. There is His treatment of the daily stain. He that is washed—and Peter had been washed. He had been bathed in the spirit of his Lord. Once and for all, coming to Jesus Christ, his guilt had been washed away forever. And now says Jesus, "Let me wash thy feet; let me cleanse off the soil of the daily walk"; and what He said to Simon Peter then, He says to you and me. I do believe that when a man is saved, he is saved not for a time but for eternity. I do believe that when we look to Christ, in that very moment all our sin is pardoned. But every day we need another cleansing for we have been traveling by dusty roads, and Christ is always stooping and ready to bestow His forgiveness. Do not rest at night till thou hast had it, brother. Summon the hours of the day before thee. Put forth thy feet and let Him wash them, for they are very dusty with the journey. So when thou wakest, thou shalt again be clean and ready for everything the day may bring, glad with the confidence of him who sang, "When I awake I am still with Thee."

January 22

Fear and Faith

"What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee." Psa_56:3

Let us consider for a little while some of the springs of human fear, and then notice how many of our fears spring from the imagination. It has been said (and I think truly said) that life is ruled by the imagination. The things we picture and weave in glowing colors have a very powerful influence over conduct. Often that influence is stimulative, illumining the pathway to discovery; often it creates or liberates fear. People who are highly sensitive are far more apt to be fearful than their neighbors. There are a hundred fears that never touch the man of stolid, unimaginative nature. That is why for a certain type of person to be brave may be comparatively easy, and for another infinitely hard.

Now, the worst thing about this kind of fear is that reason is powerless to allay it. You might as soon allay a fire with good advice. Argument is cold. It cannot banish the specters of the soul. It has no brush that can obliterate the pictures of the imagination. But there is another way, more powerful than reason, to overcome imaginative fears, and that is the way of this inspired psalmist. Faith is the antidote to fear. It quiets fear as the mother quiets her child. The child still dreams, but the dreams are not reality. It is the mother's arms that are reality. So we, His children, dreaming in the darkness and sometimes very frightened by our dreams, find "underneath the everlasting arms."

Weakness of Body

Another very common source of fear is weakness or frailty of body. Everyone is familiar with that. When we are strong and well it is not difficult to keep our fears at bay. Fears, like microbes, do not love the sunshine. They need the darkness for their propagation. That is why, when the lights of life are dim, we readily become the prey of fearfulness. We can bear burdens without a thought when we are strong and vigorous and well; we can meet tasks with quiet hearts; we can bravely face difficulties—but these seem insurmountable when we are worn and often plunge us into the lowest pit. We must never forget how the state of the mind is affected by the condition of the body. Health is not alone the source of happiness. It is one of the perennial springs of hope. Many of our vague uncharted fears which haunt us and rob us of the sunshine are rooted in the frailty of our bodies.

Now I have no doubt that many of my readers are far from being physically perfect. The fact is, there are very few of us who could be described as physically perfect. And to all such, whatever their condition, I want to give these wonderful words of Scripture: "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee." He knows our frame. He remembers we are dust. He made us and He Understands us. He alone can perfectly appreciate the interactions of body and of mind. And when we trust Him in a childlike faith, nothing is more evident in life than the way in which He disappoints our fears. He grace is sufficient for us. Often when we are weak, then are we strong. Drawing from Him we find we have our fullness, given us daily as the manna was, until at last the "body of our humiliation" shall be fashioned like His glorious body, and then such fears will be laid to rest forever.

Faculty of Conscience

I close by naming one other source of fear, and that is the faculty of conscience. A guilty conscience is a fearing conscience——conscience makes cowards of us all. If we could get rid of conscience, what fears would go whistling down the wind! But God has so created us, that that is the one thing we cannot do. We may drug and dope it, we may silence it, we may sear it as with an iron, but, like the maiden, it is not dead but sleeping. It awakens in unexpected seasons, sometimes in the stillness of the night, or when our loved ones are removed in death, or when we see our sins bearing fruit in others; perhaps most often in our dying hours when the flaming colors of time no longer blind us and we draw near to the revelation of eternity. All the fears of our imagination, all the fears that spring from weakly bodies, all these, however haunting, are nothing to the fears of conscience. And the tremendous fact, never to be disputed by any theory of its evolution, is that God has put conscience in the breast.

But He who has put conscience in the breast has done something more wonderful than that. To minister relief to fearing conscience, He has put His Only-begotten on the tree. There, explain it as you will, is freedom from the hideous fears of conscience. There, explain it as you will, is release from the terrors of our guilt. One trustful look at the Lord Jesus Christ dying upon the cross of Calvary, and the fearfulness of conscience is no more. There is now therefore no more condemnation. Pardoned, we have joy and peace. God is for us on the cross, and if God be for us, who can be against us? Blessed Savior, who didst die for us and whose blood cleanseth from all sin, What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

January 23

The Rock That Is Higher Than I
"Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Psa_61:2

Whatever suggested the image of our text, the inward meaning of it is explicit. It is the long cry of the human heart for the forgiveness and comforting of God. There are times when the deepest craving of the soul is for something higher than itself. The self-reliance of our sunny hours is lost in a deep feeling of dependence. And that deep feeling of dependence, expressed in many relationships of life, is never satisfied nor perfected until it finds its rest in God. Now when the heart is overwhelmed (as was the psalmist's) there always falls a dimness on the eye. The rock of safety may be very near, but the mist hangs heavy, and we cannot see it. It is then the soul betakes itself to prayer and like the shipwrecked sailor or the desert wanderer supplicates heavenly guidance to the refuge. There is a rock higher than our highest, but we all need to be led to it. No one can by searching find out God. And how we are led there by a most loving guidance, whether it be of providence or grace, is the question which arises from our text.

The Experience of Failure

We see, for instance, how often men are led to the Rock by the bitter experience of failure. Man's extremity of need is heaven's opportunity of leadership. A pastor friend of mine was once traveling in a train. He was joined by a well-known merchant whose affairs were on the point of bankruptcy. And quite naturally, after a little talk, the merchant asked my friend if he would pray for him, and there in the carriage they knelt down and prayed. He was a strong, self-reliant man, that merchant. He was not given to asking help of anybody. But now the deepest craving of his heart was for something higher than himself on which to rest.

And much of what is difficult in life, and overwhelming to the point of heart-break, is but the kindly stratagem of heaven to lead us to the higher Rock. Those hours of heart-sinking familiar to us all, the feeling that we have spent our strength for nothing, the deep conviction which visits us in secret that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags—such things, for ten thousand souls, have been the hidden leadership of heaven to the Rock that is higher than themselves. Deep is calling unto deep, the deep of misery to that of mercy. Out of the depths man is always crying. And though he often knows not what he cries for, God knows and answers through the dark by leading the overwhelmed soul to Himself.

Devotion to the Best

Again, we note how often men are led thither by lowly devotion to the best. Loyal to the highest that they know, they are confronted by the higher Rock. If this universe is not a righteous universe and if love lies not at the heart of things, what use is there in striving to be righteous or in making love the passion of our lives? But the strange thing is that whenever a man is loyal to the best and worthiest he knows, he is never left with questions like that. He is led upward from his cherished loyalties to something loftier than his loyalties. It is a Rock, solid and impregnable; the Rock on which the universe is built. He passes upward from his values to the reality of what he values; he discovers he has aligned himself with God.

When men live for love and truth and mercy, God is always walking in their garden. They come to feel with deepening conviction that the things they strive for are not passing dreams, but answer to the realities of heaven. Do your duty, though it be very irksome, and do it because it is your duty; be tender-hearted, forgiving one another, no matter how you are tempted to be hard; and above you, over-arching you, the reality of what you strive for, you will discover God who is our Rock. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me." To be true to the highest that we know is to be led to the Rock that is still higher. "Madam," said Dr. Hood Wilson once to a lady lamenting she had lost the Lord, "go down and work in the slums and you will find Him."

The Guiding Hand of Christ

But, above all, we are led to the Rock that is higher by the guiding hand of Christ—"no man cometh to the Father but by me." When we crave for the certainty that God is love, we may turn in vain to nature or to history. Nature and history have many voices, but they never cry, "I am the way." Only Christ proclaims Himself the way to One higher than our highest thought, because deeper than our deepest need. Thus, although the psalmist did not know it, he saw the day of Christ and he was glad. It was for Christ that he was yearning in that passionate outcry of his spirit. It is He who takes us by the hand and leads us where philosophy can never lead us, to Love, to a Father on the throne, to "the rock that is higher than I."

January 24

Leaving It There
"Leave it all quietly to God, my soul." Psa_62:1 (Moffatt)

There are times in life when it is a great help to have someone say to us, "Leave all that to me." Like a gentle wind it blows the clouds away. When one has a difficult schedule or has arrangements to make for a marriage or a funeral, to have someone who is competent and expert take over is often an untold relief. There is much in life that we must do ourselves, and no one can relieve us of certain duties. There are crosses each of us must carry and burdens nobody can take away. But how much more difficult life would be in times of anxiety or strain were there not someone standing by to say to us, "Leave all that to me." That is particularly the voice of fatherhood, which in reality is the secret of childhood's carefree spirit. A child does not worry about clothes or meals. Instinctively it leaves that to its father. And much of the joy of childhood springs from the trustful relationship to somebody who says, "Leave all that to me."

It is beautiful to notice how the psalmist had grasped that comforting energy of God. Baffled, betrayed, a prey to bitter anguish—"Leave it all quietly to God, my soul." And so for him, too, came interior peace, and the light of heaven began to shine again and the storm was changed to calm.

Now this command which the psalmist gave his soul is one of the secrets of the spiritual life. No passing of ages has made it less imperative. Think, for instance, of those ways of providence which it is impossible to understand, for in every life, however blessed and happy, there are things impossible to understand. And often these are strange and bitter and so difficult to reconcile with love that the bravest soul is near to unbelief. When prayers seem to go unanswered, when someone dear and young is taken away, when those who would not harm a living creature are bowed under intolerable pain, how hard it is to say that God is good, and saying it, believe it with a confidence which is pleasing in His eyes. We want to know. We want to understand. Sometimes, like Job, we expostulate with God. And so, expostulating, everything grows harder till we are brought to the margins of despair. How much wiser the attitude of David, plunged into the very sea of trouble—"Leave it all quietly to God, my soul."

We are not here just to understand. Now we know in part and see in part. We are here to glorify God by trusting Him even when we do not understand. And such trusting carries its own evidences in the rich inward peace it brings as if our life were in tune with the Eternal. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me." His meat was neither to probe nor to expostulate. When the cup was bitter, when the cross was heaviest, when the lights were darkened in the Garden of Gethsemane—He left it all quietly to God.

Questions Too Deep for Us

Think of those intellectual problems which visit and perplex the human mind. There are times in life when these are very perplexing. Who that has ever thought at all has not had anxious thoughts about the doctrine of election? What, too, of the foreordering of God and of His sovereignty, universal and particular, if I am really a creature of free will? Such things, and a thousand things like these, puzzle and confound the human mind. And we are so made that we cannot avoid thinking of them with the mysterious facilities which God has given us. Yet I venture to say that something must be wrong if such great thoughts that have baffled all the centuries rob the believer of his joy and peace.

There are times when it is well to consider such things. A great problem may be an inspiration. The opposite of faith is never reason; the opposite of faith is sight. But there are other times when the highest part of wisdom is not to torment ourselves with things too high for us, but to give our souls the counsel of the psalmist—"Leave it all quietly to God, my soul." Someday we shall arrive and understand. We shall see His face and His name shall be on our foreheads—it shall be written out in the region of the brain. Meantime we have a life to live, a heart to cultivate, a service to perform. "What is that to thee—follow thou me."

Failure and Discouragement

Again, we are to remember the psalmist's counsel in the hours when we have done our best—and failed. The higher the service that we seek to render, the more are we haunted by the sense of failure. The man who has no goal doesn't fear failure. But in higher ministries, when soul is touching soul and we are working not in things, but lives, how haunting is the sense of failure. Every Sunday School teacher knows it well, every mother with her growing family, and every preacher of the Gospel. So little accomplished, so little difference made, so little fruit for the laborious toil, although the seed sown may have been steeped in prayer. Well then, are we to give up in discouragement? Are we to leave the battle line and be spectators because we hear no cheering sound of triumph? My dear reader, there is a better way, and it is just the old way of this gallant psalmist—"Leave it all quietly to God, my soul."

Often when we fail, we are succeeding. We are doing more than we have dreamed. We are helping with our rough, coarse hands because Another with a pierced hand is there. Do your best, and do it for His sake. Keep on doing it and don't resign. And as to fruitage and harvest and success—leave it all quietly to Him.
"When obstacles and trials seem

Like prison walls to be,
I do the little I can do,
And leave the rest to Thee."

January 25

Harvest Thanksgiving
"The valleys…are covered over with corn." Psa_65:13

One of the uses of the harvest festival is to awaken us to things we take for granted. We are always in danger of taking things for granted, especially in organized communities. The desert traveler can never take his water for granted, he has to shape his route to reach the wells. But in the city, where we have water supplied to every house, such a thing causes us no concern at all. That is especially true of daily bread. We just take it for granted. It has been bought at the baker's or the grocer's, and beyond that our vision seldom goes. And then comes the harvest festival, and beyond our city shops we see the golden mystery of harvest. We are awakened; we are shaken out of our ruts—and do you know what someone has said about these ruts? He has said that the rut only differs from the grave in that the latter is a little deeper. We are touched with the wonder of the commonplace—we feel the glory that invests the ordinary.

It is this, too, that makes it preeminently a Christian festival, for one of the beautiful things about our Lord was that He never took usual things for granted. The Pharisees were always doing that. They took the lilies of the field for granted. They took it for granted that if a woman was caught in sin, the God-appointed conduct was to stone her. And then came our Lord, with that dear heart of His, and He did not see just the glory of the rare thing; He saw the glory of the familiar thing—the sparrow and the mustard seed, and the woman who was a sinner on the streets.

It is very comforting to bear in mind that He never takes you for granted either. Other people are doing that continually: they have you classified and docketed in pigeon-holes. But to Him you are always wonderful though you are only a typist in an office and nobody would ever call you clever. Filled with the wonder and potential of the commonplace, that was the vision of the Savior, and it is to that that we are summoned by the recurrence of the harvest thanksgiving.

Mutual Dependence

Another benefit of harvest festival is to impress on us our mutual dependence. It is a call to halt a moment and reflect how we are all bound together with one another. The priceless secret of cooperation is God's secret of survival. The individual needs everybody, and everybody needs the individual.

Now at every harvest festival, how vividly is that thought brought before us! It preaches, with a kind of silent eloquence, the interdependence of man. Those sheaves of corn that stand within the sanctuary—who ploughed the fields for them? Who in the bleak morning sowed the seed, that sower and reaper might rejoice together? There are unknown ploughmen and harvesters and millers and bakers whose names are never heard behind that loaf of bread on the table. Was that why the Master chose the bread to be the Symbol of His dying love? He might have chosen one of the flowers which charmed Him and which He has bidden us to consider. But, choosing bread, He chose the staff of life, and that life wasn't one of isolation, but of a rich cooperating brotherhood. We are always in danger of forgetting that when we look at the bread on our table. And then the church comes with her harvest festival and says, "This do in remembrance," and we feel the interdependence of humanity and the fact that in back of everything the shops supply us with, stands the Creator, and on Him we utterly depend.

January 27

Summer and Winter - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Thou hast made summer and winter." Psa_74:17

I suppose there are few who seriously doubt that the maker of summertime is God. There is something in every summer's glory that tells us of the touch of the divine, for here indeed we see the handiwork of God. But notice that in our text it says a great deal more than just that God hast made the summer. It says "Thou hast made the summer and the winter."

It was an old belief which is still held by multitudes that rival deities had been at work on nature. It was not the handiwork of one god; it was the handiwork of two gods. And all the sharp antagonisms of the universe and all the contrasts amid which we live were tokens of their mutual enmity. Had one made the glory of the day and the other the darkness of the night? Had one cheered us with the genial heart and the other cursed us with the bitter cold? It was one power that made the radiant morn, and another that made the deepening shadow. There were millions of people who believed that once, and there are millions who still believe it.

How different, how superbly different, is the spiritual vision of this singer of the Psalms! It was the God of Abraham who made the summer, and it was his God who made the winter, too. The very hand that decked the summer meadow and cast the mantle of green upon the forest touched that summer glory and it died. Thou hast made the summer and the winter. Thou hast clothed and thou hast stripped again. Thou hast lengthened out the shining hours, and thou hast crushed them into a little space. Thou hast created the gentle breath of evening that falls on man with benediction, and thou the bitter and the piercing blast.

The Summer and Winter of the Heart

Now I want you to carry that great truth into regions which the eye has never seen. I want you to believe that one God has made the summer and winter of the heart. There are experiences which come to every man which are tingling with the touch of heaven. They are so radiant and so delightful that we never doubt the hand which gave them to us. It is good to be grateful for such recurring gladness, but more is needed for a life of victory. He who would conquer must have faith to say, "Thou hast made the summer and the winter." God is not only gracious when the sun shines, He is just as gracious when the wind is sharp. He gives the glory and He strips the glory, and on His vesture is the name of Love. He who can trace His hand when it is winter—who can still say He loves me and He knows—has won the secret of that abiding peace which the world cannot give and cannot take away.

What a summertime the patriarch Job enjoyed! How the sun shone on him for many days! There was no one like him in the land of Uz for health and wealth and happiness and peace. And then there fell on him the blast of winter, and he was desolate and deathly cold, and "The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away," said Job, "blessed be the name of the Lord."

Do you remember what his wife advised him? His wife advised him to curse God and die. Do you remember what his friends advised him? It was to confess that he had played the hypocrite. But Job was far too big a man for that. "Though he slay me yet will I trust him," he said. The faith in which he conquered was just this, "Thou hast made the summer and the winter."

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Summer and Winter - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Winter Is the Loom on Which Summer Is Made

And now another question arises: How does God make the summer? What is the unseen loom on which He weaves that garment of beauty which we see Him by? Don't consider me as being mystical when I reply that winter is the loom. It is a truth which science will corroborate that out of the winter He hath made the summer. When a child rises in the morning, what an exuberance of life there is! The eyes are bright and the feet swift to run and play; and all that life, so wonderful and glad, has been created in the womb of sleep.

We say that in winter everything is dead. That is what they said of Jairus' daughter. And then came Christ and looked at her and said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth." So we learn that in the dead of winter—and we never talk about the dead of summer—what we call death is but the child's sleep. Life has not vanished even though the eyes are closed. And then comes morning with all its joy and renewed life, all because of the quiet sleep of wintertime. There is no thrilling beauty of springtime without the chill of December. God needs the one if He would make the other. He fashions glory out of decay.

Consider that truth then and carry it to a higher sphere. It is as true of us as of the earth that winter holds the secret of the summer. Out of December, God will fashion June. Out of the cross, He fashions the crown. Out of the trial that was so hard to bear, He brings the beauty of the saintly character. "God be merciful to me a sinner"—that is the winter of our discontent, and yet when a man has cried that prayer of despair, he is preparing for his summer and his song.

There came to Glasgow, not so long ago, a pianist with an excellent reputation. I read the Herald's criticism of him, and there was one thing in it that I especially noted. The Herald said that he had been always brilliant—always been wonderful as an executant—but now there was a depth of feeling in him that had never been present in his work before. A day or two afterwards while preaching in a suburb, I met a relative of the pianist. As we began to discuss him and the Herald's criticism of him, the relative said to me, "Did you notice that? And do you know what was the secret of the change? It was the death of his mother eighteen months ago." He was an only son, unmarried, and had been simply devoted to his mother. And then she died and he was left alone, and all the depths were broken up in him. And now he played as only he can play who knows what life and death are and what sorrow is—and out of the winter God had made his summer.

Perpetual sunshine may make men brilliant, perhaps, but never deep. They don't understand. They never know. They condescend, for they cannot sympathize, for much that is beautiful in men and women springs from the season when the tree is stripped. All that is fairest in the world rises from the darkness of the cross. My brother, that is also how He leads us, for to our hearts the world is but the shadow. He will never leave us nor forsake us.

Why Did God Make the Summer and Winter?

There is only one answer that can be given to that question in the light of all that we have learned. Not just for their own sakes has He made them—not for their sublimity or beauty merely. Through night and day, through sunshine and through storm, God has His purpose which is never baffled. And that one purpose—how shall we describe it? Put in simple language it is this: It is the purpose of every living thing that after summer there should be the harvest. Of course, God has made purposes in every thing and every season. Undoubtedly when He made the summer beautiful, He meant it to give pleasure to His children. But there is one thing deeper than all others, and that is the mellowing of the harvest field. Nothing is beautiful in nature for its own sake. Beauty is a trust for other's sakes. Summer and winter look beyond themselves to the time when the flower shall wither and the fruit shall come. He that liveth to himself is dead. There is he that scattereth and yet increaseth. Our gifts——our summer sun and winter storm—these have an end to serve in other lives. We are not here simply to be happy. We are here to serve and be a blessing. And "Thou hast made our summer and our winter" that we may have the joy of harvest time.

January 28

The Higher Purposes of Winter - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Thou hast made.., winter." Psa_74:17

It is always easy to believe that God has made the summertime. There is something in a perfect summer day that speaks to us of the divine. The beauty which is around us everywhere, the singing of the birds in every tree, the warmth of the pleasant summer sun, the amazing prodigality of life, these, as by filaments invisible, draw our hearts to the Giver of them all and make it easy to say, "Thou hast made the summer."

With winter it is different. It is not so easy to see the love of God there. There is a great deal of suffering in winter both for the animal creation and for man. It may therefore aid the faith of some who may be tempted to doubt the love of God in winter if I suggest some of its spiritual accomplishments.

Winter Deepens Our Appreciation of Summer

One of the higher offices of winter is to deepen our appreciation of the summer. We should be blind if summer were perpetual. Someone has said, and very truly said, that our dear ones are only ours when we have lost them. They have to pass away into the silent land before we know them for what they really are. And in like manner summer has to pass, leaving us in the grip of icy winter, before we fully appreciate the summer. It is not the man who lives in lovely Scotland who feels most deeply how lovely Scotland is. It is the exile on some distant shore, yearning for the mountains and the glens. It is not the man with abundant, unbroken health who feels most deeply the value of his health. That is realized when health is shattered.

In Caithness, where I lived four years, there is a great scarcity of trees. I never knew how much I loved the trees till I dwelt in a land where there are none. And we never know all that summer means to us, in its pageantry of life and beauty, till we lose it in the barrenness of winter. Lands that have no winter have no spring. They never know the thrilling of the spring when the primroses awake and the wild hyacinths, and the iris waves in the breeze. Thoughts like these, in January days, make it easier for faith to say, "Thou hast made the winter."

Winter Puts Demands Upon the Will

Another of the higher purposes of winter is the greater demands it makes upon the will. I should like to take a simple illustration. In summer it is comparatively easy to get out of bed at the appointed hour. For the earth is warm, and the birds are busy singing, and the light is streaming through the open windows. But in winter, to fling the covers off and get up when it is dark and perishingly cold, that is quite a different affair. That calls for a certain resolution. It makes instant demands upon the will.

Now broaden that thought to the compass of the day, and you reach a truth that cannot be denied. The countries where the will is most developed and where moral life is most vigorous and strong are the countries that have winter in their year. There "ain't no Ten Commandments east of Suez," says Kipling in a familiar line. The singular thing is that east of Suez there isn't any winter in the year. Rigorous winter days when life is difficult and when it takes some doing even to get up are God's tonic for His children's will. "O well for him whose will is strong. He suffers, but he does not suffer long." Let any young fellow have his will under control and he is on the highway to his victory. Summer is languid; winter makes us resolute. We have to do things when we don't feel like them. And Thou—the Giver of the Ten Commandments—Thou hast made the winter.

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The Higher Purposes of Winter - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Winter Intensifies the Thought of Home

Another accomplishment of winter is to intensify the thought of home. In lands that bask in a perpetual sunshine, home-life is always at a minimum. I had a friend who for three years was prisoner in an internment camp in Germany. I asked him once when he felt most homesick, and I am not likely to forget his answer. He said that the only times when he felt homesick were when fog settled down upon the camp reminding him of winter fogs in Glasgow. In summer he was happy. It was good to be alive in summer. But when the fog came, he thought of lighted streets and saw his cozy and comfortable home. And always the thought of home is sweetest, and the home-life richest and most beautiful, in the dark, cold season of the winter. We talk in the same breath of hearth and home, and it is in winter that the hearth is glowing.

There is one poem about a humble home more beautiful than any other in our literature. It is a picture by the hand of genius of the joy and reverence of the hearth. But the "Cottar's Saturday Night" could never have been written in the tropics. It is the child of a land with winter in its year.

Now think of everything we owe to home. Think of what the nation owes to home. "From scenes like these auld Scotia's grandeur springs." Home is the basis of national morality. Is it not easier when one thinks of these things to say in the bitterest January day, "Thou hast made the winter"?

Winter Stirs Us to Charity

The last purpose of winter I shall mention is how it stirs our sluggish hearts to charity. With that we are all perfectly familiar. Did you ever watch a singer in the street in the warm and balmy days of summer? The passersby pay him little heed and rarely give him a coin even though he is singing all the charms of Annie Laurie. But in winter, when the air is biting, and when the snow is deep upon the ground, Annie Laurie brings him in a harvest. Folk are extraordinarily good to me in giving me donations for the poor. For one donation that I get in summertime, however, I get ten in the bitterness of winter. Winter unlocks the gates of charity. It unseals the hidden springs of pity. It moves us with compassion for the destitute, and so to be moved is a very Christlike thing. Such thoughts as these in stern and icy days, when we are tempted perhaps to doubt the love of God, make it easier to say with David, "Thou hast made the winter."

January 29

The Highway in the Sea - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Thy way is in the sea." Psa_77:19

Doubtless when the psalmist penned our text, his first thought was the crossing of the Red Sea. He was seeking to revive his drooping heart by recalling the saving power of God in Israel's past. But the words of a true poet never end when we have found their literal significance. It is one mark of poetic inspiration that it is capable of indefinite expansion. It is not by narrowing down, it is by widening out, that we get to the real genius of a poet, and the writer of this psalm had the true gift. Thy way is in the sea—were there not glimpses in that of truths which the Exodus never could exhaust? So did the writer feel—so must we all feel—and it is on two of these suggestions that I wish to dwell.

The Sea As an Object of Dread

There were two places above all others dreaded by the Jew. The one was the desert and the other was the sea. The desert—for it was the home of the wild beasts and the haunt of the robbers who plundered the Jewish villages, and it was across the desert that those armies came which besieged Jerusalem and pillaged it. And the sea—because it was full of storms and treachery in Jewish eyes; it was the hungry, cruel, insatiable deep. It is very difficult for us who are an island nation to enter into that feeling of the Jew. The ocean is our defense and our great ally, and we have loved the sound of its waves since we were children. But to the Hebrew it was very different. For him there was no rapture in the lonely shore. He loved his fields and his vineyards and his markets, but the element he dreaded was the sea.

But now comes the voice of the great Jewish singer and says to the people, God's way is in the sea. In the very sphere and element they dread there is the path and purpose of divinity. They loved their gardens and the Lord was there. They loved their vineyards and the Lord was there. In places that were sweet and dear to them, there was the presence of the God of Israel. But nonetheless in the realm of what was terrible and in the regions which they shunned instinctively, there was the ordered path of the Almighty.

I think we should all do well to learn that lesson—God's way is in the very thing we dread. We are so apt to cry that God has forgotten us when the experience which we loathe arrives. We all love health, but we all dread disease. We love success, but we dread disappointment. We love the energy and glow of life, but we dread the silence of death and the cold grave—but the way of the Lord of heaven is in the sea. Believe that He is working out His purposes through what is dark as well as through what is bright. Believe that what is hardest to bear or understand is never disordered nor purposeless nor pathless. What is the object of thy greatest dread, O Hebrew? Is it the sea? "God's way is
in the sea."

The Restless Sea

And second, the sea is the element of restlessness. That is a familiar thought in the Old Testament, receiving its noblest and most poetic expression in Psa_107:1-43. It is not easy for us to realize how vividly this thought impressed the ancient world, for the most ignorant among us has been taught by science that nothing in the whole universe is at rest. The earth is flying with tremendous speed around the sun; and the solar system itself is hurrying somewhere; we hardly need to turn to the waves of the sea to get our parable of restless energy. It was very different with the Jew. For him, the earth was fixed under a fixed heaven. It was set fast by the ordering of God. And over against it, in the sharpest of all contrasts, rocked and surged the restless sea. The sea was the element of change, the home of restlessness. One day it was as calm as if it were asleep; the next it was tossed and rent in a storm. It was all that of which a Jew would think when the word came to him that God's way was in the sea.

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The Highway in the Sea - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Now, there is an unrest in our life that is the consequence and issue of our sin. It is as true today as when the prophet wrote it, that "there is no rest for the wicked, saith my God." Let a man deliberately choose the lower levels and yield up the reins to his baser nature, and his whole existence becomes one of great discontent there is nothing of God's way in that.

But there is a restlessness that is inspired; there is a discontent that is divine; there is a spirit within us that will not let us rest, and it is the very spirit of the wind-swept sea; and if there is one thing written clear in human history, it is that the way of God is there.

In one of Shakespeare's sonnets there is a memorable line, "With what I must enjoy, contented least." There can be little doubt, from the connection, that Shakespeare is referring to his plays. "With what I most enjoy, contented least"—then Shakespeare was not satisfied with Hamlet. There is a grand unrest there like the unrest of the ocean, and through the heart of it there runs the track of God. We are not here to be satisfied and indifferent. We shall be satisfied when we awake. We are here to strive and yearn and toil and pray for things that are too large for our three-score years. And in that distressing and yet divine unrest, there is the way and ordering of God. God's way is never in the stagnant pool; His way is ever in the restless sea. It is He who says to us, "This is not your rest." It is He who fills us with eternal hope. It is He who makes us rise after each failure to strive again for what we cannot reach. So we toil on and all we do is fragmentary, but we shall be satisfied in the eternal morning. He keeps us "climbing up the climbing wave" here, but in heaven there shall be no more sea.

January 30

The Secrecy of God - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known." Psa_77:19

Men tell us that there are few more impressive sights than that of a burial at sea. It is even more solemn and arresting than the last rites beside an earthly grave. There is the ceasing of the throbbing engines, the gathering of the hushed crowd upon the deck. There is the simple service, the lifting of the body, and then—the plunge into the deep. And it is this element of silent secrecy, this hiding in unfathomable depths, which thrills and solemnizes and subdues.

Something like that was in the poet's mind when he said of God, "Thy way is in the sea." Mingling with all his other thoughts was the thought that God has His unfathomable secrets. And it is upon that element of secrecy, so characteristic of the divine procedure, that I want to dwell.

The Divine Secrecy of God's Gifts

The best gifts are always at our hand. The brightest are never far away. All things needed for the song and crown are in the region where our hearts are beating. And yet though they are here, they are not flaunting themselves. They are by our side, but they are never showy. There is no name inscribed upon their foreheads nor any blast of the trumpet on their lips.

Think, for example, of the gift of love. In the darkest spot on earth some love is found. I doubt if there is a man so brutal and so base that no one loves him and thrills at his approach. And yet how silent and how secret love is, hiding itself away from human eye and speaking in a momentary glance. Our poets liken love to a flower. It is red as the rose, white as the lily. Yet love is not a flower of the field; love is the treasure hidden in the field. And thousands cross the field and never see it nor do they dream of the treasure hidden there until at last, in the appointed hour, passes the traveler who understands.

It is always so with the love of man. It is always so with the love of God. God's love is here, and yet how secret and hidden it all is—-how meaningless to the blinded—till Christ has come and shown His wounded side and led us to the glory of the cross.

The Providence of Life

The same thing also is true of the gift of life. Life is the one impenetrable secret. We have it and we thank God for it, and yet the wisest does not know what it is. It is not only of the heaven of heavens when looking up we say, "Thy footsteps are not known." It is not only where the sun is shining and where beyond the sun there are the angels. The deepest mysteries are not in heaven; the deepest mysteries are not in hell. The deepest mysteries are here where we are, and know not what we are. Life looks at us in every human glance. Life speaks to us in every human voice. Life meets us riotously in the play of children. Life shines transfigured on the face of saints. And yet what is it, so near and yet so far; so strong and beautiful, and yet so frail; so evident that none can pass it by; so hidden that no human hand can reach it? It baffles science with all its mighty claims. It baffles philosophy with all its pondering. No thought can get at it. Yet it is here where you are sitting and where I am writing. God's footsteps are in the temple of my heart, and yet His footsteps are not known.

Not with the sound of a bell does God arrive when our feet are at the turning of the ways. Over the silent sea the boat approaches, but the oars are muffled and we don't hear it as it comes from the haven of the far away. Decked with the embroidery of common moments, the moments which are not common reach us. Wearing the aspect of our usual hours, our great hours of destiny arrive—and life shall never be the same again. We thought it was a common hand that touched us; we know now it was the hand of God. Ah! sirs, life would be easy if providential hours declared themselves; if they met us radiant and with an uplifted look, and cried, "I am one of thy great hours." But they never meet us in a guise like that—never betray their greatness by their bearing—we hear no sound of the approaching footsteps—thy footsteps are not known.

When Abraham rested by the door at Mamre, he saw three travelers drawing near to the tent. They were but wayfarers, thirsty and dusty, and he had no idea that they were angels. And it is always thus that the angel-hours come, wearing the garments of the undistinguished, treading on the dusty ways of life, worn with the everyday weariness of man. How many noisy hours have passed away, and left no impact upon our life. How many a little hour has been a seed, and it rooted deep and blossomed high as heaven. Yet was it borne upon the wind so noiselessly and fell so lightly that we never noticed it; and its roots are deep today and its topmost branches in the sky.

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The Secrecy of God - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Secrecy of God's Approaches to the Soul

You who are students of the Scripture know what a favorite thought the secrecy of God was with Jesus Christ. It is not in the whirlwind that the kingdom comes when it makes it lodgment in the heart. Christ will not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets—those steep streets that lead into the soul. The kingdom comes as if a man should sleep, and the seed should spring up he knows not how. The kingdom comes just as the leaven comes, and who is so watchful as to see it rise? When Christ was born at the inn in Bethlehem, choirs of angels were singing in the sky. And when Christ comes again there will be the sound of the trumpet and a light so bright that every eye shall see Him.

But when Christ comes into the human soul, He comes with voice so soft that none can hear it except the ear on which the message falls. Christ does not ride in uproar to the soul; Christ steals in quiet secretly. The kingdom cometh not with observation, and here the kingdom is the King. His knock is so clear that when He knocks, you hear it, but His knock is so soft that no one else can hear it. To everyone else it is an ordinary footstep, and to everyone else it is an ordinary hand. But to you there is a wound upon the hand and the print of the nails upon the feet. To you it is CHRIST, and He is yours forever in infinite and redeeming love.

The Secrecy of Christ While on Earth

Notable, too, is this element of secrecy in the life of Christ when He was here on earth. God hid Him under the garb of poverty and set Him amid the silence of the hills.

When a man has a message which he burns to make known, you know the passion that rises in his heart. You know how the beckoning hand of London calls him, and how he is restless till he has reached the capital.

But when God had a message, He despised the capital and passed it by and all the glories of it, and He sent His Son into a secret place where the wind was fresh upon the hills. There He was born, and men were in the inn jesting and drinking and knew not it was He. And kings were rioting and scholars pondering and armies marching with the imperial eagles. But not a whisper broke upon that riot nor hushed the play of the children in the streets nor fell on the legionaries with a sense of awe as at a greater captain than their own. Wrapped in the secrecy of distant Galilee, moving obscurely amid obscurer villages, shrinking when men would hail Him king, craving for Bethany in crowded streets—that was the signet on the hand of God; that was the seal of the divine procedure. The footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth were the footsteps of God, and yet His footsteps were not known.

God's Secrecy Drives Us On

So far, then, upon the spheres of evidence, and now a word or two upon the other aspect. Can we discern the spiritual uses of this great element in God's procedure? I shall tell you how it seems to me to bear upon our triumph or our failure.

In the first place the secrecy of God is meant to be a spur to drive us on. There are things which are better for us not to hear, and God has the gracious strength to keep a secret. How often have we said to someone, "Ah, how I wish you had never told me that!" We can never have the same thoughts again since that one word was whispered in our ear. And we put it away from us and it comes again, and it rises from the dead when we least wish it; and we are brought lower and we are ashamed, just because someone could not keep a secret. There are times when there is strength in speech. There are times when there is strength in silence. There are things that it was very sweet to tell, but life has been far harder since we told them. And that is why God is silent in His love and will not speak although our hearts are craving; and tomorrow we shall thank Him for the silence that seems to be almost cruelty tonight.

"My father," said Isaac, as they went up the hill, "Here is the wood, but where then is the lamb?" Poor child, so wistful and so happy, it would have been cruelty to have told him that. And so with us who are but wistful children, speech may be cruel and secrecy may be kind. When we reach the hilltop we shall see; and seeing we shall understand.

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The Secrecy of God - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Secrecy of God Should Give Us Hope

There is hope for the world and there is hope for men when we can say, "God's footsteps are not known." The footsteps of sin and vice are always known. There is nothing unobtrusive about them. They leave their print of filthiness and blood on every pavement and on every newspaper. And that is why a thousand men are pessimists, for these reeking footsteps are before them and they forget that God is also there—-only His footsteps are not known.

Let some drunken husband kill his wife tonight, and you shall hear all about it in tomorrow's newspaper. And any scoundrel may have his doings published there so that any child can read about them. But thousands of homes were very happy yesterday and wives were singing and children were playing, but you shall read nothing in the papers about that. All that is of God, for love is of God; but then, you see, God's footsteps are not known. And no one buys the paper to read that, and it is not at all notorious or flaunting. And what I say is that you must remember that sin is riotous and God's way is in the still, small voice—-or hope will go and hearts will be embittered and faith will die into the cold of death.

God's Secrecy Keeps Us Faithful

And then, in closing, the secrecy of God is surely meant by God to keep us faithful. It is the pattern for our everyday life. It is given to help us on our daily round.

Rarely are we summoned to great deeds. To many of us they never come at all. We are not beckoned along the shining road to anything that might arrest the attention of the world. We make our journey by a quiet way, with crosses that are commonplace and duties that are ordinary duties unlustered by any sparkle of glory.

There are blessings in a life like that, and there are hardships too. We miss the excitement and the music and the cheering. And it is on that level road when we are a little disheartened and discouraged that we should recall the secrecy of God.

When a man is famous, his footsteps are well known. He is not nearer God on that account. From the tiniest violet up to Jesus Christ, God moves in quiet and unobtrusive paths. And if it is thus He lavishes His beauty and makes His infinite sacrifice of love, we can be very near Him in our calling.

His way is in the sea, and so let mine be. Let me live and work where there is depth and freedom. His footsteps are not known—ah! happy God, who hast thus chosen to reveal Thyself. So would I move apart and live unknown and never seek the clamor and the show; for love is not there with gladness in its eyes, nor does the road to the kingdom lie that way.

January 31

Drink From the Depths - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"He... gave them drink as out of the great depths." Psa_78:15

The psalmist is here reviewing the providence of God that sustained the children of Israel in the desert. That providence had made a deep impression on him, and he delights to dwell upon its wonders. There is a sense, I believe, in which the poet is really the best of all historians. He sees by the gift of a trained imagination into the hearts of men and the character of movements. And though he may lack the minute and critical knowledge that is in the keeping of laborious students, yet he often brings us nearer to the truth than the man who discovers and refutes his errors.

One often feels that it is so with the psalmist, and especially when he is dealing with the Exodus. For him the miracles that marked that journey were not isolated and solitary splendors. They were rather the discoveries of that power which is everywhere present and everywhere upholding; only in other lives they dealt with small numbers of people while here in the Exodus they are with large numbers.

Take for example the water from the rock of which the psalmist is speaking in our text. The wonder that God gave them water as out of the great depths comes to him in a flash. He sees the Israelites crowding around the rock and saying in their hearts, "This cannot last long." He sees them watching for the supply to fail as, of course, coming from a rock, it must soon do. And then he sees their look of wild surprise when it dawns on them that the stream is inexhaustible and is fed by channels they know nothing of, from boundless and unfathomable reservoirs.

What the people crave for is a draught of water, and God in His mercy gives them their desire. But He fills their cups, not from a little cistern, but as from some illimitable ocean. And the psalmist knows that that is always true, for whenever the Almighty satisfies His creatures, He gives them to drink as out of the great depths.

All Nature Depends on God's Goodness

Think, then, for a moment of the world of nature as it unfolds itself in all its beauty around us. There is not a bird or beast, there is not a tree or flower, but is ministered to in the way our text describes. I take the tiniest weed that roots among the stones—the flower in the crannied wall of which the poet speaks—and I ask, What does it need to live; what does it need that it may flower and fruit? The answer is that it needs a little warmth; it needs an occasional moistening with rain.

Now in a certain measure that is true, but you can never stop there in this mysterious universe. At the back of the warmth which it needs, there is the sun; and at the back of every raindrop, there is sky and ocean. And it takes the sun and sea and the white cloud of heaven to satisfy that tiniest weed among the stones, which may come to its delicate beauty only to be unregarded and perhaps crushed by a passing foot.

Try to explain the light that a rose needs, and you are carried into the depths of solar energy. Look at the raindrop on the hedge—has it not been drawn "out of the boundless deep"? And so there is not a rose in any garden nor a leaf that unfolds itself on any tree that is not ever whispering to the hearing ear, "He gave me drink as out of the great depths."

Again, think of our senses for a moment—think of our sight and hearing, for example. One of the plainest facts about our senses is the different way they translate what they receive.

To one man a rose is just a rose and no more. To another, in the smallest flower there are thoughts that often lie too deep for tears. And it is not the eye alone that differentiates, it is the life that is hidden deep behind the eye; He giveth them drink as out of the great depths.

Two men may listen to a piece of music, and one, as he listens, is profoundly stirred by it. There seems to pass before him, as he listens, visions of what is high and fair and beautiful. And he hears the calling of his brightest hopes and the cry of regret for all his wasted years and the stooping over him again of faces that he has loved long since and lost awhile. All this is kindled in some hearts by music—this burning of hope and haunting of regret; yet play that very piece before another, and it is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Drink From the Depths - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Is not the ear of a dead person perfect? Is not every membrane and convolution there? Yet call to it or whisper to it passionately, and will it play its part and carry the news of love? Yesterday there would have been a smile of recognition; there is not a flicker of response today.

So at the back of every sense we have there is a depth that can never be fathomed. All that a man is, looks through his eyes. All that his soul is, listens through his ears. If the eye could speak or if the ear could speak, would they not echo the language of the text, "He gave us drink as out of the great depths?"

The Common Joy and Sorrow of Mankind

Again let us think for a moment of God's ways in providence—in the ordering and
discipline of our lives. One of the lessons we learn as we grow older is that our discipline is not exceptional. When we are young our joys are all our own; we never dream that others could have known them. When we are young we take our little sorrows as if there were no such sorrows in the world. And much of the bitterness of childish trial lies in its terrible sense of isolation; in the feeling that in the whole wide world there is no one who has had to suffer just like us. It seems as if God has cut a special channel for us out of which no other life has ever drunk. In joy and grief, in sunshine and in shadow, we seem to move apart when we are children. But as life advances and our outlook broadens, and we learn the story of the lives around us, then we see that we are not alone but are being made to drink of the great depths.

It is not by exceptional providence's that we live. It is not by exceptional joys we are enriched. It is not by anything rare or strange or singular that we are fashioned under the hand of God. It is by sorrows that are as old as man, by trials that a thousand hearts have felt, by joys that are common as the wind is common that breathes on the palace and on the poorest street. By these things do we live; by these we grow; by love and tears, by trials, by work, by death; by the things that link us all into a brotherhood, the things that are common to ten thousand hearts. And it is when we come to recognize that truth and to feel our comradeship within a common discipline, that we say, as the psalmist said of Israel, "He gave us drink as out of the great depths."

The Everlasting Word of God

Now there is one thing that always arrests me in the Bible. It is that the Bible is such an ancient book, and yet is so intensely modern and practical. Think of the ages which have fled since it was written and how "heaven and earth have passed away" since then; think of our cities and of the life we live in them and of the stress and strain unknown in the quiet Bible times. To me it is wonderful, when I reflect upon it, that the Bible should be of any use at all now, and should not rather have moved into the quiet of libraries to be the joy of the unworldly scholar.

But if there is one thing certain it is this—-the Bible meets the need of modern life. In spite of all criticism, as a practical guide there is no book to touch it. There is not a problem you are called to face and not a duty you are called to do; there is not a cross you are compelled to carry and not a burden you are forced to bear, but your strength for it all shall be as the strength of ten if you make a daily companion of your Bible. Now this is what you feel about the Bible, that it never offers a draught from shallow waters. You do not find there a set of petty maxims, but you find the everlasting love of God there. You do not find any shallow views of sin there, but a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And that is the secret of the Bible's permanence, when our little systems have had their day and ceased to be, then for sin and sorrow and life and death and duty, it gives us to drink as out of the great depths.

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Drink From the Depths - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Depths of Jesus Christ

And think for a moment upon Jesus—-of Jesus in relation to His words. If ever words were as water to a thirsty world, surely it was the words that Jesus spoke. How simple they were, and yet how deep! How tender and full of love, and yet how searching! They seemed to pierce into the very heart till a man felt that his secret thought was known.

Now there are men whose lives so contradict their words that when you know the men you cannot listen to them. And there are men who are so much less than their own words that when you come to know them you are disappointed. But what people felt about Jesus Christ was that when all was uttered, the half was never told, for at the back of all His words there was Himself, deeper unfathomable than His deepest speech. That is why the words of Christ will live even when heaven and earth have passed away. You can exhaust the cup or drain the goblet dry, but you cannot exhaust the spring fed from the deeps. And just because the words of Jesus Christ spring from the depths of that divine humanity, they will save and strengthen the obedient heart to the last recorded syllable of time.

February 1

The Witness of Locality - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"He let it fall in the midst of their camp." Psa_78:28

The writer of this noble psalm is meditating upon the past of Israel. He is recalling the wonders of the Exodus. He sings of how God fed the wanderers both with the manna and the quails. He gave them bread from heaven to eat and continued giving it in spite of all ingratitude.

But not only was the supply from God, there was another feature which impressed the poet, and it is this he writes of in our text. That bread might have been rained from heaven in places very difficult to reach. The quails might have fallen far away in regions almost inaccessible. And what impressed the poet was that God did not give His bounty in such a way—He let it fall in the midst of their camp. The gift was not far away from them. It did not call for any tiring journey. They had no long distances to travel to secure the necessities of life. God's gracious bounty, new to them every morning, fell just where they were—and the quick eye of the poet noticed that.

"The Word Is Nigh Thee"

Then one thinks how true that is of other heavenly blessings than the manna. It is true, for instance, of the Bible—"The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth." When we read a confession or a catechism, we feel that it is very far away. The truth it embodies is remote from the beating of the human heart. But the wonderful thing about the Bible is that it is not only the most divine of books. It is that, but it is also the most human. It comes right into these sinful lives of ours, portraying them and understanding them. There is the throb of the human heart in it as well as the throb of the great heart of God. Our joys and sorrows, our victories and failures, our hours of triumph and the shadows on them, all these are mirrored on the pages of the Bible. It can never be treated just like other books. It is one great mark of inspiration that the Bible is not far away from life. He lets it fall in the midst of the camp.

Christ Was Born Among the Multitudes

And think how true this is of that unspeakable event, the Incarnation. In the fullness of the time God gave His Son. In palaces there is a certain isolation; they are remote from the common haunts of men. Even a cottage is a place withdrawn when within the cottage is a woman in travail. But not in a palace nor even in a cottage was our blessed Lord brought into our midst—He was born in the manger of an inn. Men were gathered there from every quarter. The world in miniature was there. Travelers had reached that inn by lonely roads, but it was not on lonely roads they found the Babe. They found Him amid a gathering of folks drawn from every section of society in the welcome afforded by an inn. The Child was born where there were human voices and all the stir and confusion of a crowd, where some were sleeping and others eating and many telling the adventures of the road. Where there was light and noise and the throb of human life, the Bread from heaven was bestowed at Bethlehem. He let it fall in the midst of the camp.

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The Witness of Locality - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

And this marked all the ministry of Jesus, distinguishing it from that of John the Baptist, for the Baptist was a solitary figure loving the lonely spaces of the desert. When men wanted to inquire of John, they had to go out and seek him in the wilderness. When they wanted to inquire of Jesus, they found Him on their trodden ways. He was a lover of the haunts of men, no stranger to their lowly cottages, sitting where the common people sat and perfectly familiar with the crowd. He gave them bread from heaven to eat, and it was given just as was the manna. He never reserved it for the monastic shelter nor for the quietness of the academy. He healed men and He taught men in the places where they lived and toiled, in the dull routine of daily living. In the fields, down by the seashore, in the narrow streets of unimportant hamlets, in the rooms of overcrowded cottages, in the thronged meeting-places of the cities, there He fed them with that wisdom which dwelt with God before ever the earth was (Pro_8:23)—He let it fall in the midst of the camp.

The Rich Provision of the Gospel Today

Equally does this apply to the rich provision of the Gospel now. We do not need to leave our place to gather it: it is given in the places where we are. The promises are not for imaginary circumstances; the promises are for here and now. The offered adequacy of the Holy Spirit is always available for us today. The fellowship of the Lord Jesus with all its cleansing and uplifting is not for the rare hours of mountain vision but for the common hours of ordinary life. Peace and joy are not for a few choice saints who move apart from the heavy cares of men. Serenity was never meant by heaven only for those who are withdrawn from things. The great distinction of the Gospel is that all its blessings are for common people immersed in the care and business of the hour. What struck this poet was that heaven's supply fell right among the places where people tabernacled. That is why God has poets in the Bible, because they see what others never notice. For this poet there was a wealth of meaning, which it has taken the ages to unfold, in the fact that when God gave bread from heaven, He let it fall in the midst of their camp.

February 2

Limiting God

"They... limited the Holy One of Israel." Psa_78:41

Sometimes we fall into the sin of limiting God to the greater hours of our life. I take it that all of us are so tempted. When the Syrians were fighting Israel they found they were always beaten on the hills, from which they gathered that the God of Israel was a God of the hills and not of the valleys. And this exclusion of the will of God from the peaceful and lowly valley-land of life is not confined to Syrian mentality. Every life has its dramatic hours and knows the exhilaration of the heights. In such hours, "so nigh to God is man," we often are strangely conscious of His presence.

But to limit the Holy One of Israel to our rarer moments on the hills is to miss the wonder of His fellowship. He is as near us in the dreary day as in the day when all the birds are singing. He is as close to us in lowly duty as in the hours that are going to alter everything. He is present in the lilies of the field, according to the teaching of our Lord, as magnificently as in the earthquake or the storm. Do not confine God to the big things as if these alone lay upon His heart. Never reserve Him for the greater moments as if He had no feeling for the lesser ones. To do so is to fall into the sin which is recorded here against the ancient Jews. It is to limit the Holy One of Israel.

We Limit God in the Use of Human Instruments

We are so ready to forget His sovereignty. It is true that often, when God has work to do, His choice of instruments at once commends itself. The man He chooses is exquisitely fitted for the peculiar task that is allotted him. But very often it is the other way—God's choice is mysterious and sovereign—the whole of history is one long commentary on the unlikely instruments of heaven. He wants a nation which shall bless the world, and He chooses a company of slaves in Egypt. He wants a messenger to carry doom to Eli, and He chooses Samuel, a little child. He wants a cradle for the beloved Son whose name is to be above every name, and He chooses a manger in the inn at Bethlehem.

I believe in an educated ministry. I trust we shall always have it in our land. It is one of the proudest boasts of Scotland that we have always had an educated ministry. But how often when we were priding ourselves upon our education, God in His sovereign fashion has come and put us all to shame by the preaching of uneducated men. You cannot limit the shining of the sun, and the Lord God is a sun. You cannot limit the breathing of the wind, and the Holy Ghost is like the wind. Men must watch when they want to keep their pulpits from the preaching of unordained servants lest they be limiting the Holy One of Israel.

Limiting God in Our Prayers

Or again, aren't we often tempted to limit God in the matter of our prayers? We confine Him to one expected answer. What if our blessed Savior had done that? What if He had limited the Father? What if the only answer He would tolerate had been the passing of the bitter cup? Then we would never have had Calvary nor the blood that keeps the sinner from despair, nor the victorious power of His resurrection. I remember a chaplain saying to me in France that if the Germans won the war, he'd lose his faith. In the mercy of God, the Germans did not win. But there are few things more perilous in prayer than to make one's faith conditional, and that is what the Savior never did. He never said, "This cup must pass from me, or I shall cease to trust the love of heaven." He said, "Father, if it be possible...nevertheless thy will not mine be done." And always we must bear that in mind when we cry for anything upon our knees lest, even in our holiest moments, we limit the Holy One of Israel.

Limiting God in His Power

Lastly, are we not prone to limit God in regard to the compass of His power? We have many instances of that in Scripture. When, for instance, Jairus' daughter died, the servants went hurrying through the streets to Jairus. And when they found him, they cried, "Sir, she is dead. There is no use troubling Jesus any further."

What they meant was that as long as she was living there always was the hope that He might cure her. There was no such hope now that she was dead. They were limiting the power of Jesus. There were certain things that were beyond Him. And sometimes when we view society today, are we not subject to the same temptation? God keep us all, who are praying for revival and for the coming of His kingdom in the world, from limiting the Holy One of Israel.

February 3

God's Self-Limitation - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"God... delivered his strength into captivity." Psa_78:61

These words in their primary and historical reference refer to the taking captive of the Ark of God by the Philistines. What a terrific calamity that seemed to Israel! They thought that the glory of Israel had departed. To the whole world it looked as if God were overcome, as if some power had arisen that was really superior to God, or as if there was something in the world that would ultimately baffle and defeat His purposes. You can understand how, to a religious nation like the Jews, it was a tremendous and terrifying thought, as, of course, it ought to be to every man. And then this inspired writer came along being illuminated by the divine Spirit, and puts a different meaning on the whole thing—says that God designed it, says in his own poetic language that God, nobody else, God delivered His strength into captivity.

Don't you see in a moment how that thought would animate and inspire Israel? It was not enemies who had defeated God, it was God who had deliberately done it. God had not exercised His own omnipotence; He had self-limited Himself. And if we could only understand how God, not only with the Ark for that was typical, but right down the centuries, has voluntarily delivered His strength into captivity, I think it might confirm our faith.

God's Sovereign Will

Well now, let's consider the thought of God's sovereign will. The one jubilant note of the whole Bible is that God's will in itself is sovereign. "I formed the light and I created the darkness. I am God and there is none beside me." Anyone who imagines that there is any will in the universe that can ultimately thwart God is not making the Bible his rule of faith and life. Of course, that does not mean that God's will is arbitrary. God limits His rule of many things just because He is love. As Butler said in his own deep way, "God's being is a kind of law to His working." All God's workings must be love if He is love. But it does mean that God's will in itself is irresistible, that nothing can ever ultimately baffle it, that there is no rival in heaven or in hell who can ever stand against the will of God. Don't you see how that thought is bound up with the ringing note of triumph of the Bible? You have no assurance for the future of the world, but for the future of yourself, and yourself strangely corresponds to the greater progress of the world.

What a great comfort when a man can say, "This is the will of God, even our sanctification." Poor, weak sinners baffled every day, it is God's will that ultimately we will be clothed in white. But if God's will can be thwarted, if there are powers abroad that limit His sovereignty, why, you and I in every effort may be just beating the air. Nothing may come of it. You know that makes life impossible, and therefore all the depths in your heart corroborate the jubilant assurance of the Bible. If it did not it would not be the Bible because the deepest mark of inspiration is within, and if the Bible did not correspond with all the voices from the depths of your heart, you might lay it aside as not being inspired. But when you come to the Lord Jesus, you find the Lord Jesus teaching you to pray, "Thy will be done."

Now if God's will is an irresistible will, and if it is always exercised as an irresistible will, why should you and I pray, "Thy will be done"? It will be done whether you pray or not; it will be done whether you help or not. It must be done if it is exercised as a sovereign will. Don't you see you are faced by this dilemma, though nobody likes the argument of a dilemma—either the will of God is not omnipotent (a thought that is intolerable to the human heart) or else for wise, holy purposes, when God is dealing with mankind, He does not totally exercise His sovereign will—He delivers His strength into captivity. And don't you see what His wise and holy purposes are?

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God's Self-Limitation - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Fellow-Workers With God

My father used to spend his leisure in editing books, and I remember once, just when I was about to finish school, he was editing one of the cantos of Childe Harold. He had the introduction all shaped out and most of his notes were blocked, and he turned to me and said, "I am very busy. I want you to complete the editing of this book for me." You know, to this hour, I have never forgotten it. To this hour I remember the joy and pride I felt when I was called to be a fellow-worker with my father.

And if God's will for mankind were sovereign, if it just had to be, you could not be a fellow-worker with God. It would not make the least difference what you did, whether you prayed or worked or gave. God is so passionately eager that you and I, His children, should be raised up to the joy and honor of being fellow-workers with Him that He just does not exercise the sovereignty He might—He delivers His strength into captivity, limits Himself that His children may help Him. Surely that is a motive worthy of a father, and that is just the name that Jesus gives Him.

I don't want to be philosophical, but you might put it another way. You might think of the purpose. Well, now, if you are going to be a fellow-worker with a man, that man must have a purpose. If a man has a purpose for building a house, every mason, every bricklayer is a fellow-worker with him. If a shipbuilder has a purpose for building a ship, then the whole labor force can be fellow-workers with him. If a man has no purpose, you cannot be a fellow-worker with him. And it is just so with man and God.

Self. Limitation

But does it ever occur to you that to have a purpose is to limit yourself? The builder would not take months to build the house if he could do it like the palace of Aladdin, all in a moment. The shipbuilder would not spend years and millions if he could create a ship just in an hour. And don't you see, if God limits Himself, if God doesn't complete His purposes in a moment, if God doesn't say in the slums of Glasgow, "Let there be light," as He once said in chaos, it is because He is limiting Himself for a purpose. And only in a purpose can you and I, His children, ever be fellow-workers with Him. I don't have the least doubt that the sovereign will of God could convert Africa just as we worship here; I don't have the least doubt that He could change Ireland and make it in a moment the Island of the Saints, but He does not. Don't you see that if He did, you and I, His children, could never be His fellow-workers? I think if we could only grasp that thought, it might help to explain a good deal of the suffering in the world. It is the suffering of being sharers in a purpose.

Take, for instance, the great French general who commanded at Verdun. Well now, why did he struggle on there? Because he had the purpose of saving France. Not only he, but every man down to the foot soldier shared in his purpose of saving France. They knew perfectly well that if wounds, pain or death came, all was bound up in the purpose which they shared with their general. If God has a great purpose, and if the Lord says, "Thy will be done," we have got to share it; and if it is a purpose in which suffering is inevitable in such a world as this, doesn't it cast a good deal of light upon much of the suffering in the world?

The Conviction That We Are Free

I am quite certain there is no Christian who, when he makes a choice, does not feel that that choice is a real choice, determined by himself. We all recognize that much of our battle is fixed for us by heredity, but there is not one of us who does not know in his heart that his fate is in his own hands. We are free creatures.

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God's Self-Limitation - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And don't you see why God made us like that? God's purpose was love; God wanted beings who could be in fellowship with Himself. It would be an awful thing to be a lonely God. God wanted beings who could share His purpose, think His thoughts after Him, enter into His will, pray to Him, be His children. And no one could do that unless he were free. God could easily have made us mechanical so that sin would have been impossible, so that everything we did would have been automatic. Do you think God could ever have shared His thoughts and purpose with beings like that? Don't you see, the moment He made us free, He delivered His strength into captivity? God has created something with which He cannot interfere. The one thing God can never do, for His gifts are without repentance, is to smash and shatter our freedom by the intrusion of omnipotence. God can do just what He does in Christ—He can woo, He can appeal, He can try to win, He can breathe His spirit on each one of us; but if we misuse our freedom, not even God will break in with His omnipotence to make it impossible.

And yet people say, Why does God allow sin? God does not allow sin. Why does God allow the slums of Glasgow? Why did God allow war? God never allows war. God, wanting beings to have fellowship with Him, made us free, and not even God, having made us free, will bring His omnipotence to stop us when our freewill misused gives us sin, misery, slums and war.

When God made us free, He delivered His strength into captivity, and in that sense it is in captivity still. Without our freedom what a poor, miserable thing life would be. I think all that is perhaps corroborated by a very deep feeling that God's children have that they can disappoint Him. If a child does something that is wrong, he disappoints his mother or his father, or a husband may disappoint his wife, and you and I can disappoint God. My dear brother, if our sin was predetermined from all eternity, we could not disappoint God, and there could be no joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.

Christ Was Delivered for Us

Let us consider the thought for a moment in connection with Christ. Don't you see how it all comes to its climax, how God delivered His strength into captivity when He gave His only-be-gotten Son for you and me? He had done it before in regard to His sovereign will when He created free beings—He had done it because He was love. And then, in His own way, He did it to its utmost when He gave the Lord—He did it because He was love. "God so loved the world that He gave"—-delivered Him to the captivity of the virgin's womb, delivered Him to the captivity of the body that had been prepared for Him so that the Lord emptied Himself and took on Him the form of a servant. Did you ever think how often the word "delivered" is used of the Lord Jesus Christ? "He was delivered to the high priest." "Pilate released Barabbas and delivered Jesus." "He was delivered by the counsel and foreknowledge of God." But most beautiful of all: "He was delivered for our offenses." Christ was the strength of God, and God delivered His strength into captivity. The marvelous and beautiful thing is just this, that by that deliverance you and I are saved.

February 4

Refusing to Go Back

"So will not we go back from thee." Psa_80:18

To go back from God is to desert Him. It is to turn away the footsteps of our heart from Him. It is to doubt the vision we have had of Him in our more intense and illumined moments.

To determine that whatever comes, we shall not go back from God, is one of the open secrets of the saints. To cling to Him when life is difficult and we are tempted to question if He cares; to believe in Him with a simple childlike faith when clouds and darkness hide His throne—this is one of the triumphs of the spirit which makes the humblest life a thing of victory and brings it to the sunrise at the end.

When Mallory and Irvine were last seen climbing Everest, they were "going strong for the top." From that top, a thousand feet above them, nothing could turn them back. What a great victory it would be for all of us were we to say, like these heroic climbers, So we shall not go back from Thee.

When Things Eternal Grow Dim

We are tempted sometimes to go back from God by the apparent indifference of heaven. There are seasons of the soul when things unseen are touched with a strange sense of unreality. The lamp that burns upon my study table is as nothing to the radiance of the moon. But then the lamp is near me, and I read by it till I grow oblivious of the moon.

And so there are seasons when the things around us so grip us in their vividness that things eternal tend to grow unreal. At such times we do not renounce God, but we are often tempted to go back from Him. We grow oblivious to His peace and light and there passes a certain deadness over us as the winter, and we forfeit the joy of our salvation. Prayer becomes a chore; the Bible loses its fragrance and its dew. We are in the dark night of the soul and lying under spiritual desertion. But even so (observe the psalmist's word) the true heart will cry out of the darkness, "We will not go back from thee." To cling to God and His great love to us when things grow dim and shadowy and distant, to affirm God to our own souls in the hours when the unseen is as a dream is one of the tasks of all who claim the name of Christ. "So will not we go back from thee."

We are also tempted to this retrogression in hours when all the lights are burning low. None is so strong that he does not now and then have fainting spells. We lose heart, and a dull depression seizes on our spirits. We move on the flat margins of despair, and are all tempted to go back from God as the disciples were tempted to go back from Christ.

To be perfect as our heavenly Father is a standard that often seems impossible. Is it any use striving to be holy with these insurgent and rebellious hearts? Is not sainthood for rare and elect souls, and beyond the compass of our common clay? So are we tempted to take the lower road, thinking it more on the level of our powers, and we settle down into second best. That is the tragedy of many lives—they have settled down into the second best. They had visions once of the summit of Mount Everest; now they are content to dwell below it. But the real victory of this life of ours is not to gain the summit we have seen; it is to keep on climbing to the end. God's best in Christ is not for elect souls. It is for everyone who trusts Him. Things that are impossible with man are possible with God, and in spite of all our failures, we shall not go back from Thee.

February 11

Forgiveness and the Cross

"There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." Psa_130:4
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." Col_1:14

There are millions of people for whom divine forgiveness is a great and thrilling fact. They could no more doubt it than they could doubt their being. Quite possibly they do not understand it, but one can enjoy things he doesn't understand. We daily use and enjoy a hundred things of whose nature we are ignorant. I light my room with electricity or revel in a glorious summer morning though I know practically nothing about electricity or the sun. And among these things stands out divine forgiveness as the greatest. For millions it is an experienced reality. It is the spring of joy, the source of liberty, the starting-point of victorious endeavor. Forgiven, the barriers are gone that raised themselves between the soul and God. Estrangement from their Creator has given place to sweet communion.

Why Was the Death of Jesus Necessary?

But the difficulty for many people is how forgiveness comes through the death of the Lord Jesus. Why can't a God of love forgive His children as the father of the prodigal forgave his son? When a wife forgives her husband, she doesn't need the intervention of another. She forgives him just because she loves him with a love that expects a brighter tomorrow. When a father forgives his erring child, it is a private and personal transaction where the intrusion of anyone else would be impertinence. Why, then, should our heavenly Father call for more than a repentant heart? Why should restoration to communion demand the agony and death of Jesus?

This difficulty is often aggravated by the glorious ringing note of the Old Testament: "There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared, and plenteous redemption that thou mayest be sought unto." Well, men say, that is enough for me, I needn't complicate matters by the cross; and they forget that the Old Testament is never final but rather God's avenue leading to the new. I give a child an apple, and tell him to eat it for it is good for him. It is only afterwards that the child learns why that apple should be healthful. A little boy puts coals on the fire, confident that they will warm the room. But why the coals should have their warming properties he only learns when he goes to school or college. That is heaven's universal ordering, first the fact and then the explanation. Life would be impossible to live if we could not use things till we understood them. And as God orders the whole of human life, so He does with Scripture, first proclaiming the eternal truth and then showing us the secret of it. The cross of the New Testament is not an intrusion on an old simplicity. The cross does not complicate forgiveness: it explains it and shows how it is possible. "There is forgiveness with thee," cries the psalmist; and the New Testament interprets that—Yes, there is forgiveness through the blood.

God's Divine Assurance

Surely it is evident that without the cross we could have no assurance of divine forgiveness. It is only in the life and death of Jesus that we can be perfectly sure of a forgiving God. God reveals Himself in nature. Could we be perfectly certain of forgiveness there? Even though nature carries glimpses of it, are these sufficient to assure the heart? Neither in nature nor in human history is there the luminous proof the sinner needs that there is forgiveness with God. That proof is given in Christ, and in Christ only. Only in the life and death of Christ can we be perfectly sure that God forgives. When we see Him dying on the cross for us in a redeeming love that traveled to the uttermost, God's forgiveness becomes certainty. A child in his earthly home needs no such argument. He is perfectly familiar with his father. He sees him every evening and has his kiss before he falls asleep. But the heavenly Father is different from that—-clouds and darkness are about His throne—and so His children need for their assurance something that our children never do.

Again, we must not forget that earthly fatherhood can never exhaust the fullness of the Deity. In Him lies the fount of moral order without which life would be intolerable. A father at home who is a judge may freely forgive his child, but he cannot act like that on the bench. The morale of the State would go to pieces if the judge were to act just as the father does. He is to administer the law, and were every repentant prisoner forgiven, law would become a byword and a joke. That, as one of the Reformers put it, was a problem worthy of God—how to maintain and magnify the law, and yet freely forgive the transgressor; and God's answer is the cross of Christ. There we learn what heaven thinks of sin. There sin is seen in all its awfulness. There we behold the grandeur of the law in the very glance that tells us of forgiveness. The pardon of God is not the worthless pardon of an easy and tolerant good nature. He is just, and the justifier of all them that believe.

February 12

The Gifts of Sleep - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"He giveth his beloved (in) sleep." Psa_127:2

If we take the words of our text just as they stand, they are charged with deep and beautiful significance. They tell us what our own experience confirms, that sleep is the gift of God. The world has gifts which it gives to its favorite children. It loads them with wealth or honor or fame. But God deals otherwise with His beloved, for "He giveth to his beloved sleep."

It would, of course, be very wrong to say that sleeplessness is a mark of the divine displeasure. A man may be wrapt in the gracious peace of God, yet seek in vain the refreshment of sleep. Yet it is true that sleep, when it is given, is such a medicine for the weary and worn, that it can be nothing less than the gift of love. I think of Jesus in the storm-tossed boat, asleep on the pillow when everyone else was running around in wild alarm. I think of Peter fast asleep in prison when the coming morning was to bring his execution. I think of the tired worker when nightfall comes, and the sufferer who has been racked with pain through weary hours, and I learn how tenderly and deeply true it is that "He giveth his beloved sleep." Nor can anyone ever ignore that sweetest of all suggestions wherein the word is whispered over the sleep of death. A thousand memories of shadows and tears have clustered around that interpretation. It is when the fever breaks that one sleeps well, and when the struggle of life has ended and quiet peace has fallen, then love, through the mist of weeping, murmurs: "So he giveth his beloved sleep."

The Stress and Strain of Life

But though that is a comforting and blessed truth, it is not the true interpretation of the words. If you read the verse in relation to its context, you will see that that could hardly be the meaning. The psalmist is warning against overwork which degenerates into worry. He is picturing the man who overdrives himself until he has no rest and no peace. And all this pressure and nervous activity is not only a sin in the sight of God, it is also, says the psalmist, a mistake. It is vain for you to rise up early and to sit up late. You will never gain the choicest things that way. Let a man be nervous, overworked and tired, and he is sure to miss the worthiest and the best. God giveth to His beloved in sleep—when they are at rest like a child within its cradle, when they are free from that turbulence of wild desire in which the still small voice is quite inaudible.

Remember that the psalmist never dreamed of casting a slur on honest, manly labor. He knew too well the blessings that we gain, and the sins that we are saved from, by our work. What was borne in on his soul was that by overwork we lose more than we gain, for many of the richest gifts of heaven only approach us through the path of slumber. It is imperative that the soul should be held passive if we are to have the inflow of His grace. It is imperative that its uproar should be hushed if we are to hear the still, small voice. And it is that which the psalmist hints at here, when, in the intense language of a poet, he cries to men, "Your stress and strain are vanity; God giveth to His beloved in sleep."

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The Gifts of Sleep - Page 2
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The Blessings of Infancy

There is a world of love encompassing an infant, yet how unconscious the baby is of it all! When our Savior was drawing near the cross, He said to His disciples, "I go to prepare a place for you," and they knew from that hour that when they awoke in glory, they would find that all was ready for their coming.

But not only in the land beyond the river is a place prepared for everyone God loves. When into this present life a child comes, hearts have been busy with preparation. Stooping over the little one is a mother's love and all the splendor of a mother's patience. Shielding it is a father's strength and eagerness to provide for all its needs. And it is clothed and fed with food convenient and rocked to sleep and sheltered from the storm. And should it become ill, the best skill in the city is not good enough for the tiny sufferer. What a wealth of love and care is here, yet what is more passive than that little infant! Have these small hands helped in the preparation? Has that little mind done any of the planning? Helpless it lies, and-doomed to certain death, if life depended on its puny efforts. But "God giveth to his beloved in sleep"; He has prepared for His children, too.

The Pursuit of Happiness

If anywhere in life, it is in pleasure-seeking that it is vain to rise up early and to sit up late. Not when we are determined, come what may, to have a pleasant and a happy life does God bestow the music of the heart. He gives it when there is forgetfulness of self and the struggle to be true to what is highest though the path be through the valley of the shadow. The one sure way to miss the gift of happiness is to rise early looking for it and to sit up late waiting for it. To be bent at every cost on a good time is the sure harbinger of dreary days. It is when we have the courage to forget all that and to lift up our hearts to do the will of God that, like a swallow darting out from under the eaves, happiness falls upon us with glad surprise. Had Jesus lived just that He might be happy, He certainly would have escaped the cross. No one would have laughed Him to scorn in Jairus' house; no one would have pierced His hands and feet. But He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many; and so you find Him talking of His joy. Brethren, remember that nine-tenths of our unhappiness is selfishness and is an insult cast in the face of God. But the way to be happy is not to seek happiness. It is to be awake to what is higher and asleep to self-satisfaction. And then, as time passes, comes the discovery that God giveth to His beloved in sleep.

Heaven, the Gift of Sleep

The last gift of a kind God is heaven, and God giveth it to His beloved in sleep. We can never know how it would have been had man not sinned and fallen. Like Enoch, man would have walked with God till his never-halting footsteps brought him home. But death has passed upon all men for that all have sinned; yet "O death, where is thy victory?" God makes death's foul embrace His opportunity; He giveth to His beloved while they sleep. As one stands with sorrowing heart beside the dead and looks on him from whom the breath has flown, it is very strengthening and soothing to say, "God giveth sleep to his beloved." But isn't it better to lift our eyes to heaven and, thinking of its liberty and joy, say, "He giveth to his beloved in sleep."

February 13

The Searching of God - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me." Psa_139:1

We are prone to associate the searching work of God with events of a striking or memorable kind. It is in great calamities and overwhelming sorrow that we feel with particular vividness God's presence. When Job was in the enjoyment of prosperity, he was an eminently reverent man; but it was in the hour of his black and bitter midnight that he cried out, "The hand of God hath touched me." And that same spirit dwells in every breast so that God's searching comes to be associated with hours when life is shaken to its depths. Now the point to be noted is that in this psalm the writer is not thinking of such hours. There is no trace that he has suffered terribly or been plunged into irreparable loss. "Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising"—my usual, ordinary, daily life—it was there that the psalmist recognized the searching; it was there that he awoke to see that he was known. And as the psalmist's, so our effort must be to try to discover how in our usual round, in the downsitting and uprising of our days, God searches us and shows us to ourselves.

The Passing of Time

In the first place, we are searched and known by the slow and steady passing of the years. There is a revealing power in the flight of time just because time is the minister of God. In heaven there will be no more time; there will be no more need of any searching ministry. There we shall know even as we are known, in the burning and shining of the light of God. But here, where the light of God is dimmed and broken, we are urged forward through the course of years, and the light of passing time achieves on earth what the light of the Presence will achieve in glory.

He is a wise father who knows his child, but he is a wiser child who knows himself. Untested by actual contact with the world, as children we dream our dreams in the sunshine of the morning. And then comes life with all its harsh reality and the changes of the years, and we turn around on the swift flight of time and say, "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me." We may not have suffered anything profound, we may not have achieved anything splendid. Our life may have moved along in quiet routine, not outwardly different from the lives of thousands. Yet however dull and uneventful, God has so ordered the flight of time for us that we know far more about ourselves now than we knew in the dawn of our morning. Brought into touch with duty and fellowmen, we have begun to see our limitations. We know in a measure what we cannot do, and thank God, we know in a measure what we can do. And underneath it all we have discerned the side of our nature which leans towards heaven, and the other side on which there is the door that opens to the filthiness of hell. It doesn't take any terrible experience to learn our power and weaknesses. Each single day which makes up the passing years, slowly and inevitably shows it. So by the pressure of evolving time—and it is not we, but God, who so evolves it—for better or for worse we come to say "O Lord, thou hast searched me and hast known me."

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Our Responsibilities Test Us

Then also, God searches us by the responsibilities He lays upon us, for it is in our duties that the true self is searched and known. Think of those servants in the parable who got the talents. Could you have gauged their character before they got the talents? Were they not all respectable and honest and seemingly worthy of their master's confidence? But to one of the servants the master gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, and what distinguished and revealed each one was the use they made of that responsibility. They were not searched by what they had to suffer; the servants were searched by what they had to do. They were revealed by what their master gave and by the use they made of what they got.

And so, I take it, it is with all of us to whom God has given a task, a job, a talent—it is not only a gift to bless our neighbor; it is a gift to reveal us to ourselves. It is not always the greatest jobs that make the greatest demands on a man. It is sometimes harder to be second than first, and sometimes harder to be third than second. In the important jobs there is a certain glow, and generally a cloud of witnesses to cheer us on; but in the humbler jobs there is nothing of that. Great services reveal our possibilities; small services reveal our consecration, calling for patience and rigorous fidelity and the power that can endure through dreary days. So by the daily work we have to do and the task that is given us of God, we are tested in the whole range of manhood. There are no temptations more subtle or insistent than those that meet a man within his calling. There are no victories so quietly rewarding as those that are won within one's daily work.

Details

God also has a way of searching us by lifting our eyes from the detail to the whole. He sets the detail in its true perspective, and seeing it thus, we come to see ourselves. You know how the writer of this psalm proceeds: "Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising," he says. These are details, little particular actions, the unconsidered events of every day. But the writer does not stop with these details—he passes on to the survey of his life: "Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways."

You will remember that it was through details that Christ revealed the Samaritan woman to herself. She had been hiding her guilt from her own eyes by busying herself in the details of the day. And then came Jesus with His enlarged vision in which the days are all parts of the one life, and in the eyes of Christ she saw herself because she saw the details as a whole. "Come, see a man," she went and cried, "who told me all things that ever I did." Actually, it was an exaggeration, for Christ had not spoken to her very long. But when you get down to the spirit of the words, you never think of their exaggeration for they reveal the way that Jesus took in searching her and showing her to herself. He would not let her hide in the detail; He wanted her to have a vision of the whole. He wanted to show her what her life was like when looked at closely. And so this woman was searched and self-revealed through detail in its true perspective, and her conscience, which had long been slumbering, awoke.

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The Searching of God - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

I think that is often the way the Lord deals with you and me. We are all prone to be blinded by details so that we scarcely realize what we are doing. There are lines of behavior which we would never take, if we only realized all that they meant. There are habits and certain sins to which we would never yield if we only saw them in their vile completeness. But the present is so tyrannical and sweet and the action of the hour is so absorbing, that we cannot see the forest for the trees, nor see ahead the path that we are taking.

We often say when looking back upon our sufferings, "We wonder how we ever could have borne it." One secret of our bearing it was that we only suffered one moment at a time. And in looking back upon our foolish past, we sometimes say, "How could we have ever done it!"; and one secret of our doing it was that we only acted one moment at a time. When a man is dimly conscious that he is wrong, he has a strange ability to forget yesterday. When a man is hurrying to fulfill his passion, he shuts his ears to the call of tomorrow. And the work of God is to revive that yesterday and tear the curtain from the sad tomorrow and show a man his action of today set in the general story of his life. Sometimes He does it through sickness; sometimes in a quiet hour such as this. Sometimes He does it in a mysterious way by the immediate working of the Holy Ghost. But when He does it, then we know ourselves and see things as they are, and we are ashamed. Only then we can cry with David, "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me."

Seeing Ourselves in Another's Life

We may never know ourselves until we see ourselves divested of all the trappings of self-love. It was thus, you remember, that He dealt with David when David had sinned so terribly. For all the depth and the grandeur of his character, David was strangely blind to his own guilt. But then came Nathan with his touching story of the man who had been robbed of his ewe lamb, and all that was best in David was afire at the abhorrent action of that robber.

Has God ever shown you your own heart like that, in drawing the curtain from some other heart? That, you know, is your story, your temptation, your sin in all its strength and sweetness. But ah, how very different it looks now when there is no self-love to plead for it and shield it, when there is no hand to weave excuses for it such as we make so quickly for ourselves. You thought that in yourself it was romance; but in another you see it as being disgraceful. You thought that in you it might be easily understood, yet in another it appears despicable. So in the mirror of another life God shows us what we do and what we are, and, seeing it, what can we do but cry, "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me."

New Influences

Someone may enter the circuit of our being, and the light they bring illuminates ourselves. We are all prone ordinarily to settle down into a dull routine. The vision of the highest fades away from us, and we go forward without any worthwhile ambition. Our feelings lose their freshness and zest, and we are no longer eager and strenuous as we once were. We become content with far lower levels of achievement now than would have contented us in earlier days. All this may come upon a man, and come so gradually, that he hardly notices all that he has lost. His spiritual life has grown so dull and dead that prayer is a mockery and joy is flown. Then we meet someone whom we have not seen for years, one who has wrestled heavenward against storm and tide—and in that moment we realize it all. Nothing is said to blame or rebuke us. The influence lies deeper than speech. Nothing is done to make us feel ashamed. We may be welcomed with the old warmth of friendship, but there is something in that nobler life suddenly brought into contact with our own that touches the conscience and shows us to ourselves and quickens us to a shame that is medicinal. It is often so when the friend is a human friend. It is always so when the friend is Jesus Christ. "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man"—the very coming of Christ searches and sifts. But the joy is that if He comes to search, He also comes in all His love to save; and He will never leave us nor forsake us, till the need of searching is gone forever.

February 14

The Comfort of the Universal Presence - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." Psa_139:8

In the library of our university are certain old and interesting maps. They have all the charms of a geography which knows no limit save imagination. In modern atlases where there is ignorance, such ignorance is wisely acknowledged. In older atlases, on the contrary, it is curiously and cunningly concealed. And so in reading these dusty parchments covering territories unexplored we are told that here are cannibals, or satyrs and sundry other goblins.

All that has vanished from our maps today, but there is one thing which is left to us still: it is that across the map, even to the remotest boundary, we can write with full assurance Here is God. If I ascend to heaven, thou art there; if I follow the beckoning of the rosy-fingered morning, I am still in the keeping of the eternal Father. Do you and I dwell on that as we should? Do we know the comfort of God's omnipresence?

The Universal Presence Is an Arresting Thought

There is nothing on earth, when we are being tempted, so arresting as the sense of a presence. There are times of temptation when the wisest counsel is swept away from us like leaves before the gale; times when everything we have resolved upon is broken like a thread of gossamer. And how often in such times as these when counsel and resolve have been cast aside, we have found restraining power in a presence. It may be the actual proximity of someone or it may be only the presence in the heart—the presence of someone who has passed on. But love is mighty in resurrection power and eyes which we once loved are on us still, and only God in heaven could tell how many men have been helped by such memories.

There was a certain shopkeeper who had a portrait of Frederick Robertson, that great preacher, in his back shop. Whenever he was tempted to be dishonest, he went and looked for an instant at the photograph, and then the sorry thing he wanted to do became impossible. It was not Robertson's sermons which did that, searching and beautiful though they were. It was not the memory of those flaming words which scorched and shriveled what was bestial. What gripped that man and stayed his itching hand when he was tempted was the constraining power of a presence. That is often the power of little children. It is often the power of a good woman. We may not feel that someone is rebuking us; what we feel is that somebody is watching. Eyes are upon us, pure and tender, or eyes that we have not seen for many years; and God knows—that thing—we cannot do it.

The Presence of God

Now as it is with the presence of our loved ones, it is so with the presence of our God. There is a mighty power to arrest us in the controlling thought that He is here.

There is an old story of a little girl who went to the attic to steal some apples stored there. On the wall hung the picture of some venerable and long-forgotten ancestor. And as she crept along the attic floor, the eyes of that old portrait seemed to follow her until in her childish fear she tore them out of the picture.

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The Comfort of the Universal Presence - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

If one could only tear out eyes like that, sin would be infinitely sweet for multitudes. But there are eyes no human hand can reach; the eyes of memory and the eyes of God. And that, I take it, is what Scripture means in that text so often misinterpreted, "I will guide thee with mine eye."

Linnaeus, the great botanist, cherished an open heart for God in everything. Over his study door these words were written, Numen adest, vivite innocui. And what they mean is this: Live innocently; do not sully hand nor heart today: numen adest—deity is present.

Now let me ask you, have you tried to live, "as always in the great Taskmaster's eye"? Have you ever stopped in the jostling street and said to yourself, "God is now here"? Say it the next time you are worried, Martha. Say it when the waves are stormy, Peter. Say it, David, when on the roof at evening you catch that glimpse of beautiful Bathsheba.

Men who have tempers often excuse themselves—they cannot help it; they are built that way. But if you were in audience with King George, you could control that nasty temper perfectly. And the simple fact is that wherever you are, among the crowds or with your wife and children, you are always in the presence of the King. There is an arresting power in God's presence which few of us have ever really used. It is a great moment when we say with Hagar, "Thou God seest me." You who are very sorely tempted and know it is an hour of crisis, One who is infinite love and power and purity is right there with you, and He is watching.

The Universal Presence Is a Sustaining Thought

Professor Henry Drummond used to tell us about a student at examination time. It was an examination of a decisive nature which would determine the young fellow's career. And every now and again he took something out of his pocket and gave it a glance, and then as quietly slipped it back again. The examiner had his suspicions aroused and stole up quietly for observation. And he saw—what do you think—scribbled notes? No, what he saw was not scribbled notes. It was a portrait of someone very dear and who would be dearer still for better or for worse through life's long battle—his lovely wife. It was not enough that he should know his subject well. He felt he needed something more than that. He felt he needed, just what we all need, the sustaining power of a loving presence.

And the One presence we can always have, through life and suffering and work and death, is that of Him who loves us to the uttermost. He is with us always and everywhere, when we wake and when we sleep. He is infinite love and perfect understanding and irresistible power that makes the devils tremble. And yet we fuss and worry and dread tomorrow but all in vain and as if everything had not been pledged to us in Christ. But, behold, everywhere Thou art there!

February 15

Still With Thee - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"When I awake, I am still with thee." Psa_139:18

A man whose religion is of a shallow kind is content with only an occasional acknowledgment of God. He has his stated seasons of approach to God and his rigid periods of worship. There are long stretches of time when, as the psalmist says, God is not in all his thoughts. He wages his warfare on the field of business in total forgetfulness of the divine—a mark of a religious life which is neither very deep nor very real. It never thrills in spiritual strength or joy.

Now in the book of Psalms, this is not so. The psalmist's recognition is continuous; always he sets the Lord before him. And it is this continual recognition and this unvarying practice of God's presence which kindles the psalmist when he is discouraged and brings the joy that cometh in the morning. When we go to sleep mastered by some thought, that thought is usually beside us when we awake. If it is trouble on which we closed our eyes, how swiftly in the morning it returns! And it was because the psalmist lived with God and went to sleep under the wings of God that he could take his pen and write in all sincerity, "When I awake, I am still with thee."

Spiritual Lethargy

Our text is full of meaning when we think of waking up from our spiritual lethargy. There are times for most of us, in our spiritual life, when we are little better than asleep. Our prayers—how cold and formal they become; they are merely the semblance and mockery of prayer. And the Bible loses its freshness and its blessing and does not leap to meet our needs when we come to it. There settles down a deadness on our spirits, and we go to church and listen to the preaching and might as well be a thousand miles away. Who has not know such desert seasons, such days of lethargy? And to me the wonder of it all is that when the darkness passes and the dayspring comes, we are still able to lift our heads and say, "When I awake, I am still with thee." God has not forgotten to be gracious. We have been false to Him; not He to us. He has been longing to show His love again.

A Time of Crushing Sorrow

In all great sorrow there is something numbing, an insensibility like that of sleep. It is one of the triumphs of our modern medicine that it can apply opiates so powerfully. A prick of a needle and one forgets the agony of pain. But God has His opiates no less than man, and these are reserved for the hours when the physician fails, so that the mourner says, "I can't understand it—it is like a dream—I cannot realize it." There is mercy in that numbing of the spirit. The worst might be unbearable without it. When vividness of perception would be torture, God giveth to His beloved sleep. And it is when a man awakens from that sleep, slowly and heavily through dreary days—it is then that he can lift his heart to God and say, "When I awake, I am still with thee." The past may seem to be far away now, for there are days which do the work of years. But if the past is distant, God is near; nearer than He has ever been before. And the unseen is very real to us, and truths that once were on the dim horizon become the most tremendous of realities. And there are friends who cannot help us for we are moving in regions where they never traveled. But no man who believes in Jesus Christ can move in regions where God has never traveled, for down to the very bitterness of death, God in the Crucified has gone before. That is the joy of having God in Christ. You can never awaken to the bitter day and say, "Of this, the serene God knows nothing."

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Still With Thee - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Last Awakening in Eternity

And then, in closing, doesn't our text also apply to the last awaking in eternity? "I shall be satisfied when I awake," and satisfied because I am with Thee.

I heard the other day of a young husband who had to go under the surgeon's knife. All went well, and as he awoke again, his first inquiry was for his wife and children. And he was satisfied when he awoke, not merely because of his life which he had regained, but because he was still with those who loved him so and who were all the world to him. That is the Christian doctrine of the future. That is the one clear point in all the mystery. I shall be satisfied when I awake, because when I waken, I am still with Thee—still with the God who was my shepherd here; still with the God who saved me and who blessed me; still with the God in whom I trusted amid the shadows and the doubts of time.

The greatest of all questions is just this, "Am I with God, and is God with me?" Do I trust Him and try to serve Him now? If not, when I awake—what then? But if I do and if I seek His face, then when I awake under the touch of death, this will be the glory of it all, that "I am still with Thee."

February 16

Showing It Before Him

"I showed before him my trouble." Psa_142:2

What the trouble of the psalmist was it is impossible for us to say. It was so bitter in its onset that his spirit was overwhelmed within him.

In one of his sermons, Mr. Spurgeon touched on our ignorance of Paul's thorn in the flesh. He suggests that perhaps it is unspecified so that each of us may apply it to ourselves. And I think that the vagueness of the Bible is often of a deliberate intention in order that room may be left within its words for every variety of human need.

When Jesus said, "Let not your heart be troubled," He was not contemplating exemption for His own followers. He knew there would be troubles in their lives; what He enjoined was an untroubled heart. And one great help to an untroubled heart amid the thronging troubles of our lives is to be found in this practice of the psalmist. A brave man does not show his troubles before all the world. He tries to hide them and keep a smiling face in order that he might not be a discouragement to others. But to show before the Lord our troubles in the quiet moment when the door is shut is one of the secrets of serenity.

The Comfort of Having a Friend to Listen

In one sense, one of the duties of friendship is just to lend an ear. It is an untold comfort when troubles are depressing us to have someone in whom we can confide. A brother is born for adversity, not just that he may lend a helping hand. A helping hand may be a blessed thing, but a helping heart is often better. To have somebody to whom we can open our hearts in the certainty of perfect understanding is one of the choicest gifts of human life. Visitors among the poor have experienced that. How often they bring comfort by just listening! Poor folk, toiling away bravely, discover an easing of their trouble when they can pour it all, if only for an hour, into a listening and appreciative ear. Now it was that easing which David found in God. He showed before Him his trouble. He did not brood on it in solitary bitterness; he quietly laid it before God. And though the trouble didn't disappear any more than the thorn of the Apostle, he gained a sweet serenity of spirit which made him capable of bearing anything.
And, indeed, that is the real victory of faith and of all who quietly wait on God. It may not banish all the trouble, but it always brings the power to bear it beautifully. There is a deep-rooted feeling in the heart that if we are God's, we ought to have exemption. Troubles that afflict the faithless soul ought to be averted from the faithful. But the age-long experience of God's children and all the sufferings of His beloved Son proclaim that this is not so. David was not protected from life's troubles, nor was Paul or our blessed Savior. David knew, in all its bitterness, what a thing of trouble our human life may be. His victory, and that of all the saints who have learned to show their trouble before God, was an inward peace that the world can never give and the darkest mile can never take away. God does not save His children from that dark mile. He saves His children in that dark mile. Whenever they show their trouble before Him, He shows His lovingkindness to them. He keeps them from an embittered heart; He puts beneath them the everlasting arm; He makes them more than conquerors in Christ.

God Cares

One feels, too, that David, like Abraham, had seen the day of Christ. His personal trouble was of concern to God. One hears it said so often that in the Old Testament the nation was the unit, and one remembers right through the Old Testament the insistence on the majesty of God. Yet here is a troubled and persecuted soul who dares to think that the God of all the earth has a heart responsive to his very own trouble. He never dreamed it was a thing too petty for the concern of the infinite Jehovah. With a quiet confidence he showed it before Him who was the Maker of heaven and earth. And the wonderful thing is how this faith of David in the individual loving care of God was confirmed by great David's greater Son. Not a sparrow can fall without our Father. The very hairs of our head are numbered. If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto our children, how much more our Father? There would be no surprise in that precious teaching for one who could write in childlike trust, "I showed before him my trouble."

February 17

God Knows - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path." Psa_142:3
It is often a deep relief in trouble to have someone with whom the grief may be shared. There is a certain pride natural to us all which prompts us to hide what we may have to bear. There are trials, too, of such a peculiar character that we can never hope to find an understanding heart. Nevertheless, speaking in general terms, it is a mighty solace to be able in our dark and bitter hour to pour our story into another's ear. Now that comfort, you notice, was denied this psalmist. "No man careth for my soul," he said. Crushed as he was into the very depths, men passed him by in selfish disregard. There was no one to whom he could go for a word of cheer, no one who would be patient while he spoke, no one he could trust with the story of his sorrow.

It was in such an hour this singer did what is always wise in such hours. "I cried unto the Lord with my voice, with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplications." Denied the privilege of human sympathy and with a heart that was likely to break for grief, "I poured out," he said, "my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble." Now, that this was a step of profound wisdom is abundantly manifest by its results. God answers his prayer by breathing a new hope into the cheerless gloom of His petitioner until at last this brokenhearted suppliant is set so surely on the rock again that he cries, "The righteous shall compass me about, for thou shalt deal bountifully with me."

We have all seen, amid our Highland hills, a day that opened in utter desolation. There was the rolling mist, the drenching rain, the forlorn sighing of the cheerless wind. All nature seemed to brood in hopelessness as if she had forgotten to be glad. Heavy sorrow seemed to lie upon her bosom and to struggle in despair in all her voices. But as the day wore on, the aspect changed. First there was a dull and watery sun and then the heavy mists went rolling upward; the light shone and birds began to sing. So in the afternoon came warmth and beauty, and in the beauty a softness and mystery that never would have fallen upon the land but for the dreary vapors of the morning.

Brethren, have you ever noticed in the Psalms a progress like that of our hills? Have you ever noticed how often they begin cheerless and tearful and with a shrouded sun? And then have you noticed how, as they proceed, they break into the light of joy and trust, a light that is made more beautiful and tender by its trailing and misty fringes of the morning. Such is the little Psalm before us here. It begins with a cry out of the very depths. It ends with the sunshine of the glad assurance, "Thou shalt deal bountifully with me."

Times of Desolation

First, then, let us examine some of the times in which our spirit is overwhelmed within us. And may I ask you to note the word the psalmist uses? "My spirit," he says, "was overwhelmed within me." Now, in the Old Testament whenever that word spirit is used, it carries the suggestion of activity. There is another passage in which the psalmist says, "When my heart is overwhelmed within me, lead me to the rock that is higher than I." But the overwhelming of the heart is a little different from the overwhelming of the spirit. The heart is the inward nature of the man viewed passively as the groundwork of his character. The heart is the soil from which the actions spring, white as the lily or black as the night. But the spirit is the action and the energy, the manhood rising up to face its duty, the treasury of life, if I may put it so, out of which all our conduct draws supply. And when the spirit is overwhelmed within us, there will always be one sign of that dejection. It is the sapping of the springs of energy, the heaviness and the weariness of duty. The hands grow weak, the knees become feeble; power and hope die down. The spirit hears the call but cannot rise to it—as the psalmist puts it, it is overwhelmed.

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God Knows - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Now one of the seasons when this is likely to happen is the season when troubles are multiplied. A single problem we can generally handle; it is when problems are multiplied that we fail. Now you may always be certain that where you find a proverb, it voices a pretty general experience. If a proverb is not generally true, men have no use for it and it dies. And one of the proverbs that has survived the years and grown familiar to every one of us is that troubles never come singly. Why, think of Job when a messenger came running to tell him that his oxen and asses had been stolen; and while he was yet speaking came another to tell him that his camels were gone. And while he was yet speaking another hotfooted in with more trouble, and I say that that is the experience which humanity corroborates. Had Job been written by some hermit scholar, he would have put an orderly space between the messengers. But whoever wrote that book knew human life well when he hurried the messengers on one after the other. Isn't that how troubles often come, thronging together, following one another, blow after blow in shattering succession? Now it is just that relentlessness that is so prone to overwhelm the spirit. "Innumerable evils have compassed me about; therefore my heart faileth me," says David. If a single wave were to dash against us, we would have power to resist the shock. It is when "all thy billows are gone over me" that the spirit is so near to being overwhelmed.

When We Feel Unequal to Our Duties

Another time when we are likely to faint is when we feel ourselves unequal to our difficulties. When the tasks of our appointed calling overwhelm us, then often our spirit is overwhelmed too. There comes times to every one of us when our courage melts, when tasks appall us, and doubts and fears rush in like the tide. It may be all a matter of our health, for body and spirit are in close union. It may be that our work becomes more difficult through competition or altering conditions. Or it may be that there is trouble somewhere that cannot be eradicated so that a person is unable to give himself to a task that calls for quiet or concentration. It is in such a time that even the most valiant are in danger of an overwhelmed spirit. The knees become weak; the hands hang down; strong men bow themselves and the keepers tremble. One cannot look upon the golden bowl but he shudders lest it be broken at the fountain.

The Mysteries of Providence

Such mysteries do not only crush the heart, they do far more; they overwhelm the spirit. You know how hard it is to be a faithful servant if you are serving an unreasonable master. Nothing so crushes the spirit out of service as to be at the sport of whim and of caprice. But, on the other hand, nothing is more effectual in making our service one of joy and steadfastness than just to know that the master whom we serve is a perfectly just and reasonable man.

You can crush the spirit of a child by cruelty and by terrorizing its imagination. But remember, there is another way that may be quite as fatal in the after-years. It is bringing the child up under the growing sense that in the conduct of the home there is no justice, that there is nothing over it from day to day but the foolish whim of affection or of temper.

Brethren, we are all children in this world, and we know that in heaven is our Almighty Father. And it isn't His chastisements that try our spirit, although His chastisements are often hard to bear. It isn't even what we cannot fathom—for who are we to comprehend the Infinite? It isn't what we cannot comprehend, but what we cannot reconcile. We do believe that God is perfect wisdom and perfect justice and all love. And it is when we meet with mysteries that we cannot reconcile with justice or love or wisdom that our spirit—our power for reasonable action—is likely to be crushed into the very dust. Why should one who would not harm a creature be bowed for years in acute pain? Why should a mother lose her one and only child? Why should the reprobate live for many years and be useless to all and a misery to many; and some precious life be terminated in the morning when its influence was so needed in the world?

By and by it will all be plain to us, for now we know in part and see in part. Blessed are they that having not seen, yet believed. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Yet compassed as we are by clouds and darkness and confronted by the mysteries of providence, have we not all had times like the psalmist's when our spirit was overwhelmed within us?

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God Knows - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Consolations of the Psalmist

Isn't it a mark of our overwhelming hours that our pathway seems to stop or disappear? Like the children of Israel on the banks of the Jordan, we are confronted by a swollen river. Our path seems to suddenly reach some chasm or ravine, and on the edge it disappears. How often we have taken a path across the fields that seemed to lead in the way we wished to go. For a little while it was plain beneath our feet, and then it grew fainter and became divided, until at last, perhaps when the sun was setting and the shadows of evening were falling on the valleys, the path we followed just disappeared. It is always so in overwhelming hours. We lose our peace because we lose our path. Our plans are crushed; our prospects are destroyed. We seem like helpless wanderers in the twilight. And it was then that David comforted his soul with the assurance that was given him from God, that all the time, although he couldn't see it, there was a pathway for his weary feet. He was not an aimless wanderer in the dark, the result of an accident or chance. His feet were moving on a prepared path through light and shade to a prepared end. Let him go forward trusting Jehovah—that was his duty if the path were there, and by and by it would lead him from the valley and bring him to the waters of repose.

And then the psalmist had this other comfort: not only was there a pathway, but God knew it. As he reviewed his overwhelming hours, he saw it clearly—"then thou knewest my path." The Thou is emphatic—the accent is on Thou. I did not know my path—but Thou didst. Of that the psalmist could never be in doubt when he surveyed the way he had been led.

Brethren, where the Scripture says "God knows," it means far more than bare words convey. Our knowledge is often useless and inoperative, but the knowledge of God is always full of action. He knows us, and therefore He will help us. He knows our path, and therefore He will guide us. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, the Lord was my shepherd and I did not want. Let us hold to that confidence whenever, like the psalmist, we are crushed in spirit. Clouds and darkness are around His throne, and yet He knows and is very merciful. And then at last, when the dayspring has arisen and the mystery has passed away forever; when the book is opened in which He keeps our wanderings, then we shall look back upon it all with all its happiness and all its heartbreak and say, "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path."

February 18

When the Spirit Is Overwhelmed

"My spirit is overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate." Psa_143:4
There are some natures more prone than others to this overwhelming of the spirit, but it wouldn't be true to say that the peril is limited to temperament. Some of the last persons one would ever dream of are prone to this hopeless sinking of the heart. I would expect it in Jeremiah, that most tremulous of all the prophets; but in Elijah—that man of iron will—I would scarcely anticipate finding it. Yet in the life of Elijah came an hour when, plunged into the deeps, his prayer was that God would let him die. There are few things that men hide so well as this inner desolation.

Sometimes such an overwhelming feeling comes for reasons that are purely physical. This is the body of our humiliation, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I asked a friend only the other evening if she ever experienced an overwhelmed spirit, and she answered, "When I am very, very tired." Nothing is more delicate and subtle than the interaction of the body and the soul. Lack of faith is sometimes related to lack of health which should make us very tenderhearted and forbearing in judgment towards those who are never really well.

Sometimes we become overwhelmed through simple failure to do our duty. To shirk our God-appointed task is to court the presence of despair. When Christian and Hopeful were on the King's Highway, Giant Despair was never encountered. But when they got into By-path Meadow, then they fell into the giant's clutches. And whenever anybody leaves the King's Highway, sooner or later, but inexorably, "melancholy marks him for her own." To omit the task we know we ought to do, to shirk the duty of the hour and shun the cross, to refuse to lift the burden and put selfishness in place of service—all this, in this strange life of ours, is to head straight for the overwhelmed spirit.

Times of Darkness Are Not Times for Judgment

I should like, too, to add here that we should never pass judgment in overwhelming hours. Let a man accept the verdict of his Lord, but never the verdict of his melancholy. Hours come when everything seems wrong and when all the lights of heaven are blotted out, and how often, in such desolate hours, do we fall to judging the universe and God! It is part of the conduct of the instructed soul to resist that as a temptation of the devil. Such hours are always unreliable. The things that frighten us in the night are the things we smile at in the morning. We are like that traveler who in the fog thought he saw a ghost; when it came nearer, he found it was a man; and when it came up to him, it was his brother. Overwhelming times are times for leaning; God does not mean them to be times for judging. They are given to us for trusting; they are not given to us for summing up. Leave that till the darkness has departed and the dawn is on the hills, and in His light we see light again.

Indeed, the great need in overwhelming hours is the old, old need of trust in God. It is to feel, as the hymn has it, that we are "safe in the arms of Jesus." To be assured that God is love and that He will never leave us nor forsake us; to be assured that He knows the way we take and that His wings are folded over us all the time, that is the way to keeping a brave heart when everything is dark and desolate. Plunged into such depths, there is something even deeper. There is the love of God commended in the cross. Underneath are the everlasting arms. So we endure as seeing the invisible, and then (and often sooner than we expect) the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

February 19

The Setting of the Pearl

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ— Mat_1:1

The Fact of Jesus—Mark's Gospel

It is generally agreed that the Gospel of St. Mark is the earliest of the four Gospels, and it is notable that in this earliest Gospel there is no genealogy at all. St. Mark does not give the ancestry of Christ, nor does he say a word about His lineage. He stands beside the flowing river, and never seeks to trace it to its source. St. Mark, from the very outset, has his gaze fixed upon the Savior, and brings the reader face to face with Him. There is no attempt to explain the fact of Christ, by relating it to the long past. All that will come in season, for unrelated facts can never satisfy. The first thing is to have Jesus shown us, to be confronted with Him as a living person, and that is the divine office of St. Mark.

His Relation to the Old Testament—St. Matthew's Gospel

But just because man is a reasonable being he can never find rest in isolated facts. And in the next Gospel, the Gospel of St. Matthew, you have our Lord related to the past. St. Mark plunges into the heart of things. He confronts you with the Savior. He says: "If you want to understand the Lord the first thing is to fix your gaze on Him." Then St. Matthew takes that isolated fact, and traces it back to David and to Abraham; Christ is "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Mat_1:1). St. Matthew is thinking out what Christ implies, the Christ who had changed his life down to the deeps, and the great truth which dawns on him is this, that it takes David and Abraham to comprehend Him. In other words, St. Matthew says that if you want to understand the Lord, you must take in the whole of Jewish history. To St. Matthew, Christ is the crown of Jewish history. Without Him it is inexplicable. It was to Him that the sacrifices pointed. It was of Him that all the prophets wrote. That is why, for all its difficulties, we never can dispense with the Old Testament. Christ is the son of David, who is the son of Abraham.

His Relation to Adam—Luke's Gospel

Then you come to the Gospel of St. Luke, and in St. Luke you have a larger setting. St. Luke does not trace the lineage to Abraham. He traces it right back to Adam: "which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam" (Luk_3:38). Beyond the parent of the Jewish race stands the parent of the human race. Beyond the representative of Israel stands the representative of man. And St. Luke sees that to comprehend the Lord calls for more than the history of Israel; it calls for the long story of humanity. Much in Christ will always be unintelligible, unless you know the page of the Old Testament. But it takes more than the page of the Old Testament to reach His full significance. Christ is the son of Adam, says St. Luke. He is vitally related to humanity. He is in living touch with all mankind. St. Matthew says: "If you want to understand Him, you must lay your hand upon the Jewish heart."

St. Luke says: "If you want to understand Him, you must lay your hand upon the human heart." And one of the beautiful features of St. Luke's Gospel is the stress it lays upon that larger setting—on Christ as the Savior of mankind. The Gospel is full of tender human touches, such touches as make the whole world kin. Roman officers march across its avenues. The Good Samaritan is there. In the Christ of St. Luke there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. He is the son of Adam.

His Relation to God—John's Gospel

Lastly we come to the Gospel of St. John, the last of the four Gospels, written after years of ceaseless brooding on everything the Lord had meant. How then does St. John begin? What is the lineage he gives? Is he content to trace Christ back to Abraham, or to set Him in relationship to Adam? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." St. Mark gives the fact of Christ, and bids us start by contemplating that. St. Matthew relates that fact to Jewish history; St. Luke to the whole history of man. Then comes St. John, after the lapse of years, and says, "All that-is not enough. If you want to understand the Lord you must relate Him immediately to God." That is the final setting—that the ultimate relationship. The glory of the Man St. John had known is that of the only-begotten of the Father. He comes from Abraham. He comes from Adam. Yes, says St. John, but there is another lineage: "the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

February 20

The Wise Men and the Star - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

There came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him— Mat_2:1-2

God Speaks Our Language

One of the first lessons of this passage is that God speaks to men in ways they can understand. These Chaldeans had been stargazers from childhood; the study of the nightly heavens was their passion. They had watched the stars with a patience and an accuracy such as are never suffered to go unrewarded. And now by the aid of the stars they loved so well and on which they had meditated with such unwearied devotion, they are brought to the feet of the Infant in the manger. The shepherds were not Chaldeans, they were Jews. They had been trained in the doctrines of the angels. I dare say they never went out to the pasture at night without hoping to see some shimmer of angel's wings. So it was by the long expected voice of angels that the shepherds received the tidings of the Christ. But the Chaldeans had not learned the lore of angels; it was the lore of stars they were familiar with; God spake to the separate companies in separate voices, but the voices were those that each could understand. That is always true. His voice is as the sound of many waters. He is a Father, and you never heard of a father who took his children on his knee and answered their questions in Latin or in Greek. We shall never understand the Bible truly, nor shall we ever value aright all that we learned in childhood, until we have grasped this simple yet profound truth, that God speaks to men in ways they can understand.

People Led to Christ in Unlikely Ways

Another lesson of this passage is the unlikely ways in which men may be led to Jesus. We know that the prophets pointed to Jesus; so did the law—Christ was the end of the law. So did the sacrifices on the Jewish altars, and the stern summons to repentance of the Baptist. All these things were intended and adapted to guide men into the presence of Messiah, and multitudes journeyed to His presence so. But a star—do you think that was a likely leader? Is that the duty and the function of a star? Yet by a star, as surely as by the angels, were men conducted to Bethlehem. Let us be taught, then, that by unlooked-for ways men may be led to light and love and liberty. Let us never limit the power of the Almighty in opening up avenues to Jesus' feet. There are men who have heard a thousand sermons, and been deaf to the whole range of evangelical appeal, who have yet been won for Christ by a stray word in passing, or by some act of self-sacrificing kindness. There are women whom all the praise of the sanctuary has not moved, but who have been turned to God by the ceasing of childish laughter. The star is a type of the strange and unlooked-for ways in which men are led to the feet of Jesus Christ.

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The Wise Men and the Star - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Intense Curiosity of the Wise Men

A third lesson of this passage is the intense curiosity of these men about the King. Nothing would satisfy them but that they must leave home and kindred, and set out on a long and toilsome journey, and brave a hundred dangers on the road, all for the sake of worshipping Christ. Had it been a king of the whole East who had been promised them, I could have better understood their curiosity. For there is a strong desire in the heart of a loyal subject to get a glimpse of his own future sovereign. But it was not a king of Chaldea they were seeking—"Where is He that is called King of the Jews?" And when I think of that passionate inquiry for the unknown monarch of an alien race, and how they traveled hundreds of miles to see Him—and how they troubled Jerusalem about Him, and would not be baffled nor beaten in the search, I am amazed at the mysterious interest excited by the new-born Savior. The strange thing is that from that hour to this, that curiosity has never died away. In the whole of history Jesus is the supremely fascinating figure. More thoughts are directed to Jesus in one day than to Caesar or Napoleon in ten years. More books are written about Jesus now than about any hundred of earth's greatest men. There is an inexplicable mystery and charm about that simple Galilean figure; and the world is still as curious about Him as were the wise men when they saw His star.

Anxious Inquiries by Those Far Away

Again, the most anxious inquirers about Jesus were men who were very far away from Him. I wish you to compare these pilgrims from the East with the men gathered in the inn at Bethlehem. The Chaldeans were many a long mile away, and the company in the inn were at the manger. Yet it was not the latter band, it was the former, who were eager about the newborn Savior.

There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But some were out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold.
Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender shepherd's care—

yet who were the nearest to Jesus Christ that night—was it not those who were so far away? That is a parable of what often happens. At home, in the bosom of a Christian country, we are always in danger of careless unconcern. We are exposed to that worst indifference that springs from the dying of the sense of wonder. Meantime, from distant countries like Chaldea, come tidings of the kingdom being taken by violence. Once again the most anxious seekers are men whom we should say were far away.

The Apparent Insignificance of What They Found

Lastly, let us not fail to observe the apparent insignificance of what they found. When the Queen of Sheba set out from Arabia, and entered with her fine retinue into Jerusalem, she saw such lavish glory there that her heart sank under the wonder of it. But when the wise men from the East came to the inn, expecting perhaps some sight of royal majesty, they found in happy innocence—a Child. I wonder if they felt a touch of disappointment? Was it worthwhile to make that tedious journey, and this—this little Babe—the end of it? We know now that it was well worthwhile; that Infant of days was the eternal Lord. So there come times to everyone of us when we are tempted to ask, "Is all our effort worthwhile?" We pray and serve and struggle through the darkness, and the end of it all seems (as it were) a manger. But for us, too, the eternal dawn is coming when the King in His beauty shall meet us with a welcome; and I think we shall find then, like the wise men from the East, that the journey to Bethlehem was well worthwhile.

February 21

They Found What They Diligently Sought - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother— Mat_2:11

At Last They Reached Their Goal

I notice first of all that these wise men from the East came to the house at last. They had had a long and toilsome and perhaps a perilous journey; they had crossed the desert and they had forded rivers; yet in spite of all hardship and difficulty and obstruction, here they were at their desired haven. There had been days when their journey seemed a failure, when they were tempted to renounce it altogether; they had knocked at door after door in Jerusalem seeking news, yet for a long time they had knocked in vain. They had thought to have found Jerusalem rejoicing—illuminated, maybe, because its King was born; and men were at business and little children were playing, as if nothing remarkable had happened. They had said to each other as they battled across the desert, "Our difficulties will be over when we reach Judaea. The roads will be thronged with pilgrims travelling kingwards, and we will join ourselves to one of these singing companies." But the roads were empty, and listen as they might, the wise men could not catch one burst of song. There were a thousand things to dishearten or discourage them. It was almost impossible that they should be successful. Their Chaldean neighbors had told them it was folly when they set out a week or two before. But with magnificent enthusiasm they persevered—nothing could baffle them or daunt them or dismay them—and all that story of heroism is in these opening words, "when they were come into the house."

A Great Effort May Be behind a Few Common Words

What a stirring and great history may lie under half a dozen commonplace words! A few quiet sentences, when the time of utterance comes, may cover the effort and the pain of years. It is not always in impassioned declamation that the deepest concerns of the human heart are spoken. There may be hardly the lifting of the voice, yet the words may tell of the tragedy of years. A young man may quietly say, "I cannot do that," and to the unobservant ear that may mean little; yet struggle and failure and repentance and prayer and promise may all be hidden in that quiet refusal. There is more heroism in a smiling face sometimes than in half of the deeds that are chronicled in battle. There may be more self-mastery in the doing of quiet duty than in the scourging of a whole calendar of saints. A world of effort and of hope deferred and of resolute uplifting of a man's brow again—all this may be hidden in such a simple sentence as "when they were come into the house."

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They Found What They Diligently Sought - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Secret of Their Perseverance: They Followed a Star

The secret of the perseverance of these wise men is not hard to find. It sprang from this, that they were following a star. Had they been guided by anything less than that, they would have sunk down wearied long ago. Do you think, now, if they had read about this King in some of their Chaldean or Babylonian libraries—do you think that that literary discovery would have buoyed them up and carried them at last into the manger? It needed more than earth to carry them through; it needed the bright and beckoning radiance of the sky. They were strong because their guidance was a star. They looked to the lamp of heaven and not to earth's taper. And if they battled bravely, and journeyed with zeal unquenchable, and if nothing could turn them from their unheard-of quest, it was because they followed, not a light of earth, but a light that was hung aloft by God.

God behind Great Human Enthusiasms

You may make up your mind that all the great enthusiasms have had at the heart of them something religious. When a man can follow a great purpose steadily, through ridicule and insult and obstruction, there is more than strength of will in it—there is God. He who sees no star never can be stable. He wanders vainly in a trackless wilderness. Conflicting voices reach him; he is perplexed; he cannot tell whither he is moving. But when above all mists our eyes have seen the light, when we can say, "Come night or agony, God reigneth," when we believe that no effort is in vain, and that there is not a pang but has a meaning in it, then life is filled with such a quiet purpose that like the wise men we come to the house at last.

The Variety of Motives That Brought People to Bethlehem

We should never forget the variety of motives that brought men under that roof at Bethlehem. The house was an inn or caravanserai, and we know that at that season it was very full; the wise men from the East had varied company when they came into the house that nightfall. Merchants were there, and all manner of wayfarers, and men who had gathered in Bethlehem for the taxing. And they began to eat and they chatted by the fire and they rehearsed their adventures by the way; but not a man of them dreamed that in that very building the Christ of God was born into the world. They came into the house and saw the Child, and they said, This is no place for a tender child like that. They came into the house and saw the Child, and they said, God have mercy on that poor mother there! But the wise men came, and when they saw they worshipped, and presented gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Most of us Cannot See the unusual in the Common

How blind most of us are! How little we know what is going on! We rise and journey and eat and go to rest and we know not what is being transacted at our door. Tragedies happen, lives are altered in an hour, heroical deeds are done or are attempted, and you and I, living within a stone's throw, may never hear one whisper of it all. The isolation of a great city is pitiable. Who lives in that house a few doors off? We do not know. But one day the blinds are drawn, someone is dead; and there have been tears and watching and breaking hearts within it; yet all the time we were happy with our children and could not have told you so much as our neighbor's name. Many a husband goes cheerily to business, in total ignorance of what his wife is suffering. Many a father would be amazed tonight if he knew the thoughts that were stirring in his daughter's heart. The greatest things are never obtrusive things. They are never clamorous or noisy or spectacular. How many are in the inn where Christ is born, yet they know nothing of the glory.

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They Found What They Diligently Sought - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

They Saw and Knew Him Whom They Were Seeking

Do you observe why the wise men saw the King when all the others that night at Bethlehem were blind to Him? The simple reason is that they were seeking Him, and just because they were seeking Him, they saw. Where is He that is born King of the Jews—they had troubled all Jerusalem with their questions. They were more than stargazers, they were anxious searchers not to be beaten off in their endeavor. And so where others saw nothing but a child, they saw, because they had searched for Him, a King. We read that Caesar came and saw and conquered; but these three wise men came and saw and worshipped; and to worship is sometimes better than to conquer, if they be not identical before the Throne. That is an exquisite title which John Bunyan gives to the church. You remember that he calls it the House Beautiful. When you are come into the House Beautiful which is the church the supreme question is, what do you see? It all depends on what you come to see. It all depends on what you have been seeking. If you seek to find fault you shall find it very easily, for neither preaching nor singing nor prayer is ever perfect. If you seek the fellowship of men and women you shall get it, for in the sanctuary men and women gather. But if you seek for more than that, if you seek light and guidance, if you seek power to live well, and power to die well, then poor though the worship may be, never a service shall pass, but you shall be blessed by seeing what you sought.

First They Saw the Young Child

In closing will you notice this, that the wise men saw the young Child and His mother. First the young Child—it was a child-and-mother picture, not mother-and-child, as the catalogues describe it. There are those who cannot see the Child, they are so taken up with gazing on the mother; but the wise men saw the Child, and then in that very glance they saw beautiful and peerless motherhood. They had found all they looked for and a little more, for they could never forget the look in Mary's face. It is always so when a man sees God for himself. We see the young Child and—something more. Motherhood, fatherhood, duty and trial and burden—all are lit with a new radiance from that hour. Then like the wise men we go home again, but like them, warned of God, we go another way; for the old ways and the old days are done and dead, when once we have seen God in Jesus Christ.

February 22

Consecration - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him— Mat_3:13

The Baptism of Jesus Was Surrender to Vocation

The baptism of our Lord was His self-consecration to His lifework. It was His dedication to His public ministry. When others were baptized in Jordan, it was a symbol of their need of cleansing. Awakened to the guilt of sin, they were promising amendment of their lives. But when our Savior was baptized, He had no sin to be repented of. His baptism was surrender to vocation. Hitherto He had been preparing for it. He had been, if one might put it so, at college. In the secret fidelities of home God had been training Him to be the faithful witness (Rev_1:5). Now He was entering on His public ministry, and for that He was set apart and consecrated by this open and voluntary action. In what, then, did that dedication issue? What were its spiritual and immediate consequences? It is not wasted time to meditate on these things.

Clearer Vision Followed Full Surrender

First, then, it issued in a clearer vision, for we read that the heavens were opened unto Him. That does not point to a material sky, but to a vision breaking on His soul. When Peter was praying on the housetop, he, too, saw the heavens opened. In that great moment there was revealed to him the spiritual equality of Jew and Gentile. So our Lord, when the heavens were opened to Him, won a larger and a clearer vision, and won it because in full surrender He had dedicated Himself to God. That always follows personal dedication. To see, we must surrender. It is when we give ourselves with our whole heart to anything that it breaks out into a wealth of meaning. It is when we give ourselves with our whole heart to God that, like our Lord, we see the heavens opened, and new vision dawns upon the soul.

Personal Dedication Brings New Endowment

Again, this personal dedication brought with it at once a new endowment, for we read that as He left the river, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. When God bestows His Spirit on a child, He gives it up to the capacity of childhood. God does not pour into a little cup what it would take a flagon to contain. So then the Spirit of God filled the holy Child, it was not that He might be a perfect man: it was that He might be a perfect child. As a child He was a perfect child, and as a youth He was a perfect youth. All that was needed for those quiet years was given without measure. But now these sheltered years were over, with their lowly tasks, and happiness of home, and He was launching out into the deep. Before Him lay the highway of Messiahship, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the long conflict with the powers of darkness, the crucifixion on the tree. And for that He needed an equipment which He had never needed as a child, nor in the lowly duties of the home. That is what God gave Him at the Jordan, when the Holy Spirit descended on Him there—grace for His unparalleled vocation as the one Savior of mankind. The full surrender of the baptism was owned and honored by a full equipment—and so it is with every believer.

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Consecration - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

A Sense of Filial Intimacy

Again, the dedication of the baptism issued in a new sense of filial intimacy, for immediately there was a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son." We know that even from His childhood Jesus had dwelt in the fatherhood of God. The presence of God as a loving heavenly Father had been His through all the silent years. But never, till the hour of baptism, had this deep sense been verified and owned by audible witness from the other side. There came a voice now, carrying in its utterance intense and irresistible conviction. There came the glorious and immediate certainty of One who never had been far away. And all this when He came up from Jordan, and when, for life and agony and death, He had yielded Himself up a living sacrifice. Not when He was a happy child at Nazareth, wandering and playing in the fields there; not when He was a lad of twelve, intensely and spiritually eager; but when He gave Himself, yielded up Himself, immersed Himself in the baptism of sinners, did He have the divine assurance of the voice of the Father.

The Dove Gave Him a Certainty of Sacrifice

Lastly, the dedication of the baptism issued in the certainty of sacrifice, for we read that when the heavens were opened, He saw the Spirit descending like a dove. Now the dove is a very gentle bird, and you and I have a very gentle Savior. As we read the story of His life, we are often reminded of the dove. But the first thing which the Holy Spirit did was to drive Him out into the wilderness, and that is scarcely significant of gentleness. Something more than gentleness is here, and every Jew could tell you what it was. For the dove was the one and only bird that was ever sacrificed upon a Jewish altar. And do you not think that when in that high hour the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, our blessed Savior would see the meaning of it? Just as the dove was laid upon the altar, so He was going to be laid upon the altar. Just as the dove was sacrificed for sin, so He was going to be sacrificed for sin. In that great moment of perfect dedication, when He identified Himself with sinful man, there was revealed the necessity of Calvary.

February 23

The Temptation of Jesus - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil— Mat_4:1

Christ's Temptation: It Was Real

Whatever view we take of the temptation—whether it was an inward struggle or an actual scene—the one thing to remember is its intense reality. Prayerfully and reverently we must strive to realize that the temptations of Jesus were unutterably severe! It is not difficult to realize Christ's brotherhood in suffering. It is very difficult to do so in temptation. And one great reason of that is, that in our temptations, we are so conscious of sinful impulses within. But when we remember that our temptations sometimes touch not what is worst, but what is noblest in us; when we think that without the sorest and fiercest trial, the thought of sinlessness has little meaning, then we dimly perceive how intense temptation might be to a spotless and holy Savior. There is nothing more heavenly than a mother's love, yet sometimes a mother is tempted most severely just because she loves her children so. If men were always tempted at their weakest, we could hardly understand a tempted Jesus. If our temptations only lit where we were worst, Christ (who had no worst) could not have been tempted. But when we see (and time and again we see it) that the sorest onset may be on the saintliest side, then we know that the temptations of Jesus may have been unutterably sore, since Jesus was unutterably good.

Truth Was His Nature, Not His Pursuit

One of the shining features of the life of Jesus is His great and glorious fidelity. In the largest compass of the words He came to bear witness to the truth, He was supremely true to His brethren of mankind—He was as a brother born for adversity. He was supremely true to Himself and to the moving of His heart of love. He was supremely true to His heavenly Father, in whose unbroken fellowship He lived, and in whose will He found His motive and His peace! One never gets the impression from His life that He was passionately— struggling to be true.

Yet Victory Was an Achievement

There is a largeness and a liberty about Him that tell of a heart which has arrived. One feels that the battle has been fought, that the great determination has been made, before He opened the roll in the synagogue of Nazareth. Now that does not mean that this supreme fidelity was an innate equipment of the Savior. Like His sinlessness it was a vast achievement, wrought out in conflict with temptation. (Editor's note: The Lord Jesus was, however, unlike any other human in that He was born sinless. But His victory over temptation was not an empty one. His practical sinlessness was an achievement. In a similar manner, when we become children of God through our new birth we become positionally sinless in Christ, but practically we are still "sinners saved by grace." Temptation is real and therefore victory against temptation is a practical achievement. We do not acquire sinlessness by our practical victories against temptation but through the sinless Christ who became our substitute on the cross.) And of that conflict we have the vivid history, before His public ministry began, in the narrative of the temptation in the wilderness. There He was tempted, and very really tempted, to be untrue to His brethren of mankind. There He was tempted to be untrue to God and to all that was deepest in Himself. When we view the temptation in that light we catch a glimpse of the terrific struggle that preceded the perfect fidelity of Jesus.

The Time of Its Occurrence on the Threshold of His Glorious Career

With such thoughts we may approach the scene; and if we would hope to understand it, we must remember the time of its occurrence. The place of its occurrence matters less though to a heart filled with the loveliness of Galilee the grimness of the desert would be awful. But the time of the temptation matters much, for the tempter is a master in his choice of hours. Jesus, then, had been baptized in Jordan. He had been endowed with gifts from heaven for His ministry. All He had dimly seen upon the hills of Nazareth now rose before Him as His mission to mankind. In such tumultuous hours men crave for solitude. In such an hour the Spirit drove Jesus to the desert. It was, then, on the threshold of His ministry, and facing His lifework with its infinite issues, that the tempter came to Him. It is in the light of His service and His sacrifice that we shall reach the inward molding of the scene. These are the dark hours through which Jesus passed on the threshold of His glorious career.

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The Temptation of Jesus - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The First Temptation Proved Him Faithful to Humanity

The first temptation seems a simple one. "If thou be the Son of God," says the tempter, "command that these stones may be made bread." Jesus had been fasting forty days; now He was in the dire pangs of hunger. What possible harm or danger could there be in satisfying the pangs of hunger so? Had not God rained down manna in the desert? Had not Elijah been miraculously fed by ravens? The real temptation lay in using for Himself the powers that had been given Him to use for man. He was baptized in Jordan that He might show His brotherhood. He did not stand above John on the bank; He went and stood beside John in the river. At His baptism He had gone down into the water—He had stood where sinful man was standing—He had identified Himself with sinful man, as at the end He did upon the Cross. And if here, in the agony of hunger, He had miraculously created bread He would have cut the tie that bound Him to His brethren. When He fed the thousands with the loaves and fishes He was using His divine prerogative for others. That was His God-appointed mission: He was sent to satisfy our need. But had He used these powers for Himself, in an experience common to humanity, He would have broken His brotherhood with man. How could the poor ever have said again that they had a real brother in the Lord? How could the famishing ever had been certain of the perfect understanding of the Savior? Had He miraculously turned these stones to bread, and left His brethren to sweat and toil for bread, no longer would He have been the Son of Man. And when a man is tempted to a selfish life, or to use for himself alone the graces and the means that have been given him in trust for others, then is the tempter whispering to him, as he spake to Jesus in the wilderness. And whenever a man denies himself, and sacrifices something for a brother, he is sharing in the victory of Christ.

The Second Temptation Proved Him Faithful to Himself

As in the first temptation He is true to others, in the second He is true to His own self. That is why He scornfully refused to fling Himself on the astonished populace. It was the common expectation of that populace that the Messiah would appear in sudden splendor. Suddenly He would flash upon their eyes in an epiphany dramatic and divine. But our Lord Jesus, intimate with heaven, knew that epiphanies were not like that, nor were these the signals of His coming. He knew that the Kingdom must grow as does a mustard-seed, nor does it ever come with observation.) He knew that when men say "Lo, here!" it is not the real Christ whom they are hailing. (So, resisting the very real temptation to manifest Himself in splendor to the populace, He was supremely true to His own self) He came by quiet ways, and as the light cometh when the day is breaking. He came as the leaven which does not burst the loaf, but works in secret till the whole be leavened. In the first temptation He fought His lonely way to a perfect fidelity to man. From the second He emerged in triumph perfectly faithful to Himself.

The Third Temptation Proved Him Faithful to His Father

And then the third temptation shows our Savior perfectly faithful to His Father. "All these kingdoms will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." We are tempted along the line of our desires, and our Lord was tempted in all points like as we are. He had been dreaming, in the days at Nazareth, of a worldwide and universal reign. And now the devil comes and whispers to Him, "Renounce God and ally yourself with me, and I shall give you the longing of your heart." What a magnificent temptation, tribute to a magnificent Redeemer. What a fierce temptation, when we bear in mind that these kingdoms were the yearning of His being. But our Lord in an instant recognized the treachery, and recoiled from it in an infinite abhorrence, and emerged triumphant because true to God, He took the long, long road which is the road of heaven—the road that was wet with sorrows and with tears—the road that led, through loving human service, to the crown of thorns and to the pierced hands. My meat is to do the will of Him who sent Me. I come to do Thy will, O God. Supremely true to His brethren and Himself, here He is supremely true to God.

February 24

Christ's Temptation—How and When? - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil— Mat_4:1

Jesus, as a Man, Was Tempted in Order to Show That No One Can Escape Temptation
If our blessed Savior had to be the very Son of Man, it was, of course, inevitable that He should be tempted, because that is the one experience nobody ever escapes; it is the touch of nature—one of the touches of nature—that makes us all akin. A man may escape great calamity, a man may escape overpowering illness, a man may escape the perils of being very poor and the perils of being very rich; but there is one thing that nobody escapes, from the king on his throne to the beggar on the highway, that is, the experience of being tempted. And therefore, if our Lord was to be the perfect Son of Man, it was quite inevitable He should be tempted. The man who is never tempted has either sunk to the level of the beast, or risen to the level of angels. Is there anybody who is never tempted, just because evil has already gotten complete control of him—anybody who can do things with unconcern that twenty years ago would have made him halt a moment? I don't think there is any prayer for such a man except just, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Of course, if we were all tempted on our worst side, our blessed Savior could never have been tempted, because His nature was that of heaven—while yours and mine has much of hell in it. But I think you will see how, in our common life, we are very often tempted not on the side of what is bad, but just on the side of what is good. Here is a mother, and how she loves her son; it is the finest thing about her. She used to be a careless girl, and now she is a self-sacrificing woman. How often mothers are just tempted not on the side of what is bad, but just in that beautiful love for their children. Or here is a man very, very fond of his wife and children—someone once said that whenever the devil tempts an Englishman he always does it in the guise of wife and children—here is a man very fond of his wife and children; it is the most beautiful thing about him; in business he has got rather a shady character, but he is almost perfect in his home. How often a man is tempted, perhaps, just to do things that conscience does not agree to because of his dear care for wife and children. You see, you and I are very often tempted not on the side of what is bad, but on the side of what is good; and if you follow out that thought a little, don't you come to see it was possible that our Lord was tempted, even though His nature was pure? I think sometimes we are very apt to misconceive the sinlessness of Christ, as if it was a garment given to Him by God, and He could not put it off even if He tried. It was not a garment, it was a victory. It was not an endowment, it was an achievement. Every hour the Lord was tempted, and every hour He put it from Him, until at last His sinlessness was final, and He cried, "It is finished." And if you regard that as the sinlessness of Jesus, wrought out every moment, every moment tempted, every moment obedient to God until the end, you begin to see He was tempted just as you and I are.

His Temptation Makes Us Consider Him Our Brother

The thought I wanted to follow out was this. I wanted to ask, Along what lines did the tempter come to Christ? Because if we discover that, then we begin to understand that He was tempted just as we are. You know it is very difficult to feel that Christ is really our Brother. There is so much in Him that is different—His power, His nature is so unlike yours and mine, that it is a kind of relief to discover a touch of brotherhood. That is why we love to hear that He was weary—perhaps some of you are weary now; that is why we love to hear that He was hungry—there are people that have known hunger; that is why we love to hear that He was tempted—it draws Him near us. And if we discover the tempter came to Him very much as he comes to you and me, you have got a brother born for adversity. There is nothing in life like that.

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Christ's Temptation—How and When? - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Three Times When Temptation Strikes

I want you to note, first, how the tempter came to Him at the very beginning of His task, before He had wrought a single miracle, before He had said a single word. I suppose that in these forty days in the wilderness our Lord was meditating on the future. I don't think there was a single incident that ever came to Him that our Lord had not anticipated in these forty days. He was looking forward to all that was coming, and it was just then the devil tempted Him.

I think there are three times in every great task when one is peculiarly liable to be tempted. The first is the start, when things are looming up before him. The second is when he is halfway through, the arrow that flieth at midday, when he has lost the glow and glory of the morning. The third is at the end, when he is tempted to think it has all been just a failure: like Lord Kelvin: near the end of his career he said he could only describe his life as a failure. I think it would be easy to show that our Lord was tempted at these times—right in the middle when the first enthusiasm had died away, right at the end when He had to turn to Peter and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," and here, just at the beginning. There is a curious correspondence in many details at the end of His life with the details of the start, and I sometimes think that out in the desert here there had been something of Gethsemane, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." It was going to be an awful cup, awful, bitter as gall. And then, just in an instant, "Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt."

Tempted at the Start of His Ministry

Just at the start our blessed Lord was tempted. There may be someone who is starting a new task, perhaps in the Church, perhaps in the city, called to it by your duty. Well, if you are a lightweight, one of these jaunty people, of course it won't trouble you. My experience is that these kind of jaunty people never get there. But if you are deep and serious, and take life earnestly, when the thing looms up before you, then you are tempted to despair. I remember an eminent man in this city, called to a great task, telling me how the first thing he did (he was not commonly afraid) was to bow his head down in his hands and say to a friend, "It can't be me." Whenever you have these temptations, is not it a great thing that you are sure the Lord knows it? He has been there. He understands; you can get His fellowship even in that. A young writer once wrote to Sir Walter Scott, and he said, "Sir, I don't know how it is, but just when I am beginning a new book my heart sinks, formless fears surge up." And Scott, that gallant heart, wrote back, "My dear fellow, I feel it just as much as you do." You have got to think how that young writer was encouraged by the sympathy of that great soul, and you and I have got the sympathy of Someone infinitely greater.

Or again, there may be somebody who is starting a far more difficult task, and that is the task of taking up your cross, the task of bearing a great sorrow. By and by it will get a little easier. Time is a great healer; time rubs the edges off the boldest granite on the Arran hills. Men picture time with a scythe; I picture time with a vial of balm that it just pours into your gaping wounds. But at the very outset, is it not difficult? A few weeks ago, a month ago, you lost somebody very dear; now you are called to a task that is going to last through life; that is, bearing your cross of sorrow. At the very beginning are you not tempted, tempted to wonder if God is love, tempted to wonder if God cares, tempted to be dull and heartless when other lives are dependent on your brightness? It is a great thing to think that in an hour of that kind you have the sympathy, the understanding of the Lord Jesus. His task was not to manage a business. His task was to bear a cross: "Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." And at the very start, to Him, just as to you, comes the devil, tempting you to doubt the Father, and to wonder if there is any love in heaven. "In every pang that rends the heart, the Man of Sorrows had a part."

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Christ's Temptation—How and When? - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Tempted in the Hour of Reaction

Again, I think it must occur to you that our Lord was tempted in the hour of reaction. I suppose you all know what reaction is? It is the recoil after a time of stress and excitement. Our Lord was subtly tempted in the hour of reaction. Well now, consider. I suppose the hour of the baptism of Christ, which just preceded, was an hour of the most terrific strain. You have got to try and picture it. It lies there quietly upon the Gospel page, but when you get to its meaning what an hour of strain it was—the old now gone, the quiet and beauty of Nazareth, the love of His mother. "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" was just coming, and then all the future of blood and sorrow, and all that; the cleavage of it, the baptism, and then identified with sinful man, and then equipped by the Holy Ghost for all His ministry, and then heaven opening and a voice speaking to Him—try and think of the tremendous strain of it. Mark tells us that He was driven to the wilderness. I wonder no great painter has ever painted that. The Lord, bowed and driven by what was uncontrollable to get alone to think it all out, and then for forty clays so wrapped in it that He quite forgot to eat. And then, suddenly, spent in every power, and wearied to His fingertips, then the devil comes—is not he subtle? Then the devil comes, in the very hour of reaction. Not when the candle of God is shining on His head, not when all the lights are burning, not when He is strong and quivering with life, but in that awful hour of weakness and reaction. Brother, sister, is it not so still? The devil leaves us when we are happy, and comes back when the tide is at the ebb. I want you to remember in these hours when there is no music, when all the lights are burning dim, when you are so weary you can hardly face your task, when after some time of spiritual intensity you are tempted, that the Lord knows it. He was just so tempted; He has just come through it. He holds out His hand and calls you brother.

Tempted along the Line of His Desires

There is only one thing more I want to say, and it is this. I want you to notice how our Lord was tempted along the line of His desires, along the line of His ambitions (if I might venture to use that somewhat degraded word). You have that in every one of the temptations; you have it specially in the third. He would go out and preach about the Kingdom—no man worth anything preaches on what he has not given his intense thought to when you were busy at your business—and the Lord had been thinking of the Kingdom in these forty days when He was all alone, I suppose, saying to Himself, "My mother thought the Kingdom was for the Jews; and God, My Father, is showing Me that it is not. The Kingdom is going to include every kingdom in the world." And just then the devil comes to Him, and what does he do? Contradict Him? Never! The devil comes and says, "Sir, that is a most laudable ambition; accept my help; just let me give you a hand and all the kingdoms of the world will become yours." And our Lord said, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Do you see the tactics he uses? That is exactly what happens today. Take for instance, a preacher who is on fire to preach the Gospel; but what is the use of preaching when the church is empty? Of course, his deep desire, though he does not say it to you, is to have his church full. And just then the devil comes to him and—contradicts him? Never. Says, That is a poor kind of ambition? Nothing of the kind. The devil says, "Now I want you to let me help you. Don't preach on such and such things; be modern, just avoid the Cross; sometimes take a risky subject about the eternal triangle; advertise flaming, flashing titles, just have a touch of the music hall about your service, and it will all come right." And the Lord says, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

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Christ's Temptation—How and When? - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

Take a man whose great ambition is to advance in his field. Men who are content to be failures are not in God's line. Here is a man determined to advance, wanting to progress—and he is perfectly right, and the more of you who get ahead the better. And then Satan comes to him. Does he contradict him? Does he say to him, "Friend, you ought to have higher motives than that"? He says, "Won't you just allow me to help you a little?" The man is tempted to do something that he knows is wrong. The man is tempted to give bribes; to say, Of course everybody gives them, and I have my wife and children to look after. And the Lord was tempted just like that, and the Lord said, "Get thee behind me, Satan." The point is, are you a follower of His? It all comes to that. If you are not, you can do what you like. But what right have you to call yourself a disciple of Christ if in such hours you accept such help as that? None, no more than I would have as a preacher if I advertised flashy titles and had Scotch ditties sung here on my platform. Here is a man who is given to writing books, as so many people have an itch to do. Suppose he wants to be famous, and that is perfectly right. "Fame is the last infirmity of noble minds," says Milton. Mark you, of noble minds. Then the devil comes to him, never contradicts, says, "Friend, I want to help you to have your name on every lip," and tells him the sort of hook to write, so what if some of the Commandments are broken! But the point is that the Lord says, "Get thee behind me, Satan." The singular thing is this, that when the Lord took the long, slow, bloody way, there came into His heart a joy and peace that the world could never give, and has never taken away. And there is coming to Him a triumph ten thousand times greater than if He accepted the advice of Satan:

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Does his successive journeys run.

February 25

The Net Mender - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother.., mending their nets; and he called them— Mat_4:21

The God of all grace…make you perfect— 1Pe_5:10

Peter Called while Mending His Nets

We have all seen fishermen upon a summer morning mending their nets on the seashore. With a patience and a skill that we have envied, we have watched them busy at their task. These bronzed faces, and strong and vigorous frames, tell of many a year upon the deep. We can picture the men handling their boats magnificently when the wind is freshening into angry storm. And now in the quiet of the summer morning, when the waves are idly lapping on the beach, they are busied with the mending of their nets. It was thus that James and John were busied when they received the call that changed their lives. Their boat was rocking in the shallow water, and they were chatting, and working as they chatted. And then came Jesus, and claimed them for Himself, and called them into the service of discipleship, and they left everything and followed Him.

Christ Takes Over the Mending of Our Nets, When We Decide to Follow Him
Now you will wonder why, with that Highland scene, I have associated these words of Peter. Well, the reason is a very simple one, although perhaps not lying on the surface. The word that Peter uses here for make you perfect, is the same word as is used for mending of the nets. It is as if Peter had said, The God of grace, whatever else He may do, will mend your nets for you. And when you remember that Peter was a fisherman, and had spent many a day upon the sea of Galilee, it seems impossible that he should have used the word without some recollection of his craft. Our calling, whatever it may be, has a way of coloring the words we use. It influences language with its old associations, and gives it some of the music of the past. So Peter, in the throng and stir of Babylon, writing his letter of comfort to the churches, flashed back in thought again to the old days, when the water was lapping on his boat. The God of grace will make you perfect. The God of grace will mend your nets for you. Our nets are sorely broken in the boat, and the God of grace is the great net-mender. It is on that figure I want to dwell, and to try to discover some of its significance, for that it was often present to the first disciples there cannot be a shadow of a doubt.

How Are Nets Usually Broken?

Now first, how are nets usually broken? That is a question which is worth considering. Well, I was talking to an old fisherman this summer, and the gist of what he said was of this nature.

Sometimes, he told me, nets are broken by the ordinary wear and tear of fishing. They get worn out here, and they get worn out there, through the rough handling of the common day. There is no reason to suspect that they were bad nets. They may have been purchased from the finest maker. Nor have they met with any accident, such as may happen to the most skilful fisherman. But fishing is rough work at the best of it, and the handling of tackle never can be gentle; and so as the days pass—now here, now there—the fisherman comes to find his nets are broken. There are points where the net is very apt to break, but it is not always there the breakage happens. Sometimes in the least expected quarter, unexpectedly; a rent appears. And so, my brother, in these lives of ours is there often a breaking down through wear and tear, and sometimes the breaking is at the very point where you and I might never have expected it. There are men who have never been great sinners, as we put it. They have only had the wear and tear of life—the strain of business and the stress of home. And yet sometimes that very wear and tear has spoiled all that was finest and most beautiful, and the temper is irritable, and the heart is sullen, and the net, so delicately made, is broken.

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The Net Mender - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

By Obstacles and Objects in the Sea

Again he told me that nets are often broken through the encountering of some jagged obstacle. They are caught by some obstruction in the deeps, and, clearing themselves free of it, are torn. It may be a piece of wreckage in the sea, jagged, and with iron spikes upon it. It may be the sharp edge of some familiar reef, that has been swept clear of its seaweed by the storm. But whatever it is, the net goes dragging over it, and dragging over it is caught and rent, and tearing itself free in desperate effort, it gapes disfigured like some wounded thing. Are there no human lives like that? No nets mystical that are so broken? It may be a hidden and surprising sin that does it; it may be a sudden and overwhelming sorrow; it may be the ruin of a cherished friendship, or the wreckage or a love that meant the world, or some swift insight into another's baseness, where once we dreamed there was sincerity. In such an hour as that the net is rent. There is a tearing of the very heartstrings. And faith is shattered, and God is but a name, and life seems the most shallow of all sophistries. For always, when we lose our faith in man, there falls a shadow on our faith in God, so that the very stars seem masterless, and goodness but the mockery of a dream.

By the Abundance of Catch

And then he told me that nets are sometimes broken through the very wealth of the sea that they enclose. And he did not need to tell me that, for I had read it as a child in Holy Scripture. I remembered a scene on that same sea of Galilee when the disciples had toiled all night and had caught nothing. And then in the morning came the Master—it is always morning when the Master comes. And He bade them cast upon the other side, and casting so, their nets were filled with fishes—filled with such a great abundance of them that the nets, as we read, began to break. My brother, it seems a thing incredible that the gifts of a good God should break the nets. Does it not seem unlike divine compassion that the very wealth of heaven should lead to ruin? Yet are there lives on every hand of us—God grant that yours and mine be not among them—where nets are broken just because God is good. What I mean is, that life has been so easy that all that is best and noblest has decayed. Prosperity has had a hardening influence, and luxury has diminished every sympathy. Endowed with everything that makes life rich—surrounded with all imaginable comforts, how many there are who have never done a hand's turn to leave the world better than they found it!

The Loss of Broken Nets Is Fundamental

So far then on the breaking of the nets. Now will you think of the loss when they are broken? Well, to begin with, remember it is the loss of the most important possession of the fisherman. If his cottage is burned he can still ply his calling, and be out providing for his wife and children. If a blight falls upon his little garden, it is hard, but it is not unbearable. But if his nets are useless all is useless, and his very livelihood is swept away, and other boats shall hoist their sails tonight, but his shall rock idly in the harbor.
There are some losses that are insignificant, and only a foolish man will trouble over them. But there are other losses that are vital, and affect everything, and are determinative. So with a fisherman is a lost net, and so with every man is a lost life, which is not lived to the glory of its Maker, and has never known the joy of doing good. All other losses, matched with that, are comparatively insignificant. The loss of health may be a bitter thing, and the loss of a fortune may be very terrible. But the one loss that cuts down to the quick, and calls for mercy in the heart of heaven is not lost health nor lost prosperity: it is lost life and opportunity. It is a mighty thing to save the soul; but we want to save the life as well as save the soul. We want to have sin conquered, and habits brought to an end, and time redeemed, and something worthy done. And it is just when we are doubtful of all that, and wondering if there be any hope for us, that the Bible comes to us, a seaborn people, and says, The God of grace will mend your nets. He will do it by His pardoning mercy, that forgives everything for Jesus' sake. He will do it by His upholding power, that will never leave us nor forsake us. He will do it perfectly, and do it now, and do it for the weakest and the worst, for the God of all grace will make you perfect.

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The Net Mender - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

It Is Distressing for It Misses What Is at Hand

But not only is it a vital loss. It is a peculiarly distressing loss, for this reason. The loss of the rent net entails the missing of riches that are at hand on every side. If one of our whalers were to be wrecked off Orkney, it would lose a harvest that was far away. There are a thousand miles between the whaling ground and the wild cliffs and stormy seas of Orkney. But when a net was rent upon the sea of Galilee, it meant not the loss of a far-distant harvest, it meant the loss of what was just at hand. There were the shoals of fish in the blue waters. They were in the very depths where the boats lay. They were not far away in other seas; they were where Peter was, and John and James. And that was the pity of the useless net, that all that was precious was so near at hand, and yet, for all the power to take it, might have been a thousand miles away. My brother, the God of grace will mend your nets. He will give you the wealth that is lying at your hand. He will mend your nets, not for some distant fishing, but for the fishing where your bark is tonight. He will redeem for you your opportunities, and show you new meanings in your daily task, and give you the wealth that is on every hand although it may be you have never dreamed of it. Home will be different from what it has ever been; it will be so full of peace and happiness. Work will be different from what it has ever been, for it will all be done with new ideals. And on every hand, all unsuspected once, will be opportunities of doing good, and of helping someone who has need of help, although you never saw that need before. The God of grace will make you perfect. The God of grace will mend your nets for you. He will sweep into your poor barren life the riches that are there just for the taking. For the gladdest things are never far away, nor hidden in distant oceans, inaccessible, but they are here where you and I are living, and where eyes of love answer to our own.

The Work of Net Mending Requires Skill

And so we come to the work itself of net mending, and I ask in closing what kind of work is that? Well, in the first place, you will agree with me that it is a work that calls for very perfect skill. Have you never been amazed at the deft fingers of some rough old fisherman upon the Clyde? Those hands of his, so brawny and so powerful—they could hoist any sail and manage any sheet. But the beautiful thing is that these very hands, all rough and seamed and hardened with the weather, will work as delicately as a woman's hands in the fine work of mending nets. Were you and I to try it—what a failure! What a hopeless tangle we should make of things! We have our own bit of work that we can do, but the one thing we could never do is that. Yet he, with hands as deft as any woman's, and with an eye that sees right through the tangle, makes his gear ready for the deeps. I have often thought that God's hands were like those hands. They too are powerful, and can grasp tremendously, when the wind is high and when the waves are raging. But they, too, with a delicacy infinite, and with a tenderness surpassing that of women, can mend the broken net upon life's shore. The hand of Christ was mighty to command. When it was lifted up, the devils trembled. Yet that same hand, with what unerring skill did it ply its task upon the brokenhearted! It touched the weary, and they took heart again, and it was laid on the hopeless, and their hope was kindled, and it fell with a healing that was irresistible on lives that shrank from every other touch. That was the ministry of Christ on earth. That ever since has been His ministry. When wisdom has failed, and learning been inoperative, Christ has succeeded, and is succeeding still. For He knoweth our frame, and remembereth we are dust, and He is infinitely strong and gentle; and He alone, if we but trust Him, can mend the broken net and make it perfect.

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The Net Mender - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

It Also Requires Patience

But it is not only a work that calls for skill, it is a work that calls for patience also. There are tasks you can hurry through, and get them done, but you can never hurry the mending of the net. That is indeed a recognized distinction between a first-rate fisher and a bad one. The one, impatient, will patch his nets up anyhow, that he may have leisure for the public house. But the other makes it a leisurely affair, and settles down to it, and is deliberate—so deliberate sometimes that you and I are inclined to be irritated at his slowness. But the man is not working for our shallow praise. He is working with a higher thought than that. For he loves that net of his with a strange love that you and I could never understand. So with a leisureliness that is old-fashioned now, in this age of fast motion, he works at the mending through the summer morning, There is a patience that is born of cowardice, and there is a patience that is born of love. The one is the patience of a broken-spirited people who have been crushed for ages by some tyrant. But the other is the patience of our fishermen, and it is also the patience of our God, who through length of days, as Newman sings, elaborates a people to His praise. If you and I are ever to be perfect, it will take infinite patience to achieve it. We are so backward—so ready to forget—such foolish scholars in the school of heaven. Blessed be God, that love which gave a Savior will never weary in its appointed task, till that hath been made perfect which concerneth us.

It Involves Hope

And then, in closing, this work of net-mending, is it not a work that involves hope? There would be little use in mending any net if there were no hope of a harvest of the sea. Sometimes around the coasts of Scotland fish take what the fishermen call a flight. One year they are there in plenty, then unaccountably they disappear. And I know little towns upon our northern coasts where that has happened, and where hope was killed, and where the nets, so finely mended once, have hung upon the shore until they rotted. Always, when a net is mended, it means that there is hope for coming days. And always, when a life is mended, it means there is a harvest yet in store. And that is why, when a man yields up his will, and gives himself into the hand of God, hopes that were quenched begin to shine again, and the heart thrills with what is yet to be. We have sinned, and we have sinned exceedingly. We have done our very best to spoil our lives. We have wasted time, and squandered opportunity, and been unloving and utterly unworthy. Thanks be to God, in spite of all that, and of things that may be far darker than that, the broken net is going to be mended. He forgives us even to the uttermost. He is pledged to save us even to the uttermost. Deeper than our deepest need are the infinite depths of His compassion. It is in such a faith that we give Him our lives which are so rent and ragged, assured that His grace will be sufficient for us, and His strength made perfect in our weakness.

February 26

Our Daily Bread - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Give us this day our daily bread— Mat_6:11

Every Harvest Is Prophecy

Once more in the kindly providence of God we have reached the season of the harvest. The reaper has been busy in the fields, and sower and reaper have rejoiced together. Many a day in the past summer season we wondered if the corn would ever ripen. There was such rain, so pitiless and ceaseless. There was such absence of sunshine and of warmth. Yet in spite of everything harvest has arrived, and the fields have been heavy with their happy burden, and in the teeth of clenched antagonisms the promises of God have been fulfilled. Every harvest is a prophecy. It is the shadow of an inward mystery. It cries to us, as with a golden trumpet, "With God all things are possible." And so in days when all the world is dreary, and excellence seems farther off than ever, the wise man will pluck up heart again, as not despairing of his harvest home. Well, now I want to take our text and set it in the light of harvest. I want to look upon our daily bread against the background of the harvest field. A thing seems very different, does it not, according to the light in which you view it? Suppose then that in this light we look for a little at these familiar words.

First then in that light let us think of what the answer to this prayer involves.

The Tiniest Petitions

Now when you read it unimaginatively, this seems an almost trifling petition. It almost looks like an intruder here, and men have often spoken of it so. On the one side of it there is the will of God, reaching out into the height of heaven. On the other side of it there are our sins, reaching down into unfathomed depths. And then, between these two infinities, spanning the distance from cherubim to Satan, there is "Give us this day our daily bread." Our sin runs back to an uncharted past, but in this petition there is no thought of yesterday. The will of God shall be for evermore, but in this petition there is no tomorrow. Give us this day our daily bread—supply us with a little food today—feed us tilt we go to rest tonight. As if a tiny cockleshell should be sailing between two mighty galleons, as if some hill that a child could climb should be set down between two mighty Alps, so seems this prayer for our daily bread between the will of the eternal God, and the cry for pardon for our sins whose roots go down into the depths of hell.

But now suppose you take this prayer and set it in the light of harvest. Give us this day our daily bread—can you tell me what is involved when it is answered? Why, if you but realized it, and caught the infinite range of its relationships, never again would it be insignificant. For all the ministry of spring is in it, and all the warmth and glory of the summer. And night and day, and heat and cold, and frost, and all the falling of the rain. And light that has come from distances unthinkable, and breezes that have blown from far away, and powers of nourishment that for a million years have been preparing in the mother earth. Give us this day our daily bread. Is it a little thing to get a piece of bread? Is it so little that it is out of place here where we are moving in the heights and depths? Not if you set it in the light of harvest, and think that not a crust can be bestowed unless the sun has shone, and the rain fallen, and the earth been quietly busy for millenniums.

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Our Daily Bread - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

I think then there is a lesson here about the greatness of the things we pray for. Our tiniest petitions might seem large, if we only knew what the answer would involve. There are things which you ask for which seem little things. They are peculiar and personal and private. They are not plainly vast like some petitions, as when we pray for the conversion of the world. Yet could you follow out that prayer of yours, that little private prayer, you might find it calling for the power of heaven as mightily as the conversion of the nations. "Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring." Only remember that a large petition is not always measured by the compass of it. It may be small and yet it may be large. It may be trifling and be tremendous, for all the days beyond recall may somehow be implicated in the answer. You are lonely, and you pray to God that He would send a friend into your life. And then some day to you there comes that friend, perhaps in the most casual of meetings. Yet who shall tell the countless prearrangements, before there was that footfall on the threshold which has made all the difference in the world to you? Give us this day our daily bread, and the sunshine and the storm are in the answer. Give us a friend, and perhaps there was no answer saving for omniscience and omnipotence. Now we know in part and see in part, but when we know even as we are known we shall discover all that was involved in the answer to our humblest prayers.

The Toil It Cost

In the second place, in the light of harvest think of the toil that lies behind the gift.

There are some gifts which we shall always value because of the love which has suggested them. There are others which mean much to us because of the thoughtfulness which they reveal. But now and then a gift is given us which touches us in a peculiar way, because we recognize the toil it cost. It may be given us by a child perhaps, or it may be given us by some poor woman. And it is not beautiful, nor is it costly, nor would it fetch a shilling in the market. And yet to us who know the story of it, and how the hands were busied in the making, it may be beautiful as any diadem. It was not purchased with an easy purse. The purses that I am thinking of are lean. It was not ordered from a foreign market. Love is not fond of trafficking in markets. In that small workshop where your boy is busy, in that small room where the poor sufferer lives, it was designed and fashioned and completed. Such gifts are often sorry to the eye. Such gifts are never sorry to the heart. Poor may they be and insignificant, yet never to us can they be insignificant. We know what they have cost, and knowing that we recognize an unsuspected value. We know the toil that is behind the gift.

I want you then to take that thought and to apply it to your daily bread. It is a gift, and yet behind that gift do you remember all the toil there is? I could understand a man despising manna, even though manna was the bread of angels. It came so easily, and was so lightly gotten, and was so lavishly and freely given. But daily bread is more divine than manna, for it like manna is the gift of heaven, and yet we get it not till arms are weary and sweat has broken on the human brow. I think of the ploughman with his steaming horses driving his furrow in the heavy field. I think of the sower going forth to sow. I think of the stir and movement of the harvest. I think of the clanking of the threshing mill, and of the dusty grinding of the corn, and of all those who in our bakeries are toiling in the night when we are sleeping. Give us this day our daily bread—then it is a gift, that daily bread. It comes to us from God, in His great bounty, and in His compassion for His hungry children. And yet it does not always come through an opened heaven, But more often than not, it comes through the sweat and labor of humanity, through men and women who are often weary after bearing the heat and burden of the day.

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Our Daily Bread - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And is it not generally in such ways that our most precious gifts are given us? Every good and perfect gift is from above, yet is there something of heart-blood on them all. A noble painting is a precious gift. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Look at it, how calm and beautiful it is. There is not a trace of struggle in its beauty. But had you lived in communion with the artist, and had you been with him when he was painting that, what strain and agony you would have seen! So is it with every noble poem; so with our civil and religious liberty. They are all gifts to us; they come from God; they are ours to cherish and enjoy. Yet every one of them is wet with tears, and charactered with human toil and pain, and oftentimes, like the Messiah's garment, dipped in the final ministry of blood. Into that fellowship of lofty gifts I want you, then, to put your daily bread. It is not little, nor is it insignificant when you remember all that lies behind it. And do you not wonder now to find it here between the will of God and our transgressions, though the one rises to the height of glory and the other tangles in the pit of hell.

By Lowly Hands

Lastly, in the light of harvest think of the hands through which the gift is given. Give us this day our daily bread we pray, and then through certain hands it is bestowed. Whose hands? Are they the hands of God? "No man hath seen God at any time." Are they, then, the hands of the illustrious, or of those whose names are famous in the world? All of you know as well as I do that it is not thus our bread is ministered; it reaches us by the hands of lowly men. Out of his cottage does the reaper come, and back to his cottage does he go at evening. And we halt a moment, and we watch him toiling under the autumn sunshine in the field. But what his name is, or where he had his birth, or what are his hopes and what his tragedies, of that we know absolutely nothing. So was it with the sower in the spring. So is it with the harvester in autumn. They have no chronicle, nor any luster, nor any greatness in the eyes of man. And what I want you to realize is this, that when God answers this universal prayer it is such hands as these that he employs. Once in Scotland we had a different case. We had a genius at the plough. And he saw visions there and he dreamed dreams until his field was as a lawn of paradise. But for that one, who has his crown of amaranth, are there not tens of thousands who are nameless, toiling, sorrowing, rejoicing, dying, and never raising a ripple on the sea? Give us this day our daily bread—it is by such hands that the prayer is answered. It is by these that the Almighty Father shows that He is hearkening to His children. It is His recognition of obscurity, and of lives that are uncheered by human voices, and of days that pass in silence and in shadow into the silence and shadow of the grave.

Now have you ever quietly thought of what we owe to ministries like that? One of the deepest debts we owe is to those who are sleeping in unregarded graves. It is not the rare flower which makes the meadow beautiful. It is the flower that blossoms by the thousand there. It is not the aurora which gives the sky its glory. It is the radiance of the common day. And so with life; perhaps we shall never know how it is beautified and raised and glorified by those who toil in undistinguished fashion. Such men may never write great poems, but it is they who make great poems possible. Such may never do heroic things, but they are the soil in which the seed is sown. Such men will not redeem the world. It takes the incarnate Son of God for that. But they—the peasants and the fishermen—will carry forth the music to humanity. Give us this day our daily bread. Are there not multitudes who are praying so? And you, you have no genius, no gifts? You are an obscure and ordinary person ? But if there is any meaning in our text, set in the light of sowing and of harvest, it is that the answer to that daily prayer will be vouchsafed through lowly folk like you.

February 27

The Two Worlds - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts— Mat_6:11-12

Acceptance of the Material World

When our Lord bids us pray for daily bread He accepts the visible world of space and time. He reveals to us our right relationship to the material world with which we are surrounded. Only if a man accepts that world is it possible for him to live. He must receive and assimilate the nourishment it offers him if his bodily life is to continue. He does not create his own material nourishment. He finds it in the world around him, and, finding it, draws it within himself. Our true attitude to that outward world lies in receiving what it has to offer us. We need bread, and it comes to us with bread. We need water, and it brings us water. Not out of the stores of our own being, but out of the vast largesse of the world do we secure our bodily existence. All this is implied when we are taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." Our Lord is not setting the bounty of His Father over against the world in which we live. He is teaching us what He profoundly felt, that the material things which make our being possible are the free gifts of a loving Father's hand.

Realization of the Spiritual World

But to our Lord there was another world, and that other world not far away. The moment He teaches us to ask forgiveness He has stepped from the one into the other. In the material world pardon is unknown, just because sin is non-existent there. The effects of sin darken and disorder it, but it is not the sin of any bird or beast. These, guided by instinct, ignorant of evil, untouched by the glory of responsibility, have never felt the shamefulness of sin. The moment our Savior speaks about forgiveness He has passed into another world. It is not the world which bears the golden corn, nor is its music the music of the river. And the wonderful thing is how our blessed Lord, in a single breath, if I might put it so, moves over from the one world to the other. When He bids us pray, Give us our daily bread, He is thinking of the sower and the reaper. When He bids us pray for pardon, He has moved into the realm of spirit. And quite evidently, from His swift transition, the latter was not a world of distant frontiers. It was closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.

Both Material and Spiritual Gifts Are Derived from Outside of Ourselves

Now it seems to me that this rich collocation has a profound significance for all of us. It means that to these two different worlds our attitude is meant to be identical. We crave for bread, and the one world gives us bread. We thirst for water, and it gives us water. If we are to maintain our bodily existence we must receive what we cannot create. And in the same way our deeper life, to which we give the name of spiritual, must be sustained by constant receptivity. We do not win bread out of our inward stores. We get it from the bounty of the world. It is scattered across a thousand fields, and from these fields we wrest it and assimilate it. And all the nurture of our deeper life, to which our Savior gives the name of bread, has got to be received in the same way. It is not within our power to create pardon, anymore than it is in our power to create corn. Both are gifts and miracles of mercy, to be humbly accepted from God's hand. Give us our daily bread; forgive us: God's gifts are diverse; man's attitude is one.

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Man's Craving Not Satisfied with Bread Only

One feels, too, that in this collocation there is a powerful encouragement to faith. It reminds us of our Savior's graciousness in comparing faith to a grain of mustard-seed. I crave for bread, and the one world comes to me crying, Child, I have got bread for you. I have got satisfaction for that hunger in the loving fore-ordering of God. And I cannot believe that in the world of sense God would make ample provision for our cravings, and mock them in the other world of spirit. You do not exhaust the hungering of man when you satisfy the hunger of his body. The craving for truth and love and light is as real as the craving for the loaf. And that God in His merciful provision should give the loaf and deny the spiritual bread, to the thoughtful mind is utterly incredible. To do that would be to mock us. It would force us back to the level of the beast. To give the lower and refuse the higher would be the deathknell of the hopes of man. And how unthinkable that would have been to Jesus is evident from the one simple fact that His hopes for man are boundless. To Him the bounty of the world of sense was a pledge of the bounty of the other world. If from the one realm we get the gift of bread, shall we not from the other get the gift of pardon? Every field ripening to the harvest, and every fountain with its bubbling waters, was to Him a sacrament of the world unseen where are the water and the bread of life.

February 28

The Wonder and Bloom of the World - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Consider the lilies of the field— Mat_6:28

Jesus Keenly Alive to the Message of Nature

During the glorious days of June, when the world is so full of light and joy, it is an unspeakable satisfaction to remember that our Lord was keenly alive to the message of nature. It is part of the undying charm of the Gospel story that while it sounds all the deeps of the human spirit, it never forgets that we are living in a world where the grass is green and where the birds are singing. There are poets whose gift is that of interpreting nature. There are others whose genius works at its noblest in interpreting the strange story of mankind. But the sublimest masters are endowed with both these gifts—they interpret nature and they interpret man. Now Jesus Christ was far more than a poet; He was inspired as no poet ever was. Yet the twofold gift of interpreting nature and man, the gift that is the glory of our masterpieces, shines out most cloudlessly upon the Gospel page. It is there we read of the Samaritan woman. It is there we read of the denial of Peter. But the mustard-seed and the birds and the lilies are there too.

Love of Nature Was a Hebrew Tradition

Now no doubt this love of nature which was so strong in Jesus sprang partly from the circumstances of His birth. He was a Hebrew with a Hebrew lineage, after the flesh, and nature was eloquent with voices to the Hebrew. You can often tell what a people gives its heart to by the richness and copiousness of its vocabulary. Where a nation's interests have been long and deeply engaged, there it soon wins for itself a wealth of terms. Well, in the Hebrew language there are some ten words for rain, and to the understanding heart that is significant. Into that heritage, then, Jesus of Nazareth entered. He was the child of a race that had lived with open eyes. And if the glory of the world lights up the Gospel story—if there are sermons in stones, and books in running brooks, there, we owe it in some measure to God's ordering, when He cradles Emmanuel in a Hebrew home.

From Fear of Nature to Love of It

But between the Hebrew outlook on nature in the Old Testament, and the outlook of Jesus as we find it in the Gospels, there is one marked difference that we cannot note too closely. There is one contrast which no one can fail to remark, who reads the prophets and the Psalms and then turns to the Gospels. In the Psalms the world is magnificent and terrible. It is a mighty pageant of grand and mysterious forces. We see the sun there rejoicing like a strong man to run his race; we hear the rush of the storm as it shatters the cedars of Lebanon. The sea is angry, its waves mount up to heaven. There is the roll of thunder; there is the flash of lightning. You feel that clouds and darkness are never far away. It is a vast and glorious world—hardly a kindly one. Now turn to the Gospels, and do you note the change? Consider the lilies of the field, the fowls of the air. Behold the sower goes forth to sow in the spring morning. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard-seed. It is not that vast and magnificent things are disregarded, and the beauty of the small things recognized. That is not what gives us the sense of contrast between the nature of the psalmist and of Jesus. It is rather that the world is a much kindlier place; there is less menace in its terrific powers. It is still as full of mystery as ever; but it is the mystery of love now, not of fear.

Now can we explain that deep and striking change? It is quite clear that nature will not explain it. Had Jesus lived under a sunnier sky or amid fairer pastures than the old Hebrew psalmists, we might think that the change was due to change of scene. But the same stars looked down on Jesus of Nazareth as touched into music the craving heart of David; and the same wild storms leapt out of the blue heaven as have given the fire and rush to Hebrew melody. And the hills and the streams and the gleaming of the sea far off, these were the same. It is clear, then, that there is no explanation there.

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The Wonder and Bloom of the World - Page 2
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Nature Was Not Kinder to Jesus

Nor is there any—I speak with loving reverence of One to whom I owe so much—nor is there any explanation in the change of persons. I mean that had the lot of Jesus been a kindly lot, I could have fathomed His kindly view of nature. Has not Tennyson sung very wisely and very well—

Gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould?

And had the life of Jesus been a life of ease and tenderness, I think I could explain His view of nature. But did He not come unto His own and they received Him not? Was He not despised and rejected of men? Were there no drops of sweat like blood in lone Gethsemane? Was there no cup to drink, no cross to bear and die on?' I do not think that bitter sorrows like these make a man ready to consider the lilies. In my own tragedies the world grows tragic. I understand the storm when I am storm-tossed. But to Jesus, misunderstood, cross-burdened, Man of Sorrows, nature was genial, kindly, homelike, to the end.

Man's Attitude toward Nature Changes as a Result of Inward Change—God Not a Mere Creator but a Father

Here is the explanation of that contrast. It is not change of scene, nor change of circumstance. It is the changed thought of God that is the secret. To prophet and psalmist, no less than to Jesus, the world was alive and quivering with God. But to prophet and psalmist God was Jehovah; to Jesus of Nazareth God was Father. Twelve times over in this sixth chapter of Matthew Christ speaks of the Creator as "your Father." I have read of the child of a distinguished English judge who was rebuked for prattling beside the judge's knee. And the child answered: "Why should I not? He may be your judge, but he's my father." So when the thought of the Creator, infinite in majesty, was deepened and softened and glorified in Fatherhood, the mystery of fear was swept out of the world, and the gentle mystery of love came in. It was a Father who had reared the mountains. There was a Father's hand upon the storm. At the back of the thunder, no less than in the lilies, there was a Father's heart, a Father's love. It was that glorious truth filling the heart of Jesus that made all nature what it was for Him. Perfect love had cast out fear.

In the city of Florence there is an old building now used as a museum. Six hundred years ago it was a palace, and on the altar wall of its chapel, sometime about 1390, Giotto painted a portrait of the poet Dante. This portrait, the only one painted during the poet's lifetime, is of inestimable value. But the building fell upon evil days; it was turned into a jail for common criminals; its walls were coated with whitewash. And for centuries under this covering the face of Dante was hidden, until its existence was well-nigh forgotten. But in 1840 three gentlemen, one of them an Englishman, set to work and discovered the lost likeness. And now the old prison wall is full of glory because the lineaments of the great poet shine out there. Ah, yes, if a common wall is quite transfigured when the likeness of Dante is discovered on it, no wonder that a common flower is glorified when it reveals—as it did to Christ—the Father. It is a great thing to be alive to beauty; but men were alive to beauty before Jesus lived. It is a great thing to feel the mystery of nature; but men had felt all that in paganism. What Jesus did was to take the truth of Fatherhood, and touch every bird and every lily with it, till beauty deepened into brotherhood, and we and the world were mystically kin. "When I consider the heavens," said the psalmist, "what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" But Jesus, just to reassure us of God's mindfulness, says, "Consider the lilies of the field."

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The Wonder and Bloom of the World - Page 3
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Jesus Used Nature in the Interest of Morals

Such, then, was the secret of nature for our Lord. And now I have a word to say upon one other point. I want you to observe how constantly and simply our Lord used nature in the interests of morals. Our outlook on nature is very largely emotional. We make it a mirror to reflect our moods. If we are happy, then all the world is happy. But if we are sad, then even "the banks and braes O' bonny doon 'mind me O' departed joys, departed—never to return." Now all that is very natural, I doubt not; and it is a witness to the grandeur of our human story that we make every stream and every sunset echo it. But in the life of Jesus there is little of that; it is the moral helpfulness of nature that He seizes. Burns wondered how the flowers could bloom when he was so weary. That is the emotional outlook on the world. Tennyson said: "Flower in the crannied wall, could I but understand thee, I should know what God and man is." That is the intellectual outlook on the world. But Jesus said: "Why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field," and that is neither emotional nor intellectual; it is moral. I do not mean that Jesus was blind to the other aspects; but I do mean that He centered His thought on that. For the soul and the life and the individual character—these things were so transcendently important to Christ Jesus, that everything else must be impressed into their service. In the glorious days of June we are apt to grow a little dull to what is highest. Just to be alive is such a sweet thing at such a time, that the hope and the resolve of sterner moods take to themselves wings and fly away. Do not forget the earnestness of Christ. Do not forget that out in the summer fields this was His aim—to fashion noble, trustful, reverent disciples. We must have room for the lilies of the field no less than for Gethsemane; we must remember the birds not less than the bread and wine, if the whole ministry of Christ is to be operative in winning us to some likeness of Himself.

To the Very End Nature Appealed to Jesus

It is notable, too, that as Jesus' life advanced, and as the shadows upon His path grew darker, we find no trace that Jesus outgrew nature, or passed beyond the power of its reaching. I think most of us have had hours when nature seemed to desert us. She became dumb and had no healing for us. It may have been the hour of a great sorrow, or a great crisis in our life's career. And I think that most of us have had moods and feelings which we thought that nature was powerless to interpret. She could not enter into our weary problems. So as our life goes on we drift away from nature, and nature silently drifts away from us. But what I want you to note is that though that happens with us, there is no trace that it ever happened with Jesus. Here on the hillside He is speaking of providence, and He says, "Consider the lilies of the field." Then follows the preaching of the kingdom throughout Galilee, and "the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard-seed." Then the shadow of Calvary falls, and the awful death that is coming—can nature interpret and illuminate that darkness? "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." And where did Christ agonize? Was it in the upper room? He went into a place where there was a garden. And in the exultant joy of resurrection morning, did He hasten away into the city? He waited till Mary supposed He was the gardener. Right on, then, through the wealth of all His teaching, right on through His suffering and death and rising, the voices of the natural world appealed to Jesus. Nature may seem to fail us before the end, but it never deserted Jesus Christ.

In Perfect Touch with His Father's World

And the reason is not very far to seek. "I come…to do thy will, O God" (Heb_10:7). It was the childlike heart, absolutely true, never swerving by a hairbreadth from the line of duty; it was His perfect obedience to a Father's will that kept Jesus in perfect touch with His Father's world. Do you remember how Wadsworth, speaking of the man who does his duty, says:

Flowers laugh before thee in their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads?

He means that nature ceases to be musical when we are anywhere else than on the path of duty. Here, then, is the secret of a happy summer, in which all the world and you shall be in comradeship. It is to be patient, brave, unselfish, kind, and loyal. It is to accept the cross. It is to be true. To see the beautiful, you must be dutiful. It is a most strange world. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God"—even in the lilies of the field.

March 1

A Sermon for Springtide - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Consider the lilies of the field— Mat_6:28

The Ministry of Nature

At the sweet and hopeful season of Spring, when freshness and beauty surround us, I am sure there are few of us whose thoughts do not go forth to the wonder and the glory of the world. After the deadness of our northern February springtide comes tingling with the surprise of joy, and that is indeed one of our compensations for the stern and desolate winter of our land. Of all our poets who "build the lofty rhyme," there is none more thoroughly English than the poet Chaucer. As we read his musical and vivid verse, it is always the sound of a brother's voice we hear. And in nothing is he more truly English than in this, that he stirs at the call of the sweet voice of April, and casting his books aside, longs to become a child of his warm and beautiful and gladsome world. In some measure all of us feel that; nor is there aught unworthy in that restlessness. Rightly used, it may be a means of grace, drawing us nearer to the feet of Christ. And therefore I like at this season of the year to speak sometimes on the ministry of nature, and to discover what that meant for Jesus.

Christ at Home in the Country; Paul at Home in the City

Now in this matter there is one thing which strikes me, and that is the contrast between Christ and Paul. You never feel that Paul is at home in the country. You always feel that Paul is at home in the city. Country life did not appeal to Paul; it did not flash into spiritual suggestion as he viewed it. He heard the groans of a travailing creation, but he did not love it to its minutest feature. It was the city which appealed to Paul, with its great and crying problems of humanity, with its pageantry and its murmuring and its stir, with its crowds that would gather when one began to preach. The kingdom of heaven is not like a seed to Paul; the kingdom of heaven is like some noble building. When he would illustrate the things of grace, he does not turn to the vine or the lily. He turns to the soldier polishing his Armour; to the gladiator fighting before ten thousand eyes; to the freeborn citizen whose civic charter had been won in the senate of imperial Rome. I hardly need to indicate to you how different this is from Christ's procedure. Not in the city did Jesus find His parables, save when He saw the children in the marketplace. He found them in the clustering of the vine. He found them in the springing of the corn. He found them in the lake where boats were rocking, and in the glow of sunset and of sunrise. He found them in the birds that wheeled above Him—in the fig tree—in the fowl of the farmyard. He found them in the lily of the field, with which even Solomon could not compare.

Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus

It is for that reason that when the springtime comes I always thank God that Christ was bred at Nazareth. We owe far more to that quiet home at Nazareth than some of us may be ready to acknowledge. Paul was a native of Tarsus—no mean city. It was a place like Glasgow, the seat of a wide commerce. Paul was a city boy, bred among city streets, familiar with crowds since he had eyes to see. And though the gardens of a Roman city were very beautiful in their arrangement, yet gardens and fountains are a sorry substitute for the lone glen and the silence of the hills. But in the providence of God, Christ was a country child. There was no "Please keep off the grass" at Nazareth. Trespassers were never prosecuted on the hills there, as they ought never to be in any country. And it was there that Jesus spent His boyhood—keen-eyed, quick-hearted, loving all God's creatures, moving, as if at home, where all was beautiful, and praying best because He loved it all. That is the note which you detect at once when you come to the public ministry of Jesus. Other teachers elaborate their parables; but with Christ they come welling up out of the heart. They were His heritage from the quiet days of Nazareth when He had watched and loved and understood. It was His manhood recalling in the strife the music that had charmed Him as a child.

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As a Jew Jesus Admired the Greatness of Nature

Again, if Christ is different from Paul in this matter, He is equally distinguished from His Jewish ancestry. The fact is that in His attitude towards nature you can never historically account for Jesus. I believe that sometimes we misrepresent the Jews here. We contrast them too dogmatically with the Greeks. We think of the Jews as so intensely spiritual that they were blind to the beauty of the world. But no one who has studied his Old Testament dare make a sharp distinction such as that, for the Old Testament that is afire with God is redolent from the first to last of nature. The truth is that Jew no less than Greek looked with intensest interest on nature. Both felt the abiding magic of its power; both bowed before its ever-changing mystery. But to the Greek the world was just the world, gladsome and fair, a thing to be desired; while to the Jew the world was always wonderful, because it was instinct and aflame with God. Into that heritage Jesus Christ was born.

Jesus Involved Man with Nature

And now let me say one thing more, which helps to illuminate the mind of Christ. It is how often, when He speaks of nature, He deliberately brings man upon the scene. There are painters who delight in picturing still life, and who never introduce the human figure. They have no interest in the play of character; their genius seeks no other scope than nature. But Jesus is no painter of still life. He loves to have living forms upon the scene. He does not regard man as an intrusion, but always as the completion of the picture. Think of the day when He stood by the Temple gate, and looked up at the vine that was sculptured there. That vine was an artist's study in still life, and it was very beautiful and perfect. But "I am the vine," said Christ, "ye are the branches," and the husbandman appears with his sharp pruning knife. The sculpture was insufficient for the Master, till it flashed into full significance in man. In the same way when He walked abroad, He saw more than the lights and shadows of the fields. "Behold the sower,"—somehow He could not rest till he had brought a living man into the picture. And so when He wandered by the sea of Galilee, and watched the waters, and listened to the waves, all that, however beautiful, could not content Him until the fishermen and their nets were in the picture. He could not listen to the chattering sparrows but He saw the human hands that bought and sold them. He could not look at the lilies of the field but He saw Solomon in all his glory. And it all means that while the love of nature was one of the deepest passions in Christ's heart, it was not a love that led to isolation, but found its crowning in the love of man. My brother, there is a way of loving nature that chills a little the feeling for mankind. There is a passion for beauty that may be a snare, for it weakens the ties that bind us to humanity. But when a man loves nature as Jesus Christ loved nature, it will deepen and purify the springs of brotherhood, and issue in service that is not less loyal because the music of hill and dale is in it.

March 2

Putting First Things First - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness— Mat_6:33

Necessity of Order

The more narrowly one looks on life, the more one sees the necessity of order. The quality of life largely depends on the right ordering of its interests. When our Lord said, Seek ye first the kingdom, He was not speaking with contempt of other interests. He who had been the Carpenter of Nazareth knew that man must toil for daily bread. He was enforcing that infinite love of order which Fenelon noted long ago as one of the characteristics of His life. The land of the shadow of death, says Job, is a land of darkness without any order (Job_10:22). In that ineffectual and dreary realm things are tossed and tumbled in confusion. But He who came to give us life abundant insists upon the ordering of our interests, and says to us, Seek ye first the Kingdom. Put first things first, and life is like a melody. Virtue is love's order, says St. Augustine. Put secondary things in the first place, and life goes down into the glen of weeping. It is that condition of victorious living which the Lord is emphasizing in our text.

Putting First Things First

This divine necessity for order might be illustrated from many spheres. One might think, for instance, of the student. When a student enters a class of the humanities there are two ambitions he may set before himself. He may be bent on grasping the spirit of a literature, or he may be bent on the securing of a prize. He may be eager to enrich his being through converse with the immortal dead, or he may covet his name upon the prize list. Now there is nothing mean in seeking to be a prizewinner. It is a perfectly laudable ambition. Even the great apostle of the Gentiles had an eye to the prize of his high calling. But whenever the thought of prizewinning comes first, when it becomes the dominating passion, then the student misses that enriching which is the peculiar gift of the humanities. It is not a case of intellectual failure. It is really a case of moral failure. Putting what should be second in the first place induces a certain blindness of the heart. A man is out of touch with a great literature, as he is out of touch with a great God, when self has the first in his program.

A Doctor Should Put His Patients, Not Fees, First

Again, we might illustrate this need of order in our various callings and professions. Take, for instance, the man who is a doctor. The difference between a good and a bad doctor is not that the good one never thinks of fees. If he never thought of fees he would be a fool, for the laborer is worthy of his hire. The difference lies in what the man puts first, in what is primary in his profession, in what is the dominant interest in his calling. Let a doctor put the thought of money first, let his first consideration be his fees, and, for all the brilliance of his gifts, he is unworthy of his high vocation. But let him put his patients in the first place; let his primary ambition be to heal, and then, though he be ignorant of brilliance, he is an honorable member of his calling. The strange thing is that when a doctor puts the fees first, his character invariably degenerates. Probably he is half-conscious of it, but other people are not unconscious of it. Something goes—some-thing is always lost—some touch of what is brotherly and beautiful, and lost through the disorder of his interests. He is not sinning as a drunkard sins. He is only putting first what should be second. He is perfectly entitled to his fees. He is not entitled to give his fees the primacy. And the narrowing that always follows upon that, and the sneer with which common people talk of it, is a tribute to that perfect wisdom which inspires the moral teaching of our Lord.

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March 3

The Restfulness of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm— Mat_8:26

People Who Provide an Atmosphere of Restfulness

There are some people we meet who impress us with a sense of restfulness. Such people, not infrequently, are men; more often, if I mistake not, they are women. They are not necessarily brilliant, nor have they any striking or unusual gifts: all we feel is that in their company there is a pleasant atmosphere of restfulness. We are all tempted to strain after effect sometimes, but in the presence of these people we do not think of that. There is no effort to keep up conversation. We are not ashamed even of being silent. Like a breath of evening after the garish day, when coolness and quiet have followed on the sunshine, such natures, often we know not how, enwrap us with a sweet sense of rest.

And you will find, as your survey of life broadens, that people who are weak never create that atmosphere. There may be many vices in the strong, but there is always something unrestful in the weakling. We talk of the restfulness of the calm summer evening, and unhappy is the man who never feels it. But we know now how at the back of that there is the stress of conflict and the strain of battle. And so in the people who are full of restfulness, could we but read the story of their lives, we should find the record of many a hard battle, and the tale of many a well-contested field. I do not mean that they have done great deeds. I do not mean that they have suffered terribly. The greatest victories are not spectacular, nor is there any crowd to cheer the combatant. I only mean that people who are restful are people who have looked facts in the face; who have toiled, when there was not much light to toil by, and carried their crosses in a smiling way. There is never any rest in weakness. To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering, says Milton. The condition of all restfulness is power of the open-eyed and quiet, heroic kind. And probably that is why people who are restful are at the same time delightfully subduing; for there is nothing that so subdues a man as power, save the apotheosis of power, which is love.

The Restfulness of Jesus

Now no man can reasonably doubt that Jesus was pre-eminently restful. Whenever I peruse the Gospel story, I am impressed by the restfulness of Christ. One of the first invitations which He gave was this: "Come unto me…and I will give you rest." One of the last promises before the cross was this: "My peace I give unto you." And though there are depths in the peace of Jesus Christ that reach to the deepest abysses of the soul, yet the words would have been little else than mockery had the Christ not been wonderfully restful. Take a word like that of the Apostle Paul: "The Lord of peace himself give you peace always." Down to the depths of the sin-pardoned soul you are still in the province of the benediction. But there never could have been that benediction unless the Lord, whom the church loved and worshipped, had impressed everyone who ever met Him with the feeling of an infinitude of rest.

Craving for Restfulness

And I cannot help thinking that if men realized that, it would constitute a new appeal for Christ. If I know anything about this present day, there is a craving in its heart for restfulness. Mr. Moody used to tell a story of a little child who was tossing and fretting in some childish fever. And its mother sang to it and told it stories, and the little child tossed and was fretful still. And then the mother stooped down without a word and gathered her little daughter in her arms, whereon the child, in an infinite content, said, "Ah, mother, that's what I wanted." She did not know what she wanted, like many wiser people; but like most of us she knew it when she got it. And so today there are a thousand voices singing to us, and some perhaps telling stories. But it seems to me that the times are a little fevered, that the pulse is not beating steadily like our fathers', and that what we need in modern society is just the shadow and the space of rest. The strenuous life is being overdone. It is a little too strenuous to be strong. It is issuing, not in the dignity of manhood, but in the hustle of the modern market. And wise men everywhere are coming to see that we need a new ideal not less intense, but one that has ampler room within its borders for the fructifying pleasantness of rest.

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The Restfulness of Christ - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Rest for Those Whose Burden Is Religion

It is just here that, out of the mist of ages, there steps the figure of the Man of Nazareth. "Come unto me…and I will give you rest"—it is the message of Jesus for today. I want you to remember that these words were spoken to men and women whose burden was religion. It was the spirit of the age, charged with religion. It was the spirit of the age, charged with tradition, from which our Savior offered them relief. And once again the spirit of the age demands an ideal that shall have room for rest, and standing among us is the restful Christ. But the continual wonder about Christ is this, that in every part and power of His being He was intensely and unceasingly alive with a vitality which puts us all to shame. Let a woman touch Him in the throng—"Who touched me?" Let Him see a crowd, and He is "moved with compassion." Let Him be baited by the subtlest doctors, and He fences and parries with superb resource. In body and spirit, in will, emotion, intellect, Christ was so flooded with the tides of life, that when He cried to men, "I am the Life," they felt in a moment that the word was true. Yet, "Come unto me…and I will give you rest." That is the abiding mystery of Christliness. That is the secret we are hungering for today, how to engraft the strenuous on the restful. And you may laboriously search the ages, and all the ideals and visions of the ages, and never find these so perfectly combined as in the historic personality of Jesus. The East says, "Come let us rest awhile; no need to hurry, and the sun is warm." And the West says, "Let us be up and doing," till we have almost lost the forest for the trees. And then comes Jesus, most superbly active, and toiling with an inspired assiduity, and yet in the very thick and tangle of it, girt with a restfulness that is divine.

Christ's Restfulness Was the Restfulness of Balance

Now when we study the life of Jesus Christ, we light on one or two sources of this restfulness. And in the first place it was the restfulness of balance. You remember how John in the Book of Revelation has a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem; and you remember how, as he surveys its form, he sees that the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. It was symmetrical in every measurement—perfectly balanced in every dimension, and I challenge any man to read the Gospel and not remark that equipoise in Christ. We talked of Bismarck as the man of iron, but we never talk of the iron will of Christ. We speak of the myriad-mindedness of Shakespeare, but we do not speak in that fashion about Jesus. And it is not reverence that keeps us silent, nor is it any awe at present deity; it is rather that everything is in such perfect poise there, that the total impression is repose. It is the same in the highest works of art. In the noblest art there is always a great restfulness. Passion is there, and energy, and power, as there are passion and power in the sunrise. But the mark of genius is the mark of God, that it brings the warring forces into balance, and holds its energies in such a poise that the impression of the whole is rest. It is not the enthusiast who is most like Christ, no matter how fiery his ardor be. It is not the man whose feelings are the tenderest. It is not the man who has a will of steel. Ethically, that man is most tike Christ who has so lived with Him under the love of God that every part and power of his being has opened out like a flower to the sun. That, then, is one of the ethical sources of what I call the restfulness of Christ. Ill-balanced men always make us restless; ill-balanced women do so as well. But to me at least, reading the life of Jesus, there comes such a sense of powers in perfect balance, that I accept the invitation, "Come unto me…and I will give you rest" with all my heart.

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The Restfulness of Christ - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Jesus' Restfulness Is the Restfulness of Purpose

Again it is the restfulness of purpose—of steady and unalterable purpose. There is no rest in the little Highland stream as it brawls and chafes along its bed of granite. It "chatters, chatters as it goes," and chattering things and people are not restful. But the mighty river, silent and imperial, guiding its wealth of water to the sea, is like a parable of mighty purpose, and in the bosom of that purpose there is rest. There is something river-like about the life of Christ—it is so resistless in its flow. Sorrows or joys could no more stop His course than the lights and shadows on the hills can stop the Clyde. And in this mighty purpose, so deep and so divine, there lies not a little of the secret of the unfailing restfulness of Christ. Why is it that young men are so restless? And why is there generally more repose as life advances? It is not merely that the fires are cooling; it is that life is settling into a steadier aim. No longer do we beat at doors that will not open—no longer does every bypath suggest dreams—we have found our work and we have strength to do it, and in that concentration there is rest. Now in the life of Jesus Christ there is always the beat of underlying purpose. No life was so free or so happily spontaneous. To call it cribbed, cabined, and confined would be mockery. Yet underneath its gladness and its reach, and all the splendor and riches of its liberty, there is a burning and dominating purpose, and in the bosom of that purpose is repose. It is a bad thing not to have a friend. It is a worse thing not to have a purpose. Something to love, to fight for, and to live for, in the heat of the battle keeps a man at rest. And Jesus had the world to love and fight for, and the world's redemption to achieve on Calvary, and I say that that, in the midst of all the tumult, was the strain of music whose echo was repose.

Jesus' Restfulness Is That of Trust

Then lastly it was the restfulness of trust. Christ had repose because He trusted so. Faithlessness, even in the relationships of earth, is the lean and hungry mother of unrest. Let a mistress once distrust her maid, and there will be worrying suspicion everyday. Let a husband distrust his wife, a wife her husband, and the peace of home, sweet home, is in ashes. We charge this with being a restless age, and we lay the blame of that restlessness on love of pleasure, but I question if it be not lack of faith that is the true root of social instability. To me the wildest little child is restful, and it is restful because it trusts me so. Faith is the great rebuke of boisterous winds when the ship is likely to be swamped in angry waters. And the perfect restfulness of Jesus Christ, in a life of unceasing movement and demand, sprung from a trust in God that never faltered even amid the bruising of the cross.

March 4

Enough!

It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord— Mat_10:25

Spirituality Is Conformity to Christ

The highest praise that can be given to any man is that others, knowing him, should call him Christlike. That is the noblest ideal in the world. People who live long together often grow to resemble one another. Years of intimate and loving fellowship reflect themselves even on the face. So years of close communion with the Lord insensibly convey His impress, and the inward life becomes what we call Christlike. Now one of the subtle temptations of this life is an impatience with the reality of things. The facts of life are often hard, stern facts, difficult to reconcile with spirituality. And it is when we are tempted to despondency, as if the higher life were not for us, that we ought to remember this saying of our Lord. One is our Master, even Christ. His life is our ideal. Spirituality is not a vague abstraction; it is growing conformity to Him. And if He was burdened, and misunderstood, and sometimes sorrowful even unto death, we must not quarrel with such dark experiences. It is enough that we should be like Him.

Christlikeness Does Not Exempt Us from Weariness

We ought, for instance, to remember this great saying in the frequent hours when we are weary. Many of His servants have times of great exhaustion in the work and welfare of the Kingdom. They would give much to be always at their best, and perhaps they read of others who are so. There are those who claim never to have known weariness since they gave themselves up to Him in full surrender. But the Lord Himself, who yielded up His life in a way that no one else has ever paralleled, never made any such claim as that. He was so weary once that He fell fast asleep, with His head on the wooden pillow of a fishing boat. He was so weary once, travelling to Calvary, that His cross was transferred to Simon of Cyrene. And all this is written on the page of Scripture, not only that we may see the kind of man He was, but that those who love Him, and who seek to follow Him, might be delivered from the lure of false ideals. It would be a wonderful thing always to feel radiant, and equal to every task the day may bring. Never to grow weary in our service would be to taste the joy of service in eternity. But our Master knew not that experience. There were hours when He was utterly exhausted. And it is enough, He tells us, that we be like Him.

Christlikeness Does Not Exempt Us from Being Misunderstood

Again, we should always bear these words in mind in seasons when we are misunderstood. To be misunderstood is always bitter. Nothing so adds to the joy of spiritual service as to be certain that it is appreciated. Appreciation, from the right kind of people, is always a spur to more devoted toil. But to toil on, as so many have to do, misunderstood even by those they love, is one of the heaviest crosses in the world. It is so apt to blight all that is most delicate, so swift to sour the milk of human kindness. Why should God permit this chilling atmosphere to surround many of His finest toilers? Then one remembers that He who came to earth to embody the ideal of life and character breathed that pestilent atmosphere all the time. He was misunderstood when He wrought His deeds of mercy—He casteth out devils by Beelzebub. He was misunderstood when He hung upon the cross—they thought He was calling on Elias. And with that spirit of His, so exquisitely sensitive, that increasing and deep misunderstanding was sorer than the piercing of the nails. One of our novelists speaks of "Kingdom of Heaven kindness." Have not many practiced it, and been misunderstood? A little gratitude would have made all the difference, but gratitude was conspicuous by its absence. It is in such hours, and they come to everybody who has practiced the secret of the "cup of water," that there is a gospel in the word enough. Enough is as good as a feast. Enough is satisfaction. More than enough would be a spiritual surfeit, and surfeit is the prologue to disease. He who knows us and what is best for us, just as He knows what is in store for us, says it is enough that the servant be as his Lord.

Christlikeness Does Not Exempt Us from a Sense of Failure

Then, lastly, we should remember this in the seasons when we think that we have failed. Spiritual work, above all other work, is dogged and haunted by the sense of failure. A postman does not fail—he delivers his letters, and his work is done. A captain does not fail—he brings his ship to port, and that's the end of it. But when men are dealing, not with ships but with souls, and seeking to win them for the Lord, the sense of failure is often overwhelming. How many a minister, who has wrought and prayed, is so haunted by the failure of his preaching, that he longs sometimes never to preach again! Is it alien from the spirit of the Lord? It seems to me that without that seeming failure we shall never fully share in His experience. When I hear Him crying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,…how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not" (Luk_13:34), I realize that He was there before us—and it is enough, for the most ardent heart, that the servant should be as his Lord.

March 6

The Sending of the Sword - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I came not to send peace, but a sword— Mat_10:34

Christ Came to Bring Both Peace and a Sword

There seems to be a glaring contradiction between this word and some other words of Jesus. Some of the most familiar Gospel words—words that shine down like stars on the world's darkness—speak of Jesus as the great peace bringer. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." Yet here, "I came not to send peace, but a sword." The point I wish you to observe in passing is Christ's disregard for superficial consistency. Life proves many a proposition to be true that logic would readily demonstrate as false. And the strange thing about the words of Christ is, that while they seem to contradict each other at the bar of reason, they link themselves together into perfect harmony when we go forward in the strength of them. Are you fond of arguing about Christ's teachings? You may argue till doomsday and never find their power. They are words of life meant to be lived out; there is no argument in all the armory like action. And it is only as we set our faces heavenward, making these statutes our song in the house of our pilgrimage: only as we view every new morning as a new opportunity of putting Christ to proof; it is only thus, through the gathering experience of days, that we awaken to their power and truth. I notice in the engines of our river steamers that there are rods that move backward as well as rods that move forward. A child would say they were fighting with each other, and that half of the engines were going the wrong way. But though half the engines seem to go the wrong way, there is no question that the ship is going the right way: out of the smoke and stir of the great city into the bays where the peace of God is resting. So with the words of Christ that seem to oppose each other. Make them the driving power of the soul: and the oppositions will not hinder progress, and the contradictions will reveal their unity, and you shall be brought to your desired heaven.

So to our text; and there are two lights in which I wish to set it. (1) The coming of Christ sends a sword into the heart. (2) The coming of Christ sends a sword into the home.

Christ Sends a Sword into the Heart

First, then: The coming of Christ sends a sword into the heart. Now this is exactly what I should have expected when I remembered the penalties of gain. For everything a man achieves there is a price to pay. There comes a wound with everything we win. Think of the knowledge of nature that we now possess. All knowledge, whatever joy it brings with it, brings with it in the other hand a sword. All love, though it kindles the world into undreamed-of brightness, has a note in its music of unrest and agony. Every advance mankind has ever made holds in its grasp new possibilities of pain.

It is through thoughts like these that I come to understand how the coming of Christ into the heart must send a sword there. To receive Christ is to receive the Truth; it is to have the Spirit of Love breathing within us: and if truth and love always bring sorrow with them, I shall expect the coming of Christ to be with pain. I have no doubt there are some to whom Christ came, and made them very happy. You will never forget the hour of your conversion, when, as by the rending or a veil, the night was gone, and the trees in the forest clapped their hands before you, and every star in the heavens shone more brightly. A true experience, a very real experience: there are those here who look back on such an hour. But Jesus does not always come that way. He comes with the sword as well as with the song. He comes to banish the old shallow happiness, to break the ice that was over the deep waters, to touch the chords that had never given their music, to open the eyes to the hills above the cloud. And if He has come to you thus, so that you are not happier but consumed with a passion of divine discontent, I bid you in God's name go forward—it is Christ with the sword, but it is still the Christ. It is a great thing to feel like singing. Perhaps it is greater still to feel like struggling. This one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind I press towards the mark.

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The Sending of the Sword - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Three Ways Christ's Coming into the Heart Brings a Sword: He Opens Up the Depths of Sin within Us

There are three ways in which the coming of Christ into the heart sends a sword there. I can only briefly touch on these three ways. Christ opens up the depths of sin within us; that is one. We see what we are in the light of His perfection. We were tolerably contented with our character once, but when Christ comes we are never that again. Like the sheep that look clean enough among the summer grass, but against the background of the virgin snow look foul; so you and I never know how vile we are until the background of our life is Christ. You would have thought that when Christ filled Peter's net, Peter would have been ecstatically happy; but instead of that you have Simon Peter crying, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Christ came to Simon Peter with the sword; showed him himself; taught him how dark he was. And whenever the sword-stroke of an indwelling Savior cuts into the deeps of a man's heart the wound is very likely to be sore.

He Calls Us to a Lifelong Warfare

And then Christ calls us to a lifelong warfare. The note of warfare rings through the whole New Testament. The spirit is quickened now to crave for spiritual things, and the flesh and the spirit must battle till the grave. I knew a student who had been to Keswick and had drunk deep of the teaching of that school. And very noble teaching it is when nobly grasped. And he came back to Scotland in a kind of rapture; everything was to be easy evermore. And he went to one of our most saintly and notable ministers to tell him about this newfound way to holiness, and the minister (with his beautiful smile) looked at him and said, "Ah, sir, it will be a sore wrestle till the end." For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual darkness. And the evil that I would not that I do, and the good I would that do I not. Paul knew the peace of God that passed all understanding, yet to Paul the Savior came bearing the sword.

He Heightens Our Ideals

But above all, it is by heightening our ideal that the old peace goes and the pain begins. It is in the new conception of what life may be that the sword-stroke cuts into the heart. We are no more the children of time and space. We are the children of glorious immortality. We are launching out onto a career that will advance and deepen forever and forever. And do you think that the birth of a mighty thought like that can be accomplished without wound or pain? Whenever the horizon widens there is sorrow. The sword of Christ smites through the thongs that bind us. The sword of Christ cuts down the veil that shadows us. The sword of Christ makes free play for our manhood; we step into our liberty through Him. And if, with all that, there comes a haunting pain and an unrest that may become an agony, remember that Christ came to send the sword.

Christ Sends a Sword into the Home

But I pass on now: so, secondly and lastly, Christ comes to send a sword into the home.

Did you ever think how true that was of Nazareth? Did you ever reflect on our text in the light of that home? There was not a cottager in all the village but would think of one home they knew when they heard this. Joseph and Mary—was there any home in Nazareth on which the sunshine of heaven seemed to rest so sweetly? The peace of mutual love and trust lay on it, like a benediction from the green hills that sheltered it. Then into that quiet home came Jesus Christ, and the point of the sword has touched the heart of Joseph. And he was minded to put Mary away quietly, for the great love he had to her. Then came the flight to Egypt; then Jesus in the Temple—ah, yes! the sword is going deeper now. And when the public ministry began, and He was put to scorn, rejected, crucified, I think the sword had smitten that quiet home. It might have been so peaceful and so happy, with the laughter of children and the joy of motherhood. It might have been so peaceful and so happy if God had never honored it like this. But Jesus was born there, and that made all the difference. It could never be the quiet home again. Gethsemane was coming, Calvary was coming; a sword was going to pierce through Mary's heart. He came not to send peace, but a sword.

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The Sending of the Sword - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Now I think that still in many and many a home the coming of Jesus spells out unrest like that. When a young man or woman in a worldly home takes a definite stand, comes out and out for Christ, then the father and mother and every brother and sister will understand the meaning of this text. There is no outward quarrelling—how could there be when all the family are members of the Church? But the new enthusiasm and the new consecration and the new wholeheartedness for Jesus Christ—all well enough at the distance of the pulpit, but now brought into the bosom of the family—cause unrest, uneasiness, and irritation there, and that is Christ coming with the sword. I quite admit the sword is needlessly sharpened sometimes by the pride and arrogance of the young convert. I have had cases in my ministry where all my sympathy went out to the unconverted brothers. But this I want to say, Is there any young man or woman whose difficulty in deciding for Christ is the life at home? Well, then, be very humble; do not obtrude yourself; remember your ignorance, remember your youth; but as you have a life to live, and as you have a death to die, and as you have a God to meet before the Throne, do not let father or mother or the happiest home that ever cradled man keep you from closing with the call of God. If there must be trouble, then trouble there must be. To thine own self be true. As man to man Christ says to you, "I came not to send peace, but a sword."

The Sword in the Hearts of Parents over Their Children

A word to the children of sorrow as I close. A word to the fathers and to the mothers. I want you to remember there is another way in which Christ has brought the sword into the home. For home itself has a wealth of meaning in it that it never would have had save for the Gospel. And the natural love of the mother for her child has been deepened and glorified since Jesus came. Brotherhood, sisterhood, fatherhood, motherhood, childhood, you do not know how little these words meant once. And if now they speak to us of what is truest and tenderest, of ties unsurpassably delicate and strong, it is the love of Christ, it is the revelation of the Father, it is the touch of our Brother that has achieved the change. And what is the other side of that rich heritage? Ask any Christian mother for the answer. Find out if her heart never bleeds over her child; if she has not hours of haunting and torturing fears. Develop love, and you develop sorrow. Deepen the heart-life, and you deepen suffering. It is by doing that, through all the centuries, that Christ has brought the sword into our homes. The Stoic said, "Dry up these fountains of feeling"; so he made a solitude and called it peace. But Christ deepened and cleansed life's wellsprings here, and that very deepening has brought the sword. I think it is worth it. I would not be a Stoic. It is better to live vividly, spite of the pain, than to have the fingertips of all the angels grope at a heart of steel. After all, if He smiteth, He will bind up again. If He woundeth, yet He will make us whole. The sword, like Excalibur swung by the arm of Bedivere, shall flash and sink into the deeps forever, when we wake in the eternal morning of the Lord.

March 7

The Trifling Things of Life

A cup of cold water— Mat_10:42

The Importance of Little Things

Every reader of the Gospel knows the stress which our Lord put on little things. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted men and things of low degree. Things that to other people seemed important had often little importance in His eyes. Things that to others seemed of trifling value were often things of magnitude to Him. He had a scale of values all His own. Think, for instance, of this cup of water. Was not that a very trifling service? Could anyone refuse a cup of water to the thirsty beggar at the door? Yet a cup of water and a widow's mite and a kiss of welcome to the entering guest—all these meant a great deal to the Lord.

And not only is this true of life; it is true also of His view of nature. Our Lord had an eye for the trifling things of nature, and found in them His parables and poems. Very generally in the Old Testament it is the mighty things of nature which are evident. "Thy justice is like mountains great, thy judgments deep as floods." But in the eyes of Jesus these stupendous things are never quite so eloquent of God as the objects that to others were but trifles. The anemones that flowered in their thousands; the sparrows chirping in the villages; the weeds that were growing on the hedgebanks; the tares that were springing in the corn, these things, to the Lord who came not to destroy but to fulfil, were richest in meaning and in magnitude.

Life Is a Bundle of Little Things

One sees the divine wisdom of this outlook when one thinks how life is compact of little things. "Life is not a little bundle of big things, but a big bundle of little things." Reflect on the story of a day, and what a multitude of little things composes it. From the time we waken till we go to rest, we are engaged in a thousand trifling tasks. And this is as true of the greatest of mankind, who lead humanity in thought and action, as of the rest of us who are but common clay. Great hours come to us but rarely; common hours are with us all the time. Great hours reveal our possibilities; common hours reveal our consecration. And for our Lord the usual was the big thing, because the usual is nine-tenths of life, and sets the field for triumph or defeat.

The Common Little Things Are the Source of Happiness

Again, one must remember how much of our happiness depends on trifling things. It takes many of us years to learn that lesson. Professor Leckie tells of a writer who was engaged in some stupendous task. After years of labor it was ended, and he entered into the joy of finished work. But the joy so given was not half so great, he said, as the joy he got from the little pattering footsteps of some children whom he had taught to love him. "Give me health and a day," said Emerson, "and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous." It is the common things open to us all which are the secret and the source of happiness—the breath of June, the clasp of trusty hands, the eyes which answer ours across the crowd, the lowly service of a cup of water. That explains the emphasis of Jesus. He exposed the fallacy of rarity. He altogether revised the scale of bigness, because He so perfectly understood the heart. Christ has proved equal to the demands of life because, in a great love which comprehends, He recognized the magnitude of trifles.

Trifling Things Are Truest Service

One finds, too, in watching life observantly, how trifling things are often truest service. Nobody knew that better than the Lord. A well-known writer who fell into vile sin tells us how he plucked up heart again. It was because when "down and out" a passing stranger lifted his hat to him. And then one thinks of drunken John B. Gough, and how a friend laid his hand upon his shoulder—and that touch, that trifling touch of brotherhood, lit the star of hope for him again. Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. To neglect the trifle is to miss the triumph. A tiny snowflake is as exquisitely beautiful as all the splendid pageantry of sunrise. It is one of the wonderful things about our Savior that He recognized this with such perfect clearness—and the servant is not greater than his Lord.

March 8

Do We Look for Another? - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?- Mat_11:3

The Finality of Our Christian Faith

I wish to say a few words on the finality of our Christian faith, and there could be no better approach to that than the experience of John the Baptist. When John cried "Behold the Lamb of God," he was asserting the finality of Christ. All the lambs slain on Jewish altars were but prophecies and presages of Christ's sacrifice. He was the completion and the crown of the long and chequered history of Israel, and beyond Him there could never be another. Then doubts began to assail the mind of John. All was so contrary to expectation. This lowly Savior, moving about the villages, was so different from the Messiah of his dreams. And then, as in a torturing agony, John sent his disciples to the Lord, saying, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?"

Is There Going to Be Another One?

Now that question, if I am not mistaken, is in many earnest minds today. Many are asking, secretly or openly, if Christ be the final Word of God. Partly through the comparative study of religions, with its appreciation of what is beautiful in all, partly through the slowness of our faith to bring the Kingdom into our teeming cities, partly through the supineness of the Church in answering the challenge of our social problems, that question is being widely asked today. Is Christ the final Word of God? Is a new world-teacher still to be revealed? Or, in the abstract language of the West, is our Christian faith the final faith? That is being discussed more widely than many of the orthodox imagine.

The Universality and Completeness of the Christian Faith

That our faith (like polytheism) will die a natural death is a thought that may be at once rejected. Heaven and earth have passed away, and His word has not passed away. Much more conceivable is the thought of certain circles that our Christian faith will be absorbed in some synthesis of what is best in all religions. That, we are told, is what has happened with Judaism. All that is best in it was absorbed in Christianity—its sense of guilt, its craving for atonement, its profound sense of the holiness of God. And if this has been the fate of Judaism, itself one of the revealed religions, may it not be so with that which has replaced it? But there is this profound difference to be noted—Judaism could never satisfy. Paul, who embraced it with passionate intensity, found himself thirsty and hungry at the end. Whereas the wonderful thing about our faith is this, that, take it where you will throughout the world, it absolutely satisfies the heart. Take it to India, and that is true. Take it to Africa, and that is true. Take it to the cultured or the ignorant, and when they find its secret that is true. Paul needed Judaism and something else if he was to win perfect satisfaction. Nobody needs Christ and something else. That infinite satisfaction which our faith gives, that profound sense of being complete in Christ, that song which rises from the believing heart, "Thou, O Christ, art all I want," that distinguishes our faith decisively from Judaism and every other faith. It is the mark of its absolute finality.

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Do We Look for Another? - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Because Christianity Is Final It Demands Unconditional Surrender

To some this may seem a theoretical question, but in reality it is far from being that. For example, unless our faith be final it cannot demand unconditional surrender—and that is exactly what it does demand. No one would cast himself upon another if he knew that the other's friendship were but temporary. Love demands finality, if it is to give itself in utter unreserve. And the utter unreserve our faith demands could not be asked, and never could be given, were our faith destined to be superseded. Religion is nothing unless it can be everything, unless it deserves unconditional surrender, unless we can rest ourselves upon it, unreservedly, in life and trial and suffering and death. And that is what nobody can ever do, anymore than he can give his love or friendship, if what claims his heart be only temporary.

A Missionary Faith Because of Its Finality

Again, one remembers that our Christian faith is in its essence a missionary faith. Whenever it ceases to be that, it ceases to be Christianity. From the first it has evangelized the world simply because it could not help it. It could no more help it than the river can help flowing, or the rain coming down on the mown grass. But the instant you cease to believe our faith is final, and that Christ is the last Word of God, you "cut the nerve" of missionary effort. To what purpose is this waste—this lavish expenditure of men and money, if the message of the Cross is to grow obsolete and Christ be replaced by any other teacher? Do you think our Lord, who was always sweetly reasonable, would ever have said "Go into all the world," had He foreseen a prospect such as that? The genius of Christianity is missionary, and all missionaries believe that Christ is final. Men who hold Him one teacher among many have never lifted a finger to evangelize the nations. Thus this question, seemingly theoretic, has the mightiest influence on personal response, and on the coming of the Kingdom in the world.

The Finality of the Christian Faith Gives Direction

And then we remember how right through the New Testament that is the unvarying attitude—and when we cut ourselves adrift from the New Testament we are sailing on an uncharted sea. Paul never doubted that his faith was final through all the magnificent expansions of his thought. To John, Christ was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The majestic argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews is an argument for the finality of Christ—God has at last spoken by a Son. Best of all, our Savior never doubted it—it was part and parcel of His consciousness. I am the Bread of Life. I am the Light of the World. My words shall never pass away. No one has had even a glimpse of Christianity who cannot sing with the profoundest faith.

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun

Doth his successive journeys run.

March 9

The Decisiveness of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

But I say unto you— Mat_11:22

In Jesus There Was Never Any Hesitancy

There is one element in the character of Jesus which is well worthy of our consideration. It is the element which, in default of a better word, one might describe as His decisiveness. In other men, even the greatest, you catch continually the note of hesitancy. Even in the most dogmatic person you have the occasional sense of possible mistake. But in the Jesus given us in the Gospels there is not the faintest trace of such a hesitancy. There is an absolute and instantaneous certainty in the face of every problem and perplexity. In other lives, if such certainty be found, it is found generally in exalted hours. It is found in those rare and elevated moments when the mists are scattered somehow, and we know. But with Jesus this decisiveness was normal. He had not to wait for any glorious hours. It never seems to have left Him for an instant as He moved among the villages of Galilee. From the first recorded utterance of His boyhood, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" on to the last glad triumph on the cross, when He exulted in the thought that it was finished, there is not visible one shadow of perplexity, nor any halting as of uncertain feet, nor any clouding, even for a moment, of the serene decisiveness of Christ.

Christ's Decisiveness Was Accompanied by Charm

This is all the more notable when we remember how infinitely gracious Jesus was. The mystery of His decisiveness is deepened greatly when we associate it with the beauty of His character. When men have a habit of laying down the law, they may convince us but they rarely charm us. Your citizen who is always in the right may generally reckon on being held a nuisance. And the unique thing about our Lord is this, that He was .always laying down the law, yet men found Him infinitely gracious. He was dogmatic and yet they clung to Him. He was intolerant yet infinitely winsome. He was always judging without the slightest hesitancy, and yet men never felt He was censorious. There was in our Lord a constant self-assertion that is quite unparalleled in human history, yet I do not think that any lip was curled when He said He was meek and lowly in heart. It is such antinomies in Jesus' character that have made men call Him utterly inexplicable. No one would ever have dreamed of such a character, had not such a character actually existed. To be full of grace has been the lot of some, and to be full of truth the lot of others, but to be full of grace and truth is the unique prerogative of Christ.

Christ's Decisiveness in Regard to Israel

We catch that note of decisiveness in many spheres, and first in regard to the long past of Israel. There is nothing more striking in the Gospel record than the attitude of our Savior to that past. What thoughts He cherished about the past of Greece we neither know nor are we meant to know. Nor shall we ever know what thoughts He cherished about the magnificent grandeur which was Rome. But how He viewed the glorious past of Israel, with its song of psalmist and oracle of prophet, all that is written so that all may read. For Christ that story of Israel was divine. It was the revelation of His God. One jot or tittle of the law was not to pass till everything had been fulfilled. And yet though He reverenced it with a far deeper reverence than any scribe who sat in Moses' seat, He judged it with unfaltering decision. He utters His judgments of these old enactment's with the perfect freedom of a full authority. This He accepts as something always valid; that He rejects as something only temporary. He moves among these glories of the past not as a subject who has no right to question, but as a king who has the power to abrogate, as certainly as He has the power to endorse. Moses said unto you so and so, but I say unto you so and so. He has the fullest authority to ratify, and He has the fullest authority to cancel. And all this from a Galilean villager who had never had any learning from the schools, and who had been cradled in His village home in intensest devotion to the past. Had Jesus been a reckless demagogue, we could more easily have understood that attitude. There are demagogues who do not care one scrap for all that is highest and holiest in antiquity. But Jesus cared intensely for antiquity, for He saw in it the handiwork of God, and yet He judged it, and praised it, and condemned it, with a decision from which was no appeal.

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The Decisiveness of Christ - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ's Decisiveness in Regard to Himself

The same striking feature of decisiveness is seen again in regard to His own person. Christ never seems to have doubted for an hour that He was supremely and ineffably great. I have through my life been a reader of biographies, which I take to be the most fruitful of all reading. Well, in all the great lives that I ever read, there is one thing evident and universal. It is that every life has had its faltering hours, when vision has failed and inspiration vanished, when a man's confidence in his power and genius has silently and unaccountably deserted him. You find it in every life of men of action. You find it in every life of men of thought. You find it conspicuously and remarkably in the biography of every saint. Yet Christ, who was a man of thought and action, as surely as He was the ideal of sainthood, was never visited by any hour like that. Other men rise into the thought of greatness; Christ was possessed with it from the beginning. Other men win it, and in dejection lose it; Christ never lost it in any hour of agony. Rejected by His own people and betrayed, Pilate said to Him, Art Thou king? And Jesus replied, Thou sayest, I am a king. There is something very wonderful in that, and I would give much that you should feel the wonder of it. That is a consciousness not merely notable; that is a consciousness which is unique. And when you have difficulties about the virgin birth, and about miracles, and the resurrection, I beg you to turn your thoughts to facts like these if you wish to feel the mystery of Christ. No one doubted that He was meek and lowly. Everyone saw that He would not strive nor cry. There was a loving gentleness about this man of Nazareth which drew the burdened and the broken to Him. And yet this loving, gentle, lowly Man said, "I am the way—I am the truth—I am the life"; and "Before Abraham was, I am."

He Declares Himself to Be Greater Than Solomon and the Temple

That unfaltering sense of His pre-eminence is sometimes witnessed by our Lord's comparisons, and there are two such comparisons so vivid that it is worthwhile to recall them for a moment. To the Jews of our Lord's time there was one name in history that stood out glorious above all other names, and there was one building that meant more to them than any other building in the world. The name so pre-eminent was that of Solomon, and the building so solitary was the temple. These two summed up, for every pious Jew, all that was highest and holiest in the past—all that was most magnificent in empire, all wealth of argosies from distant shores, all near protection of a covenant God who had His place of rest between the cherubim. No king had ever been so great as Solomon; no building ever so holy as the temple. To it the heart of every exile turned, and for it even the exile would have died. And now comes Jesus, and to men and women burning with passionate convictions such as these, He quietly says, "I am greater than Solomon," and "a greater than the temple is here." Had He been a stranger with an alien upbringing that would have been easier to understand. But He was no stranger with an alien upbringing; He was the son of Mary, and the Child of Nazareth. He had been fed upon the Jewish Scriptures; He had been kindled as a boy with Jewish memories, and yet with a quiet, unfaltering decision He placed Himself supreme above them all.

Decisive about Human Character

The same decisiveness is very marked again in our Lord's handling of the character of others. There is a ring of finality in all His judgments which is very arresting and impressive. Every age has its own problems with which it must wrestle and seek to answer. But there is one problem common to all ages, and that is the problem of a human life. And men are always trying to solve that problem, and are always baffled in their attempts to solve it, there is such intertwining of evil and of good in the most commonplace and ordinary mortal. If all that was noble in a human character stood out apart and separate from the base, how easy it would be to judge a brother, and to classify him, and assign him to his deserts. And it is just because in actual human life there is no such cleavage between light and darkness, that men are so baffled in their attempts to judge. Sometimes all that is fairest in a character is perilously akin to what is foulest. Sometimes all that is basest in a character is irradiated by gleams of heaven itself. Until at last in the common lives around us we meet so much that is awesome and inscrutable, that we feel how impossible it is to judge. There are people, many of them women, who have a wonderful intuition into character. They seem to detect, as by a kind of instinct, the innermost nature of the folk they meet. Yet even they can never be quite sure that they have solved the secret of a character, for something always may emerge tomorrow that contradicts the impression of today. It is not the great only who are misunderstood; every one of us is misunderstood We baffle each other, and perplex each other, and are insoluble enigmas to our dearest. We are a little better than the most loving think, and a little worse than the nastiest imagine; and if one thing is certain in this mortal life, it is that no one has ever seen us as we are.

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The Decisiveness of Christ - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Christ Was Never Baffled by Any Problem of Human Personality

Now it is just here, I say with the fullest confidence, that Jesus of Nazareth stands unique. There is not one trace that He was ever baffled by the haunting problem of human personality Born in a remote and quiet village, He went into the world of men. There, with an utter freedom from convention, He mingled in every circle of society. And if one thing is certain in that unfettered intercourse, which brought Him into touch with rich and poor, it is that His every judgment was decisive. One hour He was disputing with the Pharisees; the next He was in the company of Mary. Now it was a rich young ruler who was at His feet, and now it was a woman who had been a sinner. And always, without one trace of hesitancy, you have the Savior praising or condemning with an authority from which there is no appeal. One man He commands to follow Him; another He bids go to his home again. One man He overwhelms with woe unutterable; over another He pronounces pardon And all this He is doing every day, and in the course of His ordinary ministry, and with people whom He has never seen before, till suddenly they are forced into His presence. There is something very wonderful in that; there is something quite unparalleled in that. And if you have doubts about the resurrection, I want you to give your thoughts to facts like these. Do not brood upon your resurrection difficulties; brood upon these great facts in Jesus' life, till it comes home to you, as it has come to many of us, that this is none other than the Son of God.

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The Decisiveness of Christ - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

Christ's Decisiveness in Regard to the Future

Then lastly, this decisiveness of Christ comes to its climax as regards the future. You find no shadow of doubt upon His heart as He looks forward to the coming ages. There are men who have started out with flowing hopes, and then their hopes have gradually died. For sorrow has come, and very bitter enmity, and they have lost the vision of the morning. But on that night on which He was betrayed, when everything was dark and spoke of treachery, Christ was certain that He would be remembered. He had no hesitancy about the past, handling its content with a swift decisiveness. He had no hesitancy with any human soul that rose up out of the crowd and stood before Him. And equally certain with these facts is this, that He knew no hesitancy about the future, nor about the absolute power that He would wield when the small and great were gathered before God. You remember what Danton at the French Revolution cried out with all the passion of his heart. He cried out—and he meant it from the depths—"Let my name be blighted, but let France be free." And that is a cry that has echoed down the ages from the lips of every patriot and prophet, with the one exception of the Lord Jesus Christ. Others have been content to die, if only the cause for which they fought should triumph. Others have been content to be forgotten, if only their message should inspire mankind. But Christ was never content to be forgotten, and never dreamed that He would be forgotten, but in the very center of all coming ages knew that He would bless and would condemn. While we must be on our guard against interpreting literally the poetic and pictorial language of the Master, there can be no question that Christ anticipated a day of judgment when the secret of every life would be revealed. And the amazing thing is that in that day of judgment it is His presence that is to search the character, and His estimate that is to turn the scale of heavenly blessedness or awful loss. Whenever Christ speaks about a day of judgment, it is He Himself who is the central figure. It is He who separates the sheep and goats. It is He who says Depart, I never knew you. And that magnificence of royal authority, which is interwoven with the whole Gospel story, is the climax of the decisiveness of Christ. Did you ever think how different it was from the outlook of the old Jewish prophets? They had their vision of a coming day, but in that day you never light on them. Then Christ took up that old prophetic vision, and glorified it, and touched it with eternity, and in the center of it all He puts one figure, and that one central figure is Himself. My brother and sister, either that is blasphemy, or it is something different from humanity. Either it is wild, defiant atheism, or else in the sweep of it, it is divine. And as reasonable beings you have to ask yourselves, knowing the tenor of the life of Jesus, which of the two conclusions is more likely. For myself it is such facts that are determinative. They lead me in Christ to the very feet of God. Though it were proved to me that Jesus never rose, Jesus would still be more than man for me. Down in the depths of His moral and spiritual being I light on things I cannot understand, unless that solitary lowly figure was different from us children of mortality.

March 10

The Timeliness of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father— Mat_11:25

Thanksgiving in the Hour of Darkness and Seeming Failure

Matthew never could forget the time at which these words were uttered. The hour never vanished from his memory. Our Lord had been speaking of His rejection by cities like Bethsaida and Capernaum. There He had wrought His mighty works, and had found no tokens of repentance. And just then, when everything seemed dark, and the darkness was deepening into tragedy, our Lord had risen to exultant thanksgiving. It recalls another time of darkness—that night on which He was betrayed. Then, too, He had broken into thanksgiving, so wonderful that none ever could forget it. When others would have been plunged in sorrow, struggling to keep their faith from being quenched, our Lord was filled with an adoring gratitude. Such experiences of their common Master sank deep into the minds of the disciples. They began to watch the times of Jesus, as if in these very times there was a message for them. And for us, just as for them, there is a deal of spiritual profit in studying the timeliness of Christ.

Man's Extremity Was God's Opportunity

One notes, for instance, with ever-growing wonder, the timeliness of the hour of His coming. Enlightened men saw from the very first that He had come in the fulness of the time. Sometimes a gift, precious in itself, is robbed of half its sweetness by untimeliness. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and there are gifts which are bestowed too late. But God was neither too early nor too late, as all our growing knowledge teaches us, when He gave His Son to be the Savior of the world. It was the fulness of the time, for need was greatest. The inspiring voice of prophecy was silent. Older faiths had lost their power to satisfy, and men were settling down into despair. And not only was it man's extremity; it was the hour of greatest opportunity, for there was peace abroad, and highways through the world, for carrying the news of the evangel. No one can study history, and then turn to the manger at the inn, without gaining a profound conviction of the perfect timeliness of Christ.

Christ Knew When It Was Time Not to Act

Then we turn to the earthly life of Christ, and the same feature is everywhere apparent. We take, for instance, the marriage feast of Cana. "Woman," said Jesus to His mother, "Mine hour is not yet come." He meant that she must not interfere; when the hour struck He would perform His part. And that reiterated insistence on His hour, when others sought to hasten or retard Him, is one of the indications in the Gospels of the perfect timeliness of Christ. The time of others might be always ready; His hour was not always ready. For the deed at Cana, as for the deed on Calvary, there was one perfect moment and one only. And nothing is more notable in Christ than how He refused to let Himself be hurried, or, when the hour struck, to be delayed. Even His mother must not interfere, however it pained Him to have to tell her so. Familiar with the timeliness of God, He must be faithful to His Father in this also. That is why, with such intense insistence, He silenced people by speaking of His hour. It is the perfect timeliness of Christ.

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The Timeliness of Christ - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

He Acted Always in Time

Again, one traces the same feature in the moments of His intervention. There is the story of the epileptic boy. The disciples were powerless with that boy—how they longed for the presence of the Lord! He could do what they had failed to do, but He was away on the Mount of Transfiguration. And just then, in their dire distress, they lifted up their eyes, and there was Jesus—and Mark tells us that the disciples marveled. Some have thought they marveled at His glory, as if traces of heaven still clung about His form. But if that were so, what would have been the use of telling the three that they were to be silent? I do not think it was at that they marveled; it was rather at the appearance of their Lord in the very moment when they needed Him. An hour before they had not learned their powerlessness. An hour after the boy would have been home. The marvelous thing was that the Lord appeared in the very nick of time. And I venture to think that there are multitudes who have found that this is just as true of them as it was of the disciples on that day.

Jesus Never Gave a Series of Lectures—He Spoke Freely to Meet Needs as He Saw Them

One feels, too, how true this is of the words which our Lord spake. One has only to read the Gospel narrative to discover that they were exquisitely timely. Our Lord never gave any course of lectures. He spoke freely, and for the moment's need. He answered questions, and met the scribes in argument, and gave His best to the solitary listener. And the marvel is that these free words of His, which have satisfied the needs of men, might seem to have had no one else in view than those who originally heard them. The words were timely, and yet they have proved timeless. They were occasional, and yet they are immortal. "Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words shall not pass away." They are so timely still, that many a man has felt as if they had been spoken to him alone, though centuries have gone since they were uttered.

March 11

Surrender and Service - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;…and ye shall find rest unto your souls— Mat_11:29

The Thought of Surrender

There are, I think, three thoughts that meet and mingle in this beautiful figure of the yoke. The first is the great thought of surrender. When the Romans conquered some rebellious tribe they made the vanquished pass under the yoke. It thus became a figure of common speech that the conquered were under the yoke of the victorious. And our Lord, who had seen the legions marching, and who was quite familiar with the figure, says "Take my yoke upon you." Nothing is more magnificent in Christ than the way in which He demands a full surrender. He does not claim a little bit of life. He claims life in its wholeness and entirety. And the strange thing is that whenever that is yielded, and never until that is yielded, the life is flooded with the sense of rest. Such a surrender to anybody else would mean the warping of the personality. But that it never means with Christ. It means the liberation of the personality. No man is ever really himself until he has fully surrendered to the Lord. "Take my yoke upon you.... and…find rest."

Not a Forced Surrender

This, you observe, is not a forced surrender. Our Lord says take My yoke upon you. Our Lord is very fond of the word must, but He never uses it in this connection. When the Roman legions smashed some savage tribe, that tribe was compelled to bear the yoke. Often, on that account, they hated Rome, and served her with rebellion in their hearts. But Christ wants nobody on terms like these. Such terms are not in the program of His conquest. Christ demands a surrender that is willing. You can compel the dog to do your bidding. You can force the slave to carry out your will. But Christ, that mighty protagonist of liberty, treats nobody as a dog or as a slave. We are the Father's children, made in the Father's image, with an inalienable heritage of freedom, and we may take or we may spurn the yoke. There are so many who are waiting for something irresistible to happen, something to sweep them off their feet to Christ, as the breaker sweeps the log on to the shore. That something is never going to happen. Now is the accepted time. The Master's word is "Take my yoke upon you."

Taking on a Yoke Means Service

The next suggestion of our text is that of service, for the yoke at once suggests the thought of service. Our Lord had coupled the two thoughts a hundred times as He wandered among the farms of Galilee. I love to watch the horses on a farm when the evening hour of their unyoking comes—the big, beautiful creatures free at last from the swinging and the straining of the day. So they pass to the water trough and to the stalls, till with the morning the yoke is on again: the yoke, the symbol and sacrament of service. Now all life is service, and perhaps "all service ranks the same with God," from that of the starveling in Sally Brass's kitchen to that of the Prime Minister of Britain. And then Christ comes to all who have to serve, no matter how high or how low their service be, and says, "Take my yoke upon you, and find rest." It is not of rest from service that He speaks. It is of rest in service. It is of rest that comes when care and worry vanish, and the burden no longer irritates and frets. For duty is different now, and God is near, and love is everywhere, and strength sufficient, when once the yoke of Christ is on the shoulders.

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Surrender and Service - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Peace in the Heart while Serving with Christ's Yoke

That our Lord had full authority for speaking so is evident to every student of His life. He served with an intensity unparalleled, yet who would ever think to call Him restless? Busy and broken were His days, yet He had the heart at leisure from itself. The crowds thronged Him and the calls were overwhelming, yet He moved in the peace that passeth understanding. And now He says, "Take My yoke upon you. It is My passion to pass on My secret. Take My yoke upon you—and find rest." When a man flings himself into his toil without one word of prayer or thought of God, can you wonder if his nerves get jangled, or if he is tempted now and then to give things up? But we are not here to give things up, if the ordering of God be a reality. We are here just to give up ourselves. To take Christ's yoke upon us is to serve in the spirit that made all His service beautiful, with the same unfaltering trust that God was over Him, and that the everlasting arms were underneath Him. That gave Him peace when burdens grew intolerable. Sustained by that, He never gave things up. He gave Himself up upon the Cross.

A Double Yoke Means Christ Pulling with You

And then our text suggests another thought. It is the infinite comfort of society. The yoke is a double yoke (as Matthew Henry said), and we are going to draw along with Him. Farmers tell me they sometimes train a young beast by yoking it with an old experienced beast, one that is familiar with the plough, and has been out on many a raw and stormy morning. And Christ says, "I want you to pull with Me, and then you will learn to make a straighter furrow, and the farmer will be well contented in the evening." He has been over all the ground before. He knows it well, and all its inequalities. He has been tempted in all points like as we are. He has borne the heat and burden of the day. And then He comes to us, worrying and anxious and wondering how we shall ever carry on, and He says, "Child, let's do this thing together." It is the offer of partnership with God in the strain and stress of unillumined days. The question is, Have we accepted it? Is it a great reality to us? If not, why not accept it now?

March 12

Humility Interpreted by Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I am meek and lowly in heart— Mat_11:29

From Vice to Virtue

It has been said that the greatest of all differences between ancient and modern morality is not the introduction of new virtues, but the changing of the order of the old ones. In this sphere, as in other spheres, Christ has put down the mighty from their seats. He has taken the little one of ancient ethics, and made it as it were a thousand. And so it is said our Christian morality is not generically different from others; the difference is mainly one of emphasis. Now in this there is a large element of truth, and of very fruitful and suggestive truth. No one will ever understand the Savior who forgets how largely He wrought by rearranging. But there is one point at which it is not true, and that the most important point of all perhaps—it is not true in reference to humility. Humility was not a virtue in the old world. Humility in the old world was a vice. It was a thing abhorred and accursed, utterly unworthy of the gentleman. And the amazing thing is that in Christendom it has not merely ceased to be a vice, but has been given the primacy of virtues. To be humble was once to be contemptible: now to be humble is to be blessed. It was once rejected as a thing of shame: it is now sought for as a grace of heaven. In every communion of Christendom, however deep the cleavages between them, the queen of Christian graces is humility.

The Infinity and Eternity of Christianity Should Humble us

Now for this Christian glorying in humility there are two reasons which suggest themselves. The first is the expansion given to life by the revelation of our faith. Had you lived within a little room, and then been brought under the open heaven, can you not picture how your thought would change in that amazing moment of expansion? Seeing the sun and moon in all their beauty, and the azure heaven, and the myriad stars, you would be silent and wonder and adore. Feelings hitherto repressed would waken; thoughts would rise and soar into the infinite. In a world so high and wonderful and great there would be known the surge of aspiration. And that is exactly what our faith has done in giving life its infinite horizon: chords which were silent have begun to vibrate. Life is not less mysterious since Christ came; it is far more mysterious since Christ came. He has made it high as heaven and deep as hell, and touched it to the issues of eternity. And so has been born our Christian aspiration, which neither Greek nor Roman ever knew, and humility is the other side of aspiration. Make life a finite and measurable thing, and inevitably you foster self-complacency. Make it an infinite and eternal thing, and humility ceases to be a thing of scorn. It is the fitting attitude of mind and spirit for one who stands in the light of immortality, and whose true horizon is the eternal God.

And yet that reason, though a very real one, is after all but a secondary one. The primary reason is not our new horizon; it is the personality of Christ. When you meet a person for the first or second time you may receive from him varying impressions. But gradually, as acquaintance ripens, one clear and definite impression comes. And so as men meditated on the Lord, and came to know Him through such meditation, one feature took precedence of all. It was not His courage, although He was very brave; it was not the eloquence with which He spake. It was not even that mighty power of God with which He healed the sick and raised the dead. Clear and conspicuous above all other qualities, the crown and inspiration of them all, stood out the perfect humility of Jesus. Men found it in every action which He wrought; they lit on it in every word He uttered. They traced it in a thousand subtle touches that are more delicate than speech and action. And it was that large and overwhelming impress, forever deepening as they brooded over it, which altered the conception of mankind. All the humility of Christendom really runs back to that of Christ. If it is the distinguishing virtue of the saint, it was first the distinguishing virtue of the Savior. And that is why to understand humility we must study it in the Person of our Lord, which is what I propose to do. Let me use first the method of exclusion.

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Humility Interpreted by Christ - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ's Humility Was That of Authority

To begin with, then, the humility of Jesus was certainly not a mean and groveling spirit. The bitterest enemy of the Redeemer has never taunted Him with that. In one of his pathetic letters the poet Keats says, "I hate humility." You have only to read the context of that letter to discover what he meant by that. He meant that groveling and cringing spirit which Heine called the virtue of a hound, and which is immortalized in English literature in the portrait of Uriah Heep. That is what Aristotle would have called humility. That is what Cicero would have called humility. And there are multitudes still who have a lurking feeling that if this is not the truth it is very near the truth. And I want you to learn how utterly astray are all such conceptions of humility, if the standard of humility be Christ. Christ never groveled before man or God. He never cringed to any living creature. There was a dignity about His bearing which never forsook Him in His darkest hour. It made itself felt among the hardened soldiery, cast its subduing power upon Pilate, touched the Roman centurion to reverence, and awed the clamorous rabble in Gethsemane. I therefore learn that true humility has nothing to do with cringing or with fawning. The moment you associate it with that, you dissociate it from the Person of the Lord. For He was a King, and had a royal bearing, and moved among His fellows with authority; and all the time His humility was perfect.

Christ's Humility Was Not Self-Depreciating

Going a little further, we must note that the humility of Christ was not self-depreciation. It was not the habit of belittling Himself, or the work which God had given Him to do. There were some things which Christ made very light of; things He refused to reckon as important. But there was one thing which He never once made light of, and that was the work which was given Him to do. On the contrary, He always magnified it, and used the loftiest terms in speaking of it, associating it forever with His glory. Other teachers call men to their message; Jesus called men to Himself. The self-assertion of our Savior is the most magnificent self-assertion in all history. And yet He tells us in this single glimpse which He gives us into the secret of His being, that He is meek and lowly in heart. Clearly, then, the humility of Christ was not any belittling of Himself. It was as far removed from pride on the one hand, as from self-depreciation on the other. And it is needful to remember this, for we are often tempted to think that we are humble, when all the time we are but doing dishonor to the faculties or the work which God has given us.

Christ's Humility Did Not Arise from a Sense of Sin

Going deeper still, there is one other thing which I beg you very carefully to note. It is that the humility of Christ did not arise from any sense of sin. In your experience and in mine, there is nothing so humbling as the power of sin. You have had seasons, and I have had seasons, when sin has humbled us into the very dust. And that experience, oftentimes repeated, and in a measure always present with us, has led us to connect the two together. Now most unquestionably God meant it so. It is a blessed hour of true humility when we cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner." But to understand the meaning of humility, in all the depth and compass of its glory, we must never forget that it was first exhibited in One who had no sense of sin at all. The one thing that you cannot find in Christ is any trace of a scar upon His conscience. There was not one single shadow of remorse. There was not one single whisper of regret. Many a cry of prayer was on His lips, and went ringing heavenward among the hills, yet the one prayer He never prayed was, "God be merciful to me a sinner." The point to note is that our Lord was sinless, and yet was the perfect exemplar of humility. Utterly untouched by moral evil, He was humbler than man has ever been. And that should teach us that this queenly grace is something nobler than the fruit of guilt, however the consciousness of guilt may deepen it.

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The Humility of Christ Is as a Child's Trust

What, then, was the humility of Christ? Has He Himself thrown any light upon the matter? There are two incidents which at once suggest themselves as teaching us everything we want to know. On one occasion the disciples had been arguing as to who is greatest in the Kingdom. They came to Jesus with their difficulty, and the answer which they got was very beautiful. For Jesus beckoned to a little child, and set him down right in the midst of them, and said, "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." There is the living example of humility as Jesus understood humility. And what is the spirit of a little child: is it not a spirit eminently trustful ? It trusts a father's wisdom without questioning; confides unfalteringly in a mother's care; rests in happy security on this, that there is someone arranging and providing. There is nothing mean or groveling in that. In that there is nothing of self-depreciation. A child is not humble because it knows its guilt. It is humble because it is a child. It is humble because it trusts so utterly, because it leans its weight upon a father, because it answers so unswervingly to every movement of another will.

Now that, I take it, in its essence, is the humility of Jesus Christ. It is not primarily a relationship to men; primarily it is a relationship to God. It has been noted that in the Gospels you do not read about the faith of Jesus; what you do read of in the Gospels is the humility of Jesus. And the reason for that is that our Lord's humility, when you come to understand its inner meaning, is just His faith in its most glorious exercise. Moment by moment He learned the will of God. Moment by moment He responded to it. The faintest whisper of His Father's voice was answered in unquestioning obedience. And this not only when that will was sweet, and reached Him amid the fields of Nazareth, but when it came to Him in the garden of Gethsemane. That was not courage, though it may look like courage. It was not heroism, though you may call it so. It was the perfected spirit of the child whom Jesus took and placed among them all. That was humility as Jesus understood it—loyal, loving, unquestioning submission, not only when submission was a happy thing, but when it led to the garden and the cross.

And you see at once, taking that view, how it explains a great deal which was dark before. It helps us to see the humility of Christ where otherwise we might be blind to it. When a man is humble he is always humble. His humility makes itself evident in everything. You must be able to trace it through his whole activity, if it be a real and genuine humility. And yet there are moments in the life of Jesus when it would be difficult to call Him humble, in the usual interpretation of that word. Think of His withering anger at the Pharisees. Think of His driving the traders from the Temple. Is that humility—that withering anger; or has Christ forgotten to be humble now? No, He has not forgotten to be humble: it is you and I who have forgotten something; forgotten that the humility of Christ is His absolute fidelity to God. Do you think it was pleasant to Jesus to be angry so? Do you think He delighted to wither and to burn? A thousand times rather, we may say with reverence, He would have been seated in the home at Bethany. Had He consulted Self He would have been with Lazarus, or among the hills, or in the fields of Galilee; but He withered and burned, and drove the traders forth, because He consulted nobody but God. In other words, He was never more a Child than in those hours when He seemed least a Child. He was never humbler in His Father's eyes than in His awful and imperious majesty. For then you hear, clear as a trumpet note, "I come to do thy will, O God," and that was the humility of Jesus. Take that view, and it irradiates everything. It gives a unity we never felt before. Christ is no longer humble in His suffering, and something else in His denunciation. He is as humble when He scorns the Pharisee as when He talks with the woman by the well; as humble when He commands, "Take these things hence," as when He cries upon the cross, "Father, forgive them."

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Christ's Humility Was That of a Servant

And then there is the second scene which is needed if our thought is to be adequate. It is that scene, forever memorable, in which Jesus washed the disciples' feet. Need I recall it? You all know it perfectly. You see it before you even as I speak: how Jesus laid aside His garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself and washed His disciples' feet. And He did it "because He was come from God, and because He was going home again to God"—that is to say, all filial life in God must issue in lowly and in loving service. First the child, you see, and then the servant. Take both together and you have humility. First the child, the filial trustful confidence; and then, as the fruit of that, the servant's office. And that is exactly what you find in Jesus, whom the prophet calls the Servant of the Lord, and yet says that a little Child shall lead them. Perfect loyalty to the Father's will issuing in lowliest service to the brethren—that was the humility of Christ, and that is the humility He wants in us. There is nothing cringing in it, nothing mean. It is trustful, active, eminently blessed. It is the crowning grace of every Christian character, and makes the wilderness blossom as the rose.

March 13

Christ's Teaching On Man - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

How much then is a man better than a sheep?— Mat_12:12

The Expression of Compassion Originates with Christ

Not very far away from where we sit there are gleaming the lights of our great city hospitals. We can see with the mind's eye the quiet wards, and the nurses moving in their gracious ministry. There the poorest citizens are treated with all the appliances that riches can command. There are they tended by night and day, with a skill that is as wise as it is kind. And if we ask ourselves, as thoughtful men, to what it is that we owe such institutions, the answer is not very far to seek. It is not enough to say we owe them to the generous support of a compassionate public. We want to find the source of that compassion, which is peculiar to the Christian era. And we find it, without any question, in the new conception of what man is, which we owe to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Christ Brought a New Estimate of Man

Indeed if one were asked the most distinctive feature of those ages which we call the Christian era, I do not think we should much err in answering that it was just that altered thought of man. We divide the history of the world into two parts, the one before Christ and the other after Christ. That in itself is an unequalled tribute to the centrality of the Redeemer. Well, among all the differences of these two eras, I say that none perhaps is so remarkable as the difference which is known to every student in the accepted estimate of man. It has breathed a new spirit into literature. It has created a passion for social service. It has built those splendid palaces of healing, where is the hand of science and the heart of mercy. All this, and a vast deal more than this, has been wrought by the new idea of man which Christendom owes to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Doctrine of Man Is Determined by Our Doctrine of God

There are one or two preliminary things I want to say, and the first of them is this, that the doctrine of man, whatever it may be, is always the other side of the doctrine of God. As is the thought of God in any faith, so is the thought of man in that same faith. The one controls and dominates the other, giving it its colour and its content. Tell me the kind of god a people worships—tell me their thought of the being in the heavens—and I shall tell you what they think of man in his value and his freedom and his destiny. Now we are not dealing with Christ's thought of God tonight, but we all know something of the wonder of it. We know how infinitely rich in personality was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I throw out the hint that knowing it, we shall expect to find in Jesus' view of man a grandeur, a freedom, and a depth that are without parallel in any teaching. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Act_17:28).

Jesus' View of Man Was a Spiritual One

Again it is well that we should bear in mind that Jesus laid down nothing about man's origin. His view of man is a spiritual view; it is in no sense a scientific one. That man as such was a child of God, and that he owed his being to the Creator's hand is a truth which Christ never stays to prove—He assumes it, taking it for granted. (Editor's note: The word child is used with the connotation of creature needing redemption.) But beyond that, practising a silence which is as wonderful as any speech, He leaves the utmost freedom for inquiry. His view of man is not bound up with any theory of man's physical origin. It can be held by the most advanced of scientists as fully as by the humblest peasant. The one man by whom it cannot be held is the man who makes a jest of human nature, and who, so scorning it, sets a stumbling block before the feet of one of these little ones. That Christ in His infinite humiliation may have shared in the current beliefs of His own day, is not only possible, but as it seems to me, adds to the wonder and depth of His abasement. But that He should have thought to lay on us these limitations which He assumed in mercy, must be something wholly and forever alien from the spirit and mind of Him who is the Truth. Christ has involved us in no theory here. He has not barred the door on scientific progress. He has left it open to every earnest seeker to follow the truth wherever it may lead.

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Christ's View of Man Was Based on Observation

And another thing it is well to remark is that Christ's view is based on observation. It was not the dreaming of a doctrinaire; it was fashioned in closest contact with humanity. I have read some learned books dealing with children, and been entirely humbled with their learning. But the strongest impression made on me by some of them was that the writer had never known a child. So are there certain theories of man that are entirely admirable and excellent, save for the one unfortunate detail that the man they analyse is nonexistent. There are people who are enamoured of humanity. They will talk to you by the hour about humanity. Christ did not care one farthing for humanity; He cared with all His heart for men and women. And the great glory of His view is this, that it is not elaborated in any solitude, hut is wrought out in daily loving contact with actual sinning men and sinning women. He did not come to them with any creed, determined to find that creed in every bosom. He came with a single eye, and with a heart of love, to find what was there, and only what was there. And so He saw in man such height and depth, such light and shadow, such infinite variety, as never had been seen on earth before. He knew that the eye might be so evil that the whole body might be full of darkness; and yet He knew there was a cry for home in the soul of the prodigal among the swine. He knew that out of the heart there spring adulteries, and all the lust that dwells so hard by hate, and yet He knew that we who are so vile can give good gifts unto our children. Now the real worth of any viewpoint depends on the range of facts that it interprets. If it be broad enough to embrace all contrarieties, the chances are it is the view of God. And the view of man that Jesus Christ has given us shall ever stand conspicuous in this, that it was wrought out, not in dreams of solitude, but in daily loving contact with His kind.

Christ Made the Individual the Object of Divine Regard

Coming now to the teaching in itself, the first thing to be said is this, that in His thought, as in His love, Christ made the individual the unit. He did not regard men as on the scale of fifty. He did not think of them as on the scale of ten. He thought of men, and lived for them, and died for them, upon the scale of one. Now to you and me, brethren, that is such a commonplace that we can scarcely conceive of any other reckoning. But one of the primary lessons of all history is that our commonplaces were once incredibilities. And though of course there never was a time in which men did not live their individual lives, yet it is no exaggeration to declare, as one has done, that Jesus Christ discovered the individual. To the ancient Jews, among whom Christ was born, in relation to God the nation was the unit. At an earlier period we have a time when it was the family who took the eye of heaven. But Christ as it were disrobed the individual, disengaged him out of all relationships, and revealed forever the truth that in Himself man was the object of divine regard. There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; it is not God's will that one of them should perish. It was for one coin the woman swept the house; for one sheep the shepherd left the flock; for one son, and him a sorry prodigal, the father in the home was broken-hearted. If you go back into the ancient world I shall tell you the kind of feeling you discover. You discover men claiming divine protection because they were members of a tribe or family. And the wonderful thing in Jesus Christ is this, that from such relationships He disengaged the soul, and, never despising the family or the state, flashed all the light of heaven upon the one. That is what is meant when it is said that Christ discovered the individual. It does not mean that there ever was an age when the separate heart had not its separate sorrow. But it means that Jesus, out of all societies, disentangled the individual being, putting a crown of glory on its head, and the staff of the Good Shepherd in its hand. In what innumerable ways that has affected Christendom I have not time to dwell upon. It has given a new note to literature. It has breathed a new spirit upon art. It has shown itself in the ward of the infirmary where there may be fifty patients under one surgeon, yet each of them, as an individual being, is tended with an individual care.

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Christ Taught That the Individual Was of Infinite Value to God

But there is something deeper still in Jesus' view, for Christ did not only discover the individual; He taught us also that the individual was of infinite value in the eyes of God. There are some secrets for which men have toiled, and when they have found them they have been broken-hearted. What they discovered has proved itself so tragical that they have prayed to heaven to make them blind again. But Christ, discovering the individual, found in that secret such a wealth of glory that the name He chose for Himself was Son of Man. They say that a diamond which today is blazing upon the crown of a European monarch lay for weeks upon a stall in Rome, labelled "Rock crystal, one franc." And may we not reverently say that Jesus Christ, purchasing the rock crystal for His own, has found something more precious than a diamond. For it is not man as rich that Jesus thinks of. It is not man as learned or as powerful. The ancient world was quick to recognise the value of the learned or the powerful man. The differential of Christ is this, that He stands up and faces that old world, and says that the thing of infinite worth to God is not man as powerful but man as man. Strip him of all the art of Greece. Take from him all the might of Rome. Call him a prodigal, and let him feed the swine; call him a sunken creature of the street. Yet even then, disrobed of every grace, sunken into the mire and trampled on, even then, says Christ, in God's eyes man is a being of a worth unspeakable. There is a great deal of talk today about the mystery of personality. Men are giving their deepest thought to that, and already there are signs of a rich harvest. But the deepest mystery of personality, if you will only sit down and think about it, is just that at its shallowest and worst, it should be of infinite value in the eyes of heaven. I tell you it is an overwhelming thought. It is enough to make one thrill to realise it—that the sorriest wretch whose every breath is vile, is precious because he is a man. And that is the great truth which Christ hath taught us, and which is so inwrought into our scheme of life, that not only in the church but in the world today it has the accent of the commonplace.

Jesus' Concept of God as Father

Now I said at the beginning that the thought of man is always relative to the thought of God. And I said it because I was looking forward to the point of the argument we have now reached. You know—all of you know perfectly—what was Jesus' controlling thought of God. From first to last our Saviour thought of God under the deep and tender name of Father. And you see at a glance, do you not, how this new doctrine of the infinite preciousness of every man springs from the thought of the Fatherhood in heaven? Does a father wait to love his children till they have come to discretion or maturity? Does he wait until one son has risen to honour, and another has become a prosperous citizen? On the contrary, he never loves them more than in the happy and helpless days of childhood, when there is never a scrap of learning in the brain, and never a jingle of money in the purse. Nay, if among that little family there be one that is sickly or weakly or deformed—one with a twisted limb, or with a shrunken arm, or with an intelligence arrested strangely—is not that the very child the father loves with an ineffable and yearning tenderness, so that he often prays for it, and sometimes quietly weeps, in the long silent watches of the night? That is the mystery of human fatherhood, and Christ has taught us when we pray to say, Our Father. And we lift our eyes at the command of Jesus, and lo, there is a Father on the throne. And so do we learn that man as man, simply and solely because he is a child, is infinitely and forever precious in the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. For remember that the son is still a son, though he have wandered away to the far country. He may be a prodigal—he may be lost—but he has never ceased to be a child. And just because, through all his degradation, nothing can cancel that filial relationship, there is a welcome for him in the father's home, and a yearning in the father's heart.

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Worth of Man Strengthened by the Incarnation

May I say, too, that this thought of the worth of man is enormously strengthened by the incarnation? Christ took on Him not the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. If there is one truth to which all thinking leads me it is the pre-existence of Christ Jesus. To me the Bible is an unmeaning riddle if Christ began to be when He was born. But if He came from heaven—the eternal Logos—to tabernacle with us for a little season, then in the circumstances of His coming I learn the infinite worth of man as man. One of the most curious books that was ever written has been lately translated by one of our professors here. It is the life of one Apollonius of Tyana, who was for long regarded as a kind of rival Christ. For he too healed the sick as Jesus did, and he too raised the dead as Jesus did, and he too, as the people of Tyana had it, was the son not of a mortal but of God. But there is one difference which is overwhelming. For Apollonius was the child of a vast wealth and the scion of a very noble family. But Jesus was the Son of a poor mother, for whom there was no room in Bethlehem, and who, where the dumb beasts were in their stalls, brought her firstborn Child into the world. That does not mean that God entering humanity was bringing down the mighty from their seats. But it does mean that the incarnate God was showing forth the worth of man as man. Not manhood in any might or splendour, but manhood at its lowliest and its least, was the tabernacle of the eternal Son.

Jesus' Thought of Man Explains His Thought of Sin

Is it not true also that this thought of man sheds a great light on Jesus' thought of sin? It helps us to fathom that intense abhorrence with which our Saviour contemplated sin. There were things that Jesus took no notice of, and there were others He treated as supremely petty. But there was one thing which always stirred Him to the deeps, and that was the spectacle of sin. And He abhorred it in its guilt and power not merely because it was a grief to God, but because it wrought such irreparable havoc on a being who was so infinitely precious. If I spill the ink bottle on some cheap novel, that is a matter of very small concern. But if I spill it on some priceless manuscript, then the pity of that blot is great. And it is just because man is precious in Christ's eyes—more precious than any priceless manuscript—that He felt the infinite pity of it all, when He looked on the disfigurements of sin. Whenever you have low thoughts of personality, you have low conceptions of the power of evil. Whenever you have lofty views of man, sin stands out there positive and terrible. And if you want to understand Christ's thought of sin, and all the passion of His abhorrence of it, I say you must bear in mind that in His eyes the poorest wretch was of a worth unspeakable. He was always pitiful towards the sinner; He was always pitiless towards the sin. He hated it with all the hate of heaven, which is far more terrible than all the hate of hell. And He hated it because it spoiled the beauty, and marred the strength, and slew the joy and peace of the most wonderful and precious thing in the whole universe of God.

Jesus' Thought of Man Involved His View of Man's Immortality

Then the third point I wish to note is this, that such a view involves man's immortality. The immortality of man in Jesus' eyes rests on the fact that he is the child of God. In one of the most exquisite of all his dialogues Plato handles the theme of immortality. And he discusses it and argues for it, and builds up lofty reasons for its certainty. But Jesus never discusses immortality for Him it is a thing to be assumed—He cannot conceive of any other destiny for a being so infinitely dear to God. If man were a trifle in the eyes of heaven, then like a trifle he might cease to be. But if man is infinitely dear to God, then it is impossible that he should cease to be. Girt with a love so mighty in its tenderness, able to look up and say My Father, it was simply impossible for Christ to think that the coffin and the grave should be the end. If one of your little children lay dying, and looked up at you and smiled, and said My Father, would you not barter everything you had for the power to bring that child to life again? And God in heaven always has that power, and He is our Father with a father's heart, and we, even the sorriest of us all, have never ceased at our worst to be the object of His fatherly love. It is that filial relationship, in Christ's eyes, which makes the thought of extinction quite impossible. To be what we are within the heart of God, must mean and can only mean to be forever. For love is loath to lose what it holds dear, and wants it not for an hour but forever, and only says farewell when forced to do it, which forcing has no place in the divine.

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All Doctrine Has an Influence upon Conduct

Such then is the teaching of Jesus about man, and now in closing let me say this to you. All doctrine has an influence upon conduct, and we see this perfectly in our Redeemer. Holding such a view of man as that, He was always reverent and always courteous. If the meanest life was of an infinite value it was not likely that Christ would be contemptuous. And so you find Him reverent and courteous, quite independent of any social station, and you find Him kindly when other men were harsh, and hopeful sometimes when all the world despaired. And it all sprang from His undying faith in the infinite preciousness of man as man. He never could scorn the most degraded creature, when He thought of what that creature meant for God. So you and I who name the name of Christ, must see to it as we take our journey, that we are looking out on men and women with somewhat of the look of our Redeemer. We are not called upon for any easy tolerance, as if moral distinctions were to be obliterated. We are not called upon to think of evil lightly. But we are called upon to think that every man, however lost, is still the Father's child, and is so precious to the heart of God that He will never leave him nor forsake him. Remembering that, we also shall be reverent, and always pitiful, and always hopeful. Remembering that, we shall delight to serve and count it a glad thing that we are brothers.

March 14

The Lure of the Impossible - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Stretch forth thine hand— Mat_12:13

No Challenge to Handling That Which Is Easy

Few things are so attractive as those which seem impossible. The passion to achieve what seems impossible is one of the deepest passions of mankind. One might have thought that man, being a reasonable creature, would have averted his gaze from the impossible. It would seem natural that he should give his energies to things within the compass of his powers. But there is that within the human heart which is always suspicious of the easy thing, and yearns for victories beyond its grasp. Tell men that a certain hill presents no difficulties, and for the climber it loses half its charm. Men do not dream of it by night, nor resolve to gain the summit in the morning. But tell them (as climbers once were told) that it is impossible to scale the Matterhorn, and they never rest till the Matterhorn is conquered.

The Daring of Childhood

We see that curious element in childhood, and the child is father of the man. The nearer anything approaches the impossible, the stronger its attraction for the child. Children have a way of daring one another. It is the childish challenge of the perilous. The parapet that looks impossible to walk on is more attractive to the boy than any highway. That is the real charm of fairy tales, with their seven-league boots, and fairy godmothers, and palaces erected in a night. If the heart of childhood could rest in easy things, fairy tales would lose their charm tomorrow. But that is what the childish heart can never do, in the dullest surroundings and most prosaic street. And fairy tales, where things impossible are common as berries on the rowan tree, are a refuge, in imagination, for the cravings of the childish heart.

Science Is Mastered by the Lure of the Impossible

It is very largely to this lure that we owe the conquests of our science. Great discoverers and inventors are like children, and are mastered by the lure of the impossible. When Stephenson proposed to run a train at thirty or forty miles an hour, men laughed at him as an unbalanced visionary, and assured him it was quite impossible. Had they only known the human heart, with its strange and undecipherable questings, they would have known that their jeering was encouragement. It is impossible things that captivate the child, and every man of genius is a child. He dreams at night, not of the safe bridge, but of crossing the foaming torrent on the parapet. Every train running across the world, and the telegraph and the radio and the airplane, spring from the deep passion of humanity to achieve what duller people call impossible. It is this lure which at last discovers continents, and reaches the Pole, and finds the source of rivers. It keeps men eager, in spite of every argument, to get in touch with Mars. I fancy we all love the conjurer, though we know quite well he is deceiving us, because his nightly business is doing the impossible.

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Christ Used the Lure of the Impossible

It shows how perfectly our Lord knew the human heart that He loved to employ the lure of the impossible. One thinks, for instance, of the man with the withered hand. That the man had often tried to stretch his hand we may take for granted from all we know of life. His wife would say to him: "Husband, you're looking better; don't you think you could stretch out your arm today?" And always, though he made a thousand efforts, there was no response in that withered hand of his. The thing was found to be utterly impossible. Jesus was perfectly aware of that. He read the life of that sufferer like a book. He did not sympathise with him in words. He challenged him on the line of the impossible. And the wonderful thing is that whenever Christ does that, a faith is kindled equal to accomplishment, and things that yesterday were quite impossible become perfectly possible today.

The Lure of the Impossible Is One of Christianity's Strengths

This lure of the impossible is one of the great powers of Christianity. It is one of the things that sets a gulf, for instance, between Christianity and Mohammedanism. Mohammed says, "Brother, all that I ask of you is perfectly within your power. I shall give you definite rules that you must practise, and, practising them, you will be perfected." Christ gives men an infinite ideal, beyond the grasp of any human hand, and lures them on with the lure of the impossible. That is why Mohammedanism is stagnant—it has no infinite and unattained ideals. That is why Christendom thrills and throbs with life, and has "the rapture of the forward view." Beyond every peak there is another peak, and though nobody wins the highest summit here, he gets higher than if he were never called to climb. The lure of the impossible, transformed by Christ, has given its zest and urge to Christendom. The more we trust and toil, the more we feel that the ideal for which we strive is unattainable. But then, thanks to that same Lord, we believe that we have forever, and there the impossible that lured us on will be ours in the perfect vision of the Father.

March 15

The Intolerance of Jesus- Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He that is not with me is against me— Mat_12:30

Christ Rejects Accusations Made against Him

Our Lord had just performed a notable miracle healing a man who was possessed of a devil. It had made a profound impression on the people, and had forced the conviction that this was indeed Messiah. Unable to dispute the miracle itself, the Pharisees tried to impugn the power behind it, and in their cowardly and treacherous way they suggested there was something demoniac about Christ. With a readiness of resource which never failed Him, Christ showed in a flash the weakness of that argument. If He was the friend of the demons, was He likely to make a brother-demon homeless? Then moved to righteous anger by these slanders, He said, "He that is not with me is against me."

You Cannot Understand Christ if You Fail to Notice His Intolerance

I want to speak on the intolerance of Jesus Christ. However startling the subject may appear, and however the sound of it may jar upon us, I am convinced we shall never understand our Lord if we fail to take account of His intolerance. We have heard much of the geniality of Jesus, and of the depth and range of His compassion; nor can we ever exaggerate, in warmest language, the genial and generous aspect of His character. But it is well that the listening ear should be attuned to catch the sterner music of that life, lest, missing it, we miss the fine severity which goes to the perfecting of moral beauty. Wherever the spirit of Jesus is at work, there is found a sweet and masterful intolerance. The one thing that the Gospel cannot do, is to look with easy good nature on the world. And if this passionate urgency of claim has ever marked the activities of Christendom, we must try to trace it to the fountainhead and find it in the character of Christ.

Intolerance Must Be Knowledgeable

Of course there is an intolerance so cold and hard that it must always be alien from the Master's Spirit. All that is best in us condemns the temper which lacks the redeeming touch of comprehension. When the poet Shelley was a lad still in his teens, he fell violently in love with his cousin Harriet Grove. Shelley was a sceptic even then, and on account of his scepticism his cousin was removed from him. And those of you who have read his letters of that period will remember how they throb with the great hope that he might live to do battle with intolerance. Now Shelley was a poet, with all a poet's ardour, yet I think that most young men have had that feeling. Nor is it one of those feelings that pass away with youth; it generally strengthens with the tale of years. "One has only to grow old," says Goethe, "to become tolerant." As life advances, if we live it well, we commonly grow less rigid in our judgment. By all we have seen and suffered, all we have tried and failed in, our sympathies grow broader with the years. We learn how precious is the grace of charity; how near akin may be the fiercest combatants; how great is the allowance we must make for those of whose hidden life we know so little.

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The Intolerance of Jesus- Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ Died Because of His Intolerance

I mention that just to make plain to you that I am not shutting my eyes to common truths. Yet the fact remains that in all great personalities, there is a strain of what is called intolerance. There are things in which it must be yea or nay—the everlasting no, as Carlyle has it. There are spheres in which all compromise is treachery, and when a man must say with Luther, "Here I stand." And that intolerance, so far from being the enemy of love and sympathy and generous culture, is the rock that a man needs to set his feet on, if he is to cast his rope to those who cry for help. You find it in the God of the Old Testament—"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." He is a jealous God, and brooks no rival. He must be loved with heart and soul and strength and mind. You find it in the music of the psalmist, and in the message of prophet and apostle, and you find it bosomed amid all the love that shone in the character of Jesus Christ. Never was man so tender as the Lord. Never was man so swift to sympathise. Never did sinners so feel that they were understood. Never did the lost so feel that they were loved. Yet with all that pity and grace and boundless comprehension, I say you have never fathomed the spirit of the Master, until you have recognised within its range a certain glorious and divine intolerance. We talk of the infinite tolerance of Shakespeare; it is a commonplace of all Shakespearean criticism. Nothing was alien from that mighty genius; the world was a stage and he knew all the players. But underneath that worldwide comprehension there is a scorn of scorn, a hate of hate; there is such doom on the worthless and the wicked as can scarce be paralleled in any literature; and till you have heard that message of severity—that judgment which is the other side of love—you have never learned the secret of the dramatist. In a loftier and a more spiritual sense that is true of our Master, Jesus Christ. He loved us and He gave Himself for us. He says to every weary heart, "Come unto me." But that same spirit which was so true and tender could be superbly unyielding and inflexible. The gentle Saviour was splendidly intolerant, and because of His intolerance He died.

Intolerant toward Hypocrisy

We trace the intolerance of Christ, for instance, in His attitude towards hypocrisy. One thing that was unendurable to Jesus was the shallow profession of religion. You can always detect an element of pity when Jesus is face to face with other sins. There is the yearning of infinite love over the lost; the hand outstretched to welcome back the prodigal. But for the hypocrite there is no gleam of pity, only the blasting and withering of wrath. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" It is the intolerance of Jesus Christ.

Christ Is Intolerant of Sharing His Uniqueness

We trace it again in those stupendous claims that Jesus Christ put forward for Himself. The Lord our God is a jealous God, and the Lord our Saviour is a jealous Saviour. "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life"—"No man cometh unto the Father but by Me"—"No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." What do you make of these amazing claims, and of that splendid intolerance of any rival?—yet all these words are in the Gospel record as surely as "a bruised reed shall he not break." Do you say there are many doorways to the Father? Christ Jesus stands and says, "I am the door." Do you say there are many shepherds of the sheep? Christ stands in His majesty, and says, "I am the shepherd." Pitiful, merciful, full of a great compassion, Christ is intolerant of any rival; He stands alone to be worshipped and adored, or He disappears into the mists of fable. So far as I am aware that is unique; there is nothing like it in religious history. The ancient pantheons had always room for the introduction of another god. It is Christ alone, the meek and lowly Saviour, who lifts Himself up in isolated splendour. Friend of the friendless and Brother of the weakest, He is intolerant of any sharing of His claims.

Christ Is Intolerant When It Comes to Sharing the Allegiance He Demands from us
Again I trace this same intolerance in the allegiance which Christ demands from us. He is willing to take the lowest place upon the cross; but He will not take it in your heart and mine. When He was born in the fullness of the time, He did not ask for the splendour of the palace. He was born in a manger, reared in a lowly home, and grew to His manhood in obscurest station. But the moment He enters the kingdom of the heart, where He is King by conquest and by right, there everything is changed, and with a great intolerance He refuses every place except the first. "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me"—"Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead." That is the word of a King in His own Kingdom, claiming His rightful place among His subjects. And when you speak of the meek and lowly Jesus, never forget there is that imperial note there. He is divinely intolerant of everybody who would usurp the throne that is His right.

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The Intolerance of Jesus- Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Such, then, are one or two instances of the intolerance of Jesus Christ, and now I want to examine its true nature, that we may see how worthy it was of Christ.

The Intolerance of Christ Is the Child of Glowing Faith

The first thing I note in the intolerance of Jesus is that it is the child of glowing faith. The intolerance of Christ is little else than the other side of His perfect trust in God. When one is a stranger to you, bound by no ties of love, you are little affected by what is said about him. The talk may be true, or it may not be true, but it is none of your business, and you do not know. But the moment a man becomes a hero to you, that moment you grow intolerant of liberties. If you believe in a woman, your heart is aflame with anger should anyone sully her name even with a breath. A French poet tells us that when he was a youth he was a passionate worshipper of Victor Hugo. He believed in Hugo with all his heart and soul; he thought there had never been a poet like him. And he says that even in a dark cellar underground, where nobody possibly could have overheard him, he could not bear to whisper to himself that a single verse of Hugo's poetry was bad. That is the fine intolerance of faith in ardent and eager and devoted natures. That is the faith which Jesus Christ was filled with, in God and His righteousness and providential order. And with a faith like that there can be no compromise; no light and shallow acceptance of alternatives. Under the sway of such a glowing trust a certain intolerance is quite inevitable. It is easy to be infinitely tolerant, if all that Christ lived for means but little to you. An age that can tolerate every kind of creed is always an age whose faith is burning low. And just because Christ's faith burned with a perfect light, and flashed its radiance full on the heart of God, you find in Him, in all His God ward life, a steady and magnificent intolerance.

Christ's Intolerance Was Found in His Perfect Understanding

Then once again the intolerance of Jesus is the intolerance of perfect understanding. It was because He knew so fully, and sympathised so deeply, that there were certain things He could not bear. One great complaint we make against intolerance is that it does not sympathetically understand us. It is harsh in judgment, and fails in comprehension, and has no conception of what things mean for us. We have all met with intolerance like that, but remember there is another kind. Take the case of drunkenness, for instance; there are many people very tolerant of drunkenness. They talk about it lightly, make a jest of it; they are none of your rigid, longfaced Pharisees. But sometimes you meet a man, sometimes a woman, to whom such jesting talk is quite intolerable, and it is intolerable not because they know so little; it is intolerable because they know so much. The curse has crossed the threshold of their home, and laid its fatal grip on someone who was dear. They have seen the wreck and ruin of it, and all its daily misery, and the drying up of every wellspring of the heart. So in their grief they grow terribly intolerant, and it is not because they do not understand; they are intolerant because they understand so well. Never forget that it is so with Christ. He is intolerant because He comprehends. He knows what sin is; He knows how sweet it is; He knows its havoc, its loneliness, its dust and ashes. And therefore is He stern, uncompromising, and says to us, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." There are men who are intolerant because of ignorance; Christ is intolerant because He knows.

Christ's Intolerance Is Based on His Love

Lastly, the intolerance of Jesus is very signally the intolerance of love. Love beareth all things—all things except one, and that is the harm or hurt of the beloved. Here is a little child out in the streets, ragged and shoeless in the raw March weather. Let it stay out till midnight, no one complains at home. Let it use the foulest of language, no one corrects it. Poor little waif, in whom all things are tolerated, and tolerated just because no one loves it! What kind of mother has that little child? What kind of father has that little child? You know them in the street, swollen and coarse, reeking with all the vileness of the city. They tolerate everything because they do not love; when love steps in, that toleration ceases. Now we all know that when our Saviour came, He came at the bidding and in the power of love; love wonderful, love that endured the worst, love that went up to Calvary to die. And just because that love was so intense, and burned with the ardour of the heart of God, things that had been tolerable once were found to be intolerable now. That is the secret of the Gospel's sternness and of its passionate protest against sin. That is why age after age it clears the issues, and says, "He that is not with me is against me." The love that beareth all things cannot bear that hurt or harm should rest on the beloved. Christ is intolerant because He loves.

March 19

Feeding the Five Thousand - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude— Mat_14:19

The Only Miracle Recorded in All Four Gospels

This is the only miracle recorded in each of the four Gospels, and we must take that as a token of the profound impression which it made. To us, the raising of Lazarus is more astounding than this mountain feast; but had we lived in Galilee, and heard the common talk, we should have perhaps found that this miracle was graven deepest on men's hearts. Most of the other miracles had been seen by few. There was no crowd near when the Nain widow got her son again. When Lazarus awoke, there were only the village neighbours present. But here five thousand lips had eaten, and five thousand lips would talk, until in every farm house and cottage this miracle would be a household word. That deep impression is registered in the fourfold narrative.

Only a word is needed to describe the miracle. Partly to avoid the dangerous neighbourhood of Herod, and still more, to refresh His overstrained disciples—for there is nothing like a day with Christ among the hills for making a worried heart itself again—Jesus and His disciples cross the lake, and steer for the quiet hills by the north shore. Alas! there was to be little rest that day. The folk had seen them launching. They hurry round by the north end of the lake, meeting and mingling with the pilgrim-companies making for Jerusalem to keep the Passover. And as the prow of the boat grates on the beach, and Jesus and His disciples step ashore, God's great cathedral of the mountainside, whose roof is heaven and whose organ music is the sea, is thronged with a vast and eager congregation. Then Jesus heals, and teaches, and in the evening feeds them. Which done, the stars come out, and the crowds are scattered, and the disciples are rowing homeward to Capernaum, and Jesus is on the mountainside in prayer.

Christ's Compassion

Note first that this miracle had its roots in Christ's compassion. When He stepped ashore and saw much people, we read that He was moved with compassion towards them. And all the healing, and teaching, and feeding of that memorable day sprang from that pity in the heart of Christ. And that is the glory of divine compassion it is the source and spring of noble deeds. Often we pity where we cannot help. But the compassion of Jesus sprang into action always. It set Him healing, teaching, feeding hungry men, and it still draws Him to the same service. Is Christ my compassionate High Priest today? Then He will help me in my struggle to be true. He will lift me up when I have failed and fallen. He will feed me when my soul is starving.

One Food for All

Mark, too, there was but one food for all these thousands. The rich were there, journeying to Jerusalem, and the poorest of the poor were there, from the rude huts by the lakeside. Yonder were the quick merchants from the cities, here lolled the farmhands from the fields. There was a mother crooning to her babe, and here were the children romping on the green. Old men were there with the first glow of heaven about them, and young men with the first glow of earth. Yet Jesus fed them all with the same bread. The strange thing is that no one scorned the victual. All ate, and all were filled. No swift relays of courses had ever been so sweet as the single dish with Jesus on the hill.

Now the wonderful thing about Christ—the living Bread—is that He satisfies us all. What a great gulf between the Jew of Tarsus and the ignorant fishers of Bethsaida! What a world between the gentle Lydia and the rude jailer at Philippi! Yet the power of Christ that made a man of Peter was no less mighty in the heart of Paul; and the love of God that won the love of Lydia conquered the jailor too. In all love, says a thinker, there is something levelling; and the love of God is the great leveller of the ages. It knows no social barriers. It is not powerless where temperaments differ. It comes to all, this one glorious Gospel of the grace of God, and all may feed and be satisfied.

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Feeding the Five Thousand - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Jesus Uses Gifts Men Bring Him

Again note, that in satisfying the needs of men Christ uses the gifts which men bring Him. Had Jesus so willed, He could have made bread out of the stones. In times past, God had called water from the rock, and brought manna from the windows of heaven, and I do not know why God in Christ might not have summoned these hidden stores again. But Jesus' miracles were acted parables, not wrought to amaze, but to instruct. And so He takes what the disciples give Him, and uses that to feed the crowd. It is often Christ's way to help the world through men. It is His plan to bring the Kingdom in through us. And if we take our gifts, however poor and humble, and lay them freely at the feet of Jesus, He will so bless and multiply and use them that we shall be amazed, and recognise His hand.

The Bread Increased in the Breaking of It

I see, too, that it was in the breaking that the bread increased. A wonder-worker would have touched the loaves, and made them swell and multiply before the crowd. But Jesus blessed, and brake, and gave to the disciples, and as they brake the bread, it increased. It was through the blessing that the miracle was wrought, and through the breaking that it was realised. And ever, through the breaking, comes the increase, and in the using of our gifts, with God's blessing, are our gifts enlarged. Trade with your talent bravely, and it shall be five. Power springs from power, and service out of service. Never try to do good, and you will find no good to do. Do all the little good you can, and every day will bring a fresh capacity and a new opportunity, until you find that "there is that scattereth and yet increaseth."

Careful of the Fragments

And lastly, note that Jesus was very careful of the fragments. One would have thought that Jesus was too rich to trouble Himself about the fragments. Surely it was but labour lost to sweat and stoop and stumble in the dark, to fill their wicker baskets with the scraps. But Jesus is imperious. "Gather the fragments that remain," is His command. And the twelve disciples, who a little before had been sent out to heal and teach and preach the Gospel, had now, in the presence of the thousands, to set about sweeping the crumbs. It was a splendid discipline. Someone has said that if two angels came to earth, the one to rule an empire, and the other to sweep a crossing, they would never seek to interchange their tasks. And our own poet has told us that:

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine,
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.

But was that all? I think not. It was not merely to discipline the disciples that Jesus commanded the fragments to be gathered. We cannot read the story of His life, but we detect a care for the fragments through it all. The fragment of a day, how He employed it! The fragment of a life, how He redeemed it! The fragment of a character, how He ennobled it! Yes, that is His great passion—to love and lift our fragmentary lives till they are brought into the image of His own.

March 21

Jesus Walking on the Sea - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea— Mat_14:25

Jesus Felt the Necessity of Being Alone with God

It had been a day of trial and stress for Jesus, and when the sun set, the danger was not over. There were terrible risks in that enthusiastic crowd that surged and swayed upon the mountain side. The miracle of His feeding the five thousand had made a powerful impression. It had struck deep into these fickle hearts. And if the cry once rang along the hillside "Jesus is King!" who knew where the echoes of that cry might end? Christ recognised the peril of the hour. He felt the supreme necessity of prayer. It was a moment in the Master's life when His greatest desire was to be alone with God. Full of that quiet authority that moved the crowd as wonderfully as it calmed the sea, Jesus constrained the disciples to depart, and sent the throng away. How they would talk as they travelled homeward! How gladly, as the first gusts of storm swept down on them, would they descry the gleaming of their cottage windows! I see the children plucking their mothers' robes, and crying, "Mother, where is the Teacher now? We left Him on the hill—has He no home?" Perhaps some of them would learn in after days that it was home and heaven and life for Jesus to be alone with God.

A Storm Breaks Out to Teach the Disciples Dependence

Meantime the storm had broken. The clouds swept out the stars, the wind came whistling through the glens and corries, the sea ran high. And out in the midst of it toiled the disciples, Masterless, shelterless, helpless. It was a wild night after a weary day. It was a strange fulfilment of their promised rest (Mar_6:31). And yet I question if any holiday among the hills could have taught them as much as did that unmanageable boat. That very evening they had been ordering their Master (Mat_14:15). They had been giving Him advice about five thousand men. They had been eager to manage that great crowd for Jesus—and now they cannot manage their little craft! It was a very blessed and very humbling storm. It brought the disciples to their place again. It printed upon their hearts, as in a picture, that the secret of Christian power is dependence.

They Wanted Jesus and Yet They Did Not Recognise Him

And so the night wore on, and every wave that dashed into the boat deepened their need of Jesus. The crowds were home now, the children were asleep, and every light by the lake side was out. Then with the dawn came Christ. They spied a form, moving along the ridges of the sea, now lost for a moment in the trough of the waves, now dimmed by the showers of spray. And though they had longed for Jesus, and prayed for Jesus, and this was Jesus, they did not know Him, and cried out for fear. Sometimes we get the very thing we ask, and we do not recognise it when it comes. Sometimes we win the very help we need, and we are just as troubled as before. They cried, It is a spirit! The demon of the tempest was abroad, and Jesus—where was He? Who can describe their joy when the familiar voice rang over the white crests, "Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid!"

One Stood Out

Now there are times when a man's character is revealed, and one of these times is often that of storm. When we find Jesus sleeping in the tempest, it teaches us His perfect trust in God. When we rehearse Paul's conduct in the shipwreck, it opens a window into that noble heart. So here, from all the disciples, one stands out; and amid the spray, and in the driving wind of that wild morning, there falls a shaft of light on Simon Peter. It is Peter who cries across the storm, "Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee." It is Peter who flings himself upon the waves to get to Christ. And it is Peter who begins to sink, and would have gone to the depths but for the hand of Jesus. There is the strength and there is the weakness of that hero. There is the story of his life condensed. When the wind ceased, and the ship's company knelt down to worship Jesus, none felt so deeply as Peter that this was the Son of God.

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Jesus Walking on the Sea - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Long Delays of Heaven

Among the many lessons of this miracle we shall note three. First remark the long delays of heaven. The night must have seemed endless to the twelve. Hour after hour dragged on, and hour after hour brought no word of Jesus. And it was not till the Roman guard in Caesarea had changed for the fourth watch, that the beloved voice was heard over the waves. Had they lost heart and hope? Did they suspect that Jesus had forgotten them? We are always ready to think ill of God, because of God's great method of delay. But of this be sure that when our need is greatest, God is closest. He may delay, He will not disappoint. We must be schooled out of our impatience somehow. We must be trained in waiting and in trusting. It was not only for a night of prayer that Jesus lingered. It was to teach His own that patience of hope which was to win such triumphs for the Church.

Christ Comes by Unexpected Roads

I see, too, that Christ comes by unexpected roads. That night the twelve were longing for their Master, but they never dreamed that He would come that way. If any sail went beating up the lake, their hopes rose, for Jesus might be there. But even Peter, most sanguine of them all, had never guessed that the waves would be His street. Yet by that unexpected avenue the King approached, and on unlikeliest highways He is coming still. By what strange roads Christ enters human hearts! By what strange ways He comes into our homes! A word, a visit of a stranger perhaps, a sickness or a death—and He is here. And it is all so different from what we looked for, that we do not recognise it is the Lord. There are ten thousand thoroughfares for Jesus. His ways of ingress into human souls are endless. Let me not bind Him. Let me not limit Him either to my preconceptions or my prayers. He puts to shame my wellworn offers of salvation, and comes to men by unexpected roads.

We Sink When We See Nothing But the Storm

And lastly, this meets me in the story: we sink when we see nothing but the storm. When Peter looked to Jesus he was safe. But perhaps a wave came and towered like a wall before him, and for the moment he could not see his Lord. He saw the waves, he felt the spray, he heard the wind. But he looked and he saw no face, no arm, no hand, and in that moment Peter began to sink. Do we still detect that presence in the tempest? Do we discern the presence and the love of God in the confusion of our common day? When we see nothing but the storm, we sink. When we see Christ enthroned in it, we triumph.

March 22

Beginning to Sink - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me— Mat_14:30

The Pathos of a Wasted Life

There are two sights in human life which fill the heart with profound sorrow. The first is that of a person who has sunk. When we see a face made loathsome by iniquity and think that once it was innocent and childlike; when we hear of somebody who bore an honoured name, but is now in the depths of degradation, that is one of life's most piteous spectacles. It arrests even the worldly-minded who cherish no ideals for humanity; how much more must it sadden one who has anything of the vision of Christ Jesus. Men who are sunken—women who are sunken—are the heartbreak of the home and of the city. There is such infinite pathetic waste in a wasted, miserable life. But to the seeing eye and the perceiving heart, there is another spectacle which is not less tragic—it is that of the man who is beginning to sink. Beginnings are always mighty and momentous for every eye that has the power to see. Much of our knowledge and our power today springs from our modern study of beginnings. And in this text we have an instance, not of a man who has sunk into the depths, but of a man who is beginning to sink. Shall we look at him in that light for a little?

Our Best Qualities May Be Our Ruin

The first thought to force itself upon me is that it was Peter's temperament which put him in this danger. He began to sink because he was Simon Peter. The other disciples were all safe. It never occurred to them to leave the vessel. They were men of sagacity and common sense and knew the difference between land and water. But Peter was reckless, headstrong and impetuous, acting on impulse. Peter followed the dictates of his heart, and never waited for his laggard reason. In a sense that was the glory of his character. It made him do what no one else would do. It gave him the charm of daring and enthusiasm of that unexpectedness which always fascinates. But those very qualities that in the hand of Christ were to go to the upbuilding of the Church, sometimes brought him to the verge of ruin. It was only Peter who would begin to walk, and it was only Peter who would begin to sink. He was led into peril on these stormy waters because of what was self-forgetful in him. And it may be there is someone who has not sunk yet, but is beginning to sink, because he has a temperament like that. Our perils do not always reach us through our worst. Our perils sometimes reach us through our best: through what is charming in us, delightful, and enthusiastic. And so like Peter we begin to do what the cold and calculating would never do, and then like Peter we begin to sink. That is why every man needs to be saved not only from his sin but from himself. That is why God, in His holy love to save us, gave us not a message but a Man. For our brightest social qualities may wreck us. A touch of genius may be our ruin. For all that is implied in that word temperament, we need the keeping of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sinking amid Familiar Surroundings

The next thing to arrest me here is that Peter began to sink in very familiar waters. I suppose if you had asked him if he knew them, he would have replied that he knew them, every inch. Some of us, who spend our summers by an ocean or a lake think we are very familiar with them. And if love be at the source of all true knowledge, then indeed it may be that we know them. But if you want a true and perfect knowledge, it is not to the summer visitor you look, but to the fisherman who was cradled by its shores. Now Simon Peter was a fisherman, and all his life had been spent beside that lake. He had played on its shores as a little child; he had known it in summer and in winter. And it was there, in these familiar scenes, amid what was habitual and customary, that he began to sink. There was another occasion when he began to sink, and that was in the High Priest's palace at Jerusalem. He was a stranger there—in unfamiliar scenes—among men and women who knew nothing of him. Here it was different. Here he was at home. He was among those who knew him and who loved him, and here he began to sink. It is a very sad and pitiable thing when a man begins to sink away from home, when he goes away into a distant land and forgets the God of his father and his mother. But the peril for each one of us is the peril of Peter on the lake of Galilee—that we begin to sink amid familiar waters. Beginning to sink in India is sad; beginning to sink at home is almost worse; forgetting the sanctuary and the bended knee, the purity and temperance and tenderness. And if there is anyone who is beginning to sink at home, amid those who love and pray, now is the time to cry as Peter cried, "Lord, save me, or I perish."

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Beginning to Sink - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Sinking after Loyal Discipleship

Another feature which I note is that Peter began to sink after loyal discipleship. He had known Christ and had loved and followed Him before this hour of peril on the lake. We all remember that great hour in history when Peter had been called to the discipleship. Then he had left all and followed Jesus; he had made the full surrender to the Lord. And from that hour he had companied with Jesus and seen His miracles and heard His words and enjoyed the infinite blessings of His friendship. No one would doubt the reality of that. That self-surrender was intensely real. And Peter loved his Lord and knew His power and was never happy except in His companionship. And it was after all that rich experience—that self-surrender and devoted service—that Peter on the lake began to sink. He was no raw and inexperienced youth. He was one who had heard the calling of the Master. He was no beginner in the higher life. He was a man who had done yeoman service. And the sad thing is that in every community there are men and women who begin to sink, not in their raw and inexperienced youth, but after years of discipleship and service. Sometimes it is the deceitfulness of riches which causes it. Sometimes it is growing absorption in business. Sometimes it is the constant subtle influence of one who is unspiritual in the home. Sometimes it is weariness in well doing and the dropping of the life to lower levels from secret clingings that no one knows but God. No one would say such lives were sunken lives. I am not speaking of moral wrecks and tragedies. I am speaking of men who are still of good repute, still kind at home, still diligent in business. And yet one feels they have begun to sink; they are not the men we remember in the morning; there is a different accent in their speech and a different atmosphere around their character. Men need to be awakened out of their security, as Peter was wakened on the sea of Galilee, to recall their past discipleship and to compare it with what they are now, and then to cry, as Simon Peter cried, "Lord, save me, or I perish."

Sinking While Obeying Christ

Also to be noted is this fact, that Peter began to sink on a permitted path. When he began to sink he was no trespasser; he was going where Christ permitted him to go. Had our Lord cried to him across the water, Thou art a madman if thou triest to come; had He cried to him, Thou shalt not come—on the peril of thy life I bid thee halt; why then we should have understood it better—we should have said it served him right to sink for then he would have been disobeying Christ, and the wages of disobedience is death. The point which I want you to notice is that Simon Peter was not disobeying. Our Lord had not forbidden him to come. And so do I learn that on permitted paths—on ways that are sanctioned by the voice of heaven—it is possible now, as on the lake of Galilee, for men and women to begin to sink. There are ways that are forbidden to every child of man. God writes His flaming "No Thoroughfare" upon them. And just for the reason that this is a righteous universe, the man who sets foot on them begins to sink immediately. But the strange thing is that even when God says "Come," and opens up the way that we may walk in it, even there it is always possible to sink. That is true of the blessedness of home. It is true of all social and Christian service. And man may preach the everlasting Gospel, yet run the risk of being cast away. And therefore amid all our privileges and all the gifts which God has blessed us with, "Lord, save us, or we perish."

Peter Began to Sink When He Began to Fear

Equally notable is this, too, that Peter began to sink when he began to fear. And the Scripture tells when he began to fear: it was when he took his eyes off his Lord. There is not a trace that the wind had grown more fierce while the disciple was walking on the water. It had been just as fierce and the waves had been just as boisterous when he had sprung from the gunwale of the boat. But then he had thought of nothing but the Master, had had eyes for nobody except the Master, and so long as that continued he was safe. Looking to Christ, he could go anywhere. The very sea was as a pavement to him. Looking away from Christ he was as other men, and the perils that surrounded him were terrible. And then he regretted the rashness of his venture and saw nothing around him but the seething waters, and so Peter began to be afraid and beginning to be afraid, began to sink. That is true of every kind of life. It is true especially of spiritual life. In the perilous calling of the spiritual life, to lose heart is to lose everything. And that is why the Lord is always saying to us, "My son, give me thine heart," for only in His keeping is it safe. It is a simple message—looking unto Jesus, and yet it is the message of salvation. To trust in Him and to keep the eye on Him is the one secret of all Christian victory. And when we have failed to do so in the stress of life, as all of us, like Simon Peter, fail, then there is nothing left but to cry with Peter, "Lord, save me, or I perish."

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Beginning to Sink - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Sinking Unobserved

I think, too, we may reasonably infer that the other disciples knew nothing of all this. When Peter began to sink, they never noticed it. To begin with, all this happened about the time of daybreak. Then the waves were boisterous and in wild confusion, so that the feet of Peter often would be hidden. And if they failed to recognise their Lord when He walked in majesty upon the waters, they were not likely to see Peter clearly. When we see someone on the point of drowning, our first instinct is to give a cry. But we have no hint of anyone crying here, save the disciple himself in his distress. And so I gather from these converging hints that when Peter began to sink into the deeps, no one saw it except himself and Christ. There are some people just like Simon Peter. They have not sunk yet, they are not degraded; they are just beginning to sink. Yet no one at home knows anything about it; no one suspects it or has ever dreamed of it; no one would believe it for a moment. When a man has sunk, then there is no disguising. The story is written that he who runs may read. There is nothing hidden but it shall be revealed, whether of things in heaven or things in hell. But when a man is just beginning to sink it may be utterly different from that; it may be a secret between himself and God. His nearest and dearest may not dream of it; his mother and father may be in total ignorance. And he may come to church and engage in Christian service and take his place at the communion table. And we say of him, How well he is getting on—what a fine young fellow he is turning out to be. And all the time, unheard and unobserved, the man is crying, "Lord, save me, or I perish." It ought to make us very tenderhearted. It ought to make us always very prayerful. There are things happening among us which we never suspect, of which we never dream. For the heart knoweth its own bitterness and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith; but there is One who is not a stranger and He knows.

Christ Is Never Far A way

And so I close by saying that when Peter began to sink, his Saviour was not far away. Immediately He put out His hand and grasped him. How far Peter had walked upon the water the narrative of Scripture does not tell us. Shall we say fifty yards, or shall we say a hundred yards?—it matters not whether fifty or a hundred. If the nearest human hand was fifty yards away, the hand of Christ was not fifty yards away; immediately He put forth His hand and helped him. My brother, just beginning to sink, will you remember that Christ is at your side? All human help may seem very far away; remember that He is not very far away. He is near you now; near you where you sit. You need Him sorely and He is there for you. Cry out now, "Lord, save me, or I perish," and He will do it to the uttermost for you.

March 23

The Syrophoenician Woman - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil— Mat_15:22

Jesus in Heathen Territory

The first interest of this story lies in the fact that Jesus is now moving in heathen territory. It is a pledge and forecast of the time when the Spirit of Jesus, living in countless missionaries, will spread the knowledge of the Kingdom throughout heathendom. When we think of the heathen, our thoughts fly far away. There are vast distances of sea between us and them. But a walk of a few miles, over the hills of Galilee, brought Jesus to the borders of a heathen country. We must not think, however, that they were uncivilised people like the Africans. They were not wild barbarians like the Scots whom Columba found around him in Iona. They were an ancient people with a wonderful history, skilled navigators, builders of mighty cities. Who could have thought that that wearied Galilean, journeying northward for a little rest, was to be far more powerful in the world than these old kingdoms? Yet Tyre is today a mean town of ruins, and the commerce and the colonies of Sidon are forgotten, and the Kingdom of Jesus is becoming worldwide.

Her Child Brought Her to Jesus

One of the first stones of that worldwide empire was laid when this woman got her girl again. We sometimes think there are no homes in heathendom. We think that the children are all cruelly treated, and are never encircled by a mother's love. But here was a mother who loved her daughter so, and had such an agony of heart about her, that it led her straight to the feet of Jesus Christ. I have read that in the wild American prairies, if a traveller steps out of his tract but a few yards, he often finds it impossible to discover his way back. But there is a flower there, called the compass-weed, that always bends to the north; and when the traveller finds it, and watches how it leans, it shows him his course, and sets him right again. And all that is noblest in the human heart has been like a compass-weed to lead a wandering world to Jesus. It was this mother's love that led her. It was her passion for her daughter that constrained her. A little child had brought her to His feet.

Her Faith Conquered Jesus

It has been asked, how could this woman have heard of Jesus? But I do not think we need trouble about that. I am quite sure she was not a Jewish proselyte. If you had peered through the window of her humble cottage, when her daughter was crying and writhing on the floor, you would have found her pleading for mercy from her heathen gods. But just as the woman with the issue, having tried all physicians, determined at last to steal a cure from Jesus, so this poor mother, who was only the worse for all her heathen gods, determined at last to come to Jesus too. Some village neighbour had told her of this Son of David. Some friend had been marketing in Capernaum that morning when the nobleman's boy had been brought to life again. And if He could do that for a centurion's boy, would He not do as much for a Syrophoenician's girl? She hurries to Christ. She pleads with Him. She bows at His feet. She will not be gainsaid. Until at last even Jesus wonders at her faith, and conquered by its power and persistency, gives her, her heart's desire. They say love conquers all things, but it is only faith that can conquer Jesus. A faith like this, powerful in ten thousand hearts, would give us a time of Pentecost in Christendom.

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The Syrophoenician Woman - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Her Faith Overcame the Prejudice of Her Race

Now what was the real greatness of her faith? And how did it make even Jesus of Nazareth marvel? Well, first, it overcame the prejudices of her race. She was a heathen woman, trained in a heathen home. She had bowed down to idols from a child. She had been taught from infancy to scorn the Jews. If she had asked her aged mother by the fireside for advice, she would have been told that to go to Jesus was to disgrace the family. If she had gone to the priests and asked for their permission, they would have banned her by all the powers of heaven. But she broke through everything to get to Jesus—all that was customary, all that was dear. And Jesus knew what barriers had gone down, when she lay at His feet and cried, Lord, help me. Have I no barriers to break to get to Christ? And are they keeping me from coming closer to Him? We are not born and bred in a heathen land. God has been good to us and set us down where the church bells ring, and the Bible is on the table. But sometimes a friendship, and sometimes what the others will say, and sometimes the jeering of a brother or sister, have kept us from coming right out for our Captain; and this poor heathen woman is going to shame us when we all stand face to face with Christ.

Her Faith Mastered the Natural Shrinking of Her Heart

And, again, her faith mastered the natural shrinking of her heart. It steeled her for this terrible ordeal. When a woman loves her daughter as this mother did, she is never fond of attracting public notice. She will watch all night by her sick daughter's bed; she will make her cottage a very heaven of service; but to cry out in public, and have the gaze of the strange crowd upon her, is very alien to a true mother's heart. I dare say in her after days she often wondered how she had ever done it. We cannot explain them, but Jesus can; and in the enthusiasm of this woman He saw faith. It was faith that had prompted her to leave her cottage. It was faith that had nerved her heart before the company. Had she not ventured everything on Christ, she would have been sitting weeping by her daughter yet.

Her Faith Refused to Be Denied

And then her faith was great because it so stoutly refused to be denied. No silence and no rebuff could drive her off. She was simply determined that she should have an answer. And so closely are faith and love bound up together, that the cry of her little daughter in her ear, and the picture of her daughter in her heart, kindled her faith into a flame again when it was almost quenched. Did Christ keep silence? She still cried, Lord, help me! Did He discourage her? She was still at His feet. Did He speak about the children and the little dogs? She has caught the words up, and made a plea from them. And it is in that magnificent persistency, as humble and reverent as it is persevering, that the true greatness of her faith is found. We have a beautiful hymn beginning, "O love, that will not let me go." We want another beginning, "O faith, that will not let Him go." When we have that faith—and this woman had it—our hearts and homes shall be as blessed as hers.

March 24

The Cross and the World - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel— Mat_15:24
I, if I be lifted up…will draw all men unto me— Joh_12:32

Christ Came to and for Israel

We have but to read the record of the Gospels, to find confirmation of the former of these texts. The whole activity of Christ on earth shows Him as sent to the lost sheep of Israel. Within the boundaries of Israel He was born, and within the boundaries of Israel He died. With the one exception of the journey here recorded, He never in His maturity left the Jewish land. His twelve disciples were of the Jewish faith; His friends were inhabitants of Jewish homes; His enemies were not the Romans, but His own, to whom He came and they received Him not. For His teaching He sought no other audience than the men and women of the Jewish villages. For His retirement He sought no other solitude an that of the Galilean hills. And all His miracles, with rare exceptions, which were recorded because they were exceptional, were wrought for the comforting of Jewish hearts, and for the drying of tears in Jewish eyes. The whole story of the Gospel, then, is a witness to the truth of our first text. In the fulfilling of His earthly ministry Christ confined Himself to Jewish limits. And He did so because of His assurance, that He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Christ, However, Anticipated a Wider Ministry

But as we study the words of our Redeemer, one thing gradually grows very clear. It is that He anticipated a ministry that should be wider than these Jewish limits. I am not thinking just now of any words He spoke after He was risen from the dead. I am thinking only of His recorded utterances in those crowded years before the cross. And what I say is that no reasonable man can study the discourse of the historic Jesus without discovering that He foresaw a ministry which was to be as wide as the whole world. There is, for instance, the second of our texts today—"I will draw all men unto me." There is that beautiful word of an earlier chapter, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold." There is that utterance at Simon's table, when the woman broke the alabaster box, "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, this that she hath done shall be told of her." I ask you to observe that these great sayings have stood the test of the most searching criticism. They are so germane to the mind of Christ that they have come triumphant through the fires. And they tell us this, that through the earthly ministry, confined as it was within the house of Israel, Christ had the outlook of an approaching lordship over the nations of mankind.

The Cross and the Worldwide Empire

But these utterances tell us more than that, and to this I specially invite attention. They tell us that in the mind of Jesus His death and His worldwide empire were related. So far as we can learn about the mind of Christ, we can with reverence say this about it. It was when the cross was clearest in His thought that the worldwide empire was most clear to Him. If you will think of the texts which I have cited, and consider the occasion of their utterance, you will understand quite easily what I mean. Take for instance that most beautiful word, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold." What are the words which immediately precede it? "The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." At the very moment when the thought of shepherding kindled the vision of the shepherd's death, at that very moment there flashed upon the Lord the vision of the sheep beyond the fold. Take again the scene at Simon's feast where Jesus spoke of a Gospel for the world. "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there this deed that she hath done shall be remembered." And what was it that the woman had done under the interpreting eyes of Jesus Christ? She had anointed His body for its burial. In other words that womanly act of hers had spoken to Jesus of His coming death. Over the table where the guests reclined, it had cast the awful shadow of the cross. And it was then, anointed for His burial by an act which no one else could understand, that Christ in vision lifted up His eyes and saw the Gospel preached to the whole world. Clearly, then, Christ looked upon His death as the great secret of a worldwide empire. When the one grew vivid in His thought, there rose on Him the vision of the other. And that to me is a matter to meditate on, as one of the most momentous of all truths, by every man and every woman who is interested in the world empire of the Lord. Now the question is, can we follow out that thought, and see even dimly where the connection lies? It is that which I should like to attempt to do.

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The Cross and the World - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Motive of Missionary Enterprise

In the first place, it is the death of Christ which supplies the motive of missionary enterprise.

We must ever remember that when we speak of the death of Christ, we speak of a death different from our own. Our death is the cessation of activity; Christ's was the crown and climax of His life. "I have power to lay it down," He said, and that is a power no other man has shared. We die when our appointed hour comes, and when the hand of God hath touched us, and we sleep. But Christ never looked upon His death like that, as something inevitable and irresistible. He looked on it as the last free glorious service of a life that had always been a life of love. Here in one gleam, intense and vivid, was gathered up the light of all His years. Here in one action which we name His dying was gathered up the love in which He wrought. And it is just because of the power of that action, concentrating all the scattered rays, that Christ could say, "I, if I be lifted up,…will draw all men unto me." How true this is as a fact of history we see in the story of the Christian Church. There is the closest connection in that story between the death of Christ and missionary zeal. There have been periods in the Church's history when the death of Christ was practically hidden. The message of the cross was rarely preached; the meaning of the cross was rarely grasped. And the Gospel was looked on as a refined philosophy, eminently fitted for the good of men, inculcating a most excellent morality, and in perfect harmony with human reason. We have had periods like that in Scotland, and we have had periods like that in England. God grant that they may never come again with their deadening of true religion. And always when you have such a period, when love is nothing and moral law is everything, you have a period when not a hand is lifted for the salvation of the heathen world. For it is not morality that seeks the world; it is religion centering in love. It is a view of a divine love so wonderful that it stooped to the service of death upon a cross. So always, in evangelical revival, when that has been apprehended in the wonder of it, the passion to tell it out has come again, and men have carried the message to mankind.

And may I say that it is along these lines that the road must lie to a deepening of interest. To realise what it means that Christ died, is to have a Gospel that we must impart. There are many excellent people who, in their secret heart, confess to a very faint interest in missions. They give, and it may be they give generously, and yet in their hearts they know that they are not interested. They know almost nothing about mission-fields, and are never seen at missionary meetings, and take the opportunity to visit a sister church when a missionary is advertised to preach in theirs. With such people I have no lack of sympathy, for I think I understand their position thoroughly. I have the gravest doubt if any good is done by trying excitedly to lash up their interest. But I am perfectly confident that these good people would waken to a new and lively interest, if only they realised a little more the wonder of the love of God in Christ. What think you, my brother and my sister, is the most wonderful thing that ever happened? It is not the kindling of the myriad stars, nor the fashioning of the human eye that it might see them. It is that once the God who is eternal stooped down from heaven and came into humanity, and bore our burdens, and carried our sorrows, and died in redeeming love upon the tree. Once realise what that means, and everything else in the world is insignificant. Once realise what that means, and you must pass it on to other people. And that is the source of missionary zeal—not blind obedience, nor any thoughts of terror, but the passing on of news so wonderful that we cannot—dare not—keep it to ourselves.

The Answer for a Universal Need

In the next place, the death of Christ interprets and answers a universal longing. It meets with perfect satisfaction the deepest need of all the world.

One of the great gains of this age of ours is that it has drawn the world together so. There is now an intermingling of the nations that but a few decades ago was quite impossible. Thanks to the means of transport we possess, and to the need of expansion on the part of nations; thanks to the deathless spirit of adventure, to the gains of commerce and to the march of armies, there is a blending now of the whole earth such as was undreamed of once. Now one result of all that intermingling has been a new sense of the oneness of humanity. No longer do we delight in travellers' tales, such as captivated the Middle Ages. Men push their way into untravelled forests, and they come to us from Arabia and Tibet, and under all that is strange they bring us tidings of the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. We realise today as men have never done, how God has made all nations of one blood. Deeper than everything that separates, there are common sorrows and elemental hopes. There is one common heart by which we live; one common life in which we share; one common enemy awaiting all, when the pitcher is broken at the fountain.

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The Cross and the World - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

But especially has this oneness of humanity been made evident in the religious life. That has been one incalculable gain of the modern study of comparative religion. It has investigated a thousand rites, and found at the back of them a common longing. It has touched the foundations of a thousand altars, and found they were built upon a common need. It has gathered from Africa, from India, from China, the never-failing story of religion, and always at the very heart of things it has discovered one unchanging element. It is not enough to say that all men have religion. That is now an accepted commonplace. Something far more wonderful and thrilling has been slowly emerging into prominence. It is that under a thousand different rites, from those of Patagonia to those of China, there lies the unquenchable desire of man to get into right relationship with God. Deeper than all sense of gratitude, though gratitude is very often there—deeper than unreasoning terror, though heathen religion is always big with terror deeper than that, this fact stands out today, based on exhaustive and scientific study, that the deepest longing in the soul of man is the longing to get right with God. It is that in the last analysis which explains sacrifice, and where is the heathen tribe that does not sacrifice? It is that which explains the sway of heathen witchcraft, of which the evils can never be exaggerated. The religious life is the deepest life of man, and in that life, over the whole wide world, the one determining and vital question is, how can mortal man get right with God?

My friend, I almost ask your pardon for having taken you so far afield. But you see, I think, the point which I am driving at, and from which there is no possible escape. That very question, so vital to humanity, is the question which the atonement answers. It answers the cry that is rising to the heavens from every heathen rite and heathen altar. It tells men in language that a child can grasp, yet with a depth that angels cannot fathom, how sinful man by an appointed sacrifice can be put right with the eternal God. I believe with all my soul in educational missions, but at the heart of missions is more than education. I believe with all my soul in medical missions, but at the heart of missions there is more than healing. Christ never said, "My teaching shall draw all men," nor yet, "My healing power shall draw all men"; He said, "I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men, and this spake He of the death that He should die." That means that in the atoning death there is the answer to man's deepest need. It means that the deepest cry of all humanity is answered in the message of the cross. And I venture to say that all we have learned today in the modern study of comparative religion, corroborates, and authenticates, and seals that certainty upon the lips of Jesus.

The Necessary Step before the Comforter Could Come

Then, lastly, we have the thought that the death of Christ has liberated His influence. It has opened the window of the ark, if I might put it so, that the dove might fly abroad over the waters. "It is expedient for you that I go away," He said, "for if I go not away the Comforter cannot come." Now the Lord is that Spirit, says the apostle—it is that same Jesus glorified and liberated. So by the lifting up upon the cross Christ was set free from local limitation, to pass into a spiritual ministry that should be co-extensive with the world. No longer can any village of far Galilee claim the present monopoly of Christ. No longer can loving hearts in Bethany say, "He is our guest and ours only for tonight." He is at present now by the lake shores of Africa as He is within the house of God where you worship—because He lived and died. We often talk of the story of the cross as if in that story lay the world's redemption. But I beg of you to remember that while that is true, it is far from being all the truth. Christ spoke not a word of the story of the cross. He said, I—persisting through the cross—I, the living Christ, will draw the world—I whom death is powerless to hold. In other words, when our missionaries go forth, they go with something more than a sweet story. They go with Him of whom the tale is told, so wonderful, so unspeakable, so moving. They go with Him who, having tasted death, is now alive and lives for evermore, and who is able to save unto the uttermost all who come unto God by Him.

March 25

Great Faith - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

O woman, great is thy faith— Mat_15:28

The Greatness of Faith Measured by the Obstacles It Overcomes

The greatness of faith often can be measured by the obstacles it overcomes. Our Lord evidently had that in mind when He spoke of faith like a grain of mustard seed. The mustard seed, when it is grown, is nothing extraordinarily beautiful or useful. One does not love it as one loves the lilies, nor is it fashioned into food for man. The wonderful thing about the mustard seed is its gallant adventure in the world of life, starting from the unlikeliest beginnings. Faith can often be measured by achievement; but achievement is not the only measurement. It may accomplish little and yet be really great in its overcoming of opposing circumstances. And in the faith of this Syrophoenician woman that feature is so signal and so splendid that we might measure her faith by that alone. Let us, then, lay aside all else, and think only of the things that were against her, when she came to Jesus that memorable day.

Her Birth Was against Her

In the first place, her birth was against her. St. Matthew tells us that she was a woman of Canaan, and she is called a Syrophoenician woman by St. Mark, from which we learn that she belonged by birth to one of the native races of the land. Now when, long centuries before, the Jews had entered Canaan, they had been bidden to exterminate these races. It had been war to the death between the Hebrews and the tribes who were in possession of the land. And we know what hatred and bitterness will rankle in the heart of some poor remnant whose memories are of exterminating wars. Into that heritage was this woman born. She was bred in abhorrence of the name Jew. To her the Jew was like the Norman conqueror to the disinherited and defeated Saxon. Yet all the bitterness in which she had been trained, and the prejudice in which she had been steeped, was overcome in her profound belief that Jesus could save her little daughter. How her neighbours would deride her if she hinted to them the nature of her errand! They would charge her with being false to her own gods, a traitress to her people and her past. But all the mocking of her village friends was powerless to dissuade her from her purpose, and here we find her at the feet of Christ.

Her Lack of Knowledge Was against Her

Again, her lack of knowledge was against her. This woman was not a Jew; she was a Grecian. She had been reared in the worship of the heathen gods, and was a stranger to the God of Israel. Doubtless she had heard Jehovah's name, but always in tones of hatred or contempt. Possibly there had drifted to her ear tidings of the Jewish hope of a Messiah. But how that hope would be misrepresented, and in what distorted fashion it would reach her, is not very difficult to picture. She was a stranger to the Hebrew Bible, with its prediction of a coming Saviour. She had never dwelt upon its pages in secret, feeding her soul on the nurture of the promises. The Psalms of David she had never sung; the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah she had never read; no one had ever told her of a Coming One who was to bear the sicknesses of others. Think, too, how little she could know of Christ Himself. It is almost certain that she had never seen Him. A woman with such a heart and such a daughter was unlikely to be away from home often. All that she knew of Jesus was from hearsay, from the stray rumours that would travel northward, and there was not a single rumour yet that could speak to her of the healing of a heathen. When the sisters sent for Jesus, when Lazarus was ill, theirs was indeed a noble faith. But Christ had lived with them, and loved them, and all that was a mighty encouragement to faith. Here there was nothing of such sweet experience; no personal knowledge for faith to strike its roots in. And it was all so wonderful that even Jesus wondered—"O woman, great is thy faith."

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Great Faith - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Disciples Were against Her

Once more, the disciples were against her— "Send her away, for she crieth after us." They had come northward for a little rest, and they were irritated at being so disturbed. Perhaps what they meant was this: "Give her the boon she craves, and let her go. The crowd will be sure to gather at her cries—for the sake of peace grant her, her request." But the very fact that they could speak so, shows that they viewed her in an unkindly light, and, from the moment that they saw her, had cast upon her uninviting looks. So had they acted with the mothers of Salem when they brought their little ones to Jesus. How much more natural such conduct now, when the mother was a Syrophoenician and a heathen. Yet all the angry looks of the disciples, and their biddings that she should hold her peace, and their drawing together to keep her off from Jesus, and the fact that they were men and she a woman—all this was powerless to dishearten her or to quench the shining of her faith.

Christ Seemed to Be against Her

But there was one other obstacle she had to conquer, for Christ Himself seemed to be against her. When she pleaded with Him in all her mother's passion, He answered her never a word. These silent lips were terrible enough—they were so unlike all she had heard of Him; but when He spoke it was like the knell of doom, robbing her of the hope that was her life—"I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Do not imagine it was said to try her. It was said in the perfect sincerity of truth. There is an order in the plans of God, and the time of the Gentiles was not yet. But what did the woman do—did she retire? Did she say, "Ah me, my case is hopeless now"? There is something magnificent in what she did—she came and worshipped and cried to Him, "Lord, help me." Again Jesus raised another obstacle. He uttered that dark word about the dogs—not the wild and masterless dogs of Eastern streets, but the "doggies" which even then were household pets. And the alertness, the ready mother-wit, with which this mother parried that rebuff is one of the most delightful things in Scripture. Who could have blamed her if, being called a dog, she had turned in womanly anger and gone home? Instead of that she catches up the words and turns the supposed taunt into an argument. And it was then that Jesus, charmed and captivated by that refusal to admit defeat, crowned her with the encomium of our text. Her birth was against her; her knowledge was against her; the Twelve were against her; Christ seemed to be against her. But her great faith broke every obstacle—and her daughter was made whole that very hour.

March 26

Son of Man - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?— Mat_16:13

The Name by Which Jesus Most Frequently Called Himself

There are two names which our Lord was wont to use when He spoke about His person or His work. The one was the Son of God, and the other was the Son of Man. It was not often that He used the former title, if we may judge by the Synoptic Gospels, and when He used it, it was always in some moment of unusual importance and solemnity. But it is different with the latter, "the Son of Man." This was constantly upon the lips of Christ. It seems to have been His most familiar word when He referred to His person or His work. And so deeply engraven is this upon our hearts, and inwrought into the thought of Christendom, that whenever we hear the expression "Son of Man" we at once revert to the figure of our Saviour. Under this name, then, our Lord described Himself. By this He conveyed His thought about Himself. It was a name He loved with deep affection, and which welled to His lips in the most diverse circumstances. Nor should it be forgotten that in the whole New Testament, where the title "Son of Man" occurs so often, only on two occasions is it used by anyone other than the Lord Himself.

Jesus Never Defined or Explained the Meaning of "Son of Man"

Now it is notable that in all His use of it our Lord never pauses to define the name. He does not explain what it conveyed to Him, nor what He meant it should convey to others. When our Lord gave Simon his new name of Peter, He was careful to interpret its significance. "Thou art Peter," He said, so that all could hear, "and on this rock I shall build my church." But when He laid aside His own name Jesus, and began to speak of Himself as Son of Man, He offered no explanation of the name, and never declared the reason of His choice. Equally noticeable too is this, that no one ever asked Him to define it. It seems to have been accepted without comment, and at least in a measure to have been understood. For men were not slow to interrogate the Saviour, and to ask Him what He meant by this or that, but we never find anyone enquiring of Him what was the meaning of this "Son of Man."

Not a New Name

Now the reason for that absence of all questioning will suggest itself to every reader at once. This was no new name, coined at a moment's need, it was a name that was wreathed with old association. There was not a Jew who heard the Master use it but would find it encircled with familiar thoughts. It was a name they had been accustomed to since childhood in their reading or hearing of the ancient Scriptures. And it came to them, not as a word of novelty, nor with the arresting touch of the unknown, but as a word that was a heritage of Israel from the far-off day of prophet and of psalmist. In other words, this was a borrowed name, and it was borrowed from the roll of the Old Testament. It was not a title coined for the occasion; it was fragrant with happy and with holy memories. And what Christ did was to take the hallowed name, and to breathe upon it with the breath of life, so that it glowed into a new significance and expanded into undreamed-of fullness.

Let me just say in passing that that is the real meaning of originality. If only we had just thought upon that matter, I think that we might understand our Saviour better. It is not the nature of originality to say what never has been said before. The genius that is most strikingly original is hopelessly in debt to all the past. Originality consists in this—in taking all that the past has got to offer, and then in so passing it through heart and brain that it leaps forth as if a recreation. We speak of the originality of Shakespeare, yet who is more deeply in debt to his predecessors? We speak, and we can do it with all reverence, of the originality of Jesus. Yet do remember, that that does not mean that Christ owes nothing to the past of Israel. It means that He gathers up that mighty past, and makes it new just because He is new. It should never distress you to find in the Old Testament the rudiments of one of the beatitudes. The past was Christ's, but just because He was Christ the old was all transfigured on His lips. And so with His favourite name "the Son of Man"; it was not new, it was an ancient title; it was drawn out of the storied past of Israel, but Christ has made it different forever.

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Why Did Jesus Choose This Name?

Well, that being so, why did this title so appeal to Christ? Why did He love to use it of Himself? Why was it so often on His lips? There were many other names He might have chosen out of the stores of psalmist and of prophet. In Isaiah you will get twenty titles that describe the office and glory of Messiah. And all these were familiar to our Lord, whose mind and heart were steeped in the old Scripture, yet the one He chooses from them all is "Son of Man." Why, then, did this title so appeal to Him? There is only one way to discover that, it is to go back to the Old Testament page, and find the meaning of the words "Son of Man" there. If we discover that, then we discover the thoughts that moved before the mind of Jesus, when in the quiet of Nazareth He made His choice of the name that was to mark His ministry. I do not imagine for one single moment that He used the word in a dogmatic way. There was nothing hard or cold about His use of it—nothing of fixed and stereotyped significance. It was a plastic and suggestive word for Jesus, now shining in one light, now in another, and we must reverently try to trace these lights to that Word which was a lamp unto His feet.

To Indicate His Humiliation—Psalm Eight

First, then, we shall turn to the 8th Psalm for one of the notable uses of the word: "What is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him?" The psalmist has been gazing at the heavens and contemplating their majestic grandeur. He stands perhaps upon his palace roof, amid the silent beauty of the night. The moon has arisen, and over the sleeping city there streams the silver pathway of her radiance. And the heaven above him, undimmed by any cloud, is ablaze with the countless glories of the stars. It is one of those eastern nights of perfect beauty when the stars are like the eyes of heavenly watchers looking down with an infinity of calm upon the weary and troubled hearts of men. Now, had the psalmist been a poet only, he might have rested in that outward beauty. But he was more than a poet; he was a spiritual man ever awake to the touch of the divine. And looking upward into that night of beauty what was borne in upon his soul was this—how could a God whose finger made the heavens be mindful of a creature such as man? "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him?" You see, then, the thought in David's mind when he uses that expression "son of man." He is thinking of man in all his native lowliness, of man contrasted with the glowing heavens, of man so frail compared with moon and star, yet crowned with a glory akin to that of angels. Man but a breath contrasted with the stars, yet greater than they in fellowship with God; man but the needy creature of a day, yet lifted up above all heaven's magnificence. "What is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him?"

Now, when you turn to the words of Jesus, you find Him using the name in the same way. For Jesus also it carries the significance of man in His lowliness and yet exalted. "Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Or again, where He is foretelling His own passion: "The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men." And yet this lowly and suffering Son of man is to be crowned with glory and honour, for "Hereafter," He cries, "ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power." I think there can be no question that that was one charm of this old name for Christ. It blended together His humiliation with the joy of glory that was set before Him. It spoke of Him as a man of sorrows and as One who shared the frailty of our frame, yet it ever suggested the glory that was His, and the honour that was in store for Him from God.

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A Prophet Identified with Manhood—Ezekiel

Again, when we turn back to the Old Testament, we light upon the title in Ezekiel. God calls Ezekiel the son of man not less than seventy times. "Son of man, stand upon thy feet"; "Son of man, seest thou what they do?" It is thus that God constantly addresses him. You will understand, then, how the title "son of man" came to be charged with a prophetic import. It became familiar to readers of Ezekiel as the name for the prophet of the living God. And so when one called himself the "son of man," amid a people so intimately acquainted with the Scriptures, it would at once suggest to them his claim to stand in the succession of the prophets. But why did God choose this title for Ezekiel? Was it just to indicate his lowliness? Nay, rather, it was God's reminder to His servant that he was one with the people whom he warned. He was not to speak as one who stood apart, untouched by the sorrow and the tears of Israel; he was the son of man, the sympathetic man who was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. Thus you see that in the mind of Israel there clustered these ideas around the title. Familiar with it from Ezekiel's writings, it spoke to them of one who was a prophet; and yet this prophet was not a man aloof and unable to enter into his people's heart. He was a son of man, the man of sympathy, one who was touched with a feeling of their infirmities.

And again, when we turn to the words of Christ, we find Him using the term in the same way. He uses it to claim prophetic power, and yet to reveal His sympathetic heart. "The Son of Man hath power to forgive sin"; "the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day"—that is the voice of One who was a prophet, charged with a message greater than Ezekiel's. And yet, "the Son of man came eating and drinking"; "the Son of man came to seek and save the lost"—that is the voice of One who was a Brother, and who was filled with intensest sympathy for man. That also is one secret of the charm which this ancient title had for Jesus. It revealed a yet half-concealed prophetic claim, and told that His word was the oracle of God; and yet it suggested that He was rich in sympathy and able to be compassionate to the weakest, and fitted to bear the burdens of humanity, and to be the Brother of the tired and weak. Was He the Son of Man?—then He was Brother-Man, and all might find in Him their Friend and Helper. But was He the Son of Man ? — then, like Ezekiel, He was the Prophet of the living God.

Associated with the Nations—Daniel

Then, lastly, and most notably of all, we find this title in the Book of Daniel. Let me recall to you what it implies in Daniel, and in what connection it was introduced. Daniel had had a vision of four empires that came up like four great beasts out of the sea; and then to these bestial and inhuman kingdoms succeeded another and a nobler kingdom. Within it were all nations and all peoples; it was a dominion that was to last forever. And over it, coming with the clouds, Daniel saw one like to the Son of Man. Now that was a vision of Messiah's kingdom, superseding the bestial kingdoms of the world. And who was the Son of Man who reigned within it? He was the expected Messiah of the Jews. And so, as the Jews looked forward to Messiah, and dreamed of the day when He was to appear, they came to think of Him, and came to speak of Him, under that ancient name of "Son of man." Let other kingdoms be typified by beasts, the kingdom of Christ is typified by manhood. It is the perfect Man who is to reign, in the golden age to which the Jew was looking. And yet this Man is something more than man, for He stands in the heavens engirdled by its clouds, and the passing of ages leaves no trace upon Him, and the Ancient of Days receives Him as His fellow. It was such thoughts the Jews associated with the name "Son of man."

It is not a matter of debate if such thoughts were in the mind of Jesus. There can be no question in the matter, for we have the testimony of Christ Himself. On two occasions our Lord recalled this prophecy in words whose reference is unmistakable, and both times He identified Himself with the Son of man of Daniel's vision. In His prophecy over Jerusalem, He predicted that they shall see "the Son of man coming in the clouds with power and great glory." And when standing before Caiaphas He thus addressed His judges, "I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Of this, then, there is no doubt, that the name was to Jesus a Messianic name. He would never have used it had He not wished to intimate that He was the promised Messiah of the Jews. And so it tells us that here is Christ indeed; the Man in whom all humanity is centered, yet the Man who knew that He was more than man, the Fellow of the everlasting God.

March 27

Elijah or Jeremiah - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Some say that thou art…Elias,' and others, Jeremias— Mat_16:14

Elijah—A Prophet of Wrath; Jeremiah—A Prophet of Tears

It is of the deepest interest to discover what was the common impression about Jesus, and in this report conveyed by the disciples we get a hint of the utmost value. "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" said Jesus; and the answer was, "Some say…John the Baptist: some [and probably the greater number], Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets." Now there are many interesting suggestions in these answers; but one of them to my mind exceeds all the others. Did you ever think of the vast difference there was between the characters of Elijah and Jeremiah? Yet some said about Christ, "This is Elijah," and others said, "No, it is Jeremiah." If you read again the page of the Old Testament you will appreciate the gulf between the two. The one is ardent, enthusiastic, fierce sometimes. The other is the prophet of the tender heart and tears. And the remarkable thing is that the common people should have taken these types, which are so wide apart, and should have found in both the character of Christ. In other words, the impression which Jesus made was that of a complex, inclusive personality. You could not exhaust Him by a single prophet. It took the range of the greatest to portray His character. And I want to try to bring before you some of these qualities of different natures, which harmonise so perfectly and wonderfully in the human nature of our Lord.

Christ to Be Obeyed and Loved

First, then, I am arrested in Christ's character by the perfect union of mastery and charm. It is one of the rarest things in the world to find the masterful man possessed of the indefinable quality of charm. There are some people born to be obeyed, and there are some other people born to be loved; but it is very rarely that the compelling nature, in the language of Scripture, is "altogether lovely." Think of the masterful men whom you have known; the men whose distinguishing attribute was power; the men who never insisted on obedience, yet somehow or other always were obeyed; the men who were very quiet, and very strong. Such men are always needed in the commonwealth—such men are always secretly admired; but it is very seldom, in this curious world, that such authoritative men are loved. What they lack is the indefinable quality of charm. They can master everything except the heart. They appeal to all that is strong and virile in us. Yet they do not appeal to the imagination. And it is strange what a deal the people will forgive, and how they will cover up a hundred failings, in the man who appeals to their imagination.

Christ Was Characterised by Power and Love

Now when we turn to Christ, the first thing we observe is that the mark of His character is power. Here is no sentimental dreamer from the hills; here is a regal, authoritative Man. Read over His life in the Gospels once again and mark how often that word "power" occurs. "His word was with power," says Luke. "The kingdom comes with power," says Mark. "The multitude glorified God who had given such power unto men," says Matthew. We are quite wrong in saying about Jesus that the first impression which He made was that of gentleness—the first impression which He made was one of power. He spake with authority, and not as one of the scribes. And why did men leave all when He said, "Follow me"? And in the garden when He was betrayed, and said to them, "I am he"—why did the rabble shrink and fall away? There is something so magnificent in that—in the sheer power of that defenceless manhood—that I defy any painter to portray it. Yet look at the little children how they came to Him, and nestled without a tremor in His arms. And think of Peter by the sea of Galilee, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love thee." Some men are born to be obeyed, some to be loved; but Jesus pre-eminently was born for both. That is why people said, "Lo, here is Elijah," and others, "No, it is Jeremiah." All that had marked the noblest of the prophets was harmonised and reconciled in Him. Untold authority, infinite sensibility; a will that would not swerve, a tender heart; the union of mastery and charm.

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Elijah or Jeremiah - Page 2
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Christ Characterised by Remoteness and Accessibility

Again, I am arrested in Christ's character by the union of remoteness and accessibility. There is something in Christ that always suggests distance. There is much in Christ that tells us He is near. Now there are many people who convey the impression of remoteness, though none in the same way as Jesus did. There is the man who is absorbed in some great work, for instance; and we feel that he moves apart when we meet him. And there is a certain type of the religious spirit that is so cold and so icily immaculate that a poor sinner, like the rich man in hell, sees what a gulf there is between him and Abraham. What you feel is, when men are so remote, that you must not trouble them with your small matters. You must not look to them for the sweet word of sympathy. You must not expect them to bother about you. They lift themselves apart like some high alp, which catches the morning, but is always snow clad; while we poor mortals, with hearts so weak, so warm, must struggle along in the valleys as we may.

There never lived on earth a Man who so impressed men with His remoteness as did Christ. "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord," was how Simon Peter reacted to His presence. You remember how Milton in his Hymn of the Nativity says, "Kings sat still with awful eye, as if they surely knew their Sovran Lord was by!" and I tell you there are a hundred touches in the Gospel that confirm that impression of the incarnate Lord. It is the height of childishness for any Gospel student to say that Jesus was just a genial socialist. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon, "I know men, and you may take my word for it, this is more than man." For He stood apart; men felt He was remote; there was the touch of the far away about this figure. Some said Elias, and others Jeremiah; no one said, "A genial, pleasant neighbour." The strange thing is that though Christ thus stood remote, men still should have come to Him with every worry. "Come unto me," and they came from every rank—from the lady of the court to the poor reprobate. And He who stood so far apart that He could say, "Thy sins are forgiven thee, go in peace"; yet He stood so near that there was not a sorrow He could not appreciate and understand. Some said Elias, that lone figure, standing apart from the surge and flow of Israel. And some said Jeremiah—tenderhearted, whose tears were a river for his people's sorrow. And both opinions were wrong, yet both supremely right, for Elias and Jeremiah both were here. Christ was far more lonely than the one, and far more sympathetic than the other.

Christ Characterised by Enthusiasm and Tranquility

Once more I am arrested in Christ's character by the union of enthusiasm and tranquility. His feelings were often powerfully stirred, yet the whole impression is one of profound peace. There are men who can walk unmoved through a vast crowd. When Christ saw a crowd, He was touched with compassion always. There are men who can stand beside a grave emotionless, but by the grave of Lazarus, Jesus wept. There are men who can view all manner of iniquity and never lose a moment's peace about it; but Jesus, in a mighty surge of indignation, drove out the buyers and sellers from the temple. Clearly, this is no cold, phlegmatic nature. There is nothing of the steeled heart of the Stoic here. Here is a man whose eye will flash sometimes, whose soul can be roused into a glow of passion. And yet the one impression of the whole is not that of an eager, strained unrest; the impression of the whole life of Jesus is that of an unutterable peace. It is very easy to be bold, yet calm; to be uninterested, unimpassioned, and so tranquil. It is very easy to deaden down the feelings, till a man has made a solitude and called it peace. But the abiding wonder about Christ is this, that He had an ardent, eager, enthusiastic heart; yet He breathed such a deep, such a superb tranquility, that men instinctively felt He was at rest.

Christ Was Characterised by Abnegation and Appreciation

Then, in closing, and most notable of all, there is the union of abnegation and appreciation. I regret using such ungainly words, but I know no others that so express my meaning. What is the last word in the ideal of Jesus—is it asceticism, or is it joy? Let me show you in a word how Christendom has leaned at different times to different answers.

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Elijah or Jeremiah - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Think, then, on the one hand of mediaeval painters who have portrayed for us the Man of Nazareth. It is not the Christ who considered the lilies whom they paint. It is the Christ of agony and shame. You know that figure kneeling in the garden. You know that face with its awful look of agony. You know those hands with the blood dropping from them, and St. Dominic looking upward with enraptured eyes. And even where the suffering is shrouded by an art as exquisite as it is perfect, you know that the appeal of all such art is, "Come, and let us mourn with Him awhile." It is not joy that animates these pictures; it is a calm and holy acquiescence. It is not intense delight in the glad world; it is unquestioning acceptance of the will of God. He has given up everything, this Christ, to die for men, and the last word of that art is abnegation.

And then I turn to some modern paintings of Christ, and I seem to be moving in a different world. I turn to Renan, to Zangwill, or to Dawson, and I hardly recognise the painter's figure. He is entranced with the vision of the divine life, says Renan, and He gives Himself with delight to its expression. He is the incarnation of the spirit of joy, says Dawson. And Mr. Zangwill, in his Dreamers of the Ghetto, says, "I give the Jews a Christ they can accept now; the Lover of warm life and the warm sunlight, and all that is fresh and beautiful and pure." Is this the mediaeval Sufferer, with the blood-drops, and with the crown of thorns? Is this glad poet with His glowing cheek the pallid figure of mediaeval paintings? It is not suffering that is the keynote here. It is positive, intense, and simple joy. It is not abnegation of the world; the keynote is appreciation.

"Some said Elias, others Jeremiah"—have we not here another echo of such judgments? The wonder of Jesus is not this or that; the wonder of Jesus is this and that together. There is a joy that has no room in it for sacrifice; it is too selfish, too sensuous, and too shallow. There is a sacrifice that is absolutely joyless, without a gleam of the sunshine on its cross. But Christ was happy as a child in this green world, because not a sparrow could fall without His Father; yet He gave up everything and died on Calvary, that guilty men and women might be saved. In the deepest of all senses Christ renounced the world, and trampled all its glory underfoot. The first condition of following in His train was that one should lead the life of self-denial. Yet He who so followed Him was never deadened to the call of lovely or delightful things; He was led into a world where birds were singing, and which was beautiful with the lilies of the field. That is why in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. All are united in that wonderful character. That is why you and I can never say, "He was Elias," or, "He was Jeremiah." Embracing both—all that was best in both—and all that is highest and fairest in humanity; we fall before Him and reply, with Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."

March 28

Founded on Rock

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church— Mat_16:18

Christ Wanted to Be Understood

To understand these words aright we must endeavour to recapture the right atmosphere. The words were spoken under intense excitement. The hour had come when our Lord felt it necessary to tell the disciples plainly of His death. So He had led them to the rocky solitudes which lie about the sources of the Jordan. And first, lest the shock should overwhelm them, He set Himself quietly to discover if they had solved the secret of His being. No one will ever triumph in the Cross who has wrong views of the Person of our Lord. In His own beautiful way He did not begin with that. He began by asking what other people thought. Then, having elicited an answer, He said, "But whom say ye that I am?" And immediately, with glorious insight, in a light that broke on him from heaven, Peter cried, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." To be understood is always sweet, especially after long misapprehension. It is a thrilling hour when one is understood. And so perfectly human was our Lord, that the cry of Peter moved Him to His depths, and stirred Him with profound emotion. The words of Jesus are not a cold pronouncement. They are a glowing and impassioned utterance. They are not a statement of theology; they are the glad cry of a heart. He could face the cross and all its desolation, and be tranquil in His darkest hour, in the assurance that He was understood.

Did Christ Point to Himself When He Said, "Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church "?

There are two interpretations of these words which I mention only to discard. The first is, that when He said "On this rock," He pointed with a gesture to Himself. My learned namesake, Dr. Morison, in his quite invaluable Commentaries, is the best-known upholder of this view. But surely it is not like our Lord to convey truth by an unrecorded gesture. When the moving of His hands is eloquent, the Gospel is always careful to portray it. And our Lord was so watchful of His little words that it is incredible He should have said and, when the contrast of the gesture called for but. It is the most profound of truths that the Church is founded upon Christ. It is founded on Him who loved us and who died for us, and who rose again on the third day. But here, in this moment of emotion, our Lord was not thinking of Himself; He was thinking of those who recognise His mystery.

Did He Mean Peter?

With equal conviction do I discard the view that our Lord meant Peter as an individual. With that mystic gaze of His, Peter was the type and representative of multitudes. There are hints in the story (as is so often true) that Peter spoke in the name of the disciples. There flashed into words on his eager lips, the truth that was inarticulate in them. And if there was a gesture of our blessed Lord, was it not rather a waving of His hand over the company gathered at His feet? To them, just as truly as to Peter, Christ was not Jeremiah or Elias. For them He stood in solitary grandeur, different from and greater than the prophets. And what they all felt in their inmost core, though they could not command speech to utter it, broke into utterance on Peter's lips. It is incredible that in such high emotion our Lord's vision should have stopped at Peter. Moved to His very depths He saw in Peter the guarantee and the foretaste of His triumph. He heard in Peter's cry the voice of millions, echoing through every country of the world, confessing Him and adoring Him as Lord.

"The Rock" Is the Confession of All Who Acknowledge Christ as Lord

So do I hold with a very strong conviction that such was the meaning of our Lord. Peter was the forerunner of confessing and adoring souls. The Church is not founded on an individual, and that individual soon to be called Satan (Mat_16:23). It is not founded on any form of words, for rock in Scripture is never used of words. The Church is founded on confessing lives, on all those who acknowledge Christ as Lord, and of these Peter is the forerunner. Empires are founded upon force; kingdoms upon mercenary armies. Institutions are founded upon money; secret societies on catchwords. But the Church is founded on living men and women, confessing in gratitude and wonder "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." In the deepest of all senses the Church is founded upon Christ. But let those who confess His name never forget that it is also founded upon them. Let them see to it that it is not founded upon sand, blown about by every desert wind. Let them see to it that it is founded upon rock.

March 29

The Master Builder

I will build my church— Mat_16:18

Jesus Used the Term Church Only Twice

Only on two occasions did our Lord use the word Church, here and in the eighteenth chapter, where He says, "Tell it to the church." In the rest of the New Testament the word occurs with frequency, sometimes of the universal church, and sometimes of the local church. But to the lips of our Lord Himself it rises only twice. It has been argued that He never used it, and that it really is due to the evangelist, writing at a later date, when the word had passed into the common speech. But that our Lord actually used it seems to me entirely likely, and that for two considerations. In the first place, you have it in the Greek Old Testament, and with that version our Lord was quite familiar; and in the second place He only used it in the closing period of His ministry. Hitherto He had spoken of the Kingdom—that was the word which was always on His lips. Now, as the end approached, was it not natural that He should talk of the instrument for bringing in the Kingdom? For that is what the Church is, not merely a spiritual fellowship, but God's great instrument for bringing in the Kingdom which is righteousness and joy and peace. How has the Kingdom come in Britain? How is it coming in India and Africa? Everywhere it is coming through the Church. Men say they have no use for the Church, and yet they profess to reverence our Lord, for whom it was the instrument of heaven.

Christ's Confidence in the Future

What first arrests us in the words which I have chosen is the profound confidence of Jesus in the future. We must remember that the words were spoken when the shadow of the end was on His path. In a little while He would be crucified. His very disciples would forsake Him. Men would say He was a noble visionary, but now His beautiful visions were extinguished. And just then, when everything was darkest, our Lord looked down the echoing aisles of time, and said with a serene and perfect confidence, "I will build my church." The same confidence you meet again as He sits at the Supper with His own. There He was on the verge of His betrayal. Yet there He never for one moment doubted that through the ages, till He came again, He would be remembered by adoring hearts. Sometimes you hear men say that they tremble for the ark of God. Let them not forget the fate of him who was the first to tremble for the ark of God. When once the heart has heard the Lord's assertion, "I will build my church, "such solicitude is irreligious.

He Will Build His Church through Human Instrumentality

Of course, when our Lord says, "I will build," that does not mean His hands will do the building. One recalls the dictum of the ancients, quod facit per alium, facit per se. We read in the Gospel of St. John that Jesus tarried with them and baptized (Joh_3:22). Yet in the next chapter we are told that Jesus did not baptize, but His disciples (Joh_4:2). He baptized (it is the word of Scripture), and yet He did it not with His own hands; He did it by the hands of His disciples. "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" (Psa_127:1). Does not that mean that though the Lord be builder, the masons must be busy all the time? So when Jesus says, "I will build my church," He means that He is going to build it by the toiling hands and consecrated lives of sinful men and women like ourselves. "Young man," said the old minister to Carey, "if God wants to convert the heathen He can do it without you." But that old minister was wrong. It is through those who dedicate their lives, as Carey did, through those who toil and pray and give, that the ages see the fulfilment of the words, "I will build my church."

Assurance That the Church Is Going to Be Completed

In these words, lastly, we have our great assurance that the building is going to be completed. That is why the Lord says, "I will build." We know the story of one who thought to build a tower, and had his vision of that tower completed. But long before the cornerstone was in place, that visionary's resources were exhausted. But the resources of Jesus Christ are inexhaustible—all power hath been committed unto Him—and His church is going to be built. It must be a depressing thing to be a mason when the contractor is on the verge of bankruptcy. How can a labourer toil with all his heart if tomorrow the work may be suspended? But the joy of service in the Church of Christ, a joy that ought to thrill through every toiler, is that no such dark dubiety as that can hang like a chilling cloud over his toil. Our Master-builder has resources infinite. His power is co-extensive with His vision. We have His Word that the building will be crowned and His Word will never pass away. In such sure confidence, itself a spring of gladness, the humblest worker plucks up heart again when the arm is weary and the sky is grey.

March 30

The Transfiguration - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light— Mat_17:1-2

Scenes on Mountains

How often the Bible brings us into mountain scenery. It was on a mountain that Abraham prepared to offer Isaac and that men received the law of Moses, and from a mountainside the law of Christ. The bitterest conflict between Elijah and the prophets of Baal was on Mount Carmel. John was on a great mountain when he saw the new Jerusalem descend; and on a mountain occurred the transfiguration. Do you think that choice of place is but an accident? I do not think so. For always, in the grandeur of the mountaintop, lifting its masses silencewards and heavenwards, have men perceived God's choice environment for the highest hours of holiest souls. The dullest of us knows the fuller life that stirs us on the hills. It is a fitting scene for the transfiguration.

The Transfiguration Was an Answer to Prayer

First, then, let us note that the transfiguration was an answer to prayer. Jesus took Peter and James and John, we read, and went up into a mountain to pray and as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance was altered (Luk_9:28-29). It may be we shall never grasp the mystery of the prayers of Jesus Christ. The simplest prayer you ever breathed raises a score of problems when you think on it, and these problems are multiplied a thousandfold when we are thinking on the prayers of our Redeemer. But the fact remains that Jesus prayed, intensely, passionately, resolutely, till the end; and if it is asked what He was praying for on this mountain, I think we may reverently give this reply. It was the thought of His sufferings that filled Him. It was the vision of His death that bowed Him down. Eight days before, Jesus had talked of that. He had told His disciples how He must suffer and die. And all the evangelists date this mountain scene from the memorable hour of that conversation. It was of His death, too, Moses and Elias spake. Now, these are hints of the inner life of Jesus. These are like far-off echoes of His cry. His hands were trembling as they grasped the cup. The shadow of the cross was on His soul. He went to the hill to agonise with God, and the transfiguration was the answer.

Thus, then, we reach the inner meaning of the scene. It was not a spectacle. It was not acted out for James and John. Its chief importance was for the heart of Jesus. Can we discover, then, its meaning for Christ? Can we see how it greatly strengthened Him for Calvary? That is to get to the marrow of the story. For the memory of this hour was music to Jesus, when all the daughters of music were brought low. It was song and strength to Him, when He went forth to die.

Jesus Received a Fresh Assurance of His Father's Love

Note first then, that the transfiguration gave to Jesus a fresh assurance of His Father's love, for there came a voice out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son." There are times when we are sorely tempted to doubt the love of God; and if our Redeemer was tempted in all points like as we are, this sore temptation must have fallen on Him. And the one week, in His three-and-thirty years, when it would light on Him with most tremendous power, would be the week before the transfiguration. Till then, Christ had been climbing upward, amid the welcomes of an eager people. From then, He was to journey downwards to the Cross of Calvary and to the grave. The tides were turned. The crisis had been reached. With terrible clearness He realised His death. Oh, what a task, in the full sight of Calvary, still to believe in the changeless love of God! God saw, God understood. God strengthened and established the human soul of Jesus. And from that hour—come agony, come death, Jesus is still the well-beloved Son.

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His Agony: Misunderstood on Earth, But Understood in Heaven

Again, the transfiguration assured Jesus that if His agony was not understood on earth, it was fully understood in heaven. In His sufferings and in His death Jesus was never understood on earth. Men understood the wisdom of His speech. They saw the power of His deeds of healing. But His sufferings they could not understand. The thought of crucifixion was intolerable to the disciples. Even Peter, who loved his Master so, out of his love would have kept Him from the Cross. But Moses and Elias understood what Peter and James and John quite failed to see. They spake of His decease (Luk_9:31). It was the theme of heaven whence they had come. There might be none to sympathise on earth; but the spirits of just men made perfect, in the home above, were following with unbounded love and wonder the progress of Jesus to the cross.

Assurance of the True Greatness of His Mission

Mark, too, that the transfiguration assured Jesus of the true greatness of His mission. We never doubt the greatness of that work. We now know the value of His life and death. The centuries are but a commentary on His power. Yet we sometimes wonder if in the weary round of humble service, the greatness of His task was ever bedimmed for Jesus. We are amazed, as we read the Gospel story, at the seeming insignificance of many of the days and deeds of Christ. He lived in villages and companied with humble folk. He healed their sick; He preached to unlettered crowds. So day succeeded day, and the sun rose and set, and men could not see the splendour of His work. Was Jesus sometimes tempted to forget it too? If so, it was the very love of God that sent Moses and Elijah to the mount. For Moses and Elijah were the past. They were the spirits of the law and prophecy. And now the past hands on its work to Jesus. All that the law had vainly striven to do, and all that prophecy had seen afar, was to be crowned on Calvary. His, then, was no fragmentary life. It was the very crisis of the world. For all the
past was centering in Him, and from Him the future was to stretch away.

The Transfiguration Encouraged Jesus

And lastly, note how the transfiguration encouraged Jesus because it gave Him a foretaste of His glory. His sufferings were near; His death was near; but on the mount Christ knew that heaven was nearer still. For the dazzling glow of heaven was on His face, and the saints of glory were standing by His side, and His Father's voice was music in His ear. Not that heaven was ever unreal to Jesus; but in view of the intensity of coming sorrow, there must be intense conviction of the joy beyond. It is this that was granted to Jesus on the mount. Is it not given to His children too? There is always the burning bush before the desert. There is ever the mountaintop before the garden. In the strength of the joy that is set before us, we endure the cross and despise the shame.

March 31

The Child in the Midst - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them— Mat_18:2

Jesus' Love for Children

I want to speak on Jesus and the child to show you out of the Bible story how precious childhood was to Jesus Christ. And I want to do it just that we may feel that when the Church which is His body tends the children it is certain to have the blessing of the Master.

First, then, we may find how Jesus valued them by the loving way in which He had observed them. With a quick eye and with a loving heart He had been watching them when they never dreamed of it. You can tell how closely He had watched the world by the exquisite beauty of His parables. You can tell how closely He had watched His nation from His certainty that ruin was impending. And so by innumerable incidental references, occurring everywhere throughout His teaching, you can tell how closely He had watched the child. He had watched the mother fondling her babe, and in her joy forgetting all her agony. He had watched the children playing in the market place, and sulking, and quarrelling with each other. And He had watched the boy, when school was over, hurrying home and asking for a piece of bread, and always getting it and not a stone. For Christ the coming ruin was doubly terrible just because children were to be involved in it. For Christ there was no test of loyalty more searching than that a man should love Him more than he loved his children. And all these references to the little people, these recognitions of them in unexpected moments, show you how dear they were to Jesus Christ. That is one of the great and striking differences between the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul. You would never gather from the Pauline letters that the writer was a lover of the child. But when you follow Jesus through the Gospels, when you see how He had observed the ways of children, when you mark the niceness of His references to them, as of One who had watched them for Himself, why then you feel at once that here was One for whom there was a joy for every child. He loved the little as deeply as the lost.

The Busy Jesus Had Time for the Child

Again, the same impression is intensified when we think of the access He gave them to His presence. There was never a more crowded life than His, and yet He always had leisure for the child. The fact is, friends, that in the life of Christ that air of leisure always is amazing. With such a mighty work for God to do, might you not reasonably expect some sign of strain. And yet the one thing that took the hearts of men, and awed them as with the touch of heaven, was just the infinite restfulness that clothed Him. He had a baptism to be baptised with, yet had He leisure for the summer lilies. He had but three short years to do His work, yet He had eyes for the sparrow when it fell. He had to ransom from the power of darkness men and women who were the slaves of Satan, yet always had He leisure for the child. The fact is that Christ like all of us, always had leisure for the thing He loved. It is in the heart rather than in the clock that there lies the secret of the leisure hour. And so when in the midst of all His stress, you find that Christ gave access to the children, you may learn certainly how much He loved them. It is but seldom in the Gospel story that you read of Christ as being much displeased. The impression made upon you there is this, that it took something mighty to stir Him to the depths. Yet one of the rare occasions in the Gospel when we do read that Christ was much displeased was when the disciples sought to keep the children back. It was not done in anger but in kindness. They were distressed because Christ was overburdened. Here was something they could save Him from, as if a mortal man could save the Saviour. But Christ for once made no account of motive, found no excuse in an intended kindliness; He chided His followers because they sought to bar Him from the child. My brother, there was something divine in that; but there was also something human. They were trying to keep from Him, although they knew it not, the very company in which He most delighted. And that—that constant leisure for the child, that open access in the busiest day, is another sweet and subtle indication of the value of the children in His eyes.

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Jesus Loved to Help Children When They Suffered

This impression once again is deepened by the appeal which the sufferings of children made to Him. He not only loved to watch them when they played; but He also loved to help them when they suffered. There were some appeals which Jesus disregarded, as that of the man who wanted a judgment on his property. There were some prayers that Jesus would not listen to, as when the healed demoniac prayed that he might follow Him. But the one prayer that carried Him by storm, the one appeal He never could finally resist, was when a father or a mother came and used the words "My son"—"my little daughter." Everything else must stand aside if it be a child that cries for healing. He cares not what all the mourners think of Him when He asks them unceremoniously to leave the room. With an intensity that we shall never fathom, because our hearts at their warmest are but cold, Christ felt the sufferings of little children. The first healing miracle He wrought was wrought not on a man but on a child. The only cure He gave outside of Israel was given to a little Gentile girl. Of His three rescues from the grip of death, it was only Lazarus who was an adult. The other two who were brought back again were young. You recall the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, and how Peter would have had Him stay there forever. But Jesus could not stay and would not stay simply because the world was calling Him. And so He descended from the Mount of Glory to take up His cross again and be obedient, and the first to meet Him was an epileptic boy. It is as if, transfigured on the hill, He had heard the calling of the child. It is as if the writhings of that lad had pierced the radiance that en-wrapped Him there. And so may we learn, brethren, if we will, from that irresistible appeal of childish suffering, how near and dear the children were to Christ.

Jesus Delighted in the Services of Children

That impression received further vividness when we recall how Christ delighted in their services. He sometimes refused the service of a man; He never refused the service of a child. There is an excellent sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on Christ refusing first offers of service. Strange though it may seem, He sometimes did that, and sometimes He is doing it today. But the one service that He welcomed eagerly, and never checked, and never thought unworthy, was the sweet service of the little people. "There is a lad here," said Andrew to Him. I think that one word "lad" was all Christ wanted. There is a lad here with five small loaves, and he wants us to take them and make the best of them. I take it that Andrew was intensely tickled at a lad's luncheon for five thousand people; but it was just the thing that Jesus loved. He would not add a scrap to that small store. He wanted to use the offering of the boy. He wanted to show them that in Messiah's kingdom a little child shall lead them. And if that were so out on the hills of Galilee, how much more truly so in the last days, when the children flocked to the triumphal entry, and cried "Hosanna to the Son of David." Men had wanted to cry that before, and on every such occasion Christ had checked them. They had wanted to hail Him as Messiah, and Jesus had refused to be so hailed. But now the children break into that service—for praise is service just as much as alms, and Christ with a glad heart accepts of it. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings He felt that God was perfecting His praise. There was hope for the future, though the Cross was coming, when He had won the hearts of little children. We all long to be loved by those we love. We are proud and happy when they praise us. And it was just because Jesus loved the children that their shouting was like music in His ear.

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Christ's Estimate of the Child Spirit

The same impression is confirmed again by the estimate which Christ made of the child spirit. It was in the child that Jesus found the type of the true citizen of the heavenly kingdom. "Suffer the little children to come to Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Except ye become as little children, ye cannot even see the kingdom. To enter the kingdom it is by no means necessary that a child should grow into a man. But to enter the kingdom it is always necessary that a man should grow into a child. Christ did not speak of the innocence of childhood. That innocence is gone and gone forever. He came to call the sinners to repentance. His kingdom is a kingdom for the lost. He was thinking of the receptiveness of childhood, of its glorious freedom from the worldly spirit, of the love that fills it, of the hope that stirs it, of its simplicity and sublimity of faith. To you and me, my brother, that is commonplace; but remember it is Christ who made it so. As dearly as the Jew had loved his children, he had never seen that glory in his children. It was Christ who was the first to see it. It was Christ who drew it into the light of day. And now we see it, and we reverence childhood because we are looking at it with His eyes. When a man is far from home, in a strange country, he loves whatever reminds him of his home. Some glimpse of hill, some blossom like the heather, will bring a tenderness into his heart. And that, I think, was why Christ loved the children, and was always so exquisitely tender with them. He was a stranger in a distant land here, and the children reminded Him of home. Of such is the kingdom of heaven—the kingdom here, the kingdom in the glory. I say unto you that in heaven, yonder, their angels are looking on the Father's face. Brethren, with such deep words from Jesus' heart is it any wonder the child is precious now? Is it any wonder that the Church which is His body gives of her best and noblest to their service?

"Feed the Lambs" Comes before "Feed the Sheep."

And then this ever-deepening impression is crowned when Christ risen from the dead. "Simon, Son of Jonas, lovest thou "Yea, Lord"; then, "Feed my lambs." Then twice over Simon was bidden feed the sheep. That repetition has the note of urgency. But it is not the sheep that are first mentioned, mark you. First of all is "Feed my lambs. "Still in the forefront of the love of Jesus, unchanged by Calvary and by the grave, still deep within His heart, there are the children. My brother and sister, there are many voices that say to us today, "Amuse the children." But this is the glory of the love of Christ that its command is "Feed the children." And this is the wonder of the Christian Gospel that, with great depths in it that none can fathom, it is so simple in its central message that you can tell it to the little child. Tell it, you mothers, to your children, then. Tell it, you Sabbath teachers, to your classes. Let your class witness when you meet in heaven that you were not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. So let us prosecute our work with patience, remembering how Jesus loved the children. So let us welcome the glad song of Christmas, "Unto us a child is born."

April 1

How to Be Rid of Contempt - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones— Mat_18:10

The Savage Are Characterized by Contempt of Others

The spirit of contempt is very strongly developed among savage races. A savage is nurtured to hate or to despise. Between his own tribe and every other tribe there is a deep and quite impassable gulf, and it has never entered into the savage heart that love or kindness should seek to bridge that chasm. If other tribes are powerful they must be hated. If they are weak they must be treated with contempt. There is the belief, then, in the sad creed of many a savage, that there is virtue in despising others.

The Spirit of Disdaining Others

And when we pass from the wild life of savagery to the civilisations of the ancient world, the remarkable thing is that we are immediately confronted with the same spirit of contemptuous disdain. We might have hoped that the culture of the Greek, and his swift appreciation of all things of beauty, would have given him a large sympathy with mankind. We might have expected that the world-conquering Roman, strong in his masculine sense of law and order, would have been too large-hearted to belittle. And above all, we might have trusted that the Jew, to whom had been granted the vision of the eternal, would have learned in the great glory of that vision to call nothing common or unclean. But history tells us a very different story. The old world is flooded with the spirit of contempt. And we do not need to go beyond the Bible story to learn how the Greek looked down on the barbarian, or how the Jew disdained the Gentile world. Everywhere, then, where the spirit of Christ is not, we are confronted with the spirit of contempt. A Christless world, if it believes in anything, believes in the holy duty of disdaining. And it is like the courage of the Lord Jesus Christ that He dared to lift up His voice against the past, to charge it with error in its cherished virtues, to tell it that it had gone utterly astray. For all this our blessed Lord was doing, when He taught the lesson of not despising others.

The Duty of Holy Scorn

Of course we must distinguish this despising from what I might call the passion of noble scorn. A man is a poor creature and a poorer Christian, if he has lost his capacity for scorn. There are deeds that a right-thinking man will scorn to do. There are books that an earnest heart will scorn to read. And there are men and women whom a heaven-touched soul would scorn to number in its list of friends. A man is out of line with Jesus Christ who does not hold scorn for certain things. For if ever in the world there was the passion of scorn, it was in the heart of Jesus in the Temple, when He raised His whip and drove the traders out. Such scorn as that is a very holy thing. It is the kindling of a man's best into a flame. It is all that is purest and most divine within us raised to white-heat by intolerable evil. And a man must be very lukewarm for the right, and have sadly confused weakness with charity, who is never stirred so in a world like this. But to despise is something very different. There is nothing of moral passion in despising. It does not spring from any love of goodness. It is not rooted in any hate of wrong. True scorn is an utterly self-forgetful thing. But the man who despises is always full of self.

The Evil Brought about by the Spirit of Contempt

And I think it is not difficult to see the evil that is wrought by the spirit of contempt. It was as the Champion of the weak and the oppressed, so that they might have an atmosphere to grow in, that our Lord spoke so sternly of despising. It is easy to be good when we are loved. It is not very hard to play the man when we are hated. But to be courteous, charitable, gentle, loving, kind, when all the time we know we are despised, is a task that would try the powers of an angel. There is nothing so likely to make a brother despicable, as just to let him see that you despise him. There is nothing so certain to touch the flowers with frost-bite, and chill the air, and make the spirit bitter. And I think that Jesus Christ hated contempt, and banished it imperiously from the kingdom, that chilled and suppressed hearts might have a chance. There is only one thing worse than being despised by others. And that is to be despised by one's own self.

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Christ Was Also Despised

And let me say in passing that we must bear that in mind if we would really know the beauty of Christ's character. The wonder of it is deepened a thousandfold for me, when I remember that He was despised. If it is hard for you to hold fast to lovely and lowly things, if it is difficult to be good and to be tender, when in the eyes that look on you, you see contempt, you may be sure it was not less hard for Jesus. Nay, on the contrary, it was far harder; for Jesus was far more sensitive than you. We have all been dulled and coarsened by our sin; Jesus alone knew nothing of that coarsening. In looks that we could never have interpreted, in words whose sting we never should have felt, Christ felt in its bitterness that He was despised: yet what can match the beauty of His character? Had it been only antagonism that confronted Him, I think I could understand Christ Jesus better. For a man is often roused by fierce antagonism till all his slumbering powers take the field. But that Jesus of Nazareth should have wakened every morning and said to His heart, I shall be despised today; that He should have gone every evening to His rest saying to His heart, Today I was despised; and that in spite of that He should have moved on to the cross, brave, tender, loving—that is the great mystery for me. May it not have been because our Lord knew to its uttermost the temptations of the soul that is despised, that He spoke so strongly on not despising others?

Spirit of Contempt Rooted in Lack of Understanding

Now what are the sources of this contemptuous spirit? Why is it we are so ready to despise? Well, I take it that contempt has two main roots, and the first of them is want of understanding. There is a great text in Job of which I often think; it occurs where Elihu is justifying God to men. And he says, "God is mighty and despiseth not any; He is great in strength of understanding." Now Elihu was not a very brilliant person; one can hardly imagine even patient Job listening patiently to Elihu's preaching. But I could forgive Elihu a whole volume of commonplace for this one thought that flashed on his poor brain. For Elihu means that just because God is great, and knows each separate heart with perfect knowledge, and reads, without an error in one syllable, the intricate story of the worst and weakest, because of that, God is a God of pity: "He is mighty and despiseth not any." That means that if we knew our brother as God knows him, we should never dare to despise him anymore. In the last analysis man may be a sinner, but in the last analysis—thank God—man is not despicable. If only we knew what the weakest and worst had borne, if only we understood how they were tempted, if we could read the story of their secret battle, could fathom their wretchedness, could hear their cry; if only we realised that under that dull exterior there are heaven, hell, loneliness, cravings, love, I think we should cease despising in that hour. God understands all that, and therefore despises no one. We despise because we do not know.

Contempt Rooted in Lack of Love

And then the other root is want of love. Where love is, there can be no contempt. A man may have twenty despicable traits, but to the one who loves him he is still a hero. And that is why, in the love of Christian homes, men who are not thought much of in the city are sometimes wonderfully good and gentle. They are not hypocrites. It is the absence of even the suspicion of contempt at home that brings out all that is best and brightest in them. I have seen a deformed or crippled little boy or girl sadly despised in the playground and the street. They have had to stand many a bitter jest—for children can be terribly cruel. But though all those in the playground despise the shrunken limbs, and make very merry at the arrested brain, there is one at home who would sooner lie down in her grave, than think of despising that little shattered frame. Where a mother's love is, there is no contempt. It is want of love, then, and want of understanding, that lie at the roots of most of our despising. And the question I wish to ask in closing is this: How does the Gospel of Jesus combat that? Christ never says do this, and leaves us there. When He commands, He gives the power to fulfil. And I wish to ask what are these powers, that have been called into action by the Christian Gospel, to banish the contemptuous spirit from the kingdom?

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The Christian Ideal

First, then, there is the height of the ideal that dawns on a man when he becomes a Christian. In his new standards of the measurements of things, there is less difference between him and others than he thought. A little green hillock of some thirty feet high might well despise the molehill in the field. But place them both under the shadow of Ben Nevis, and there is little room for boasting or contempt. The schoolboy who has mastered Caesar despises his junior still struggling with the rudiments. But in the presence of a ripe Latin scholar there is not so much difference between the brothers after all. Just so when a man sees little higher than himself, it is tolerably easy to despise. But when the ideal is lifted into the glory of Christ our superiority has a strange trick of vanishing. It was the Pharisee, whose standard of all things was the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as other men. But the poor publican, with his God-touched conscience, and his vision of the splendour and purity of heaven, could only cry, "God be merciful to me the sinner." With such heights to scale, and with such depths to loathe, it was impossible to despise the sorriest brother. And every man who has been wakened to the eternal has been wakened to the sight of heights and depths like that. It is that heightening and deepening that comes through Christ that robs a man of shallow self-content. And to rob a man of shallow self-content is a sure way to guard him from despising.

The Gospel Teaches Human Brotherhood

And then the Gospel insists on human brotherhood. "Our Father which art in heaven" is its prayer. Did the cultured Greek look down on the barbarian? Did the elect and covenanted Jew despise the Gentile? Did the free man look with an infinite disdain upon the slave? Clear as a trumpet, strong as the voice of God, there rang this message on a dying world: there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but all are one in Christ. Yes, and when that word of command was obeyed, and the Gospel of Jesus was carried to the heathen, and when the peace and hope and joy and comfort of it was offered in all its fulness to the slave, slowly, like a dark cloud, the contemptuous spirit of paganism scattered, and the star of brotherhood rose in the sky. It is our kinship in Christ, then, that is blotting out contempt. It is our brotherhood that has lightened that burden of despising. God meant us to be like that tiny lass in Edinburgh who was carrying a strapping infant in her arms, and when a stranger said, "Why, what a burden for you," she answered, "Please, sir, he's not a burden, he's my brother."

Who Can Despise Someone for Whom Christ Died?

But the greatest power of all has still to be named. It is the life and death of our Saviour Jesus Christ. No man can struggle to be true to that ideal, nor feel the love that brought Him to the cross, without the contemptuous spirit we are all so prone to, taking to itself wings and flying away. I ask you to trace the story of that life, and tell me if you find a trace of despising there. The fact is, Christ was despised for not despising: the Jew could never understand His charity. Did He despise the woman of Samaria though all her village held her in contempt? Did He despise the publican, the harlot? Did He ever look with disdain on the little children? Christ saw the worst as you have never seen it—felt all the loathsomeness and guilt of sin—yet for the worst all things were yet possible; there was some chord still capable of music. The sorriest sinner was good enough to live for. The sorriest sinner was good enough to die for. A man may be poor, unsuccessful, vulgar, very dull; but if he can say "Christ Jesus died for me," I do not think I shall despise that man again.

April 2

When the Child-Spirit Dies - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Of such is the kingdom of heaven— Mat_19:14

Christlikeness Is Childlikeness

It is a beautiful thought, of such are the kingdom of heaven. It is a beautiful conception, daring and fresh as it is beautiful, that the one attribute of all citizens of God must be the possession of the childlike heart. We need not be learned, though it is sweet to be learned; we need not be gifted, though God be thanked for gifts. But we must be childlike; that is the one necessity. Christ takes an unalterable stand on that.

Childlikeness Is Not Childishness

Now of course to be childlike is one thing; and it is quite another to be childish. I sometimes fear we have so confused the two, that a certain contempt has touched the nobler of them—we use our common words so carelessly, and treat that magnificent instrument of speech so lightly. To be childlike is to have the spirit of the child, to have the touch of the divine about us still. It is to live freshly in a glad, fresh world, with a thousand avenues into the everywhere out of this dull spot that we call now. But to be childish is to be immature; to have no grip of things, never to face facts squarely; and he is a poor Christian who lives so. In understanding, says the apostle, I would have you men. It is one distinguishing glory of our Lord that He looked the worst in the face, and called it bad. But the guileless heart, and the soul that can serve and sing, because there is love and home and fatherland about it—all that is childlike—like the children—and of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Childlikeness Is a Sign of Greatness

There can be little doubt, too, that in claiming the child-spirit Jesus was reaching up to the very highest in man. "Wisdom," says Wordsworth in his own quiet way—so helpful in these noisy days—"Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop, than when we soar," and Jesus, stooping to the little children, was really rising to the crown of life. Show me the greatest men in human history—the men who were morally and nobly great—and I shall show you in every one of them tokens and traces of the childlike heart. It is the middle-men, the worldly middle-men, the men of one talent who bury it in the napkin, it is these who are locked into their prison-house, and have lost the happy daring of the child. Great souls, with the ten talents flaming into genius, live in a world so full of God, that men say they are imprudent, careless; and Jesus sees that they are little children. Who was it that defined a genius as a man who keeps unsullied through the stern teaching of the years the spirit of the child? I think that Christ would have liked that definition. There is genius in childhood; there is childhood in genius too. "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree."

Christ Possessed the Spirit of Childlikeness

And you cannot read the story of Jesus Christ without feeling that to the very close of it the child-spirit was alive in Him. "A little child shall lead them," said the prophet; do you think it was only a poetic fancy? The Bible is too terribly in earnest to have any margin for poetic fancies. When I study the records of the life of Jesus, and stumble on some unfathomable mystery, immediately I find my heart responding, "This is the Son of God." And when I find Him healing the Syrophoenician's daughter, raising the widow's son, or weeping in infinite pity by the grave—"This is the Son of Man." But when I light on these passages about the lilies; about the sparrow falling, and the raven who toiled not; then, in a thousand touches such as these, fresh, penetrating, wonderful, I feel that, after all, the prophet was right—a little child shall lead them. No scoffing hardened Him. No disappointment soured Him. No pain dulled the keen edge of His love. He still believed, in spite of Iscariot. He still had a Father, in spite of Calvary. And that sweet spirit, as of a little child, has been the dew of heaven to the world.

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When the Child-Spirit Dies - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Loss of Childlikeness May Creep on Us Slowly

The spirit of the child, then, never died in Jesus. I wonder if it has died in you? It dies away so slowly and so gradually, under the pressure of a worldly city, that we hardly notice how far we have drifted. But the greatest losses are the losses we never observe; the crumblings in secret till this or that is ruined; the stealing away of the dearest in the dark; and there is no loss more tragic for a soul than the loss of that spirit of the child.

You Cease to Be Childlike…When You Cease to Be Receptive

You ask me why? I think there are three reasons; there are three penalties that follow when the child-spirit dies, and the first is, that we cease to be receptive. The joy of childhood is its receptivity. The greatest duty of it is to receive. The child knows nothing of a haunting past yet, and it is not yet anxious about the future. Its time is now, and now is God's time too, do not forget. But you and I have so overlaid this present with yesterday's sin and with tomorrow's project, that we have little heart for today's message. We are not receptive as the little child is, we do not welcome impressions and angels now. And so we grow very commonplace and dull; there is plenty of dust about us, and no dew. Let the dead past bury its dead! Do not be living in a quenched yesterday. And take no anxious thought about tomorrow. Consider the lilies; be a child again. To feel the eternal in this passing moment, to catch the rustle of God's garment now, not to be burdened with a vain regret, not to be peering forward through the curtain; all that, with the open eye and feeling heart, is to be childlike. And of such is the kingdom of heaven.

When You Cease to Live in Your Own World

No doubt it is that very receptivity that makes the little children dwell apart. I have long thought that the aloofness of the Christian, his isolation in the busiest life, was closely akin to the aloofness of the child. You talk of loneliness?—I tell you there are few such lonely creatures as little children. And they are lonely not because of sorrow; and not, thank God, because their lives are empty. They dwell apart, because they live in their own world, bright, wonderful, with its own visions and voices, and you and I never touch even with our finger-tips these ivory gates and golden. What I suggest is that the isolation of the saint is like the isolation of the child. For the Christian also dwells apart, but not in the solitude of emptiness. He has his world, just as the children have; old things have passed away from him in Christ. And in that new creation where the Saviour reigns, and which the worldly heart has never seen, there is a peopled isolation like that of the little children, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

When the Simplicity of Faith Is Gone

Once more, when the child-spirit dies, then the simplicity of faith is gone. There is an exquisite purity about the faith of children; sometimes they make us blush—they trust us so. Intensely eager, inquisitively curious; why? why? from sunrise, to sunset—but all the time how they are trusting us! Ah, if we had only trusted God like that! It is something to be trusted, if only by a helpless babe, and even God is happier when we trust Him. But better than to be trusted, is to trust; to walk by faith and not by sight; and when the spirit of the child dies out, it is not possible to walk that way again. For when we cease to be childlike we grow worldly, and to be worldly is always to be faithless; and one great danger of this commercial city is to develop faithless, worldly men. I have no doubt you call me an idle dreamer because I plead for the child-spirit in the city. But it is better to be a dreamer than a coward, and woe is me if I preach not the Gospel. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven"—minister! "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" — merchant ! "Of such is the kingdom of heaven"-schoolmaster, doctor, workman, servant! Are you of such? It is not my question. I only pass it on from Jesus Christ!

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When the Child-Spirit Dies - Page 3
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When the Feeling of Wonder Disappears

Lastly, when the child-spirit dies, then the feeling of wonder disappears. For the child is above all else a wonderer, and is set in the center of a wonderful world. There is nothing common or unclean for children; all things are big with wonder for him. The rolling of the wagon in the street, and the gathering banks of cloud down by the sunset; and the opening flower, and the father's morning kindness, and the mother's stories, and the birthday joy—the little magicians so trick them out with glory, that they make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. Childhood, as one of our poets sang, is "The hour of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower."

What a poor thing is life when the wonder of it all passes away! I remember a magnificent sermon by John Ker, that master in the great art of spiritual preaching, and this is the title of it, "God's Word suited to man's sense of wonder." And Ruskin said, "I had rather live in a cottage and wonder at everything, than live in Warwick Castle and wonder at nothing." You have all felt the trials of existence, I want you to feel the wonder of it now; and the great wonder that the Lord should be your Shepherd, and should have died upon Calvary for you. His name shall be called Wonderful—become a child again, and feel it so. For except ye be born again, ye cannot see the kingdom; and of such is the kingdom of heaven.

April 3

The Labourers in the Vineyard - Page 1
By George H. Morrison

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard— Mat_20:1

The Divine Plan in the Ordering of Scripture Chapters

As we move through chapter nineteen of Matthew's Gospel, we seem to breathe a different atmosphere than that of the twentieth. Yet the two chapters, though seemingly separated, stand in the closest connection with each other. In the former we meet with the rich young ruler and witness his sorrowful departure from the face of Christ; we hear, too, the question of Peter, "we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" (Mat_19:27). It is then that Jesus begins speaking about rewards of service. It is then, as if summing up the visible contrast between the rich young ruler and His poor disciples, that He says, "Many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first" (Mat_19:30). And then, as though to show forth in a picture some of the mysteries He has been dealing with, He speaks the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard.

God's Kingdom Is Like a Vineyard

Note first, then, God's kingdom is like a vineyard. It is an excellent exercise for all of us to recall the things that the Kingdom of God is like. It is equally good for us to gather together some of the Bible references to the vine. The vines of Palestine were famous for their growth, and for the immense clusters of grapes which they produced. We all remember that splendid bunch that the spies bore on the staff from the valley of Eshcol (Num_13:23). We cannot wonder, then, to find the vine and the vineyard among the most precious of the Bible metaphors. Israel is a vine brought out of Egypt, and planted in the Land of Promise by the Lord (Psa_80:8-10). To dwell under the vine is the choice emblem of domestic happiness (1Ki_4:25). It is a vine which Jesus selects to typify the union between His disciples and Himself (Joh_15:1-6). And the vineyard becomes the figure of God's kingdom. Long centuries before, Jeremiah had cried, "Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard" (Jer_12:10); and now our Lord, who had very profoundly studied Jeremiah, presses the same emblem into His service. Can we give two or three of the clear likenesses that would make this metaphor a favourite with Jesus?

As the Vineyard Needs Workers, So Does God

Again, observe God's anxiety for workers. Above the door of the tramway office in a certain city there is written just now, "No men wanted: none need apply." All posts are full; there is no call for hands; men may be very poor and very hungry, but there is no help for them there. But the householder whom we read of in our story had no such notice on his vineyard gate. His great concern was not to keep workers out, but somehow or anyhow to get them in. So we find him early in the morning going out to the marketplace to hire his men—how different a scene from the London Docks, for instance, where early in the morning the men are clamouring at the gates, and only a few out of the crowd are hired! And then at nine o'clock he is out again, and then in the height of noon, and then at three. These hours were the great hours of prayer in Jewry: was not this householder's work a kind of prayer? And he has not done yet: he will make one more effort—an hour before sunset he is out again. It is clear that the great passion of the man is to get the idlers set to honest work. May we not say, with reverence and gratitude, that that is the passion of the Father of Jesus Christ? He has service for all, and He wants all to come and serve Him. His finger never wrote, "No men need apply." Whenever any of our young people,, then, get the opportunity of doing something kind, when the hour comes that they can make some little sacrifice, and help in any way the cause of Jesus, let them not say, "Bother!" or do it with a grudge; but just let them think that the Lord of the vineyard has come with this very bit of work for them to do.

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The Labourers in the Vineyard - Page 2
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Labourers Are Rewarded in God's Vineyard

Note once more that God rewards all service. In the old times of feudal law in Scotland, there was many a man who laboured all his days, and never got a penny of reward. In the Southern states, while slavery existed, the men and the women who did all the work dreamed often of the lash, but never of a wage. And in many a campaign, written of in our histories, the soldiers never saw their hire. But this householder was so careful of his word, that he began with the last comers in making account; and none of his men got less than they expected, while the great majority of them got far more. All of which, I take it, is meant to teach us this—that all our service for Christ shall be rewarded. No worker shall ever get less than was agreed on; and the great multitude, to their own sweet surprise, shall be given more than they could ask or think. Now if it should seem to any of my readers that this is a mercenary view of spiritual things, I would bid them remember that even the choicest parable can only rudely embody the things of God. The reward of plucking grapes may be a penny—there is a kind of gulf between the two. But, spiritually, the wage of service is new power to serve; and the reward of love is ever-deepening capacity of loving; and the hire for all honest effort to know Jesus, is to know Him at last as the chiefest among ten thousand.

God's Measures of Rewards Differ from Ours

Lastly, observe God's measures are not ours. Do not think that this parable is meant to teach us that the self-same reward is to be given to all. If that were so, what about the talents? It so happens that all the workers get the penny; but it is not on this that the stress of the story lies. Had the latest comers chanced to begin at dawn, we feel that the householder would have given them sixpence. He was delighted with them because of their earnest spirit. They came at once; they did not stop to haggle. He saw that their whole heart was in their work, and he really paid them according to their heart. Do we not learn, then, that God does not measure service by length of time or anything external? God measures service by the motive of it, by the spirit that prompts it, by the secret heart. An hour with the heart in it for Jesus Christ is better and worthier than a heartless day. We really have not been serving well, if the first thing we do at sunset is to murmur (Mat_20:11). "My son, give me thine heart?' "Yes, Lord, we give it, and all these questions of the pence we leave with Thee!"

April 4

The Eleventh-Hour Man - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle— Mat_20:6

Staying outside the Kingdom to the Last

By the eleventh-hour man I mean the man who at five o'clock is still outside the Kingdom, and one would notice first that in the parable there is no hint of this man being bad. There was another eleventh-hour man, who had taken to evil courses on the highway. He had left home, and broken his mother's heart, and we see him at last hanging on a cross. But this first man was a much more usual type, haunting the marketplace in search of work, not forgetful of his wife and children. If you want the prodigal, go to the far country. If you want the brigand, take the road to Jericho. Our Lord, in that most masterly way of His, has always a fitting background for His characters. And this man, against the back ground of the market-place, stands for the ordinary, well-intentioned person—yet at the eleventh hour he is still outside the Kingdom.

Not without Excuse

One notes, too, that he was not without excuse. It is so like our Lord to touch on that. When the man was asked why he was standing there, he could truly say that nobody had hired him. That this excuse was not entirely valid is, I think, embodied in the parable. For at the third hour and at the sixth and ninth hours the householder had been out looking for workers. Now had this man been tremendously in earnest he would have thrown himself in the employer's way; but there is not a hint that he did that. Probably at nine o'clock he was in bed; men out of work are prone to oversleep. At twelve o'clock he would be having dinner, and at three enjoying his siesta. But the beautiful thing is that, though this be true, the Master sees, and is at pains to show us, that this man was not without excuse. There are men outside at the eleventh hour who are utterly without excuse. Deaf to every call, they have resisted the inviting Spirit. But there are others who are different from that, and one of the charming things about our Lord is that He finds room for that suggestion in His story. Such may have sat under a sapless ministry, or had the Gospel presented in repellent ways. They may have been plunged, when little more than boys, into dubious or soul-destroying businesses. Someone they loved, who made a great profession, may have proved (long years ago) a whited sepulchre—and at the eleventh hour they are still outside the Kingdom.

The Lord Still Calls at the Eleventh Hour

Now the wonderfully hopeful thing is this, that this man was called at the eleventh hour, for the eleventh hour (as Bible students know) is an hour when nothing ever happens. With the exception of this single parable I am not aware that the eleventh hour is mentioned from the Book of Genesis to Revelation. The third hour is a great hour of Scripture, for then (according to St. Mark) our Lord was crucified. And the sixth and ninth are both great hours of Scripture, and all three are Jewish hours of prayer. But the eleventh hour is an hour unchronicled—it is an hour when nothing ever happens— and it was just then that this man was called. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. Nobody ever expected such a thing. The oldest frequenter of the market-place had never known anyone to call at five o'clock. And yet that is what happened in the story and our blessed Lord would never have told the story if it could not happen now—and to you.

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The Eleventh-Hour Man - Page 2
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God Is an Extraordinary Employer

For this employer is an extraordinary person. It is that which Jesus is eager to impress on us. Had the employer been thinking of nothing but his grapes, he would never have acted in this amazing fashion. What! to hire men when the work day is closing, and to pay them with an insane extravagance? Whoever heard of a businessman like that! Such conduct in an employer is unthinkable. And then our Lord would smile, and flash a glance at them, and say, "Children, that is exactly what I am driving at, for remember that My householder is God." "My ways are not your ways, neither are My thoughts your thoughts." This is an extraordinary householder because God is an extraordinary God, giving His only begotten Son to die for us, waiting and watching and yearning for the prodigal, putting a ring on his hand and shoes upon his feet, when in the evening he comes home.

He Got More Than He Ever Dreamed Of

And then this eleventh-hour man got far more than he had ever dreamed of. It was almost incredible, but it was true. The men who came at break of day were bargainers. They began by driving a bargain with the master. They said, "Let us settle the wages question first," and he settled it, and gave them what they bargained for. But the eleventh-hour man did not drive a bargain; filled with gratitude, he left things to the Master, and he got more than he had ever dreamed of. That is the kind of faith which God delights in, not the conditional faith that drives a bargain, not the faith that says, "If Thou wilt do so-and-so for me, I will do so-and-so for Thee"; but the faith, born of a wondering gratitude that leaves all issues in the Master's hands, perfectly certain that His name is Love. Think of the amazement of the eleventh-hour man when the whole penny was lying in his hand. "What! all this for me? All this for me?" Yes: "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him" (1Co_2:9).

April 5

The Ambitious Disciples - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom— Mat_20:21

A Promise Misunderstood

The disciples had been pondering deeply, we may be sure, on the great promise Jesus had lately made to them—"When the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Mat_19:28). So strongly had these words impressed James and John, that from the hour they heard them they could think of little else. And gradually, as they dwelt upon that future, new ambitions began to mount within them; they began to dream of holding the most coveted seats, on the right hand and the left hand of the King. But they remembered how Jesus had rebuked them when once before they had striven for precedence. They dreaded such another rebuke, should they venture to broach the same subject again. So they made their mother the petitioner, they entreated Jesus through their mother's love, and it is the story of that entreaty that forms this lesson. Do you know what their mother's name was? It was Salome (cp. Mat_27:56 with Mar_15:40). Do you know what Salome means? It means perfect. I believe that Salome is perfect now, though she was very far from being perfect then. And do you know where we meet with her again? Once at the cross, where she stands far off and watches (Mar_15:40); and then in the early morning at the sepulchre, where she has gone to anoint the body of Jesus (Mar_16:1).

It Happened Shortly before the Crucifixion

Let us note, too, that all this happened little more than a week before the crucifixion. The shadow of the cross lay on the path of Jesus, His soul was filled with the thought of the approaching agony, and He had begun to talk very plainly of it to His own—and all the time His own were dreaming their own dreams, and happy in the golden thought of thrones. They thought that the kingdom was to be realised at once; were they not travelling to Jerusalem for that very end? But Jesus saw the darkness of Calvary before Him, and on either side (not seated upon thrones) a thief. Do you mark the gulf between the thoughts of Jesus and the thoughts of those who were nearest and dearest to Him? On the one side ambition and dominion; on the other, renunciation and the grave. Surely, in the next year or two, some mighty power must have been at work to bring round the disciples to the mind of Jesus. Just think how the cross found them, as their hearts are revealed in this incident, then think what in the after-days they became, and it is impossible not to feel the action, and detect the presence of a risen Lord.

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We Must Drink the Cup If We Would Wear the Crown

This passage again teaches very clearly that we must drink the cup If we would wear the crown. When Jesus spoke about His cup, He was using a familiar Bible figure. Sometimes it is a Scripture image for joy: "My cup runneth over" (Psa_23:5); "I will take the cup of salvation" (Psa_116:13). Sometimes, as here, it is the emblem of sorrow: "If this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done" (Mat_26:42). Now, when Jesus says to His two disciples, Can ye drink My cup? Can ye suffer My baptism? He is not merely questioning their power to suffer—He is hinting that that is the one way to the throne. "Ah, James and John," says Jesus, with infinite gentleness, "your eyes have been dazzled with that promised throne; but I tell you that the only road to that, lies through suffering and the death of self. I am not a tyrant who can dispense these honours even to the favourite who has lain upon My bosom; they shall be granted by God in perfect justice to those who have trodden most worthily the way of the cross." There must be the cup before the crown, says Jesus. There must be the baptism before the throne. And the strange thing is, that that truth was never more nobly illustrated than in the after experience of James and John. One of the two was the first of the apostles to drink the cup, and to be baptized with the baptism of blood (Act_12:1). The other had the longest experience among them all of bitter trial and persecution. And so Salome, after all, has had a royal answer to her prayer. But truly she did not know what she was asking.

Jesus Can Bring Light out of Darkness

Another suggestion arises from our theme—how wonderfully Jesus could bring light from darkness. When the ten heard what the two had asked, we read that they were moved with indignation. I take it that the one spirit was in them all, and that the ten were as selfish in their irritation, as the two had shown themselves in their ambition. They were all heated, envious, and hasty. It was like an hour of the Prince of darkness. This, too, after all that had come and gone between them—the wonder is, it did not break Christ's heart. But Jesus, with perfect patience, begins to teach them. The simple lessons must be gone over again. So step by step He leads them onward and inward, till they are face to face with the mystery of His death (Mat_20:28). Now, is not that a notable example of the power of Jesus to bring light out of darkness? Do you not feel as you read the story that moments of difficulty were His opportunity? How easy to have denounced James and John! How easy to have lost heart with all the twelve! I am almost certain we should have done that. But Jesus so redeemed that hour of bitterness, that we can thank God the ten were ever angry. And He has left us an example, that we should follow in His steps.

April 10

Mistaken Magnitudes - Page 1
By George H. Morrison

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel— Mat_23:24

The Evil of Not Seeing Things in Their True Proportion

It was one great complaint of our Lord against the Pharisees, that they had lost the relative magnitude of things. They were very much in earnest about the Jewish law; but for all that, they had sadly misinterpreted the law. They laid great stress upon the infinitely little, until the weightier matters of it passed out of sight. They magnified trifles—paid so much attention to their rushlights till they forgot that the stars were in the sky. It is that spirit which Jesus is rebuking in the familiar proverb of our text. Ye blind guides, cannot you see that some things are great and some are little? If there are larger and lesser lights in the great heavens, will there not be kindred differences in God's other firmaments? It is the evil of not seeing things in true proportion that is present to the mind of Jesus Christ.

Worthy Living Is Seeing Things in Their Relative Importance

Now it is on that subject that I wish to speak, for one of the great arts of worthy living is to see things in their relative importance. I have known so many who failed in what was worthiest, not because they were weaker than their neighbours—for the strongest of us is pitifully weak—they failed not because they were weaker than the others, but because they never seemed able to grasp the difference between things that were really great and really little. Mr. Froude, in his Spanish Story of the Armada, makes a significant remark about the Spanish king. Showing the incompetence of Philip II, he says, "the smallest thing and the largest seemed to occupy him equally." That was one mark of Philip the Second's incompetence. That gave the worst of all possible starts to the Armada. And for the equipping of nobler vessels than these galleons, and the fighting of sterner battles than they fought, that spirit spells incompetency still. It is a great thing to know a trifle when you meet it. It is a great thing to know that gossamer is gossamer. It is equally great, when the decisive moment comes, to seize it and use it with every power of manhood. It is such swift distinguishing between the great and little, such vision of the relative magnitude of things, that is one secret of a quiet and conquering life.

In Our Hurriedness We Fail to Distinguish True Magnitudes

Now I think that this gift of seeing things in their true magnitude is very difficult to exercise today. We live in such a hurried fashion now, that we have little leisure to take these moral measurements. When I am travelling sixty miles an hour in the express, I have very hazy thoughts about the country. Villages, towns, meadows, woods, go flashing by, but the speed is too fierce for accurate observing. So with our lives today; they hurry forward so. The morning paper has hardly been unfolded, when the children are selling the evening paper in the streets. The wide world's news comes crowding in on us; we are spectators of an endless panorama. And all this change, and movement, and variety, while it makes men more eager, more intense and responsive, is not conducive to a well-balanced judgment. We are a great deal sharper now than men were once. I do not think we are a great deal deeper. It is the still waters that run deep, and stillness is hardly a characteristic of the city. I have often been humbled, when I lived among them, at the wise judgment of one Highland shepherd. The man was not clever; he read little but his Bible; his brilliant son was home with his prizes from college, and I dare say, in the eyes of his brilliant son, the father was fifty years behind the times. But you get the shepherd on to moral questions, on to the relative magnitude of things, and in spite of all the Greek and Latin of the prize-winner—and the father is infinitely proud of these bright eyes—in spite of the Greek and Latin of the son, you recognise the father as the greater man. Something has come to him amid the silent hills; the spirit of the lonely moor has touched him; he has wrestled with a few great truths, a few great sorrows, alone, amid the rolling miles of heather. And it is that discipline of thoughtful quietude, controlling and purifying the moral judgment, that puts the keenest intellect to shame.

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Mistaken Magnitudes - Page 2
By George H. Morrison

Grievances Distort Our Vision

This failure to see things in their true proportions is often seen in relation to our grievances. When a man has a grievance—and many men have them—he is almost certain to have distorted vision. You can block out the sun by the smallest coin if you hold the coin near enough to the eye. And we have a way of dwelling on our grievances, till we lose sight of the blue heaven above us. How ready we are to brood on petty insults! How we take them home with us and nurse and fondle them! How we are stung by trifling neglects! A little discourtesy, and our soul begins to fester! And though hearts are just as warm to us today as they were yesterday when we responded to them, and though the great tides of the deep love of God rise to their flood, still, on every shore, it is strange how a man will be blind to all the glory, when a little bitterness is rankling within. We are all adepts at counting up our grievances. Open a new column and count your mercies now. It is supremely important to see things in their magnitudes, and perhaps you have never learned that lesson yet. The man who suspects is always judging wrongly. A jealous woman sees everything out of focus. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things, says the apostle.

Fatigue Causes You to See Things out of Proportion

Of course I am aware that the failure to see things in their true proportions has sometimes got physical and not moral roots. There come days when the grasshopper proves itself a burden, and the simple reason is that we are weary. Let a man be vigorous, and strong, and well, and he can take the measurement of his worries very easily. But when he is exhausted with the winter toil of a great city we know what alarming proportions trifles take. It is well that a man should remember in such moments that this is the body of our humiliation. Christ understood that matter thoroughly—"Come ye apart," He said, "and rest awhile." The disciples were overstrung and overwrought, and the tact and tenderness of Jesus dealt with that. What the men wanted was a little rest. Never accept the verdict of your weariness. Never judge anything when you are tired. We are so apt to be jaundiced and think bitter things, when all that we want is a little rest and sunshine. All that will come; the birds will sing again; the dew of May morning will sparkle on the grass. We shall see things in their true proportions then. Meantime trust thou in God, and be the person God intends you to be.

Sleep Helps You See Things in Their Proper Proportions

In this connection, too, I find a gleam of glory in the beneficent effects of sleep. Of all the secondary ministries of God for helping us to see things as they are, there is none quite so wonderful as sleep. We go to rest troubled, perplexed, despondent. We cannot see how we shall get through at all. But when we waken, how different things are! Sleep has knit up the ravelled sleeve of care. Now, Jesus loved to speak of death as sleep. He seems to have kept that word death in reserve, as the name for something darker and more terrible. Tennyson talks of "the death that cannot die," and I think that is what Jesus meant by death. Our "death," for Christ, was sleep, and sleep is the passage to a glad awaking. Shall not that sleep do for us what tonight's will do, and help us to see things truly in the morning? Then we shall know even as we are known. There will be no mistaken magnitudes in heaven. There will be no errors in proportion there. We shall no longer be blind to the relative importance of things that confused us when we fell asleep. The love at home that we despised down here, and the selfishness that made those whom we loved unhappy, and the work we tried to do with so much failure, and the exquisite joys, and the bitterness of tears—all these we shall see at last in their true magnitudes when we awaken in the eternal morning.

What Makes a Man See Things As They Are?

Meantime we are on this side of the grave. There are heavy mists lying along the valley. I want to ask, then, what are the Gospel powers that help a man to see things as they are?

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Mistaken Magnitudes - Page 3
By George H. Morrison

Love

First, then, remember that the Gospel which we preach puts love at the very center of our life. It makes all the difference what you put first and foremost, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ puts love there. That was the tragedy of these poor Pharisees. It is always a tragedy when love dies out. When anything other than love is at the center, the gnats and the camels are certain to get mixed. For love alone sees purely, clearly, deeply. Love always seeks the best interpretation. Love never makes the most of petty faults. The windows of love are of the finest glass. And it is that spirit of loving interpretation that helps a Christian to see things as they are. If without love I never can know God, then without love I never can know anything. For every blackthorn that breaks into snow-white blossom, and every bird that is winging its way from Africa, and every human heart, however vile, has something of the Creator in its being. Take away God, and things are chaos to me. And without love, I never can know God. You understand, then, the wisdom of Jesus Christ in putting love at the center of our life. It focuses everything. It links the little and the great with the Creator, and brings things to their relative importance.

Look at Things in the Context of Eternity

And then the Gospel takes our threescore years and ten and lays them against the background of eternity. And a life is like a painting in this respect, a great deal depends upon the background. You have been charged with making your colouring too strong. Men say it is a beautiful and powerful picture, but the hill, and the sunset, and the breaking waves, were never so intense and vivid as that. The likelihood is that they are far more vivid; but the hills and the sunsets are not flamed, in nature. Your canvas has got to end abruptly; but nothing in nature ever ends like that. Things stretch away into infinite distances there. There is not a tree and there is not a wave but is part of the one grand colour-scheme of God. And it is because you have to isolate a little part, and take it out of its setting in the expanse, that men will tell you sometimes it is exaggerated. Do you not think the same charges will be made when we isolate our threescore years and ten? The colours will always be too bright, too dark, unless we remember the eternal setting. And it is because Christ has brought immortality to light that the Christian sees things in their true proportions. I bid you remember that eternal prospect. The efforts and strivings of our threescore and ten years are not adjusted to the scale of seventy, they are adjusted to the scale of immortality. This life is not the opera, it is the overture. It is not the whole book, it is the first chapter of the book. A man must be wakeful to his eternal destiny if he would know the magnitude of things.

Take Your Measurements from Jesus

And then the Gospel brings us into fellowship with Christ, and that is our last great lesson in proportion. The heart that takes its measurements from Jesus is likely to be pretty near the truth. A great deal depends on the kind of company you keep, as to what things are to be important to you, and what not. It is one of the hardest tasks of every earnest man quietly to scorn the measurements of the world, and in that task we are mightily helped by Christ. His comradeship reinforces the true standards. There is a scale of worth in the teaching of Christ Jesus to which the spirit instantly responds. Cherish that comradeship. Live in that glorious presence. Take your measure of the worth of things from the Redeemer. And when the journey is over, and the hill is climbed, and you look back out of the cloudless dawn, I think you will find that in the fellowship of Christ you have been saved from many a mistaken magnitude.

April 13

The Ten Virgins - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish— Mat_25:1-2

The Tradition of a Jewish Wedding

The ceremonies at a marriage in the East were very different from those we are accustomed to, and the more clearly we can picture one of these Eastern weddings, the better we shall understand this parable. There was no religious service, as with us; no priest or minister was present. The essential thing was that the bridegroom should lead his bride from her father's house to his own. Hence the old phrase, "to take a wife," was literally true in Eastern countries, and we know that to this day, among the Arabs, the bride is taken as if she were an enemy—captured after some show of violence, and removed as a prisoner to her husband's home. Among the Jews, the bridegroom, with his friends (Joh_3:23), went to the home of his bride in the late evening. It was dark, and lights were needed for the procession—such lights among the Greeks and Romans (as the boys who are reading Latin poetry know) were generally torches; but among the Jews were more commonly lamps. The bride was waiting for the bridegroom there, in a white dress, decked out in all her jewels; and John would recall many a village scene when he wrote that the wife of the Lamb was arrayed in fine linen, clean and white (Rev_19:8), and that the New Jerusalem came down from heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev_21:2). Then the bridegroom led his bride into the street, with her maiden friends bearing her company, amid music and a score of flashing lights. And as the procession made its way back to the bridegroom's home, through the crowds who had poured out to see the bridal party, a little group of maidens at this corner, and a few more who had been waiting in the court, joined the happy company, and went with it to share in the marriage feast.

Five Were Not Prepared for a Delay

This, then, was the scene that Jesus transfigured in this exquisite parable, and the ten virgins, who take the chief place in it, may either (as many have thought) have been attending the bride in her own home that evening, or they may have formed one of those little bands that waited for the return of the procession. Will the reader please observe that number ten ? It is a favourite number in the Bible. When Abraham's servant went on his great journey, he took ten of the camels of his master (Gen_24:10). When the kinsman of Ruth desired to deal with Boaz, he took ten men of the elders of the city (Rth_4:2). The dragon in Revelation had ten horns (Rev_12:3).There were ten lepers who were cleansed by Jesus (Luk_17:12). The commandments were ten, and the talents and pounds were ten, and here our Lord says there were ten virgins. Now we are not told that these ten were good and bad; but we are told that five were wise and five were foolish, and we recall another parable where we read of a wise and of a foolish builder (Mat_7:24-27). The strange thing is that the foolish as well as the wise, here, each had her lamp, and it was burning merrily. The sad thing is that the foolish were not prepared for a quite possible, and indeed quite common, delay. The night deepened, and still there was no bridegroom. The wisest of them nodded off into sleep. Then at midnight there rang the cry, "Behold the bridegroom!" and in a twinkling every eye was open. No lamp was out, but all were going out (read verse 8 in the Revised Version). The wick even of the wise was sputtering. But then the wise had little flasks of oil with them; it was the work of a moment to trim their lamps. But the foolish had no oil, and there was none to borrow, and when they hurried out to buy it at the merchant's—can you not hear the jesting of the crows? And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut.

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The Ten Virgins - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Want of Forethought Is True Foolishness

Now I trust that no one will spoil this matchless story by arguing what the lamp or what the oil must be. I do not think that Jesus built up His parables laboriously. It is better to keep to the broad lessons of a parable, and there are three here which anyone may grasp. The first is, want of forethought is true foolishness. Can you tell me why the one builder was a foolish man (Mat_7:26)? It was just because he never foresaw the storm. He built in May when the birds were singing, and the sand was firm enough for summer weather; but he forgot November and its gales, when nothing could stand but a house upon a rock. So here the foolish virgins had their lamps, and their lamps were burning merrily enough. But they forgot to reckon with a tardy bridegroom, and it was just that want of forethought that spoiled all. Now none of us is to be anxious for tomorrow. But we have a strange and difficult life to live, and we have a death to die and a God to meet, and it is high time to make provision for all that. Have you done it? You know perfectly what the provision is. "Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart."

Times When We Cannot Help Each Other

And the second lesson of the story is this: in the great hours we cannot help each other. I have no doubt the ten were all good friends; they had done many a kindly turn one to another. But now, that friendship was of no avail; there was no oil to borrow or to spare. It was not because the wise disdained the foolish, or were eager to see them ousted from the marriage, that they were deaf to this request for oil. They refused it for a far better reason—they needed every drop of oil they had. That means, that in every hour of judgment, there is no shining with a borrowed light. The help of others is priceless in many things, but in the hours of spiritual crisis it is vain. Another's faith can never aid us then, even though that other be a friend or father. It is our own faith and holiness and love that will determine matters when the Bridegroom comes.

The Highest Wisdom Is to Be Watchful

Then, lastly, and this is the great lesson of the parable, it is the highest wisdom to be watchful. The bridegroom came when no one looked for him, and Jesus will come in an hour we think not of. The one day has been hidden, said Augustine, that every day might be regarded. How little did Pompeii think, in the bright morning, of the desolation the evening was to bring! With what awful suddenness in 1666, did the great fire devastate London! And like a Bridegroom in the night, Jesus will come. God grant He find us vigilant!

Watch! 'tis your Lord's command,

And while we speak, He's near;

Mark the first signal of His hand,

And ready all appear.

April 14

The Talents - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into afar country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey— Mat_25:14-15

Slaves Were Trusted Servants

To understand this parable we must remember that the servants spoken of were really slaves. It might seem a strange act on the part of this proprietor to intrust his goods to servants, in our modern sense; but in the old world the slaves had far more power, and were intrusted with far greater responsibilities, than commonly fall to the lot of servants in our homes. In the Latin plays of Plautus and of Terence the slave is a constantly recurring character; and even in the Bible, we find the slave occupying very confidential posts. Abraham's slave is the steward of his household (Gen_15:2). We read in Proverbs of slaves acting as teachers (Pro_17:2). And Ziba, the slave of Saul, who himself had fifteen sons and twenty servants, was put in charge of the goods of Mephibosheth, very much as the servants are, in this parable (2Sa_9:2-10). We must try then to realise these old-world ways, if we wish this parable to be a living story.

Connect This Parable with the Preceding One of the Ten Virgins

It makes an interesting study for us, too, to compare this passage with that which precedes it. The story of the Ten Virgins and the tale of the Talents were either spoken by Jesus at the same time, or else were designedly placed side by side by Matthew, who felt that each threw light upon the other. For the former is a parable of watching, and the latter is a parable of working—and every Christian watcher is meant to work, and every Christian worker is bound to watch. And the former centers in the heart, while the latter moves in the sphere of outward service, as if to indicate that, in the Christian life, the heart must always come before the hand. Why did the five foolish virgins fail? Because they were over-sanguine and easy. Why did the man of the one talent fail? Because he was over-careful and afraid. Thus Jesus, in His infinite compassion, moves round the whole circle of the heart in warning. I need nothing more than a study of the parables to assure me that He knew what was in man.

Our Gifts Are Proportioned to Our Power of Using Them

Note, first, how our gifts are proportioned to our power of using them. In the parable of the Pounds in Luke, you remember that each man got one pound. That is to say, there are certain things (what were they?) that the wisest and the weakest share alike. But here, one man gets five talents, the second gets two, the third gets only one; but they get according to their several ability (Mat_25:15). Now I think that Jesus meant us to learn that all we have is wisely and justly given. He wanted to teach us that all our several differences, which sort us out into such strange variety, are not the work of any accident, but of the discriminating hand of God. Are any two girls in the Sunday school the same? Is not one brighter, stronger, quicker, than the other? It was that which flashed before the mind of Jesus, when He made this householder give different sums. We are not to be jealous of another's gifts. We are not to think how happy we would be, if only we were like so-and-so. We are to remember that all we have is God's, and God has given us all that we could use. The question is, How are you using it? Are you trying to be faithful in the least? Then, because "thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord."

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The Talents - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Non-Use Is Misuse

In the parable of the unjust steward (Luk_16:1-31), the steward is accused of wasting his master's goods. In the parable of the prodigal son (Luk_15:1-32), the son recklessly squanders the portion he had got. But here, there is no wasting and no squandering; the slave returns every penny he received; yet his lord calls him a wicked and slothful servant (Mat_25:26). Learn, then, that it is not enough to have a gift; the gifts of God are given to be used. God is grieved, not only when a talented man does wrong: He is grieved when a talented man does nothing. The sure way to have a gift withdrawn, is to be lazy or too timid to employ it—not to use it, at last spells not to have it. Henry Drummond used to tell us about the fish in the great caves of Kentucky, and how their eyes were perfectly formed, and yet the fish were blind. They had never used their eyes in the dark caves; the gift of sight that God had given them had been unexercised for generations, until at last due to non-use, the power of seeing passed away.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not.

We Don't Know God Unless We Try to Serve Him

I do not know what the slave who got five talents thought of his master in his secret heart. But I know that when he did his best with the trust his master had committed to him, he found his master far more generous and far kindlier than he had ever dreamed. But the slave of the one talent said: "I know my lord" (Mat_25:24); "I know his temper and his character exactly." And it was he (who was sure he knew his lord so well) who missed all that was most generous in him! That means, that if we never try to do God's will, we shall never know Him in His love and tenderness. The worst of burying our talent is, that it always keeps us from knowing God aright. Do we wish to find what a loving God He is? Do we wish to feel what joy He can bestow? Then we must be in earnest with every gift we have; we must trade with it, and take the risks. Slothfulness always misinterprets God—"I knew thee that thou art an hard man." I wonder if the other two would have subscribed to that, when they were summoned into their Master's joy?

How Jesus Adds Grace to a Word

If we had asked the boys and girls of Nazareth what the meaning of that word
"talent" was, they would have told you it meant a great sum of money—about two hundred and forty pounds in British currency. But now we speak of a very "talented" boy, or we say of a man that he has splendid "talents," and it was Jesus who, in this little parable, lifted the word into these nobler meanings. When He found the word, it signified gold and silver; but when He left it, all gifts and graces were in it. That upward sweep is very Christlike. It is just what Jesus has always loved to do with words, and lives, and all the world. What He did for the word "talent" by one parable, He is waiting to do for you this very day.

April 15

The Fact of Faithfulness - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of the lord— Mat_25:21

Faithfulness, a Test of Character

One might dwell for a long time upon this parable without exhausting its message or its meaning. It is like a sea in which men fish for pearls, and in which every diver has some new reward. These parables are terribly practical, yet in their suggestion they are boundless. Again and again do we return to them, only to be amazed with their significance.

I want to center your thoughts upon one theme—upon the fact of faithfulness, and to speak to you for a little while on that; and my prayer is that as I dwell upon that subject and show you one or two of the bearings of it, we may all be moved to cry, "Please God, I shall be more faithful in the days ahead."

What is our Lord's doctrine of fidelity as we find it in this parable before us? Let me endeavour to present it to you. In the first place what impresses me is this, that our Lord makes faithfulness a test of character.

These men in the parable are sifted out, and the cause that separates them is faithfulness. It is not a case of having great abilities or of being dowered with the gift of genius. It is not along such lines there is a cleavage, with the one servant here and the other there. The touchstone of character is faithfulness; by that they stand, through lack of that they fall; the men go to their blessing or their curse, and the basis of it is fidelity.

To show you that this is a leading thought with Jesus, I might ask you to recall His praise of John the Baptist. For what was the distinguishing feature of John's character? It was his fidelity to God and duty. "What went you out into the wilderness to see: A reed shaken by the wind"—a man swayed to this side and that with every breath that blew upon his soul? True poet that he was, Christ saw the contrast between that reed bowing to every gale and the figure of the Baptist by the river standing four-square to every wind that blew. That is the glory and the strength of John. Nothing could ever move him from his duty. In desert and dungeon the Baptist was magnificently true. I want you to note that it was such a character, conspicuous above all else in faithfulness, that won from our Lord that so majestic praise when He called John the greatest born of women.

According to the measurements of Jesus, then, we are face to face here with a test of character. It is in faithfulness that men are great; it is in unfaithfulness that they are weak. When the morning breaks and we get our welcome, it will never be, "Well done, thou brilliant servant." The highest praise even for all the talents will be, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

But, after all, when we think of the world's great men, when we get to know them intimately in their lives, there is perhaps nothing so arresting as the fidelity which we discover there. When we are young we are ready to imagine that the great man must be free from common burdens; we think he has no need to plod as we do and face the weary drudgery daily; we picture him lighthearted and inspired, moving with ease where our poor feet are bleeding. Ah! in such terms we dream about the great in the days when we know little of them, but as knowledge widens we see how false that is.

We see that at the back of everything is will. We come to see how every gift is squandered if it be not clinched with quiet fidelity, until at last we dimly recognise that the very keystone of the arch of genius is something different from all the gifts, and that something is called fidelity.

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The Fact of Faithfulness - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Examples of Faithfulness

One of the critics of Shakespeare, Professor Bradley, insists upon the faithfulness of Shakespeare. It is the fidelity of Shakespeare, in a mind of extraordinary power, he says, that has really made Shakespeare what he is. I turn to Sir Walter Scott, and the same thing meets me there. It is written on every page of his journal. If there ever was a man who was faithful unto death, faithful to honour, to duty, to work, and I shall say, to God, it was that hero who so loved his country, and died beside the murmur of the Tweed.

My point is that one mark of all the greatest is a fidelity which is sublime. No gifts, no brilliance, no genius can release a man from being faithful. Not in the things we do but how we do them, not in fame but in fidelity, is the true test of a man's work, according to the teaching of our Lord.

Faithfulness—a Result of Courage

In the second place our Lord recognises that faithfulness calls for courage. It is significant that the man who hid his talent said to his lord, "I was afraid." In trading there was a certain risk, as in all commerce, I suppose there is a certain risk, and the man with the one talent was unfaithful because he had not the courage for that venture. It was far easier to wrap his talent up than to give it out to the traffic of the market. I dare say he slept a deal more comfortably than the others, who tossed with their anxieties; but God has not sent us into this stirring world just to sleep comfortably and wake at ease. He has sent us to work, and to carry to the market every power that He has dowered us with. It is only in doing that that we are faithful; it is only in taking the risk which that involves. And when our Lord makes the servant say, "I was afraid," and bury his talent without using it, He indicates in His own exquisite way that in faithfulness there is the element of courage.

As our life advances we come to see clearly that our Lord is right. To be faithful in one's duty, whether for layman or for minister, may come to be the finest of heroisms. In youth we are hardly awakened to that fact. When we are young it seems easy to be faithful, for youth is a time of generous enthusiasm and a heavenly disregard for the world's judgment. But the outlook alters when we get a little older; we grow more cautious, more prudent, more worldly wise, until to be quietly and gladly faithful is only possible when the heart is brave.

When Thomas Carlyle, with no prospect of a settled income, received the offer of the editorship of a London magazine, it was an honourable offer; it required competence. A man less sure of a mission would have jumped at it; but Carlyle, faithful to his trust, refused it, and only a brave man would have done that.

It is a brave thing when morning after morning a man goes cheerfully to his unpleasant duty, and it is a brave thing when a daughter year after year nurses an aged mother, or toils for a motherless family. It is a brave thing when a wife is faithful to a husband when he has ceased to be a man and plays the brute. Yes, there is nothing spectacular in that long fortitude: the world will never hear it and applaud; but I think that Jesus understands its courage and will not forget the reward when He returns.

The Rewards of Faithfulness

In the third place, observe that our Lord makes faithfulness the road to power. "Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee a ruler over many things." Now, we must remember God's rewards are never arbitrary like the prizes boys get for running races. God's rewards grow out of the struggle that we wage, as the fruit of the autumn grows from the flower of spring. All the rewards that we shall ever gain are with us in their rudiments, just as the doom that waits some in eternity is germinating in their heart this very hour.

You see, then, in the light of that, why Christ associates faithfulness and rule, "Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." It is because one is the outflow of the other, as is the brook among the heather in the spring. It is because, as the flower blossoms from the bud, influence blossoms from fidelity.

There are many pathways to power in this world, some of which may lie far away from us. There is wealth, there is social influence, there is charming manner; all these make a man powerful enough, but the power that an earnest heart will covet most is not an authority that is external; it is the influence that radiates from the heart to hearten those who struggle by our side. That is the rule, I take it, of which Jesus speaks here. That is the power which is so much worth possessing, and having it makes a man's life worth living. Now our Lord here shows that the road to it is not to be feverishly anxious to do good, but rather to be faithful in the least.

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The Fact of Faithfulness - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Do you think Abraham had an eye for power when he obeyed God's call to leave his home? Do you think that Moses dreamed of majesty when he loyally accepted his great task? Moses and Abraham were sublimely faithful, passionately bent on being loyal, and all the power in the lives of men has sprung from their fidelity to God.

Now if you believe in Christ at all, I want you to believe in that. I want you to believe that your life is bound to show if you are day by day faithful in the least. Seekest thou great things for yourself? Seek them not; study to be quiet and to do your work within your own path, and follow it to the end. Men will be helped toward the feet of God by you, and there is not one of us who does not have an audience.

The Joy of Faithfulness and the Sorrow of Unfaithfulness

Then I want you to observe, Christ associates faithfulness with joy. To the faithful servant came this benediction: "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." It is not success and joy, it is not fame and joy; it is not these that are joined in our Lord's teaching, but faithfulness and joy. These are the bride and bridegroom and the mystical marriage of our Lord.

Then look at the doom of the unfaithful servant; it is outer darkness and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I trust none will take these words of parable as a correct description of a material hell. A man who is unfaithful is always moving nightwards. He has been false to the light God gave him for his journey; and the man who has been unfaithful, when the day is done, what can he look for but remorse and tears?

Here are two men engaged in the same work, both of them intelligent and skillful craftsmen. One is careless and scamps his work, while the other does it with his heart and soul. Is the work easier for the man who does it negligently? Is he happier when the bell rings in the evening? I tell you that every nightfall, had he but eyes to see it, he might detect the shadow of the outer darkness. It is only the faithful workman who has joy, no matter how hard and laborious his work be; he understands, when he lays down his tools, why Christ associates faithfulness with gladness.

Or here are two young men starting in life with bright ideals and dreams of a great future. And one holds fast his ideals through failure and toil; the other is overcome and barters them. He may be very prosperous indeed and an honourable citizen, but all his prosperity will never compensate him for having ceased to walk in the direction of his dreams. He has gained much, but he has lost himself, and the bitter note is that he knows it. He sees things in their proper values now, and would give half the world to begin again. He understands the meaning of those words, perhaps the most solemn that were ever spoken, "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Lord, keep our young men from that successful tragedy. We wish to live no less than well, therefore to be faithful, whatever our trust be, no matter how hard and wearisome the toil along that road is, if the words of Christ mean anything, the song of triumph will echo by and by.

April 16

The Lowly Duty of Fidelity - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Thou hast been faithful over a few things— Mat_25:21

Fidelity Can Be Anybody's Virtue

It was very like our Lord to make fidelity the test of life. He was quick to recognise the lowly virtues. Just as He took obscure and lowly men when He wanted to build up a kingdom, so did He take obscure and lowly virtues when He wanted to build up a character, and this not merely because they were obscure, but because they were within the range of all, and His was to be a universal Gospel. There is nothing dazzling in fidelity. It is not at all a rare and splendid gift. It has no power to arrest the eyes, nor get itself chronicled in any newspaper. And it is singularly like the Lord, with His passion for undistinguished people, that He should crown a virtue such as that. Some of my readers never can be brilliant. They serve in the great army of the commonplace. But there is one thing within the compass of them all, and that is the steady practice of fidelity. And the inspiring thought is that our Lord should take a thing within the reach of everybody, and make it the criterion of character.

Fidelity Demands Courage

It is like Him, too, to recognise that fidelity demands a certain courage. In the parable from which our text is taken that is very charmingly exhibited. There is one man there who was not faithful. He got his talent and he buried it. And it is a master-touch of a profound psychology that in the end of the day, when the reckoning was taken, that man is made to say I was afraid. His infidelity was fear, and the Lord delights to hint at truth by negatives. There is a courage of the battle-field, which is often a very splendid thing. There is courage needed for every high adventure, whether it be in Africa or Everest. But perhaps the finest courage in the world (in the eyes of God, if not of men) is the quiet and steady courage of fidelity. To do things when you don't feel like them, to keep on keeping on, to get to duty through headache and through heartache, to ply the drudgery when birds are calling—there are few things finer in the world. That is not a thing of the rare moment—it is carrying victory into the common day. It does not flash in the country of our dreams—it illuminates the dreary levels. And life is never a victorious business unless our common days are full of victories of which no one ever hears anything at all.

Christ Demonstrated the Courage of Fidelity

I should like to halt a moment to say in passing that this was the courage of our Lord Himself. Sometimes we forget how brave He was. We sing of "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," and we dwell on His exceeding tenderness, nor in a world like this, so full of difficulty, can we ever dwell on His tenderness too much. But if we ignore His courage, we lose one of the appeals of Christ to youth, and to do that is infinitely pitiful. Did it take no courage to come down from heaven and become the tenant of a cottage? Did it take no courage to remain at Nazareth when His heart was burning in His breast? Did it take no courage to resist the devil, offering Him the kingdoms of the world, when the winning of these kingdoms was His passion? To scorn delights and live laborious days, to take the long, long trail that led to Calvary, to set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem, where the Cross was waiting and the crown of thorns—never was finer courage in the world. When we feel that we are missing things (and to feel that means an aching heart), when we are tempted to rebel at drudgery and to long for the wings of a dove to fly away, we must remember Him who never flew away (though white-winged angels were His servitors), but took up His cross, daily, to the end.

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The Lowly Duty of Fidelity - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Fidelity Is Rewarded by Capacity

Another profound suggestion of our Lord is that fidelity is rewarded by capacity. "Thou has been faithful over few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." Sometimes an employer of labour says to me, "The young fellow you sent me is no use. He has proved a slacker in his task, and I never can offer him a bigger one." But sometimes he says to me, "I've been watching that lad; he's doing splendidly; the first bigger thing that offers he will get." The real reward is not the bigger task. It is the capacity to do the bigger task. Real rewards are never arbitrary; they are vitally related to the toil. The reward of service is greater power to serve. The reward of fidelity is new capacity—added fitness comes through being faithful. To be faithful in the least is to be qualifying for what is greater. To do with the whole heart the lowliest thing is to be getting ready for the higher thing. So live, and whatever the world may have in store, He whose word can never pass away will make you ruler over many things. Life will deepen and be enriched for you, though your home be but a humble lodging. Your will shall be strengthened by those daily victories which, after all, are the victories that count. True wealth is augmented personality, with corresponding increase of capacity, and the avenue of God to that is faithfulness.

Fidelity Is Associated with Joy

We shall not forget how our Lord associates fidelity with joy. "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Tell me, is not that profoundly true? Here are two men engaged in the same task, both intelligent and skillful workmen. But the one is careless, and he scamps his work; the other is laboriously faithful. At the end of the day, when work is over, and there stretches ahead the leisure of the evening, which of these two workmen is the happier? "Flowers laugh before thee in their beds," says Wordsworth of the man who is found faithful. Unfaithfulness moves towards the dark. Fidelity pitches its tent towards the sunrise. Be thou faithful, and when the task is over, and the morning breaks upon the farther shore, thou shalt enter into the joy of thy Lord.

April 17

Judgment - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory— Mat_25:31

Preaching on the Judgment

One always notices in time of revival that a great deal is preached about the Last Judgment. In our ordinary pulpit ministration it is not so. I think most ministers hesitate to face up to these awful truths, but always, both in past centuries and today, when there is a revival of God's Spirit, as a moral motive power you find prominence on the Last Judgment. Over against the inequalities, the injustices, the apparent unrighteousnesses of this world, mankind almost naturally has postulated a judgment to come. I suppose there is not a savage faith without some glimmering of it; and in the religion of old Egypt there was no picture more familiar than that of the Judgment Hall, and somebody standing holding a pair of scales, and in one side of them the human souls.

The Judgment Is Going to Be at the End of Time

One wants, then, to find what our Lord had to say about this deep instinct of the human heart. We find it here. Laying aside the imagery—one can never be quite sure when or not the curtain is the picture—but trying to lay aside the imagery and trying to get at the truth which our Lord wanted to teach, I think we discover this. First of all, our Lord makes it perfectly plain to us that this judgment is going to be at the end of time; when the Son of Man cometh in His glory and His holy angels with Him, then—and whatever be our thoughts of eschatology, and whatever be our views of the millennium, I think it must be clear to all of us that what our Lord meant was that the great judgment is not to be until the story of time is at an end. Now a little reasoning will just show you how necessary that is. For instance, nobody can be perfectly judged in this life, just because life is not static; life is a thing of movement. Our blessed Lord never judged a man by what he might be at the particular moment, but rather by the trend of what he was going to be. You take the parable of the Pharisee and Publican praying in the Temple. At that particular moment the Pharisee really thought he was better than the Publican, he had done far more good, but in the broken heart of the poor penitent the Lord saw such possibilities for tomorrow that He pronounced blessing. John Newton was a slave trader, and if at any hour in his earlier life you had judged him you would have condemned him to the lowest pit. But Newton was converted, became a well-known minister, and won multitudes of souls for Christ. You see, you can never judge him while his life is moving. Again, is it not equally clear to you that you can never judge a man just when he dies, because when a man dies his influence does not die; it may go on from age to age. You take, for instance, a case like Mr. Quarrier. Mr. Quarrier with all the passion of his heart loved these little orphan children, and then he got the Homes built at Bridge-of-Weir, and there he laboured till he died; but the Homes did not die. Year after year, generation after generation, perhaps to the end of time, they are going to go on blessing the orphan children. If you want to sum up the total influence of Mr. Quarrier you cannot judge him till the end of time. You take a man whose influence is bad: a man who writes a bad book, it may be an obscene novel, spawn of the press, it may be a book deliberately designed to overthrow faith. The man writes it and gets his bread by it, and he dies; but the book does not die. Year after year it may go on corrupting, degrading, and lowering, and not till the ripples have broken on the shore of eternity is the whole story of the man's influence known, and our Lord, who is always so reasonable, says that when the Son of Man comes, when times is done, when your influence has gone to its uttermost limit, then we are going to be judged.

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Judgment - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Judgment Is Going to Be Final

The next thing our Lord tells us here is that the judgment is going to be final. I want you to listen while I read over quietly these words—not of mine, but of Christ: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous unto life eternal." If there be anybody here who knows Greek, he will know that the word for "everlasting" is the same word as the word for "eternal," and therefore if you and I believe that the life we are going to live beyond is one that never ends, you can only interpret the words of Christ as meaning that the punishment is never going to end. I want you to think of that. It is perfectly true that men have tried to get out of it by giving another meaning to that word "eternal." They have taken it to mean "age-long": that is, lasting through the next period to this, though beyond that no one knows what happens. There is no hope that way. All through the Bible—St. Paul, St. John, the writer of the Hebrews, the Revelation—the word means "never ending." So it means in classic Greek, so it means in Plato. It is not I, it is the Lord who says, and says it with a passionate intensity, "Where the worm never dieth, where the fire is never quenched." It is not I, it is the Lord who says, "These shall go into everlasting punishment, and those into everlasting life," and how the Lord, with His big heart of love, tender to everybody, even to the beasts, how the Lord could combine that with such an awful prospect, is something we have never fathomed to this hour. If you want to say, "I do not believe in everlasting punishment," remember you are at perfect liberty to say it. If it is your judgment, then it is yours, but please observe you can never quote the authority of the Lord Christ for that. It is awful to think that His authority is on the other side. You have got to face up to that. I suppose the two difficulties men have felt when they have allowed themselves to brood upon this matter are these. First, we say, we have all said, How could anyone be happy in heaven, how could the saints of heaven sing their song if they knew that there were souls—even one soul—suffering in hopeless misery? To that there is no answer. But is not it possible that a little light may be drawn from what we see in this present world? Are not there people in Glasgow who are perfectly happy, thoroughly enjoying themselves, and all the time within a stone's throw there are men and women in hopeless misery? You see it can be done, and if you answer, as I have no doubt the keener among you would answer at once, that these are worldly people, these are not the inhabitants of heaven, my experience is, it is generally worldly people who talk like that. The saints rather bow the head and say, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

Can God Be Love and Punish?

I fancy our other profound difficulty is this. How can God be love? How can God care and be a Father and wish us well and have the power to give us the best, and yet forever have creatures in hopeless misery? Again there is no answer, but again does not this present world suggest that it may be possible? Is not God love today? Is not God infinitely kind today? And yet today are there none who have committed the unpardonable sin which can never be forgiven, neither in this life nor the life to come? May there be forgiven, neither in this life nor the life to come? May there not be a fixity of heart, a deadness like that of the nether millstone, owing to our free will working as well as the love of God? There is not one of us in pew or pulpit, who does not long with all the passion of his heart for universal restoration; there is not one who does not crave that ultimately all should be blessed; but the Lord has been our light, the Lord has been the Revealer of the Father, and it is the Lord who says, "Where their worm dieth not and the fire is never quenched." It is the Lord who says, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." I want to speak in the right tone, I don't want to speak harshly. I am like a man groping in the dark, but with one hand I grip Christ, and I say, Brother, would not it be awful to awaken and find that you were wrong and the Lord was right? "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him."

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Judgment - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Christ Himself Will Be the Judge

The next thing which our blessed Saviour tells us is that He Himself is going to be our judge: "When the Son of man shall come in his glory." Our judge is not God, the Father; our judge is Christ, the Son, and you know that is as stupendous as it is beautiful. Think how stupendous it is. Here is Christ, born in a manger, living for thirty years in a little cottage, going about among humble people, doing little deeds of kindness, and then He says, "I am going to judge mankind." It is either arrogance raised to the point of madness, or it is the truth, and I do not think that any fair review would ever charge the Lord with arrogance. And if it is the truth, your Carpenter of Nazareth is God, and you have got to bow before Him and say, "My Lord and my God." All well enough to say, I love the Carpenter of Nazareth; I like to watch Him talking with the children, watching the sparrows, moving through the harvest; but mark you, your only source of knowledge of that Carpenter tells you that He said, "I am going to judge the world." Then how beautiful it is that you and I are going to be judged by a Man, by One who bore our burdens, by One who knew our frame, by One who understands us perfectly. The other day there came into the vestry a man who again had given way to drink. When I asked him what was the cause of it, he answered something like this: "I was down and out, my business tottering, my home unhappy, and I gave way to drink." If I had judged him, what would he have said? He would have said, "You do not understand; you never had a business that was tottering; you were never unhappy at home." But if I could have said to him, "Brother, I have been down and out, I have come through all that you have, and yet God brought me through," my very presence would have judged him. It is so with the Lord. He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. He was down and out when every disciple forsook Him and fled; and He is going to be our Judge. I could imagine some daring soul on the Day of Judgment, if the judge was God the Father, saying, "Thou who dwellest yonder, far away in the light that never fades, you do not understand." Nobody ever can say that to Christ; I think just His presence will be the judgment.

Our Judgment Will Depend on the Discharge or Neglect of the Common Charities of Life

One thing more I have got to say, and it is this, that our Lord—apart from the figure altogether—teaches us the principle of the Last Judgment, and the principle is this: it is the discharge or the neglect of the common charities of life. May I say it again? It is the discharge or the neglect of the common humanities of life—visiting the prisoner, cheering the sick, giving bread to the hungry, clothing the naked; and that is but a short and swift summation of what we call the charities of life. Are you not surprised? You thought character was going to be the test in the Last Judgment; you thought the Spirit of Christ was going to be the test—"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." But what is the spirit of Christ? It is believing and experiencing what He said about the new birth and proving it by doing what He did. It is the Spirit who brought Him to the manger, it is the Spirit who kept Him quiet in Nazareth for thirty years, it is the Spirit who made Him move among men, teaching them, healing them, helping them, doing them good; and if that is your life, you have got the Spirit of Christ. You do not know it ? Of course you don't; none of the saved knew it, they were all amazingly surprised when the Lord told how He reckoned them (see Mat_25:35-40). And you may have the Spirit of Christ if you go out and be kindly, charitable, helpful; and yet you may never know it till the judgment comes. You say, I am going to be judged by my relationship to Christ. Yes, you are. When the Lord was here, with whom, tell me, did He identify Himself? Was it with Herod? "Go tell that fox." Was it with the Pharisees? "Woe unto you, Pharisees." The Lord identified Himself with the poor, with the needy, with the last, with the least, with the lost; and He is the same yesterday and today and forever. And if the Lord is identified with all who are in need, then every time you help a man in need you are brought into relationship with Christ.

We Must Revise Our Lives

It has been very difficult—not difficult to speak the truth, but to speak the truth in the right spirit. I trust I have done it tenderly, and I simply want to ask you to remember that all of us have got to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and therefore should not we all revise our lives, lest at the end, when far off there is music, for us it should be wailing and gnashing of teeth?

April 18

The Anointing at Bethany - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified…Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat— Mat_26:1, Mat_26:2, Mat_26:6, Mat_26:7

Jesus Was Calm on His Way to the Cross

We are now approaching the last days of the earthly life of Jesus in our study of Matthew's Gospel, and our lesson opens with the clear declaration from our Saviour's lips that in two days He would be crucified. There is a singular interest in Matthew's little preface to these words: he tells us that it was "when Jesus had finished all these sayings" that He spoke plainly about His crucifixion. That means, I take it, that the mind of Christ was calm; that there was order and quiet progress in His teaching; that He moved forward through His many lessons with a deliberate and sure advance, till His hearers were able to bear the news of Calvary. How apt we are, when a great secret holds us, to blurt it out in an ill-considered way! How thoughtless and how unkind we often are, in the eager telling of unpleasant things! The narrative of Matthew deepens our impression of the noble self-restraint of Jesus. Matthew had felt in Christ that sweet reserve without which love is sure to prove a wastrel. Observe, too, that when Jesus foretells His death, He does not say He is going to be betrayed. He says, "The Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified" (Mat_26:24). That intimates that in the heart of Judas, Christ read the deed as if already done. In the thoughts of the traitor everything was planned, and Jesus is a discerner of men's thought. The secret imaginings of our today are the open sins and failures of our tomorrow. There is a deep philosophy of conduct in the advice of Paul, to bring every thought into captivity to Christ. I fancy that God sees, hidden in every acorn, the beauty and the gnarled strength of the oak tree; so Jesus, in the dark and brooding heart of Judas, saw the arrest in the garden, and the cross. And one point more: The high priest is called Caiaphas (Mat_26:3). But it seems that Caiaphas was only his distinguishing name. His personal name was Joseph, but there were so many Josephs that men called him Joseph Caiaphas, perhaps Joseph the Oppressor. Can we recall a similar Bible instance where the name of Joseph has been almost forgotten? "Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, which is, being interpreted, the Son of Consolation" (Act_4:36).

In the House of Simon the Leper

Then follows the beautiful scene at Bethany, and we cannot too closely note the setting of it. It is immediately preceded by this black conspiracy (Mat_26:1-5); it is immediately followed by the traitor's bargain (Mat_26:14-16). On the one side, fear and jealousy and hatred; on the other side, treachery and bargain driving. And in the center (a rose between the thorns) a love that forgot everything and lavished all. Who Simon the leper was, we do not know. I like to think he was that leper we read of, who had cried, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean" (Mat_8:2). Whoever he was, no doubt our Lord had cleansed him: and yet men called him Simon the leper still. You see how old names, like old reputations, stick. Men keep them alive with a kind of evil pleasure. There would be many who could never talk of Simon but they would add, "Of course, you have heard he was a leper once?" And yet I think that Simon loved his name. It was a standing memorial of one glorious morning. He never could think how he had been a leper but it led him to think of how he had met the Lord; and now that that same Lord was at his table, he may have been saying, "My cup is running over." It was then that this woman, whom we know to have been Mary, performed this act that was to live forever. She broke the alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on Jesus' head as He reclined at meat. And the disciples were indignant and thought it sheer extravagance; but Jesus crowned the act with immortality. Just note that in the ancient world rare ointments were commonly held in alabaster vases. Herodotus tells somewhere that among the presents sent by King Cambyses to the Ethiopians there was an alabaster vessel of nard like Mary's. Now, if this woman were indeed the sister of Lazarus, may not the ointment have been purchased to anoint his body, and so have been given with a double meaning to the Lord who had raised her brother from the grave ?

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The Anointing at Bethany - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Lord Can Read the Glory of Humble Acts

The first thing to impress us in this story is Christ's rich interpretation of the deed. It was a simple action, done by a sinful woman, yet Jesus drew a wealth of meaning from it. To the disciples it was a foolish exhibition. Even the best of them thought lightly of it. Christ had no need of it, so they began to reason; He came not to be ministered unto but to minister. Were there no paupers in the village of Bethany? And might not the ointment have been sold for their benefit? A murmur of disapproval ran round the table, scarcely audible, perhaps, when it reached John, but loud and positive when Judas voiced it (Joh_12:4). And then, had you asked the woman what she meant, I dare say she would have stammered in reply. She might have said she had never stopped to reason; she had only listened to her heart, and there she was. None of the disciples knew what she was doing; I question if she really knew herself. Only Jesus saw the meaning of the deed, and felt its glory in the love that filled it. Never forget, then, that we serve a Lord who can read the humblest actions gloriously. The Son of man in the midst of the seven candlesticks has eyes as it were a flame of fire (Rev_1:14). He sees in the simple deed, inspired by love, meanings and purposes we never dreamed of. He so interprets our poor and tangled service that we shall hardly know it in the morning. All which is fitted to make us very hopeful when, loving the Master, we first try to serve Him; and to restrain us from judging or troubling anybody when they serve in ways we fail to understand.

Mary's Act of Sacrifice Was a Symbol of Christ's Cross

But the heart of this exquisite story lies in this, that this deed was the dying of Jesus, in a figure. It was not merely because love inspired it that Jesus crowned it with unequalled praise. It was because He found in it the very Spirit that was leading Him on so steadily to Calvary. Had Mary stopped to balance or to weigh, we should never have heard of the alabaster box. Had the gift been calculated to a nicety, it had never been part of the undying Gospel. But the love of Mary never asked how little; the love of Mary only asked how much. With a magnificent and glorious disregard, it broke the box and lavished everything. Now there is no need to make the alabaster box a type and figure of the body of Jesus. It was not the vase that was like the body of Christ; it was the act that was kindred to His death. For Jesus, like Mary, never asked how little. He lavished everything in saving men. He gave with a glorious fulness like that of Mary's, when He gave Himself to the cross and to the grave. And wherever the love of Christ is known and felt, and the wonder of its lavish sacrifice awakens, "there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her."

April 20

Love's Wastefulness - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

To what purpose is this waste?— Mat_26:8

A Strange Deed Lives Forever

The scene was Bethany, and the time was near the end. A few more days and the earthly life of Jesus would be over. Jesus and His disciples are seated at their evening meal, when a woman, whom from other sources we learn to have been Mary, did this strange deed that is to live forever. It is not always true that "the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." The harm that Mary did, if she did any, lies sleeping with the other gossip of the street of Bethany. This deed still lives, like a choice framework for her heart and hand. 'Tis one of those countless actions of the just, that smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

A Simple Act to Express Love

And the deed, however unforeseen, was very simple. It was the breaking of an alabaster box, and the pouring of the ointment on the feet of Christ. How much this Mary owed to Jesus, perhaps we shall never know. We cannot tell what a new peace had stolen upon her heart, and what a new glory had fallen upon her world, when first this guest entered her brother's home. But when her brother died, and Jesus came, and called him from the dead, and gave him back to Bethany and to Mary, why then, by any passionate thankfulness we have felt in getting back our kindred from the gates of death, we can touch the fringes of the gratitude of Mary. And that was the motive and meaning of her act. She loved Him so, she could not help it. Christ's love had broken her alienated heart. Now let it break her alabaster box. The best was not too good for Him, who had given her a new heart and a new home.

This Was a Deed Only Christ Could Understand

But there are deeds so fine only Christ can understand them. There are some actions so inspired, that even the saintliest disciple, leaning on Jesus' bosom, will never interpret them aright. And this was one of these. Peter, and James, and John—they understand it now, but they did not understand it then. They were indignant. It was a shocking extravagance of an impulsive woman. What need to squander so a year's wages of a working man—for the ointment never cost a penny less. If it were not needed now for Lazarus, it might have been sold and given to the poor.

You call them narrow? And you are irritated by their lack of insight? Stay, brethren, there were some noble features in their indignation. And had you and I been lying at that table, I almost hope we should have fallen a-fretting too. These men could not forget, even at the feast, the gaunt and horrid form of destitution that sits forever in the chamber of the village pauper, crying aloud for clothing and for bread. It may be, too, that at their evening worship they had been reading that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord. And had they not had it from their Master's lips that He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister? Till in the light of that, and in the remembrance of the woes of poverty, their hearts began to burn with a not so dishonourable indignation. And each began to ask his fellow, "To what purpose is this waste?"

Her Wastefulness Was the Expression of Her Love

But these disciples had forgotten one thing. They had forgotten that this woman's wastefulness was the native revelation of her love. There is a wasteful spending that is supremely selfish. There is a lavish giving that is disowned in heaven, because the giver is always thinking of himself. But God suspends the pettier economies, and will not brook a single murmur, when He detects the wastefulness of love. It is the genius of love to give. It is love's way to forget self and lavish everything. And Mary's way was love's way when she brake the box and poured the ointment on the feet of Christ. And being love's way, it was God's way too.

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Love's Wastefulness - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

God Lavishes His Love

And so we reach the truth that I am anxious to press home on your hearts. If God be love, and if a prodigal expenditure like that of Mary be of the very essence of all love, then in the handiwork of God we shall detect a seeming wastefulness. I scan the works of the Almighty, and everywhere I see the marks of wisdom. I look abroad, and the great universe assures me of His power. But God is more than wisdom or than power. God is love. And I can never rest till I have found the traces of that love in all I know and all I see of God. Here, then, is one of love's sure tokens. It is a royal expenditure, a lavish and self-forgetful waste. Can I detect this prodigality in the various handiworks of God?

In Nature

First, then, I turn to nature. I leave the crowded city, and find my way into the field, and there, amid the hedgerows, under the open sky, I see a prodigality like that of Mary. God has His own arithmetic, it is not ours. God has His own economy, but it is not the economy of man. Things are not measured here and weighed in scales, and nicely calculated and numbered out. The spirit that breathes through universal nature is the spirit that brake the alabaster box. That heather at my feet is flinging off its seeds in such countless millions, that this one patch could cloak the mountainside in purple. Yon birch that shakes its leaves above my head could fill with seedlings the whole belt of wood. The sun is shining upon dead Sahara as well as on the living world that needs it. And the gentle rain that falls on the mown grass is falling just as sweetly on the granite rock. What mean these myriads of living things? Was He utilitarian who formed and decked the twice ten thousand creatures who dance and die upon a summer's eve? Have we not here in primal force the spirit that prompted Mary to her deed? There is a royal extravagance in nature. There is a splendid prodigality. There is a seeming squandering of creative power. Let men believe it is the work of carelessness, or of a dead and iron law; but as for us, we shall discover in it some hint that God is love, until the day break and the shadows flee away.

In Beauty

Or holding still by nature, let us set the question of beauty in that light. This world is very beautiful, the children sing; and so it is. And the only organ that can appreciate beauty is the eye of man. No lower creature has the sense of beauty. It serves no purpose in the world's economy. Beauty unseen by man is beauty wasted. Yet there are scenes of beauty in the tropics on which the eye of man has never lit. And there are countless flushings of the dawn, and glories unnumbered of the setting sun, that never fall within the ken of man. Arctic explorers tell us that in the distant north there is an unsurpassable glory in the sunset. For a brief season in declining day the levels of the snow are touched with gold, and every minaret of ice is radiant. And every sunset has been so for centuries, and never an eye has looked on it till now. O seeming waste of precious beauty! Until the heart begins to whisper, "Why, to what purpose is this waste?" Ah! it is there! that is the point. We have observed it now in the Creator's work.

In Providence

But now I turn to providence. If Mary's action was in the line of God's, we should detect even in providence something of the prodigality of love.

When aged Jacob sat in his tent in Canaan, nursing the hope that Joseph still was living, he would have been content to have had his son again though he came home in rags. And when the prodigal of the parable came home, ashamed of himself, and sorry for his sin, he wished no better chamber than his father's kitchen. But God was lavish in His lovingkindness, and gave a prince and not a beggar back to Jacob. And the father of the prodigal was himself so prodigal of love that he must put a ring upon that truant hand and bind the shoes upon these wandering feet.

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Love's Wastefulness - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Now do not say all that was long ago. And do not think the God of providence has changed. Even now, in every heart and home, He is still working with lavish prodigality. O brother, what opportunities that God of providence has squandered upon you! Come, to what purpose is this waste?—unsaved heart, you tell me that. Justice would long ago have settled things. Nothing but love could ever be so lavish in letting down from heaven these opportunities. And when I think of all the gifts of God that seem to be given only to be wasted; of sight that might have seen so much, and sees so little, and that little can be so vile; of speech that might have done such noble things, and does so little, and that little can be so mean; of hearing and of memory, of thought and of imagination, lavished so royally on worthless men; then dimly I realise the prodigality of providence, and feel my hopeless debt, and the hopeless debt of all this fallen world, to the seeming wastefulness of Him who quickened Mary to her wasteful deed.

In Grace

So, in the realm of nature and in the sphere of providence, we have observed a spirit akin to Mary's. But in the world of grace it is clearer still. Indeed, when Jesus said that Mary's deed was always to be coupled with His death, He must have recognised that the two were kin.

Now think: the death of Jesus is sufficient to pardon all the sins of every man. Why do we make a universal offer, and why do we carry the Gospel to the heathen, if we are not convinced of that? Yes, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." There is no soul so sunk, nor any heart so ignorant, but turning may be saved. And all the teeming millions of the continents, coming to Jesus Christ for mercy, could never exhaust the merits of His blood.

But tell me, are these millions coming? And do you really believe that the whole world is being saved right now? Are there not multitudes for whom life's tragedy is just the "might have been"? And souls unnumbered, here and everywhere, galloping down to the mist and mire? And there was room within the heart of Christ for all! And there was cleansing in the Saviour's death for everyone! O waste! waste! waste! And to what purpose is that wasted agony? And why should Jesus suffer and die for all, if all were never to accept His love? Ah, Mary, why didst thou break the alabaster box and pour the precious ointment upon Christ? That prodigality was just the Saviour's spirit that brought Him to the cross and to the grave. Love gives and lavishes and dies, for it is love. Love never asks how little can I do; it always asks how much. There is a magnificent extravagance in love, whether the love of Mary or the love of God.

If, therefore, you believe that God is love, if you take love as the best name of the Invisible, then, looking outwards to the world and backwards to the cross, you can never ask again, "To what purpose is this waste?" If you do that, come, over with the love as well, and go and find a calculating god who is not lavish because he does not love. Find him! and be content! Only beware! Be self-consistent! Never look more for strength when you are down. Never again look for help when you are weary. Never expect a second chance when you have squandered one. Seek not for any sympathy in sorrow, or any fellowship of love in loneliness. And never dream that you will find the Christ. Come, will that do for you, young men and women? And will that do for you, housewife or businessman? You want the loving arm and voice of God. You want the loving ministry of Christ. You, poor rebellious and staggering heart, are lost but for the lavish scattering of a love that never wearies, and will not let you go. And I believe that is mine in Jesus, and I believe that is yours. Claim it and use it. And when you see that love breaking the alabaster box, ask not the meaning of that waste again.

April 22

The Cry for Companionship

What, could ye not watch with me one hour?— Mat_26:40

The Closest Disciples Sleep Most Often

The scene was the Garden of Gethsemane, and all three disciples were asleep. It is not the first time in the Gospel story that we have found these three disciples sleeping. When the Lord was transfigured on the mountain these same disciples were asleep, and neither there nor here was it a light and evanescent drowsiness. We are told that in the former narrative, and here, the moment Jesus ceased to speak they relapsed into their heavy slumber. One would have thought that the word of Jesus to them would have stabbed them wide awake. It evidently did nothing of the kind. The last syllable was scarcely uttered, when they were sunk again in profound sleep.

As a Man, Jesus Craved Companionship

One recognises in these words of Jesus His passionate yearning for companionship. In His hour of travail and of agony He craved the companionship of men. One might have conjectured that in such an hour the Master would have longed to be alone. Had He left His disciples in Jerusalem one could have understood that perfectly. And the very fact that He took these three disciples, and set them where they were not far away, shows how He craved for human sympathy and needed the companionship of men. Our blessed Saviour was no stoic. He leaned hard on loving hearts. He yearned for the fellowship of men as intensely as they yearned for His. And if today He is "the very same Jesus," unchanged by death and resurrection, then He still craves, with an unaltered longing, for loving human companionship.

He Craved for Their Companionship although He Knew It Would Be Inadequate

It should be noted that He craved this fellowship when it was utterly inadequate. How little could these disciples fathom all that was transacting in the darkness! There He was bearing sin upon His spirit, as on Calvary He bore it in His body. There He was giving Himself utterly to God's will in the redemption of mankind. Even had the disciples been awake, how little could they have understood—yet He craved an imperfect sympathy like that. What an exquisitely human touch that is! An old and faithful family retainer may know nothing of what her master has to bear. To her his troubles may be as great a mystery as the troubles of Jesus to His three disciples. Yet the loving sympathy of that old servant, even though she does not understand, is strangely helpful to her master's heart. Perhaps at the best all we can give to Christ is a sympathy like that of the old servant. There are depths in His being, His death, His endless life, that no human heart can ever fathom. And yet He wants our loving close companionship, just as, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He wanted that of these three sleeping men.

He Asked Them to Watch But One Hour

Another thought that meets us is how often it is in lesser things we fail. In order to fully appreciate that I ask you to put the accent on one hour. Had He asked them to watch through the livelong night with Him, that might have been a high and arduous service. But to ask their vigilance for sixty minutes surely was a very small demand, yet it was there that the disciples failed. In the last great service Peter did not fail Him, for Peter was crucified for Christ. James, too, laid down his life for Him, and John went to exile in the Isle of Patmos. Where they all failed was in the lesser thing, in the duty that was comparatively small—what, could ye not watch with Me one hour?

And perhaps it is there most often that we fail in our loving companionship with Christ. Perhaps it is there that love most often fails. In our fellowship with the Lord Jesus we may be ready and eager for the greatest sacrifice, and yet we cannot watch with Him one hour. In those infinitesimal self-denials which are possible with every passing day, in patience and appreciative sympathy within the shelter and secrecy of home, in the rendering of those little kindnesses which are more to many hearts than gold or silver, how often we fail as those disciples did. Great services reveal our possibilities; little services reveal our consecration. Jesus places the emphasis of heaven on him who is faithful in the least. Had these disciples watched for that one hour they would have rendered a service far beyond their dreams. That is true of everyone of us.

April 23

On Making Allowances - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak— Mat_26:41

To Forgive When Hurt Is Hard

There are times when it is very hard to make allowances for other people. To forgive them seems a counsel of perfection. Even if we do forgive we are haunted by a lingering resentment. Gusts of bitterness invade the soul when we remember how deeply we were wronged. To trust again when we have been deceived, with the simple and sweet trust of long ago, seems a victory beyond our powers. Love may abide through bitterest disappointment, for love is strong as death. But the love which has been hideously wronged is seldom quiet as a resting place. Flashes of suspicion visit it; harsh thoughts come surging to the surface; memories, sharp and anguished, break their blighting way into the soul. To make allowance when someone dear has failed us, to forget judgment in a great compassion, to go on trusting hopefully, after the shock of discovered infidelity, that, which falls to the lot of many people, though they very seldom speak about it, is one of the hardest tasks in human life.

Jesus Substitutes Mercy for Resentment

Now it was such a task that met our Saviour in the Garden of Gethsemane. The hearts on whose fidelity He counted in one blinding flash were found to be unfaithful. Who could have wondered if our blessed Lord had turned from these three men in stern revulsion? Who could have wondered if His instant thought had been that He never could trust them any more? In swift and righteous condemnation might He not have judged them unworthy of His love, and so barred them from His heart forever? That is the first swift impulse, let me say, of every woman who has been deeply wronged. She says (little knowing what she says) I may forgive, but I never can forget. And the beautiful thing is that our Master, pierced to the quick by dear ones' infidelity, rose to a loftier attitude than that. Judgment was submerged in pity. Compassion took the place of condemnation. The love that had been so terribly wronged wove the garment of mercy round the sinners. And so doing it saved their souls alive and led them onward to that brighter morrow, when infidelities were all to be redeemed.

It Would Have Been Human to Be Done with Them, But It Was Heavenly to Continue.

Trusting Them

To understand that magnificence of attitude ponder a moment on the sleep of these disciples. It was not a venial fault of drowsiness; it was a heinous sin of infidelity. It is always a very grave offence if a sentry be found sleeping at his post. Often the penalty for that is death. And these men were not only there in comradeship; they were sentries at the post of duty; they were there to watch as well as to keep awake. I shall not say that had they watched they might have saved the Lord, for it was not the will of God that He be saved. But would not Jesus crave to be forewarned that He might have a last quiet moment with His Father. And He never got it—the armed rabble broke on Him, suddenly, with shouting and with torches, because these sentries were sleeping at their posts. A disloyal soldier is like a disloyal friend—it is supremely difficult to make allowance for him. The heart that has been wronged by infidelity haunts the margins of despairing bitterness. Yet Jesus, towards His disloyal soldiers, who were also His weak disciples, maintained a pitying love that was redemptive. It would have been easy to have done with them. It was very hard to trust them still. To condemn them would have been entirely natural. To keep them still within His heart was heavenly. So our Saviour points the better way for all who find their Garden of Gethsemane in the disloyalties of someone who is dear.

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On Making Allowances - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Their Lack of Vigilance Was a Sign of lngratitude

And then, mingling with disloyalty, think of the ingratitude involved. "What, could ye not watch with Me?" For a moment put the accent upon Me. Have not I been the best of friends to you? Have not I toiled for you and prayed for you? Have not I watched many an hour for you? Have not I lavished the riches of My love on you? All that they owed to Him in love and sacrifice, and in the uplift of unrecorded intimacies, was forgotten in that disloyalty of sleep. That is what makes infidelity so bitter. At the heart of it lies rank ingratitude. All the patient ministries of years are forgotten because the flesh is weak. And no one could have blamed our blessed Lord if, in the sudden flaming of disgust, He had torn these disciples from His breast.

He Remembered It Was Past Midnight

But He did not do that, however terrible the provocation. The others might forget, but He remembered. He remembered it was long past midnight; He remembered the awful strain of the past days; He remembered the sorrow that consumed them, and their burden of unintelligible mystery. And the condemning wrath that might have ruined them was swallowed up in an infinite compassion—the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Never was there kindlier allowance. It was the consummate handling of heaven. It issued not in tragedy, but in the richer loyalties of resurrection days. So may like grace be given to all in perplexity through infidelites, that they may find a budding morrow in midnight.

April 24

Jesus before Caiaphas - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled. But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end— Mat_26:57-58

Jesus Had to Be Tried Twice

Our Saviour had to undergo two trials, the one before the high priest, and the other before the Roman governor, and it is with the former of these two that our passage deals. Had Palestine been an independent state, the tribunal of Caiaphas would have given the verdict. There would have been no appeal for any prisoner from the decision of the college of the Sanhedrin. But Palestine had lost its independence. It was part of the great Roman province of Syria. Hence the last word, in cases of high moment, lay not with the Jew, but with the Roman. Now the Romans did not strain their own authority. They left a large measure of power with the provincials. Especially where matters of religion were concerned, they gave the conquered nations a free hand. But when the question was one of life and death, they took the final judgment to themselves, and that explains the double trial of Jesus. He is first brought before the Jewish council, and by it He is held guilty of death. He is then brought before the Roman governor, and in another message we shall find what happened there.

Why Was He Brought to Annas First?

Caiaphas, then, was high priest at the time, and Jesus should have been led straight to him. But it was past midnight now, and some of the members of the court would be in bed—could not something be done with Jesus till all was ready? John tells us that Jesus was taken before Annas. This Annas had himself been the high priest, and just as we sometimes call a man provost, or bailie, though it is a year or two since he held office, so Annas, a man of most commanding influence, was still called, in Jerusalem, the high priest. He parleyed with Jesus, in an informal way, while the senators came hurrying into the council hall. And then, while all the city was asleep, and the children were dreaming of play and love and heaven, the Friend of the children was put upon His trial. It was an illegal council to begin with. The Sanhedrin was forbidden to meet by night. But if they waited until the city was astir, and the whisper ran along the streets that Christ was prisoner, might there not be a popular rising in His favour? They loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. Like Judas, they had a kinship with the night. It were well that the Roman soldiers should have Jesus, when the day lightened and the city awoke.

Jesus Patiently Stood His Hurried Trial

Then the trial began with the summoning of witnesses, and for a time it looked as if the prosecution must break down. Things had been rushed with such a nervous hurry that even the witnesses had not been drilled. There was no lack of witnesses, it seems (Mat_26:60). I wish we could always count on witnesses for Christ, as surely as they reckoned on witnesses against Him then. But though these witnesses had much to say, and repeated many a biting word of Jesus on His judges, the judges knew their own character too well, and knew what the people thought of them too well, to dream that Jesus could be condemned for that. There was a vaunt about the Temple, certainly, but you could not get Rome (that rude destroyer of temples) to sanction a Galilean's death for that. Caiaphas was baffled. The steady composure of Christ was like an insult. Everyone else was feverish, Jesus alone was calm. And it was then, as in half-frantic desperation, that Caiaphas put his question to the Lord. He conjured Him to tell if He were Messiah. Jesus answered immediately that He was, and "hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Jesus was very courageous in His silence; but He was also very courageous in His speech. That sentence practically sealed His fate, yet the hour had come for speech, and Jesus spoke. They called it blasphemy. He was guilty of death (Lev_24:15). They had triumphed, and self-control went to the winds. Their pent-up passions burst out like a torrent. They spat on Him, and they smote Him—how they loathed Him! And out in the court the Apostle John was sitting, watching it all in unutterable agony. Would not this hour come back to him again, when, long years afterwards, in the isle of Patmos, he wrote of "the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ"?

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Jesus before Caiaphas - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Peter Arrives to Deny Him

Meantime Peter had come upon the scene. Impelled partly by curiosity, it may be, and largely by his devotion to his Lord, he had followed afar off to the high priest's palace. Like other men who follow afar off, he was running into terrible temptation. Unbefriended and unknown, Peter might have been denied admission to the high priest's house. But John was there already, and John was a man of some little social standing, and it was at John's entreaty that Peter got in. There are times when we think we are doing our friend a kindness, and we are only making life the harder for him. Now, when we read about the high priest's palace, what do we understand? It was a large house built round a square courtyard, and with the windows opening inward on the court. It was in this courtyard, then, that Peter was sitting, chafing his cold hands at the fire, when one of the maidservants charged him with discipleship. And Peter was so utterly taken aback, that quick as lightning, he denied the charge. And then it dawned on him what he had done, and he rose up, and went to the dark gateway. He would stand in its deep shadows for a little, if only to feel the ground beneath his feet. But the lamp in the gateway swung and flared, and every now and then it lit up the face of Peter; and another maid recognised him there, and Peter once again denied his Lord. The first sin made the second easier. Meanwhile the news was spreading in the courtyard. There would be sport in baiting the disciple. It would put some warmth into their hearts on that cold morning to worry this bewildered Galilean. Poor Peter! It was too late to keep silence now, and to open his mouth was to be betrayed by his Highland accent. Peter denied again. "And immediately the cock crew." With a breaking and a penitent heart Peter went out. When Judas went out, it was darkening to midnight. But when Peter went out it was very near the dawn.

April 25

Jesus before Pilate - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When the morning was come, all the chief priests and eiders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor— Mat_27:1-2

Pilate the Last Roman to Manage Jews

By the Jewish law no sentence of death could be passed by night, and therefore, when the morning dawned (Mat_27:1), a second meeting of the priests and elders was convened. It was then that their formal sentence of death was passed on Jesus, and it was then that they deliberated how they should best present their case to Pilate, so as to ensure that Jesus would not escape. We know very little about Pilate, save from the Gospel story. He was a typical Roman, self-centered and self-seeking, not devoid of the Roman love of justice. But his love of self outweighed his love of justice; and his shameful past had so eaten the heart out of him, that in the great crisis of his life he went to ruin. He was the last man in the world to manage Jews. He had outraged their feelings in the most wanton manner. We do not wonder to read in an old historian that Pilate fell into disgrace in after years, and, wearied with misfortunes, killed himself. Those who have read Scott's story, Anne of Geierstein, will know the legend of Mount Pilatus—the mountain with the bare and jagged peaks, opposite the Rigi, at the west end of the Lake of Lucerne. The legend is that Pilate spent years of torturing remorse on that mountain, and at last drowned himself in the lake; and "a form," says Scott, "is often seen to emerge from the water, and to go through the motions of one washing his hands."

Accusation That Jesus Was Implicated in a Political Plot

Now the usual residence of the Roman procurator was not Jerusalem. Jerusalem was an intolerable city to the man who had revelled in the gay life of Rome. The usual residence was Caesarea, a mimic Rome down by the seashore. But whenever Jerusalem was thronged with strangers, as it was on the occasion of all the great feasts, it was the duty of the Roman governor to be there in person, to see that the peace was kept. So Pilate was in Jerusalem at the Passover, and he was living in the magnificent palace of the Herods, when the hour came that flashed on him a light that was to make him visible to all the ages. In the early morning Jesus was brought to Pilate, not into the palace (for to enter that would have been pollution to a Jew), but into the court, with its colonnade, in front of the palace. And the first question which Pilate asked showed how cunningly the charge against Jesus had been coloured. Pilate did not ask, "Art Thou the Messiah?"—what did he care for Jewish superstitions? But he did ask, "Art Thou the King of the Jews?" (Mat_27:11). The question indicates how craftily the priests had gone to work. They had given a political and civil turn to the spiritual claims of Jesus, in order to play on the Roman governor's heart. They had hinted that here was a rival to Tiberius, and Pilate would do well to silence him. Jesus did not deny the accusation. There was a glorious sense in which He was a King. And when the accusers began to heap charge on charge, and Jesus neither retorted nor retaliated, I think that Pilate began to feel His kingliness. He marvelled greatly (Mat_27:14). He had never met a Jew at all like this. There was something subduing in this silent Man. Pilate resolved to do all he safely could to get this strange, sad prisoner acquitted.

Pilate's Wife Attempted Intervention

A powerful influence now appeared to back his efforts—it was the unlooked-for intervention of Pilate's wife. Do you remember how she had heard of Jesus? Well, perhaps in the idle days of Caesarea the tale of His deeds had enlivened the dinner table. Or perhaps that morning, when Jesus was gone to Herod, Pilate had told his wife about the Man. And then, for it was still early, Pilate's wife had fallen asleep again, and God had visited her in a dream. Did God reveal the glory of Christ to her, so that she became a disciple of the Lord? Every Christian in Russia believes that, and the Eastern Church has made a saint of her. At least, while she slept, God touched her conscience, and she saw the unutterable horror of the deed in hand. She wakened in terror—could something still be done? She despatched a messenger to warn her husband. She bade him have nothing to do with that just Man. And again Pilate resolved to do all in his power to get this haunting prisoner acquitted.

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Jesus before Pilate - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

With the Hosannas of Palm Sunday Fresh in Mind, Pilate Tried an Appeal to the Populace

Now Pilate had formed the shrewd suspicion that jealousy was at the back of the indictment (Mat_27:18). Who knew but that the prisoner might be a popular hero—had not the provincial crowds been crying Hosanna to Him? It flashed on Pilate (always thinking of self) that there was one way of releasing Jesus that might rebuild his own shattered popularity. It was a Roman custom at the Passover to liberate one prisoner chosen by the people. And it came as an inspiration to Pilate that if he summoned the people they might ask for Jesus. He summoned the people and laid two names before them—that of Jesus and the other of Barabbas. And we have a hint that Barabbas—which means "son of the father'—had another name, and it was Jesus too! Now we never can tell how the mob would have chosen had they been left alone to make their choice, for the Pharisees were busy in the crowd; they whispered that Jesus was favoured by that odious Pilate. And they so played on these poor city-hearts, and so touched the chords of their cherished prides and hates, that there grew and gathered a hoarse shout, "Barabbas"; and Jesus—"Let Him be crucified." There was no gainsaying a hoarse mob like that. The more they were checked, the wilder grew the clamour. It was infinitely disgusting for a patrician Roman to have any discussion with such shouting beasts. He called for water, and standing on the balcony where all could see him, he washed his hands. It was an act that every Jew would understand. A silence fell on the flushed and eager crowd. What was that they heard from the balcony—Pilate protesting his innocence? Another terrible cry rang out in an instant, "His blood be upon us and on our children." Then Pilate released Barabbas unto them, and when he had scourged Jesus, delivered Him—to be crucified (Mat_27:26).

April 26

Which Is Your Answer? - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?— Mat_27:22

Jesus Is Unavoidable

One possible answer to this question is: I shall have nothing to do with Him at all. I shall ignore Him and pay no heed to Him. If He confronts me when I go to church, I shall deliberately avoid the church. If He steals on me when I am quite alone, I shall do my best never to be alone. If He meets me in certain companies, so that I am very conscious of His presence, I shall be careful to choose my company elsewhere. I shall bar every window against Him. Against His coming I shall bolt my doors. I shall give injunctions to my lodgekeeper that He is never to have access to my avenue. But the extraordinary thing about the Lord is (and there are thousands who can testify to this) that to get rid of Him is utterly impossible. He is inevitable. He is unavoidable. Just because He is love, He laughs at locksmiths. As on the evening of the resurrection day, when the doors are shut, comes Jesus. Just when a man thinks that he is safe, secure from the intrusions of the Lord, He is there, within the circuit of the life, closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet.

Indecisions That Are Not Intellectual but Are Moral

Another common answer to this question is: Really I can't make up my mind. Folk are in perplexity today, and therefore halting between two opinions. Now I want to say, gently but quite firmly, that is often a dishonest answer. The difficulty is not in making up the mind. The difficulty is in making up the will. There are indecisions that are not intellectual: they are moral; they are based on character; they strike their roots into some secret sin. The real problem is not making up; the real problem is giving up. We are all tempted to cloak our moral weakness in the garb of intellectual perplexity. But even when the answer is entirely honest, there is one thing that should never be forgotten, and that is the great fact of life that not to decide is to decide against. A man is travelling in a railway train. Shall he get out at such and such a station? He vacillates; halts between two opinions; really he can't make up his mind. Meantime the train has drawn up at the station, and is off again thundering through the dark—and the man has decided against alighting there, just because he could not make his mind up. Few people calmly and deliberately decide against the Lord. But multitudes do it who never thought to do it, by the easy way of not deciding. And while I would rush nobody's decision (just as I would not let anyone rush mine), a wise man will accept his universe, and never ignore the great facts of life.

Postponed Decisions May Never Be Made

Another common answer to this question is: I shall accept Him by and by. I have no intention of dying out of Christ; but meantime I want to have my liberty. Life is sweet; it is a thrilling world; I want the colour and music for a little. Leave me the gold and glory of the morning, and I shall settle matters in the afternoon. I trust my readers will not be vexed with me if I call that the meanest of all answers: nobody ever likes to be thought mean. Who that had a loved one on a sickbed would bring that loved one a bunch of withered flowers? And yet many seem to be perfectly content in the thought of offering Christ a withered heart—and He has loved us with a love that is magnificent, and has died for us upon the cross, and is the finest Comrade in the world. It is true that there is always hope: a man may be saved at the eleventh hour. "Betwixt the stirrup and the ground, I mercy sought and mercy found." My fear is not that Christ will mock the prayer that is offered at the eleventh hour. It is that when the eleventh hour comes a man may have quite lost the power to pray. There are things that we can do at one-and-twenty that are almost impossible at sixty. At one-and-twenty one may be a footballer; very rare are the footballers of sixty. And to surrender oneself to the Lord Jesus Christ is a far more intense activity than football. Perhaps that is why at sixty it is rare.

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Which Is Your Answer? - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ Will Not Accept Any Place in Your Heart but the First Place

Another answer to this greatest of all questions is the frequent one: I shall compromise. I shall give Him a certain place within my heart, so far as other interests will permit. I have no intention of being out and out; I am not going to carry my heart upon my sleeve. I shall do my duty and lead a decent life, and come to church, and be present at communion. But the strange thing that the meek and lowly Saviour, who was content with a manger and a cottage, is not content with that. Offer Him a place in your life, and the extraordinary thing is that He refuses it. His peace is never won on such conditions; His joy is never a factor in experience. As Henry Drummond put it once, "Gentlemen, keep Christ in His own place—but remember that His place is the first." "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness."

The Decision Must Be Made Here and Now

There is perhaps only one other answer. It is: I accept Him now. Here and now I yield myself to Him, for that is my reasonable service. Paul did that, going to Damascus, and it changed the universe for him. Augustine did that, in the quiet garden, and it freed him from the tyranny of vice. There are millions everywhere, right across the world, who, giving that instant answer to the question, have found life and liberty and power. My prayer is that these words of mine may lead to such immediate decision. "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. Call ye upon Him while He is near." He will never be nearer than just now.

April 27

The Crown of Thorns - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head— Mat_27:29

A Touch of Brotherhood

Amid all the sufferings which Christ had to endure in the last and terrible days of His humility, none has more deeply moved the heart of Christendom than His wearing of the crown of thorns. We have never felt the agony of nails, nor the cruel piercing of a Roman spear. And therefore we can but dimly realise the physical pain of such experiences. But in the torment of sharp and biting thorns we reach the commoner lot of our humanity; within our own remembrance we have that which interprets this experience of our Lord. To us, who have never known the stab of wounds, the wound of a spear is but a faint imagining. It would take a soldier, gashed and bleeding on the field, to have fellowship with Jesus Christ in that. But in a world so thick with tangled briers, and thickest with them where man has had his dwelling, the crown of thorns is like a touch of brotherhood in a scene of lonely and exalted sorrow.

He Suffered Not as Just Another Man, but as the Embodiment of Mankind

But there is something in that coronation that reaches deeper than any homely anguish. There is a meaning more profound than that; more vital in the purposes of God. They platted a crown and put it on His head, and He was the second man, the Lord from heaven. He was not one man more amid the thousands who suffered and slept under that Eastern sky. In Him was the very essence of humanity. In Him the race was gathered and united. In Him was every child who ever played and every woman who ever wept in secret. All human life was hidden in that form whose face was marred more than any man's; all joy that shares its secret with the stars; all passion that hears its echo in the winds. And Him they crowned—Him the representative—Him the embodiment of all mankind, and they crowned Him with a crown of thorns. They did it as we know in merry jest, for they were brutal men and loved a brutal sport. And one of them stole out into the night and plucked the twigs from the garden of the palace. And he rejoiced in being a clever person, and he knew how his ready wit would be appreciated, and he never dreamed he was a girded messenger in the hand of an ordering and sovereign God. Here was a jest, and yet it was reality. Here was mockery, and yet the truth. Here was the coronation of mankind, and on its brow there was a thorny coronet. And that is the deep and universal meaning of it, wrought out by soldiers in their beastly sport, that on the brow of man there is a diadem, yet always it is a diadem of thorns.

Our Crown of Thorns Is a Crown of Glory

Now on that thought I wish to dwell. First we shall think of our crown in being men. "And God breathed upon man," we read in Genesis, "and man became a living soul." It is not in the structure of his bodily frame that man is separated from the beasts that perish. It is not in the cunning deftness of his hand; not in the wonder of his eye or ear. It is in the spirit that controls the hand, and journeys through the gateway of the eye, and watches, like aged Simeon in the Temple, to catch the whispered message of the ear. It is thus that man, moving among the beasts, can say at his darkest, "The hand of God has touched me." It is thus he is crowned with glory and with honour, and made but a little lower than the angels. And yet that crown, so rich and so resplendent that not the basest of our race would forfeit it—is it indeed a crown of thorns? No longer can we be simply happy, as the bird that sings upon the bush is happy. No longer can we cast into oblivion the hour that is past, the hour yet to be. We live in thoughts that wander through eternity; in desires that nothing here can satisfy; in cravings that time can never meet, for they are born of the infinite within. Give to a bird its daily food and water and it will flood its little cage with music. But give to a man the kingdoms of the world and he shah still be restless and unsatisfied. And that is his crown—that kinship with infinitude; that spark of the eternal in his breast—and is it not for man a crown of thorns? It makes him hunger for what he cannot gain here. It sets him craving for what he cannot grasp. It touches as with a sense of pain the beauty of the earth and sky and sea. And man is restless and he knows not why; and he is lonely, though love be all around him; and he is haunted by feelings he shall never fathom, till the day break and the shadows flee away.

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The Crown of Thorns - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Crown of Knowledge Is a Crown of Thorns

Think again upon the crown of knowledge, which rests so royally upon the brow of man. There is a passion in the heart to know, and man will know, though Paradise be lost. Loftier than any search for happiness, purer than any striving to be rich, more glorious than the pursuit of fame, that last infirmity of noble mind—the passion for knowledge in the human breast, unflagging, unsubduable, unending, is more aflame with the Promethean fire than boast of heraldry or pomp of power. It is this that animates the lonely student to scorn delights and live laborious days. It is this that has penetrated to the icy pole, and forced its way across uncharted seas. It is this that has triumphed over persecution, and bid defiance to a world of dangers, and filled with opulence the home of poverty, and vanquished the fell ravage of disease. The greatest thing in all the world is loving. The second greatest in all the world is learning. There is a joy in it, a quickening of the heart, an exaltation of the personality. And yet this precious diadem of knowledge—this circlet after the pattern on the Mount—is it not after all a crown of thorns? The more we know, the more we cannot know. The more we see, the more we cannot see. Let a man be ignorant, and be content, and he may always have music in his prison house. It is when he beats against the prison wall, and clambers upwards to the barred window, that voices reach him which are full of pain, and faces whose secret he shall never read. Every expansion of knowledge has brought joy. Every expansion of knowledge has brought sorrow. It has enlightened and it has perplexed. It has unveiled and yet it has confused. It has made it harder to grasp the skirts of God; to live in unquestioning and simple faith; to keep alive the wonder of the child who feels that the angels are not far away.

Our Knowledge of Nature Is but a Crown of Thorns

In our own time this thorn upon the crown has pierced at two points with peculiar pain. The first is in regard to nature, and the deeper knowledge of her which is ours today. Always shall this world be beautiful, so long as there is a poet's eye to see it. Always, in the meanest flower that blows, shall there be thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. And yet such knowledge has been won for us, of the grim battle behind the veil of beauty, that nature can never be quite the same again, nor the song of birds so innocently sweet. The watchword of nature is not peace but war: its deepest music is the battle cry. Under the peace which broods upon the hills, the bloodiest of strifes is being waged. And the weak are ruthlessly crushed into oblivion: and the strong are utterly selfish in their strength: and every meadow, when we know its story, is as mysterious as the earthquake at Messina. No doubt it will all grow plain again, for now we know in part and see in part. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and our knowledge at its grandest is but little. But the fact remains that in spite of all tomorrows, there is a strain upon our faith today, and the magic of the world is dimmed a little, because we are less ignorant than yesterday. It is not so easy, as long ago it was, to see the divine painting on the lily. It is not so easy to believe that God is present at the funeral of the sparrow. We have our crown, for knowledge is our crown, and only a coward would refuse to wear it; but when it is pressed upon our human brow we find it to be a crown of thorns.

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The Crown of Thorns - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And So Is Our Knowledge of the Bible

The other point at which this pain is felt is in regard to our knowledge of the Bible. A flood of light has been poured upon the Bible, till it is literally a new book today. For centuries the Bible stood alone, not to be questioned nor criticised. Every sentence was of equal value, as verbally inspired by the Almighty. And men accepted it without a doubt, and women pondered it in simple faith, and it was a garden where the Lord was walking, as in the cool of the day He walked in Paradise. And do I say it is not so today? God forbid that I should be so foolish. It is still, and will ever be, the Word of God, in a sense no other book can ever bear. And there is light in it yet for every hour of shadow, and comfort for every day of grief, and all our hope for time and for eternity is rooted in the message of the Cross. No truth can ever overturn the truth. No knowledge can discredit Him who knew. It is our bounden duty to the Lord Jesus Christ, to cast His Word into the fires of criticism. And yet with all the knowledge which that has brought us, knowledge so wonderful and so undreamed of, what pain has visited a thousand hearts, what agony of doubt and of unrest! Some have been tempted to abjure the light, that they might cherish a simple faith again. Some have turned to the critics and have cried, "Ye have taken away my Lord, and I know not where ye have laid Him." And all of us have had seasons of perplexity, not knowing what to think or what to do: only knowing if we were false to facts, we never could be true to Jesus Christ. Do not repeat that maxim of the recreant, "Where ignorance is bliss 'twere folly to be wise." That begs the question, for in a sphere like this, ignorance never can be bliss. Rather believe that knowledge is our crown, and wear it as the diadem of God, and if it pierces and is a crown of thorns, the servant is not greater than his Lord.

And So Is Love

And then, in closing, there is another crown. It is the fairest of them all—the crown of love. It is the only crown that is of amaranth, for love is to last forever and forever. Without it, the brow is always bare, and the heart is always very cold and lonely. But the commonest dwelling is a palace with it, and there is sunshine in the dreariest day. And all the wealth of the Indies will not buy it, and all the might of armies will not force it, and all the hands that reach out of the dark are powerless to pluck it from the brow. And it is not hidden in Some guarded casket, far from the handling of the common people. It is not only above the bright blue sky that there's a crown for little children. There's a crown for them here, where they are loved today, and for their mothers who rejoice in motherhood, and for their fathers who have not been false to tryst and covenant of long ago. Love is the crown of life, for God is love, and everything is a mockery without it. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and to be loveless forever and ever, that is hell. And yet this love which is the crown of life, the bliss of angels and the air of heaven, tell me, is it not a crown of thorns? I think of the patriot who loves his country. I think of the mother with her little children. Has she no fears—no torturing anxiety—no seasons when the sword is in her heart? I think of Jesus Christ who loved us so, and who was mocked and buffeted and slain, who found in love the pathway to His joy and equally the pathway to His cross. Love has its triumph and it has its torture. Love has its paradise and has its pain. Love has its mountain of transfiguration, and its olive garden where the sweat is blood. Love is the secret of the sweetest song; love is the secret of the keenest suffering. Love is the very crown of life—and it is a crown of thorns. And they platted a crown of thorns and put it on His head. That is what God is doing with us all. And shall I tell you why He treats us so, and stabs us in our coronation? It is that, looking upon the brow of Christ, we may all feel we have a Brother there. It is that, watching His patience and His courage, we may be patient and courageous too. It is that we may lift our eyes to where the Lamb is standing at the throne, where there is no more pain; where there is no more curse; where the thorn has vanished from the crown forever.

April 28

The Great Refusal - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

They gave him wine to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink— Mat_27:34

The One Cup Jesus Refused to Drink

It was a kindly provision of the Jews to give an opiate to the condemned. They found their warrant in the page of the Old Testament. Anesthetics in these earlier days were, of course, very far from perfect. There was no method of mitigating pain save by some dulling or stupefying drug. And it was such a draught that was offered to the Lord when He reached the place appointed for His death. This was fittingly the ministry of women. There was a guild of ladies who charged themselves with that. They bought the ingredients and mingled them, and had them ready for the unhappy criminal. And no one who witnessed the scene ever forgot how, when the draught was handed to the Lord, He quietly and deliberately refused it. He took it, and He tasted it. He was always courteous to the kind. He recognised the compassion that inspired it, and to the compassionate He was ever gracious. Then, having tasted it, and having thanked them, He quite deliberately returned the cup. It was the one cup which He refused to drink. Can we understand that swift declination? Can we fathom the reasons of refusal? The answer brings us to the heart of things.

Had He Drunk It He Would Have Marred the Crowning Service of His Life

One thinks, for instance, how the drinking of that draught would have marred the crowning service of His life. The Cross was the crowning service of His life. There is a way of thinking of the death of Jesus as if it were the tragic end of a high story. There are those who take it as the pitiable opposite of all the rich and popular activities of Galilee. But never, through the whole New Testament, is there even a hint of such a view as that—the Cross is the crowning service of His life. Christ deliberately chose that by which He was to be remembered. It was the hour when everything burst into a flame. It gathered up into one splendid action all the redeeming labours of His days. All He had come to do—all He had lived for—all His work as prophet, priest, teacher and king—was crowned in the last service of the Cross. Now, when a man is facing noble service, does he drug his faculties with opiates? Does the surgeon take a drug before the operation? Does the captain do it when the storm is threatening? For such hours, the crowning hours of service, when tremendous demands are going to be imposed, a man must be at his clearest and his best. Had His work been over, our Lord might have drunk that draught. He might have argued that nothing mattered now. That swift refusal, as with a flash of light, reveals the Master's outlook on His death. It was no tragic and pitiable end, to be got through with the minimum of suffering. It was a service to be wrought with His whole being.

Akin to that is the great thought that our blessed Lord died of His own will. "No man taketh it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself" (Joh_10:18). No beast in the sacrificial rites of Judaism ever died of its own will. It was dragged to the altar, struggling and reluctant. It died because other hands were gripping it. And the infinite value of the death of Jesus lay in its being a voluntary sacrifice—I come to do Thy will, O God. Now the singular power of opiates is this, that they interfere with the freedom of the will. Under their influence we are no longer free. We pass under the dominance of others. We are not controlled nor directed from within when the drug has poured its poison through the veins; we are controlled and directed from without. No longer are we self-determined, nor do we act because we will to act. We have yielded up the mastery of life; we have rendered our personality to others. And that was the one thing our Master could not do if, in the perfect freedom of His love, He was to lay His life down of Himself. So He took the cup, and tasted it, for He was always courteous to the kindly—and then, deliberately, He refused it.

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The Great Refusal - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

How Much We Would Have Lost Had He Drunk the Cup

One thinks again how much we should have lost had the Lord drunk of that stupefying draught. We should have lost some of the sweetest passages of Scripture. We should never have heard that wonderful prayer for pardon, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." We should never have known His filial care for Mary, "Woman, behold thy son." We should never have had the ringing, glad assurance wherewith He cried in a loud voice, "It is finished"—the greatest word in the whole of human history. What multitudes have been rescued from despair by the story of the penitent thief, saved and blessed at the eleventh hour, when it seemed too late even for heaven's mercy? Yet of that penitent thief we never should have heard, nor of his cry, nor of the Lord's "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise," had He drunk of that stupefying drug. A poorer Bible and a poorer Christendom—was our Lord conscious of all that? I do not know; the Scripture does not tell us. No man can fathom the consciousness of Jesus. I only know we should have lost forever the seven words upon the Cross, had He not refused to drink the offered draught.

He Wanted to be Our Brother in Suffering

One wonders, too, if in that great refusal our Lord was not thinking of His own. For in spite of all the advances of our knowledge, suffering is still terribly real. There was a friend of my boyhood's home who suffered from an excruciating trouble. He was a genuinely Christian man, who had been active in the service of the Kingdom. And when friends stooped down to catch what he was whispering as he lay at last upon his bed of agony, what they heard was, "He suffered more for me." Was our Lord thinking of that follower when He came to Golgotha that day? Did He resolve that He would be a Brother, down to the very depths of human agony? It would be so like Him if that were in His heart when—facing the untold agony of Calvary—He refused to drink the wine mingled with gall.

April 29

The Darkness at the Cross

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour— Mat_27:45
When Jesus Was Born there Was Light, When He Died There Was Darkness

It is notable that when our Lord was born there was a supernatural light across the sky. It was a fitting prelude to the life of Him who was sent to be the light of men. The shepherds, sitting by their flocks, were surprised by the shining of the heavens. The night became as day about them when the Holy Child was born. All which was God's prophetic symbol of the illumination of the heart of man through the unspeakable gift of the Lord Jesus. The strange thing is that when our Saviour died there was no illumination such as that. If the cradle was a scene of light, the cross was a spectacle of darkness. At the hour of noon, when in ordinary course the sun would have shone in oriental brilliancy, there stretched a veil of darkness on the land. What are the voices that reach us from that darkness? For the darknesses of heaven are always eloquent. Let us meditate on that.

One thinks first how the darkness at the cross speaks to us of the sympathy of God. If someone whom we dearly loved were mangled in some crowded thoroughfare, the agony of it would be vastly deepened for us by the cruel feature of publicity. To have someone dear to us in torture in the center of a gaping crowd must be one of the most awful of experiences. Instinctively we draw a curtain around the sufferings of those we love. We cannot bear to think that loveless eyes should gaze upon their agonies and torments. That is why, when a dear one is in pain, we "steik the door," as Sir Walter Scott put it; that is why, in the ward of the infirmary, the curtain is hung around the bed. God's curtain was the darkness. He had such pity as a father hath. He could not bear that cruel mocking eyes should feast themselves on the tortures of His Son. And in His infinite Fatherly compassion, from the sixth hour to the ninth, He drew the veil around that dying bed.

The Ministry of the Shadow

One thinks again how the darkness at the cross reveals to us the ministry of shadow. Did you ever notice what the darkness did for the men and women who were gathered there? Before that noonday how fearful was the scene! There was malignant and insulting mockery. The passersby reviled the Crucified; likewise the priests and scribes and elders mocked Him. We see a rabble, merciless and cruel, stirred to the point of frenzy by their leaders—and then at the sixth hour came the darkness. Men tell us that in the sun's eclipse there falls a great silence on the world. Hushed is the song of birds, hushed, too, the howling of the beasts. And one has only to read the story of the cross to see how, when the darkness fell, there died away that howling of the beasts. Reviling ceased; mockery was silenced; there was not another syllable of railing. One gathers that the attitude of insolence was changed into an attitude of awe. That mysterious overshadowing gloom chilled the blasphemy of ribald lips and struck a terror into every heart. Uproar became quietness. Insolence passed into an awful wonder. A strange and searching sense of mystery fell on the most frenzied spirit there. And who can doubt that God, who loves the world, and willeth not that any man should perish, was moving in that ministry of gloom? There are things we learn in darkness that we never learn when the sun is in the sky. Sometimes men only see their cruelty, when the other is in the valley of the shadow. It is not when the heaven is radiant that men detect how evil they have been. It is often when the darkness deepens. The darkness at Calvary was gracious. It was the goodness of God leading to repentance. It awed men. It woke their conscience. It led them swiftly to revalue Jesus. I believe that many who on a later day believed in Jesus and rejoiced in Him would date the beginning of their gracious change from the awful darkness at the cross.

The Darkness Speaks of the Mystery of Atonement

Lastly, the darkness at the cross speaks to us of the mystery of atonement. Here is something no human eye can penetrate. So long as the sun was shining every movement of the Lord was visible. Did He lift up His eyes to heaven? They observed it. Did He look round on the crowd? They marked that also. And then the darkness fell, and He was hidden from them, and now let them strain their eyes, however eagerly, they knew not what was transacting in the shadow. They could not follow nor fathom what was forward. There was something they were powerless to penetrate. No husband could go home that Friday evening and say to his wife, "Wife, I saw it all. "And the strange thing is that to this hour no saint or scholar, brooding on the atonement, would ever dare to say "I see it all." No theory exhausts the cross. No intellect fathoms the atonement. No human thought can grasp the height and depth of the greatest of all mysteries. And that shrouding from our finite mind of the infinite meanings of atonement is one of the suggestions of the darkness.

April 30

The Place Where the Lord Lay

He is not here; for he is risen. ....Come, see the place where the Lord lay— Mat_28:6

The Grave Is Associated with Gladness

One does not usually associate gladness with the grave. That is not the experience of men. The sepulchre is the quiet home of sorrow, where the tears fall in gentle, loving memory. How often, visiting a graveyard, does one see somebody lingering by a tomb, taking away the flowers that are withered, tending it with a sweet and careful reverence. Such ministrants are seldom singing folk, with a great and shining gladness on their faces. They are the children of memory and sorrow. Summoned to a grave, we know at once that we are summoned to a place of sadness. Women clothe themselves in decent black, as perceiving the unseemliness of colour. And yet the strange thing is, in the passage now before us, that when the angel wanted to make these women glad, he bade them come and investigate a grave. He did not drive them from the garden, as Adam and Eve were driven from the garden. He did not bid them try to forget their sorrow, and go out and face their duty in the world. He quieted their fears and cheered their hearts, and turned their sorrow into thrilling joy, by bidding them investigate a grave. It is one of the strangest episodes of history. To exaggerate its uniqueness is impossible. It is the only time in all the centuries when a grave is the triumphant argument for gladness. We make pilgrimages to see where poets sang, or where patriots lived, or captains fought their battles. But the angel said (and it brought morning with it), "Come, see the place where the Lord lay."

The Grave Was Empty

One marvellous thing was that that place was empty, though only the angel knew why it was empty. It had not been rifled of its priceless treasure: He is not here—He is risen. The Sadhu Sundar Singh tells of a friend of his who visited Mohammed's tomb. It was very splendid and adorned with diamonds, and they said to him, "Mohammed's bones are here." Ho went to France and saw Napoleon's tomb, and they said to him, "Napoleon's bones are here." But when he journeyed to the Holy Land and visited the sepulchre of Jesus, nobody there said anything like that. That was the marvellous thing about the place. It thrilled these women to the depths. The grave was empty. The Master was not there. In the power of an endless life He had arisen. That empty grave, flung open for inspection, lies at the back of all the Easter gladness which had transformed and revivified the world. In the rising of Christ all His claims are vindicated. In His rising His Father's love is vindicated. His rising satisfies the human heart, which needs more than the inspiration of a memory. The certainty that we have a living friend, who will be with us always in a living friendship, springs from the investigation of a grave. For once, the grave is not a place of sadness. It is the home of song and not of tears. It is the birthplace of a triumphant joy that has made music through the darkest hours. "He is not here; He is risen. He has won the victory over the last great enemy. Come, see the place where the Lord lay."

The Grave Was Orderly

But not only was the place empty. We are also told that it was orderly. There were the linen clothes lying, and the napkin folded by itself. Now, some have held (and perhaps they are right in holding) that this reveals the manner of the rising. The napkin still retained the perfect circle which it had had when wound around His brow. As if the Lord, awaking, had not laid aside these cerements, but had passed through them, in His spiritual body, as afterwards He passed through the closed doors. The older view is different from that, and to the older view I still incline. It is that our blessed Lord, awaking, had deliberately put all these things in order. And that, if it be the true conception, is in perfect harmony with all we know of Jesus, in the decisive hours of His life. What a quiet authority He showed! What a majestic and unruffled calm! Look at Him in the storm or on the Cross. His are no desperate nor hasty victories. And now, in His victory over the last great enemy, there is the kingly touch of a sublime assurance. "He that believeth will not make haste." Drowning men struggle for the surface. Men entombed fight to gain their freedom. But the grave of Jesus bore not a single trace of any desperate or struggling haste. It was orderly. There lay the folded napkin. Leisurely calm had marked the resurrection. It was the quiet triumphing action of a king. Tell me, if men had stolen the body, would they conceivably have left these things behind? Or, if they had, would they not have torn them off, and thrown them down in a disordered heap? But they were folded, and everything was orderly, and there was not a trace of confusion in the grave. He is not here; He is risen.

The Grave Was Fragrant

But not only was it orderly; we must not forget that the place was also flagrant. Spices had been strewn around His body, and the odour of them filled the tomb. The Lord had left the grave, and it was empty. He had left it, and it was orderly. But is it not full of beautiful suggestiveness that He had left it flagrant? For now, through Him who died for us and rose again, there is something of fragrance in the common grave that none ever had perceived before. There is the hope of a life that lies beyond, in the light and love and liberty of heaven. There is the hope of meeting again those whom we have lost. There is the hope of seeing face to face, at last, in a communion that never shall be broken, the Friend and Master to whom our debt is infinite.

May 1

Where They Found Him

And when they had found him— Mar_1:37

Lost and Found—Sinner and Savior!

Meditating on the Gospel story, one of the most enriching of all studies, one notes the great variety of places in which men and women found the Savior. There are people of whom we say admiringly, that you always know where you will find them. At any hour of any given day, you know where they are to be met with. But I venture to say, with the most perfect reverence, no one ever could say that of Christ—that was one of the wonders of His life. Appointments may be precious, but what a charm there is in unexpected meetings, when suddenly in the crowd we see a face, and then the sun shines out even in December. People were always finding Christ like that, suddenly, in very diverse places, and it is of one or two of these I wish to write.

In the Special or Striking Place

First, let us take the wise men from the East. They found Him in a manger. It was the unlikeliest place in all the world for One who had been heralded by stars. I remember, many years ago, going down a coal mine with a friend. We stumbled along a mile of tunnel, and there came on a man working in a hollow. And my guide, who was the local minister, pointing to the stooping figure, said, "That is the brightest Christian in my parish." Then I thought of the wise men from the East finding Christ in that unlikely manger. I thought of the rowers upon the Lake of Galilee finding Him upon the stormy sea. I thought of the penitent thief upon the cross, finding the desire of all the nations amid the shames and agonies of Calvary. That is one of the wonders of the Lord. He is found in the unlikeliest places, in lives where one would never think to light on Him, and in the most unpromising of circumstances. He is found in India and in Manchuria, and among the hills and glens in Livingstonia, and in the savage islands of the Pacific Ocean. How often, studying the Old Testament, is the Lord found in the unlikeliest places—not in the royal splendors of Isaiah, but in seemingly desolate and barren tracts. So the magi, dreaming of kingly furnishings, and of cradles wrought with curious art, found Him a little babe among the beasts.

In the Sacred Place

Then, passing on a little, one remembers how His parents found Him in the Temple. It is a story familiar to us all. The wisest sages of the land were there, but Mary and Joseph never heeded them. The courts were echoing with music, but I question if Mary ever heard it. Like a morning of sunshine after a night of weeping was the sight of Jesus to His mother's eyes, and she and Joseph found Him in the church. Not in the streets where rolled the tide of traffic; not amid the chaffering of bazaars; but in the beautiful place where God was worshipped, with its altar and its mercy seat. And to this hour, wherever folk are gathered to worship God in singleness of heart, the Lord still reveals Himself as present. Through song and prayer, or when the word is preached, or in mystical ways the mind can never fathom, how many become conscious of that presence which makes all the difference in the world? What new meaning does it give to churchgoing if we practice it in quiet assurance that we shall meet the chiefest among ten thousand there?

In the Solitary Place

Then, again, one recalls how His disciples found Him in the solitary place. To me that is of infinite suggestiveness. All the evening before He had been busy, healing sicknesses and working miracles. Virtue had been passing out of Him, for when He gave a cure He gave Himself. Then in the morning, long before the sunrise, He had risen and stolen quietly away—and they found Him in the solitary place. All alone, nobody beside Him, round Him the infinite solitude of nature—and to me there is a parable in that. To many a young man there comes the day when his spirit is thrilled by Emerson or Shakespeare. But Shakespeare and Emerson do not stand alone; there are other essayists and other poets. You find them moving in a glorious company, and you look at them, and call them men of genius; but you find Christ in the solitary place. Genius is a thing of less or more. It has its chosen child in every century. Genius may be an all-subduing flame, or it may only be a tiny spark. But the one thing you can never do with Christ is to regard Him as belonging to a class; you find Him in the solitary place. In the unconditional obedience He calls for, in His unparalleled and stupendous claims, in His immediate knowledge of the Father, in His total sinlessness, Christ stands alone, confronting every one of us. We find Him in the solitary place.

The Standard Places - Along the "Highway of Life"

Lastly, one recalls that there were those who found Him on the common highway. Who does not know the matchless story of the two who found Him on the Emmaus road. There rolled the wagon. There the chariot dashed. There marched the legions of the empire. There was the merchant travelling on business; there the prodigal returning home. It was the common highway, free to everybody, open to the beggar and to the emperor, and there the two disciples found the Lord. Sometimes that common road is very dusty. The heart faints and the feet grow weary on it. We wonder if we shall have strength to travel it, till in the hour of evening we win home. But what a difference it makes, what a blessed and amazing difference, when like the two going to Emmaus, we find Him on the common road! He makes so much of our worrying ridiculous. We forget it all in company with Him. He is so radiant, so full of loving hopefulness, so absolutely sure of God. In that companionship life blossoms. We have courage for the darkest mile. We recapture, even when the shadows fall, the burning of the heart.

May 2

The Touch That Reveals

Jesus... put forth his hand, and touched him— Mar_1:41

We Reveal What We Are by What We Habitually Do

It has been said that if we want to judge a person we should never do it by a single action; but if we must do it by a single action, let that action be an ordinary one. A man is more likely to reveal himself in the kind of thing he habitually does than in the deed of some excited moment. Now touching is a very ordinary action. We touch a thousand things each passing day. We do not prepare ourselves for touching things, as we do for the greater hours of our life. Yet in the touch of Jesus, instinctive and spontaneous, what a deal of His glory we discover! There is an evangel of the touch of Christ as surely as an evangel of the blood. I want you to think, then, of the Master's touch, that in this common, ordinary action we may have some revelation of the Lord.

Christ's Touch Revealed His Brotherhood

First, then, His touch revealed His brotherhood—we find that in the story of the leper. "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean"—and then we read that Jesus touched him. All that the leper expected was a cure. He thought some word of power would be pronounced. He would have been well content to light on a physician; he never dreamed he was going to find a friend. And when Jesus touched him—him the outcast, him whom everybody loathed and shunned—it was something he never could forget. He would go home and tell his wife, "He touched me." He would gather the villagers and say, "He touched me." He had found more in Christ than a physician; he had found a brother and a friend. That touch revealed to him, as nothing else could do, in all the ineffable yearning of his loneliness, that he was face to face with One who understood. That was the revelation of the touch. It revealed in an instant the Savior's loving heart. It revealed His scorn of prudential morality and the self-forgetful courage of His comradeship. It was the kind of thing we are doing every day, for every day we touch a hundred objects, yet here it was the sacrament of brotherhood.

Christ's Touch Revealed His Divine Authority

Again His touch revealed His large authority: it was a quietly commanding touch. That emerges, with quite singular vividness, in St. Luke's story of the widow of Nain. When He met that procession, outside the city gates, the first thing He did was to address the mother. Christ has always a cheering word to say, even in hours when other lips are dumb. And then Luke tells us that He touched the bier, and immediately the whole procession halted. He did not argue or discuss the matter. He did not beg the favor of a halt. Apparently He did not speak one syllable to the men who were carrying the bier. It was His touch that was authoritative. It was His touch that had commanding power—and His touch has commanding power to this day. How many a drunkard has that touch stopped, when heading straight for a dishonored grave! How many a woman has that touch stopped, when she was squandering the possibilities of womanhood! The touch of the Lord reveals His brotherhood, but sometimes it does more even than that. It reveals the range of His divine authority.

Christ's Touch Revealed God's Restfulness

Then once again His touch revealed His restfulness. "Come unto me and I will give you rest." Is not the restful touch exhibited very beautifully when there was sickness in the house of Peter? Simon's mother-in-law was down with fever—of what particular kind we do not know. Her pulse was racing, and her head was aching, and she was restlessly tossing on her couch. And then, we read, the Savior came and touched her, and immediately the fever left her. The "storm was changed into a calm" in the house of Peter as on the Sea of Galilee. Instead of uneasy tossing there was peace. Instead of feverish unrest, repose. The infinite restfulness of Jesus flowed out through the very act of touching, and the touch itself conveyed what it revealed. There are people whose touch is wonderfully restful. That is one sure mark of a good nurse. There are people who can calm us by a touch, just as others by a touch can irritate. But the touch of Jesus is unequalled, in the "fitful fever" of this life, for conveying the restfulness of God.

Christ's Touch Revealed His Uplifting Power

Lastly, His touch revealed His uplifting power: we see that in the case of Jairus' daughter. When He went in the little maid was sleeping—they called it death, but Jesus called it sleep. For Him death meant something far more awful than the closing of those childish eyes. Then He touched her—took her by the hand—and the Gospel tells us that the maid arose: it is the elevating power of His touch. On Goldsmith's monument these words are written—nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. They mean that within the realm of literature he touched nothing that he did not adorn. Outside literature that is not true of Oliver. He had a touch which often tarnished things. It is only true universally of Jesus. He touched water, and the water became wine, and the wine became the symbol of His blood. He touched the lilies, and their scarlet robes grew more beautiful than those of Solomon. He touched language, and common words like talent were lifted up from the bank into the brain. He touched Simon, and Simon became Peter. What sin touches it defiles. What the devil touches he degrades. Everything that Jesus touches is lifted up to higher, nobler levels. Of all which we have a sign and symbol when in Jairus' house that day He took the maid by the hand, and she arose.

May 4

Harvest Thoughts

He went through the cornfields on the Sabbath day— Mar_2:23

Christ Introduces the Evidential Value of the Ordinary

Harvest helps us to recapture the thought of God in the common things of nature. We do not bring what is rare into the sanctuary; we bring the common products of the fields. Our Lord's outlook upon nature differs somewhat from that of the Old Testament. There generally (though not always) God is recognized in the stupendous. In the roaring cataract, in the thunder, in the cedar which overtopped its neighbors, the Jew saw the signature of heaven, and found his testimony to Jehovah. The wonderful thing about our Lord is how He introduced another scale of values. He recognized, as none had done before Him, the evidential value of the ordinary. For Him the sparrows chattering on the housetops, and the mustard plant, and the lilies of the field were the scattered witnesses of God and the inconspicuous sacraments of heaven. It is a great thing to see God in the miracle; it is a greater to find Him in the usual. It is easier to recognize Him in an escape from death than in the recurring mercies of the day. And harvest-time, is very congenial to the mind of Christ, with its passionate insistence on the common. We do not search out rare and curious fruits for the adornment of the house of God. The sheaves, and the red berries, and the common vegetables are enough. Seeing as Jesus saw, we do not need now to limit heaven to the extraordinary. We recognize and adore God in the usual.

Harvest Awakens Us to the Faithfulness of the Creator

Again we are awakened every harvest to the faithfulness of the Creator. While the earth remains, harvest shall not fail. Often in the summer months one wondered if there would ever be a reaping. The days were sunless, and the rain so pitiless, and then the clouds returned after the rain. Yet now, in the appointed time, the golden sheaves are in the sanctuary, and the ancient promise is fulfilled again. In the deeper life of spirit we have to do with a faithful Creator. One may count on constancy in life when there is such splendid constancy in nature. If God keeps trust with corn, which knows no fashioning in His image, He is not likely to break trust with His children. Our blessed Lord was greatly daring, and spoke of the faith of a grain of mustard-seed. Did you ever quietly ask yourself what is the faith of a grain of mustard-seed? It is the faith, through cheerless days, when the sun is hidden and the rain is dripping, that its little flowers are to bloom and to be perfected. Unregarded by the eye of man, untended by any human skill, unsheltered from the storm, exposed to the fury of the elements, that weed keeps on keeping on, in the inborn hopefulness of heaven, and that is the faith of the grain of mustard-seed. All faith roots in the faithfulness of God. We only trust the trustworthy. One of the encouragements of harvest, to all whose faith is flickering, is its message of the faithfulness of heaven.

Harvest Reminds Us That Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone

Again we are reminded by the harvest that man cannot live by bread alone. Bread is needed if man is to exist; more is needed if he is to live. If bread were all that man required, we should never have had the wonder of the harvest-field. Heaven would have rained bread upon the earth, as it rained manna on the wilderness. The beauty of the harvest-field, with all its golden glory in the autumn, is the silent acknowledgment of heaven that man cannot live by bread alone. So when man makes his waterway he rules the straight line of the canal; but when God makes His waterway, He hollows it in the highland brook. And the brook wanders through the heather, and sleeps in pools and ripples on the pebbles; it is water set to beauty and to song. No poet ever wrote on a canal, but Tennyson caught his music from the brook. Yet probably the water in the brook is the same as flows in the canal. It is the way of giving, the heavenly overplus, the recognition of spiritual cravings, which is the hallmark of God's gifts bestowed for the cravings of the body. The body does not need the harvest-glory, nor the song and beauty of the brook. Why then does heaven give like this? I find no answer to that question save in the knowledge of the great Creator that man cannot live by bread alone.

Harvest Reminds Us How God Requires the Services of Man

Harvest too, reminds us how God requires the services of man. Gifts, however freely given, are ours on the basis of copartnership. We call bread the gift of God. In such language we are taught to pray. Science could no more set a loaf upon the table than it could set a daisy on the lea. But if, in a dull fatalism, we left the giving of the loaf to God, omnipotence itself would be unequal to furnishing the staff of life. Bread needs the sower and the reaper. It needs the hands of miller and of baker. The farmer calls for God, and God calls for the farmer. It is that copartnership, that fellowship, that sense of being laborers together, that lies deep in the joy of harvest, as it lies deep in the joy of life.

May 5

The Kind of Man He Was

There was a man there [in the synagogue] which had a withered hand— Mar_3:1

He Was an Ordinary Man

If we center our attention on this man we see him as a quite ordinary person. He was one of the crowd of undistinguished people who go to church on the Sabbath day. Tradition says he was a bricklayer, and quite probably that is true. It at least indicates the old belief that this was a quite ordinary person. And one of the striking things about the Gospel is its perennial and amazing power over ordinary people like this bricklayer. He is not like Lazarus, or even Bartimaeus, whose names have come ringing down the aisles of time. The only name his fellow-worshippers had for him was "the man with the withered hand." And that, from the first, is just the kind of man whom the Gospel has been powerful to handle, and to give back to usefulness again. That is what makes it a universal Gospel—that heavenly power over nameless people. If lack of culture made it ineffectual it could never be preached across the world. And the very fact that it is so preached, and preached with signs and wonders following, proclaims it as of the Son of Man.

His Experience Was Hard and Embittered

Again we recognize him as a person who had had a hard and embittering experience. We feel the force of that more vividly when we turn to the Gospel of St. Luke. One of the charming things about Luke's Gospel is his illuminative touches in the miracles. Luke was a doctor, with a doctor's eye, quick to observe everything pathological. He tells us that the leper was "full of leprosy," and that Peter's mother-in-law was down with "a great fever"; here he reveals that the hand was the right hand. Nor, mark you, had the man been so from birth. This cruel affliction had come upon him gradually. His hand grew stiff; he lost the power of it; gradually it shrank and atrophied. Until now, when people passed him in the street, they glanced at him with commiseration, and called him "the man with the withered hand." One thinks of everything that must have meant in a day when there were no insurance's nor doles. His work gone—his children without bread—his wife a broken-hearted woman. It was a cruel thing, to all appearance meaningless, one of the taunting ironies —the years had brought him, when he was never dreaming of it, a hard and most embittering experience. Such people are always a great company. There will be not a few of them among my readers. Nothing is so hard to bear in life as bitter things that seem devoid of meaning. And the beautiful thing is that it was just that kind of person whom our blessed Savior singled out that day, in a synagogue which would be crowded.

He Had Not Lost His Faith

And then, equally evident is this, that this man had not lost his faith; for first of all the Savior healed him, and faith is indispensable to miracle. Mark you, faith is not always mentioned in the miracles, nor is there any reason why it should be. It seems to me that faith, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Had you asked this man if he had faith, he might probably have answered in the negative, but Christ saw more in him than the man dreamed. I want to say a very comforting thing, out of a long pastoral experience. I think that many people have more faith than they are ever willing to admit. Life is compact of faith; we could. not live without it; we walk by faith through every common day—but it has never been turned upon the Lord. That is why Christ did not ask if he had faith. The man would probably have answered "No." But Christ knew him, and read his inmost heart, and saw there what the man had never seen. That is why often the Lord can work so wonderfully, and perform His miracles of grace, on folk who lament they have no faith at all.

He Had Not Given Up the Church

And then this man had not given up the church: that also is a witness to his faith. After his hard and embittering experience he was in the synagogue on that Sabbath day. One can picture him in the old, happy days coming to church with his wife and children; life was pleasant then, and God was good to him, and there was work and bread upon his table. But now, impoverished—dependent upon others—with hungry children and a despairing wife—could you have wondered if he had stayed away? "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want"—and his wife and children were in want. "The Lord God, merciful and gracious"—had He been merciful and gracious unto him? Quite evidently this was a great big soul, still simply trusting in the God of Jacob, and that the Lord instantly recognized. After that cruel irony, after that seemingly meaningless catastrophe, there he was, in his familiar place, listening to the gracious news of heaven. What need to ask him, "Hast thou faith?" That sweet and simple continuance declared it—and, "being in the way," he won his crown.

He Found That He Could Do What Up to That Hour He Had Deemed Impossible
But I keep the best wine to the last, for there is one thing more to be said about this bricklayer. He was a man who found that he could do what up to that hour he had deemed impossible. Do you not think his wife had often said to him, "Husband, try to stretch your hand this morning"? And he, feeling a little better perhaps, had tried, and always tried in vain. The delightful thing is that when the Lord commanded, somehow or other it was not in vain: the Lord said, "Stretch it out," and he just did it. He did not pray about it, nor discuss it, nor plead that it was utterly impossible. To his own intense amazement he just did it, though I daresay he could never tell you how he did it. But we, who know the mind of Christ far more intimately than the despairing bricklayer, are cognizant of the secret of the Lord. There may be seeming ironies in life: there are none in the commands of Christ. When He enjoins, He enables. When He commands, He gives the power. Despondent, on the margins of despair, with an enfeebled will or withered heart, I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.

May 6

The Responsibility of Hearing - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Take heed what ye hear— Mar_4:24

Frequent Emphasis on the Responsibility of Speaking

On the responsibility attached to our speaking our Lord was never weary of insisting. He has given a significance to human words which has altered their character forever. These syllables, invisible as air, are indestructible as adamant. They are the opposite of the snowflake on the river, which is "a moment white, then gone forever." According to the consistent teaching of our Lord, our words are shaping our eternal destiny, and by them, as by the flower of the life, we shall be judged.

Of Equal Importance the Responsibility of Hearing

But if our Lord insists, as He does constantly, upon the responsibilities of speaking, we must never forget that with an equal emphasis He insists on the responsibilities of hearing. Often when He was beginning a discourse, and sometimes when He was concluding a discourse, He would pause a moment, and look round the company, and say, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." It was a solemn summons to reflection, flung out upon a crowd who were all listening; a sharp and swift reminder to His audience of the responsibility attached to all hearing. There was a sense in which all heard alike, for when Jesus spake, He lifted up His voice. Some carry the cross of ineffectual voices; but I do not imagine it was so with Him. But there was another sense in which every man who listened heard something a little different from his neighbor, and Christ was intensely aware of that divergence. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. "All were listening, yet not all were hearing. Christ knew it intuitively and sympathetically. He read it in the look upon their faces. And so do we learn that He who felt intensely the responsibility which clings to speaking, felt, and often gave expression to, the responsibility which is attached to hearing.

Careful How We Hear and What We Hear

In the parallel passage of St. Luke our text assumes a slightly different form. It is softened and toned down a little, and becomes, Take heed how ye hear. Such an injunction as that is not arresting; it would not touch nor startle anybody. Every Galilean schoolboy knows that if he was half asleep in school, he would be punished. What Jesus actually said was far more penetrative, and would send men home to ponder and reflect; not take heed how ye hear, but take heed what ye hear. It is commonly held, and I think rightly held, that Peter dictated these logia to Mark. And I can fancy Mark suggesting a mistake here, for Mark was young enough to be omniscient. And then I can picture the veteran apostle, who had done forever with betraying Christ, bidding his amanuensis hold his tongue and write exactly as he bade him do. Christ was fond of saying startling things, and this is one of His most startling things. Take heed how ye hear is commonplace; take heed what ye hear is revelation. For it tells us that in the kind of things we hear there is more than the impact of the wave of air. There is our love and hate. There is our ruling passion. There is character and destiny.

We Cannot Choose All That We Hear but Our Soul Can Pass Verdict on All

Of course there is a large and literal sense in which hearing is independent of the will. And of course our Savior knew that perfectly, for He was always in living touch with fact. No man can choose entirely what he hears, anymore than he can choose entirely what he sees. There is an element of necessity in life. It is the ground on which our liberty is built. Everyday there are ten thousand sounds travelling towards us in unseen vibration, and just because God has made the ear to hear, we hear them whether we will or no. He whose lot is cast in the great city cannot be deaf to the uproar of the street. He whose home is on the verge of ocean cannot escape the music of the sea. In the physical impact of all sound there is a region where the will is powerless, and Jesus was perfectly aware of that. The point is that when Jesus spoke of hearing, it was not of the physical impact that He thought. For Him no sound had traveled all its course till it had reached from the ear into the soul. And it is when the soul, in its inherent liberty, passes its inevitable verdict, that the thing we hear becomes a moral thing, carrying an infinite significance. "Two men looked out of the prison bars. The one saw mud, the other stars." It was the same prospect that they looked upon, and yet to hope and to despair—how different! And so to different ears come the same words, identical in cadence and in syllable, and yet how diverse their interpretation in the selective power of the soul. It is not really by the eye we see. It is really by the soul we see. And it is not by the ear we hear. It is indeed by the character we hear. By all we love, by all we have made ourselves, by all we have striven for or lusted after, do we take the words which fall on every ear and color them with heaven or with hell. Take heed what you hear. It is a revelation of your personality. It is in the verdicts which you are always passing that your responsibility begins. Every sermon that is worth a scrap is a revelation of the preacher; but remember that in the thought of Christ it is also a revelation of the hearer.

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The Responsibility of Hearing - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

What We Hear Betrays Our Personality

"Father, glorify thy name," said Jesus, and then there came an answering voice from heaven. And Jesus and the disciples heard it, and all the company who were standing round; and when they heard it, some said it thundered, and others that an angel spoke to Him. Think of it, it was the voice of God: the audible utterance of the Creator. And it fell alike on every listening ear of the men and women who were gathered there. And yet for some of them there was no more in that than the distant roll of thunder in the hills; and for others there was the music of the angels. Each caught the selfsame utterance of heaven. Each heard what he had trained himself to hear. It was the same accent upon every ear, but a different accent within every soul. And that is what Jesus means when He enjoins us to take heed what we hear, for what we hear betrays the personality.

One might illustrate that in many ways. We might think, for instance, of the home. We might think of those childish stammerings of speech that succeed the "only language" of a cry. Those broken syllables—those childish lispings—those faint irrecognisable resemblances—how little these convey of any value to the indifferent or uninterested heart. But to the mother they are full of meaning, and she is never weary listening to them: to her they are the sweetest music in the world. She does not hear them with a fleshly ear. She hears them with a mother's heart. She brings that gift of heaven, a mother's love, to the interpreting of every syllable. And so by what she hears she trains her child; yet in so doing she reveals herself, and stands before us self-confessed in motherhood. Love a person, and his speech is sweet. Hate him, and his every word is barbed. It is by love and hate and jealousy and envy that we record and register the utterance. And thus is it always vital to self-knowledge not only to take heed to what we say, but also to take heed to what we hear.

That strange divergence of the recording faculty has in our modern life one notable expression. It is the bane, perhaps it is the necessity, of the development of party-politics. With party-politics as party-politics the Christian minister has no concern. But with the temper fostered by such politics the Christian minister has every concern. And there is certainly no sphere in modern life which more powerfully or constantly exemplifies that there is no such thing in the affairs of men as what may be called neutrality of hearing. Some great statesman makes a speech, and the news of it is flashed along the wires. And on the morrow in a hundred newspapers it stands precisely as it was delivered. And to one man it is the voice of angels and thrilling as with the music of a trumpet; and to another, hearing the selfsame words, it is sound and fury signifying nothing. Nothing is registered on a clean slate. There is no such thing in life as a clean slate. Nothing falls upon a virgin ear. There is no such gateway to the soul. Men hear by every ideal that they cherish—by every battle they have lost or won—by every ancient privilege they guard—by every dream that they have ever dreamed. All our hope is in our hearing, and all our selfishness is in our hearing; all the right that we have ever sought, and all the wrong that we have ever done. That is the response of human character to everything that falls upon the ear, and our response is our responsibility.

The same thing is always happening in the hearing of the Gospel message. A hearer's judgment of a Gospel sermon is really the judgment of himself. With patient and with prayerful diligence a minister prepares his message. He has his ideals of what preaching is, and from those ideals nothing will make him swerve. And then, often in fear and trembling, and sometimes with a joyous sense of liberty, he gives his message to his beloved people. It is the same message which falls on every ear, and yet how varying is the reception! All that is living in the hearer's breast rises up to meet a living message, and rises in welcome or defiance. Men hear with all that they have made themselves. They hear with every sin that they are clinging to. Every ambition, every joy or sorrow, comes to the hearing of a Gospel sermon. And that is why to one it shall be weariness, and to another a thing to be disproved, and to a third, in hungriness of heart, the message shall be the very bread of angels. It is a great responsibility to preach. It is a great responsibility to hear. I know no teacher except Jesus Christ who has laid such tremendous emphasis on hearing. For Him there is nothing mechanical in hearing. It is the response of what a man has made himself. It is the swift reaction of the character, and character is destiny.

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The Responsibility of Hearing - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

In closing I point to another familiar fact which helps to illustrate our text. It is the fact that in the company of certain people there are things that we should never dream of saying. There are people in whose presence the most indecent tongue never feels one vestige of restraint. There are other people in whose hearing one would not venture on an unseemly word. And all that, to the observant mind, indicates that the kind of thing we hear depends in no small measure on the character. If one were to tell me an objectionable story I should certainly be very much ashamed. But not of the narrator only should I be ashamed: I should be ashamed also of myself. I should be ashamed that he had such thoughts of me, and of the kind of thing I loved to hear, that he would venture on such garbage to amuse me. There are thousands of men in a city such as this, whose lips are far from being what they ought to be. Yet moving among them every day are citizens who are never visited by their indecency. If their life and character were different, it would all be poured into their ear; but being what they are, they never hear it. To a large extent in our daily life we are responsible for what we hear. There are numerous occasions every day when a man is largely to blame for what is told him. He has invited it by his own habits: by all the impress he has made on others. Had he been living a more worthy life his character would have commanded silence. My brother and sister, take heed what you hear. It is often a revelation of yourself. Count it a thing much to be desired that men should honor you with worthy speech. And when they do the opposite, look inward, and find what must be amiss in you, when men whose words are dishonoring to God venture to trade upon a fellow-feeling. There is no refuge in silence for a Christian. Silence may only indicate consent. There is no refuge from the strife of tongues save in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. For in His presence all that is evil dies, and gossip and indecency are silent, and something stirs men to say out their worthiest, as conscious of a heart that understands.

May 7

Taking Him as He Was

They took him even as he was— Mar_4:36

Without What Some Thought as Necessary Provisions

From the first verse of this chapter we infer that Christ had been teaching the people from the boat. He was not particular about His pulpit. He had sat in the ship a little way from land, and spoken so to the crowds upon the shore. Now the teaching was over; He was weary; He was craving for a period of rest. And so He bade His disciples cross the lake, and that is the moment to which our text refers—they took Him even as He was. Perhaps the sky was threatening a storm, and someone had suggested fetching cloaks. Or one had hinted at getting store of victuals if they were going to camp out on the other side. And then Peter, who was dictating this, recalled a certain eagerness in Christ, so that all the kindly hints had come to nothing. They had not waited till any cloaks were brought. They had not sent a messenger ashore. Weary, and probably hungry, they had taken Him even as He was. That is a great task for all of us, and I should like to consider for a little some of the many folk who fail to do it.

Don't Take Jesus as You Think He Ought to Be

First, then, I speak of those who take Jesus as they think He ought to be. It is the temptation of many godly people, and that is the reason why I put it first. They never doubt that Jesus is divine. Their confessing cry is that of Thomas. Then they remember what they learned in childhood, that God sees everything and is omniscient. And so, quite independently of Scripture, and as an inference from the attributes of God, they conclude that it was so with Him. Then perhaps they open Scripture, and they find Him saying, "I do not know." Or they read that He was astonished and surprised, and, of course, omniscience never is surprised. And it perplexes them, and gives them troublesome doubts, as if the writers were tampering with their Lord, and laying violent hands upon His glory. Then comes the temptation to wrest Scripture, and to make it mean what it could never mean, and to evade the sense that any child would gather if you put the Bible in his hand. And to all such I would say quietly, and very gently (for I honor them), "Friend, you must take Him even as He was." Never dream that you are honoring God by imposing your conceptions upon God. Never dream that any thoughts of yours can be worthier than those the Bible gives you. You are a child, a learner, a disciple, and as a child you must come to Christ in Scripture. You must take Him even as He was.

You Can Learn from Nature Only as You Take It as It Is

That this is the only way to get to know Christ I might illustrate in simple fashion. I might think of the knowledge we have gained of nature. For long centuries men came to nature with certain preconceptions in their minds. They had their theories about the world, and to these theories nature must conform. And the result was ignorance, and rank empiricism, and a science that was falsely so called, and the countless errors of the Middle Ages. Then came Bacon—and what did Bacon do? He took nature even as she was. He swept away that fog of preconception. He accepted facts as simply as a child. And the result was a real and growing insight into the mystery of God in nature, which has irradiated all the world for us. For us the wayside weed is wonderful, and the tiniest insect is compact of miracle. For us there is a glory in the heavens such as was never dreamed of by the Psalmist. And all the knowledge has been brought to us because these gallant toilers of the dawn had the courage to take nature as she was.

Take Him as He Is, Not as Others Present Him

Again, I think of those who take Him as they find Him in the books they read. Our modern literature is full of Christ even though His name be never mentioned. There is a Christ of Browning and of Tennyson. There is a Christ of Mr. Wells. There is a Christ of the novels of George Eliot, and of the sermons of Newman and of Spurgeon. Yet all these are but imperfect paintings, and the yearning heart can never rest in them. To know Him and to trust Him and to love Him we must take Him even as He was. That was what the wise men from the East did. In their books they had been told of Him. And then the star appeared and led them to the cradle—and the cradle was but a sorry manger. Many a scholar would have gone home again, preferring his scholarly dreams to this reality; but they took Him even as He was. Took Him in the manger, with the ox and ass as His companions—gave Him the gold and frankincense and myrrh—worshipped and adored. These students of all the learning of the Orient did what every student has to do—they took Him even as He was.

Don't Take Him as You See Him in the Lives of Others

Lastly, I think of those who take Him as they see Him in the lives of others. Someone has very truly said that a Christian is the Bible of the street. There are multitudes who judge of Christ by what they see in His professing followers. And very often that is a noble witness, fraught with an influence incalculable, and rich in commendation of the Master. A godly and consecrated father is a noble argument for Christ. A Christlike mother, in a worrying home, is more convincing than any book of evidences. But the pity is that you and I who trust Him are often so very different from that. And to all who are watching us and judging Him by us, I say, "Friend, you are not dealing fairly with the Master. You must take Him even as He was." You would never dream of judging Chopin by the schoolgirl's rendering on her poor piano. Is it perfectly fair to judge of Christ by the imperfect rendering of His learners? What a difference it would make for multitudes if only, like the disciples on the lake, they would take Him even as He was.

May 8

The Ultimate Discovery

And they went out to see what it was that was done. And they come to Jesus— Mar_5:14, Mar_5:15

They Went Out Searching and They Lighted on Jesus

As many of my readers are aware, there are no verses in the Greek New Testament. The text runs on without a single break. The verses of our English Bible have proved a great help to Scripture study. For thousands of humble folk they have made the Bible easier to read. But sometimes they obscure the sense, and cut right across some striking thought, as in the passage we are considering today. One pictures the swineherds, trembling and aghast, hurrying to the city with the news. One pictures the crowd, angry and unbelieving, pouring out of the city to the shore. Or as Mark puts it (and as he wrote the words don't you think their depths would dawn on him?), they went out to see what was done, and come to Jesus. The extraordinary thing is how often we do that. We go searching, and we find the Lord. We pursue our inquiries wherever they may lead us, and we light on Jesus, central and dynamical. We might illustrate that in many different ways.

Our Present Education and Civilization Would Lead Us Back to Christ

Think of national life, for instance, as we have it in our own land of Scotland. Men visit our shores from many countries to see what has been done in education. They inspect our splendid schools and colleges, they learn of our national passion for education, and then, pursuing inquiries, they discover that it runs back to the genius of John Knox. But John Knox was not a teacher, he was a mighty preacher of the Lord; and so, going out to see what has been done, men come to Jesus. Or, take the United States, with their vitality and their idealism, with their gallant effort to stem the tide of drink, with their extraordinary liberality. And when one asks inquiringly what lies away at the back of this large life, one comes to the Pilgrim Fathers. That is to say, one comes to men and women who gave up everything for the sake of the Lord Christ, who left their homes and the green fields of England, in simple and splendid loyalty to Him. So, going out to see what has been done in that virile and magnificent republic, one comes, like the Gadarenes, to Jesus.

Or, again, think of missions in their industrial and civilizing aspects. Take such a mission as Livingstonia. Go out to see what has been done there, and you find schools and colleges and hospitals; you find trade, and boats upon the lake, and highways, and cultivation of the soil. And then, back of all that civilization, where fifty years ago was blood and terror, you see the rugged face of Dr. Livingstone. Now Dr. Livingstone was not a trader. He was something more than consul or explorer. He was a man inspired by the Lord Jesus, and eager for the coming of His Kingdom. So, going out to see what has been done in the very heart of Africa, you come to Jesus. Multiply all that by fifty from the New Hebrides to Madagascar. Everywhere a growing civilization, and at the back of it—the Lord. It is facts like that, and the world is full of them, that bow me at the feet of Christ and make me cry, "His name shall be called Wonderful."

Our Poetry, Architecture and Music Go Back to Jesus

Nor should we forget that we make the same discovery when we engage in the pursuit of beauty. Poets and artists must remember that. I think of poetry, that daughter of the gods. Now, where did English poetry begin? Not in the love of nature, but in the inspirations of religion. I think of architecture, that "frozen music," and I am back to church and to cathedral, each fashioned in the likeness of the cross. When the common people lived in hovels, when Scottish palaces were only keeps, when domestic architecture was undreamed of, when private dwellings were comfortless and shapeless, art, genius, increasing toil were being lavished in the service of the faith. I think of painting, that most heavenly art, and I discover at the birth of modern painting not the portrayal of mountains or of forest, but the figures of Mary and her Child. Go out to see what has been done in the noble realms of English poetry. Go out to see what has been done in painting, architecture, music. The strange thing is that whenever you do that, never dreaming what you are going to find, like the Gadarenes, you come to Jesus.

At the Back of Our Social Reform Is Jesus

Again, one thinks how true this is in the great sphere of social reform. At the back of it all do we not come to Him? Who led the way in the reform of prisons? It was certainly not your general philanthropist. It was men like Howard, whose hearts the Lord had touched, and who had felt the power of His compassion. Who toiled for the emancipation of the slave? It was not your champion of the rights of man. It was men like Wilberforce, inspired by the conviction that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Go out and see what has been done for women—go and inquire what has been done for children—go and cast your eyes on Quarrier's Homes—go and measure the walls of our infirmaries—and you come, not to a general philanthropy, nor to any natural tenderness of heart: like the Gadarenes you come to Jesus. Go down into the slums of our great cities, and tell me who is toiling there. Moral philosophers? I rarely meet them.

Doctrinaires? They are at home discussing social problems. I light on Christian men and Christian women. I light on the Salvation Army, with its magnificent battle-cry of "Blood and Fire." When the drunkard is made himself again, when the poor woman of the street is rescued, when little homes that once were pigsties become models of neatness and of cleanness, I bear my witness, after a long ministry, that in ninety-nine cases in the hundred at the back of everything you come to Jesus. Ally yourself with Him. He is the only One who gets things over. Why waste youth and energy and brains in allying yourself with anybody else? With life so short, with so much yet to do to "build Jerusalem in our pleasant land," it is the sanest and most practical of politics to fight under the banner of the Lord.

May 9

Why She Was Treated So

But the woman fearing and trembling…came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace— Mar_5:33-34

Why Didn't the Lord Let Her Go Unnoticed?

One is ready to think it would have been kindlier treatment if our Lord had let this woman slip away. It would have been more consistent with His gentleness. Probably she was a stranger in the place; all the traditions point to that. She was a modest and retiring woman, not in the least eager for publicity. And the hidden cross that she had borne for years had been of a kind that made her haunt the shadows, as one burdened with a thing of shame. Was it not a little unlike our blessed Lord to insist on an overt avowal—to make her, sore against her will, the observed of all observers? Would it not have been kinder to let her go quietly home, rejoicing in the fact that she was healed, though nobody knew anything about it? Our Lord Himself had often felt that deep imperious craving for retirement. Thronged by the crowd, He had often stolen away to where beyond the voices there was peace. And yet He refused to let this woman go; He summoned her forth, and made her tell her story. He brought her in confession to His feet. One perhaps wonders why He acted so; it seems so different from His usual tenderness. Let us try to find the loving reasons for it.

She Would Have Thought She Was Cured by Magic

First, then, had He let her steal away she would have carried wrong conceptions to her grave. She would have thought she had been healed by magic, and would never have known the loving will of Christ. That her faith was a strong and conquering faith is written so that he who runs may read. She did not expect to be made a little better. She believed that at a touch she would be whole. And this, though she had never seen the Lord, and had no parallel to rest her faith upon, for all this happened early in Christ's ministry. It was a very strong and splendid faith, yet intellectually it was a faith of ignorance. She evidently thought there was some magic power resident in the garments of the Master. She believed that without the consciousness of Christ, and the loving cooperation of His will, wonderful things could be wrought upon her body. Now cannot you see what would have happened if the Lord had let her quietly slip away? She would never have known the loving will of Christ; she would have thought her cure was automatic. And our Lord summoned her forth, and made her tell her story, that she might be lifted out of the realm of magic and brought into living relationship with Him. It seemed cruel, but it was really kind. It sent her home with loftier thoughts of Him. She would never talk of the wonder of the tassel; she would always talk of the wonder of the Lord. Permitted to steal away without confession, she would have said exultantly, "I've found a cure." Now the woman cried, "I've found a friend."

She Would Have Never Been Sure of Jesus

Then had she been allowed to steal away she never would have been quite sure of Jesus. She would have been haunted, to the last hour she lived, by the suspicion that she had done something wrong. You will notice that when the Savior summoned her she came to His blessed feet with fear and trembling. It was not her dread of the crowd that made her tremble; it was something deeper in her woman's breast. It was her fear that she had stolen something; that she had filched a cure and acted surreptitiously; that she was going to hear the accents of rebuke. Now suppose she had gone home again, without the swift compulsion of confession, cannot you see at a glance that all her life she would have been haunted by that chilling fear? Healed, she would have been unhappy; her conscience would have continually pricked her; she would never have heard that Christ was in her neighborhood, but she would have fallen to fear and trembling once again. It was impossible for Christ to let her go like that, however great the pain of her avowal. He was not content that the woman should be healed; He wanted always to think of her as happy. That was why He insisted on confession; she must tell Him all and see His look of love; she must hear Him saying to her, "Daughter." She was the only woman to whom He ever gave that title. He never called anybody else His daughter. She would have missed all that if she had got her way. To learn it, she had to take the way of Christ. And always, if we want to learn His love, and to have done forever with our fear and trembling, like her we have to take the way of Christ.

She Would Have Been Powerless for Service

Lastly, if He had let her have her way this woman would have been powerless for service. And nobody is healed just to be happy; we are saved that we may save. In a brief space of time He would be dead, and dead, where were His garments now? What Roman soldier had them in his chest, to be carried home to his family in Britain? The garments were gone, their wearer had been crucified, and what testimony had she to bear for Christ to the children of disappointment and disease? She would have had no power for witness-bearing; she could never have spoken of the love of Jesus; she never could have cried to weary, broken people, "The Master looked on me, and called me daughter." And Christ was so eager she should be a witness-bearer, in places where His foot had never trod, that He imperiously insisted on confession. Now she would never talk of magic; she would talk of the wonderful welcome she had got; she would talk of the love that streamed on her poor heart, which was better than the healing of her body. Had she stolen away she would have had her gift, but she never would have known the Giver. For that she had to stand forth and confess.

May 10

Sleep and Death - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth— Mar_5:39
This thy brother was dead, and is alive again— Luk_15:32

Death as a Fact and What Christ Thought of It

I wish to speak for a little while on some of our Lord's references to death. I wish to discover in what light He viewed that dark experience of our mortality. You will observe I am not asking your attention to the question of the life beyond the grave. That is another theme. But here we shall look at death just as a fact, as joy and sorrow and love and hate are facts, and ask what our Savior has spoken about that. For those of us who believe in Christ as Lord, it is supremely important to discover that. But I venture to think it is scarcely less important for those of you who take a lower view. For the words of Jesus Christ, whoever Christ was, have influenced the world and altered history in a way as profound as it is unapproached. When you think, whoever Jesus was, of the tremendous influence of His words, when you think that they will still be winged when yours and mine are dead, it becomes the duty of every thoughtful person, who makes any pretence to the balance of true culture, to give the words of Christ his first attention. It is important to know what Plato thought of death. It is important to know what Hegel thought of death. But for men and women living in a world that has felt the terrific impact of Christ's words, to know what Christ has said on such a theme is the primary duty of intelligence.

Jesus Spoke Little of the Fact of Death

Now when we study Jesus with this end in view, there is one thing which immediately impresses us. It is that Jesus in His ministry spoke comparatively little about death. Familiar with it in the home at Galilee, for Joseph had died when Jesus was still there; lighting oftentimes in boyish wanderings on ghostly sepulchres among the hills, there is no sign that He brooded upon death, nor let it color His imagination, nor that He lived, as men have sometimes lived, with the shadow of death forever by His side. That He spoke much of the life beyond the grave is a fact, of course, which nobody disputes. There is indeed a powerful school today which interprets everything in terms of eschatology. But of the fact of death— that shrouded enemy which lays its icy hand on all humanity— of that He spoke comparatively little. Now that at once separates Jesus from those Stoical teachers who were already beginning to take the ear of Rome. For they, as Bacon has so wisely put it, made death more terrible by dwelling on it so. They thought to conquer death by gazing at it, till familiarity should beget contempt, and instead of contempt there came a haunting terror on the men and women of the Roman Empire. A similar thing has happened more than once in the long story of the Christian Church. Inspired by the passion of asceticism, men have feasted their eyes upon the grave. And the singular thing is that when we turn to Jesus, with whom the story of the Church began, you find wonderfully little of all that. Whatever Jesus feasted His eyes upon, He never feasted them upon the grave. You can never imagine Him a mediaeval saint, clasping a human skull within a charnel-house. But you can always imagine Him among the fields, feasting His heart upon the bending corn, and on the innocent merriment of little children, and on the first glimmerings of human love.

Jesus Speaks Little of Death in Spite of Its Universality

This comparative silence grows more notable when you bear in mind two considerations. The first is the old familiar commonplace that death is a universal thing. There have been teachers who have avoided universal themes and loved to handle exceptional experiences. Some of our finest plays, like Hamlet, deal with experiences of the rarest kind. But Jesus deliberately chose the universal, and dealt with what is common to humanity, and touched with the finger of a son of man the strings that God hath put on every harp. The sorrows He soothes are universal sorrows; the joys He shares in are universal joys. The questions He answers are universal questionings; the hopes He kindles are universal hopes. Yet here is death, the universal leveler, stealing with equal foot to every door, and Jesus speaks very little about that.

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Sleep and Death - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Jesus Speaks Little of Death in Spite of Its Significance to Himself

The other consideration which makes the silence notable is the significance to Christ of His own death. That His own death was profoundly important in His eyes no unbiased reader of the Gospels can deny. When He was deeply stirred He spoke of it. It was the one topic of the transfiguration. He watched with eagerness for every sign of readiness that He might unfold its meaning to the twelve. And yet though He saw the coming of the cross, and knew that His triumph was to include a grave, the theme of the grave was rarely on His lips. Even when death was standing on the threshold, it did not form the theme of His discourse. It is not death that moves with awful mien through the glorious discourse of the upper chamber. It is a message more gladdening than death—it is the music of celestial joy—it is tidings of peace that the world cannot give, and at its darkest cannot take away. On that night on which He was betrayed, the shadow of death was on the heart of Jesus. On that night, under the olive trees, He cried, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." Yet on that night, with the finger of death upon Him, the talk of Jesus was no more of death than in the glad days when He had watched the lilies, and taken the little children in His arms.

His Silence Could Not Be Interpreted as Indifference

Now that is very suggestive and significant, and it clearly calls for some interpretation. Let me dismiss in passing one interpretation which might possibly occur to certain minds. It might occur to some that this reserve of Jesus was only the superior silence of indifference. It might seem that Jesus spoke little about death, because He scorned the very thought of death. But I venture to say that if you take the Gospels, and study the story of the Master there, you will dismiss that supposition as untenable. When you and I are silent on a matter, it does not necessarily mean we are indifferent. Sometimes the subject of which the heart is fullest is that on which the lips are strangely still. And as there are thoughts that lie too deep for tears, so are there thoughts that lie too deep for utterance, and men detect them not by any speech, but by a look, or a handclasp, or a tear. Now think of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, when He was face to face with death. Look at Him—what is that upon His cheek?—it is the dewy glistening of tears. And then a bend of the road reveals the sepulchre, and there is death, in ravage and in victory, and Jesus groans in spirit and is troubled. Whatever else that means, there is one thing that it emphatically means. It means that Jesus, indifferent to so much, was not indifferent to the final tragedy. He wept; He groaned in spirit; He was troubled. He shared in the anguish of the orphaned heart. Whatever His silence, it was not the silence of a serene and philosophic scorn.

Jesus Spoke of Death as Sleep

Dismissing that, then, we may advance a little if we remember Jesus' favorite name for death. I think there can be little question that the familiar name of Christ for death was sleep. I do not insist on the raisings from the dead, though they at once suggest a waking out of sleep. I do not insist on that, though all these raisings at once suggest the thought of sleep to me. But I keep close to Christ's recorded sayings, on two occasions when He confronted death, and on both of them He spoke of death as sleep. Entering the darkened home of Jairus, He said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth." Learning the news that Lazarus was gone, He said at once, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." And these expressions, springing from the heart, and of an authenticity that none can question, tell me that Jesus spoke of death as sleep.

He Did Not Speak of Death as Sleep Poetically

But now it will occur to you at once that this is a thought common to all poetry. I know indeed no literature in the world where death is not spoken in terms of sleep. You will find it in the philosophy of Greece, and you will light on it in the poetry of Rome. The Jews were perfectly familiar with it, for they spoke of their dead as sleeping with their fathers. Dante accepts it as a commonplace; Chaucer speaks of the living and the sleeping; and Shakespeare tells us in words that are immortal how our little life is rounded with a sleep. Now the question I want to ask is this: was our Lord talking as a poet talks? Was He simply using a poetic figure when He said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth"? I have been led to think, for reasons I shall give you, that Christ was not talking as a poet talks, but was using language of intense reality. I certainly hold that Jesus was a poet. I think He was a poet to His fingertips. If poetry be simple, sensuous, and passionate, there never was speech more poetical than His. And yet, granting all that without reserve, I am constrained to think that when Christ spoke of death as sleep, men felt that He spoke, not in poetic figure, but in sober earnestness and truth. Let me suggest to you this one consideration, based on the passage at hand.

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Sleep and Death - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

If I Were the One to Call Death Sleep

Suppose I were called, as I am often called, to a home that was under the shadow of bereavement. Suppose that a daughter of twelve years old were dead, and that I went in gently to where the body lay. What words would rise more naturally to my lips, when I had drawn the napkin from the brow, than just the words "How peacefully she sleeps"! They have risen to my lips a score of times, and never once were they misunderstood. I have said them to fathers, to mothers, to brothers, and to sisters, and found I was only uttering what they felt. There is never a trace of misinterpretation there is always immediate and full response—when in the presence of the quiet dead we whisper that the little life is rounded with a sleep. But now suppose I turned to the sorrowing father, and said with a glowing eye, She is not dead! Suppose I turned to him, and with tremendous earnestness said, "I tell you she is not dead, but sleeping." First he would look at me with incredulity; then it would flash on him I was beside myself, and then, in the frantic unsettlement of grief, the house would echo with derisive laughter.

Those Who Heard Him Knew He Meant What He Said about Death Being But Sleep
I want you to remember that that is exactly what happened to our Lord, and that such conduct is utterly incredible if Christ was speaking as a poet speaks. The Jews were far more poetical than we are, and they loved metaphor and all poetic imagery, and they were perfectly familiar from their literature with the figure of death as the last sleep. And yet when Jesus stood beside the dead, and said what all of us have said, "She sleepeth," somehow they utterly misunderstood Him, and heaped on Him the insult of derision. Others had come to Jairus' house that morning, and had said gently, "How peacefully she sleeps." And the father and mother, looking on their loved one, had understood at once that kindly sympathy. And then came Christ, and said, She is not dead—I tell you she is not dead, but sleeping—and Him they laughed to scorn. That scorn to me is utterly inexplicable if Christ was speaking in poetic metaphor. There must have been something in His eye and tone that challenged the plainest evidence of sense. They felt instinctively that in the mind of Christ their little daughter was not dead, but living, although her eyes were closed, and all her fingers motionless, and there was not a quiver of breath upon her lips. In other words, this was not death to Christ, and every hearer felt He meant it so. Whatever death was in the thought of Jesus, it was not this ceasing of the heart to beat. And that is why these lovers of all imagery, who would have understood us had we said she sleeps, poured upon Him their frenzy of derision.

For Christ Spiritual Death Was More Real Than Physical Death. Hence the Latter He Called Sleep

And so am I gradually led to the conviction that this was not what Jesus meant by death at all. In the habitual thought of that supreme intelligence, death was something darker and more terrible. It was not death to Him when the silver chord was loosed, nor when the pitcher was broken at the fountain. It was not death to Him when the strong men bowed themselves, and when the daughters of music were brought low. All that was life, though it was life asleep, in the mighty arms of the eternal God, and death was something more terrible than that. The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth; but— this my son was dead and is alive again. The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth; but— let the dead bury their dead. The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth; but— he who believeth upon Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Christ did not find the dead in Jairus' house, nor in any sepulchre among the Galilean hills. He saw the dead where men and women were— in the synagogue and in the market and the home. And so Christ does not find the dead where the flowers are withering on the grave, but here where men are, and where women are, who have a name to live and yet are dead. If half the anguish of the open grave were felt for those who are living useless lives, if half the tears that fall upon the coffin fell upon hearts that are frivolous or obdurate, not only would we be nearer Christ in His deepest thought about humanity, but we should know more than we have ever known of the joy that cometh in the morning. For love and faith and prayer are powerless to bring again the dear one who is lost. No lifting heavenward of anguished hands will give us back again the one we loved. But "this my son was dead and is alive again"—and there is music and dancing in the home tonight, and there is joy in heaven, where the Father dwelleth, over one sinner that repenteth.

May 11

The Thoughtfulness of Jesus

He commanded that something should be given her to eat— Mar_5:43

The Manifestation of the Divine and Human Jesus

This is an exquisite and charming instance of the thoughtfulness of Jesus. Such a detail would never have been given had this been a story of the imagination. Jairus and his wife would forget everything in the excitement of having their daughter back again. Probably they would betake themselves to prayer, for God comes very near in life's great hours. And as for the disciples who were present such an awe would rest upon their hearts that they could only be silent and adore. In that environment of awe and wonder, in that moment of spiritual exaltation, when the power of God was manifestly present, and the chamber vibrated with heaven, it is an exquisite and charming touch, which even genius could never have imagined, that Jesus ordered the maid a little food. Great miracles are apt to seem remote. They are transacted in an alien atmosphere. They often carry the guise of unreality in their aloofness from our common days, and then there comes quite unexpectedly, some little homely and familiar incident, which is wonderfully helpful to our faith. Such is the thoughtfulness of Jesus here. It touches that chamber with reality. It clothes the Son of God with the vesture of the Son of Man. It was divine power which conquered death and commanded the maiden to arise. It was the thoughtfulness of a loving human heart which commanded that something be given her to eat.

In the Busy Life He Remembered the Details of Love

The thoughtfulness of Jesus grows more wonderful when we remember certain aspects of His ministry. It was, for instance, as the Gospels show us, one of constant movement and excitement. In quiet and uneventful lives there is always a margin for remembering. The slowly passing hours give ample leisure for the thoughtfulness of loving hearts. But when the days are broken and the life unsettled by the throng and pressure of activities it is always difficult to find a place for the little thoughtful services of love. Such thoughtfulness in a career of movement call for steady mastery of life. They demand a spirit that knows interior rest though every day be broken into fragments. It is one thing to be thoughtful when "time as it passes has a silken sound"; it is another when the storm is up. Now the mark of the whole ministry of Jesus is an unceasing and absorbing movement. How constant are the calls upon Him! How broken and crowded are His days! And one must remember that, and the pressure of it all, on that pure spirit of His, familiar with eternity, to feel aright the wonder of His thoughtfulness.

Purpose Motivated Thoughtfulness

Again one must not forget that Jesus' ministry was controlled and dominated by a mighty purpose. The pondering mind will recognize at once how that heightens the value of His thoughtfulness. When life is dominated by some exalted purpose it is very apt to be blind to little things. The runner has not leisure for the flowers that may be blossoming beside the track. Absorption in a single aim gives vision for everything within that aim, but often blindness to everything without it. How many men, absorbed in making money, miss the delight of daily wayside kindnesses! How many, in a burning zeal for holiness, ignore the trifles for which hearts are yearning! It is a rare thing when any man or woman, with a single passion burning in the heart, has a heart at leisure from itself for "little nameless unremembered" services. Now Jesus was not a happy dreamer. He did not wander unconcerned across the world. He had a baptism to be baptized with, and He was straitened till it was accomplished. And the beautiful thing is that in a life like that, intense with the intensity of heaven, He had a heart that always was at leisure for the fragrant things that blossom by the road. He did not miss the lilies. One who misses the lilies misses God. He did not miss the weed upon the hedgebank, nor the play of children, nor the widow's mite. And in Jairus' house, where the power of God was present, and everyone was hushed in wondering awe, He commanded that something be given the child to eat.

He Thought of Others in Spite of His Own Suffering

Lastly, one should remember that His was a life of suffering and sorrow. The sky was sometimes black as pitch for Him, and His soul sorrowful even unto death. One hears people speak sometimes as if suffering had a sanctifying power. Suffering in itself has no such power. Its native virtue is to make us selfish. All suffering, unless the grace of God be working, tends to contract the soul and to impoverish the treasury of life. How hard it is to think of other people when pain is laying its grip on every thought! How often suffering folk are selfish folk, and can talk and think of nothing but themselves! It is one of the triumphs of the grace of God when anyone who has to suffer sorely has a heart at leisure for those little kindnesses that sometimes mean far more than gold or silver. Now was ever sorrow like unto His sorrow? His suffering was far worse than yours or mine, for He was sinless, and nobody can fathom the capacity for suffering in sinlessness. Yet right through His ministry, from first to last, what deep unselfish thoughtfulness for others! It shames us while it lifts us heavenward— the thoughtfulness of Jesus.

May 12

What Jesus Learned at His Trade

Is not this the carpenter?— Mar_6:3

We Learn from Our Trades

Every man learns certain lessons from the trade in which he is engaged. Nobody is unaffected by his business. The farmer is very different from the sailor, because the one is a farmer and the other is a sailor. Each has his own outlook upon things; each dwells in his own universe. As you can often tell a man's profession by certain indications in his body, so also by indications in his soul. Now we are faced with the great fact that our blessed Savior was a carpenter. Through His youth, and on to the age of thirty, Jesus was the Carpenter of Nazareth. And we may be certain, from all we know of life, that these years of carpentering would leave their mark on the public ministry of after days. They would suggest much; they would give Him certain insights; they would impress certain truths upon His mind. It was not alone in the house and in the field that He was gathering material for His teaching. He was learning things, just as we all learn them, in the quiet discharge of daily duty, which were to help Him when everything was changed. Never forget that Jesus was a poet, just as His life was God's most perfect poem. Every common task at which He wrought would flash out into diamonds of significance. The village shop was not only full of logs; for Him it was also full of parables, as was His mother's kitchen, and the garden, and the fields.

As a Carpenter the Lord Learned from a Log. How Much There Can Be Hidden

One truth I reverently think that He would learn was how much may lie hidden in a thing. Picture the waggoner delivering a tree that had been ordered by the Carpenter of Nazareth. The Carpenter would begin to work it up; He would lop off the branches and the twigs; He would saw it into planks and blocks; He would use it for the orders He was executing. And by and by, round His little workshop, would be ranged the various things that He had made—a plough, a chair, a wooden bowl or platter. What! a plough hidden in that tree— that rough, gnarled creature of the forest? And platters and bowls (to feed the children with) hidden in that swaying tree? Then the Poet-Carpenter would halt a moment, and dream, and say quietly to Himself, "Ah, how much may lie hidden in a thing." Did He forget that when carpentering days were over? Was not that one glorious secret of His hopefulness? He saw the Kingdom in a mustard seed. He saw the citizen of heaven in a child. He saw, as no one else has ever seen, how much lay hidden in the human heart, and in the lives and characters of common men.

It Takes Pains and Time to Transform a Thing

Another truth I believe that He would learn is what pains it takes just to transform a thing. That would be deeply graven on His heart. Picture a farmer coming to the shop and asking the Carpenter to make a plough. An Eastern plough was a very simple thing. The farmer would sit there till it was made. "Friend," the Carpenter would say to him, "my ploughs are not manufactured while you wait. It is a long and weary business making ploughs! See that tree? I have got to transform that tree. I have got to change that tree into your plough. Who can tell what faults and flaws are in it? Leave Me alone. I have to wrestle with it." With such material, so rude and so intractable, one thing the Carpenter would learn was this: that pains and patience go to all transforming. Was that forgotten when carpentering days were over? Think of the first disciples. Not in one hour did Simon become Peter. John was not made an apostle "while you wait." There is nothing more wonderful in history than the long, patient, and persistent way in which the Lord transformed these followers of Galilee. In a single instant He could heal the leper. In a single instant He could raise the dead. It took many a thousand weary instants to transform Simon into Peter. And what more beautiful training for that ministry than to be sent of God until the age of thirty to toil as the lowly Carpenter of Nazareth. Perhaps one day, when things were very difficult, and the disciples were like wayward children, Jesus espied a plough that He had made, and remembered all the pains that it had cost Him. And then He would thank His Father that He had been a carpenter, for if it took all these pains to make a plough, how infinitely more to make a Peter. We are all in the hands of One who was a carpenter. That is a fact we never should forget. He is a thorough workman. He never spares Himself. He is eager for perfection in His workmanship. And some day, when His work on us is over, and we are perfected in His own perfect way, we shall say, "Is not this the Carpenter?"

The Finest Things Are Made of Hardest Wood

Then, lastly, might He not learn in carpentering that the finest things are made of hardest wood? It was cedar-wood that was demanded for the paneling of palace or of temple. Did He smile, I wonder, when He noticed that? Did he recognize the deeper meaning of it? And was He recalling the old days in Nazareth when He deliberately selected Paul? Hard as cedar, injurious, a persecutor, the bitter and savage foe of every Christian—but finest things may be made from hardest wood. Do you know anyone who is what is called a hard case—anyone who has resisted every pleading—some member of your flock, or some wild lad you try to teach on Sundays? Have faith. Someday he will be won. The cedar will adorn the temple yet. And then you will say, quietly and adoringly, "Is not this the Carpenter?"

May 13

The Ministries of Leisure - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while— Mar_6:31

Rest Helps Us See Things in Their Right Perspective

Most of us, at this season of the year, are looking forward to a time of leisure. We are hoping to get away for a brief space into the quiet and beauty of the country. A period of rest is not a luxury. A period of rest is a necessity. It is part of the constitution of our nature which can never be disregarded with impunity. It is not to be spoken of apologetically, as something of which we are half ashamed. It is to be spoken of with perfect frankness, as part of the wise ordering of God. There are people who tell you they do not need a holiday. Such people are always to be pitied. They are like men with some malignant trouble, who tell you that they do not need a doctor. It is one thing to need a thing; it is quite another to feel the need of it; and perhaps there is no man who so needs a holiday as the man who assures you that he does not want it. We need a holiday that we may rest, and we need a holiday that we may see. There is nothing so fatal to a kindly vision as an unceasing and unvarying routine. To understand anything we must not only look at it; we must learn the art of looking away from it; and holidays are given us for that end, that we may see things in their right proportions. That is one of the ministries of sleep, which is among the most blessed of all holidays. It is one of the ministries of convalescence, when we are getting better from an illness. And it is meant to be one of the ministries of summer, and of the rest that summer brings to us— come ye apart, and rest a while. Now what I want to do is this— I want to examine this rest of the disciples. I want to see what were the elements of the leisure to which they were invited by Christ. And I want to see that, not from curiosity, but from the most practical of motives; for it will teach us, as nothing else can do, how to enjoy the very best of holidays.

A Rest the Disciples Earned

Well, in the first place, this was a rest which the disciples had very richly earned. They had flung themselves heart and soul into their work, and now they were thoroughly ready for vacation. You could never imagine a man like Simon Peter doing his business in a halfhearted way. You could never imagine John, with his deep soul, scamping anything to which he put his hand. And now they were back again, Peter and the others, from a work which had been incredibly exacting, and the first thing which Jesus saw was this, that His disciples had richly earned a holiday. There are masters who never awake to that. There are congregations who never awake to that. There are husbands who never seem to notice that their wives might be the better for a rest. But Jesus Christ was very quick to notice it. He saw that they were exhausted and forspent. His workmen had richly earned their leisure, and everything must cease till they had had it.

Some of the Best Gifts We Cannot Earn

Now, some of the best gifts we cannot earn. They are given us freely from the hand of God. We cannot earn the sunshine or the morning, or the lights and shadows on the Highland hills. But I want to say that no one deserves a holiday, and certainly no one will enjoy a holiday, unless by faithful and conscientious toil he has honestly and fairly earned it. I dare say we are all apt to envy those whose lives are one continuous holiday. We think it would be heaven to live as they do, and spend the year in following the sun. But I question if in all humanity there are any such poor and miserable creatures as those who have nothing else to do save to chase the sunshine across Europe. I put that question to a doctor once, an English doctor in the south of France. His patients were entirely drawn from that class, and I asked him if they were happy people. I shall not soon forget the look he gave me, nor the ring of scorn that was in his voice—"Happy," he said, "happy? It's the most miserable business under heaven." When it's all work it is but sorry work, and when it's all holiday it is but sorry holiday. If you want a good companion for your holiday, get a man who is a giant-worker. Wholehearted toil gives a whole-hearted holiday; gives it a freedom and a happy conscience; and the man to avoid for a holiday as you would avoid sin, is the man with an uneasy conscience.

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by George H. Morrison

Rest in Fellowship with Others

Again, the rest to which they were invited was a rest of mutual intercourse. Come ye apart, said Christ, all of you together, and we will go into a desert place. When Christ went up the Mount of Transfiguration, He took but three of His disciples with Him. When He entered the chamber where Jairus' daughter lay, it was the same three, and they alone, who were so privileged. But here, in the happy interval of rest, there was no such setting apart of any three; they were all to mingle, in their short vacation, in mutual and loving intercourse. When Jesus sought His rest, He went alone. He was alone, and yet not alone. He stole away to the quiet mountain side, and lifted up His heart under the stars. But when He said to the twelve, "Come ye apart," He knew it was best that they should not be alone. He did not call them to the rest of solitude, but to that of sweet and happy fellowship. Now do you know why He acted so? Well, this, I take it, was the reason for it. They were becoming strangers to each other, in their separate missions of evangelizing. They were losing the sweet touch of real comradeship. They were drifting a little into isolation. It was inevitable in their engrossing work; but none the less it was regrettable.

There are times for all of us when it is good to go out and be alone. There are seasons when the best of all society is the secret company of one's own heart. There are times when other voices are impertinence, when other faces are a harsh intrusion, when the deepest craving of our mysterious being is to be alone with self and God. All that is true, and he who has never felt it is either very shallow or very wicked. All that was understood by Jesus Christ, and for it He has made full provision. And yet remember that in our city life, with its constant pressure and absorbing work, there is another side to a true holiday. You talk about the companionship of towns. Do not forget the loneliness of towns. There is far more fellowship in little places than in the jostle and the crowd of Babylon. We hardly see each other in the city, we have so little time for social intercourse. And nothing is easier in the city than for friendships to become little else than names. It is in view of that we get our holidays. A holiday is not selfish, it is social. It is the golden opportunity of God to put our tattered friendships in repair. It gives us leisure to approach each other, and mingle with a freedom that is sweet, and feel, what here we are so apt to lose, the warmth and the reality of brotherhood. How little time some of you businessmen give your wives and children! Some of you hardly know your children, and some of your children hardly know you. Now use your holiday to put that right. Give them your leisure, and be happy with them. Begin to play the father for a little, which is a different thing from playing the fool.

Rest in the Fellowship of Nature

Then, once again, the rest they were invited to was a rest in the fellowship of nature. "Come ye apart into a desert place." Now do not associate with that word desert the scenery which it commonly suggests. When you say desert, you picture the Sahara, or some rocky and barren wilderness. But it was not to such a desert that they went. It would not have been like Christ to lead them there. It was a desert because it was deserted, that is, it was remote from human life. I have no doubt it was a place of beauty, and the sunshine slept upon the hills around them. And overhead there were the fleecy clouds, and far off there was the shimmer of the sea. And it was full of rest, and full of healing, with only the murmur of the brook for music, and the stirring of the wind among the lilies only intensified the deep repose. Christ knew every nook among these hills. He had wandered among them since He was a boy. Where the grass was greenest He had dreamed His dreams, and read the writing of His Father's hand. And now, looking upon His wearied twelve, He thought of one choice spot He had long loved, and He said, "Come ye apart and rest awhile." For Him, there had been rest in nature. For them, there was to be rest in nature. Taught by the breeze, the mountain and the stream, they were to come to their true selves again. They were to bathe in that deep and mighty silence that spreads itself out beyond the noise of man. They were to let the peace of lonely places sink with benediction on their souls.

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The Ministries of Leisure - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Beauty and Peace of Nature Remain Unchanged for Us

Many things are changed since Jesus walked and taught in Galilee. But one thing is still utterly unchanged, and that is the beauty and the peace of nature. Still are the stars shining in the sky. Still are the flowers waving in the fields. Still do the great white clouds go drifting by, in the glory of the summer afternoon. And if these had a ministry for wearied men who moved in the fellowship of Jesus Christ, remember that they have that ministry for you. Do not despise it, or call it sentimental. Jesus Christ was never sentimental. Do not imagine you can do without it. Have done with toiling for a little season. Open your heart, and let the peace steal in. You will be twice as fit for every task, when for a little you have let God do everything.

A Rest in Which He Had a Share

Again, the rest to which they were invited was a rest in which He had a share. Christ did not say to them, "Go ye apart"; He said to them, "Come, for I am coming too." It might have been natural for Him to wait behind, that there might be someone to carry on the work. He might very well have said, "I cannot come with you; my presence is demanded in the towns." But Christ did not say that— He did not tarry— He knew that rest without Him would be mockery; and so when the disciples had their holiday, Jesus was their holiday-companion. None of them thought that He would spoil their holiday. None of them wished that He had stayed behind. None of them dreamed that their freedom would be marred, because their Master was in the midst of them. On the contrary, they rejoiced to have Him, and they felt that their cup was running over now; and they were happier, and the world more beautiful, because Christ was their holiday-companion.

Now, is it going to be so with you? That is the question which I want to ask. There are people whose one aim upon a holiday seems to be to forget Christ altogether. They never leave their fishing rods at home. They often leave their religion at home. They seldom pray, seldom read their Bible, seldom give a thought to Jesus Christ. They pack their boxes with a hundred things which no one will ever possibly want; and then discover when the Sabbath comes, that they have forgotten to put in the Bibles. Such people when at home are decent churchgoers. On holiday, they seldom go to church. If they do, it is to the fashionable church, where of course there is a wonder of a preacher. I do not doubt he is a first-rate preacher, but what I do most seriously doubt, is whether they ever would have discovered him had he been minister of the dissenting chapel. You call it tolerance. I call it snobbery, and snobbery in religion is contemptible. And you have no idea how hard it makes things for the minister whose church you never enter, and whose only fault is that he has been true to the communion for which his fathers suffered. I believe better things of you. I believe you will take Christ with you when you go. It will not dim the sunshine; it will not spoil the laughter; it will not mar the beauty nor the peace. Nay, on the contrary, it will increase it all, and make it the happiest holiday you ever had. There is no one with such a title to be happy as the man who has the companionship of Christ.

Rest Which Fitted Them for Better Service

Then lastly, the rest that they were called to was a rest which fitted them for further service. It was not "Come ye apart and rest forever"; it was "Come ye apart and rest awhile." As a matter of fact, it did not last long. Our holidays at the longest never last long. They had hardly reached the quiet of the hills when their congregation was wanting them again. But it was long enough to make them men; to give them strength and vision for their duty; and if a holiday has not that effect, I for one would write it down a failure. Of course I know that it is often hard to take up the dreary round again. It is hard to leave the freedom and the sun for the office desk or for the schoolroom. But that will pass, as it has passed before, and we shall settle to our familiar task, and it is then we shall discover if our leisure has been honorably used. Memories will awake in winter days of quiet places where the sun was shining. Friends will meet us in the thick of work, and they will be different because they knew us then. Love will be kinder in the city home; father, mother, and children will be nearer, because of the long hours they spent together when the summer wind was in the grass. God grant to all of us a time of rest that will make us better when November comes! God grant to all of us new power for service, drawn from the riches of a happy holiday! It is that which is in the heart of Christ, as He looks down on us and on our city, and says in prospect of the July days, "Come ye apart, and rest awhile."

May 14

The Evident Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He could not be hid— Mar_7:24

It Was Impossible to Conceal Christ

Jesus was in retirement at this time. He had sought seclusion in the coasts of Tyre. It was perilous for Him to be seen just then, and the hour of His cross had not yet come. The tetrarch Herod had become suspicious. The Pharisees made no concealment of their hatred. The people who were so enthusiastic lately had taken deep offence at Jesus' teaching. And our Lord, recognizing the danger in all this, withdrew for a time to a half-heathen territory, where occurred that exquisite and precious incident—the visit of the Syrophenician woman. Now there was one thing which deeply impressed the disciples there. It was the impossibility of concealment for their Master. Quietly He had stolen away. No vision of Messiah stirred these villagers, for they were pagans and outside the covenant. Yet even there Jesus could not be hid— there were hearts which recognized Him as the Christ— and it was that which made so deep a mark on the watchful minds of the disciples. It is very probable that as the years went on that thought would grow in meaning for the twelve. John would recall it on the shores of Patmos; Peter amid the crowds of Babylon. And when they were wearied out with opposition, or crushed by the might and mockery of heathendom, it would come to them sometimes like cheering music, that Christ could not be hid. On that thought I wish to speak. I want to show you how grandly true it is. Firstly, we shall consider Jesus in the flesh. Secondly, Jesus in the world. Thirdly, Jesus in the heart.

Jesus in the Flesh

First, then, considering Jesus in the flesh let us dwell for a moment on His lot. It would be hard to imagine any lot that offered a surer promise of obscurity. He was the child of a secluded village— a village that was not held in much repute. There He lived and there He humbly labored till He was some thirty years of age. And so deep was the retirement of these years, so void of rumors of the coming glory, that Nathanael, who belonged to Cana in the neighborhood, seems never to have heard a whisper of Him. Most men who are to come to greatness are on the road to it before the age of thirty. They have left their native village long ere that; they are out in the world and battling with its powers. But at thirty Christ was still at Nazareth, still toiling for His daily bread there, still acting as a father to His brothers, for His mother Mary was a widow now. Wealth is able to open many doors, but in the cottage at Nazareth there was no wealth. Influence is powerful in advancement, but what influence had a village carpenter? Learning can beat a way through every barrier, and bring a man into the court of kings, but to the laborious learning of His day, Jesus was utterly indifferent.

Have you ever thought again how much in Jesus' character seemed to promise nothing but obscurity? I say that with the utmost reverence— you all know what our Lord means for me. There is not a trace in Him of lust of power, so often the characteristic of the great. If He had ever felt it He had crushed it down, as you may read in the Temptation narrative. There is not a sign in Him of any passion for fame— the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, as Milton puts it. And as for ambition, if He were ambitious, ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Christ was gentle. Christ was tenderhearted. Christ was compassionate to all the failures. And when men would have made Him a king He slipped away. He had a habit of slipping away from demonstrations. And He loved solitude, and lowly life, and the quiet beauty of pasture and of hill. And He was never happier than with His own, where the waves were lapping on the shore. There were men who became powerful then as now by taking the lead in patriotic movements. Christ never once identified Himself with any popular or patriotic movement. He stood apart a little from them all; went His own way in sunshine and in shadow; and, with a character of perfect poise, kept at the heart of all a perfect love. It is not usually characters like that which break through every barrier of concealment. It is men who are determined and aglow; who are intense even to narrowness. And it seems to me that the very poise of Christ, and His meekness, and the beauty of His love, are just the elements we might have reckoned on as making for the shelter of obscurity.

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The Evident Christ - Page 2
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Yet we all know that that was not the case. Jesus could not be hid. No prophet who ever lifted up his voice created such intense interest as Jesus. Wherever He went, crowds hung upon His steps. Wherever He was known to be, crowds gathered. He was talked of in the castle of the Herods. He was the conversation of the cottage. And there were some who loved Him, and there were some who scorned Him, and there were some who wished Him dead; but there were none who could be quite indifferent. And it was not just His miracles that did it, though His miracles deepened the impression. Nor was it just the wonder of His speech, although the charm of it was irresistible. It was the feeling, born they knew not how, and spreading mysteriously and steadily, that here was One who stood apart from all, and in whose being were unfathomed depths. You will never understand the life of Christ until you waken to that great impression. There was something about Him that suggested God, and men, detecting it, were awed. It shone through every veil that wrapped Him round— poverty, lowliness, suffering, and death— till those who loved Him knew, nothing could ever hide the Christ of God.

Jesus in the World

So much then about Jesus in the flesh; now shall we think of Jesus in the world? Our text is as true of the big world of Rome as it had been of the little world of Palestine. You know how powerless one often feels on entering a great city as a stranger. That is often a moment of great loneliness, and of an overwhelming sense of insignificance. And I think the apostles must have felt like that when they went out from the land of their nativity, and entered the cities of the Roman Empire, carrying the simple message of the Christ. Everywhere around them was philosophy, and they were ignorant of all philosophies. Everywhere were temples to the gods, and the only temples they had were themselves. Everywhere they were confronted with a powerful faith which was rooted in an immemorial past, and they had to preach the happenings of yesterday—the death of Jesus and the resurrection. Roman patriotism was against them, for every patriot clung to the old gods. Pride was against them, for it was intolerable that one should worship a Jew who had been crucified. And immorality was rampant everywhere, and superstition was a tremendous power, and every act of soldier or of emperor was interpenetrated with ancient ritual. What chance had Jesus in a world like that? He had an excellent chance of being buried. Roman historians made so little of Him that they could not even spell His name correctly. It was a gallant sight to see those eastern preachers carrying the message of their Christ abroad; but everyone was certain that in a dozen years Jesus Christ would be buried in oblivion.

Yet the fact is, that is what never happened. The strange thing is, Jesus could not be hid. In the might of a power that was the power of God, Jesus rose conspicuous in Rome. They tried to hide Him by ignoring Him, but Jesus can never be ignored. They tried it by awful persecution, but persecution was powerless to do it. They tried to hide Him in the cloak of ridicule, wrapping Him in the motley of derision; but the more they tried it, taunting Him with folly, the more He silently showed Himself a King. His name became familiar in the markets. It was whispered by the soldiers in the camp. Where no philosopher had ever entered, Christ entered with His power and His peace. Until at last to the remotest west, and from the cottage to the court of Caesar, there was not a woman but had heard of Calvary, and not a man but knew the name of Jesus. Explain it as you will, these are the facts. That is what happened on the stage of history. Out of an obscurity like night, Christ rose into the gaze of every eye. And it just means that Jesus in the world was the very Jesus who had lived in Galilee. In Rome and Lyons, as in the coasts of Tyre, Jesus could not be hid.
And is not the same thing eminently true as we survey the ages till today? The verdict of all the centuries is this, that there is that in Jesus which is irrepressible. I have seen a rock cleft into twain by a seedling-birch that rooted in the crannies. A seed had fallen, and the spring had quickened it, and it rent its prison-house and rose in beauty. And so in the ages has it been with Christ— He has been buried out of sight a thousand times, and a thousand times when hope was almost dead, the world has learned that He could not be hid. That is the meaning of the Reformation, when Christ stepped forth again out of the darkness. That is the meaning of every revival, when Christ is uplifted and every eye beholds Him. That is the meaning of all social effort, which is so earnest in our land today; for it is Christ who is moving in it all, and He cannot be hid. We have had, in the generation that is passing, an unparalleled criticism of the Bible. Did it not seem as if Christ were to be hid in the clouds of dust from the critics' chariot-wheels? Yet to how many of us Christ is nearer now, and His grace more real, and His love more wonderful; to how many the Bible is a more precious book, because it is the avenue to Him. Science has been powerless to hide Him, though it has lengthened time by millions of years. Astronomy has been powerless to hide Him, though it has cast the earth out of her central place. It is to Christ's ideals we still are working. It is by Christ's standards that we still are judging. It is in Christ's Spirit that we still are hoping for the weakest and the worst of human kind. Heaven and earth have passed away since Galilee, yet every letter you write, you date from Jesus. Commerce is vast and intricate and keen, yet commerce ceases the day when Jesus rose. On every hospital Christ is written large. On every orphanage His name is graven. Through every provision for friendless and for fallen, the pity of His heart is shining still. Think what you will of Christ, there is the fact, that history has been powerless to hide Him. You cannot avoid Him; He confronts you everywhere; He is magnificently and universally conspicuous. And yet this Christ was very meek and lowly, and shrunk from popularity and clamor, and was never happier than with His own, where the waves were lapping on the beach.

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Jesus in the Heart

And now in closing, and in a word or two, shall we think of Jesus in the heart? In the heart within as in the world without, Jesus cannot be hid. Of course there is a very real sense in which, when He is ours, He is concealed. He is our life— and can you fathom life? Can you find its secret in the tiniest weed? Search for it, and it lurks within the shadows. Probe for it with the lancet, and it dies. Of every flower which blossoms that is true; and it is true of every Christian man. There must always be a secret in religion— something you cannot tell to anybody. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him—always a secret between Him and you. And so the Christian has a hidden life, and it is fed by thanksgiving and prayer, and no one shall ever know how deep it is, until the day when secrets are revealed.

But if Christ in the heart is always hidden thus, it is just as true that He cannot be hid. If Christ be in you, everything is possible, except to hide Him from the light of day. You can never crush Him down and keep Him so. If you can do it, it is not the Christ. The power of the resurrection is within you, and it is mightier than human weakness. Slowly the Master will reveal Himself, like a root out of a dry ground, until at last, over the field of character, there is the swaying of branches in the wind. In one He will be seen in added strength; in another, in unexpected tenderness. One will be filled with a desire to serve; another with a new desire to pray. And some will walk in a new path of rectitude; and some will cease to fret and become happy; and some will no longer be rebellious, but will take up their cross, and be at peace. We may never be aware of what is happening. Moses wist not that his face shone. We shall cry to the last day we live, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Yet if we trust Him, and if we long to be like Him, and if we have taken Him to be our own, Christ will use us, and He will not be hid in us, any more than in the coasts of Sidon.

May 15

The Category of Genius - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Whom do men say that I am?— Mar_8:27

Impossible to Think of Christ as Genius

Among all the recent answers to this question, there is one that has obtained peculiar prominence. It is the answer that describes our Lord in terms of spiritual or religious genius. As one man has a genius for poetry, and another a genius for mathematics, so are we told today in many quarters that Jesus had a genius for religion. What Shakespeare was within the realm of poetry, and Newton or Kepler within that of science, that, though more conspicuously perhaps, was Jesus in the realm of religion. Now of course there is an element of truth in that, for the one passion of Jesus was religion. It filled His heart; it colored all His life; it was the source of all He said and did. Yet if there be one thing that is growing clearer to me, as I study the mind of Christ in Scripture, it is that the category of genius, as we call it, is quite inadequate to the historic Jesus. I beg to remind you that no man is at liberty to construct a Christ out of his inner consciousness. The one valid procedure for the student is to examine every fact the sources give him. And I wish to show you, if I can, that if a man will only do that seriously, it becomes impossible to think of Christ as genius.

The Achievements of a Genius Can Be Separated from the Personality

Well, in the first place it is a mark of genius that it is separable from its own achievements. This, I think, is not an accident; it is an essential and universal feature. The history of genius is nothing else than the long struggle to liberate its powers. It is the effort to work into expression the forces that are tumultuous within. It is the passion to body out the soul, in block of marble or in word of beauty, which shall live on and be a joy to men when the creator is sleeping in his grave. You can get all the enrichment of a play like Hamlet though you know nothing about William Shakespeare. You can possess the truth of the law of gravitation though you never heard the name of Isaac Newton. You can learn the wonders of modern astronomy, and the interactions of the solar system, though you live in an ignorance as deep as midnight of the life-story of Copernicus. That is the characteristic of all genius. It displays its powers in an external medium. Touched from heaven with the creating impulse, it says, "Let there be light, and there is light." And so the Madonna is a joy forever, though Raphael be but the shadow of a name; and Hamlet feeds us as with the bread of angels, though Shakespeare be inscrutable and still.

You Cannot Separate Jesus' Words and Works from Himself.

Now the moment you turn to the historic Jesus, you are faced by something absolutely different. There is not the faintest suggestion in the records that Christ was struggling to liberate His powers. The one thing you can never do with Christ is to separate His achievement from Himself. His revelation was His personality, and it is through that that He has blessed the world. You can separate the Iliad from Homer, and you can separate Hamlet and Macbeth from Shakespeare, but you can never separate the Redeemer's triumphs from the personality of the Redeemer. The one impression you do not get in Christ is that of forces struggling to express themselves. Christ was not struggling to express Himself; Christ was the expression of the Father. And He was that, not by the way of toil, such as writes anguish on the brow of genius, but naturally and beautifully and constantly, as in the lake is the reflection of the sun. Now I suggest that whatever you call that, it is a misuse of words to call it genius. To talk of Shakespeare and of Raphael and of Christ is to betray an ignorance of data. Think for a moment of what you mean by genius, taking it at its richest and its best, and you will find that it is hopelessly inadequate to cover the fact of the historic Lord.

Genius Varies in Degrees

In the next place, I ask you to observe that genius is a matter of degrees. In one man it is a flame of splendor, and in another it is a tiny spark. There are poets, for instance, of whom we say that undoubtedly they have a touch of genius. Well-nigh every Scottish countryside has had its poet with a touch of genius. There was a touch of genius in Walter Watson, a touch of genius in Hugh Macdonald, a touch of genius in fifty I could name to you, who have sung and sorrowed and suffered at our doors. On some men genius lays her hand so lightly that the touch of her fingers is almost imperceptible. Others she grasps into her straining arms, and breathes her very soul upon their lips. And so at the one extreme you have these gentle souls who have lilted beside innumerable waters, and at the other you have a Dante or a Milton. They are more than talented, these differing men; they are brothers in the gift of genius. Separated by a thousand differences, they are all kindled by a common fire. The humblest maker of a genuine lyric is a true citizen of that immortal kingdom where Chaucer and Spenser and Dryden are the peers, and one who was born by the Avon is the king. Genius, then, has its less and has its more. It is capable of compression and expansion. In one life it is shining as the sun; in another it is gleaming as a star. And all this, mark you, in perfect independence of any theory of what genius is, for we are not discussing that, but taking it in its common acceptation.

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The Category of Genius - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Jesus Stands Alone as Unique in History

Now when you study Jesus Christ in Scripture, one impression becomes overwhelming. It grows upon you that He stands alone, in incommunicable, solitary grandeur. The one thing you can never do with Christ is to regard Him as belonging to a class. The one thing that is utterly incredible is that of Him there should be less or more. You may talk of the goodly fellowship of the martyrs, and of the glorious company of the apostles, but over against us all— confronting us— there stands, alone, the person of our Lord. No man cometh to the Father but by Me— no man knoweth the Father but the Son. I am the way— I am the truth— I am the life— he that believeth on Me shall never die. That is not a case of less or more, my brother, that is absolute truth or it is falsehood, and to say that other men can share in that is to say what is irreverent and ridiculous. You may find shadowing of the virgin birth in many a story of the old mythologies. You may find parallels to every word of Jesus in the literatures of India or of Rome. But the inexplicable thing is this, that, when every religion has been ransacked, the deepest impression made by Christ on men is that of an incommunicable grandeur. In the unconditional obedience He demands— in His unparalleled and stupendous claims— in His immediate knowledge of the Father— in the absence of the least consciousness of sin in Him— I say that there is a historic fact which is not only different in degree, but is absolutely different in kind from anything that the world has ever seen. Now we are not discussing what we shall call it; we are simply discussing what we shall not call it. And I suggest that if words have any meaning, whatever we call it we shall not call it genius. And we shall not speak of Shakespeare and Christ again as if they stood upon a common platform. Over against us all, including Shakespeare, there stands forever the figure of our Lord.

Genius Is Notoriously Unhappy

In the next place, I ask you to observe that genius is notoriously unhappy. It is a dowry that is wet with tears, and wrapped in the sable coverings of anguish. Even in the common relationships of life we know how often genius is unhappy. There is such quivering sensibility in genius, that only the grace of God can give serenity. And if you are looking for a happy home, where the wife wakens with a singing heart, you know, if you are students of biography, that it is rarely in the dwellings of genius that you find it. Yet, after all, that is not the deepest of it; the sorrow of genius is a deeper thing. It is the sorrow of the heart that has seen heaven, and yet cannot climb the ladder to the throne. It is the craving of the soul for the ideal; the haunting of visions that are unrealized; the torture, after years of striving, of an imperfect mastery of one's material. When he has poured himself into his best, the genius feels that there is still a better. When he has wrought out his crowning toil, he is still haunted with a sense of failure.

No Sense of Failure Ever Possessed Jesus

And the singular thing about Jesus Christ is this, that no such sense of failure ever touched Him, though He had a task to do so mighty that beside it that of the artist is but play. You never find Jesus craving for the ideal; you find Him always living in the ideal. You never find Him yearning for a better; you find Him always dwelling with the best. You never find Him, when His day is over, crying "Alas, what a failure I have been"; you find Him crying gloriously "It is finished." My brother, if I know anything of genius, most emphatically that is not genius. It is a fact, and genius is a fact, but the two facts belong to different worlds. And he who will have it that Jesus was a genius, has either very hazy thoughts of genius, or else, what is far more deplorable, has very hazy thoughts of Christ.

Genius Makes Us Conscious of Our Distance

Another feature of genius is this, that it always makes us conscious of our distance. Indeed to me that seems one of its essential elements. When I meet with a man of ordinary talent, I am not conscious of any great remoteness. However able my honored brother be, he does not impress me as aloof from me. But whenever I am face to face with genius, even if it only be a spark of genius, then immediately I feel a separation. The life I know best is of course the preacher's life, and that has always been my experience there. When I listen to an average preacher, I am not greatly distressed about my sermons. But when I listen, on some rare occasion, to a preacher of real spiritual genius, then, not as a man but as a minister, I go home miserable and in despair. It is too high for me, I cannot attain unto it. I want to be silent and never preach again. I want to take these sorry sheets of mine, and burn them, and have done with them forever. Such is the feeling that genius creates, a strange disabling sense as of a distance, leading us to feel that all is useless, and bringing us to the margins of despair.

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The Category of Genius - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Jesus Made People Feel Very Near Him in Spite of His Uniqueness

I need hardly tell you that in the presence of Christ men never have been conscious of that feeling. The more they have felt His infinite transcendence, the more they have felt that in Him they had a brother. He is nearer to us a thousand times than Dante. He is nearer to us a thousand times than Shakespeare. In our intensest moments, when the deeps are calling, He is nearer to us than our hands and feet. "Come unto Me and I will give you rest," and men in their multitudes have come to Him. The poor have come, and the prodigals have come, and the waifs and strays and wreckage of humanity. Yet I never read amid all that broken earthenware of one who was overwhelmed with Jesus' distance, but I have read of thousands who have cried, "Christ is mine, praise God, and I am His." My brother, whatever you call that, it does not occur to me to call it genius. That is not the impression genius makes, so far as I have any knowledge of the matter. I know how a man feels when faced by Plato. I know how a man feels when faced by Shakespeare. And I know emphatically it is not thus he feels when he is faced by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Genius Evokes Wonder and Not Worship as Jesus Does

And so that leads me to my closing thought, that genius evokes wonder and not worship, and all through the ages worship and not wonder has been faith's final attitude to Christ. From first to last, in the New Testament, Christ is the object of adoring worship. Confronted by no august tradition, the apostles found themselves bowing at His feet. And from that day on to this, every believer in his holiest hours has carried all that he has found in Jesus into the heart of the eternal God. Seeking God's will, he has followed Christ's will; listening for God's voice, he has heard Jesus' voice. The love revealed on the cross is not man's love to him: it is the love that harbors in the heart of God. Until, not as a matter of reasoning, but by sheer power of spiritual impression, he has bowed down and worshipped at Christ's feet. The matter was never more beautifully put than in that exquisite story about Charles Lamb. You remember how Lamb and his friends one evening were talking about people they would like to have met. And one said he would like to have met Chaucer, and another brought up the name of Sir Thomas Browne. And at length that sacred name was mentioned— the name which is above every name. And there was a pause, and then Lamb said, in his slow, gentle, and stammering way, "If Shakespeare came into the room we should all stand up, but if He came in we should all kneel." Saint Charles!—as Thackeray once called thee— thou hadst the right of it with that dear heart of thine. There in a single sentence is the difference, felt always, yet not always uttered. Yes, if Shakespeare came into our midst, we should all stand up, we students, to acclaim him; but if HE came in, we should all kneel.

May 16

So Near and Yet So Far - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Thou art not far from the kingdom of God— Mar_12:34

Difficult to Estimate Crowds and Distances

There are two things which it is very difficult for the uninstructed eye to gauge, the one is the dimensions of a crowd, and the other is the measurement of distance. So much depends on the clearness of the air, and so much on the intervening landscape, that the most accurate observer may find himself at fault when estimating distances in unfamiliar places.

Difficult Also to Estimate How Near You and Others Are to the Kingdom of God
Now as it is in the material world, so is it in the spiritual world. There is nothing harder than to gauge with accuracy how near a man may be to the kingdom of God. I believe there are many whom we think very near it who as a matter of fact are far away. I believe there are many who seem to us far away who in the sight of God are very near. And as this should make everyone of us more earnest, for some may be farther from God than we imagine, so should it make everyone of us more hopeful, for some may be nearer Christ than we conceive. We are often in error in such measurements, and therefore in charity we should avoid them.

Christ Was Never in Error in Judging Others

But of this be sure, that Christ was never in error, never miscalculated in these finer judgments; and here we have Him saying of a scribe, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." I want to examine this deeply interesting case. I shall give you some signs that the scribe was near the kingdom. And I do pray that the spirit of Jesus Christ may bring the word right home into your hearts, that one here and another there may say, "Lord is it I, and is it I?"

Signs That This Scribe Was Not Far from the Kingdom of God.

Let us note then some of the signs that this scribe was not far from the kingdom of God. And in the first place, and in a general sense, this is true as a plain fact of history. This scribe was a Jew, trained in the Jewish faith, familiar with the doctrine of the kingdom. He lived in Palestine, in the providence of God, at the very time when Jesus Christ was there. Often would he have seen Him in the streets, often would he have listened to Him talking, and no man could be so near the King without being near the gateway of the kingdom. He was not an African, like Simon of Cyrene, with an ocean between his home and that of Jesus. He was not, like Lydia, a European, born in another continent from Christ. He lived within a stone's-throw of the Master; he studied the very books the Master loved; and doubtless among the followers of Jesus were some whom he would call his friends.

Now there are none of you of whom similar things might not be said. By birth and upbringing and Christian nurture, you are not far from the kingdom of God. It is near you whenever you hear the Gospel. It is near you in every Christian character. The influences of that kingdom are around you; its activities are incalculable in this city. In the providence of God you have been born here, where there is an open Bible and a Christian church— and it may have come even nearer you than that. You may have had a mother who was a saint of God, or a father who was an exemplary Christian; you may have a sister within your home today whose religion you would never dream of doubting. And therefore remember, however vile you be, however foolish or prayerless or unclean, if you want to return you have not far to travel; you are not far from the kingdom of God.

He Had a Great Admiration for the Lord

Again this scribe was not far from the kingdom because he had a great admiration for the Lord. I think we can see, if we read the passage closely, how very warmly this man admired the Master. Probably he had listened to Christ before, and had been deeply stirred by what he heard. Dissatisfied with all his weary studies, there was that in Christ which made him dream of peace. But now, as he heard the discussion with the Sadducees, and saw Christ's masterly handling of these skeptics, all other feelings, dim and ill-defined, gave place to a great and glowing admiration. Had he been a little man his spite would have rejoiced to see his rivals the Sadducees confuted. Had he been a blind and bitter pedant of the schools, he would have been angry at any triumph of the Carpenter. But there was something noble in this scribe— something that lifted him above all petty feeling— he felt he was in the presence of a Master, and was filled with warm and lively admiration. Now whenever a man feels that, I want to say he is not far from the kingdom. You are not a Christian when you admire Christ Jesus, but you are nearer His kingdom than when you jest and sneer. And if I speak to any young man who can say from his heart he admires this man of Nazareth, I urge you to take one other step, just because you are so near the gate. We are not saved by admiring Jesus Christ. We are saved by loving Him and serving Him. It takes something mightier than admiration to pierce to the very deeps of a man's being. But admiration is so akin to love, and is so truly its herald and its harbinger, that if you truly and morally admire Christ, you are not far from the kingdom. Not far, yet on the wrong side of the gate. That is the infinite pity of it all. "O the little more and how much it is; and the little less, and what worlds away." And therefore I appeal to you who are so near, because you so admire the Son of Man, to take the last step of full surrender that you may have the blessing of the free.

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So Near and Yet So Far - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

He Was Intellectually Convinced That Christ Was Right

Again this scribe was very near the kingdom because he was intellectually convinced that Christ was right. With perfect frankness, and with full sincerity, he admitted that what Jesus said was truth. Nothing would have been easier for him than to challenge Jesus' answer to his question. It was a matter of endless debate among the scribes which was really the great commandment. And had he been seeking what so many seek in argument, not truth, but a dialectic triumph, he could easily have summoned his scholastic learning. But the scribe was not a disputer of this world; he was a genuine searcher for the truth. Weary with all his study of the law, he longed for a ray of light upon his darkness. And when he welcomed the doctrine of the Christ, and said, "Well, master, thou hast spoken truth," Christ recognized what was implied in that, and said "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." If he had flouted the answer of the Lord he would have been far away from the kingdom. If he had let the words sink down into his heart, that moment he would have been within it. But he gave them an intellectual acceptance— said "Yes, master, what you say is true"; and that, though it did not stamp as a citizen, was a mark that he was not far away.

Now I think that that very hopeful sign is one which meets us everywhere today. There is a greater respect for the teaching of Christ now than there has been for many generations. Men want to know what Jesus Christ has said on every relationship and every problem. There is a widespread feeling that in these words of His lies the true answer to a thousand questions. And so within the past twenty years we have had countless books upon the teaching of Jesus, and attempts innumerable to bring His words to bear on all the problems of our modern life. There is much that is hopeful in that deepening of interest. It is not everything, but it is much. It takes more than the intellect to make a Christian, for faith is something deeper than the intellect. Still, when a man comes back to the words of Christ, after a trial of the words of other masters— when he says to himself, "There are no words like these for none are proving themselves so true to me"— that man is not far from the kingdom of God.

He Was Near the Kingdom Because He Was Deeply Stirred by Jesus' Answer
And then, again, the scribe was near the kingdom because he was deeply stirred by Jesus' answer. Emotionally as well as intellectually he was very deeply impressed by Jesus Christ. You may often notice in the life of Jesus how deeply His hearers were moved by what He said. It was not cold truth they heard, but living, burning truth, and it profoundly moved them in sympathy or anger. So here there is emotional excitement; had you been present you would have seen a kindling eye. There is more than intellectual assent here; there is the stirring of a man's nature to its depths. It was a dangerous thing to acknowledge Jesus Christ, and the scribe would never have done it in cold blood. To admit in public thus that Christ was right was to expose himself to bitterest suspicion. And then the words that followed his confession are so torrent-like, and so intense, and so aglow, that you feel through them the excitement of the speaker, and realize how deeply he was moved. There is no sign that his conscience had been touched; there is every sign that his feelings had been touched. The crust of formalism had been broken through—he was no longer the cold and dry scholastic. And it was then, when he was so impressed— so ready for great action and decision— that Jesus looking at him said, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."

Now you have all heard it long ago that it is not our feelings which save us, but our faith. It is not by what we feel that we are saved; it is by laying our hand in that of Jesus Christ. It is the height of folly for one to trust his feelings when the Bible calls on him to trust his Savior. It takes more than emotion, as it takes more than intellect, to enter the glad kingdom of the Lord. But what I want you to realize is the value of our seasons of emotion in sweeping us forward to a great decision in a way that argument can rarely do. It may be that we come to church indifferent and a word is spoken which reaches to our hearts. It may be that a children's hymn is sung and its memories unlock the fount of tears. Or someone who is dear is called to suffer, or someone whom we love is called to die; or we have been ill, and are still weak and helpless, and a simple prayer is offered by our bed. In some such ways, and there are a thousand ways, we are brought to hours when we are deeply moved. And the crust is broken, and the deeps are stirred, and we cease to be indifferent and worldly. And I plead with you to seize these hours, and to seal them at once in personal decision, for in all your appointed journey through the world, you are never so near the kingdom as just then. I care not how deeply your feelings may be moved; I must tell you plainly that they will never save you. Could your tears forever flow you might still be an exile from the grace of Christ. But when your tears are flowing, and your heart is tender, you are so near the kingdom of the Lord that the pity is infinite if after all you miss it. There are times when a single step makes all the difference, as when a man is standing on the quay. One step, and he is on board the ocean vessel that will carry him over the deeps to other countries. But let him refuse that step and stand inactive, and all the feeling of which the heart is capable will not prevent his return to the old life, there to be haunted by a dull regret. Is it such an hour with anyone? Thou art not far, my brother, from the kingdom. It was never quite so near you in the past. It may never be quite so near you in the future. Take it by violence. Storm its walls now. Say, "I am thine, my Savior, in a full surrender." What a difference that will make in time, and what a difference through all eternity!

May 17

The Grace of Appreciation

She hath done what she could— Mar_14:8

Appreciation Alleviates Drudgery

Few gifts are more helpful than the gift of appreciation. It is like rain on the mown grass, or sunshine falling on the flowers. When one of our Scots ministers died, a very beautiful thing was said of him. It was said that there was no one left to appreciate the little triumphs of little men. Mrs. Oliphant, too, in her Life of Edward Irving, tells us that not a little of his influence sprang from the possession of this grace. "He addressed ordinary individuals as if they were heroes and princes; made poor astonished women in tiny London apartments feel themselves ladies in the light of his courtesy; and unconsciously elevated every man he talked with into the ideal man he ought to have been." A recent essayist has divided people into minus and plus people. The minus people are those who leave us poorer, and the plus those who leave us richer. Among the latter, in the common ways of life, where there is little applause and many a weary hour, are those who have appreciating grace. It helps folks wonderfully when things are difficult to know that somebody appreciates. It is always easier to march to music. A little word of appreciation now and then would make all the difference to thousands whose day's round is very largely drudgery.

Appreciation Is Different from Flattery and Praise

One must distinguish true appreciation both from flattery and praise. Flattery is veiled insult, and praise may be condescension in disguise. Newman has said that people shrink from praise, because the right to praise implies the right to blame, and Scripture warns us with no uncertain voice against coveting the praise of man. But genuine appreciation is different from praise or flattery, and for it every heart is hungering. A story is told of Robert Browning, how once at Oxford he got a great ovation, and when someone hinted that he must hate all this, he said, "Why, I've been waiting for it all my life." Men of genius, who would scorn to stoop to the passing fashions of the hour, are as eager for appreciation as the rest of us. Just as everybody yearns for love, so everybody yearns to be appreciated. The drudgeries of life are always lightened when there is somebody who understands. There are few nobler heroism's in the world than that of those who have to toil for years without a single appreciative word.

Appreciation Is a Mark of a Noble, Generous Nature

This gift of appreciation is always the mark of a noble, generous nature, just as the constant habit of depreciating is the sign-manual of littleness. To depreciate is not to criticize, for true criticism has an eye for beauty. To depreciate is to betray an uneasy feeling of inferiority. But generous natures are always self-forgetful, and are touched with a certain sweet serenity, and so have the heart at leisure from itself. "See," said Nelson, "how that gallant fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action." There is nothing harder than to appreciate richly the men who are doing the same work as we are. The noble nature of Sir Walter Scott is never more beautifully evident than in the appreciation which he lavished on the efforts of his inferior fellow-craftsmen. When I went as assistant to Dr. Alexander Whyte, Professor Lindsay laid his hand upon my shoulder. "Never forget," he said to me, "that all Whyte's geese are swans." It was a playful warning not to lose my head when I found that the least service I could render was appreciated with amazing generosity. Little souls delight in faultfinding; big ones in appreciating. Mean folk are always minus folk; it is the great hearts who are the plus ones. They add to life and make it richer; they call out all that is best within us by the sunshine of their appreciation.

Christ Appreciated What He Saw in Others

Then one turns to the story of the Master, and sees how gloriously Christ appreciated. That was why life blossomed in His company. When the woman broke the alabaster box, He alone appreciated what it meant. When the widow cast her mite into the treasury, He saw in a flash the splendor of her giving. Others appreciated a cup of wine; He a cup of water, and that was characteristic of His life. Hating sin as no man ever hated it, because He knew the Father with such perfect intimacy, the wonderful thing about our Lord is how He appreciated the common heart. He saw the worshipping woman in the harlot, the disciple in the despised tax-gatherer, the rock in the unstable will of Simon. Common things were beautiful to Him— the lily was more wonderful than Solomon. Sparrows, of little value on the market, were in His eyes fed by the catering of God. The love of woman, the wonder of the child, the fine things lurking in the pagan breast, our Lord appreciated them all. No wonder folk came to their very best with One who could appreciate like that, and so they are doing to this hour.

Love Is the Secret of Appreciation

It only remains to add that love is the secret of appreciation. Love is not really blind; it has the most generous of eyes. Professor Henry Drummond used to say that if you buy a box, it must be flawless. But if your little son with his rough tools makes you a box, very probably it has a hundred faults. Yet you appreciate that clumsy workmanship far more than what you purchased in the market, because it's the work of the little chap you love. Love wildflowers, and you come to appreciate what to other people are but weeds. Love the hills, and you find beauties in them that other eyes are powerless to see. When love reigns, as it is going to reign when God's Kingdom is established on the earth, there will be such appreciative grace abroad that life and labor will be set to music.

May 18

The Blessing of the Unexpected - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross— Mar_15:21

His Physical Weakness Speaks of His Humanity

I want you, please, to note the words that are employed in Mar_15:20-22. In this, the greatest hour of history, every word is of supreme significance; thus we read in Mar_15:20, "They led him out to crucify him." And then we read in the Mar_15:22, "They bring him unto Golgotha." These two words are just a little window on to the supreme physical exhaustion of the Savior in this the greatest hour of His agony. You see, when He left the Praetorian they were leading Him; when they came to Golgotha they were bearing Him. He had started walking; He had stumbled; He had needed the support of these strong hands, and I think nothing could more eloquently speak to us of the full true humanity of Christ than just the awful physical weakness of that hour. For fifteen hours, since the hour of the Last Supper, our Lord had suffered the most awful strain, strain of body, agony of mind. "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death." Now, He was so utterly forspent that He staggered and stumbled in the way. "He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." All this, my brother, He bore for you and me when He might have had hosts of angels at His bidding. Here, as at the outset of His mission, He refused to turn stones into bread, refused to avail Himself of anything that might break the bond between Him and us when He was dying in our room and stead.

The Romans and Jews Were Not Anxious to Alleviate Jesus But to Keep Time

It was the custom of these Roman soldiers to make the criminal carry his own cross, but in this instance that was quite impossible. What were they to do? No Roman would have touched the horrid thing—Roman shoulders were not meant for that. To have made a home-born Jew bear it would have been to court uproar; and just then, coming down the way that probably led from the uplands about Bethany, they saw the very person that they wanted. Others were travelling in companies, this man was travelling alone. His dark skin showed that he was a foreigner; his costume showed he was an African; he was a stranger who had no kith or kin, he was far from home, probably friendless. This was the very person that they wanted. I don't suppose these soldiers pitied Christ; half an hour before they had been mocking Him; they were irritated at the loss of time, things were not going according to their program, and they cried, "You, you, Cyrene come here!" (He was known afterwards as Simeon Niger.) And him they compelled to bear the cross. This Gospel is very rich in vivid touches; is there a touch so vivid as this one?—the sinking Savior, the irritated soldiers, the dark-skinned foreigner coming from the country, and over everything the blue heaven, and the birds singing as they used to sing when Jesus was a happy boy at home.

A Man Can Serve Christ Although He May Be Ignorant as to Who He Is

I want for a little while just to try and show you some of the teaching of that story, and in the first place, will you notice how a man can serve Christ though he is utterly ignorant who He is. I don't imagine for a single moment that Simon had ever seen the Lord before. Possibly, and indeed probably, he had never even heard His name, for the Lord's name had not penetrated Africa, and it was in Africa Simon had his home. Probably he had just arrived the other day. Then, you observe, he was coming from the country; that means he had his lodging in the country. At Passover the city was so full that many had to get lodgings in the country, and therefore that morning, coming to the city, he had no idea who the prisoner was— he was doing something for somebody he did not know. The strange thing is that he was called to serve somebody whom he had never heard of; called to help in a great hour which was going to change the future of the world; called not to a little service, but to a great service, so splendid and unique that any of Jesus' disciples might have envied him. Mary broke the spikenard on His head; Martha made Him a supper in the evening; Joseph served by giving Him a grave, Lazarus by giving Him a cottage; but all these services, however beautiful, are not to be matched with this of Simon when he relieved the Lord of the burden of His cross. To him and to him alone was it given to help our Savior in His deepest need, to him to relieve Him of His cross when all the others forsook Him and fled. And how profoundly significant it is that this service, such a glorious service, was rendered to the Christ he did not know. And then one thinks of the parable of Jesus about the Last Judgment of the world: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom that is prepared for you; for I was hungry and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink," and then the blessed are going to say in frank astonishment, "Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or thirsty?" You see, evidently in the mind of Christ thousands are serving Him who never knew Him— in little actions, in the kindly loving deeds, in the little offices of courtesy and love; and what is to hinder us widening out that thought to the great services of men written in the history of the world? The men who built these highways across continents— they were serving Christ although they never knew it; the men who constructed railways across Africa— they were serving Christ although they never knew it; the man who invented printing, though he may never have thought about the Lord, he too has been a magnificent evangelist. So was it with Simon; he knew nothing of the prisoner, he had not the least idea whom he served when he carried the cross up the hill, but he was serving the Lord Christ, he was helping on the coming of His kingdom. He has got his reward.

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The Blessing of the Unexpected - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Unexpectedness of Life

And then, another thought embodied in our story is just the unexpectedness of life. This was the great hour in Simon's history, and it just came to him like a bolt out of the blue. You have got to picture him that beautiful spring morning leaving the cottage where he had had his bed, crossing the fields brilliant with anemones, going up the pathway to the city, meditating on the goodness of the Lord in bringing him to the city of his dreams and allowing him to see the holy place. He had come there to celebrate the Passover, and that done, he was going home again to his wife and his two boys in Africa who had been praying for him every day; and just then, dreaming his own dreams and meditating upon the God of Jacob, he was gripped and brought into the presence of the Lord. And one feels how it would come to him all in a moment that he was present at the greatest hour of history, the hour for which the world had been waiting, the hour that the Psalmist had foreseen, the hour that the prophets had foretold, and it just came to him without any sound of trumpets. Simon dreaming his own dreams, his greatest hour met him by the way. And I scarcely need to tell you how true that is of life. Have not we a proverb in almost every language that it is the unexpected thing that happens? Joseph came out to see how his brothers fare, and Joseph is never going to see his home again. David in the morning is king, and when night falls he is flying from his son. Matthew is sitting at the receipt of custom; somebody speaks to him and calls him, and the future is never to be the same again. How often our sorrows take us unexpectedly! How often our joys take us unexpectedly! How often the things we have looked for never come, the things that we never looked for have arrived: all of which should teach us not that life is chance, but that our highest wisdom is to trust Him when we know not what an hour may bring forth. How often Jesus meets us unexpectedly when our thoughts are busy upon something else! And I beg of you never to forget that that is how the Lord is going to come, in an hour when you never think of it. If you and I were in the hands of fate, life's unexpectedness would be its tragedy; but we are not, thank God, in the hands of fate. We are in the hands of One who loves us and who knows us; One who sees the fall of every sparrow, in whose eternal love is no tomorrow, whose everlasting purposes embrace, as Wordsworth says:

"Whose everlasting purposes embrace all accidents, converting them to good."
"Almost by the merest chance I met the Lord." I dare say Simon spoke like that. "Had I overslept myself by half an hour I never would have stumbled on the Savior." He did not oversleep himself, because the Lord God is merciful and gracious and loved him from the foundation of the world.

We Are Blessed by the Things We Are Compelled to Do

Then the last lesson which I want to touch on is this, how men are blessed by the things they are compelled to. As the years went by and Simon's hair grew white, I am perfectly certain he often thought of that. Will you please observe he was compelled; his wishes were not consulted in the matter. Very probably he was rebellious; this was degrading to an honest Jew, and then, was not he due in the Temple at that hour, and was not this interfering with his plans? But it was no use struggling; he was one, the might of Imperial Rome legion; better to yield to the inevitable, although he did it with a curse within his heart. And the beautiful thing is that just that bitter task to which he was compelled proved the glory of his life. There is no question that he became a Christian. Alexander and Rufus were members of the Church. Mark talks as if everybody knew them; they were familiar figures in the Church at Rome, and all the blessing and the altered home, and the new deepened spiritual relationships came from something to which he was compelled. If he had had his way that morning, if nobody had interfered with him, if he had been allowed to do just as he pleased, he would have gone back to Africa, and we would never have heard of him. But the bitter thing he had to do, doing it perhaps with a curse within his heart, was just what proved his blessing. There are things in your life you are compelled to do; there are things in your life you are compelled to bear. Sometimes you think that if you were only free from them life would become sunshine and music, but one of the deepest lessons of this life is that things we are compelled to are the road to character and heaven. Accept that task you have got to do; accept that burden you are compelled to bear. The wonderful thing is how often it proves the very cross of Christ; it brings you into His fellowship; it deepens your character; it steadies you; it gives you the kingdom and the patience of the Lord; it draws you into sympathy with others. Simon became quite a noble character through the bitter thing he was compelled to. Has not it been the same with you and me?

May 19

Misunderstood - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Behold, he calleth Elias— Mar_15:35

Christ's Life Began and Ended in Misunderstanding

We are here in the center of the Gospel mystery. It is the closing scene in the earthly life of Jesus. Jesus has been betrayed, He has been scourged and crucified, and in a little while the sorrow will be over. It is then that in His unutterable agony He cries, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani"—and some of them that stood by when they heard it said, "Behold, He calleth Elias." They misinterpreted that last dear cry. They thought He was speaking to Elias and not to God. So at the very end, and on the cross itself, Jesus was misunderstood.

The strange thing is that what happened in this last scene of the life of Jesus had happened also in the first of which we read. It had happened on that memorable occasion when Jesus was a lad of twelve years old, and had gone up with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem. There they had lost Him—you recall the story—and they hurried back to Jerusalem to find Him; and all the time they thought it was childish wantonness—the careless wandering of a happy boy. "Son," said Mary, "why hast Thou thus dealt with us? Behold thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing": and He said unto them, "How is it that ye sought me: wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" His nearest and His dearest misconstrued Him. There were purposes of heaven in His waiting, and they thought at the best it was a boyish frolic. So Christ began by being misunderstood, and ended misunderstood on Calvary.

The Way in Which Jesus Was Misunderstood

On that subject I wish to speak tonight— the way in which Jesus was misunderstood. And the very fact that He was so misunderstood is a tribute to the greatness of our Lord. There is, it is true, a very real sense in which we are all of us misapprehended. Even the shallowest heart is far too deep ever to utter itself aright to any man. Yet in large measure we understand each other when we are moving on the same lines and levels; it is when a man is transcendently original, that he is certain to be misunderstood. Men did not misinterpret John the Baptist; they recognized him as a prophet and they honored him. And I feel that Jesus must be greater than John when the whole nation misunderstood Him so.

You will observe, too, that if Christ was misunderstood it was not from any subtlety of character. If He was supremely great, do not forget that He was supremely simple— His life is transparent as the finest glass. It is hard to say how high the mountain is when the mists hang round it and it is wrapped in cloud; and there are men like that— men who never reveal themselves, and such men are certain to be misinterpreted. If you have not the courage to be a clear, straight man, you must not wonder if we all misjudge you. It is part of the penalty which every hypocrite pays that he is involved in perpetual misunderstandings. But Christ? He was sincerity incarnate! filled with one passion and pressing for one goal. There was never such a simplicity on earth as that of the character of Jesus; yet for all that there never was a character which was so hopelessly misunderstood. Is not that very strange? I think it is. It sharpens the thorn in my Redeemer's crown. Great Savior! who wast so true and open— it was Thou who wert misunderstood!

Men Misunderstood Christ's Motives

I want to follow that misinterpretation into one or two spheres of the earthly life of Jesus: and I notice first that men misunderstood His motives. Think for example of His healing miracles— "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," they said. There was no gainsaying that the devils were routed, and that the sick were healed, and that the dead were raised. It was all part and parcel of Christ's gracious ministry. It was the kingdom of God coming with power among them. That was the motive of it— let God's kingdom come. That was the meaning of it— let sin be overthrown. And "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," they said. Or think of His eating with publicans and sinners. You know the motive of that condescension? It was love— it was love unutterable for mankind— that shattered the barriers and made Christ a brother. But "He is a gluttonous man and a winebibber," they said. "He feels at home with sinners, and so He eats with them." That condescension spelled out love divine, and they thought it was proof positive of guilt.

If you are Christ's you must expect that too, for the servant is not greater than his Lord. If you are truly in earnest about the kingdom, and striving to live along the lines of Jesus, be sure your motives may be misconstrued. There is not a deed you do but men may question it, and run it back into your secret thought, and if there be two possible motives for it, you may be certain that the world will choose the worse. Tell me what are you really thinking in the very moment when you are praising so and so? Ah, if we could only read your thoughts sometimes, I fear we might think little of your praise. It is that knowledge which keeps a Christian steadfast through the world's censure and the world's applause. In the light of Christ he has learned to expect his motives to be misunderstood. And so he takes the world's praise very lightly, detects the fester at the roots of it, lifts his brow heavenward, goes forward to his duty, and leaves his final judgment to God.

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Misunderstood - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ's Speech Misunderstood

Again I remark that men misunderstood the mystical and poetic speech of Jesus. They took Him very prosaically and literally when He only meant to suggest as music does, and so time and again they misconstrued Him. Take for example one of His early words, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again." And as He spake, I doubt not, He would wave His hand toward His own body. That was the Temple, the home of the living God, a thousand times greater than these mighty stones; but they were literalists— the Temple? There it was— and not one Jew in all the circle caught the rich suggestion of the Lord. So, too, in the sad sweet story of the home at Bethany you recall how Jesus said to His disciples, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." And they all loved Jesus— that little band of followers— and love gives a man eyes to understand. Yet they answered at once, "Lord if he sleep, he shall do well," and Jesus, with a touch of pity at their dullness, had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not grasped the sweet suggestion of the word. They took Christ literally and misunderstood Him— and yet they were His disciples, and they loved Him.

I think that Jesus is still misunderstood that way. There are men who love Him as these disciples did, and who are striving to serve Him in a life of duty, but they have taken the music of His speech, that was meant to suggest and to lead into the infinite, and they have built their arguments upon the letter of it, forgetting that it is the spirit that giveth life. Believe in the possibilities of Jesus' speech. No creed or commentary can ever exhaust it. It may have been interpreted a thousand times, but there is some new gleam of heaven in it for me. Take all the words of Jesus at their largest. Be not afraid: expand them infinitely. In everything He ever said there is far more than has ever yet been grasped by Christendom.

The Silence of Jesus Misunderstood

The world, then, misunderstood the speech of Jesus; but it also misunderstood His silence. There is no clearer instance of that in the four Gospels than in the scene we read from the Gospel of Luke tonight. Christ had been sent by Pilate to Herod, and Herod when he saw Him was exceeding glad. He plied his prisoner with ceaseless questions, and he hoped to have seen some miracle at last. But Christ would do no miracle and would answer nothing. Silent and unresponsive, He stood still. And if ever the silence of Jesus was misunderstood, it was that day by Herod. He took it as a confession of His impotence. It was because Christ was powerless, that He was speechless. The dignity of it, and all the royalty of it, was lost on Herod. He misunderstood the silence of the Christ.

Is not Christ's silence still misunderstood? There is nothing harder for many a mind to grapple with than the apparent silence of our ascended Lord. It is not what God does, it is what He fails to do; it is not what Christ says, it is what He fails to say, that puzzles and perplexes many an earnest soul. Has He no word of answer when we cry to Him? Does He not hear the moaning of the world? Why are the heavens of brass, when such things happen? Is there no eye to pity this poor earth? Until we are tempted to say, He does not know: until we are tempted to cry, He does not care: and all the time, like Herod in the Gospel, we have misunderstood the silence of the King. Not that I can explain that silence. It is inscrutable and mysterious and dark. But I am determined not to misinterpret it; I shall suspend my judgment till the glory. And then, I take it, it will so shine with meaning and will be so bright with patience and with love, that at last I shall begin to understand the mysterious silence of my Lord.

Misconstruing the Part as the Whole

One word and I have done. Come back to our text again before we close. "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," and when they heard it they said He calleth Elias. Do you see the reason why they misunderstood Him? They had only caught a fragment of His speech. They had only heard a syllable or two. Had they caught the whole of it— let the whole sentence sink into their hearts— they would have known that He was calling upon God.

There never was a time when Christ was more misunderstood than now, for the very reason that we find at Calvary. There was never a time when fragments of the Gospel were proclaimed with such assurance as the whole round truth. One man will take the Sermon on the Mount, and neglecting everything else say, This is Christianity. Another can think of nothing but the sacrifice: the whole of the Gospel is in that for him. They are like the men who heard "Eloi Eloi," and said at once, "He is calling for Elias." It is wonderful, I grant you, what a single word— what a mere fragment will do for any soul. A few stray syllables, like a strand of rope, may save a sinner and bring him to the shore. But for you who are Christians that is not enough. You must study and strive to have a full rich Gospel. To take a part and think it is the whole is the sure way of misunderstanding Christ. Therefore reject not uncongenial truths. Embrace the whole: come like a child to it. Believe that wherever God Almighty works, there must be infinite compass and unfathomable depth. So slowly, and amid many things you cannot reconcile, you will draw nearer to the truth as it is in Jesus, until at last in the land where there are no misunderstandings any more, you will know even as also you are known.

May 20

Behold the Place: an Easter Message - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Behold the place where they laid him— Mar_16:6

The Angel Kindly Compelled Them to Come and See

It was a kindly compulsion of the angel that bade the women come and see that place. They would bless him for it in the after-days. The story shows us that they were affrighted, a great dread fell upon their hearts. In hours when the unseen draws very near, such dread is natural to men and women. And these women, when they descried the angel, would be tempted to turn away and flee, in a kind of panic we can understand. It was to such affrighted souls the angel cried, "Come, behold the place where the Lord lay." They must know for a certainty the place was empty. They must see with their own eyes He was not there. And we can well imagine how in the after-days, when they had to stand the brunt of cross-examination, they would be grateful for that compulsion of the angel. He was not gratifying their curiosity. He was giving them solid ground to rest on. He was giving them something definite and positive wherewith to face the questionings of others. Had they fled affrighted they could have borne no testimony save that the stone was rolled away. Now they could proclaim that He was risen. That was the import of the command for them. Has it any significance for us? Let us meditate a little upon that.

The Message of the Empty Grave: God Had Not Forsaken Jesus

When we behold the place where the Lord lay we realize that God had not forsaken Him. We recognize the faithfulness of God in the mysterious darkness of the tomb. On the Cross our blessed Lord had cried, "My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" There was a darkness on His Father's face as He endured the agonies of Calvary. And then the shadows deepened, and the night encompassed Him, and they removed His body from the Cross, and laid it in the house appointed for all living. Was this the end of all that perfect fellowship? Had God forgotten to be gracious? Was He suffering His Holy One to see corruption, even though the grave was in a garden? Come, says the angel to our questioning hearts, behold the place where they laid Him. Had it been tenanted we might have cried, "It was a beautiful dream, but it is over now." All that He lived for, all that He came to do, has been flouted by the irony of death. But if the place be empty, when men have done their worst, and carried Him from Calvary to the tomb, then God is present even in the darkness. He has not forsaken His beloved Son. He has justified His claims and sealed His testimony. He has crowned with His divine approval that life of beauty and that death of sacrifice. We hear God saying in that empty grave, as clearly as at the hour of baptism, "This is my beloved Son."

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Behold the Place: an Easter Message - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Death Is Conquered

Again, when we behold the place where the Lord lay we realize that death is conquered. The last great enemy is overcome, and the power of the grave is broken. Still death has a dark and awful shadow. Sooner or later it knocks at every door. It touches the fairest flowers and they wither. It robs us of dear ones who made life like music. But the empire of death is now a broken empire, one day to be finally destroyed, because Christ our representative is risen. He is the second Adam. He is the Son of Man. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. He wore a crown of thorns as we all do. He passed into the silence of the grave. And if death was powerless to hold Him, and had to give Him up and let Him go, there steals on the ear the distant triumph song. What a victory it would have been for death if he could have held in his grip that second Adam! How he must have summoned all his powers to keep watch and ward over that peerless Prisoner. And then the angel, sitting in calm confidence, says to our shadowed human hearts, "Come, behold the place where the Lord lay." He is not here; He is risen. The tyranny of death is broken. The Son of Man has proved too mighty for him, because the Son of Man is Son of God. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We Have a Living Friend

Lastly, when we behold the place where the Lord lay we realize that we have a living friend. He meets us as He met Mary in the garden, and as He joined the two on the Emmaus road. Memories are exquisitely precious. They enrich and deepen every life. They touch with beauty the commonest of scenes and set their hallowing on homeliest places. But for the battle of life and for our daily guidance we need more than the most sacred memories: we need the presence of a living friend. We need somebody who understands us, who has been tempted in all points like as we are, who has traveled the rough road our feet must take, who is ready to sympathize and to forgive. And it is then that the angel shines on us, as he shone on the women in the garden, saying, "Come, behold the place where the Lord lay." Look at it. It is empty. Life is going to have more than memories. He who lay in the grave has left the grave, to be the very same Jesus to the end. Closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet; with us, living, to share our very life. "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

May 21

In Another Form - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country— Mar_16:12

We Are Not Told What Form

This is all that St. Mark has got to tell us of our Lord's appearance on the Emmaus road. It is in the Gospel of St. Luke that we have the exquisite story in detail. St. Luke tells us that when He joined the wayfarers their eyes were holden and they did not know Him. Although when He spoke to them their hearts began to burn, something interfered with recognition. And St. Mark tells us what that something was which kept them from recognizing Jesus— He appeared unto them in another form. What that form was we do not know. This is one of the silences of Scripture. The Bible can be magnificently eloquent, and the Bible can be magnificently silent. It was another; it was different; it was not any form they were familiar with; and then (as in the play) the rest is silence.

What God Gives Is Not Static as What Man Makes

I should like to say that if Jesus be of God this is exactly what I should expect. The work of God differs from that of man in the beautiful varying of form. Man builds a bridge, and it remains a bridge: it is still a bridge when fifty years have gone. Man constructs the engine for the liner, and that engine never varies till it is scrapped. And then God comes, and begins building, and one great mark of His handiwork is this, that it is always appearing in another form. He makes the oak— it is barren in November. It appears in another form in July. He makes the seed, intricate in mystery. It appears in another form upon the harvest field. He makes the hawthorn, flowering in May and burning with scarlet berries in the autumn. It is the same bush, but in another form. That is particularly true of sunshine, and our Savior is the sun of righteousness. One of the mysteries of sunlight is how it is always appearing in another form— in health, in countless energies, in the coal-fire burning in the grate, in the colors of the lilies of the field. Now, according to my Gospel, He who gave the sunshine gave the Lord. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And I should expect, if Jesus be of God, as the sunshine and all the lilies are, that He would appear in another form.

Christ Is the Same and Yet Changing

One thinks, for instance, how very true that is of Christ in succeeding generations— He is the same, yet the form is ever changing. Suppose that some preacher of a hundred years ago were to "revisit the glimpses of the moon"—an able man, born of the Holy Ghost, consecrated to his heavenly calling— suppose he were to preach one of his sermons to an audience of our more thoughtful young people: does not everyone know what they would say? They would say, "That is an able man, and we recognize him as perfectly sincere. We admire his logic and we enjoy his eloquence, and we wish we had more of it today. But the Christ he preaches— dogmatic, theological— seems to be out of contact with our lives, and his message (to put it frankly) leaves us cold." Then folk talk of this degenerate age— as if Christ were a man-constructed thing; as if He were like that engine of the liner that can never vary till it is scrapped. While all the time the glorious thing is this, that to every succeeding generation Christ is appearing in another form. Always the same— always the Son of Man— always (as I believe) the Son of God; able to save as no one else can do, for He is able to save unto the uttermost— yet, like the lily and the hawthorn and the sunshine (these glorious but lesser gifts of heaven), too wonderful to be tied to one epiphany.

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In Another Form - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ Is Different in Various Individuals

One thinks again how very true that is of Christ in different individuals. That is where He differs from the creed or catechism, however indispensable they be. Your creed or catechism never varies, whether a man be a blackguard or a saint. It meets you with the same form of words when the bells are ringing and when the heart is breaking. But Christ, living, infinitely sensitive to the secret lodged in every separate heart, is always appearing in another form. How different the Christ of the converted criminal from the Christ of the philosophic thinker! How different the Christ of one of Cromwell's Ironsides from the Christ of the delicate and shrinking woman! Right down the ages, in our varying lives, you have the transcript of resurrection morning, when Mary supposed He was the gardener, and the two saw Him in another form. He came to Paul as the righteousness he craved for. He came to Justin Martyr as the truth. He came to St. Francis as the radiant Comrade. He came to Spurgeon as rest and satisfaction. Always the same— always the Son of Man— always (as I believe) the Son of God, yet in differing form to different personalities, and every form most exquisitely chosen.

Christ Different in the Advancing Years of Life

One thinks lastly how very true this is of Christ in the advancing years of life He is the "very same Jesus" to the end, yet different, in form, with every mile. That is where He is so like the Bible, for this is one of the wonders of the Bible. The Bible we cherish when we are growing old is identical with the Bible of our childhood: yet how different— how rich in new significance— how melodious with notes of heavenly music that we never had ears to hear when we were young. With every trial met and temptation mastered, the Bible appears in another form— with every illness, and every hour of heartbreak, and every cross that we are called to carry. And the wonder of the written word is just the wonder of the Word Incarnate: He is always appearing in another form. In ardent youth, the Lord of high endeavor; in the years of stress and strain, the Lord of rest; in the evening when the first stars come out, the Way that leads us home. And when we waken, in the brighter morning, there He will be just the same— and yet we shall see Him in another form.

May 22

The Worldwide Gospel - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature— Mar_16:15

The Gospel Deep and Wide

There are two directions in which the sway of Jesus is without any parallel in human history. The one of them is that of depth; the other that of breadth. All great movements may be judged extensively— that is, by the area which they cover; or, on the other hand, they may be judged intensively by their power of influence over the individual, and in both respects the Gospel of our Lord stands quite alone upon the page of history— in its depth and in its breadth it is unequalled. The one name for the followers of Socrates was the name of disciple, or of learner. That name was often on the lips of Christ, and is familiar on the Gospel page. But it is very significant that, as the days went by, and men perceived all that they owed to Christ, the name of disciple (for all its tender memories) gave place to that of servant or slave. That indicates with what a perfect mastery Jesus Christ controls the individual. His influence reaches to the depths of being, and possesses every power and every passion. Yet not less notable than that complete control is the area over which it is to reach: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." The two remarkable things about the Gospel are that it is deep as life and wide as all the world. It is a message of redeeming power for the whole man; it is a message of redeeming power for every man. And on that latter subject I wish to speak— on the worldwide message of the Gospel. First, let us look at it in its conception; next, in its accomplishment; and, lastly, in its obligation.

The Gospel in Its Conception

First, then, the worldwide message of the Gospel, viewed in the light of its conception: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."
These words were uttered by the risen Lord when the agony of Calvary was over; it was when He was soon to leave His own that He commanded them to go into the world. It has been argued hence that this idea was only present with Jesus at the end. Had he succeeded in converting Israel, this destiny would never have emerged. It was His failure, we are told, with His own people, and the reaction of a brave spirit from that failure, that led Him to think that all might not be lost though Israel refused Him for its King. In other words, it has been argued that the worldwide message was an afterthought. It was not part— if I may put it so— of the original program of the Christ. It was the child of disappointed hope born of His failure with unbelieving Israel; the last dream, if not the last infirmity, of a noble mind. Now, brethren, there are certain of Christ's thoughts of which you can trace the development. You can see them forming with the passing days into the fullness of our Christian heritage. But the thought of the worldwide mission of the Gospel can never be included in that number, for from the first hour of His public ministry it was present to the mind of Christ.

Think, for instance, of that mysterious hour when Christ was tempted in the wilderness. The last temptation was the sorest one, and you recall what that last temptation was: "Then the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain and showeth to Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saith to Him, 'All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.'" Now, how do our bitterest temptations reach us? They reach us along the line of our desires; they offer us immediately and in forbidden ways the things we covet and hunger for and crave for. And if in the desert the bitterest temptation was couched in dreams of universal empire, you may be sure that universal empire was the ruling passion in the Savior's heart. It was not in the sovereignty that the temptation lay. It was in the way suggested to achieve the sovereignty. It was in the prompting to take the nearest road instead of the blood-stained path that led by Calvary. And the very fact that Christ was tempted so when He was fresh from His mother's home at Nazareth shows us that even then there burned within Him the hope and the vision of a worldwide kingdom.

Or, again, take the Sermon on the Mount, which is the charter and the program of His kingdom. That it was spoken early in His ministry is not a matter open to dispute. Well, now, in the 37th Psalm you read that the meek shall inherit the land. It is not so translated in our version, but that is the only meaning of the Hebrew. The Psalmist is thinking of the land of Palestine, and thinking of nothing but the land of Palestine, and he looks for a day when pride shall disappear, and every dweller in the land be lowly. And now comes Christ, and strikes out that word "land," and in its stead He places the word "earth"— "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"— the bounds of Palestine have been submerged. And then, as if to confirm that spacious thought, He says to those who follow Him, "Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world." Clearly, then, at the outset of His ministry our Lord had His eyes fixed upon the world. The worldwide mission of His Gospel message was not the late-born child of disappointment. In all its grandeur it possessed His heart when first He opened his lips upon the hill, and it abode with Him unaltered until the end, when he said, "Go ye into all the world."

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The Worldwide Gospel - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Overwhelming Boldness of the Gospel in Its Conception

Now, there are two features in this conception to which I desire to direct your thoughts, and the first is its overwhelming boldness. If you would but reflect for a moment on the facts and on the circumstances that surround the facts, there is not one of you but would be amazed at the unparalleled boldness of the Lord. We have read of an Alexander conquering the world and then weeping that there were not other worlds to conquer, but Alexander was born in king's estate, and had a mighty army to obey him. We have read of Napoleon, with his vast ambition and his dreams of a mighty empire in the East, but Napoleon also had his hardy veterans, and his ambition rose with his success. How different from all this is Jesus Christ, who had not a single sword to back His claims, and who, in the quiet glory of His faith, believed in His worldwide empire from the first. Had He been born in Rome of Latin ancestry we might have better understood His outlook. For Rome was stretching her power into far distances, and widening the horizon of her children. But Jesus Christ was born after the flesh, of the narrowest and most exclusive race that ever lived. Yet out of the heart of that most jealous heritage He looked with equal eyes upon the whole world. In every land His Gospel would be preached; in every tongue His name would be proclaimed; the heavens and the earth might pass away, but His word would never pass away, and He— who was He to make these mighty claims?-He was the meek and lowly man of Nazareth, whose mother had never heard the name of Plato, and whose brethren moved about a village street. Note, too, in what a natural way our Savior talked about His worldwide mission. He did not dwell on it as one might dwell on something stupendous that was overwhelming Him. But He spoke of it as quietly and simply as you and I might talk about our work, without the slightest trace of any feeling that He had taken on Him a task that was too great. Think of Him as He sat in Simon's house when the woman broke the alabaster box. "She hath done it for My burial," He said. And then He added, in the same quiet voice, that wherever this Gospel should be preached in the whole world, there also what this woman had done should be told for a memorial of her. It is easy to say that the world to Jesus must have meant far less than it means today for us. I question if it did not mean far more than it does now, when you can telegraph to Africa. (Editor's note: And today when we can travel to the moon!) But at least to one who had seen the Roman soldiers drafted from strange regions of the empire, to one who had moved amid the crowds at Passover, drawn from the towns and cities of far lands, there must always have been a grandeur and a breadth in the conception of a worldwide mission.

The Originality of the Conception of the Gospel of Christ

The other feature is its originality. I question if we think enough on that. The program of a universal empire was as original as it was daring. There was nothing like it in the Jewish creed; the Jewish religion was rigidly exclusive. There was nothing like it in the Pagan world, where religion and the State were almost one. It was a thought transcendently original, and original because it was Divine, that now there was to be neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. It is not from particular promises that we learn the originality of Jesus. There is scarcely a beatitude whose germ, at any rate, you may not find in a page of the Old Testament. Christ is most deeply indebted to the past, and to those who sang and sorrowed in the past, but it is His glory that sets the past in a light that never was on land or sea. Take, for example, the thought of the Kingdom of Heaven, an expression that was often on His lips. It was a word familiar to the Jews, and its coming was proclaimed by John the Baptist. Yet between the kingdom of Jewish aspiration and the Kingdom as announced by Jesus Christ there was a world of spiritual difference. The one was earthly, and the other heavenly. The one was national; the other universal. The one had its seat and center in Jerusalem; the other had its bond of unity in Christ. The marching order of the one was this, "Come ye, and worship in the holy temple," while these were the marching orders of the other, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel." Remember, then, that we owe to Jesus Christ our familiar thought of a worldwide religion. It is one of the grandest and most sublime ideas that has ever been granted to the human race. And not to Greeks do we owe it, nor to Rome; we owe it to Jesus Christ our Savior, to whom it was given, not from the past of Israel, but from the Father with whom He was one.

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The Worldwide Gospel - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Accomplishments of Preaching the Gospel

In the second place, let us view this worldwide mission in the light of its accomplishment.

Now it is one thing to cherish great ideas, and quite another to see these ideas fulfilled. We know what a gulf there is between a great conception and its actual achievement upon the stage of history. Sometimes the great idea proves impractical, and takes its place among Utopian dreams. Sometimes, in contact with the rude reality, it is so crushed and bruised that none would recognize it. I may recall to your memory two great conceptions that have fared in these two ways in history. One of the best-known works of Plato the philosopher is the treatise that pictures his ideal Republic. It is a pattern of what a State should be when ruled by the wisest and for the wisest ends. Yet this— this Kingdom of Heaven of philosophy— has had so little power in touch with fact that to this day, in spite of its moral grandeur, it is an impractical and unsubstantial dream. On the other hand, in the time of the French Revolution, there rose the conception of an ideal kingdom. Its watchwords were Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and it was to inaugurate a golden age. So big with promise did that conception seem, and so like to be the dawn of the millennium, that for enthusiasts and generous hearts "bliss was it in that dawn to be alive." I need hardly tell you what actually happened— how hopes were dashed and aspirations shattered. The prisons were crowded, guillotines were busy, the streets ran red with the blood of slaughtered men. Here was a great conception of a kingdom within whose bounds there would be peace and liberty, yet, in actual contact with the brutal fact, it turned itself into a scene of carnage. Now think, in contradistinction from all this, of the worldwide Kingdom announced by Jesus Christ. Slowly and silently it made its way from nation to nation and from land to land. It was no impractical and unsubstantial dream, as could be witnessed by a thousand lives; and in the peace and power which it brought, it was true to the first design of its one Lord. As an actual fact, from the moment of its birth, the Gospel has been steadily advancing. It has broken down the barriers of class; it has survived the changes of the centuries. Nations have risen and perished in the world since Jesus moved along the ways of Galilee; ancient empires have crumbled into dust; new continents have swung within our ken, but still the Gospel message is proclaimed, still men are going forth with its glad news, still Christ is proving Himself in distant lands the wisdom and the power of God.

Now, not only is this an actual fact, but we must remember it is also a unique fact. There is not another religion in the world of which the same assertion can be made. If you can point to any other faith that has traveled far from the region of its birth, then one might think, on purely natural grounds, to explain the wonderful spread of Christianity. But such a faith is nowhere to be found in all the great historical regions, though some of them have had the aid of allies that Christianity would scorn to own. Think, for example, of Mohammedanism. With its consecration of sensual indulgence, with its sword of steel and with its heaven of sense, well fitted might it seem to win the world. Yet Mohammedanism has never touched the West, and, however powerful with its own people, it has never succeeded in laying its hands on peoples who are remote from its first home. Or think of Buddhism, with its so gentle touch and all the soothing of its voice for weary men, for two thousand years and more its spell has lain on the unnumbered millions of the East; yet in all these centuries it has never crossed the boundary that separates the Orient from the Occident; never wooed the nations of the West with its dreamy gospel of despair. Now, with both these, contrast the Christian Gospel. It was cradled in a little Eastern land, and within a hundred years it was in Spain; within a hundred years it was in Scotland; and now, when but eighteen centuries are gone, in the remotest East and furthest West, men, on fire with love for Jesus Christ, are preaching the glad news of the Evangel. There is nothing like this in the history of the nations; nothing like it in the story of religion. It is unparalleled; it is unique. I do not hesitate to say it is Divine. The steady progress of the Christian faith for him who has eyes to see and ears to hear, is one of the strongest of all arguments for the divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel Is Triumphant in Spite of Forces against It

And this impression is singularly deepened when we think of the forces allied against the Gospel. It had against it the power of the State, and, still more powerful, the heart of man. I shall not dwell upon persecutions which fell with such terrific force upon the Church. Other religions have been persecuted too, and they, like the Gospel of Jesus, have survived. Far more remarkable than that survival from the bitter persecution of the State is its survival from these deadlier evils that lay in their infancy on its own bosom. When I think of the heresies which rent the early Church, of her gradual decline from spirituality, of the superstition of the Middle Ages, and the widespread skepticism it engendered; when I think how the Church has been rent into divisions, and how Protestant and Catholic stand apart, to me it is wonderful that men should ever dream now of carrying the Gospel to the world. As a matter of fact, not only do they dream it; every day they actually do it. Never before, in all the Christian centuries, has there been such eagerness to evangelize the world. And, when you think of the story of the past, with all its division and all its degradation, that glowing zeal of the Christian Church today is a mighty witness to the living Christ. Every power that could wreck the Gospel has been brought to bear on it since it was born. It has been persecuted, ridiculed, degraded; it has been wounded by foes and by its friends. Why, brethren, if Christ be not alive, I tell you that all that is inexplicable. I pity with all my heart the man or woman who says he does not believe in Foreign Missions; he is shutting his heart to such a splendid proof of the divinity of Jesus Christ. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," and men are doing it to this very hour. To me, knowing the past, that is inexplicable unless the speaker was the Son of God.

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The Worldwide Gospel - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

The Accomplishments of the Gospel Put Us under Obligation

And now, in closing, and in a word or two, this worldwide mission in its obligation. And, first, it is the duty of us all to realize what we owe to this command, "Go ye into all the world, and preach." Why, that has been the charter of our liberty; without it there would have been no Gospel here. I hear of some who believe in Home Missions, but have no interest in Foreign Missions. That attitude, I believe, is often due to lack of imagination rather than of heart. But remember, if a thousand years ago the Church had taken a standpoint of that kind, we should still have been living in a heathen country, and without a single hope in Jesus Christ. It is to the Foreign Missions of the past that we owe our highest life today. It is to men who left their home and country that we are indebted for the Christian faith. In spite of all that disgraces our profession, and all the indifference that fills our land, no patriot has ever done for our nation a thousandth part of what has been done by Christ. It is not fair to judge of Foreign Missions merely by what you see or hear today. Even that, when it is rightly read, is full of argument and inspiration. The Foreign Missions are as old as Christendom; it is they which started Europe on her course, and rightly to know the worth of Foreign Missions you must include that story of the past. But not alone must we strive to realize all that the worldwide faith has done for us; each one of us must make the text our own if we are truly disciples of the Lord. To some there has come the call to go abroad, and they have opened their hearts to hear that call. God grant that even today there may be others who will be drawn to dedicate their lives to this great service; but everyone of us, whether old or young, can play his part in this unequalled labor, and help on more powerfully than we know the promised evangelization of the world. Read, I pray you, with attention the story of that service in our missionary journals; take an intelligent interest in the matter, as I know so many of you already do; give it a large place in daily prayer, and be not content with general petitions, but, with a mind enriched by information, intercede for particular localities. It is in such ways that we can take our place, though we may not stand in the forefront of the battle. By prayer, by interest, by thoughtful giving, we can help the worldwide triumph of the Gospel. For that great victory will surely come, when the knowledge of Christ shall cover the whole earth, and happy shall he be who, in that crowning hour, shall be found to have hastened on its coming.

May 23

The Angels and the Babe

And, Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them; and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid— Luk_2:9

God Speaks Your language

One of the messages of this beautiful story is that God speaks in ways we understand. That is part of His fatherly compassion. The wise men from the East had spent their nights observing the stars, it was no chance, then, that it was by a star that they were led to the feet of the Redeemer. But the shepherds, devout and humble Jews, had been familiar since childhood with the angels, and it was through angels that God drew near to them. I believe that the divine voice has a different accent for every differing heart. His voice is as the sound of many waters. There are things He says to every separate child which probably no one else could under-stand—His secret is with them that fear Him. That was so with the voice of the Good Shepherd. in what different ways He spoke to different people. He never dealt upon the scale of thousands; He always dealt upon the scale of one. And today He is on the throne, the very same Jesus, still touched with a feeling of our infirmities.

Vision Comes Along the Line of Duty

Another lesson of this story is that vision comes along the line of duty. it was when they were busy in their lowly toil that the shepherds heard the music of the skies. I wonder if any of them had stayed at home, leaving the work to be done by someone else. I wonder if any of them had slipped away to spend an hour in the tavern of the village. Then for such there was no music, nor any glorious singing of angels. That was given on the line of duty. There is an old story of a monastic porter, who in his cell had a vision of the Lord. Then came the clanging of the monastery bell. Must he leave the vision to go in answer? He went, and returning, the vision was still there, saying, "Hadst thou remained, I should have vanished; but thou wert faithful, and lo! I am still here." We are all tempted to flee away sometimes. We crave for liberty from common drudgery. We seem to be missing so much in the routine. We long for a larger life. But the angel music never comes that way. Heaven has never a song for those who shirk. It was on men who were faithful to their appointed task that there broke the glory of the Lord.

What Interests Heaven, Earth Disregards

One notes, too, that what interested heaven was something which all the village disregarded, it is a strange contrast to pass from the hillside to the crowded caravansary of Bethlehem. There were men from every neighboring village, and some who had traveled from long distances. One subject alone was on their lips; they were all talking of Caesar and his tax. But I do not think that the sharpest shepherd's ear, listening to the singing of the angels, caught a single whisper of the topic which was absorbing the travelers in the inn. The theme which was agitating everybody was not the theme which agitated heaven. Nobody gave a thought to Jesus' birth, and heaven that night thought of nothing else. So are we taught, that what the world makes much of may be insignificant in heaven, and what the world neglects may be supreme. To grasp that is one secret of fine living, it helps us to readjust our scale of values. The relative magnitude of things is altered when we live under the aspect of eternity. Some unnoticed and interior victory may be like the birth in Bethlehem, and set the angels singing in their courses.

Angels May Go but Jesus Remains

And then this exquisite story teaches us that angels may go, but Jesus Christ remains, in a little while the hillside was all dark again, but the Baby was still lying in the manger. The angels went, but Jesus did not go. The glory departed, but the Lord remained. He grew in wisdom, and lived within their borders, and toiled as the Carpenter of Nazareth. The vision of the angels was a memory, but the Babe they heralded was more than that—He was a living power in their midst. Now, for many, Christmas is a sad time. it is a season when memories awaken. We cannot help thinking of those angel faces that we have loved long since and lost awhile. But for us, as for the shepherds, Christ remains, a living presence, a Savior and a friend, the same yesterday, today, forever. He offers us His peace. He wants us to be sharers in His joy. He is here to break the tyranny of things, and in life and death to make us more than conquerors. With such a Savior, pardoning and powerful, who will never leave us nor forsake us, cannot we all enjoy a happy Christmas?

May 24

Love and Courage

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and they were sore afraid— Luk_2:9
But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping and seeth two angels and she turned herself back, and saw Jesus— Joh_20:11, Joh_20:12, Joh_20:14

The Shepherds Were Afraid

We do not like to associate fear with Bethlehem. Fear seems to be banished from the picture. We associate Bethlehem with joy and singing, and with the springing up of glad and glorious hope. Our Christmas hymns are among the gladdest hymns to be found in the whole range of Christian praise. Even waifs and strays, and desolate, lonely people are conscious of an inward warmth at Christmas. And yet these shepherds, out on the hillside, and "simply chatting in a rustic row," were (as Moffatt puts it) terribly afraid. They were not careless nor irreligious men. Eastern shepherds were very rarely that. Their converse with the solitudes of nature kept their hearts alive to awe and wonder. Yet when the angel of the Lord appeared, in some sudden and overwhelming flash of glory, these hardy men were terribly afraid. The unseen world was breaking in on them. Invisible presences were near. That hidden realm which lies beyond the grave was revealing its mysterious secrets. And though their trust, as simple faithful shepherds, was in the God of Abraham and Isaac, an awful dread fell upon their hearts.

But Mary Magdalene Was Not Afraid When the Angels Spoke to Her at Jesus' Grave
Now the singular thing is that when we come to Mary there is not a trace of that commanding terror. And yet if it struck into the shepherds' hearts we should expect to find it here intensified. They were hardy and courageous men; she was a delicate and shrinking woman. They were together, in strengthening companionship; she was all by herself in the dim dawn. They were out on the hills, where sheep were bleating, and where every bush and streamlet was familiar; she was in the presence of a grave. Fear falls upon the heart more readily when some intense experience has exhausted it. No such experience had reached the shepherds; Mary had come through Calvary. Yet there is not a trace in Mary's instance of that gripping and overpowering fear which seized the shepherds when they saw the angels. She did not flee. She did not faint. She saw them, and she continued weeping. The angels spoke to her and Mary answered, as if she were talking with some village friend. And so little did they disturb her heart that she did not even continue gazing at them, but, having spoken, turned herself about. One could not imagine the shepherds doing that. Terror held their eyes. Had a wolf howled, and any sheep cried piteously, I question if they would have even heard it. What, then, had happened? What made the difference? What banished that overwhelming dread in the intrusion of the realm unseen?

Mary's Love for Jesus' Made the Difference

The difference lies in Mary's love for Jesus, a love of which the shepherds were quite ignorant. They came to the innumerable company of angels; she to the Mediator of the better covenant. We all know how love can banish fear. The Apostle tells us there is no fear in love. In the strength and passion of her mother-love, the timidest of mothers will grow brave. And the love of Jesus had so mastered Mary, and captured every tendril of her heart, that fear took to itself wings and flew away. it was a fearful thing to be out in the dim dawn, beside a grave, and near those Roman soldiers, it was a fearful thing within a sepulchre lo be confronted with these unearthly presences. But just as mother-love will drill out fear when a beloved baby is in peril, so the love of Jesus drove out fear from Mary. To have known Jesus had made all the difference. To have loved Him had slain a hundred terrors. To be perfectly certain of His love for her had swallowed up her womanly timidities. A woman with a woman's heart, she was stronger than these hardy sons of shepherding, because Christ had come into her life.

Haunting and Mysterious Fears Can Be Banished in Your Life

And that is what always happens in a life, amid the presences of the unseen and the unknown. To banish haunting and mysterious fears takes more than the natural courage of the heart. No one would charge these shepherds with being cowards. They would have laid down their lives for the sheep. Amid familiar and expected dangers they were easily equal to their problem. But let unseen and mysterious fingers touch them, and flashes betray the nearness of eternity—and dread awakes, and sudden pangs of fear, and piercing terrors in the stoutest heart. No natural courage can keep such fears at bay. They haunt and darken every human heart. We all move through a mysterious universe, and from irruptions we are never safe. But one thing we do know, and even Mary was not sure of this, that neither height nor depth nor life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. in that love, given and returned, lies the dismissal of a thousand fears. We do not tremble now when the unknown assails us, nor when the finger of death is on the latch. We are like Mary, very near a sepulchre, in the dim dawn, amid unearthly things, but undisturbed, untroubled, unafraid—because Christ has come into the life.

May 25

Where to Go at Christmas - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem— Luk_2:15

Bethlehem Did Not Know What God Was Doing in Its Midst

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, that we may see the unobtrusiveness of God. How little the great world knew that night of all that was happening at the inn! The inn itself was crowded; every corner of it housed a traveler. Men were talking excitedly and eagerly on a hundred subjects of the hour. And the great subject of eternity—the birth that was to alter all the future—unobserved, was at their very hand. Nobody was discussing that. The innkeeper would wish to keep it quiet. A few might wonder what was going on in the manger, but they would give to it only a passing thought. And it was thus that the Redeemer came, for the King is really the Kingdom, and cometh not with observation. The old Greeks used to say that the gods come to us on feet of wool. It was thus that God came when His Son was born, in the greatest moment of all history. Men were trafficking, and little children playing, and women gossiping beside the well—and lo! the kingdom of heaven was among them.

No One Expected Christ to Be Born in a Manger

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, that we may see the unexpectedness of God. Here was the heavenly purpose of the ages, fulfilled in a Babe lying in a manger, it was a common dream that the Christ would come in power, breaking into the world of time magnificently. Even if born (as prophecy had hinted), there would be visible splendor at His birth. The last thing that anyone expected, was that the Christ would be a manger-child, unable to find housing in an inn. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord" (Isa_55:8). The manger is forever preaching that, and we are forever slow to take it in. When we are tempted to dictate to heaven, and to "limit the Holy One of Israel," let us instantly turn our steps to Bethlehem.

They all were looking for a King

To slay their foes and lift them high:

Thou cam'st, a little baby thing

That made a woman cry.

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Where to Go at Christmas - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

In Their Obedience the Shepherds Found God to Be Faithful

Let us now go again even unto Bethlehem, that we may see the faithfulness of God. That was what the shepherds found that night. When the shining angels went away, everything would be darker on the hill. Often in life the very darkest hours follow hard on the splendor of the vision. And one pictures the shepherds, in that enfolding darkness, no longer "chatting in a rustic row," but wondering if it all had been a dream. It is characteristic of these honest souls that they put things to the proof at once. They did not discuss the vision; they obeyed it. And so obeying, when everything was dark, and when the night had swallowed up the glory, they discovered the faithfulness of God. Was there a scoffer, I wonder, in their company? Did he warn them that they were self-deceived? Did he bid them "tarry by the sheep-folds," for that they would go to the city and find nothing? Then, with a wisdom that learning cannot give, they disregarded him, and made for Bethlehem, and found their proof of the faithfulness of God. That is how we always find it. It is not enough to have the hour of vision. Visions unacted on and unobeyed never authenticate high heaven, it is when the vision goes, and through the following darkness we carry on, though with a sinking heart, that we find He is always better than His word. To act instantly on what has been revealed to us, though there be nothing round us but the familiar pastures; to obey, when the voices of heaven are all silenced, and we hear only the bleating of the sheep, that, for us, as for these simple shepherds, is the way to discover the faithfulness of God in the unspeakable gift of the Lord Jesus.

God Uses Human Hands to Dispense His Higher Gifts

Let us now go yet again even unto Bethlehem, that we may see how God needs human service. The shepherds came to the Baby in the manger—and Joseph and Mary were both there. When God sends rain, man cannot interfere. It is the unaided ministry of heaven. When God sends sunshine, He does not ask our help. It comes quite independently of man. But one mark of all the higher gifts of God is that something is always left for man to do, and he is summoned to be a fellow-worker. The gift of the corn demands the farmer's aid. The gift of the olive-trees demands the gardener. The precious gift of the little crying infant demands the love and watching of the mother. And the Babe at Bethlehem, the greatest gift of all, was not alone when the shepherds reached the manger—even for that gift, human hands were needed. The infant Christ demanded loving service. Without that service He could not have lived. May I not say that He demands it now as imperiously as He ever did at Bethlehem? All which does not decry the great word gift, for always, the nobler be God's gift, the more it claims the toil of human hands.

God's Gifts Reveal His Thoughtfulness and Understanding

Let us now go once more even unto Bethlehem, that we may see the thoughtfulness of God. For that gift, though few might have known it then, was exactly what all the world was needing. Sometimes, even at Christmas, we get gifts which do not speak of thoughtfulness. We feel that the giver has never really known us, or he would never have given us a thing like that. But love and thoughtfulness and perfect understanding (which is always one of the sweetest fruits of love) are mingled in that Christmas gift at Bethlehem. "Thou, O Christ, art all I want, More than all in Thee I find." The cultured Roman and the savage African were all to agree that this was true. I think as years roll on, and hours of triumph reach us, and shadows fall, and days of heartbreak come, one of the most wonderful of life's discoveries is the all-sufficiency of Christ.

May 26

The Message of Christmas - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us— Luk_2:15

Find Out What God Is Doing in Your Neighborhood

It was a great thing for these shepherds to be in the same country with the new-born Christ. There were many other folk upon that countryside. There were the merchants of Bethlehem, and the shopkeepers. There were the Roman officers taking the census, and the Roman soldiers in their garrisons. But they never dreamed that the crisis of all history was being enacted at their very doors. The shepherds knew it; God had revealed it to them; out on the hill-pasture under the stars they learned it. And it was a great and glorious thing for them to be in the country of the newborn Christ. I trust it will prove so to all who read this page. For not in a manger and not in swaddling clothes, but in all revivals and in all righting for the right, Jesus is mystically born again. And to be awakened to the new life, and catch the meaning of it, is to join the company of these simple shepherds. Do not be self-centered any more. Find out what God is doing in your neighborhood. And in a wider horizon and a glowing heart, and a song from above like the music of the angels, it will be a great thing for you, as for the shepherds, to be in the country of a newborn Christ.

God's Greatest News Is Revealed to Humble Men

Note first, then, that God's greatest news is revealed to humble men. There were many great men and many wealthy men in Palestine. There were scholars of the most profound and various learning. There were lean ascetics who had left the joys of home, and gone away to pray and fast in deserts. But it was not to any of these that the angels came, and it was not in their ears the music sounded; the greatest news that the world ever heard was given to a group of humble shepherds. Few sounds from the mighty world ever disturbed them. They were not vexed by any ambition to be famous. They passed their days amid the silence of nature, and to the Jew nature was the veil of God. They were men of a devout and reverent spirit, touched with a sense of the mystery of things, as shepherds are so often to this day. is it not to such simple and reverent spirits that God still reveals Himself in amplest measure? Must we not become as little children if we would know the secrets of the Kingdom? Whenever I read the beatitude of Jesus, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," I see the shepherds chatting on the hill. How fitting it was, too, that shepherds should be chosen, when we remember how the twenty-third Psalm begins, and when we reflect that the Babe born in Bethlehem was to be the Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep.

The Shepherds Were with Their Flocks

Again, note that when the glory reached them, the shepherds were with their flocks. I like to think that when the heavens shone, and the air thrilled with that magnificent music, these humble men were at their humble duty. I dare say that on the highway over the hill there were fast young fellows going rioting home. Do you think they caught one whisper of that heavenly chorus? I dare say one shepherd had turned lazy, and was asleep at home when he should have been at his herding. Do you imagine he had any vision of the angels? It was to the shepherds who were at their posts, and who were toiling faithfully at their appointed work, that God revealed the birth of Jesus Christ. Could there be any better Christmas message than that? There is an open heaven above simple duty. It is not through the pageantry of idle dreams that life becomes a great and noble thing. It is through the fine heroism that sweeps moods aside, and takes up the cross, and grapples with daily work. it is on simple duty that the glory falls, it is the shepherds at their posts who see the angels.

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The Message of Christmas - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Manger Proves the Music True

To the same purpose is this other lesson: it is the manger that proves the music true. This was a night of wonder for the shepherds. It is not remarkable that they were sore afraid. When the darkness of midnight flashed into glorious splendor, and the silence of midnight rang with an angel's voice, it is no marvel that the shepherds were dismayed. Was it a dream? Was it the work of magic? Would the splendor pass, and leave things as they were? "This shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." You note, then, what a mean and sorry thing was to be the proof that the vision was from God. No cradle enriched with ivory or gems; no palace flashing with a thousand lights, it was a lowly cave that confirmed the tidings. it was the manger that countersigned the music. What does that mean for your life and for mine? it means that we may put our visions to the proof. It means that God intends us to prove them true in spheres as lowly as the manger cradle. No vision of love, if the love be truly God's, will pass away and leave us to our midnight. It will be verified in the round of humble toil, and in the drudgery of every common day.

The Angels and the Vision and the Music May Go, but the Lord Was with Them Still
Lastly, the angels depart, but Jesus Christ remains. It would be a little while before the shepherds realized that the angels had actually gone. Then the darkness would be deepened a thousandfold. Yet it was not while the angels sung their hymn that the shepherds found the place where Christ was laid. It was in the moment of the angels' going that they rose up and made for Bethlehem. And is it not often when the angel departs (and the angel may be a child or sister) that the heart for the first time sets out for Christ? The angels went, but Jesus Christ remained. The music ceased, but the Lord was with them still. They would never hear again these heavenly strains, but the Savior was never far away. It is in that faith we all must live and work. The angel and the vision and the music go. The dreams and the hopes of our childhood may depart, and we may seem to be left under a cheerless sky. But though the glory fade, Christ Jesus still remains. He is always with us to hearten and cheer and keep us. Better than any song of angels is His fellowship. It is the true secret of a happy Christmas.

May 27

Simeon and Anna - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him .... And there was one Anna. a prophetess .... which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day— Luk_2:25, Luk_2:36, Luk_2:37

Age and Infancy Meet

No more beautiful scene could be imagined than this meeting of age and infancy in the Temple. As we read the story of the life of Jesus, we find Him surrounded on all hands by hypocrisy, until we begin to wonder if there was any religion left in those who haunted these sacred courts. But here, for a moment, the curtain is drawn aside. We get a glimpse of a Jewish man and woman. And we find them living holy and separated lives, and longing for the advent of Messiah. On a gravestone erected over certain soldiers in Virginia there are these words, "Who they were, no one knows; what they were, everyone knows," and we might use these words of Simeon and Anna. Who Simeon was we shall never learn; Luke is at no pains to tell us that; but what he was in his daily life and walk, in his inmost desire, and in the sight of God, everyone knows who has read this Gospel chapter. Simeon and Anna, then, entered the Temple when the infant Savior was there, and to them the glory of the child was shown.

Never Give Up Hoping

First, then, we learn that we should never give up hoping. When Alexander the Great crossed into Asia he gave away almost all his belongings to his friends. One of his captains asked him, "Sir, what do you keep for yourself?" And the answer of the king was, "I keep hope." Now we do not read that Simeon was an old man, though it has been universally believed that he was (see Luk_2:29). But through all his years Simeon was like Alexander: he had parted with much, but he had held fast to hope. The days were very dark days for Israel; no John the Baptist had sounded his trumpet note; everything seemed hopeless for the Jews, and some of the noblest of them had taken refuge in despair. But this brave soul "waited for the consolation of Israel," and we know now that his waiting was not vain. Do you see the roots of that heart-hopefulness of his? It ran down to justice and devotion (Luk_2:25). it would have withered long since if it had not been rooted in an upright life and in fellowship with God. Dishonest conduct and forgetfulness of God are always visited with the withering of hope, for hope hangs like a fruit on the first two great commandments. Let us all keep hoping, then, as Simeon did; let us be expectant and on the outlook to the end; and let us remember that a glad and helpful temper is only possible when we are just and devout.

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Simeon and Anna - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

God's Performance Greater Than His Promise

Next we see that God's performance is greater than His promise. There is an old legend that Simeon had stumbled over the words in Isa_7:14. And as he prayed and wrestled with his doubts, it was revealed to him that with his own eyes he would see the virgin's Son. All that he dared to hope for was a glimpse—"a brief glimpse" and "a passing word" would have sufficed him. He lived in expectation of the hour when someone would say to him, "Behold Messiah!" Now the expected moment has arrived—and is it merely a glimpse of Messiah that he wins?—he takes the child of all his hopes up in his arms (Luk_2:28). No wonder that he broke forth into such glorious praise; he had got more than he could ask or think. God's promise had buoyed him through many a weary day; but the performance was greater than the promise. We should all remember that in entering a New Year, and when we speak about the promise of the year. God has a royal way of doing things, and His cups have a happy art of running over. The devil is a most lavish and tireless Promiser, but how the promise is performed let our own past days tell us. God's promises are very many and very great; but to a living and prayerful faith as Simeon's was, the performance is greater than the promise.

Simeon and Anna Saw Jesus in the Temple

Again we remark that Simeon and Anna saw Jesus in the Temple. The shepherds had seen Him lying in the manger; there, too, the wise men from the East had seen Him. But it was not in the manger that He was seen by these two devout souls; it was in the House of God. Now there is a sense in which we all must find Christ in the manger, we must discover Him under life's lowly roofs. In places which were never consecrated, but where the daily drudgery is done, there must we waken to the presence of Jesus. But on the other hand it is equally true, that we shall miss Him if we do not go to church; and we must never enter a place of worship without the prayer, "Sir, we would see Jesus." Columba got his Gaelic name, "Colum of the churches," says an old Irishman, because as a boy he was so devoted to church-worship; like Simeon, he saw Jesus in the Temple.

Till We Have Seen Jesus We Are Not Ready to Die

Lastly, we learn that till we have seen Jesus we are not ready to die (Luk_2:29-32). Children do not dwell much upon death; God did not intend that they should do so. But sometimes, even to children, comes the thought, "When is a person ready to die?" Well, length of years has little to do with it, although all young people think that it has. We are not ready to die when we are seventy; we are ready when we have seen Christ as our Savior. Have the children of the family seen Him so? Are the fathers and mothers praying for that end? A little girl dearly loves to hold the baby. Get it from Simeon's arms, and give it her.

May 29

The Boyhood of Jesus - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. Now his' parents went to Jerusalem every year at the fast of the Passover. And when he was twelve fears' old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast— Luk_2:40-42

Uneventful Years Need Not Be Unprofitable

One of the holiest doctors of the mediaeval church, who was placed by Dante among the saints of paradise, said a striking thing about the youth of Jesus. "Take notice," he said, "that His doing nothing wonderful was itself a kind of wonder. As there is power in His actions, so is there power in His retirement and His silence." When we read the false Gospels of the youth of Jesus, we meet with story after story of miracle. Jesus makes clay sparrows and they fly away; or He puts out His hand and touches some plough that Joseph had made badly, and immediately it takes a perfect shape. But in our Gospels there is nothing of all that. There is not a whisper of a boyish miracle. Jesus grew and waxed strong in spirit filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him (Luk_2:40). Let us learn then that uneventful years need never be idle or unprofitable years. The still river in the secluded valley is gathering waters to bear a city's commerce. Give me health and a day, said Emerson, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. Give Me, said Jesus, the quiet vale of Nazareth, and the blue sky and the blossoming of flowers, and David and Isaiah, and My village home and God, and I shall be well prepared for My great work.

One Event in Thirty Silent Years

Now out of these thirty silent years one incident alone has been preserved, it is the story of Jesus in the Temple. We learn that when Jesus was twelve years old, He went up with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem to keep the Passover. And how, when the feast was over, Mary and Joseph set out again for home, and how they missed their child and went to search for Him and found Him in the Temple with the doctors, all that we have known since our days of Sunday school. Now, why do you think this story has been preserved? Why should it rise, a solitary hilltop, out of the mist that hangs along the valley? It is worth a great deal of pains to discover that.

Influence of the Journey to Jerusalem on Jesus.

First, then, let us try to realize the in influence of this journey upon Jesus. It is always a very memorable hour when a lad for the first time leaves his village home. He has dreamed of the great world many a night, and now he is going to see it for himself. Hitherto his horizon has been bounded by the range of hills that encircles his quiet home. Now he is actually going to cross the barrier, and touch the mystery that lies beyond. There is a stirring of the heart in such an hour, a fresh conception of the greater world; a journey like that will do what a death does sometimes, it wakens the childish spirit to the mysteries. And the lad may come home again, and live with his father and mother, but the world can never more be quite the same. So when Jesus for the first time left His village, it was an ever-memorable day. From Nazareth to Jerusalem was some eighty miles, and almost every mile was rich in memory. Yonder was Shunem, where the woman's son was raised. There was Gilboa, where Saul had perished. That curling smoke rose from the homes of Bethel. These walls and battlements were Jerusalem, at last. So all that Jesus had ever learned at Nazareth, and all that He had drunk in from His parents' lips, thrilled Him, and glowed in His young heart, and by the very glow, expanded it. And what with the growing crowds that joined their company, and what with the ever-changing scenery, the nature of the boy was so enkindled that old things passed away for Him. That is one reason why God preserved this incident, it was a momentous hour in the life of Jesus. Luke gives the story as a kind of picture to illustrate the truth that Jesus grew.

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The Boyhood of Jesus - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Character of Jesus Is Revealed

Next note that in this incident the character of Jesus is revealed. For a boy of twelve reared in a quiet village, Jerusalem at Passover must have been paradise. A city has always a fascination for a lad, especially a crowded city on a holiday. What throngs there were! What pillars and stairs and castles! And at any corner might they not hear the tramp of a marching company of Roman soldiers, with glittering helmets and flashing pikes? Now tell me, did you ever hear of a lad who would leave the stir and the busy streets and the gallant soldiers, and steal away into the quiet Temple? Yet that is just what Jesus did, and it is an exquisite glimpse of His young heart. I dare say He heard the music of the trumpet and had a boyish pleasure in the crowd. But here was the Temple He had heard of so often at Nazareth, and here were the doctors who could answer all His questions. Many a time at home He had questioned Mary, and Mary had said: "Ah, child! I do not understand; it would take the Temple doctors to answer that." And now the Temple doctors were beside Him, and Jesus forgot the crowds—forgot His parents—in His passionate eagerness to ask and know. No doubt when all the companies turned homeward, not a few children were missing beside Jesus. No doubt when the first evening fell, other mothers turned back to seek their boys. And one would find her child among the soldiers; and another would find her child in the bazaars. Mary alone found Jesus in the Temple. is it not a priceless glance into a spirit whose consuming passion was the things of God?

Jesus' Dawning Sense of His Mission to the World

Lastly, this incident has been preserved because in it we have Jesus' dawning sense of His mission to the world. The age of twelve was an important period for a Jewish boy; it was the time when he ceased to be a child, and in the letter of the law became a man. It was at twelve, according to the Jews, that Moses had left the house of Pharaoh's daughter. It was at twelve that Samuel had been called. It was at twelve that King Josiah, of the tender heart, had launched forth in reform. But more important still, it was at twelve that a Jewish boy began to work; he was then apprenticed, if I may say so, to a trade. So Mary and Joseph, travelling to Jerusalem, would be much in talk about their Son's career. They would often kneel on the grass by the roadside, and cry to the God of Abraham to guide them in choosing rightly for their beloved Boy. And here was the answer to their evening prayers—how different from all that they had dreamed!—"Wist Ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" How much that meant for Jesus we cannot tell. How far He had seen into the dark yet glorious future, we shall know better when we see Him face to face. But at least He was conscious that He stood apart, and felt, as man had never felt before, the nearness and the glory of God's Fatherhood, and knew that henceforward life was to be to Him an absolute devotion to His Father's will. Then He went back with Mary and with Joseph and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them; but His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.

May 30

Coming Back Again - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them— Luk_2:51

It Was Hard to Return to Nazareth after the Vision of Jerusalem

That visit to Jerusalem was one of the great hours in the life of Jesus. It must have moved Him to the depths. Often in the quiet home at Nazareth His mother had spoken to Him of the Holy City. And the Boy, clinging to her knee, had eagerly listened to all she had to tell. Now He was there, moving through the streets, feasting His eyes upon the Temple. He had reached the city of His dreams. Clearly it was a time of vision. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? In that moving hour there broke on Him the revelation of His unique vocation. And the beautiful thing is that after such an hour He quietly went back to Nazareth, and was subject to Mary and to Joseph. He drew the water from the well again. He did little daily errands for His mother. He weeded the garden, tended the flowers in it, lent a hand to Joseph in the shop. And all this after that great hour which had changed His outlook upon everything and moved Him to the very depths.

Coming from Vision to Duty Was Characteristic of Jesus

That faithful and radiant way of coming back again was very characteristic of the Lord. We see it later at the Transfiguration. That was a splendid and a shining hour, when heaven drew very near to earth. Such hours find a more suitable environment on mountain-tops than on the lower levels of the world. There Moses and Elias talked with Him. There was heard the awful voice of God. There His very garments became lustrous. After such an hour of heavenly converse you and I would have craved to be alone. Voices would have had a jarring sound; company would have been deemed intrusion. And again the beautiful thing about our Lord is that after such a heavenly hour as that He came right down to the epileptic boy. Instead of the voices of Moses and Elias, there was the clamor and confusion of the crowd; instead of the tranquillity of heaven—the horrid contortions of the epileptic. It was the way of Jesus, after His hours of vision, to come right back, whole-heartedly and happily, to the task and travail of the day.

Routine Should Never Be Counted as Drudgery

Now, that is big with meaning for us all, and is capable of endless application. At this season, for instance, one would think of holidays. Many of my readers have had a splendid holiday, favored by weather exquisitely fine. A strong light, says Emerson, makes everything beautiful, and multitudes have found the truth of that. And now, from the "large room" of holidays, and the healing vision of mountain and of moorland, they are back to the old drudgery again. It is never easy coming back like that, especially in the vivid years of youth. The "daily round and common task" are alien and irksome for a little. But if we are trying to follow the great Master, we can show it not only in our going forth, but by the kind of spirit in which we return. He went down and was subject to His parents. He left the hills for the epileptic boy. He did it with that unfaltering faith of His, which assured Him that His God was everywhere. And in that radiant spirit of return from the vision to the daily round, He has left us an example that we should follow His steps.

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Coming Back Again - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

It Takes Heroism to Come Back to Lowly Tasks

The same truth holds with equal force of all the great revealing hours of life. There is often not a little heroism in coming back again to lowly tasks. When love has once come caroling down the highway it is not easy to get back to drudgery. When sorrow has come and "slit the thin-spun life," how intolerable, often, is that housework! The hand that knocks the nail into the coffin seems to knock the bottom out of everything, and we are left sometimes, paralyzed and powerless, in a world of phantoms we cannot understand. Some men in such hours take to drink. Some who can afford it take to travel. Some lose "the rapture of the forward view" and settle down in the "luxury of woe." But He who came to lead us heavenward, and who drank our bitter chalice to the dregs, has empowered us for a better way than that. To take up our common task again, to march to our duty over the new-filled grave, to come back to the detail of the day, knowing that this, too, is holy ground—that is the path marked out for us by Him who went down and was subject to His parents, and who left the mount for the epileptic boy.

A Christian Does Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways

Nor can we forget how this applies to the great hours of the spiritual life. For that life, too, has its high revealing seasons, when like the apostle we are caught up to Paradise. After such hours (and one of them is conversion) men often yearn to do great things for heaven. They want to be ministers; they want to leave the bench, and go abroad to evangelize the heathen. If that be the authentic call of God it will reveal itself as irresistible, but often the appointed path is otherwise. It is not to go forth in glorious adventure; it is to come back with the glow upon the face—to the old home, the dubious friends, the critical comrades, the familiar faces, it is to tell out there all that the Lord has done, not necessarily by the utterance of the lip, but by the demonstration of the life. A Christian does not always do extraordinary things. He does ordinary things in extraordinary ways. He makes conscience of the humblest task. He does things heartily as to the Lord. And to come back again, with that new spirit, to the dull duty and narrowing routine is the kind of conduct that gives joy in heaven.

May 31

John the Forerunner - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight— Luk_3:3-4

Forerunners Precede Great Events or Persons

It is one of the ways of God in the ordering of history to grant forerunners of great events or persons. The widespread superstition that such things as meteors or earthquakes are the heralds of mighty happenings in history, is nothing but a mistaken application of heaven's great principle of forerunning, in the stormy gusts and the sweeping rains of March we have the forerunners of the beauty of the summer, in illness and sorrow and the open grave we have often the forerunners of changed and useful lives. Before the full sunshine of the Reformation there was the dawn in Wycliffe and his "poor preachers." And the earthquake and the bursting of gates at midnight, was the preparation for the Philippian jailer's joy. So John was the great forerunner of Jesus. It was he who roused the people from their lethargy. He touched the national conscience by his preaching. He made men eager, expectant, and open-eyed. In the far-reaching words of his great namesake he was sent "to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe" (Joh_1:7). What then was the character of John? What features impress us in these verses from Luke? That is what we must endeavor to find out.

John Stood Alone and Yet Undaunted

First, then, we note that John stood alone, and yet he was undaunted. We know that it is easier to be brave when we have brave friends on our right hand and our left. It is a great assistance to a soldier's heart to be one of a regiment of gallant fellows. A little boy will not mind the darkness much, so long as he knows that someone is beside him: it is when he wakens, and finds that he is solitary, that we hear the bitter crying in the night. Now remember that John the Baptist was alone. He lived in the desert of the Jordan Valley. He cut himself off from the haunts and homes of men; he did not mingle in glad human companies. Yet from first to last he was conspicuously brave. His courage shone like a star in the dark night. His voice never lost its trumpet-note though other voices failed to answer it. John came (we read) in the spirit of Elijah. But in this respect John was greater than Elijah. He was more than cousin, in this matter, to the Savior, whose prophet and whose forerunner he was. For Jesus trod the winepress alone; in His great hour all forsook Him and fled; yet He set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem, and cried on Calvary, "It is finished."

John Was a Dreamer and Yet He Was Most Practical

Again, we observe that John was a dreamer, and yet he was most practical. When I call him a dreamer I do not use the word slightingly, I use it in its best and noblest sense. It was to be one mark of Messianic times that the old men were to dream dreams in it, and though John was far from being an old man, yet this touch of the latter day was on his heart. The word of the living God had come to him. He was preparing for a coming Savior. He woke and worked and preached and prayed, with the vision before him of the advent of Messiah. Yet read his preaching, when the people flocked to him, and tell me if anything could be more intensely practical. "Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father" (Luk_3:8). "Exact no more than that which is appointed you" (Luk_3:13). "Do violence to no man, and be content with your wages" (Luk_3:14). What teaching could be more plain and practical than that? Let us learn from John, then (the greatest born of women), that the highest character embraces dream and duty. It knows the value of the present task; but it has its vision of a Christ-filled tomorrow. It does not lose itself in things to be. Nor does it despise the humble round of drudgery. It does life's common work with strenuous faithfulness, but never forgets that Jesus is at hand.

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John the Forerunner - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

John Was Very Stern and Yet He Was Most Wonderfully Humble

Once more, we mark that John was very stern, and yet he was most wonderfully humble. We always think of John as the stern prophet. There is the mark of severity about the man. The spirit of the wild and desolate wilderness, where the dislodging of any stone might show a viper, seemed to have cast its tincture on his heart. Now we do not associate sternness with humility, it is the sister of pride more often than of lowliness. And the great glory of John's character is this, that with all his severity he was so humble. Men had been deeply stirred by the Baptist's message. They began to question if he might not be Messiah. Was it not just such a leader that they needed if the kingdom of Israel was to be restored? So all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ or not (see Luk_3:15). it was then that the grandeur of John's character shone forth. "He confessed and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ." "He must increase, but I must decrease." "I am not worthy to unloose His shoe-latchet." Stern in the presence of evil and of vice, stern in the presence of Herod and his court, John was as humble as a little child before the feel of Him who was to come. Other prophets have been as stern as John. Other saints have been as true and lowly. But it is the union of his matchless heroism with lowliness and joyous self-effacement that makes John the greatest born of woman.

John Had Imperfect Views of Christ and Yet He Glorified Him.

Then, lastly, we see that John had imperfect views of Christ, and yet he glorified Him. What kind of Messiah, think you, did John expect? Read over the verses again and you will see. it was a Messiah whose fan was in His hand, and who would burn the chaff with fire unquenchable (Luk_3:17). Now when Christ came, He did indeed come to winnow. What John foresaw was true, and terribly true. But it was also true that He would not strive nor cry; that He was gentle, and loved the gatherings of men; that a bruised reed He would not break, and smoking flax He would not quench. All that had been but dimly seen by John. It was that which vexed him as he lay in prison. The Baptist had imperfect views of Christ—and yet how nobly did he glorify Him! So you and I may have imperfect views of God—for clouds and darkness are around His throne—yet if we be brave and earnest as our hero was, knowing God's infinite worth and our unworthiness, we too shall glorify Him, and enjoy Him forever.

June 1

Faith Refusing Deliverance - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He hath sent me... to preach deliverance to the captives— Luk_4:18
Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance— Heb_11:35

Faith Leads to Deliverance

Among the blessings which we connect with faith, one of the most conspicuous is deliverance. The Bible is a great record of deliverance effected through the agency of faith. Abraham was delivered from idolatry. Joseph was delivered from his brethren. David was delivered from Goliath, and Peter from the prison at Jerusalem. And most notable of all, there was the Exodus, when Israel was delivered from its bondage—drawn out of Egypt, by the might of God, into the peril and the prize of liberty. All these are instances of deliverance, wrought in the power of a living faith. Men trusted God, and in the joy of trust were freed from darkness and captivity. And so the Bible, as we read its pages, grows into a great argument for this, that God is able and willing, if we trust Him, to set the feet in a large room.

The same issue of faith also arrests us when we come into the company of Jesus. Here, too, as in the rest of Scriptures, faith is a mighty power to deliver. We see the maniac released from legion, and sitting clothed and in his right mind. We see the withered arm restored again; the eye that had been blind regaining sight. We see a woman delivered from infirmity, and a loved brother delivered from the grave, and a great company whose eyes are glad because they have been delivered from their sin. Christ was the great enemy of bonds. He was the lover and the light of liberty. He came to preach deliverance to the captives, and to bestow the gift which was His message. And so again we learn this happy lesson, that faith is a mighty power to redeem; and that in every sphere where faith is active, one of its blessed fruits is liberty.

There Is a Faith That Refuses Deliverance

Yet while that is true, and gloriously true, in a way I trust we all know something of, there is a suggestion in our second text that it is fitting we should not forget. "They were tortured, not accepting deliverance," and the whole chapter is a song of faith. The chapter is a magnificent review of all that faith is powerful to achieve. So this is also a result of faith, not that it brings deliverance to a man, but that sometimes, when deliverance is offered, it gives him a fine courage to refuse it. There are seasons when faith shows itself in taking. There are seasons when it is witnessed in refusing. There is a deliverance that faith embraces. There is a deliverance that faith rejects. They were tortured, not accepting deliverance—that was the sign and seal that they were faithful. There are hours when the strongest proof of faith is the swift rejection of the larger room.

Better to Be Faithful Than Free

Think in the first place of the martyrs, to whom our text immediately applies. When a man was charged with being a Christian, deliverance was always at his hand. He had only to blaspheme the name of Christ—a word or two of cursing—that was all. He had only to spit upon the name of Christ, when the Roman centurion scratched it on the wall. He had only to put his hand into a box, and take a grain or two of incense from the box, and sprinkle it without a single word before the beautiful statue of Diana. On the one hand was life, and life was sweet. On the other hand was death, and death was terrible. On the one hand was liberty and home. On the other hand was torture and the grave. And they were tortured, not accepting deliverance. They might have had it by a single word. It was their faith that led them to the scaffold. It was better to be faithful than be free.

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Faith Refusing Deliverance - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

It Takes Faith to Refuse to Be Liberated from the Troubles Entailed in the
Performance of Needed Common Tasks

The same issue of faith is seen again amid the troubles of our common life. in precisely the same manner it is witnessed in the pettier martyrdoms of every day. Each of us has got his cross to carry. There is no escaping from the law. Each of us has got his secret bitterness, and his burden, and his travail or his fear. For one the trouble may be in business matters; for another, the cross may be at home; while for a third, perhaps, it is the body that wakes the heart to trembling in the night. Now I believe that whatever be the trouble, Jesus Christ has come to preach deliverance. There is peace in Him, and quietness of soul, and conquest over death and all its terrors. But remember that there are other outlets which sometimes loom upon our gaze invitingly, and promise us the release that we are craving—if only we are untrue to our best selves. I think that all of us are tempted so, though these are temptations of which we seldom speak. Sometimes indeed we hardly understand them, they are so subtly hidden and disguised. But always there is a tampering with conscience in them, and a certain lowering of the flag of youth, and a sinking clown upon a lower level than we know to be worthy in our hearts. it is when a man or woman is so tempted that faith in God is needed to be true. To choose the drudgery and spurn the liberty is the sign-manual of faith in him. "They were tortured, not accepting deliverance." They let the laughter and the sunshine go. And sometimes in the quiet of our obscurity, you and I may be called to be their children.

Don't Miss the Best by Choosing the Easier and More Remunerative in Disregard of Conscience

Now I might illustrate how to beware of choosing the easier in disregard of conscience by many instances. For example, the case of a young man. His work is hard and irksome and ill-paid, and he has a father who is dependent on him. From morning till evening it is a weary grind. There is no encouragement. There are scarce any prospects. And when evening comes he is so fagged that he can hardly follow a good book. And then there comes to him the glittering chance of work that is easier, and pay that is far better, on the condition that he shuts his eyes, and does not trouble about a tender conscience. Many a man accepts that swift deliverance. He offers the grain of incense to Diana. And then he prospers, and is kind at home, and there are comforts for the aged father. But nothing on earth can alter the old fact that such an act was faithless and untrue, and that a man forever from that moment has left the company of saints and martyrs. He has been tortured and accepted deliverance, and the world and the devil are exacting creditors. Somehow, as the years unroll themselves, he will discover he has missed the best. And if my words have any weight on young men who are starting out on life, they will write upon their hearts this text of Hebrews, and avoid that tragic mistake.

Faithfulness Is Better Than Happiness When Happiness Is Brought On by What Is False

Or I might take the case of a young woman who is set amid uncongenial surroundings. She is not happy. Perhaps she has to work, and probably her health is very far from good. I shall not paint the picture at its blackest, though I have seen it at its blackest for myself. I shall not touch on that most awful freedom that lurks on every street of every Babylon. But I shall say that she gets the offer of marriage from someone to whom God has never led her, and to whom in her woman's heart there is no drawing, as of those cords which have been knit in heaven. There is the chance of freedom, if you like. There is deliverance from all the drudgery. But, O my sister, at what an awful cost of all that is most womanly and delicate! A thousand times better to be tortured daily than to accept deliverance like that—and it is there, you see, that faith comes in. Faith that God can uphold you in the darkness, and give you music in the weariest mile. Faith that there are better things than happiness, when happiness is bought by being false. Faith that the best in life is ,ever lost when you are true to what is high and beautiful; and always lost when you have played the traitor to the sweet sincerities of womanhood.

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Faith Refusing Deliverance - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Sometimes Deliverance Can Be Failure or Treachery

The same issue of faith is also seen in public and in Christian service. I suppose there is no one engaged in that who does not feel at times a longing for release. It may be that enthusiasm has vanished. It may be that we are disappointed. It may be that those whom we are called to labor with are irritating and interfering people. So sooner or later comes to us the day when we are tempted to have done with it; to take our armour off, and hang it up, and pass into the oblivion of peace. Now I am far from saying that that is always wrong. Sometimes it may be right and necessary. A man may be forced to it by doctor's orders, and if he be wise he will attend to these. A man may be led to it by the appeal of conscience telling him he should be more at home, and that no service can have heaven's blessing if wife and children are neglected. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. That is a matter for heart and God. All that I want to do here is this: it is to warn you that all release is not like that. There may be times when deliverance is treachery; when to seek for freedom is to fail; when a man's first duty is to continue serving, even though his service may be torture. "They were tortured, not accepting deliverance," and sometimes we are called with that vocation. If we trust God we shall refuse relief, and stick to the service we have put our hand to. God has no pleasure in these sorry workers who are always threatening to send in resignations. No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

Beware of False Deliverance from Moral and Intellectual Doubt

I am impressed again by the same truth in regard to our spiritual and intellectual difficulties. I may be speaking to some here who have great difficulties about faith and God. They would fain believe, and yet they find it hard. They would fain trust, and yet they cannot trust. They cannot feel their need of a Redeemer. They cannot grasp the power of the cross. Or it may be that, having grasped it once, they have been thrown into darkness by their reading, and cannot reconcile the facts of science with the old message of the love of heaven. My brother, I want to say to you that Christ has got deliverance for you. He has come to preach deliverance to the captive, and there is no captivity so dark as doubt. But there are times of darkness and perplexity when other methods of release will face you, and if you are a man you will reject them, and face the torture which rejection brings. You will not take shallow answers to great questions. You will ,or yield up moral questions in despair. You will not fall back upon a life of sense, as if in sensuality were rest. But you will be true to all the light you have, and you will cling to all the good you know, and you will trust that, when the night is past, the singing of the birds is sure to come. To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. It is sometimes better to be tossed and tortured, than to be sleeping on a couch of ease. This is one mark of every earnest soul that has come at last to liberty and light, it has been too faithful to the Highest to accept deliverance upon unworthy terms. "Not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection."

Christ Refused False Deliverance

In closing, may I just remind you how true this was of our Lord Jesus Christ? He is our Savior not because He refused deliverance. "All these kingdoms will I give thee," said the Tempter, "if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Was not that a road to power and princedom which would have escaped the torture of the cross? But He was tortured, not accepting deliverance. He chose the bitter way that led by Calvary. He scorned deliverance by that compliance, and so He has won deliverance for the captive. Then think again, when He approached the cross, how the women offered Him the opiate. And had He but drunk it, His senses had been numbed, and the agony of crucifixion had been deadened. But having tasted it, He put it from Him. He could not and He would not drink it. And He was tortured, not accepting deliverance, that He might be the Savior of mankind. Now He preaches freedom to the captive. Do you know it? Have you experienced it? Can you this minute bear witness in your heart that you are a freed man in Jesus Christ? if so, to you may come those darksome hours when voices call you to some mean escape, and just because you are a man in Christ, with all the saints and martyrs you will scorn it.

June 2

The Winsomeness of Jesus - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And all…wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth— Luk_4:22

Christ's Manner Was Gracious

Our text tells us that the words of Christ were gracious words, and in every sense of the word gracious that is true. But the exact meaning of the terms which are here used is a little different from what we commonly imagine. His hearers were not referring to Christ's message; they were referring rather to Christ's manner. They marveled, not at the grace of which He spake; they marveled at the grace with which He spake. In other words, what so arrested them as they gathered round and listened to the Master was what I would call the winsomeness of Jesus. It is on that theme I wish to dwell. I desire to speak on the winsomeness of Christ. I shall try to unveil to you a little of that charm which was so characteristic of the Lord. And I shall do so in the one hope—to use the prophetic words of the old psalmist—that we may behold the beauty of the Lord.

Winsomeness Radiated from His Whole Life

You will note that this winsomeness of Jesus was not by any means confined to His discourse. It was in His speech that men felt the spell most powerfully, but it radiated out from His whole life. The moment He was baptized, on to the last agony on Calvary—at the marriage feast—at the table of Zacchaeus—out in the meadows where the lilies were—everywhere, in every different circumstance, men felt not only the holiness of Jesus; they were arrested also by His winsomeness. It was indeed this very winsomeness that was a stumbling block to godly Jews. It was so different from all that they had read of in the men whom God had sent to be His messengers. Had Christ been stern, and lived a rugged life, and dwelt apart in fellowship with heaven, they would have been swifter to recognize His claims. It was in such guise the ancient prophets lived. It was in such guise that John the Baptist lived. He was a rugged man of fiery speech, and he fared coarsely, and loved to be alone. And then came Jesus moving with delight among the homes and haunts of common people, and what I say is that this very winsomeness was a perpetual riddle to the Jews. They could not understand His childlike interest in every flower that made the meadow beautiful. They could not understand His love for children nor His quiet happiness in common life. Reverencing the old prophetic character as that of the true messenger from God, they were baffled by the winsomeness of Jesus.

Winsome in Spite of His Stupendous Claims about Himself

Now if you wish to feel the wonder of that winsomeness there are one or two considerations which are helpful. You have to think of it, for instance, in connection with the stupendous claims which Jesus made. One of the commonest features of the winsome character is a certain delightful and engaging diffidence. It is extremely rare to discover charm in anybody who seems a stranger to the grace of modesty. And though of course not for a single instant would I suggest that Christ was such a stranger, yet the fact remains that there never lived a man who made such amazing and stupendous claims. "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me" (Joh_14:6). Tell me, was there ever heard from human lips such amazing and unbounded self-assertion? And the wonderful thing is that with a note like that ringing like a trumpet through the ministry, men should still have felt that Christ was winsome. The fact is that unless Christ had lived men would have called His character impossible. So to assert, yet all the while to charm, is almost beyond credence psychologically. And it is just this glorious self-assertion sounding through the ministry of Christ that makes His winsomeness to thinking men such a baffling and amazing thing.

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The Winsomeness of Jesus - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Winsome in Spite of His Loyalty to Truth

Again the wonder of Christ's winsomeness is deepened when we remember His loyalty to truth. Christ did not say, "I speak the truth"; He said, "I am…the truth." Now it is one of the sad things about the winsome character that it is not always the most truthful character. There is often more of truth in the blunt man than there is in the charming and attractive man. The former takes a sturdy pride in telling out exactly what he thinks; the latter, by his very temperament, is in peril of prophesying smooth things. When truth is unpleasant, the winsome character is continually under temptation to conceal it. There may still be a compliment upon the lip, although there is a curse within the heart. And that is why men are generally readier to trust one who is bold and blunt and rugged than one whose distinguishing attribute is charm. They have a lurking conviction that the winsome man, for all his winsomeness, is not quite sincere. They question if he be really genuine when in every society he is so delightful. And this is the wonder of Christ's winsomeness, not that men felt it and acknowledged it, but that they felt it in One who stirred them to the deeps by His passionate loyalty to truth. "I am ... the truth," said Jesus Christ; and He lived that out to the last syllable. Not by a hairbreadth did He ever swerve from all that had been given Him from heaven. And the strange thing is that, with such sublime fidelity to Himself and His brother and His God, He should yet have been so infinitely winsome. "We beheld his glory," says the Apostle John, "and it was full of grace and truth." That was the wonder of it in apostolic eyes, and that has been the wonder of the ages. There are men who are splendidly truthful and not gracious. There are men who are finely gracious and not truthful. This was the wonder of the Son of God, that He was full of grace and truth.

Winsome in Spite of His Trials

The wonder of that winsomeness is deepened also by the experiences of Christ's life on earth. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and men hid as it were their faces from Him. Had He always lived among the hills at Nazareth we might more easily have understood His charm. Dreaming His dreams there, where the world was beautiful, we might have expected a character of beauty. But Christ deliberately left that quietude, and flung Himself into the battle of humanity, and it is when we think how awful was that battle that we marvel to find Him winsome still. If ever there was a life to make one stern, it was the life that Jesus had to live. It was so hard, so misinterpreted, so ringed about with diabolic malice. Yet in spite of every lip that taunted Him, and every heart that hungered for His tripping, Christ never lost, whether in word or deed, the winsomeness that so attracted men. To be suspected as Jesus was suspected is not the common road to charm of character, it is not often that life blossoms out in an atmosphere of suspicion and of treachery. Yet every day Christ rose, there were the Pharisees, and there was Judas with his eyes of malice, and men said; "He is mad; he hath a devil"—and Jesus through it all was winsome still. Still had He eyes for the lilies of the field. Still was He happy in the home at Bethany. Still was He in love with little children, and happy-hearted and pitiful and courteous. It is this contrast between the outward lot and the infinite and inward grace of the Redeemer that makes so wonderful to thinking men what I call the winsomeness of Christ.

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The Winsomeness of Jesus - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Moral Beauty of Christ

Observe too, that to the very end Christ never lost that moral beauty. It did not pass away as the dew passes, under the burning heat of the high sun. I know few things in life more saddening than to meet again some comrade of our youth, and to discover how the years have marred the likeness which we cherished in our memory. As we remember him, in school or college, he was one of the most delightful of companions. There was a charm in him, a happy winsomeness, that made him a universal favorite. And now after the lapse of years we meet him again, it may be unexpectedly, and we discover, in an afternoon, that the years have robbed him of his best. He is no longer the happy-hearted comrade whom we remember in the golden days. He is irritable or heavy-hearted now, or he is worldly and cynical and bitter. Everybody called him winsome long ago; nobody could call him winsome now. He has gone out to his battle with the world, and the grim world has beaten him. My brother, Jesus Christ entered that battle, and for Him the struggle was terrific. And it grew fiercer every year He lived, till the last hour of agony and blood. And I shall tell you what convinces me that He came out victorious at the end: it is that on to the end He never lost the sweet and winsome beauty of the morning. No bitterness, even in the thick of it. No cynicism, even at the darkest. No cold suspicion of His brother man, though He knew man as he was never known. No forfeiting of deep and happy peace; no dimming of the mystic radiance, even when under the olives of Gethsemane the bloody sweat was dropping to the ground. With words of grace His ministry began, and there were words of grace upon the cross. With a deed of grace His ministry began, and there were deeds of grace in the resurrection garden. I want you to feel as you have never felt before the magnificent persistence of Christ's winsomeness, that you may be ashamed at what the years have been plundering from you.

The Importance of the Home

Now if you ask me what were the sources of this unequalled winsomeness of character, I think I should answer that they were chiefly two, and the first was the influence of home. We do not know much about the home in Nazareth—God in His wisdom has hung a veil on that—but we know enough from the Gospels to assure us that it was a home of happiness and peace. Martin Luther could never think of home without a certain shuddering of heart. There was no gladness for him in his Pater Noster, so loveless were his memories of his father. But Jesus, all through His stormy years, turned to His home with infinite delight, and clothed His deepest thoughts of God and man in the tender and sweet memories of Nazareth. There had He seen the woman sweep the house. There had He watched the hands that used the leaven. There had He learned, with innocent, childish lips, to run to the workshop and cry Abba Father. Out in the battle, with evil eyes upon Him, His thought went flashing back to happy Nazareth, and at the darkest He never lost His winsomeness, because He never lost the influence of home. There are homes where it is well-nigh impossible that the children ever should be winsome. There is so much bitterness in them, so much worldliness, so much unkindly and unguarded talk. There is so little of that gracious reverence that ought to encircle the great years of childhood, when the foot of the angel is still upon the ladder, and every bush is burning with its God. Out of such homes may come successful men, or smart and clever and fashionable women; but never, from such a barren childhood, is there built up the temper that is winsome. It takes a Mary to make a winsome son. It takes a home of reverence and of love. It takes a depth of fatherhood and motherhood that has never lost the hallowing of prayer. Men marveled at the grace with which He spake, and they said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" That was their difficulty, and, as often happens, at the heart of the difficulty was the explanation. They would have marveled less had they but known how quietly beautiful was that home in Nazareth, where those lips which were to draw the world stammered the first syllables of speech.

The Importance of Fellowship with the Father

But the winsomeness of Jesus had another source than the kindly influence of Nazareth. It was His knowledge of the Heavenly Father and His unbroken fellowship with Him. It was Charles Kingsley, was it not, who as he lay dying was heard murmuring, "How beautiful God is!" His heart was quieted in the dark valley by his vision of the beauty of the Lord. And no one, I think, can read the Gospel story and learn what Jesus saw of the divine, without echoing the words of Kingsley, and murmuring, "How beautiful is God." One would not call the God of Sinai glorious. He dwelt in the light that no man could approach, and He was infinite in holiness and majesty. But the God of Jesus is something more than that, as every page of the four Gospels shows us. He is not only infinitely holy, He is also infinitely winsome. He does not dwell apart in awful majesty; it is He who clothes the lilies of the field. His care is not limited to mighty empires; it is He who caters for the sparrow. And He makes the rain to fall on the evil and the good, and when we ask for bread He will not give a stone, and He has a ring and a robe and a sweet kiss of welcome for the poor battered son from the far country. Aristotle pictured an ideal man, and one of his marks was that he should never run. But the father, when he saw the prodigal far off, ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him. My brother, do you not feel the charm in that—the charm that has wooed and won through all the ages? There is more than authority in such a God; there is the grace of winsomeness as well. Christ felt, as man had never felt, the unsurpassable winsomeness of God. To that He clung with a faith which never faltered, in the teeth of everything that contradicted it. And I think it was that winsomeness of God, learned in the intimacy of a perfect sonship, that was one secret and unfailing spring of the winsomeness of our Redeemer. If God be holy, and nothing else than holy, those who trust in Him will be holy. His righteousness may make them righteous. It takes a God of love to make men lovable; a God of perfect grace to make them gracious. So that God in His infinite glory must be winning if men who know His name are to be winsome. It was that discovery which Jesus made. He walked in sonship with a winning God. All that He had ever seen at home was reinforced by what He saw in heaven. Until at last, reflecting as a mirror the sweet and kindly fatherhood of God, He lived in a winsomeness the world could never give, and at its dreariest could not take away. We cannot hope to repeat that. It is too high and wonderful for us. But at least we can pray, as the psalmist prayed of old, "Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us." And so it may be that as the days go by, not without many a pitiable failure, we too may come to show a little of the winsomeness of our Master and our Lord.

June 3

The Call of the Fishermen - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught .... And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake— Luk_5:4-6

Christ Singles Out an Individual's Disappointment

It was not easy for Jesus Christ to be alone, men were so eager and so curious about Him. Not only did they crowd round Him in the villages, where at any moment there might be a work of healing, but they also watched Him as He stole away into retirement, among the hills, or by the seashore. Our lesson opens, then, with Jesus at the seaside, and there, as in Capernaum, there is a great crowd round Him, eager to listen to the Word of God. Then Jesus steps into one of the fishing boats and preaches there—note the many and strange pulpits in which Christ preached. And when the sermon was over, and Jesus was doubtless weary—what did He do? Did He ask for a drink of water? He immediately turned to Peter, in whose boat He was, and said to him, "Launch out into the deep." He had seen the disappointed look in Peter's face. He had detected that the night's fishing was a failure. All the excitement of the thronging crowd, and all the effort of telling them God's news, had not made Him careless of one man's disappointment. So may we learn to trust Christ's individual care, though we be only atoms in a countless multitude. Then follows the miracle, and the call to discipleship, and so this brief but exquisite lesson closes.

It Was in Deep Waters that the Draught Was Got

Now, note that it was in deep waters that the draught was got. The first word of Jesus was, "Launch out into the deep." if the nets were to be filled with fish that morning, the first requirement was to leave the shallows. Now, every miracle is but an acted parable; there are meanings in it that all life may interpret, and to us today, no less than to Simon Peter, Jesus is saying, "Launch out into the deep." We must come right out for God if we are ever to enjoy Him. We must unfasten the cable that binds us to the shore. It is when we launch out into the deeps of trust, that we find how mysteriously the nets are filling. For the harvest of life's sea is joy and peace, and growing insight, and increasing love, and these are beyond the reach of every fisherman, save of him who dares to launch into the deep. Then, too, as experience increases, we learn the meaning of the expression "deep waters." We learn that sorrow and care, and suffering and loss are the deep waters of the human heart. And when we find what a harvest these may bring, and how men may be blessed and purified and made unworldly by them, we understand the need of the deep waters, if the nets are ever to be filled.

God's Gifts May Cause Some Disorder at the First

Note again that God's gifts may cause some disorder at the first. When Peter at Christ's command let down the net, it enclosed a great multitude of fishes. We may be sure that the net was a good one if it was Peter's making, yet for all its goodness it began to break. Now nets are very precious to a fisherman; the loss of them is sometimes irreparable. So in a moment we see Peter and Andrew beckoning to their neighbor's boat, and like the man of Macedonia, crying, "Come over and help us." They came at once, and both of the boats were filled, and filled so full that they began to sink. And the point I wish you to note is that the first results of the kindness of the Savior were—breaking nets and sinking ships! You see, then, that when Jesus enters a life as He entered Andrew's and Simon's boat that morning, it is always possible that at the first there may be some distress and confusion and disorder. We find abundant records of it in the early Church, and every minister has seen it in his converts. Let no one be distressed, then, if when Christ steps on board it is not all joy and singing from the start. All that will come, in the good time of God, for the promise is there shall be no more sea. Meantime, just because Christ is good, and charges the empty night into such morning fulness, the nets (that are so precious to us) may seem on the point of breaking, and the waves come lapping to the gunwale of the ship.

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The Call of the Fishermen - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Nearness of Jesus Shows Us Our Unworthiness

Once more, it is the nearness of Jesus that shows us our unworthiness. One day, when Jesus was across the lake in Gadar, the Gadarenes came to Him with a strange petition: they came and begged Him to depart out of their coasts. Jesus had cured the Gadarene demoniac; He had interfered with the local trade of swine keeping; and so incensed were the people at this interference, and so dead were they to the glory of their Visitor, that they begged Him to depart, and He departed. How different is the cry of Peter here, "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man." It was not because he was dead in trespasses and sins, it was because he was wakened to his own unworthiness, that Peter was overpowered by the Lord's presence. And so, while Jesus departed from the Gadarenes, the next word that He spoke to Peter was "Fear not" (Luk_5:10). Sometimes, when we gather a bunch of flowers, they seem to us very sweet and beautiful; and so they may be, for they are God's creatures, and He has made everything beautiful in its time. But if we take a pure white rose and set it in the midst of them, it is strange how garish and coarse some of the others appear. They are God's creatures, but they seem less worthy now, in the near presence of that pure and perfect whiteness. Just so when Jesus Christ is far away, we may be very well contented with ourselves. But when He enters our boat, and shows us His love and power, like Peter we too would say—"I am a sinful man."

They Followed Christ When Things Were Brightest with Them

Then, lastly, these men followed Christ when things were brightest with them. They had never had such a fishing in their lives. It was not in the weary morning after a useless night that they forsook all and followed Jesus. It was when they were the envy of the neighborhood for the huge haul of fishes they had got. Will the children act as Simon and Andrew acted? Will they follow Jesus when life is at its brightest? It is better to come late than not at all. It is better to come in old age than to die Christless. But it is best to come when all the nets are full, when life is golden, and the heart is young; best, and not only best, but surest, for "they that seek Me early, shall find Me."

June 4

Somewhat to Say - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee— Luk_7:40

Jesus Christ Has Somewhat to Say

It is one of the notable things about our Lord that always He has somewhat to say. No hour of need ever finds Him silent. The intrusion of the woman into Simon's dining room was an entirely unexpected incident. It was a painful and perplexing moment when she made her way into the feast. But our Lord had somewhat to say then, and one of the wonderful things about Him is that, always, He has somewhat to say still. Listen to the speaker at the street corner discussing Socialism or industrial unrest. Join an eager company of young fellows gathered to reconstitute the universe. Socrates and Shakespeare are not mentioned, but almost always Christ is summoned in; they all feel He has somewhat to say still. Heaven and earth have passed away, but His words have not passed away. We live under a different heaven now, and the earth has been displaced from her centrality. Yet still, on every problem which emerges, Jesus Christ has somewhat to say. It is a fact which is well worth considering.

Jesus Has Somewhat to Say When Everybody Else Is Silent

He has somewhat to say, it should be noted, just when everybody else is silent. My impression is that when that woman entered, you might have heard a pin drop in the dining room. Some of the guests would hang their heads, and some would look at each other "with a wild surmise." A sudden quiet would fall upon the table; conversation would instantly be hushed. And just then, when there was silence, when nobody else had a syllable to utter, our Lord had somewhat to say. So was it in the house of Jairus, when the father and mother could do naught but weep. So was it outside the gates of Nain, when the widow was stricken dumb in her great sorrow—and the wonderful thing is that so is it still. When all the philosophers are dumb, and cannot give one word of help or comfort; when learning has no message to inspire or to console the heart; when sympathy hesitates to break the silence, lest it give "vacant chaff well-meant for grain," the Lord has something to say. Nothing can rob Him of His message, not even the bitterest experience of life. He never grows silent when the way is dark, nor when the feet go down into the valley. There are many voices, and none without significance; but the hour comes when they all fail us, and then we find how in such hours as that. Jesus has somewhat to say.

He Has Somewhat to Say to Those Separated from Him by Great Distances

One notes, too, that He has somewhat to say to those separated from Him by great distances. What a gulf there was between our Lord and Simon! It is true that Jesus was sitting next to Simon, for that was the place of the chief guest. But sometimes one may sit beside another, and all the while be thousands of miles away. Just as two may live in the same dwelling, and sleep under the same roof at night, and yet seas between them "broad may roar." Many a young fellow is nearer Keats or Shelley than he is to the fellow-clerk on the next stool. Real nearness differs from proximity. And that night, though seated next to Simon, our Lord was really separate from Simon by a gulf it is impossible to measure. The One a provincial from Galilee; the other trained in the learning of the schools. The One with love filling His great heart; the other discourteous and cold and legal. And yet across that gulf the Savior reaches, with His searching and revealing word—"Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee." That is the wonder of the word of Christ. it is universal. It bridges every gulf. Men hear that word in their own tongue, as they did at the miracle of Pentecost. He has somewhat to say to the millions of India. He has somewhat to say to the myriads of China. He has somewhat to say to the New Guinea cannibals. When one thinks of our industrial civilization and compares it with the environment of Jesus, it might seem incredible that that lone Man of Galilee should have anything to say to us. yet there come times when we most profoundly feel that there is no one who understands us and our problems like the Guest who was in Simon's house that night.

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The Lord Has Somewhat Personal to Say

Then, too, we must not forget that our Lord has somewhat personal to say. To his intense surprise Simon discovered that. I imagine that when he invited Christ to dinner, he was counting on some splendid talk. Had he not heard from the assembly officers that never man spake like this man? Simon was a man who loved good talk, and had an abhorrence of gossip at the dinner table, as every decent person ought to have. He would get this prophet to talk of the Old Testament—He was said to have strange views of the Old Testament. He would get Him to speak about the Coming One. He would urge Him to tell one of His beautiful stories. And then, suddenly, and in the deathlike silence, came what he was never looking for: "Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee." It was a word for him and him alone. It was intensely personal and individual. It reached his solitary, selfish heart. It probed his conscience and convicted him. And that is the abiding wonder of the Lord, that He speaks to each of us in such a way that there might be no one else in the wide world at all. He holds the answer to the vastest problems. He has a message for international relationships. But when we listen to Him He never leaves us brooding on international relationships. As He speaks to me, I come to realize that the problem of all problems is myself. "Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee."

June 5

Seeming to Have - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

From him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have— Luk_8:18

Not Hypocrisy but Self-Deception

You will observe that when our Lord speaks of the man who seems to have, He is not referring to the hypocrite. Our Lord poured out the vials of His wrath upon the hypocrite, but it is not the hypocrite who is in question here. There is a sense in which every hypocrite seems to have. He makes pretentions to virtues or to graces that he does not in reality possess. But then he is aware, more or less clearly, that he lacks them. The hypocrite deceives others, not himself. But this is a case of genuine self-deception. The man is not practicing trickery on anybody. There are things that a man may imagine that he has, and Jesus says he only seems to have them.

The Pharisees—More Self-Deceived Than Hypocritical

There are one or two notable instances of this in the New Testament. For example, there is the Pharisee in the parable. We quite mistake the meaning of that parable if we think that the Pharisee was consciously a hypocrite. The moral of the story lay in this, that it was spoken to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. The Pharisee thanked God quite sincerely that he was a great deal better than his neighbor. He believed most genuinely in his superior self. There was no question in his own mind of his possessions. And the tragedy of the man's career is found in this, that he only seemed to have.

The Church of Laodicea Was Self-Deceived

On a larger stage we are faced by the same spirit in the Church of Laodicea in the Apocalypse. it was a very prosperous and comfortable church. I am rich, it said. I am increased with goods, I have need of nothing. An exceedingly snug and smug society, with its own peculiar Laodicean smile. Yet thou art wretched, said the Spirit of God; and thou art miserable, and poor and blind and naked! The tragedy of that church's career is found in this, that it, too, only seemed to have.

The Causes of Self-Deception

I venture, then, to speak for a little on that most subtle form of self-deceit. There is probably not one of us, in pew or pulpit, but is giving himself credit for what he does not possess. Now, how is this? Can we detect the causes of this delusion? I shall endeavor to touch on some of them.

1. Inexperience

The first and most innocent of all is inexperience. In all inexperience there is a seeming to have, which the rough and pushing world helps to dispel. I take it that every rightly constituted youth has a kind of lurking scorn for all his ancestors. All things are possible to faith, says the apostle. And all things are possible to one-and-twenty also. Unmatched with the intellect and power of the great world, untried by the searching discipline of life, we seem to have aptitudes, touches of heaven within us, that will carry us to the front imperiously. And then we are launched into the great depths of life, and we find there were brave men before Agamemnon. it is a humbling and sobering experience. We have to recast everything, before we are through. But at least we come to know what we possess. We learn what we can do, and what we cannot. When we were immature and inexperienced, before we had come to grips with actuality—ah, then we seemed to have. Today we have far less, but it is ours.

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2. Self-Love

Again, this strange deception is intimately connected with self-love. We seem to have much that we do not really have, simply because we love ourselves so well. In all love, even the very purest, there is a subtle and most exquisite flattery. Love is not worthy of its name at all, unless it clothes its object with a thousand graces. You fathers and mothers—you don't know how much you seem to have to your young children, it is enough to make the hardest of us cry to God for mercy when we remember that, to our child of five, we are still perfect. You know the kind of week you spent last week; yet to your little family there is not a stain on you. Such love is wonderful. Was there ever a mother who was not quite convinced that her one-year-old was a most marvelous child? He seems to be, because she loves him so. I think you see, then, the point I wish to make. Love can make any wilderness blossom as the rose. And never a child loved the most honored father, and never a mother loved the dearest child, more passionately than most men love themselves, it is thus that we seem to have, just because self-love is dominant. It is thus that he that hateth his life for Christ's sake begins to learn the secret of self-knowledge. "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

3. Pressures around Us

Often, again, we imagine we possess, because of the pressure of the general life around us. We move in certain circles of society; we are surrounded by what we call public opinion; and by the pressure of our environment upon us, our life takes its color and its trend. Now I am far from saying that these outward influences may not have a very real effect on a man's character. Some of the most useful habits we can form may be formed through compliance with social convention. But there is always the danger of mistaking for our own the support we get from the society we move in. And it is only when that external pressure is removed that we discover how we only seemed to have. Put any man of average sensibility into the company of born enthusiasts, and in a week's time you shall have him enthusiastic. There are hours when the dullest talker feels that he is gelling on excellently in conversation, and it is not till afterwards that it begins to dawn on him that someone else had the magnetic charm. We seem to have, we think that we possess; but the possession is not really ours. Here is a man living at home in Scotland, a man of correct, perhaps exemplary conduct. He is a regular churchgoer at home; he is quite interested in church affairs. But he goes abroad to China or to India, and there is little of the old Scottish feeling round him now; and gradually, almost insensibly, he drifts away from the old reverence, till the kindliest critic dare not call him religious. What I want you to note is that that man was not a hypocrite. He was not consciously deceiving anybody when he lived that exemplary life at home. He never possessed his possessions, that was all. He was guided and molded by an outward pressure. He seemed to have the root of the matter in himself, and it lay in his surroundings all the time.

The Fate of These Fancied Possessions

Now our Lord tells us the fate of these fancied possessions. From him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have. Sooner or later, as our life advances, we shall have our eyes opened to these fond delusions. We are to be so led, each one of us, that there will be no mistaking what is really ours. I want to ask, then, what are God's commoner methods for making clear to us what we only seem to have.

One of the commonest of them all is action. We learn what we possess by what we do. There are powers within each of us waiting to be developed; there are dreams within each of us waiting to be dispelled, and it is by going forward in the strength of God that we learn our limitation and our gift. I am sure there is not one man in middle life here but has been surprised by the revelations of his past. He has been called to work he never dreamed of doing; his way has led him far differently from his wish. There were gifts which you were quite certain that you had; but the years have gone, and you are not so certain now. Meantime, out of the depths of self, some unsuspected powers have been emerging, and the hand that has quickened them into life is duty. The men who do nothing, always seem to have. So-and-so is a genius, we say; if he would only exert himself what he might do! Well, probably he would cease to be called a genius if he did, and, therefore, he is wise in doing nothing. I do not call that genius. I call it cowardice. Life is given us just to find out what we can do. And it is through a thousand tryings and a thousand failures that we come to find what is really our own. That is one of the great gains of earnest duly. We learn from it the confines of our kingdom. It is by action that there is taken from us that which we only seem to have.

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This, too, is one great gain of life's variety, it shows us what is really our own. We are tested on every side as life proceeds, and every mood and change and tear is needed, if we are to be wakened to what we seem to have. It is so easy to be patient when there is no worry. When there is no peril, it is so easy to be brave. It is when the whirligig of time brings its revenges that we discover more exactly what we own. If I want to know the value of an army, I must wait till the campaign has tested it. It may seem to be perfectly equipped for service, yet a month on the field may teach us other things. So you and I, seeming to have so much, are marched into battle, led over weary miles; we are kept waiting, we are baffled, wounded; till out of all that changeful discipline, that which we seemed to have is taken from us. One of the functions of our vicissitudes is to strip us bare of what we seemed to have. Life is so ordered for us in its heights and depths, its changes, its hopes, its sufferings, its fears, that, unless we are blind, we shall discover gradually all that is ours and all that only seems so.

And if life fails, remember death is left. Death is the great touchstone of the man. We may be self-deceived for threescore years and ten, but the deception ceases on the other side. There we shall know even as we are known. Know what? Among other things, ourselves. There will be no delusions concerning our possessions when our eyes open on that eternal dawn. I bid you remember there will be no seeming to have, before the great white throne and Him who sits on it. All that is accidental and imaginary will be revealed in the light of that great day. If we have never let action do its work, and never seen ourselves amid life's changes, we have not escaped the judgment of the Christ.

I have sometimes thought, too, and with this I close, that the words might apply even to those we love. Is it not true, in the realm of the affections, that sometimes we have and sometimes we seem to have? We are thrown into close relationship with others; we are bound to them with this tie and with that. We call them friends; we think we love them, perhaps. Is it real, or is it only seeming? Nothing can tell that but the strain of life, and the testing of friendship through its lights and shadows. Nothing can tell that finally but death. All that seemed love, and was not really love; all that we fancied or mistook for friendship; all that is taken from us, passed away, in the hour and the separation of the grave. But true affection is an immortal thing; nothing can separate us from love indeed. Where hearts unite, there is eternity. And in eternity partings are unknown.

June 6

Jairus' Daughter - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

There came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue and he fell down at Jesus feet and besought him that he would come into his house— Luk_8:41

The Only Child Dying

The morning that saw the Gadarene demoniac cured dawned sadly over one home in Capernaum. The sun rose up, the narrow streets became busy, one heard the word of command of the Roman officer drilling his garrison beside the fort (Luk_7:1-10); but in one house in the Jewish quarter everything was hushed. Folk moved on tiptoe, they spoke in whispers; and in the little bedroom the father and mother knelt beside the bed. There lay their daughter—she was twelve years old. They had been watching and praying by her bed all night. They had been hoping against hope, and fighting with their fears. But the autumn morning came, fresh, bright, and beautiful, and the strong light of it flooded the room and fell on the little sufferer's face—and hope was gone. No Jewish doctor was needed to confirm the worst. Their daughter was dying. She was an only daughter, How often one thing, one person, stands at the center of a Gospel scene or story. It was one coin the woman lost. It was one sheep the shepherd missed. The widow of Nain had but one son. Here the whole family was one daughter. Around the throne of God in heaven thousands of children stand; but—

Thou art as much His care, as if beside
Nor man nor angel lived in heaven or earth.

Jairus Believed in Christ but Nobody Knew It 'Til Trouble Came

The father's name was Jairus, and he was the leading elder in the Capernaum Church. He had heard Jesus reading the Scriptures there: he had often talked with neighbors whom Jesus had healed; he had seen a miracle with his own eyes. Everybody in Capernaum knew Jairus; but no one knew that he believed in Christ till his little daughter was at the point of death. Then he confessed it. tie ran to the shore. He flung himself down at Jesus' feet. He implored Him to come and heal his daughter, and Jesus, in compassion, heard his prayer. What different impulses lead men to Christ! Yesterday on the lake the disciples had cried "Master!" and it was fear for themselves that made them do it. And now the ruler of the synagogue cries "Master!" and it was love lot his child that made him do it. A little child had led him. Had Jairus' daughter always been strong and happy, she never would have helped her father so. Health is a precious gift. We thank God for the rosy cheeks in nursery and schoolroom. But there are crippled lads and fragile daughters who have led their fathers and their mothers straight to Christ, and there is no service in the world like that.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps,
What seem to us but sad funeral tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.

To the Sufferer God Seems to Move So Slowly!

It was not far from the shore to Jairus house, but it never seemed so long to Jairus as that morning. The news soon spread up the street that Jesus was back: at every turning the crowd gathered and grew, until at last, the way was almost blocked, and Jairus almost in despair. Then came an unexpected interruption. A poor sick woman had touched the tassel of Jesus' robe and had been healed, and Jesus had to halt and call her forth, and teach her that there was no magic in the tassel, but that her faith had healed her. And all this took so long—or seemed to Jairus to take so long—that when he saw a movement in the crowd, and caught sight of his servant forcing his way through, he knew in a moment that his daughter was dead. How slow God often seems! How hard it often is to wait with Christ! I saw a little girl once playing on the seashore at building castles. She built her fort and dug her trenches, and then waited for the waves to fill them. But the waves were so long in coming that the little girl lost patience, and in a fit stamped down her battlements and went away. And all the time, ceaseless and irresistible, the ocean was creeping up. Invisible fingers were drawing the whole sea up to her moat. I think she would have waited had she been sure of that. So Jairus and you and I must wait. Things seem all wrong sometimes. We cannot understand why Christ delays. "Fear not, believe only, and she shall be made whole."

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Lament Turns to Scornful Laughter

At last Christ reached the house, and with that tender courtesy that will not rudely invade the home of death, He waved all back, save Peter and James and John, and entered with them. We call for silence in our death-chambers. But in the East the house rang with lamentations—so necessary, indeed, was this show of grief considered that women were actually hired to wail (Jer_9:17). "Weep not," said Christ, anxious to quiet the uproar, "the maiden is not dead, but sleepeth"—and how unreal their grief was we may see, when the next moment they broke into scornful laughter. Then Jesus turned them out. If they would not be still, they would not know that He was God. And He took the maid by the hand, and called, "Talitha cumi!" "And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway; and He commanded to give her meat." Can you wonder that her parents were amazed? Do you not see why Christ wished it kept a secret? Think what would happen if the news spread that a dead girl in your street was raised to life; think how people would crowd to see her, till the excitement would make her ill again; think of the stir and tumult that would surround the man who raised her, and you will understand the reticence of Christ.

Kindness That Is Dishonoring to Christ

One or two lessons from this beautiful story. Note first an instance of mistaken kindness. That servant who came pushing through the crowd said, "Trouble not the Master." It was the honest and kind desire of Jairus' household to save Jesus from unnecessary worry. But it is never truly kind to treat Christ so. It is dishonoring to His power and love. Sometimes when I have done a little service for a friend I add, "It is no trouble"—and the greatest service is no trouble to Jesus. His power is infinite. His love is endless. The more I let Him do, the better pleased He is.

Christ's Hatred of Insincerity

The women who wailed were wailing for a fee. They beat their breasts at so much per hour. Had their grief been genuine, Jesus had been very pitiful. But it was insincere, and He turned them out. Christ hates all shams. He cannot tolerate hypocrisy. He excludes from His company the insincere.

The Unfailing Thoughtfulness of Jesus

It was He who commanded that the maid should have food. Jairus loved his daughter, and would have died for her. But in the joy of that hour he never noticed that she was hungry. Christ noticed what Jairus failed to see.

Those That Are Called Early Are Called Easily

The maid was newly dead. She had not been lying in her grave, like Lazarus. So here there is no agony of spirit, no crying with a loud voice; but all is quietly and easily done. All spiritual awakening is the work of God, but the young are the most easily awakened. No graveclothes bind them yet. No long-continued sins have made them loathsome. Let fathers and mothers realize their opportunity, and plead with God for definite conversions. Christ still is saying, "Suffer the children to come unto me."

June 7

The Weapon of Ridicule - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And they laughed him to scorn— Luk_8:53

From Lament to Ridicule

This incident occurred in Capernaum, whither our Savior had just returned. He had scarce landed when the ruler of the synagogue besought Him that He would come and heal his daughter. Then had occurred the interruption in the crowded street, and we can picture the father's agony at the delay, an agony that would dull down into despair when word came that the little maid was dead. So Jesus entered the house with Peter and James and John. it was very crowded and noisy and disgusting. "Weep not," He said, "the maid is not dead, but sleepeth." Were it not better to be quiet when a tired one sleeps? And it was then, not catching what Christ meant, nor guessing that He spoke of a sleep that here has no awakening, that they laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. One moment there was nothing heard but wailing, and the next the shrill lament was drowned in laughter. One moment there was wild beating of the breast, and the next the heaping of ridicule on Christ; and it is of ridicule, in some of its aspects and suggestions, that I wish to speak.

Jesus Was Often Assailed with Ridicule

Now the first thing which I want you to observe is how often Jesus was assailed with ridicule. Our Lord had to suffer more than bitter hatred. He had to suffer the sneering of contempt. When a man is loved, his nature expands and ripens as does a flower under the genial sunshine. When a man is hated, that very hate may brace him as the wind out of the north braced the pine. But when a man is ridiculed, only the grace of heaven can keep him courteous and reverent and tender; and Jesus Christ was ridiculed continually. "Is not this the carpenter's Son; do we not know His brothers?" "He is the friend of publicans and sinners." Men ridiculed His origin. Men ridiculed His actions. Men ridiculed His claims to be Messiah. Nor in all history is there such exposure of the cruelty and bestiality of ridicule as in the mocking and taunting at the cross, with its purple robe, and its reed, and crown of thorns. Think of that moment when, all forspent and bleeding, Jesus was brought out before the people; and Pilate cried to them, "Behold your king! Is not this broken dreamer like a Caesar?" That was the cruel ridicule of Rome, often to be repeated by her satirists, and it was all part of the cross which Jesus bore. It is not enough to say that Christ was hated, if you would sound the deeps of His humiliation. There is something worse than being hated, and that is being scorned; and we must never forget that in the cup, which Christ prayed in Gethsemane might pass from Him, there was this bitter ingredient of scorn.

Jesus Was Not Impervious to Ridicule

Nor should we think that because Christ was Christ He was therefore impervious to ridicule. On the contrary, just because Christ was Christ He was most keenly susceptible to its assault. It is not the coarsest but the finest natures that are most exposed to the wounding of such weapons, and in the most sensitive and tender heart scorn, like calumny, inflicts the sorest pain. When Lord Byron published his first little book of poems, and when he was covered with ridicule by the Scotch reviewers for it, he was stung into an act of swift retaliation, but there is no trace that he felt that derision deeply. But when Keats, casting his poems on the world, met with like treatment from the same reviewers, it almost, if not quite, broke his heart. Both were true poets, touched by the sacred fire, but the one was of finer fibre than the other, and it was he of the sensitive and tender heart who was like to be broken by the pitiless storm. Now think of Christ, uncoarsened by transgression, exquisite in all faculty and feeling, and you will understand how, to a soul like His, it was so bitter to be laughed to scorn. I thank God that the Savior of the world had not the steeled heart of a Roman Stoic. I thank God He was so rich in sympathy, and so perfectly compassionate and tender. But I feel that the other aspect of that beauty must have been exquisite susceptibility to pain, and not alone the pain of spear and nail, but the more cruel and deep-searching pain of ridicule.

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Ridicule Most Keenly Felt by the Young

Probably it is thus we may explain why ridicule is most keenly felt when we are young. It is not at sixty, it is at one-and-twenty, that we are most afraid of being ridiculous. "He was one of those sarcastic young fellows," says Thackeray of young Pendennis, "that did not bear a laugh at his own expense, and of all things in the world feared ridicule most" and Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the enthusiasms of his own boyhood, said, "At that time I feared ridicule more than I have ever done since." There are many young men who could bear to be thought wicked, but I never met one who could bear to be thought ridiculous; indeed I have found them doing ridiculous things just to escape the taint of being thought so; and my point is that that temptation—for it is such—falls at its fiercest on the heart of youth, because in youth we are sensitive and eager, and not yet hardened by traffic with the world.

Christ Was Ridiculed because People Failed to Understand Him

It is notable, too, that Christ was laughed to scorn because the people failed to understand Him. It was because they had not caught tits meaning that they burst thus into derisive laughter. "The maiden," said Jesus, "is not dead but sleeping"; and they were without imagination, and they took it literally. They had no heart for that mystic and poetic speech that calls the last closing of the eyes asleep. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," He said once, "but I go to awake him out of sleep." He thought of His friend whose spirit had departed as of one who had fallen upon the peace of slumber. So here, to the noisy mourners in Capernaum, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth"—and they laughed Him to scorn and covered Him with ridicule; and they did it because they could not understand.

Disciples Ridiculed at Pentecost

The same truth meets us in the story of Pentecost, as we read it in the vivid narrative of Acts. There also, on the birthday of the church, we light on ridicule, and there also it is the child of ignorance. For there came a sound as of a mighty wind, and the spirit of God fell on the little Company, and they were exalted marvelously by the gift, and went out in the glory of it to preach Christ—and the people, .blind to the source of their enthusiasm, mocked at them as though they had been drunk. "These men are filled with new wine," they said. It was not an argument, it was a sneer. They could not comprehend what this might mean, but at any rate they could heap derision on it. So once again, on the page of Holy Scripture, that perfect mirror of the human heart, we have an instance of ridicule which sprang from an incapacity to understand.

Ridicule Is Often the Weapon of Incapacity

I therefore trust that people will appraise ridicule at its true value. It is not always the token of superior cleverness. It is far oftener the mark of incapacity. Many of us remember how, not so long ago, it was the custom to ridicule the Salvation Army. In the press, on the street, and on the stage at pantomimes, the Army was held up to derision. But no one ridicules the Salvation Army now. Men may object to its methods, but they do not laugh at it. And why? because they know it better now, and have learned how gallant and pure is its enthusiasm. It is the gradual increase of knowledge and of light that has made that ridicule impossible today. It has died a natural death, and been replaced by admiration or by argument. And if in this case, and a thousand other cases, a clearer knowledge makes ridicule ridiculous—do you not see the point I am driving at, that ridicule is the handy weapon of the ignorant? You cannot refute a sneer, said Dr. Johnson; but if you cannot refute it, at least you can despise it. A sneer is the apology for argument made by a man who does not understand. And that is why, though you find Christ Jesus angry, you never find Him ridiculing anybody, for every secret of every human heart was perfectly understood by the Redeemer.

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by George H. Morrison

The Ridicule of the Wise versus the Ridicule of the Ignorant

Of course I am aware that in a world like this there is a certain' work for ridicule to do. So long as shams and pretensions are abroad, a little gentle ridicule is needed. There are some things that should never be taken seriously—they are in their nature so utterly ridiculous—and against these things no man with any humor would ever plant the great guns of his argument. A jest is sometimes the wisest of all answers, and a little raillery the best of refutations. The world owes not a little to these ready spirits who can answer a fool according to his folly. Professor Lecky tells us that in the Middle Ages the troubadours did one great service to humanity. It was a time when the minds of men were darkened by grotesque and horrible teachings about hell. No one dared argue with the mediaeval church—it might have cost a common man his life to argue—but the wandering troubadours, in their fantastic songs, poured ridicule upon these priestly horrors, and by their badinage helped on a brighter clay. So too in Spain in the sixteenth century, when the popular literature was the romance of chivalry, do you think that preaching could have weaned the people from those so vapid and unedifying books? But Cervantes, in his superb Don Quixote, turned the whole literature of romance into a jest, and brought men to their senses by a laugh. At a party, at which Charles Lamb was present, there was a gentleman who was loud in his praises of Mohammedanism. He would have all the company convinced that Mohammed was far superior to Christ. It does not appear that Lamb discussed the matter. There is certainly not a sign that he got angry. Probably he felt himself incompetent to debate the high matters in dispute. But as the company was dispersing, the gentleman lost his hat, and when Lamb was asked if he had seen it, "I thought," said the stammering and gentle Elia, "I thought that our friend came in a turban!" That was a stroke of the most exquisite ridicule. It was answering a fool according to his folly. You may depend upon it that it would be remembered when all the arguments were quite forgotten. And so long as the world has foolish people in it, who strain at the gnat and swallow down the camel, so long will there be an office in the world for the gentle raillery of ridicule. But remember that the ridicule of genius is very different from the sneering of the world—that mockery which the world loves to cast upon every enthusiasm and aspiration. It is not because it understands so much, it is because it understands so little, so that in Capernaum, and here, it laughs to scorn.

The Danger of Only Seeing the Ridiculous Side of Things

I should like to say also to those who are tempted to see only the ridiculous side of things, that perhaps in the whole gamut of the character there is nothing quite so dangerous as that. The man who is always serious has his risks, for there is more laughter in God's works than he imagines. The man who always argues has his risks, for there are truths too fine to be meshed in any argument. But the man who ridicules what is true and high and noble had a thousand times better never have been born into a world so strangely built as this. It is so easy to raise a laugh at things. It is so cheaply and absurdly easy. And there are men whose only claim to being superior is that they are able to win that little triumph. But I call that the most degrading of all triumphs, and that not only for the harm it does to others, but far more for the irreparable harm that it surely brings upon the man himself. Life is not worth living without some high ideal. Life is quite worthless unless we live it reverently. If there be nothing above us and beyond us, we may as well give up the struggle in despair. And the strange thing is that when we take to ridiculing all that is best and worthiest in others, by that very habit we destroy the power of believing in what is worthiest in ourselves. It was not a caprice that when Jesus Christ was ridiculed, He turned the mockers out of the miracle-chamber. That is what the Almighty always does when men and women take themselves to mocking. He shuts the door on them, so that they cannot see the miracles with which the universe is teeming, and they miss the best, because in their blind folly they have laughed the Giver of the best to scorn. Therefore I beg of you never take to ridicule. If you have started the habit, give it up. I beg of you also, never be turned by ridicule from what you know to be right and good and holy. You serve a Master who was laughed to scorn, but you also serve a Master who despised the shame, and the servant is not greater than his Lord.

June 8

Cross-Bearing

If any man will come after me, let him…take up his cross daily— Luk_9:23

The Cross Signified Anything Difficult to Bear

When the Romans crucified a criminal, not only did they hang him on a cross. As a last terrible indignity, they made him carry the cross upon his back. Probably Jesus, when a lad, had been a witness of that dreadful spectacle. How it would sink into His boyish mind the dullest imagination can conjecture. And that was why, when He became a man, He used the imagery of cross-bearing to describe all that is bitterest in life. The cross is anything difficult to bear; anything that robs the step of lightness and blots out the sunshine from the sky. And one of the primary secrets of discipleship is given in our text: "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross daily."

Cross-Bearing: A Universal Thing

The first implication of our text is that cross-bearing is a universal thing. If any man will come after Me—then no one is conceived of as escaping. In the various providences of God there are things we may escape in life. There are many who have never felt the sting of poverty: there are some who have never known the hour of pain. But if God has His providences which distinguish us, He has also His providences which unite us, and no man or woman ever escapes the cross. There is a cross in every life. There is a crook in every lot. There is a bitter ingredient in every cup, though the cup be fashioned of the gold of Ophir. Our Lord knew that everyone who came to Him, in every country and in every age, would have to face the discipline of cross-bearing. The servant is not greater than his Lord.

The next implication of our text is that cross-bearing is a universal thing. "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross." From which I gather that crosses are peculiar; separate as personality; never quite the same in different lives. When coins are issued from the mint, they are identical with one another. Handle them; they are alike: there is not a shade of difference between them. But things that issue from the mint of God are the very opposite of that: their mark is an infinite diversity. Some crosses are bodily and some are mental. Some spring from unfathomed depths of being. Some are shaped and fashioned by our ancestors, and some by our own sins. Some meet us in the relationships of life, frequently in the relationships of toil, often in the relationship of home. Were crosses like coins issued from the mint, we should ask for nothing more than human sympathy. That would content us, were we all alike. That we would appreciate and understand. But in every cross, no matter how it seem, there is something nobody else can understand, and there lies our utter need of God. No one was ever tempted just as you are, though every child of Adam has been tempted. No one ever had just your cross to carry; there is always something which makes it all your own. And that is why, beyond all human kindliness, we need the eternal God to be our refuge, and underneath, the everlasting arms.

The third implication of our text is that cross-bearing must be a willing thing. "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross." Probably our Lord, visiting Jerusalem, had seen a criminal led to execution. He had seen the legionary take the cross and lay it on the shoulders of the criminal. And the man had fought and struggled like a beast, in his loathing of that last indignity—and yet for all his hate he had to bear it. Our Lord never could forget that. It would haunt His memory to the end—these frenzied and unavailing struggles against an empire that was irresistible. Did He, I wonder, recall that horrid scene when He forbade His follower to struggle so? Let him take up his cross, I had a friend, a sweet and saintly man, whose little girl was dying. She was an only child, much loved, and his heart was very bitter and rebellious.

Then he turned to his wife and said: "Wife, we must not let God take our child. We must give her." So kneeling down beside the bed together, they gave up their baby—and their wills. My dear reader, I do not know your cross, I only know for certain that you have one. And I know, too, that the kind of way you bear it will make all the difference to you. Your cross may harden you; it may embitter you; it may drive you out into a land of salt. Your cross may bring you to the arms of Christ. Rebel against it, you have still to carry it. Rebel against it, and you augment its weight. Rebel against it, and the birds cease singing. All the music of life's harp is jangled. But take it up because the Master bids you, incorporate it in God's plan for you, and it blossoms like the rod of Aaron.

The last implication of our text is that cross-bearing is a daily thing. "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross daily." There lies the heroism of cross-bearing. It is not a gallant deed of golden mornings. You have to do it, cheerfully and bravely, every dull morning of the week. Some disciplines are quite occasional. They reach us in selected circumstances. Cross-bearing is continuous. It is the heroism of the dull common hour. Thank God, there is something else which is continuous, and that is the sufficient grace of Him, whose strength is made perfect in our weakness, and who will never leave us nor forsake us. "If any man will come after me, let him .... take up his cross daily."

June 9

Ashamed of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

For whosoever shaft be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shaft come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels— Luk_9:26

Why Some Were Ashamed of Christ in His Day...

I can understand how men were ashamed of Christ as He moved about the villages of Galilee. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and men hid their faces from Him. Born in a humble and malodorous village (can any good thing come out of Nazareth?), living in the deepest obscurity for thirty years, then suddenly claiming to be the Messiah, yet contradicting the warmest hopes of Israel—no wonder there was disappointment, and that many were ashamed of Jesus and His words.

How Can Men Be Ashamed of Him Now?

But the thing that is difficult to understand is how any man can be ashamed of Jesus now. For now He is no longer rejected and despised: He is enthroned in heaven at the right hand of God. We can understand a man denying that Christ rose—there are many who honestly believe that He still sleeps; but the man who is ashamed of Christ is not an unbeliever; you cannot be ashamed of that which has no existence. The man who is ashamed credits the resurrection—get him alone and he will not deny it. The man who is ashamed credits that Christ is living and is energetic in human hearts today; and the mystery is how, crediting all that, it should be possible to be ashamed of Christ. That it is possible everyone of us knows, and it is on that strange possibility I wish to speak. First, I shall touch on the revelation of this shame; next on the roots of it; and thirdly on some remedies in our power.

Signs of Being Ashamed of Christ

1.Concealment

First, then, I wish to speak about its revelation, about the way in which this shame of Christ betrays itself: and the first feature that rises before me is concealment. Is there any man or woman of whom you are ashamed? Think of them and call up their names while I am speaking. Well, however else your shame may show itself, it will at least have this mark—you are ashamed to be seen with them in public. In private, that is a different matter: you have no objection to meeting them in private. In the pressure of a great crowd, that is a different matter, for any two may be cast together in a crowd. But when you are ashamed of a man you are ashamed of being openly seen with him, you are ashamed of walking in broad daylight through the streets with him; and as that is a feature of all shame between man and man, it is a mark of the man ashamed of Christ. Remember we may be ashamed of Christ although in the quiet hour we pray in secret. Remember we may be ashamed of Him although at the stated times we come to church. For in the one case—in private prayer—there is a solitude, and in other—in public worship—is a crowd; and neither in solitude nor in the throng is the shame or glory of the heart detected. It is as we walk through the streets of daily life; it is as we take up our task in homely scenes; it is as we go about our work and mingle with our friends—it is there that our heart's loyalty shall be seen. if we honor Christ men will perceive the friendship. If we are ashamed of Him we shall conceal it.

2. Silence

The second feature of all shame is silence. There is a close and mysterious tie between the two. The feeling of shame whenever it is operative has a way of putting a seal upon the lips. A child will babble and prattle all day long, and spin out a history about its small adventures; but let it do anything of which it is ashamed, and not a word will it speak concerning that. How many homes there are in which one son or daughter has come to disgrace, till the parents' hearts are breaking! Does the stranger entering that home talk of the prodigal? Is not that the one name that is never mentioned? There are ceaseless yearnings and there are secret prayers rising to heaven daily for the wanderer; but mingling with every thought of him is shame, and one great witness of that shame is silence. Now far be it from me even to suggest that all our silence about Christ is such. There is a reserve which is dignified and right when we move among august and holy things. Still, hours will come in every Christian life when confession is imperative and clearly called for, and if in such hours there be not speech but silence, the silence is the stamp and sign of shame.

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3. Avoidance

The third witness of shame lies in avoidance. We avoid instinctively what we are ashamed of. When an architect has designed a building of which he is proud, I can imagine his delight in looking at it. I can imagine him going out of his way by half a dozen streets just to get one more glimpse of his conception. But let the building be a failure, and the man ashamed of it—he is not eager to feast his eyes upon it. Now he does all in his power to avoid it, and he avoids it because he is ashamed. I fancy that most of us know places such as that, for we are all the architects of our own fortunes: places that are disgraced for us by wretched memories, tarnished and desecrated by some sin; and we too, as we journey through the years, are glad to avoid such scenes, and we avoid them because we are ashamed. Avoidance is one sign and seal of shame. Can it be said of you that you are avoiding Christ? If so, however you may explain it to yourself, depend upon it you are ashamed of Him.

The Roots of Our Being Ashamed of Christ

So far then of the revelation of this shame: now a word or two upon the roots of it. Whence does it spring? How is it born? What possible cause can there be for this so tragic feeling? It will be best to keep close to Scripture in our answer.

1. Fear

Sometimes we are ashamed of Christ through fear. We are ashamed as Nicodemus was. He came to Jesus by stealth and in the nighttime, and he came so because he feared the Jews. In his heart of hearts he profoundly admired the Lord—we can do that, and yet be ashamed of Him—but he was a public man, a master in Israel, living in the fierce light that beat upon a rabbi, and he was afraid and he crept to the Lord by night, and the root and basis of his shame was fear. My impression is that fear is at the root of far more things than most of us ever dream of. There are even virtues on which men pride themselves which a little more courage would instantly destroy. The Bible never reiterates in vain, and do you know the command that occurs most often in Scripture? The commonest command in Scripture is Fear not. Now we are not in bodily peril like Nicodemus; no one will slay us for being out and out. The day of the thumbscrew and of the stake and of the Solway tide—that day, we may thank God, is gone forever; but though that day is gone, fear has not departed. For in the intricate mechanism of modern society there is ample room for subtler and finer fear—fear lest one's business suffer, fear for one's prospects, fear for the welfare of one's wife and children; and who does not know how often tongues are tied and lips are silenced and confession stifled, through the haunting of a vague fear like that? I do not wish to speak harshly of that temper: I know how hard it is sometimes to be true. There are inevitable and unavoidable accommodations which the wheels-within-wheels of modern life demand. Still, there is such a thing as being ashamed of Christ—if there were not, the words would not be written—and at the root of it today as in Jerusalem, may be the promptings of unmanly fear.

2. Social Pressure

Again the cause of this shame may be social pressure. We may be ashamed of Christ as Simon Peter was. And the amazing thing is that in such a zealous and loving heart there should have been any room for shame at all. But Peter sat by the fire in the courtyard, and they taunted him with his discipleship; and then the girl who kept the wicket recognized him, and everyone present was antagonistic; and Peter denied his Lord—Peter was ashamed of Him—and the shame had its source in his society. Had it not been for Peter's company that night, we should never have had the tale of Peter's fall. Alone, in the dark streets, with what a burning loyalty he would have lifted up his heart to his great leader! But Peter was impressionable, easily influenced, quick to receive the impact of environment, and his society made him ashamed of Christ. Are there none today who are like Simon Peter? Are there none who deny Christ because of social pressure? Are there none who are silent and afraid to speak because of the men and women who surround them? In careless homes, in crowded shops or offices, in football clubs, in social gatherings, is not the old tragedy re-enacted sometimes, and does not their company make men ashamed of Christ?

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3. Intellectual Pride

One other reason only would I mention, and that is intellectual pride. There are not a few instances in the book of Acts of shame which sprang from a certain pride of intellect. When a minister whom I know well was on the point of entering the ministry, the late Dr. Moody Stuart, a saint and a scholar, happened to walk up and down his garden with him. And the talk fell on the ministry, and on its joys and sorrows, on the love that inspires it and on the hopes that cheer it; when the Doctor turned sharply on his young friend and said, "Mr. C., are you willing to be a fool for Christ's sake?" It was an apposite and pertinent question. There must be something of that willingness in every Christian—the Gospel is so simple, so free from subtle intricacy, so entirely, in the heart of it, a gift. And men are ashamed of Christ because His message is so plain that the illiterate peasant can live by it and die by it. There is nothing so alien in the world to pride of intellect as the life and the words and the sacrifice of Jesus. Here is the great offence of Calvary in intellectual and cultured ages—it is that in Calvary there is a fact which the mind alone is powerless to explain. I bring my learning of a thousand books there, and I cannot fathom its mystery and meaning. It only speaks home to my dark and baffled heart when "Nothing in my hand I bring."

The Remedies for Being Ashamed of Christ

In closing, what are the remedies for this besetting shame? I shall just mention two.

1. Endeavor to Realize Who Jesus Is

The first is, endeavor to realize who Jesus is. If you had lived in London in the times of Queen Elizabeth you might have met two men walking together; and the one by his rich dress and his attendants you would recognize as the Earl of Southampton. But who is the other so plainly and carelessly dressed; and is not my lord ashamed to be seen with him? The other is the profoundest intellect God ever fashioned—the other is William Shakespeare. I do not think we should care much about dress, if we had the chance of a walk and a talk with Shakespeare. He would be a strange creature who would be ashamed to be seen anywhere in such company. And did we but realize who He is, whom we name and whom we seek to follow, the very thought of shame would grow ridiculous. Who are you, tell me that—a merchant or a minister? a teacher or a doctor or a clerk? And who is Christ?-the King immortal and eternal, the Wonderful, the mighty God, the Counselor! When I put it that way does it not seem absurd even to dream of being ashamed of Christ? And no one really likes to be absurd.

2. Endeavor to Realize What Christ Has Done for You

And then endeavor to realize what Christ has done for you. That after all is the great cure of shame. When we once feel deeply all that we owe to Him, the black bat, shame, has flown. I could understand a young fellow about town being ashamed to walk through the streets with an old-fashioned and lame countrywoman. But if the old-fashioned and lame country-woman is his mother—God have mercy on him if he feels shame then! For she cradled him and she watched him night and day, and she nursed him in fever and she prayed for him; and never a day has passed since he left home but her thought has gone out in a great longing to him; and who with a spark of manhood in his heart could ever dare to be ashamed of one who had rendered service so great and rich as that? Yet all the service of the dearest mother is not one tithe of what we owe to Christ. He loved us and He gave Himself for us. He saved us and called us, and has made us heirs of heaven. Just think of it. Try to realize it. Call it up as you walk home from church tonight. Then from the heart you will be able to sing.

I'm not ashamed to own my Lord,

Or to defend His cause.

June 10

The Prerequisite of Vision - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When they were awake, they saw his glory— Luk_9:32

Sleeping on the Mount of Transfiguration Is Spiritually Unnatural

It is very strange to find the disciples heavy with sleep, even on the Mount of Transfiguration. One would have thought that there, if anywhere, there were things happening that would have "murdered sleep." The glory of heaven was shining forth from Jesus, like sunshine pouring itself irresistibly through cloud. There too, not in any ghostly apparition, but in most strange reality, were men who had been dead for centuries; yet in the presence of such scenes as these, Peter and James and John were very sleepy. Then they awoke, startled we know not how. Gradually, as a swimmer might rise to the surface out of deep waters, they came to themselves, and remembered where they were. And then, and not till then, when they were fully awake, the Gospel tells us that they saw His glory.

Only When We Are Awake Do We Have a Vision of Glory

You see, then, that one of the penalties of living sleepily, is that we miss so much of what is happening. The mightiest transactions may be forward, and heaven be stooping down to touch the mountain tops, but we shall see nothing of it all if we be drowsy. The latest biographer of Principal Cairns, in his most satisfactory and illuminative little volume, gives us a very charming account of Cairn's school days. He tells us that very early in the morning, when the house was still, Cairns was already busy with his books. His brothers were fast asleep, so was his father; no one was stirring in the cottage save his mother. She was already hard at work in her day's toils, not grudgingly, but perhaps singing as she worked. Now Cairns had a limitless admiration for his mother; she was his heroine and his saint right to the end. And his biographer suggests that this love and adoration might be traced, in part, to these early morning hours. The cottage was radiant with love and toil and sacrifice. But the others were heavy with sleep, and did not see it. None but the zealous young student were awake; but when he was awake, he saw her glory.

When We Are Awake We See Unexpected Glories

Now it is one mark of every great awakening that it reveals to us unexpected glories. When intellect is quickened and the feelings are moved; when the will is reinforced and conscience purified, the world immediately ceases to be commonplace, and clothes itself in unsuspected splendor. You might play the noblest music to a savage, and-it would carry little meaning to his ear. You might set him down before some magnificent painting, and it would not stir one chord in all his being. But when a man has breathed the spirit of the West, and been enriched by its heritage of feeling, there are thoughts that wander off into eternity in every masterpiece of art—we have been wakened, and we see the glory. Do you think it is an idle figure of speech when we talk of the long sleep of the Middle Ages? Do you imagine that we are only using metaphor when we describe the Reformation as an awakening? I hardly think that we could speak more literally than when we use such simple terms as these. There is always a world of glorious environment; but men were heavy with sleep once, and they missed it. it was not till powers and faculties were quickened in the great movements of Renaissance and Reform, that the clouds scattered and the blue heaven was seen. And if today there is larger meaning in our life, if nature is richer in spiritual significance, if faith and hope and love are far more worthy, if religion is deeper and God more real and tender; it can all be interpreted in the language of the text: When they were fully awake, they saw the glory.

The Lord's Awakening in Us Is Needed before We See Certain Glories

I think, too, that in spiritual awakening we find that the suggestion of our text arrests us. There are many glories which we never see, till the call of our Lord has bidden us awake. There is the Bible, for instance; think of that a moment. We have been taught out of its pages since we were little children, and we can never be grateful enough for this so priceless book, that is alive with interest even to the child. It is the noblest of all noble literature. It is fearless, and frank, and eloquent, and simple. It faces life's depths, yet it is always hopeful. It fronts life's tragedies, yet it is always calm. A man may refuse to believe it is inspired, yet may acknowledge what a debt he owes it. But it is one thing to feel the Bible's charm, and it is another thing to see the Bible's glory; and the glory of the Bible is a hidden glory, until a man is spiritually awake. It is only then that it speaks as friend with friend, and that it separates itself from common voices. It is only then that it reaches us apart, with a message and a music no one else shall hear. It is only then, under the pressure of sorrow, or in the darkness of failure, or beneath the shadow of warring duties, that it touches us as if we were alone in the whole world. That is the glory of love, and of love's literature. And we know much before we wake, but never that. It is as true of us as of the three upon the mountain—when they were fully awake, they saw the glory.

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The Prerequisite of Vision - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Gospel Awakens in Us Glories Hidden in Our Fellowman

Or think again of the life of our fellowman. Until we are awakened by the Gospel, I question if we ever see the full glory there. To most of us the life of thousands of our fellows seems a most dull and commonplace affair. There is little radiance in it, and little hope; it is as cheerless as a Grey sea in late November. But can imagination not do anything? Certainly, imagination can work wonders. If you want to see the charm of common lives; the passion, the tenderness, the joy, the strength of the persons whom you and I would brush past heedlessly, just read the Bleak House of Charles Dickens again.

The poem hangs on the berry-bush
Till comes the poet's eye;
And the whole street is a masquerade
When Shakespeare passes by.

All that is true. And all that should make us very grateful to God for the gift of every real novelist and dramatist. But underneath all life of passion and affection there are spiritual possibilities for the meanest, and not till the world is wakened by the Gospel are the hidden glories of humanity revealed. Why are we carrying on home-mission work? Is it merely to employ our leisure energies? It is because we have been wakened, and have seen the glory of the poorest brother in the meanest street. And why have we missionaries in India and in Africa? Is it because we fear the heathen will be damned for not having trusted One of whom they never heard? It is because we have been wakened, and have seen the glory of every heart that beats in darkest Africa. Under all vice there is still something true; deeper than the deepest degradation, there is still a hope unspeakable and full of glory; in the barren desert the rose may blossom yet, and Jesus Christ has wakened us to that. There was the ring of the true faith about Chalmers of New Guinea when, writing of a cannibal chief of that dark island, he refers to him as "that grand old gentleman."

We Must Be Spiritually Wakened to See the Glories of the Lord

And the same thing is true of our dear Lord Himself. We must be spiritually wakened if we would see His glory. It is only then that He reveals Himself, in the full and glorious compass of His grace. When a man approaches Christ Jesus intellectually, he is humbled and stirred by that wealth of spontaneous wisdom. And when a man approaches Christ emotionally, the sympathy of that matchless heart may overpower him. But the brightest intellect and the most delicate emotions may center themselves for a lifetime on the Savior, yet the glory of the Savior may escape them; it is always difficult for the man who is spiritually dead to understand the dominion of Christ in history. But the hour comes when a man is spiritually roused. Out of the infinite, the hand of God hath touched him. The old content is gone like some sweet dream. He realizes that things seen are temporal. He is not satisfied anymore, nor very happy; sin becomes real, the eternal is full of voices. And it is then, in a vision fairer than any dawn, that the glory of Christ first breaks upon the soul. There is a depth of meaning in His wisdom now, that the mere intellect was powerless to grasp. There is a tenderness and a strength in His compassion that mere emotion never understood. There is a value and a nearness in His death that once would have been quite inexplicable. When they were awake, they saw His glory.

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The Prerequisite of Vision - Page 3
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Time Wakens in Us Glories We Once Missed

But to pass on from that great theme of spiritual wakening, there is one feature of experience which I must not omit. It is part of God's discipline with us in the years, that the years should waken us to see glories which once we missed. The value of our college education is not the amount of raw knowledge which it gives us. There are men whose minds are amazingly full of facts, yet no one would call them educated men. And there are others who have comparatively few facts at their command, yet you instinctively recognize that they are educated. For true education is not meant to store us; true education is intended to awaken us; and the joy of the truly educated man is no poor pride in his superior knowledge: it is that he has been so wakened that in every realm and sphere he can see glories unobserved before.

God's Education Is Needed for Us to See the Glories of Mysteries

Now if this be true of our schools and of our colleges, do you not think it holds also of God's education? It is a truth we should ever keep clear before us. There are mysteries in life's discipline we cannot fathom; there are strange happenings that have baffled every thinker; but at least we know that the change and the stress of years, and the joys they bring with them, and their losses and gains, waken us, perhaps rudely, out of many a dream, and show us glories which once we never saw. I do not think that the man who has never been poor will be quick to see the heroisms of quiet poverty. I do not think that he who is always strong can ever appreciate at its full moral value the dauntless cheerfulness of the racked invalid. You must have been tempted as your brother is, to know his magnificent courage in resisting. To the man who never loved, love is inscrutable. So the Almighty in whose hands we are, disciplines us through the deepening of the years, wakes us by change, by love, by sorrow, by temptation, until the veils are rent that shrouded other hearts. And we say of humanity what these three said of Jesus: "When we were awake, we saw His glory."

But the deepest interpretation of the text is not of this world. It will come to its crown of meaning in eternity. It is then that out of the sleep of life we shall waken, and we shall be satisfied when we awake. We shall see the glory of goodness and of truth then, as we never saw it in our brightest hours. We shall see the glory of having kept on struggling, when every voice was bidding us give in. We shall see the glory of the love we once despised, of insignificant and unrewarded lives, of the silence that shielded and the speech that cheered. We shall see the glory of Jesus and of God. We are heavy with sleep here, even at our best. It is going to take the touch of death to waken us. But when we waken in the eternal morning, I think we shall truly see the glory then.

June 12

Holding On

No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God— Luk_9:62

The Ploughman: A Symbol of the Person Who Holds On

Holding to things doggedly was one of the controlling thoughts of Jesus. That was why He singled out the ploughman. Ploughmen are not usually learned persons, nor are they often poets in disguise. But there is one virtue they possess pre-eminently, and that is the virtue of quietly holding to it. And it is because, in Jesus' eyes, that virtue is of supreme importance that He wants tis to take the ploughman for our model. "If ye continue in my word," He says, "then are ye my disciples indeed" (Joh_8:31). Something more than receiving is required to reach the crown. To hold on when the sunshine vanishes, and there is nothing but clouds in the sky, that is the great secret of discipleship.

The Importance of Abiding at All Times

We see that with peculiar clearness when we meditate on the great word abide. That was one of the favorite words of Jesus. With those deep-seeing eyes of His He has discerned the wonder of the vine-branch. The branch was there—abiding in the vine—not only in the sunny days of vintage. It was there when shadows fell, and when the dawn was icy, and when the day was colorless and cloudy, and when the storm came sweeping down the glen. Through all weathers, through every change of temperature, through tempest and through calm, the branch was there. Night did not sever that intimate relationship. Winter did not end that vital union. And our Lord recognized that, as in the world of nature this is the secret and the source of fruitfulness, so is it also in the world of grace. To abide is not to trust merely. To abide is to continue trusting. It is to hold to it—and hold to Him—through summer and winter, through fair and stormy weather. Nothing could better show the Master's vision of the great and heavenly grace of holding to it, than His love for that great word abide.

The Principle of Holding On Exemplified by Christ's Life

Not only did our Lord insist on this; He emphasized it in His life. For all His meekness, nothing could divert Him from the allotted path of His vocation. Think, for instance, of that day when He was summoned to the bed of Jairus' daughter. In the crowded street a woman touched Him, and He instantly felt that "virtue had gone out of him." But the original is far more striking in the light it sheds upon the Lord—He felt that the power had gone out of Him. All of us are familiar with such seasons, when power seems to be utterly exhausted. In such seasons we cannot face the music; the grasshopper becomes a burden. And the beautiful thing about our Lord is how, after such an experience as that, He held to it in quiet trust on God. He knew, in all its strength, the recurring temptation to give over. He had to reinforce His will continually for the great triumph of continuing. Through days of weakness, through seasons of exhaustion, through hours when His soul was sorrowful unto death, He held to the task given Him of God. It is very easy to hold on when we are loved and honored and appreciated; when our strength is equal to our problem; when the birds are singing in the trees. But to hold to it when all the sky is dark is the finest heroism in the world, and that was the heroism of the Lord.

Jesus in Full Agreement with Heaven's Perseverance

Nor is it hard to see where He learned this, living in perfect fellowship with heaven. For few things are more wonderful in God than the divine way He has of holding to it. The ruby "takes a million years to harden." The brook carves its channels through millenniums. There goes an infinite deal of quiet holding to it for the ripening of every harvest. And if we owe so much, in the beautiful world of nature, to what I would call the doggedness of heaven, how much more in the fairer world of grace. We are saved by a love that will not let us go. Nothing less is equal to our need. We often think that God has quite forgotten us, and then we discover how He is holding to it. Through all our coldness and backslidings, through our fallings into the miry clay, He has never left us or forsaken us. When we awake we are still with Him, and, what is better, He is still with us; just as ready to pardon and restore us as in the initial hour of conversion. No wonder that our Lord, in perfect fellowship with such a Father, laid His divine emphasis just there.

If You Want to Be Victorious—Hold On

For (just as our heavenly Father does) we win our victories by holding to it. We conquer, not in any brilliant fashion—we conquer by continuing. We master shorthand when we stick to shorthand. We master Shakespeare when we stick to Shakespeare. Wandering cattle are lean kine, whether they pasture in Britain or in Beulah. A certain radiant and quiet doggedness has been one of the marks of all the saints, for whom the trumpets have sounded on the other side. In the log-book of Columbus there is one entry more common than all others It is not "Today the wind was favorable." It is "Today we sailed on. "And to sail on, every common day, through fog and storm, and with mutiny on board, is the one way to the country of our dreams. Days come when everything seems doubtful, when the vision of the unseen is very dim. Days come when we begin to wonder if there can be a loving God at all. My dear reader, hold to it. Continue trusting. Keep on keeping on. It is thus that Christian character is built. It is thus the "Well done" is heard at last.

June 13

The Mission of the Seventy - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come .... Said he unto them .... heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you— Luk_10:1, Luk_10:2, Luk_10:9

There Is a Place for You to Serve

Can you picture the distress of a farmer when he sees his fields golden with a harvest, and there are no servants to gather that harvest in? It was such an agony that filled the heart of Jesus as He looked out on His harvest field. The seed had been sown; sunshine and rain had come; by the songs of psalmists and the message of prophets, by national guidance and national disaster, God had been bringing Israel to its autumn. And now there was the harvest ready to be cut, but the harvesters—where were they? How intensely Jesus felt the need of helpers! How clearly He saw that the world was to be won through the enthusiasm and the effort of humble men! It is one glory of our joyful Gospel that if we wish to help, there is a place for us. I have seen boys left out in the cold by their schoolmates, but men by their Master, never.

It's Safe to Be One of the Unnamed Disciples

Well, when the work of Jesus in Galilee was over, and a larger field was calling for larger service, Jesus chose seventy, as before He had chosen twelve. Who these seventy were I do not know. We find no list of their names in the Gospels. But one thing we are sure of, for we have it from the lips of Christ Himself, their seventy names were all written in heaven (Luk_10:20). One of our sweetest poets, who died in Italy, bade his friend write upon his tombstone, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." But the very feeblest of these seventy, when he came to die, would bid men write, "Here lies one whose name is writ in heaven." What a debt we owe to the unnamed disciples! How we are helped by those we never heard of! If struggles are easier and life is brighter for us, we owe it largely to the faithful souls who pray and work and die, unknown. Do you long to be one of the twelve, till all the land is ringing with your name? Better to be one of the unnamed seventy, who did their work and were very happy in it, and whose names are only known to God. Better: perhaps safer too. There was a Judas in the twelve: we never read of one among the seventy.

Why Seventy?

And why did Jesus fix on that number seventy. Fine souls have dreamed (and sometimes it is sweet to dream a little) that Jesus was thinking of the twelve wells and seventy palms of Elim that had refreshed the children of Israel long ago (Exo_15:27). But if that be a fancy, this at least is fact. It was seventy elders who went up with Moses to the mount and saw the glory of the God of Israel (Exo_24:1-9). Now seventy workers are to go out for Jesus, and see a glory greater than that of Sinai. It was seventy elders who were afterwards chosen to strengthen Moses in his stupendous task (Num_11:24-25). Now seventy are set apart by Jesus to aid Him in His glorious service. Do you see how Jesus gathered up the past? Do you mark how He was guided by the past in making His great choices for today?

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The Mission of the Seventy - Page 2
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They Were to Win Men by Trusting Them

So the seventy were chosen; and with an exquisite kindness were sent out two and two. They were to heal the sick. They were to be the heralds of God's kingdom. If men received them, let them rejoice. If cities rejected them, let them remember Jesus, for "he that despiseth you despiseth me." He was the Lamb of God, and they were sent forth as lambs among the wolves. They were to try to win men, too, by trusting them. For when Jesus bade them leave their wallet and their purse behind, He was not only teaching confidence in God; He was teaching them to look for the best in man. That was one secret of the seventy's success. They took it for granted they would be hospitably treated, and men responded to that trustfulness. They honored that confidence reposed in them; till the hearts of the seventy overflowed with praise, and they came back to Jesus full of joy.

No Time to Waste

It should be noted too, in their directions, how Jesus guarded against all waste of time. There is a note of urgency we must not miss. The value of precious hours is realized. Take this, for instance, "Salute no man by the way." Did Jesus mean that the worker should be a churl? Not that. But in the East greetings are so tedious, so full of flattery, so certain to lead on to wayside gossip, that men who are out on a work of life and death must run the risk of seeming unsociable sometimes. When Elisha bade his servant carry his staff and lay it on the dead child of the Shunamite, do you remember how he said to him, "If thou meet any man, salute him not; and if any salute thee, answer him not again" (2Ki_4:29)? The call was so urgent, there was no time for that, and there is a thousandfold greater urgency here. Or why, again, did Jesus say, "Go not from house to house"? Did not the disciples break bread from house to house (Act_2:46)? Did not Paul at Ephesus teach from house to house (Act_20:20)? But what Jesus warned the seventy against was this. It was against accepting that endless hospitality that to this day is the custom in an Eastern village. It was against frittering all their priceless hours away in accepting the little invitations they would get. They must remember how the days were flying. They must never lose sight of their magnificent work. The time is short, and all must give way to this—the preaching of the Kingdom and healing the sick.

Their Success Brought Joy to Christ

The seventy did their work, then, and came home again (for it was always home where Jesus was); and when Jesus heard their story and saw their joy, there fell a wonderful gladness on His heart, This Man of Sorrows was often very joyful, but never more so than in His friends' success. Now is not that a Comrade for us all? Is not that a Companion who will make life rich? We are so ready to envy one another. We cannot hear about a brother's triumphs but it sends a sting into our hearts. Jesus exults when His nameless children prosper. He is jubilant, in heaven, when I succeed. It is worthwhile to master self; it is worthwhile to be a Christian, in my own nameless way, when I have a Friend like that to please.

June 15

Unexpected Comforters

But a certain Samaritan .... had compassion on him— Luk_10:33

No Help Came from Those He Expected It From

If ever a comforter was unexpected it was in the case of this poor wounded wayfarer. Half-dead though he was, he still had life enough to be surprised. Had the priest hurried to his help that would have been entirely natural. Had the Levite come to his assistance that was what anybody might have looked for. But a Samaritan was the last man in the world to succor a disabled Jew, yet here it was a Samaritan who did it. The Jews and Samaritans despised and distrusted one another. Between them, for long ages, had been religious and racial antipathy. And yet this man who showed such ready kindness was actually a Samaritan. It is a striking and suggestive instance of the unexpected comforters of life.

Paul Received Help from Barbarians on Malta

It is notable how often one discovers this in the biographies of Scripture. One thinks, for instance, of the earliest Christians. If there was one man they were afraid of it was Paul; his very name struck terror to their hearts. They never heard of his approach without dismay, for everywhere he made havoc of the church. And yet this man, whose coming made them tremble, and who lived to persecute and ravage, was to become their mightiest of champions. Similarly in Paul's own life, when he was shipwrecked on the coast of Malta, one recalls that very charming touch that "the barbarous people shewed us not a little kindness." Roman citizens were bound to help each other to the very extremities of empire: but here the comforters were the barbarians. Paul was finding what we all find, that comforters are often unexpected, that the folk who are kind to us in hours of shipwreck are the last folk in the world we should have thought of. He was like that traveler going down to Jericho who, to his own intense astonishment, was comforted and helped by a Samaritan.

Receiving Help from Unexpected Sources in Our Own Experience

Now what is true of the biographies of Scripture is also largely true of our own lives. There are few of my readers who have been without experience of the unexpected comforters of life. There are those to whom we look for comfort, and thank God, we generally get it. There is the mother of our childhood, or the father, or the wife or husband, or the friend. But, like the well of Hagar, or the burning bush, or the ladder of the sleeping patriarch, how often are our comforters and helpers the last folk in the world we should expect. Sometimes innocent and prattling children, sometimes people whom we hardly know, sometimes those we were jealous of in secret, of whom we never spoke except in bitterness—how they have helped us, poured oil into our wounds, perhaps put their hand into their pockets for us, as the Samaritan did for this sorely battered wayfarer. I recall a woman who came to church one evening hoping to get comfort from the pulpit. Well, she did not get it, for that night I was preaching upon sin. But a lady next to her in the pew spoke to her and was wonderfully tender, and that poor wanderer told me afterwards that peace and comfort flowed into her heart. There are unexpected wells in Hagar's desert; there are unexpected comforters in life. They come to us when we never look for them, as the Lord did on the Emmaus road. All of us are like that Jewish traveler, for we all sometimes get oil and wine from the folk we never should have dreamed of.

Help from a Carpenter—One of long Ago So Different from Us

I venture to say that this unexpected ministry finds its crown in our blessed Lord and Savior. It is a strange thing that men should turn for comfort to One who was a Carpenter of Nazareth. A Carpenter! How can He comfort us, when the heart is heavy and the road is long? He was a child of a different race from ours: He lived some nineteen centuries ago. And the strange thing is that countless multitudes still turn to Him for comfort, and find Him the best Comforter of all. Priests disappoint us; Levites disappoint us. This good Samaritan never disappoints us. He comes just where we are (Luk_10:33), and pours oil and wine into our wounds. And He, too, was despised and rejected, and men were very contemptuous of Nazareth, for they said, Can any good come out of Nazareth ?

Help from Unexpected Sources Ought to Dispel Despair

This fact of life on which I have been dwelling ought always to help to keep us from despairing. How readily we say, when people disappoint us, "there is no eye to pity and no arm to save." I think this wounded traveler said that when priest and Levite passed him by. He despaired; there was no help for him; there was no eye to pity and no arm to save. And just then the Samaritan appeared—the unlikeliest person in the world—and comfort was far nearer than he knew. Do I speak to any whose hearts are very sore in the bitterness of disappointment? To any who have hoped for help from certain people and, like this wounded traveler, never got it? My dear reader, courage! The oil and wine are nearer than you think, for, and very probably, they are going to come to you from someone of whom you would never dream.

June 16

Just There

A certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was— Luk_10:33

The Lord Himself as a Good Samaritan

Our Lord, true poet that He was, had a great liking for pictorial teaching, and in all the pictures of His gallery none is more remarkable than this one. The scene, familiar to them ail; the robbery, an occurrence they all dreaded; the ecclesiastics whom they knew so well; the Samaritan, whom they all despised—these made a glowing vivid picture, which nobody but a master could have painted, and nobody but the Master ever did. It is a beautiful etching of benevolence, and as such it is immortal. But men have loved, right down the ages, to find in it something more than that. They have loved to find in this Samaritan a delineation of the Lord Himself, in His infinite compassion for mankind. Many thoughts come leaping to the mind when we set the story in the light of Christ. This Samaritan was long in coming. He had everything the man required (Luk_10:34). But there is another beautiful feature in his pity that is so eminently true of Christ that we do well to dwell on it a little.

As the Samaritan, so the Lord Came Where He Was

Than feature is that the Samaritan came just where the man was—came right up to him, and handled him, where he lay battered on the hedge-bank. When he saw, as he came down the hill, that in the hollow yonder there had been a struggle—when he saw that battered figure by the road, with the robbers probably in concealment, how naturally he might have halted till some Roman convoy had come up; but, says Jesus, he came just where he was. I feel sure our Lord intended that. Christ was unrivalled in suggestive phrase. The Priest saw him; the Levite looked at him; the Samaritan came right up where he was. How perfectly that exquisite touch applies to the Lord, who was the teller of the story, in His infinite compassion for mankind!

It Was He Himself Who Came

Think for a moment of the Incarnation. Tell me, what was the Incarnation? It was the Son of God, seeing the need of man, and coming in infinite mercy where he was. Not speaking as by a trumpet from high heaven; not casting down a scroll out of eternity; not sending Gabriel or any of the angels to proclaim the loving fatherhood of God. No, this is the glory of the Incarnation, that when man was bruised and battered by his sin, Christ, the Son of God, the good Samaritan, came just where he was. He came to the inn, where the travelers were drinking; to the cottage, where the mother prayed; to the village, where the children romped; to the fields, where happy lovers wandered. He came to the marriage feast and to the funeral; to the crowded city and the sea; He came to the agony and to the cross. Show me where folk are lying ill at home, and I can show you Jesus there. Show me where men are tempted of the devil, and I can show you Jesus there. Show me where hearts are crying out in darkness, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and the beautiful and amazing thing is this—that I can show you Jesus there. Where man has suffered, Jesus Christ has suffered. Where man has toiled, Jesus Christ has toiled. Where man has wept, Jesus Christ has wept. Where man has died, Jesus Christ has died. He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, and made His grave with the wicked in His death. The good Samaritan has come .just where he was.

Contrasted with John the Baptist

And when we follow the footsteps of the Lord, does not the same thing at once arrest us? Why, that is just what the people marked in Christ, when they contrasted Him with John the Baptist. If you wanted John, you had to search for John. You had to leave the city and go into the wilderness. And there, "far from the haunts of men," was John the Baptist, a solitary figure. But Christ was genial, kindly, and accessible, a lover of the haunts of men, the friend of publicans and sinners. Simon Peter was busy with his nets, and Christ came where he was. Matthew was seated at the receipt of custom, and Christ came to him. The poor demoniac was in the graveyard, there to be exiled till he died, and the glorious thing about our good Samaritan is that He came exactly where he was. Where is that bright girl from Jairus' home? We have been missing her happy smile these days. Where is Lazarus? We used to see him daily. Is he ill? We never see him now. Where are the spirits who were disobedient at the time the ark was a-pre-paring? I know not; I only know of each of them that Christ came where he was. Go to the penitent thief upon the cross, and tell him there is someone who can save him. Only he must come down, and leave the city, and fly to the wilderness and he will find him. There are many who offer paradise on these terms when men are powerless and cannot move a finger; but Christ came where he was. That is exactly what He is doing still. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. No one needs to fly away to find Him. The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth. "Just as I am," is a very gracious hymn: but I want someone to write me another hymn: "Just where I am, O Lamb of God, You come."

June 17

Christ and Worry - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful— Luk_10:41-42

Seizing upon the Essential

These words, you will remember, are taken from the brief description of the well-known scene in the home of Martha and Mary at Bethany. And few episodes, even in the Gospel narrative, are more familiar to us than this. What wonderful artists the sacred writers are! They know how to paint with just the few absolutely essential and perfectly correct strokes. There is not one too many, and not one is out of place. Here we have a home, a scene in that home, two characters, and a wealth of teaching from the Lord Jesus, all sketched in and made to live before our eyes and in our memories within the space of just five verses. What a rebuke to our prolixity!

We might have taken a whole chapter to describe what is here told in twenty lines, and we should probably have left the reader with a far less vivid and a far less correct impression. The very form of the narrative teaches us the chief lesson it contains—the importance of seizing upon the essential, and how comparatively few of the things we are apt to consider necessary really are so. It is upon choosing the really essential things in life, and in laying stress upon these, that true welfare depends.

A Divided Mind

How clearly, how vividly we see Martha, the good-hearted, bustling, over-anxious mistress and very-much-manager of the household! She is so very busy about so very many things; and all the time she is firmly convinced in her own mind that all she does and all she would provide is absolutely necessary. Not one of all this multitude of things must be wanting. Custom, and her own reputation in her own eyes and among her neighbors, demand them ail. The amount of mental and physical energy which she consumed in providing and preparing and arranging the "many things" which she deemed necessary, she probably never computed, nor did she stay for a moment to consider whether she had forgotten one or two things which in intrinsic worth might be of far greater value than the sum total of all the other things about which she was busying herself. Her mind was too divided to think clearly: part of it was running on this thing and part on that, and yet another part on something else; and her bodily movements were a reflection of her mental ones. As we say, she was all the time in a bustle, running here and there, anxious, distracted, worried; and because she was so, she was much inclined to blame others, even the Lord Jesus, who were really guiltless of the cause of her unhappiness.

Contrast her with her sister Mary, to whom the opportunity—a short one, and one which would quickly pass—of sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus and listening to Him outweighed in importance everything else at the moment. Besides making the most of this opportunity, just then nothing else mattered. And very probably Mary had a far keener insight into the mind of the Great Teacher, who was there for so short a time, than had the anxious and worried, if kind-hearted, Martha.

What Is Real Hospitality?

When guests enter our house it is right that we should seek to provide them with all that they can need; we would go further, and would offer them what we believe will give them the greatest pleasure. We say to ourselves that we hope they will enjoy their sojourn with us. But do we ever ask in what the true enjoyment of our most worthy guests consists? Do we not too often see their pleasures only through our own eyes, and decide, according to the accepted standards of the conventional which rule us, what they ought to enjoy, rather than take the trouble to enter into their feelings? Is there not often at least a measure of pride, a desire to give ourselves satisfaction, in the nature of the hospitality which we offer? How often when we have been the guests of others would not some of us have gladly given up three-fourths of what was set before us to eat and to drink in exchange for half-an-hour's quiet conversation with some thoughtful person in the neighborhood we were visiting! For then we could have enjoyed that refreshment of soul, that stimulus of a mind greater and richer than our own, which the busy often need far more than mere bodily satisfaction.

May not Jesus have felt something of this that day in the home at Bethany? He lived a busy life, and His interests were centered on a great purpose—to influence others, to teach them the precious truths He had come to reveal. He would know Mary's anxiety to learn, that she might impart what she had learned to other women. To help her in this high purpose would be to Jesus far greater enjoyment than to partake of all the material things Martha was so anxiously providing. And, besides, by her bustling to and fro, Martha was actually preventing those few minutes of quiet so precious to Jesus and to Mary His disciple.

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Christ and Worry - Page 2
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Are We Doing the Usual or the Right Thing?

Martha, like a great many well-meaning people today, was evidently the slave of convention, and to do what was the fashion was, in her eyes as in the opinion of so many, to do the "right" thing. Is it not true that the majority of people who wish to be hospitable, and to show kindness and honor and respect, simply ask themselves what, under the circumstances, is the usual thing to do? For in their opinion the usual is only another term for the right thing. They would do what fashion demands. But fashion is a hard taskmaster. He runs up many accounts, but does he pay many bills? And what does being in the fashion too often mean? Does it not mean obtaining and displaying and using what those who are richer than ourselves possess? It too often means a display (at the cost of much labor and anxiety) of our possession of the material things of life. And then the greater part of both our time and our energy must be directed towards these things—towards obtaining and displaying and taking care of them. We must remember that all material things are to be sought and are useful just in so far as, and no further than, they minister to the higher life. A comfortable, well-ordered, healthy house will so minister; but the moment the house and its contents become an end, rather than a means to an end, the true order of importance has been reversed. A sufficiency of plain and wholesome food ministers to the higher life, for in health we can think more clearly, work harder, and be more useful to others; but the moment the care for eating and drinking goes beyond this, the true order of things has been lost. Once more, a reasonable amount of recreation ministers to the usefulness of life, for it also promotes and tends to maintain health, and so the powers of usefulness; but when energy is consumed in providing the means for expensive amusements (often because these are fashionable), and when much time is consumed in taking part in them, in this case also a sense of proportion has been lost. The "judgment values" of life, upon whose correctness so much depends, are in all these cases false. It is still only too frequently true that in being so anxious about the means of living we often deprive ourselves of the opportunity for life itself.

Our Lord says, "Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things: but a few things are needful." And in Gal_5:1 St. Paul says, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." And these words of St. Paul's seem extremely applicable to the subject before us; for Christ has, if we have accepted the liberty He has given us, set us free from "many things." But have we fulfilled, are we fulfilling, the conditions of that liberty? Are we not rather the slaves of many a worldly conventionality which causes us far more worry and far greater anxiety than we would care to confess? Does not Christ tell us that it was "for judgment that He came into the world"? And the function of judgment is to give right decisions, and, among these, correct estimates of intrinsic value. Thus Christ will help us to decide upon the true value of many possessions and many objects of anxious effort upon which our own judgments are often seriously at fault.

In one place Christ speaks with great plainness upon the subject. In the Parable of the Sower He tells us that some of the seed—and by the seed is meant that which contains the principle of the higher life, that which is essential to the development of that life—some of the seed fell among the thorns. These thorns represent "the anxieties, riches, and pleasures of this life," which grow and choke the seed and render it unfruitful. The very order of these evils is suggestive; first anxieties, then riches, then pleasures. How anxious some people seem to be not merely to have enough, but to be rich, and that in order to be able to enjoy what are by convention regarded as the pleasures of this world, but which all the time are a cause of weariness of soul to many who participate in them, and in the meanwhile there is no bringing what should be the true fruit of life to perfection.

Think of the contrast between freedom in and through Christ, and of slavery to the conventions, the fashions of the world. As redeemed by Christ, as free in Him, we ought to enjoy the fullest opportunity for the development of the highest life; but actually this is too often prevented by the slavery which I have been describing. How then can we enjoy the freedom which Christ has potentially won for us? Christ is the Light of the World; He is also the Wisdom of God and the Power of God.

Only One Thing Is Needful

The secret of the highest and purest success in life lies in the ability first to choose and then to make effort after those things which are of really greatest worth. Of course, together with this choice, there must be a ceasing to strive after things of no intrinsic or permanent value. This is what Jesus meant when He said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." Now ability to choose rightly, and also to obtain, implies the possession of all the three qualities of Christ which I have just mentioned, namely, Light, Wisdom, and Power.

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Christ and Worry - Page 3
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These we may obtain from Him; and before we can use them we must obtain them. By means of light we see things as they are; we discern their real nature, we can estimate their relative greatness or smallness. Only in the light, only, that is, in possession of the completest knowledge available, must we choose and select. This selection also implies skill, which is the true meaning of wisdom. The truly wise man is the man who can both choose and use skillfully. Christ's wisdom is seen in His choices, in His decisions. The proof of His wisdom is seen in the results of these. Christ chooses, and He teaches us to choose those things which are of permanent value and which satisfy the highest parts of our nature. Our want of wisdom is seen in our frequent rejection of these things for objects which give only a very temporary satisfaction, and that only to the lower part of our nature.

But in addition to light or knowledge, in addition also to choice or decision, we need power. We need power to do what we know we ought to do and have chosen to do. Remember St. Paul's words, "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."

Light, wisdom, power are three conditions of freedom—of the freedom which, as a possibility, Christ has won for us. To obtain them we must possess Him. He is the One needful; they are the few things needful. Possession and use of these will prevent that worry which wears out life, that distraction which, in its endless seeking after things of comparatively little value, destroys even its own object. In its constant search after what it considers necessary as means of living it forgets life itself.

June 18

Social Claims Impelling Us to God - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him— Luk_11:5-6

This Parable Resulted from a Request How to Pray

This parable was spoken to encourage men in the difficult exercise of prayer. Christ had been praying in a certain region, and the disciples, themselves unseen, had been observing Him. They had lighted upon the holy place, where He was rapt in communion with the Father. And when He ceased they did not steal away, nor did they try to excuse their presence there; they cried, "Lord, teach us to pray." One might argue from such a cry that these men had been ignorant of prayer. To do so would be a great mistake; and it would be an injustice to the twelve. What they felt was, when they saw Jesus praying, that their prayers were unworthy of the name. As they looked at their Master communing with His Father, there was something which told them that this was prayer indeed. And so when He had ceased they turned to Him, feeling as if they had never prayed at all, and they cried "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." It was then that our Lord supplied that form of prayer which has been linked with His name through all the centuries. It was then that He spoke this parable, teaching men to pray and not to faint.

Another's Need Made Him Pray and Beg

So far we are on familiar ground, for that is evident to every reader. But our text has a suggestion of its own, to which I propose to invite your consideration. When the man left his house to seek for food, it was not his own necessity that urged him. So far as he himself was concerned that night, we have no liberty to infer that he was in want. He had had his supper, and he had gone to rest, with a sufficiency to meet the morning's need. Had there been but himself to be considered, he would never have begged his neighbor for the loaves. The point to note is that what drove him forth was the unexpected demand on his resources. At midnight there arrived before his door a journeying friend whom night had overtaken. And it was this claim upon his hospitality, a claim that is always sacred to an Eastern, which sent him forth, and made him such a suppliant, that to refuse him was impossible. I do not say that his plea prevailed, just because he was asking for another. Had he been starving, and pleading for himself, his petition might have been equally compelling. But we are looking at the transaction from the petitioner's side, not from the side of him who was approached, and in that light the simple fact is this, that it was another's need which made him pray.

He Was Driven by Another's Need, She by Her Own

That this is not an accidental feature, may be seen if we consider the companion parable. The companion story to the Friend at Midnight is the striking picture of the Unjust Judge (see Luk_18:2-8). There was a judge that feared not God nor man, and a certain poor widow came before him. And she cried out, and she continued crying, "Avenge me of mine adversary." And you will note how all the features are alike—the persistence, the reluctance to accede—all are identical save this one feature which I have chosen for our meditation. The widow came pleading for herself, and to do so she had a perfect right. Someone had wronged her and she wanted justice; she wanted the wild justice of revenge. But this man was not thinking of himself, nor urging anything in his own interest. The claim which drove him to another's door was the social claim of hospitality. I think you will admit from that comparison that the feature before us is not there by accident. Our Lord delighted to repeat Himself with beautiful and intentional distinctions. Nay, I shall go farther even than that, and regard this as the key to the whole parable—the fact which determined its conception, the thread round which it crystallized.

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Social Claims Impelling Us to God - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Driven to Prayer by the Needs of Others

The teaching of the parable, then, is this, viewed always from the side of the petitioner. We are not only driven to prayer by our own needs; we are driven also by the needs of others. There are times when we are like the widow with the judge. We are driven to God by personal distress. Trouble has come, or sickness, or anxiety; or we are sorely tempted, or in great perplexity. In such seasons how much a man must miss who does not turn for communion to his Father, who never said to any of the seed of Jacob, "Seek ye me," in vain! That is the personal aspect of devotion. That is its private and individual bearing. For our own souls, in such a world as this, there is no hope at all unless we pray. And yet how ignorant is he of life, and of the complexity of human ties, who would limit to his own private needs the urgent summons to the throne of God! Is it not often because others need us, that we are awakened to our need of God? Is it not because others are leaning upon us, that we are driven to lean on the Eternal? In every relationship of human life large and various demands are made upon us. There are those who trust us; there are those who love us; there are those whose welfare hangs upon our guidance. And who are we, whose hearts are often empty, as empty as was that Eastern home—who are we, in our own poor resource, to meet and satisfy these social claims? It is then that we are driven upon God. We come to Him just because others need us. We come to Him not with our private sorrow, not with our weary and besetting sin. We come for the sake of those who love us so, for the sake of those who trust us and who honor us; for the sake of those committed to our charge; for the sake of all with whom we have an influence.

Let us think, for example, of a mother, whose children are growing to manhood and to womanhood. We shall suppose her to have come out of a Christian home, and to have enjoyed the privilege of Christian upbringing. In all her life there has never been a time in which she did not bow the knee to God. So was she taught when she was yet a child, and the influence of that teaching was determinative. And she had her trials, and her girlish troubles, and perhaps a time when she thought that no one needed her; and all this, as it helped to make her lonely, so did it bring her to the feet of God. Then her life deepened into motherhood. There were the voices of children in the home. And as the children grew, each was a separate problem, for each had a separate nature. Yet every one of them trusted her implicitly, and claimed her love as their peculiar heritage, and never thought of doubting for a moment that she was a pattern of perfect womanhood. And one made large demands upon her patience, and another made large demands upon her intellect. And one with eyes of innocence would look at her, as if he were reading her to the very depths. Until at last, feeling her own helplessness to guide and bless and save these young children, she has been driven to feel her need of God, just because other lives were needing her. Like the Syrophenician woman in the Gospel, she has cried for mercy because she had a daughter. She has knocked at the golden door of grace, because of the lives that were entwined with hers. That is the blessing of social demands, and of all the intertwining of relationships. Others are leaning upon us so hard, that in our poverty we lean on God.

Again we might take an illustration from those who are engaged in social service. We might think of those who are bravely setting out to do something for Glasgow in the name of Christ. There are, I think, two great discoveries made by all who share in that service. The first is how deep is the need of God on the part of those whom they are trying to serve. Ameliorative schemes are not enough. Men know the better, and pursue the worse. You may cleanse the home—you may reform the public-house, and the last state be little better than the first. Sooner or later a man awakes to this—and what is needed, if dark is to be light, is nothing more and nothing less than God, changing the heart and ordering the life. But if the worker lights on that discovery, sooner or later he makes another too. It is not how fallen men need God. It is how utterly he needs God himself. And just in proportion as he serves with blessing, and is trusted and loved by those whom he seeks to raise, will he be driven by his service to his knees, and to that fellowship which is the source of power. It is not always when men fail that they pray best. If they are real men, it is when they succeed. It is when others are trusting them—when eyes are looking to them—when little children are drinking in the teaching. It is when the young men and women in the class think there is no one in the world like their own teacher. It is when a minister feels himself surrounded by a loyal and an earnest people. Who then is sufficient for these things? The friend has come and we have naught to give him. And who are we, so helpless and so sinful, that we should be trusted and used and loved and honored so? it is then that we betake ourselves to God, just because others betake themselves to us. The pressure of other lives upon ourselves is the pressure that drives us to the throne.

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by George H. Morrison

Shirking Responsibility Weakens Our Fellowship with God

Now if that be so, we have lit on a great truth; one that is worthy of most careful pondering. It is that if we shirk responsibilities, we weaken our life of fellowship with God. Take the case of the man we are considering. Suppose he had refused to entertain the wayfarer. Suppose he had cried to him "My house is full," or, "My larder is empty and I cannot have you." Why, then he would have gone to sleep again, and never would have made that midnight pilgrimage, and never would have beaten at his neighbor's door, clamoring in necessity for bread. He was responsive to the claims of others, and so was forced to go and beg for help. He was sensitive to the appeals of friendship, and so was he driven forth to be a suppliant. Had he hardened his heart, and played a selfish part, and muttered sleepily "Am I my brother's keeper?" then there would have been no parable of his eager entreaty for supplies.

Beware of the Temptation in Thinking That Seclusion Would Draw You Closer to God
Now I believe we are all occasionally tempted by a very subtle and insidious temptation. We are tempted to think we might live nearer God if we could free ourselves from social demands. It may be that there are worries in the home. It may be that there are anxieties in business. Or gradually our work for Christ may have so grown, that the burden of it is well-nigh overwhelming. And then it is that the temptation visits us, that, could we only be freed from these demands, prayer would be easier, our life in God be deeper, our fellowship with heaven more sustained. Remember I am not saying a word against the need of seasons of retirement. Sometimes it is good to get away, and be alone with our own hearts and God. But what I do say is, that if one who is much burdened is never driven to God because he is burdened, he is far less likely to approach the throne when the pressure of his burdens is removed. It is God who sends to us the friend at midnight. It is God who determines the bounds of our habitation. It is God who leads us to a growing usefulness with all its deepening responsibility. And if all that does not make us pray, and does not waken us to our need of Him, then, in the hour when we renounce our service, we shall be farther off from blessedness and heaven. Think of what happened in the monasteries, to take an instance from the larger world. Men said, "We want to live with God more wholly," and they cut the ties which bound them to society. The common result was sloth and bestiality, the very antithesis of all religion; and today the ruins where the ivy clings are the judgment of heaven upon that mistake. They refused to open to the friend at midnight. They shut their ears to the demands of life. They said, "Let us be free from all this trammel, and then we shall certainly be nearer God." Far better had they served their generation, and played their part, and mingled with humanity, until the burden of it all, weighing them down, had brought them to the everlasting arms.

Thank God for Every Midnight Call

So I close by saying this to you who are taking up the service of the winter. Thank God for every call that reaches you. Thank Him for the opportunity of toil. The hour may come for you when it is midnight, just as it came to the host in our parable. The hour may come when heart and flesh are weary, and hope is dim, and courage is decayed—and in that very hour, for aught I know, the hand may be heard knocking at the door. But if these claims awake you to your weakness, and make you feel anew your need of God; if they send you out from your own self-sufficiency to lean upon His grace and on His love; why then, my brother, all your happy holiday, and all your remembrances of the purple heather, will not be such a blessing to your heart as the burden and the service of today. "Commit your way to the Lord .... and he shall bring it to pass." Come now, and cast your burden on the Lord. Take up your service, whether in church or city, no matter how impoverished you feel. There is One whose store is always overflowing, and He is willing to give you of His best; and men will be blest in you and call you blessed, just because they make you lean on God.

June 21

Interior Alms - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Give for alms that which is within— Luk_11:41 (R.V.)

The importance of the Within

That the rendering of the Revised Version is the right one is suggested by a study of the context. The whole passage is intended to reveal to us the value which Christ attached to the within. A Pharisee had invited Christ to sup with him, and then had marveled that He had omitted washing. This led Jesus to speak His sharp, stem words on the cleansing of the inside of the cup or platter. And then, recalling Pharisaic ostentation not only in washings but in almsgiving's, He added, "Give for alms that which is within." It is the same thought as is expressed by Paul in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." It is the same thought as was expressed by Peter when, fixing his gaze on the lame man, he said, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee" (Act_3:6). For to every man there is an outward realm of all the material things which he possesses, and to every man there is an inward realm comprising not what he owns but what he is. And the law which Jesus here lays down is this, that of all giving, that is the most blessed which gives not merely of that which is without but also of that which is within.

I need hardly say that there is no encouragement here to anything like a cheap and spurious charity. No one could ever associate such a thought with any word that fell from Jesus Christ. The tender compassion of Jesus for the poor—the miracle of the loaves and fishes—the reward that is given to all who have clothed the needy in the great parable of the last judgment—all this would prove to us, if any proof were needed, how Christ regarded the giving of the outward. It is not as belittling outward giving that Jesus utters the teaching of our text. On the contrary, it is to reinforce it from a richer and a deeper spring. For when the heart is opened then the hand is opened, and when feelings are stirred the purse is never closed, and when a man so lives as to bestow, the greater he is not likely to begrudge the less. He who gives everything up to the point of money and then refuses to give that, need never think to shelter in this text when he remembers who it was that uttered it. And this I think it right to say in passing, lest any one should pervert this word of Jesus, as if it put any slight on outward charities.

Having thus safeguarded this deep word, the question which I should like to ask is this: why does the giving of that which is within have this primacy in the thought of Christ? There are many considerations I could touch upon, but I shall confine my attention to three.

The Greatness of a Gift Depends on Its Closeness to the Giver

In the first place, I would suggest to you that the giving of that which is within is blessed, because, in a quite peculiar sense, it is the giving of that which is our own.

You all know, friends, that the value of a gift depends largely upon its relation to ourselves. The closer and more vital that relationship the greater the value of the act of giving. When a king in earlier ages gifted lands away, over which his suzerainty was of a shadowy kind, that was not so eloquent of a generous nature as the giving of some palace that he loved; and so always is our giving less or more, not merely according to the greatness of the gift, but according to the place of the gift in the giver's life. It is a glad thing that God has given us sunshine and fruitful seasons and the rain from heaven. But gladder than all that is this, that God hath given us His only begotten Son. And the infinite preciousness of that great gift, viewed in relation to the Giver of it, is just that the Giver and the gift were one.

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Now when a man gives of his wealth, however kindly and generous be the giving, it does not need any argument to prove to you that he has not yet given of his real self. Increase a man's wealth a thousandfold and he is not necessarily a better man. Strip him swiftly of all his affluence and he is not necessarily a worse man. There is no vital relationship at all between a man's belongings and himself, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. But the moment you touch that which is within you see that the case is different at once. You are not dealing now with what is accidental; you are dealing with what is vital and essential. You are dealing with that which makes us what we are, with that which, added to or taken from, might leave us richer or might leave us poorer, but in any case must leave us different. For you may add ten thousand pounds to a man's capital, and in the sight of God that man is still the same. But let faith, hope and charity be added, and in the sight of God that man is different. And so when we give of that which is within we give out of the depths of our own being; and so are far-off followers of God who gave for us sinners of mankind His only begotten Son.

Channels of Giving from the Heart

Once more the giving of what is within is blessed, because it opens up such an expanse of charity.

When we confine our thought of charity to outward things, there are two results that inevitably follow. The first is that almost of necessity we narrow the channel in which giving flows. Now no one knows better than I do what gladness a gift of money sometimes brings. Even a comparatively trifling gift may make the wilderness blossom as the rose. Some of you good people who live in comfort haven't the least conception of that side of things. There are hundreds in Glasgow to whom a five pound note would make all the difference in the world. Still, when that is said, and said with most intimate knowledge out of my experience as a pastor, how much there is, my brother, in the humblest life that all your money is powerless to reach. How many needs that money cannot meet, how many wants that money cannot satisfy, how many longings in the humblest heart that money is quite helpless to appease. The poorest has a heart that longs for love, and the heart of the richest can long for nothing more. There are chords that will vibrate to the touch of sympathy that will never vibrate to the touch of coin. And it was just because our Lord and Savior was so alive to the range of human need that He bade us give of that which is within. For he who gives with the hand has but one channel, and he who gives with the heart has fifty channels. He gives of his sympathy and of his loving-kindness; he gives of his happiest sunshine and his tears. He gives of his time which is the stuff of life, and of his thought which is his noblest attribute, and of his prayers when the chamber door is shut, and the heart is reverent, and God is near. Think not that such almsgiving is easy. Christ does not call any man to what is easy. He calls us to what is arduous and toilsome, and very exhausting e'er the day is done. Yet is there no life on earth so glad as the life that is ceaseless in such interior charity, for it is more blessed to give than to receive.

But when we limit the thought of alms to what is outward another result inevitably follows. It follows inevitably from that conception of it that we shut out thousands from the grace of giving. If the only almsgiving be that of substance, if the one valid charity be money, if no liberality deserves the name save the liberal giving of what a man possesses, then all those thousands in our Christian lands who fight their grim and ceaseless fight with poverty are denied the practice of the grace. It is true that the poor are wonderfully kind. Their kindness far outstrips that of the rich. The poor stand by each other and assist each other with a comradeship that is often beautiful. Yet that kindness of the poor entails such sacrifice, and makes such a drain upon the scanty means, that it can never be other than occasional. Multitudes there are in every city who can barely win the necessities of life. They are only too thankful if from a scanty wage they can bring food and clothing for their children. And though these people, as I have said, often show kindnesses that put us all to shame, such kindness from the nature of the case must always be the exception, not the rule. If material charity is to be the rule, then it can only be the rule of the minority. If the giving of means be the one valid giving, then of course there always must be means to give. And hence it follows that if the only almsgiving is the habitual giving of the outward, there are thousands everywhere who are excluded hopelessly from the practice of this grace.

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Interior Alms - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Now, friends, if giving were a hardship we might see in that the ordering of God. But giving, so far from being a hardship, is one of the purest joys in human life. Look at that selfish man who in a generous moment has given a shilling to the beggar in the street. Whether or not it has made the beggar happy, it most undoubtedly has made the donor happy. And if such thoughtless and impulsive giving can bring a secret glow of satisfaction, what must the secret joy be when the giving is that of a thoughtful and prayerful Christian man? He who has missed the joy of liberality has missed one of the purest joys of life. There is no luxury of silk or tapestry that can match the luxury of doing good. And it is incredible, from all we know of God, and from all we have learned of Jesus Christ, that He should exclude thousands from this joy simply because they happen to be poor. But the moment you grasp our text you see that these multitudes are not excluded. The noblest giving, in the eyes of Jesus, is the giving of that which is within. And though a man be very poor he may have a plentiful treasure of the heart, and be a blessing by it and help others by it, in a way that silver and gold could never do. I suppose there is not a Christian worker here but has had some such experience as this. You have gone with some offering of charity to a frail or aged woman. And you have come away so helped and humbled by her trust in God, her patience, and her gratitude that you know you have got far more than you bestowed. You gave to her of that which was without, and for that you shall have the blessing of the Father. For she needed it, and it will cheer her heart, and bring her some little comfort that she lacked. But perhaps she hath exercised the richer almsgiving according to the judgment of the Master, for she hath given of that which is within.

The Perfect Aims Giver

I remark, lastly, that this inward giving is blessed for a reason still more cogent. It is blessed because it brings our lives into such harmony with that of Jesus.

If we were to reckon all that Jesus gave by His giving of the material and outward, I need hardly tell you how sadly we should fail to comprehend the wonder of it ail. We can never forget, it is true, that He fed the hungry, or that once He turned the water into wine. Neither can we forget that His poor band had a bag to hold the offerings for poor. Yet if we sought to measure all that Jesus gave by what He gave of that which was without, how little would we understand of Him! Our blessed Lord was born in a poor home, and lived to the end the life of a poor man. Others may leave fortunes when they die; He left nothing but the seamless garment. Indeed it has been questioned in these latter days, on the ground of certain well-known Gospel incidents, whether our Savior ever handled money. Measured by the test of things without, there are thousands who give far more than Jesus gave. There are men and women who in a single day give more than Jesus gave in His whole ministry. The giving of our Master is unique not in the giving of that which is without, but in the glorious and heavenly lavishness with which He gave that which is within. He gave of His virtue, and the sick were healed; He gave of His sympathy, and sorrowing hearts were comforted. He gave of His joy, and men were glad again; He gave of His peace, and restless hearts were quieted. He gave of His prayers upon the mountain side when the shadows had fallen and His locks were wet with dew, and faith was strengthened and courage was revived, and Satan was baffled of his prey. He gave of His vision of a Father-God, and men who were heavy-laden sang again. He gave of His love to the fallen and the far, and womanhood stole back to women's hearts. He gave of His life to the last drop of it until its very cup was dashed in fragments, and, because He died for us, we live. That, brethren, is the spirit of Christ, and if any man have not that Spirit he is none of His. May God grant us the joy of spending and of being spent. Ceaselessly and happily and secretly may we give for alms that which is within, for it is more blessed to give than to receive, and he that loseth his life shall save it.

June 22

The Rich Fool

And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me .... And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth—(Luk_12:13-15)

What Jesus Did When He Was Interrupted

Jesus was often interrupted in His teaching, and some of the choicest sayings in the Gospel spring from these interruptions of the Lord. When we are interrupted at our work or play, you know how cross we generally are. But Jesus, in His perfect trust and wisdom, turned even His interruptions to account. He had to stop preaching at Capernaum once when the paralytic was lowered through the roof. But instead of fretting, He so used the moment that the crowd in the cottage glorified God. And here, too, as He is teaching, He is brought to a halt by an unlooked-for question. Yet He so answers it, and uses it, and preaches such a memorable sermon on it, that I am sure there was not a disciple but thanked God for the unseemly interruption. Christ felt that not one man could interrupt Him, without the permission of His heavenly Father. It was that present and perfect trust in God that kept Him in His unutterable calm.

Where Was This Man's Treasure?

While He was speaking, then, of heavenly things—of forgiveness of sins and of the Holy Ghost—and when He paused, perhaps, for an instant to see if Peter and John had understood Him, there came a grating voice upon His ear, "Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me." Now, whether this man was really wronged or not, it is of course impossible to say. And it was not that which stirred the wrath of Jesus—it was the betrayal of the speaker's heart. A single sentence may be enough to reveal us. A single request may open our inmost soul. And here was a man who had listened to peerless preaching, and might have been carried heavenward on the wings of it, but the moment Jesus stops, he blurts out his petition, and his whole grievance is about his possessions. Does not that show what he was thinking of? Cannot you follow back the workings of his mind through these magnificent teachings that precede? It was that earthly mind that stirred Christ's anger. It was that which led Him on to preach on greed. There was life eternal in the words of Christ; but this man, in the very hearing of them, could think of nothing but the family gold.

An Anxious, Selfish Fool

Then Jesus told the story of the rich fool, and as He told it His mind went back to Nabal (1Sa_25:1-44). For "Nabal" just means a foolish man, and as his name was, so was he. Like Nabal, too, this churl was not a badman. He had not stolen the wealth that was to wreck him. It was God's rain that had fallen on his seed. It was God's sunshine that had ripened his harvest. It was God's gentleness that made him great. But for all that, his riches ruined him. He gave his heart to them: he gave his soul. Then suddenly, when he was laying his plans, and dreaming his golden dreams about tomorrow, God whispered, "Senseless! This night they want thy soul!" Who the they is—for so it reads in the original—we cannot say. They may be the angels of death; they may be robbers. In any case they are God's instruments, and the rich man must say goodbye to everything. O folly, never to think of that! He had thought of everything except his God. "And so is he that layeth up treasure for himself, if he is not rich towards God."

Now there are three things we must notice about this man; and the first is how very anxious he was. When we are young we think that to be rich means to be free from anxiety altogether. We can understand a pauper being anxious, but not a man who has great heaps of gold. But this rich man was just as full of cares as the beggar without a sixpence in the world. He could not sleep for thinking of his crops. That question of the harvest haunted him. It shut out God from him, and every thought of heaven, just as that family inheritance we spoke of silenced the music of Jesus for the questioner. Who is the man who we sometimes call a fool? It is the man with the bee in his bonnet, as we say. But better sometimes to have a bee in the bonnet than to have nothing but barns upon the brain. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.

See next how very selfish the man was. Do we hear one whisper of a harvest-thanksgiving? Is there any word of gratitude to God? You would think the man had fashioned the corn himself, and burnished and filled the ears with his own hand, he is so fond of talking of my corn. Do you remember what we learned in the Lord's Prayer. It is never my there, it is always our. And the Lord's fool is at opposite poles from the Lord's Prayer, for he is always babbling about my. And then were there no poor folk in his glen? Was there no Naomi in yon cottage in the town? Did not one single Ruth come out to glean when the tidings traveled of that amazing harvest? If the bosoms of the poor had been his barns, he would have been welcomed at the Throne that night. O selfish and ungrateful!—but halt, have I been selfish this last week? There are few follies in the world like the folly of the selfish man.

Then, lastly, think—and we have partly traveled on this ground already—think how very foolish the man was. Had he said, "Body, take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry!" there might have been some shadow of reason in it. But to think that a soul that hungers after God was ever to be satisfied with food—is there any folly that can equal that? "The world itself," says James Renwick, "could not fill the heart, for the heart has three corners and the world is round!" Let us so live, then, that when our soul is summoned, we shall say, "Yea, Lord! It has long been wanting home." And to this end let us seek first the kingdom. For where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.

June 23

The Great Supper - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; For all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind— Luk_14:17, Luk_14:18, Luk_14:21

The Peril of the Neglected Invitation

At the table of the chief Pharisee, where Jesus was reclining when He spoke this parable, the guests were almost without exception His enemies in disguise. But there was one man among them who was favorably inclined to Jesus. He had been impressed, in spite of his prejudices, by the lofty teaching of the young prophet. So strong, indeed, had the impression been that to the great amazement of his fellow-guests he cried out, when Jesus had finished speaking, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." Now there can be no doubt that the speaker was blessing himself. It never occurred to him to question for a moment that he would share in the feasting of the kingdom. Christ therefore turns to him and addresses to him the parable of the Great Supper. It was meant to rouse that guest out of his self-complacency. It comes with the same message to you and me. There are few perils so great and so unnoticed as the peril of the neglected invitation.

A certain man, then, said our Lord, made a great supper. He sent his invitations for it freely. And when the table was served, and everything was ready, he despatched his servant with a courteous reminder, in accordance with an old custom of the East (Pro_9:3), which, as the travelers tell us, has not yet quite died out. But with one voice all the guests begged off. They were all busy—might they not be excused? And there was nothing for it but for the servant to go home again, and tell his master that they refused to come. Then the master was angry at his slighted welcome, for he saw clearly what the excuses implied. So he sent out his servant into the streets and lanes, and bade call in the poor and the blind and the lame, and we know that in the streets of Eastern cities a man does not walk far to light on these. It was done quickly; so quickly indeed that some would have it that the servant had anticipated his master's wish. But even yet, so spacious was the chamber, the places at the table were not all lull. "Away then, out through the city gates!" cries out the host. "Away to the country roads, and to the hedge-banks, and compel the waifs and the vagrants to come in." And I dare say the servant, looking through the hedges, saw the first guest, who had excused himself, strutting and fussing in his new piece of ground. But the house of the entertainer was filled at last. The door was shut, and the glad feast begun. I wonder if the man who sat at the table with Jesus, and to whom this wonderful parable was spoken—I wonder if he was as ready now with his self-satisfied ejaculation, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God."

The Kingdom of God Is Like a Great Supper

Note first that the kingdom of God is described as a supper. That is the figure Christ chooses for it here. Now it is, of course, quite true that supper is an evening meal—it is the last meal of the day. And some have thought there was a hint in that of the final nature of the Gospel-call; as if God, who had fed the world with many an earlier banquet, closed His provision for the world's day with Jesus. But it is better and safer to remember that this meal called supper was the principal meal. It was the chief hour for appeasing hunger; it was the chosen time of fellowship and rest. And all these features of the supper table, idealized long since in Psalm and prophecy, made it very expressive, for our Lord, of the rich and varied blessings of His kingdom. Had not He come to satisfy men's cravings, to bring them to a knowledge of His Father? Had He not said, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest"? Was He not often speaking of His joy? It was such things that were symbolised for Christ under this figure of the Gospel supper. Neither the mustard-seed nor yet the hidden treasure more truly and fully conveyed the message of God's grace, than did the great supper of our parable.

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The Great Supper - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Don't Let Pride, Anxiety or Family Keep You Away

Next note the excuses of the invited guests, and see first the points in which they differ. The first had bought a piece of ground—it was pride in what he possessed that kept him back. The second wanted to prove his yoke of oxen—it was the cares and the worries of his work that filled him. And the third had married a wife (and he was the only one who was uncivil: he had lost his manners since his marriage) —it was the ties and claims of home that hindered him. The guests all differed in their excuses, then, as men do still when they make light of the invitations of the Gospel. But at some points they all agreed, and we must note at least two of these. Firstly, not one of them was kept away by occupations sinful in themselves. Secondly, the root of the whole matter was indifference: had they cared enough, they could all have gone. There was nothing sinful in buying a piece of ground. There was no harm in proving a yoke of oxen. But things that are quite lawful in their own place prove hindrances and offences in the first; and it was into the first place that these things had crept, with the men who all began to make excuse. Are you so busy and glad with other things that you are really indifferent to God? Is your whole day a silent prayer to God to have you excused from accepting His calls? God grant it be not so. "Keep Christ in His own place—and His place is the first."

There Is Room for the Truly Hungry

I want you, lastly, to observe how the circle of the invitation widens. There are first of all the duly invited guests. They had a long invitation to the supper, and when all things were ready they got another bidding. Then they refused, and the invitation widens; it extends through the lanes and streets of the town. But still the servant is within the walls; he has received no mandate to go through the gates. There may be many a hungry gypsy by the hedge, but no glad word of welcome reaches him. Then comes the last great widening of the circle, consequent upon the servant's word, "yet there is room." And away beyond the towers of the city, in the lawless and dangerous and beautiful environs of it, there is given the strange calling to the feast. So is it with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came unto His own, and they received Him not; the guardians of the people's faith rejected Him; so He went to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to the lanes and the streets of the old city of God. But the clay was coming when an ascended Savior was to say to His disciples, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," and in that day it is our joy to live. Every preacher who tells of a crucified Lord, and every missionary who in the zeal of love uplifts the cross in the far and darkened countries, does so because the Master has said to him, "Compel them to come in."

June 25

Counting the Cost - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down. first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish— Luk_14:28-30

Life Is a Building

It is notable that in this little parable, and in the one which directly follows it (Luk_14:31), which deal with the great endeavors of the human soul, our Lord brings in the figure of the builder, and of a king making war upon another king. Christ always took human life at its best and kingliest, and even His illustrations have a royal touch. But the point to note is that Christ compared life to building. Life was like architecture or like war. Building and battling—these are the Master's figures; and I do not think the world has ever bettered them. There are rare souls that seem to grow, not build. And it may be some of us have known one saint—our mother perhaps—who bore no marks of conflict anywhere, and seemed to have reached the highest without a struggle. But for most of us it is the other way. Effort on effort, failure after failure, we have to forge and hammer ourselves towards what is honorable. And there are days when we seem to be building up a prison-house, until God in His mercy shatters that to fragments. Just note, then, that it is in a little parable of building that our Savior teaches us to count the cost.

Christ's Yoke Is Easy

Now, anyone who has read much in religious literature must have been struck by a kind of contradiction in it. He must have been arrested by two opposite conceptions of what religion really demands. I read some sermons, or I listen to some preaching, and religion seems exquisitely sweet and easy. I thought there was a cross in our religion, but when I read some of our current literature—if there be a cross it is so wreathed with honeysuckle that a poor soul can stumble past it easily. The valley of the shadow seems to have grown antiquated; we are to walk on the delectable mountains all the way. Mark you, we never can insist enough on the true joy of the religious life. We never can forget that to the heavy-laden, Christ said, and says forever, "My yoke is easy." But that is so interpreted sometimes, and the harder and sterner sayings are so evaded, that religion seems to walk in silver slippers.

Christ Promises a Cross

But when I turn to another class of teachers—and some of the greatest of every age are in it—what impresses me is not the ease of things, but the depth and difficulty of religion. The gate is narrow; the way is strait and mountainous; the cross is heavy, and the flesh cries out against it. Read Dr. Newman's sermons to see that view of the religious life expressed in matchless English. That, then, is the seeming contradiction. These are the two opposite conceptions. The one says, "If I come to Jesus, happy shall I be." The other says, "If I find Him, if I follow, what His guerdon here? Many a sorrow, many a labor, many a tear."

Well, in our text there can be little question that our Lord leans to the latter of these views. It is a great thing to be an earnest Christian, it is a high calling to be a knight of that round table; let a man, says Jesus, deliberately sit down and count the cost, lest the fair fame of it be smirched and sullied by him. Nothing impresses us more in Jesus Christ than His insistence on quality, not quantity. He never hesitated to set the standard high, even though men should be offended at Him. It is better to be served by twenty loyal hearts, than by half a hundred undisciplined adventurers. Think it all out, says Christ. Sit down, count up the cost, find what it comes to. Rash promising is certain to make shipwreck. I want you to be still, and know that I am God.

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Counting the Cost - Page 2
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Now I think it immensely increases our reverence for Jesus to find Him dealing thus with human souls. He never veils the hardship of His calling, He is so absolutely certain of its glory. When Drake and the gallant captains of Queen Elizabeth's time went out into the streets of Plymouth to get sailors, they told them quite frankly of the storms of the Pacific, and of the reefs in it, and of the fevers of Panama. They honored their brave Devonshire comrades far too much to get them to sign on under any false pretences. But then there was the Spanish gold and treasure, and the glory of it, and all England to ring with it. And the men counted the cost and signed for that daring service, in the spacious times of great Elizabeth. And I honor our Captain for dealing with men like that—that press-gang is an un-Christlike instrument. Christ says: You are a free man; count the cost. Life is before you: choose whom you will serve. I offer you a cross, also a crown. I offer you struggle, but there shall be victory. You shall be lonely, yet lo, I am with you always. You shall be restless, yet I will give you rest. Was there ever a leader so frank, so open, so brave, as the Master who is claiming you tonight?

Counting the Cost

And it is just here that the service of our Lord stands at opposite poles from the service of sin. For the one thing that sin can never do is to say to a man, "Sit down and count the cost of it." Do you think that tonight's drunkard ever counted the cost when men called him such splendid company twenty years ago? Do you think that the man who has tried for, and missed, life's prizes counted the cost when he was sowing his wild oats? Sin is too subtle, too sweet, too masterfully urgent, to give a man time for that arithmetic. "Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart." If that young student will only deliberately count the cost; if he will only remember he is in the grip of law that no repentance ever can annul; if he will think that as he sows, so will he reap, I think he will shake himself and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." It is true that you cannot put old heads upon young shoulders. But don't we begin counting when we are little children? And half the battle of a man's life is won when he sits down and counts the cost. Sin will keep a man from that, by hook or crook. But "come and let us reason together," saith the Lord.

Of course we must distinguish this wise deliberation from a merely calculating and cowardly prudence. It is often the man who has counted the cost most earnestly, who shows a kind of splendid imprudence to the world. I mean that what the world calls prudence is very often a somewhat shallow thing. It does not run its roots into the deeps; it is really a kindlier name for selfishness. And the man who has dwelt alone with the great things, and who has been touched by the hand of the Eternal, is not likely in that sense to be worldly wise. I dare say that everybody thought John Knox imprudent when he insisted on preaching in St. Andrews, though the Archbishop had warned him he would slay him. I dare say everybody thought Martin Luther imprudent, when he said he would go to the Diet though every tile on the housetops were a devil. But Knox and Luther had been alone with God; it was deliberate action, and not reckless folly. They had counted the cost for Scotland and for Christendom.

The fact is, that in all the highest courage there is the element of quiet calculation. The truest heroism always counts the cost. The bravery of passion is not a shining virtue. I think that a very ordinary man could storm a rampart, if he were a soldier. They tell us there is a wild forgetfulness of self in that last rush that would fire the blood and thrill the most timid. The test of courage is the long night march, under the fire of invisible guns; it is the sentry duty in the darkness, when the shadows and silence might shatter the strongest nerve: I think that the man who deliberately faces that, who goes through it quietly because it is his duty, is just as worthy of the Victoria Cross as the man who has won it in some more splendid moment. No man, said one of Oliver Cromwell, no man was a better judge than Oliver of what might be achieved by daring. Yet the true heroism of that noble soul was not the heroism of the rash adventurer. He never let texts do duty for tactics, says Mr. Morley. I always admired the answer of that man who was going forward with a comrade to some dangerous duty. And his comrade looked at him, and saw that his cheek was blanched. And he laughed and said, "I believe you are afraid." And the other, looking straight forward, said, "Yes, I am afraid, and if you were half as afraid as I am, you would go home." Do not forget, then, that when Jesus says, "Count the cost," He is really sounding the note of the heroic. He does not want anyone on false pretences. He will not issue any lying prospectus. He comes to you and says, you are a thinking man, with powers that it will take eternity to ripen. Look life in the face. Look death in the face. Sum it all up, measure the value of things. And if you do that quietly and earnestly, with sincere prayer to God to enlighten you, My claims, Christ means, shall so tower above all others, that I shall have your heart and your service from that hour.

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The Secret of Calm Persistence

I have been struck, too, in studying the Scriptures, to note how the great men there learned to count the cost. They were not suddenly dragged into the service. There was no unthinking and unreasoning excitement. God gave to everyone of them a time of silence before their high endeavor. It was as if He laid His hand upon them and said, "My child, go apart for a little, and count the cost." Moses was forty days alone with God. Elijah was in the wilderness alone. Paul, touched by the finger of the Lord whom he had persecuted, took counsel of no flesh, but departed into the loneliness of Arabia. Moses, Elijah, Paul—yes, even Simon Peter going out into the night—were learning the deep lesson of our parable. And whenever I read of the temptations of Jesus, and of how the Spirit of God drove Him apart, and how Satan came and showed Him all the kingdoms, and taught Him a less costly way to sovereignty than by the sweat of Gethsemane and the water and blood of Calvary—whenever I read that and recall how He stood fast, I feel that our Savior had counted the cost Himself. We shall never understand the calm persistence of the glorious company of martyrs and of saints till we go back to that quiet hour at the beginning when they faced every difficulty, weighed every cross, forecast the future, looked at life whole, and then, having counted the cost like reasonable men, took up their stand upon the side of God. A blind acceptance may be justifiable sometimes. But the great hearts were never led that way.

Now I want you to join that reasonable company. I do not know that that is popular doctrine, but I want to get the young men back to the Church of Christ again, and I am willing to risk unpopularity for that. "Come, let us reason together," saith the Lord. "Sit down and count the cost," says Jesus Christ. I do not ask any man to become a Christian blindly. It is the most reasonable act in the whole world. For the sake of a saved life and of a rich eternity you ought to make that reckoning immediately.

June 26

The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?... Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?— Luk_15:4-8

"There Is Something Astonishing in the Christian Religion"

In the Catacombs at Rome there is no more familiar painting than that of the Good Shepherd with the straying sheep. Sometimes the other sheep are at His feet, gazing up at Him and at His burden; sometimes He is portrayed as sitting down, wearied with His long and painful journey; but always there is a great gladness in the picture, for the painter had felt, in all its morning freshness, the wonder of the seeking love of God. I trust we shall never lose that sense of wonder. "Let men say what they will," wrote Pascal, "I must avow there is something astonishing in the Christian religion." And there is nothing in it more astonishing than this, that God should have come to seek and save the lost. It is that glad news which lights up all our lesson. It is that truth which, like some strain of unexpected music, makes these two parables a joy forever. We shall never know, till all the books are opened, how much sinful and despairing men have owed to the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

He Seeks Them One by One

Now as we read these two parables together, one of the first things to arrest us powerfully is the worth of single souls. It was one sheep the shepherd went to find. It was for one coin the woman searched the house. If a score, say, of the flock had gone missing, we could better understand the shepherd's action. And we might excuse the bustle and the dust if five of the ten coins had rolled away. The strange thing is that with ninety and nine sheep safe, the shepherd should break his heart about the one. The wonder is that for one little coin there should be such a hunt and such a happiness. It speaks to us of the worth of single souls. It tells us of the great concern of God for the recovery of individual men. We are all separated out, and separately loved, by Him who counteth the number of the stars. I have looked sometimes at the lights of a great city, and tried to distinguish one lamp here and there; and I have thought what a perfect knowledge that would be, if a man could discriminate each separate light. But God distinguishes each separate heart. He knows and loves and seeks them one by one. And I can never feel lost in the totality, when I have mastered the chapter for today. I am not one of many with the Master. With Him, souls are not reckoned by the score. I stand alone. He has a hundred sheep to tend, I know it; yet somehow all His heart is given to me.

No Cost Is Too Great

Again this truth shines brightly in these parables: no toil or pains are grudged to win the lost. When the shepherd started after his straying sheep, he knew quite well it was a dangerous errand. He was going to face the perils of the desert, and he took his life in his hand in doing that. True, he was armed; but if a band of robbers intercepted him, what chance had one man of coming off the victor? And who could tell what ravenous beasts lay couched between the shepherd and his vagrant charge? A hireling would never have ventured on the quest. He would have said, "There is a lion in the way." But this shepherd was not to be deterred; he risked all danger; nothing would keep him back, if only he might find and save the lost. The woman, too, was thoroughly in earnest. She spared no pains to get her piece of silver. She lit her candle and she swept the house, till the whole household grumbled at the dust, and charged her not to fuss about a trifle. But the trifle was no trifle to her; and she persisted and swept until she found it. Do you not see what that is meant to teach us? God spares no pain or toils to win the lost. Do you not see where all that is interpreted? It is in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. He, like the woman, was passionately earnest, till all His household—His own: the Jewish people—murmured at Him in their hearts and hated Him. And He, like the shepherd, ventured on every danger, and for His sheep's sake, took the road to Calvary. No pains, no sorrows, were ever grudged by Him who came into the wilderness to save; and He has left us an example, that we should follow in His steps.

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The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Where Are the Lost?

I want you, too, to mark this in our lesson: there is loss in the house as well as in the desert. It was in the wilderness that the sheep was lost. It was far from the fold with its protecting wail. But the coin was not lost in any wilderness—it had not even rolled into the street. It was still in the house; it was within the walls; it was lying somewhere on the dusty floor. So there are multitudes of men lost in heathendom; lost to the joy of the Gospel and the hopes of God in the far countries where Christ was never known. But are there not multitudes who, like the piece of silver, stamped with God's image, coined for useful service, are lying lost and useless in the house? They have been born and nurtured in a Christian country, they are encircled by Christian care and love, they are within the walls of the church visible, they have heard from childhood the message of the Gospel; yet they have never yielded their lives to the Redeemer; within the walls of the homestead they are lost. Are there no lost coins in your home? Give God no rest till by the light of His Spirit they are found.

For What Are They Found?

Note, lastly, in a Word, this joyful truth: the sheep, when found, was carried by the shepherd. He did not drive it before the flock. He did not commit it to the charge of any underling. He laid it rejoicingly on his own shoulders, and on his own shoulders bore it home. When the coin was found it was restored to service; it became useful for the woman's need. But when the sheep was found it was upheld in the strong arm of the shepherd, till the perils of the desert were no more. So everyone who is saved by Jesus Christ is saved to be of service to his Lord. There is some little work for him to do, just as there was for this little piece of silver. But he is not only found that he may serve. He shall be kept and carried like the sheep. He shall find himself borne homeward by a love that is far too strong ever to let him go. It is only when we are leaning upon Christ that we are able to win heavenward at all. He alone keeps us from falling, and can present us faultless before the presence of God's glory, with exceeding joy.

June 27

The Two Petitions of the Prodigal

A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that calleth to me. And he divided unto them his living— Luk_15:11-12

Father, Give Me

I wonder if my readers ever noticed that the prodigal made two petitions to his father. The first was: "Father, give me." "Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me." The son was growing weary of the home. He felt acutely that he was missing things. The world was big, and the days were going by, and he was young, and he was missing things. It is always bitter, when the heart is young, and the world is rich in visions and in voices, to dwell remote, and feel that one is missing things. The fatal mistake the prodigal made was this—he thought that all that he wanted was far off. He thought that the appeasing of his restlessness lay somewhere over the hills and far away. He was destined to learn better by and by; meantime he must have every penny for his journey, and he came to his father and said, "Father, give me." Mark you, there is no asking of advice. There is no consulting of the father's wishes. There is no effort to learn the father's will in regard to the disposition of the patrimony. It is the selfish cry of thoughtless youth, claiming its own to use just as it will: "Father, give me what is mine."

Father, Make Me

So he got his portion and departed, and we all know the tragic consequences, not less tragic because the lamps are bright, and the wine sparkling, and the faces beautiful. The prodigal tried to feed his soul on sense; and the Lord, in that grim way of His, changes the cups, the music, and the laughter into the beastly routing of the swine. Then the prodigal came to himself. Memories of home began to waken. He lay in his shed thinking of his father. Prayers unbidden rose within his heart. And now his petition was not "Father, give me." He had got all he asked, and he was miserable. His one impassioned cry was, "Father, make me." "Father, make me anything you please. Make me a hired servant if you want to. I have no will but yours now. I am an ignorant child and you are wise." Taught by life, disciplined by sorrow, scourged by the biting lash of his own folly, insistence passed into submission. Once he knew no will but his own will. He must have it, or he would hate his father. Once the only proof of love at home was the getting of the thing that he demanded. But now, "Father, I leave it all to thee. Thou art wise; I have been very foolish. Make me—anything thou pleasest."

Insisting on Nothing, He Got Everything

And surely it is very noteworthy that it was then he got the best. He never knew the riches in the home till he learned to leave things to his father. When he offered his first petition, "Father, give me," the story tells us that he got the money. He got it, and he spent it; in a year he was in rags and beggary. But when the second petition, "Father, make me," welled up like a tide out of the deeps, he got more than he had ever dreamed. "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him." He got the garment of the honored guest. "Bring shoes and put them on his feet, and a ring and put it on his finger." All that was best and choicest in the house, the laid-up riches of his father's treasuries were lavished now on the dusty, ragged child. Insisting on nothing, he got everything. Demanding nothing, he got the choicest gifts. Willing to be whatever his father wanted, there was nothing in the house too good for him. The ring, the robe, the music and the dancing, the vision of what a father's love could be, came when the passionate crying of his heart was, "Father, make me"—anything thou pleasest.

I think that is the way the soul advances when it is following on to know the Lord. Deepening prayers tell of deepening life. Not for one moment do I suggest that asking is not a part of prayer. "Ask, and it shall be given you." "Give us this day our daily bread." I only mean that as experience deepens we grow less eager about our own will, and far more eager to have no will but His.

Disciplined by failure and success, we come to feel how ignorant we are. We have cried "Give," and He has given, but sent leanness to our soul (Psa_106:15). And all the time we were being trained and taught, for God teaches by husks as well as prophets, to offer the deep petition, "Father, make me." He gives, and we bless the Giver. He withholds, and we do not doubt His love. We leave all that to Him who knows us, and who sees the end from the beginning. Like the prodigal, we learn a wiser prayer than the fierce insistence of our youth. It is, "Father, make me"—whatso'er Thou pleasest.

Christ's Prayer

Might I not suggest that this was peculiarly the prayer of the Savior? The deepest passion of the Savior's heart rings out in the petition, "Father, make Me." Not "Father give Me bread, for I am hungry; give Me angels, for I stand in peril." Had He prayed for angels in that hour of peril, He tells us they would have instantly appeared. But, "Father, though there be scorn and shame in it, and agony, and the bitterness of Calvary, Thy will be done; make Me what Thou wilt." How gloriously that prayer was answered, even though the answer was a cross! God made Him (as Dr. Moffatt puts it) our wisdom, that is our righteousness and consecration and redemption. Leave, then, the giving in His hands. He will give that which is good. With the prodigal, and the Savior of the prodigal, let the soul's cry be, "Father, make me."

June 28

Coming to Oneself - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When he came to himself— Luk_15:17

You Are Not Yourself While Unrepentant

In a few graphic touches Jesus delineates the kind of life the prodigal had been leading. With characteristic delicacy He does not give details. He leaves it for the elder brother to do that. We have the picture of a young man wasting his time and money—and what is worse than that, wasting his life—and like most young men who think to live that way, finding plenty of both sexes to join him. He is self-willed, self-indulgent, riotous—and we are just on the point of calling him contemptible. We are just on the point of thinking how to one like Jesus the prodigal must be infinitely loathsome. When suddenly a single phrase arrests us, and opens a lattice into the mind of Christ, and makes us suspend judgment on the prodigal. "When he came to himself"—when he became himself—then in his years of riot he was not himself. It was not the prodigal who was the real man. The real man was the penitent, not the prodigal. He was never himself until his heart was breaking, and the memories of home came welling over him—till he cried, "I will arise and go to my father, and say unto him, Father, I have sinned."

Sin Is Madness

I may note in passing how we have caught that tone in the kindly allowances we often make. This parable has not only influenced thought; like all the parables it has also affected language. When someone whom we love is cross or irritable, we say of him, "He's not himself today." When one whom we have known for years does something unworthy, we say, "Ah, that's not himself at all." And what is that but our instinctive certainty that man is more than his vices or his failures, and that if you want to know him as he is, you must take him at the level of his best. It was always thus that Jesus judged humanity. He was a magnificent and a consistent optimist. He never made light of sin, never condoned it. To Him it was always terrible and tragic. But then the sinner was not the real man; sin was a bondage, a tyranny, a madness; and it was when the tyranny of sin was broken that a man came to his true self.

He Left Home to Find Himself

I would remark, too, about this prodigal, that his one object in leaving home was just to find himself. When he went away into the far country, he imagined he was coming to his own. Life was intolerable on that lonely farm. There was no scope there for a young fellow's energy. And why should he be eating out his heart when the thousand voices of the world were calling him? And youth was short, and he must have his day; and he wanted to go and sound life to the deeps. So in the golden morning of desire he went away to the far country. It was impossible to realize himself at home. He would realize himself now, and with a vengeance. He would live to the finest fibre of his being, and come to his own in the whole range of manhood. And then, with the exquisite irony of truth, Christ shows him beggared and broken and despairing, and tells us that only then, when he was dead, did he come to his true self. It is not along the path of self-willed license that a man ever reaches his best and deepest self. To be determined at all costs to enjoy is the most tragical of all mistakes. We come to ourselves when we deny ourselves; when life has room for sacrifice and service; when the eyes are lifted to the love of heaven, and the heart is set upon the will of God.

Jesus Rebukes Peter for Not Being Himself When He Tried to Dissuade Jesus from the Cross

That our text was no chance expression of the Master's we may gather from many Gospel passages. Think for example of that memorable hour when Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem. Our Lord had begun to speak plainly of His death, drawing the veil from the agony of Calvary; and it was all so shocking and terrible to Peter, that Peter had taken Christ to task for it. "Far be it from Thee, Lord; this never shall befall Thee. While I have a sword to draw they shall not touch Thee." And then the Lord flashed round on His disciple, and said to him, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Only an hour before he had been Peter—"Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build." That was the true Peter, moved of God, kindled into the rapture of confession. But this was not Peter, though it was Peter's voice. It was something lesser and lower than the rock. Possessed by a spirit unworthy of his highest—"Get thee behind Me, Satan." In other words, Peter was not himself then, anymore than the rioting prodigal was himself. There were heights in him that no one saw but Christ. There were depths in him that none but Christ had fathomed. And the glory of Christ is that in these heights and depths, and not in the meaner things that were so visible, He found the real nature of the man on whose confession the church was to be founded. It is easy to measure Peter by his fall. It is easy to measure any man by failure. Vices are more visible than virtues, and form a ready-reckoner of character. But not by their worst does Jesus measure men; not by their lowest and their basest elements. Through fall and sin and denial, "Thou art Peter"—until at last he was Peter in very deed.

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Coming to Oneself - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

We Are Responsible for Our Actions Even When We Are Not Ourselves

Of course in such a hopeful, splendid outlook there is no lessening of responsibility. A man is not less guilty for his failures, because they do not represent his real manhood. I have seen children playing with one another, and one would slap the other and say, "I never touched you." And when the other said, "You did, I saw you," the reply was, "It wasn't me, it was my hand." There is not a little in the maturer world of that ungrammatical and infant hypocrisy. It is so easy to make excuses for ourselves, and to say, "We were ill—we were worried—it was not really me." But perhaps in all the circle of bad habits, there is no habit more fatally pernicious than the habit of making excuses for ourselves. We should always have excuses for our neighbors. We should never have excuses for ourselves. To palliate and condone our own defections is the sure way to rot the moral fibre. A man should make allowances for everybody, for we know not what is the secret story; but heaven help the man, and help his character, when he begins to make allowance for himself. You will note that the prodigal made no excuses. He never said, "Young men must be young men." He never said, "My passions are my heritage, and you must make some allowance for warm blood." What he did say was, "Father, I have sinned—I have been a selfish and good-for-nothing reprobate"; and it was then, when his worst was in his own eyes, that his best was in the eyes of Christ. In spite of His wonderful sympathy and pity, there is a note of intense severity in Christ—"If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off. If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out"—and in every life that is inspired by Christ there must be the echo of that same severity, urging itself not against any brother, but against the wickedness on its own bosom. I never find Jesus making any allowance for the man who makes allowance for himself. Just in proportion as you are stern with self, will the Redeemer be merciful with you. Not through the meadows of easy self-excuse, but down by the very margin of despair, does a man come, as came the prodigal, to the reach and the reality of manhood.

Christ Wants to Make Us Ourselves

I would further remark that when He was on earth that was one great aim of Jesus' toil. It was not to make men and women angels. It was to make men and women their true selves. They could do nothing without faith in Him, and therefore He was at all pains to quicken that; but away at the back of their dawning faith in Him, was His magnificent and matchless faith in them. "Ye are the light of the world; ye are the salt of the earth"—did you ever hear such wild exaggeration? All this for a little company of rustics, provincial, unlettered, undistinguished? Ah yes, but under the warmth of such a faith in them these natures were so to grow and so to ripen, that every syllable of that audacity was to prove itself literally true. The boys at Rugby used to say of Dr. Arnold, "It would be mean to tell him a lie, he trusts us so." All that was best in them began to germinate under the influence of Dr. Arnold's faith. And if it was so under the trust of Arnold, what must have been the influence of Christ, when a man felt that he was trusted by those eyes that saw into the depths. Christ aimed at more than making people better; His aim and object was to make them themselves. He saw from the first hour all that was hidden in Simon and Matthew, Lazarus and Mary. And then He lived with them, and showed what He expected, and hoped undauntedly and never wearied, until at last, just like the prodigal, they came to their true selves. It took far more than their faith in Christ to do that. It took the superb faith of Christ in them. The sheep was still a sheep though in the desert. The son was still a son although a prodigal. And it was this—this faith of Christ in men—that drew them to their highest and their best, as a flower is drawn into its perfect beauty by the gentle influence of the summer sun.

When We Are Ourselves, We Are Free

And that is the reason why the follower of Christ is the possessor of the largest freedom. The nearer a man is to being himself, the nearer is he to sweet liberty. We go into certain companies, for instance, and we speedily feel that we are not at home there. What is the word we use to express that? We say we are constrained—that is, imprisoned. But by our own fireside, and among those who love us, we are not constrained, we have a perfect liberty; and at the basis of that social liberty there lies the fact that there we are ourselves. It is the same in the deeper world of morals. When we are ourselves, then are we free. It is not freedom to do just as we please in defiance of all the laws that girdle us. Freedom is power to realize ourselves; to move unfalteringly towards the vision; and the paradox of Christianity is this, that that comes through obedience to Christ. Think of the schoolgirl practicing her music. Is not that the weariest of bondage? Is this the happy face we saw so lately, flushed with the eager merriment of play? But set down the musical genius at the instrument, and get him to interpret some great master, and the thoughts which he utters are the master's thoughts, and yet he is magnificently free. The child is in bondage, the genius is at liberty. The child is unnatural; the genius is himself. The child is slaving under an outward law. The genius has the spirit of the master. And "if any man have not the spirit of Christ," then, says the Scripture, "he is none of His." "When he came to himself." My brother and my sister, the pathway to that is coming to the Savior. Jesus believes in you, and in your future, and in a best that is higher than your dreams. Respond to that splendid confidence tonight. This very hour say, "I will arise." The past is disgraceful; but the past is clone with. Thank God, there will be a different tomorrow

June 29

Homesickness of the Soul - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And when he came to himself, he said, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!'— Luk_15:17

A Little Light on a Dark Subject

A very fresh and delightful American writer, John Burroughs—a man who often reminds us of our own Richard Jefferies—has given us in one of his books a most illuminative and suggestive paper on Carlyle. Mr. Burroughs visited Carlyle in London—his essay is called "A Sunday in Cheyne Row"—and with great tenderness, and wisdom, and literary skill he has recorded his impressions of the visit. Now I am not going to speak of Mr. Burroughs, nor am I going to preach about Carlyle; but there was one phrase in that essay that seemed to me very memorable: "homesickness of the soul." "A kind of homesickness of the soul was on Carlyle,'' says Mr. Burroughs, "and it deepened with age."

That, then, is the topic on which I wish to speak. My subject is the homesickness of the soul. I want to take the thought that the soul is homesick, and use it to shed a little light on dark places. Perhaps we shall proceed more comfortably together if I divide what I have to say under two heads. (1) Under this light we may view the unrest of sin. (2) Under this light we may view the craving for God.

Under This Light We May View the Unrest of Sin

It is notable that it was in this light that Jesus viewed it, in the crowning parable from which we have taken our text. The prodigal was an exile; he was in a far country. It was the memory of his home that filled his heart. There are conceptions of the awakened sinner that make him the prey of an angry and threatening conscience. And I know that sometimes, when a man comes to himself, he can see nothing and hear nothing in the universe but the terrors and judgments of a sovereign God. But it was not terror that smote the prodigal deep. It was home, home, home, for which his poor soul was crying. He saw the farm, bosomed among the hills, and the weary oxen coming home at eventide, and the happy circle gathered round the fire, and his father crying to heaven for the wanderer. His sorrow's crown of sorrows was remembering happier things. He came to himself, and he was homesick.

Now I think that Jesus would have us learn from that that wickedness is not the homeland of the soul, and that all the unrest and the dissatisfaction of the wicked is just the craving of his heart for home. We were not fashioned to be at home in sin. We bear the image of God, and God is goodness. The native air of this mysterious heart is the love and purity and joy of heaven. So when a man deliberately sins, and all the time hungers for better things, it is not the hunger for an impossible ideal; it is the hunger of his soul for home. Ah! do not forget that you can satisfy that hunger instantly. Now, out of the furthest country, in a single instant of time, you may come home. We are not like the emigrant in the far west of Canada longing for Highland hills he will not see for years. God waits. Christ says, "Return this very hour." "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

In that very fascinating little volume by Charlotte Yonge, in which she narrates the history of the Moors in Spain, there are few pages more enthralling than those in which she tells the story of Abderraman. Abderraman was the first Moorish Khalif in Spain. He was an Eastern, bred by the Euphrates. There was no great beauty in the scenes where he spent his childhood. And his Spanish home, in the old city of Cordova, seems to have been a fairy palace of delight. Yet among all the groves and towers and fountains of fair Cordova, Abderraman was miserable—it was banishment. And when he got a palm tree from his Syrian home, and planted it in his Spanish garden, one of the old ballads of the Arabs tells us that he could never look at it without tears. Do you not think that the children of Cordova would mock at that? It was their home, and they were very happy. They could not understand this Oriental, unhappy and restless among the garden groves. And my point is that you will never understand the soul's unrest, amid the exquisite delights of sense and sin, unless it is hungering for another country, as Abderraman hungered for his Syrian dwelling. It is not facts, it is mysteries, that keep me from materialism. I believe in the cravings of the human heart, and they overturn a score of demonstrations. If I were a creature of a few nerves and fibbers only, I should be very happy in my Cordova. But we were made in goodness, and we were made for goodness; and the native air of the soul is love and truth; and we shall always be dissatisfied, always be homesick, if we are trying to live in any other land.

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Homesickness of the Soul - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

This thought, too, helps us to understand why men cover evil with a veil of goodness. It is just the longing of the exile or of the emigrant to give a homelike touch to his surroundings. Why do you find an Inverness in Canada? Because men and women from Inverness went there. And why do you find a Glasgow in Canada? Because it reminded these Glasgow men of home. Do you know what James Chalmers of New Guinea—the greatest soul on the Pacific, as Stevenson called him—do you remember what he called the first bay he discovered in New Guinea? He called it lnveraray Bay. I do not think he would ever have dreamed of that name had he not been born and spent his boyhood by Loch Fyne. And when I see men taking the names of goodness and labeling their vices and their sins with them, when I note how ready we all are to use a kindly term for some habit or frailty that is most unkindly, I think that it is the soul telling where it was born, confessing unconsciously that it is a little homesick, and trying to give a homelike touch to the far country, just like James Chalmers with his Inveraray Bay.

And we can understand the loneliness of sin when we remember this homesickness of the soul. The man who is homesick is always lonely. It does not matter how crowded the streets are; the city may be gay and bright and brilliant, but all the stir of it, and all the laughter of it, and all the throng and tumult of the life of it will not keep a homesick man from being lonely. Nay, sometimes it intensifies his loneliness. It is made more acute by the contrast of the crowd. It is not in the quiet spaces of great nature, it is among the crowds whom you will meet today, that the bitterness of loneliness is found. Now sin is a great power that makes for loneliness. Slowly but surely, if a man lives in sin, he drifts apart into spiritual isolation. And the strange thing is that the sins we call social sins, the sins that begin in fellowship and company, are the very sins that drive a man apart, and leave him at last utterly alone. That loneliness is homesickness of the soul. It is the heart craving for home again. God grant that if in this house there be one man who is drifting away on a great sea of wretched self-indulgence, from wife and child or mother and sister and friend—God grant that, drawn by the love of Christ, he may come home!

Under This Light We May View the Craving for God

We often speak of heaven as our home, and in many deep senses that is a true expression. If in heaven we shall meet again those whom we loved and lost, and if boys and girls will be playing in the streets of Zion, I have no doubt that heaven will be a homelike place. But in deeper senses heaven is not our home, or if it is, it is just because God is there. In the deepest sense our home is not heaven, but God. Do you remember how Wordsworth put it in his glorious "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Childhood"? I think a lesser poet would have written it thus, "Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home."

Our God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And—our eternal home.

God is the true home of the human soul.

Do you see, then, the meaning of that craving for God that is one of the strangest facts in human history? You would have thought that in a world like this, so full of interest, color, music, and delight, mankind would have lived in contentment without God. But the Book of Psalms is filled with that passionate craving—"As the hart pants after the water-brooks." And if the Book of Psalms has lived through chance and change, and been cherished when ten thousand volumes are forgotten, it is largely because it gives a voice in noblest poetry to this unappeased hunger of mankind. We do not crave for God because He is glorious. We do not crave for God because He is sovereign. We are just homesick, that is the meaning of it. We crave for God because He is our home.

Now this homesickness of the soul for God is one of our surest proofs of God. It is an argument more powerful than any that philosophy affords to convince me that there is a God. We are all grateful when a prince of science like Lord Kelvin tells us he is forced to believe in a directive power. But in a day or two you will have someone writing to the Times denying the validity of that induction. But no one denies that souls still pant for God. And hearts today and here still thirst for Him, as truly as the exiled psalmist did. And unless life be a sham, and unless we were born and fashioned to be mocked, there cannot be homesickness without a home. I crave for food, and mother earth holds out her hands to me and says, "Yes, child, there is food." I crave for happiness; and the shining of the sun, and the song of birds, and the sound of music, and the laughter of children come to my heart and say to me, "There it is." I crave for God. And will the universe reverse its order now? Will it provide for every other instinct, and call the noblest of them all a mockery? It is impossible. Without a home, homesickness is inexplicable. My craving for God assures me that God is. All other arguments may fail me. When my mind is wearied, and my memory tired, I forget them. But this one, knit with my heart, and part and parcel of my truest manhood, survives all moods, is strong when I am weak, and brings me to the door of God my home.

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Homesickness of the Soul - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

One of the saddest letters in all literature is a letter written by the poet, David Gray. David Gray was born eight miles from Glasgow; he went to the Free Church Normal in this city. His honest father would have made a preacher of him, but God forestalled that by making him a poet. Well, nothing would satisfy David but he must go to London. He suffered much there and fell into consumption. And this is one of his last letters home:—"Torquay, Jan. 6, 1861. Dear Parents,—I am coming home—homesick. I cannot stay from home any longer. What's the good of me being so far from home and sick and ill? O God! I wish I were home never to leave it more! Tell everybody that I am coming back—no better: worse, worse. What's about climate, about frost or snow or cold weather, when one's at home? I wish I had never left it .... I have no money, and I want to get home, home, home. What shall I do, O God! Father, I shall steal to you again, because I did not use you rightly .... Will you forgive me? Do I ask that? I have come through things that would make your hearts ache for me—things that I shall never tell to anybody but you, and you shall keep them secret as the grave. Get my own little room ready quick, quick; have it all tidy, and clean, and cozy, against my homecoming. I wish to die there, and nobody shall nurse me except my own dear mother, ever, ever again. O home, home, home!"

I will arise and go unto my Father. Thank God we need no money for that journey. Is there not one reader who has been far away, who is going to come home—to God—this very hour?

June 30

The Prodigal Son

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him— Luk_15:20

The Tenderness of Jesus' Words

A friend of mine was on one occasion visiting one of our seaport hospitals. It chanced that at the time of her visit two Russian sailors were lying ill there; both of them rough, wild men who had led a wandering and riotous life. With a silent prayer to God that He would guide her to some suitable passage of Scripture, she read to them the parable of the prodigal son. And great was her wonder when she looked up from her book, and saw tears streaming down the sailors' cheeks. They had never heard the parable before. It broke on them freshly with its matchless music. It touched some of those secret chords that had lain silent through many a sinful year. And my friend used to say that she never realized the reach and the tenderness of Jesus' words, till she read them, without note or comment in that ward. Is there no danger in a too familiar Bible? Have we not read and read again such passages as these, till we have almost ceased to feel the wonder of them? It is a heavenly mind, said Thomas Boston, that is the best interpreter of Scripture.

Self-Will Leads to Misery

Now first let us note how self-will leads to misery. Like many another child of other countries, this younger son chafed at the bonds of home. He wanted to live; he wanted to see the world; it was intolerable for a young fellow like him to be pent up in that lonely farm. His heart was away, long before he left. He had really wandered before he ever set out. So he came to his father and he got his portion; and without a thought of the sore hearts at home, he started lightly for the far country. I daresay the sun had never shone so brightly, and the world was never so magical, so intoxicating, as on that morning when he left the farm. Now he had burst the shackles, now he was going to be free—and before long, instead of being free, he found that he had made himself a slave. It was a sweet slavery for a little while; but the sweetness passed and the degradation came. Then (for troubles never come singly) there broke out a great famine in the land, until at last there was nothing left for him but to take service with some citizen and feed his swine—and you know what degradation that was for a Jew. It was to this that his self-will had brought him. He longed to be free, and he was free to starve. It was a strangely different world, out with the swine, from the world that had danced before him when he started—and he had no one to blame for it except himself. He had been self-willed, and now he was self-made. There was a way that had seemed right in the man's eyes, and he was finding that its end was death.

It Was the Prodigal's Want That Turned His Heart Homeward

Again mark that it was the prodigal's want that turned his heart homeward. In his days of pleasure he had forgotten his home. Life sped so merrily when money was plentiful, that he hardly ever gave a thought to his father. And had his portion only lasted long enough, he might have been forgetful till he died. But the day came when he began to be in want, and on the back of his hunger memory revived. He had never known the value of his home till he was homeless in a stranger's field. But he knew it then; he saw it clearly then. His need set everything in its true light. And then urged by his destitution, and spurred by these happy visions of love and plenty, he was thrilled by the strong purpose to return. Had he sat still and only dreamed of home, he would have been the victim of remorse. When he rose up and started out for home he was the subject of genuine repentance. For repentance, says the catechism, is a saving grace, whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.

The Father's Love: Strong and Deep

Then note how strong and deep the father 's love was. The prodigal had well-nigh forgotten his father, but the father had never forgotten his younger son. He never waked in the morning but it flashed on him that perhaps the wanderer would come home today. His heart had given a strange leap many a time when he spied a distant figure on the hill. But always it was another disappointment and a stronger entreaty arose in the evening prayer. But today there was no disappointment. However ragged and haggard and way worn, he would have recognized that figure in a thousand. They say that love is blind, but the love of the prodigal's father was not so. His love, then, was unchanging, ever watchful; but it was more, it was generous, royal, forgiving. There is the kiss of peace; there is the noble welcome; there is never a whisper of "I told you so." I think that if the elder brother had met the prodigal, he would have sneaked him round and in by the back door. But the love of the father wishes no concealment; the whole house must be sharers in the joy. Is not that worthy of the name of love ? Do you not say such love is wonderful? Yet that is the picture of the love of God when He pardons and welcomes and blesses you and me.

The Unbrotherliness of the Elder Brother

Note lastly how unbrotherly the elder brother was. He was almost unworthy to have such a father. He took the feasting as a personal insult: he cannot call him brother—"this thy son." You might have thought he would have been glad to get him home. Instead of that he was angry at the welcome. And he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? The younger brother had been selfish once; but the elder brother was selfish all along. The younger brother had a broken heart; the elder brother knew not his need of one. The younger brother, through bitterness and famine, had realized the priceless worth of love; but the elder brother, with everything he wanted, was loveless still. God keep us from the narrow and nasty spirit! May we all grow brotherly, and never elder-brotherly. And we shall never do that if in every evening prayer, amid all the joy and thanksgiving of grateful hearts, we whisper seriously, "Father, I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son."

July 1

The Elder Brother

Now his elder son was in the field— Luk_15:25

Seeing beneath the Regularities

There is not a little that is excellent in the character of the elder brother, and our Lord, with His eye for what is fine, is careful to bring that into the picture. For instance, the man was diligent—he was getting back from the field when all this happened. The prodigal was returning from debauchery: he was returning from his work. He had been busy on the farm since early morning, keeping a watchful eye on everything, and now at twilight he was getting home. Not only was he diligent; he had also been a pattern of obedience. He could assert, with a perfectly clear conscience, that he had never transgressed against his father. In all such excellent attributes of character he was immeasurably superior to the prodigal, and that the Master freely recognizes. The strange thing about Christ is how He gets below these outward regularities. He pierces through the ordering of habit into the secret spirit of the heart. And how He does that here, till we see the real man, and feel that we should know him if we met him, is one of the most arresting things in Scripture.

Unappreciative of His Privileges

To begin with, we see him as a man who was utterly unappreciative of his privileges. He was the kind of person who always bears a grudge. Every day he had his father's company, and the blessed society of home. His father's love was round about him constantly, and everything the father had was his. Yet in the midst of all that wealth of privilege the man had walked with an ungrateful heart—thou never gavest me a kid. When anyone breaks out like that, it is not so extemporaneous as it seems. It is the boiling over, in some heated moment, of what has long been simmering in the heart. That is the worst of many a bitter word, with its sometimes irreparable consequences, that reveals, as in a flash of lightning, what has been festering in the hidden soul. Thou never gavest me a kid—the thought had been there through many a long day. One trifling little thing had been withheld, and it had turned the music into discord. With lavish hand the father had given everything—all that I have is thine—and the man had been brooding on one thing never given. Are there not many people just like that? God has been wonderfully good to them; but because some one thing has been withheld they bear a grudge, and have the bitter heart. And yet they may be industrious and diligent, and obedient to the daily calls of life, just like the elder brother in the parable.

Hardened toward His Brother

Again our Lord reveals him as a man who was utterly hardened toward his brother. He was diligent and obedient—but hard. There is one exquisite touch which makes that plain—the word brother is never on his lips. He does not say, "My brother has returned"; he says, "This thy son is come again"—and sometimes a word (or the absence of a word) lights up the hidden chambers of the heart. The prodigal was his father's son; nothing on earth could alter that relationship. "Thy son"—the word was uttered with a sneer, and a sneer may be deadlier than a sword. But brother—the word had died out of his speech, because the love it carries had died out of his heart—the prodigal no longer was his brother. He had ceased to be his brother long ago. He had ceased when he became a prodigal. The elder had no kinship with the junior. His heart had no room for ne'er-do-wells. Yet with that unbrotherly and hardened heart (as the Lord is so careful to remind us) the man was a pattern of industry and diligence. How searching is the eye of Christ! How unerringly He sees the deeps! I suppose the Pharisees thought that they were models, till the Lord revealed what was hidden in the darkness. And sometimes, in the strict performance of our duties, He gives us also a little glimpse of that, and we cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner."

Out of Sympathy with His Father

Again we see this man, for all his excellencies, utterly out of sympathy with his father. His attitude to the younger brother involves that. Of whom had the father been thinking every day? He had been thinking of the prodigal. He had been praying for him—he had been longing for him—he had been watching for him through the weary months. And always beside him was his elder son, with his heart utterly hardened to the prodigal—father and son a million miles apart. The real prodigal was the elder brother. He was farther away than was the ne'er-do-well. Between him and the father's loving heart there stretched a quite immeasurable distance. Yet he was at home, and under the same roof, and in his father's presence every day, while the prodigal was in an alien land. How often we light on that in human life! Two may be near each other, and yet far away. Two may wake and sleep in the same dwelling, yet be more distant than if oceans parted them. And that is what Jesus felt about those Pharisees, to whom this parable was spoken—they were so near and yet they were so far. Sitting in the very seat of Moses, they were strangers to the loving heart of God. Thronging the Father's House, they shared not the Father's yearning for the prodigal. Yet were they diligent, scrupulous, exact—earnest toilers in the field of Scripture—just like the elder brother of the parable.

The Father Loved the Unlovable Elder Son

In closing, we should never forget that the father loved that elder son. He was not lovable, but the father loved him. Did he run (exquisite touch!) to meet the prodigal? He acted similarly with the elder brother. He left the song and dance to go and find him. He could not leave him, embittered, in the darkness. And when he found him—he, the Eastern father whose prerogative was to command—he stooped in fatherly yearning and entreated him. Then follows that charming touch of Jesus, for the father did not call him son. He called him child—so is it in the Greek—and child is a word of tenderest affection. Doubtless the prodigal was far more lovable—ne'er-do-wells are often very lovable. This elder brother (like many other people) was just a little difficult to love. And the triumph of the art of Jesus is not that He makes the father love the prodigal, but that He makes him love the elder brother. What Jesus teaches is that that is God. His love embraces folk who are not lovable. So mighty is it that it sweeps into its circuit folk who are very difficult to love. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish."

July 2

Refusing to Go In - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he was angry, and would not go in— Luk_15:28

An Inexhaustible Parable

I have often spoken on this beautiful parable, and I hope often to speak on it again. It is so full of teaching and so full of hope that in a lifetime one could not exhaust it. I think I have even spoken on this verse when discussing our duties to our equals. But now I choose it for a different purpose, and I want to put it in a different setting. I want to look at this brother in the parable as the type of the man who will not enter into a love that is too big for earth, and into a household that is home indeed. "And he was angry, and would not go in. "Are there not multitudes in that condition? They see the gleaming of the lights of home, and there is the sound of music in their ears. And yet though they know that they would have a welcome, and add to the gladness of it all by entering, somehow or other, like the brother here, they stand in the cold night outside the door. I am not speaking to those who have accepted Christ, and know His fellowship, I am speaking to those so near to door and window that they see the light and hear the sound of music. And yet though the night is over them and round them, and they are hungry and the feast is there, somehow or other they will not go in. Let me ask you in passing to lay this to heart, that no one will ever force you in. God is too careful of our human freedom to drag us against our will into His home. You must go willingly or not at all. You must make up your mind to go, and do it. And probably there is no hour so fit for that as just this hour which you have reached.

There are two things about which I want to speak in connection with the conduct of this brother. First, I want to look at the reasons which kept him from entering the home that night. Second, I want to find out what he missed because he thus refused to enter.

He Could Not Understand His Father's Ways

First, then, looking at the man, why was it that he refused to enter? I think to begin with, that this was in his heart, that he could not understand his father's ways. Doubtless he had always loved his father. Doubtless he had always honored him. He had never before questioned his sagacity, or dreamed of thinking of him as unjust. But now, in the hour of the prodigal's return, when the house was ablaze with light and loud with merriment, all he had cherished of his father's justice seemed to be scattered to the winds of heaven. Was this the way to receive back a prodigal? Was not this to put a premium on folly? Was it fair to him, so faithful and so patient, that a reckless ne'er-do-well should have this welcome? He could not understand his father's ways. Is this the only man who has stood without because of irritating thoughts like that? Are there none here who will not enter because they cannot understand the Father's dealings? They cannot fathom the mysteries of providence. They cannot understand the cruelties of nature. They cannot grasp the meaning of the cross, or see the power of the death of Jesus. Am I speaking to anyone who feels like that—who cannot understand the Father's dealings? I want to say to you that the one way to learn them is to come at once into the home. For the ways of God are like cathedral windows which to those outside are dim and meaningless, and only reveal their beauty and their story to those who are within.

He Was Indignant with His Brother

I think again this man refused to enter because he was indignant with his brother. He was indignant that one with such a character should have a place at all within the house. It is not likely that he ever loved his brother, and perhaps his brother had never much loved him. There was such a difference between their natures that they could hardly have been the best of comrades. For the one was always generous to a fault, and always getting into trouble somewhere; and the other was a pattern of sobriety, and as cautious as he was laborious. Such Jacobs, and they are found in every region, are always a little contemptuous of Esaus. Secretly they despise them and their singing, and they cannot understand why people love them. And when they find that they are home again, and that all the household is in revelry, then are they angry and will not go in. So was it with this person in the parable. He was not only angry with his father; he was deeply indignant that in the house of gladness a man should be tolerated such as his brother was. And I know many who are standing outside—who are angry and will not go in—for a reason precisely similar to that. I remember a young man coming to me in Dundee to tell me why he would never join the church. It seemed that in the place of business where he worked there was a young woman who made a great profession. And all the time that she was busy in attending meetings and acting as a monitor, she was engaged in pilfering the till. "And he was angry, and would not go in." He was very indignant with his sister. He said, "If these are the kind of people who are in, then it is better that I should be without." And I tell you there are many just like that, who would come in and get their welcome, if it were not for what they have seen in you—if it were not for what they have seen in me. My brother, standing in the darkness there, there is a great deal to justify your attitude. But why do you leave the happiness to us when we are such prodigals and so unworthy of it? Come in yourself tonight out of the cold. Bring your enthusiasm and your courage with you. And not only will you receive a blessing, but you will be a blessing to us all.

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He Trusted the Reports of Others

I think again this man refused to enter because he trusted the reports of others. He did what is always a foolish thing to do—he went on the information of the servants. Had he gone right in and seen things for himself, the night for him would have had a different issue. One look at his brother might have softened him, there were such traces of hell about his face. But instead of that he went to the stable door, where the ostler was loafing and listening to the music, and he, the first-born of his father's family, was content to get his information there. Now of course we know that he was told the truth. "Thy brother is come, and they are making merry." But might not the truth be told in such a way as would irritate and rankle just a little? It is always the prodigals whom the servants love. It is always the prodigals they like to serve. And there would be just a touch of pleasing malice in it, when they told the elder brother what had happened. "And he was angry, and would not go in." It was partly the servants' tone that made him angry. He took his report of that most glorious night from men who knew nothing of its inner mystery. And what I say is that it is often so, and that there are multitudes outside today because they have taken the report of others who are incapable of judging rightly. Are you quite sure that your reports of Jesus are taken from those who know Him and who love Him? Are you quite sure that in your thoughts of Christ there is no travesty of what is true? You must especially beware of that, young man, in an age like this when everyone is talking, and when a thousand judgments are passed on Jesus Christ by men who have never touched His garment's hem. I beg of you to believe that in the Gospel there is something that lies beyond the reach of intellect. There is something which is never understood except by those who have experienced it. And therefore if you are in earnest and are wise you will take no verdict upon the cross of Christ, except the verdict of the man or woman who has experienced its saving power.

He Missed What He Most Needed

So far then on the older brother's reasons. Now will you let me show you what he missed? Well, to begin with, you must all agree with me that the man missed just what he most needed. Think of it, his day's work was over. He was coming home in the evening from the field. Like a faithful servant he had been hard at work, driving the furrow or building up the fences. I honor him for that quiet and steady toil, and for being not above the servant's duty. There would be more prosperous farms and prosperous businesses, if sons today would follow his example. Now the labors of the day were over. "The ploughman homewards wends his weary way." And he was hungry and he needed food. He was weary and he needed rest. He was soiled and stained with his day's work, and he wanted a change of raiment in the evening—and all that he needed in that evening hour was stored and treasured in his father's house. "And he was angry, and would not go in. "He missed the very things that he was needing. All that would freshen him and make him strong again, he lost because he stayed outside the door. He was a soiled, weary, and hungry man, and everything was ready for the taking, yet no one forced him to the taking of it when he deliberately stood without. Is not that always the pity of it, when a man refuses the love of Jesus Christ? Is he not missing just what he most needs, and needs the more, the more he has been faithful? For all of us are soiled and we need cleansing; and all of us are weak and we need strength, and all of us are hungering and thirsting, and Christ alone can satisfy that hunger. My brother and sister, I want you to come in not to please me, but for your own sake first. I want you to come in, because just what you need now is waiting you in Christ. I want you to come in because that heart of yours is restless and unsatisfied and hungry; because when you were tempted last you fell, and you are missing the very thing you need.

He Missed the Joy

But not only did the man miss what he needed; he also missed the merriment and gladness. He missed what some folk would not miss for worlds—he missed an excellent dance and a good supper. Think of him, standing out under the stars, a man alone and out of touch with everybody. Have not you felt it when there was some fine gathering, and you were not one of the invited? And then, to make it worse to bear, the sound of the music floated through the yard, and he could see how happy they all were, as the figures passed beyond the lighted window. The man was bitten by the fiercest jealousy. He was hurt; he was offended; he was miserable. Everyone was joyous except him. Everyone was in the light but he. And the strange thing is that in all the countryside there was not a man who would have been more welcome, nor one who had a better right and title to the gladness and the feasting of the night. Ah! what a right some of you have to know the joy and feasting of the Lord! How you have been prayed for since you were little children! How hearts at home have yearned for you in tears! And yet today you are the very one—you who have had an upbringing like that—who stand without, and will not enter in, and miss the gladness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to come right in tonight. You are far more lonely than some people think. I want you to have the gladness of religion, instead of your little petty evanescent gladness. I want you to feel that in the love of Christ, with all its strengthening and all its saving, there is just that deep strong joy that you are missing, and always will miss till you pass the door. "I am the door," said Jesus. "By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved" (Joh_10:9).

He Missed a Chance to Serve

Then tell me, did he not miss one thing more? Did he not miss his chance of making others happy? Although I daresay he never thought it so, his absence was the one shadow on that feast. He was not, I take it, a very lovable person, and for that matter perhaps you are not that either. He was not at all the kind of man we know, who is the life and soul of any gathering. And yet that night—that night and that alone—his presence would have been the crowning gladness; his absence was the one dark shadow upon a happiness which was like that of heaven. Do you think the prodigal could be at peace until his brother had come in and welcomed him? Could the father be happy when there was one wanting, one whom he loved and honored for his toil? And all the time, bitter and angry-hearted, the man outside was missing his great chance, a chance that it is worth living years to win—the chance of making other people happy. Have you ever thought, young men and women, of the happiness you would give by coming in? If you have never thought of it before, I want you to think of it today. What of your mother, who has toiled and prayed for you? What of your father, though he never says much? What of that friend whose eyes would be so different if you were but a faithful soul in Christ? What of the angels in their ranks and choirs who are waiting to rejoice when you are saved? What of Jesus Christ, the Lover of mankind, who would see of the travail of His soul and would be satisfied? I beg of you not to miss your opportunity. It is a great vocation to make others glad. I would call you to it even if it were hard, and meant the sacrifice of what was dearest. But the wonderful thing about our Lord is this, that when you trust Him, and make others glad, in that very hour you become glad yourself, and win what you have craved for all along.

July 3

Our Duty Toward Our Equals - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he was angry, and would not go in— Luk_15:28

The Elder Brother's Duty toward His Younger Brother

The moral failure of the elder brother is very significant in one respect. It was a failure in the sphere of duty to an equal. As a son he had given every satisfaction, and with a good conscience he insists on that. Faithfully, and with creditable patience, he had served his father for these many years. Probably, too, no fault could be found with him in his practical management of the estate, nor in his conduct toward the servants on the farm. Toward his superiors—for in Jewish eyes the superiority of fatherhood is great—toward his superiors he was all that could be wished for. Toward his inferiors he was blameless, and no fault attaches to him there. The point to be noted is that where he failed, and failed in a shocking and contemptible way, was in his duties toward his equals. True, one was older and the other younger; one had the privileges of the first-born. Yet were they brothers, born of the same mother, sharers together of the home of infancy. And this was the point of failure in his life, not his duty to superiors or to inferiors, but his duty to one whose birth and upbringing put him on the platform of equality. I want to talk with you for a little on our duties toward our equals.

The Comparative Silence of the New Testament on Our Duty to Our Equals

Now it will at once occur to you, hearing that theme, how little is said of it in the New Testament. On the matter of our duty to our equals, the New Testament is comparatively silent. It speaks to us, not infrequently, of the duty which we owe to our superiors. Men are to reverence those who sit in Moses' seat; they are to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; they are to pray for kings and all who are in authority. It speaks constantly of our duty to inferiors. That is one great theme of the New Testament. Everywhere, with all variety of appeal, that is insisted on and urged. But as we read the Gospels and Epistles we gradually become aware of a strange silence—it is the silence, the comparative silence of the Gospel, on the matter of our duty to our equals. That does not mean that such duties were of little consequence to the men who have given us our New Testament. It means that there were certain causes, which inevitably put the emphasis elsewhere. Let me suggest three of these causes to you.

The Causes for Such Silence: The Stress on Christian Humility

In the first place, there was that new humility which was present so powerfully in Christian character. Working in the heart of the newborn, it did not suggest equality at all. However glad was the good news of the Gospel, however it cheered and comforted the world, one of its first effects on human hearts was to deepen the sense of personal unworthiness. And this deep feeling of personal unworthiness so colored every estimate of self, that men were readier to deny than to assert their equality with anyone whatever. When Peter, overpowered and awestruck, cried, "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man"; when Paul, in the ripeness of his vast experience, thought of himself as just the chief of sinners, you have a frame of mind that was widespread, and was the peculiar creation of the Gospel, and yet a frame that was far from ready to assert equality with anybody. Similarly, the only greatness in the kingdom lay in being a servant in the kingdom. It was to him who took the lowest place that Christ promised the blessing and the honor. And Paul, preaching what he practiced, as he ever practiced what he preached, bade his readers "in lowliness of mind esteem the other better than themselves." Now in all this there is no denial of the fact that we all have our equals. The Gospel is always true to human nature, and that is one of the facts of human nature. But you will readily understand how men, dominated by a new-born humility, were not in a mood to give immediate prominence to the duties which imply equality.

The Causes for Such Silence: The Stress on Compassion

The second reason is to be found in this—in the Gospel message of compassion. That was so new, so new and so amazing, that for a little it obscured all else. There may be elements in the ethic of the Gospel which were familiar to the older world. That is exactly what we should expect, since God has never left Himself without a witness. But there was one thing in the Gospel which was new, and set it apart from all the thought of ages, and that was its magnificent insistence on the need and the blessing of compassion. For the first time in the world the grace of pity was placed in the very center of the virtues. For the first time tenderness of heart was made a manly and a noble thing. And such was the thrill of this discovery, and the power it gained over the hearts of men, that it dimmed the thought of duty towards equals. It was the Christian's mark to be compassionate —to help the poor, to cheer the solitary. He went to the least and lowest of mankind, in the great love wherewith His heart was burning. And you cannot wonder that that great enthusiasm, so utterly unknown in paganism, pushed into the background, as it were, the statement of our duty towards equals.

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The Causes for Such Silence: The Stress on the Indwelling Christ Who Has No Equal

But there is another reason, not opposed to these, yet standing just a little apart from them. It is the fact that Christian morality is so vitally dependent upon Christ. Paul never thought of morals by itself. He never spoke of isolated ethics. For him to live—in every realm of life—for him to live was Christ. To be like Christ was his idea of goodness; to be in Christ his idea of glory; to follow in the steps of Christ was his compendium of all morality. Now the very foundation of the Church was this, that Jesus Christ had no equal. "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"—it was on that foundation that the Church was built. Neither in heaven above nor on earth beneath had Jesus Christ a duty to His equal. Now of course it does not follow that we have none, because our incomparable Lord had none. To assert that would have been blasphemy. But you can understand how to men, for whom Christ was all and in all, the subject of duty towards equals was not one that would be largely handled. It is in these ways we must explain the comparative silence of Scripture on the subject. It is not because in the eyes of the Apostles the matter was one of subordinate importance. It is because they were enthralled by the new joy that had come to them in the new message of the Gospel, a message of One who though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor.

Duties to Our Equals Are Hard to Perform

Now probably there are no duties harder to perform, as there are none more beneficial to the character, than the duties we owe to our equals. It is not always agreeable or easy to fulfil our duty to our inferiors. Nor is it always agreeable or easy to live towards our superiors as we ought. But perhaps in the whole range of duty that which makes the most severe demands upon us, is not our duty to inferiors or superiors, but is our duty to our equals. Let me recall one or two facts which indicate how commonly men fail here.

Failures of Our Duties to Our Equals: In the Family Circle

In the first place, we may see it in the narrow compass of the family circle. There are many—it is to be feared—many homes where the spirit of the elder brother still survives. Take each member of the circle separately, and you find each to be amiable and useful. One may be in an office—one a nurse—one a diligent visitor to the poor. And all these duties they faithfully fulfil, working for those set over them most loyally, or cheering, by the word and deed of comfort, the poor who are entrusted to their charge. No fault can be found with them in these relationships. They fulfil them with every satisfaction. But is it not sometimes the case that these brothers and sisters are far from being a united family? The one thing that it seems impossible for them to do is to live harmoniously together, or to share in the mutual and happy confidences which lie at the basis of a happy home. In other words, the duties which they fail in are just the duties I am speaking of today. Towards their superiors they are faithful and diligent. Towards their inferiors they are tender-hearted. But where they fail is in the family circle, where all are on the level of equality, and where the only duties that have place are the duties that we owe towards our equals.

Failures of Our Duties to Our Equals: Among Those Who Have a Common Calling
In the second place, we witness the same thing in the larger area of a common calling. It is notorious how little sympathy there often is between those who are brothers in vocation. I have heard a doctor say more unkind things about a brother doctor than about any other person in the world. I have heard one literary man decry another in a way no reader would ever dream of doing. And "depend upon it," said a well-known friend to me the other day, "the nastiest things ever said about us are some of the things said by our brother-ministers." Now send that doctor out among his patients, and he may be the very soul of skilful kindness. Watch that minister visiting the poor, and he may do it with the most genuine sympathy. It is not with inferiors that the strain comes—it is not there that duty is most difficult—it is in the circles where all stand alike, and are on the social footing of equality. I think that even in the band of the disciples we may discern the truth of this. The last lesson which they seem to have learned was the lesson of living harmoniously together. It was not so difficult to be loyal to Jesus. It was not so difficult to bless the poor. But what was difficult, right to the very end, was to live together without quarrelling.

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Failures of Our Duties to Our Equals: In Our Attitude toward Those Who Fail
And in the third place, is there not a proof of this in the attitude of society towards its failures? I do not wish to seem to speak unkindly, yet nothing is gained by shutting the eyes to facts. Now suppose a man to be prospering in the world, is he not a target for a good deal of malevolence? Is it not rarely that you hear him generously judged, with a noble forgetfulness of his faults? But let that man meet with some great reverses, and be crushed under a series of disasters, and I need scarcely tell you what usually follows. There may be one or two who say "I told you so," and who gloat over the misfortune of a brother. There are far more who are genuinely sorry, and who forget their former bitterness of judgment. And now for the first time they become generous, and they forget old grudges and offences, and they do it, mark you, then and then alone when their neighbor has passed from his equality. Let him recover himself and take his former place, and the snarling is certain to begin again. The bitterness that was withering for a season will spring up in the new sunshine of prosperity. From which we gather that it is an easy thing to be generous and kind to our inferiors, but one of the hardest things in life to be just and generous to our equals.

Harder to Execute Ones Duties to Equals Than to Inferiors and Superiors

If then, that be a fact, and a fact I think that cannot be gainsaid, it is surely worth our while to ask what is the reason of a thing so strange. One would have thought that, of all our duties, those to our equals would have been easiest. One would have thought that our duties to inferiors would have been the hardest to perform. And yet it is not so—it is the opposite—our hardest ethic is that of our equality, and the reason, I take it, is not far to seek. It is this, that in all our intercourse with inferiors, there is no place for jealousy or envy. There is nothing to interfere with our self-love; there is no possibility of competition. And therefore in all intercourse with them, there is a sense of shelter and security; an utter absence of those irritations which are inevitable with our social equals. We never dream of envying the poor when our Christian duty takes us among the poor. We are never jealous of the weary sufferer, when we go to visit him upon his sickbed. Our health is an immeasurable asset—our social position gives us a certain standing—we are treated with a certain deference and respect, which sometimes may be the deadliest flattery. Let no one think I am saying a word against the Christian duty of compassion. But what I do say is that as a means of discipline, as a means of searching and of bracing character, our duties to our equals are a far surer instrument than are our duties to inferiors. In them we are out upon the open. in them we get as surely as we give. In them we are constantly tempted to be jealous—constantly tempted to assert ourselves. And therefore are they very hard to do, and being hard are very blessed, giving to character a strong sincerity which no other duties can supply. A man may be perfectly true to his superiors, and yet be a cringing and miserable creature. A man may be wonderfully kind to his inferiors, and yet live all the time in a fool's paradise. But a man who moves as a man among his equals, and is just and generous and kind to them. is moving under the eye of day, and fighting his battle on the open field.

Our Reluctance to Deal with Equals

And that is why there is a certain cowardice in the kind of life which certain people affect. I mean when socially, and not for the sake of service, they surround themselves with their inferiors. It may be a bad thing when one is overanxious to move in higher circles than his own. It is very often associated with vulgarity. But it seems to me it is a worse thing, in its net result upon the character, when one deliberately takes the other course, and consorts habitually with inferiors. Instead of the give and take of equal comradeship, there is then the poisonous atmosphere of deference. Instead of the buffet and the blow of argument, there is the gentle flattery of acquiescence. Instead of the friendship that shows us what we are, and teaches us our faults, and braces us, there is the purring of those whom we honor with our company, till we grow more self-satisfied than ever. It is not thus that character is made. It is fashioned where all the winds are blowing. it never ripens in that soft seclusion which the society of inferiors affords. It ripens in the frankness of equality, where one is not afraid to meet another, and where the frets and jars are as medicinal as the kindliest word of benediction.

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The Hardest Trials Are Those That Reach Us from Equals

And that leads me to say this in passing, and it is well that we should not forget it. Perhaps there are no trials so hard to bear as the trials that reach us from our equals. The psalmist, you remember, felt that when he was suffering from an act of treachery. What made it doubly hard to bear was this, that it was perpetrated by a man his equal. Had it been anyone else he could have borne it—anyone mightier or less than he—but the sting of it all first lay in this, that it was an equal who was base. As it was then, so is it still today, and it helps us to be strong when we remember it. Trials from inferiors are bad enough, trials from superiors are worse; but trials from our equals are worst of all, and I shall tell you why it is so. The reason is that trials from our inferiors are trials from which we always can escape. We can return again to our own levels, and leave thus the sphere of our vexations. But from the trials of our equals there is no such refuge—our equals are our habitual environment—and therefore always, every day we live, we are exposed to the buffet or the thorn. It is thus that the trials of our nearest may be blessed in a more certain way than any others. There is no one we can fly to except God; there is no one we can lean on except God. Tried by inferiors we have still our equals, in whose society we are secure. Tried by our equals every refuge fails, and "hangs my helpless soul on Thee."

Try Your Character by Your Attitude toward Your Equals

And so, in closing, I would urge upon you to test and try your character that way. Be chary of accepting any verdict, except the verdict of equality. Distrust the subtle flattery of deference. There is no self-knowledge to be gained that way. Distrust the judgment of the poor and needy, whom in your warmth of compassion you have helped. If you want to know yourself go to your equals—find what you think of them, and they of you. Reckon yourself by what you are at home, or with your brother merchant or your brother minister. It is thus and thus alone we learn the truth, and when we learn the truth we are never far from Christ. Seeing ourselves, we see our need of Him, and in that sight is the beginning of salvation. Driven from the rest of self-esteem, so easily fostered by our very pity, we hear Him saying to us irresistibly, "Come unto me .... and I will give you rest."

July 4

Sleep and Death - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth— Mar_5:39
This thy brother was dead, and is alive again— Luk_15:32

Death as a Fact and What Christ Thought of It

I wish to speak for a little while on some of our Lord's references to death. I wish to discover in what light He viewed that dark experience of our mortality. You will observe I am not asking your attention to the question of the life beyond the grave. That is another theme. But here we shall look at death just as a fact, as joy and sorrow and love and hate are facts, and ask what our Savior has spoken about that. For those of us who believe in Christ as Lord, it is supremely important to discover that. But I venture to think it is scarcely less important for those of you who take a lower view. For the words of Jesus Christ, whoever Christ was, have influenced the world and altered history in a way as profound as it is unapproached. When you think, whoever Jesus was, of the tremendous influence of His words, when you think that they will still be winged when yours and mine are dead, it becomes the duty of every thoughtful person, who makes any pretence to the balance of true culture, to give the words of Christ his first attention. It is important to know what Plato thought of death. It is important to know what Hegel thought of death. But for men and women living in a world that has felt the terrific impact of Christ's words, to know what Christ has said on such a theme is the primary duty of intelligence.

Jesus Spoke Little of the Fact of Death

Now when we study Jesus with this end in view, there is one thing which immediately impresses us. It is that Jesus in His ministry spoke comparatively little about death. Familiar with it in the home at Galilee, for Joseph had died when Jesus was still there; lighting oftentimes in boyish wanderings on ghostly sepulchres among the hills, there is no sign that He brooded upon death, nor let it color His imagination, nor that He lived, as men have sometimes lived, with the shadow of death forever by His side. That He spoke much of the life beyond the grave is a fact, of course, which nobody disputes. There is indeed a powerful school today which interprets everything in terms of eschatology. But of the fact of death— that shrouded enemy which lays its icy hand on all humanity— of that He spoke comparatively little. Now that at once separates Jesus from those Stoical teachers who were already beginning to take the ear of Rome. For they, as Bacon has so wisely put it, made death more terrible by dwelling on it so. They thought to conquer death by gazing at it, till familiarity should beget contempt, and instead of contempt there came a haunting terror on the men and women of the Roman Empire. A similar thing has happened more than once in the long story of the Christian Church. Inspired by the passion of asceticism, men have feasted their eyes upon the grave. And the singular thing is that when we turn to Jesus, with whom the story of the Church began, you find wonderfully little of all that. Whatever Jesus feasted His eyes upon, He never feasted them upon the grave. You can never imagine Him a mediaeval saint, clasping a human skull within a charnel-house. But you can always imagine Him among the fields, feasting His heart upon the bending corn, and on the innocent merriment of little children, and on the first glimmerings of human love.

Jesus Speaks Little of Death in Spite of Its Universality

This comparative silence grows more notable when you bear in mind two considerations. The first is the old familiar commonplace that death is a universal thing. There have been teachers who have avoided universal themes and loved to handle exceptional experiences. Some of our finest plays, like Hamlet, deal with experiences of the rarest kind. But Jesus deliberately chose the universal, and dealt with what is common to humanity, and touched with the finger of a son of man the strings that God hath put on every harp. The sorrows He soothes are universal sorrows; the joys He shares in are universal joys. The questions He answers are universal questionings; the hopes He kindles are universal hopes. Yet here is death, the universal leveler, stealing with equal foot to every door, and Jesus speaks very little about that.

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by George H. Morrison

Jesus Speaks Little of Death in Spite of Its Significance to Himself

The other consideration which makes the silence notable is the significance to Christ of His own death. That His own death was profoundly important in His eyes no unbiased reader of the Gospels can deny. When He was deeply stirred He spoke of it. It was the one topic of the transfiguration. He watched with eagerness for every sign of readiness that He might unfold its meaning to the twelve. And yet though He saw the coming of the cross, and knew that His triumph was to include a grave, the theme of the grave was rarely on His lips. Even when death was standing on the threshold, it did not form the theme of His discourse. It is not death that moves with awful mien through the glorious discourse of the upper chamber. It is a message more gladdening than death—it is the music of celestial joy—it is tidings of peace that the world cannot give, and at its darkest cannot take away. On that night on which He was betrayed, the shadow of death was on the heart of Jesus. On that night, under the olive trees, He cried, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." Yet on that night, with the finger of death upon Him, the talk of Jesus was no more of death than in the glad days when He had watched the lilies, and taken the little children in His arms.

His Silence Could Not Be Interpreted as Indifference

Now that is very suggestive and significant, and it clearly calls for some interpretation. Let me dismiss in passing one interpretation which might possibly occur to certain minds. It might occur to some that this reserve of Jesus was only the superior silence of indifference. It might seem that Jesus spoke little about death, because He scorned the very thought of death. But I venture to say that if you take the Gospels, and study the story of the Master there, you will dismiss that supposition as untenable. When you and I are silent on a matter, it does not necessarily mean we are indifferent. Sometimes the subject of which the heart is fullest is that on which the lips are strangely still. And as there are thoughts that lie too deep for tears, so are there thoughts that lie too deep for utterance, and men detect them not by any speech, but by a look, or a handclasp, or a tear. Now think of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, when He was face to face with death. Look at Him—what is that upon His cheek?—it is the dewy glistening of tears. And then a bend of the road reveals the sepulchre, and there is death, in ravage and in victory, and Jesus groans in spirit and is troubled. Whatever else that means, there is one thing that it emphatically means. It means that Jesus, indifferent to so much, was not indifferent to the final tragedy. He wept; He groaned in spirit; He was troubled. He shared in the anguish of the orphaned heart. Whatever His silence, it was not the silence of a serene and philosophic scorn.

Jesus Spoke of Death as Sleep

Dismissing that, then, we may advance a little if we remember Jesus' favorite name for death. I think there can be little question that the familiar name of Christ for death was sleep. I do not insist on the raisings from the dead, though they at once suggest a waking out of sleep. I do not insist on that, though all these raisings at once suggest the thought of sleep to me. But I keep close to Christ's recorded sayings, on two occasions when He confronted death, and on both of them He spoke of death as sleep. Entering the darkened home of Jairus, He said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth." Learning the news that Lazarus was gone, He said at once, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." And these expressions, springing from the heart, and of an authenticity that none can question, tell me that Jesus spoke of death as sleep.

He Did Not Speak of Death us Sleep Poetically

But now it will occur to you at once that this is a thought common to all poetry. I know indeed no literature in the world where death is not spoken in terms of sleep. You will find it in the philosophy of Greece, and you will light on it in the poetry of Rome. The Jews were perfectly familiar with it, for they spoke of their dead as sleeping with their fathers. Dante accepts it as a commonplace; Chaucer speaks of the living and the sleeping; and Shakespeare tells us in words that are immortal how our little life is rounded with a sleep. Now the question I want to ask is this: was our Lord talking as a poet talks? Was He simply using a poetic figure when He said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth"? I have been led to think, for reasons I shall give you, that Christ was not talking as a poet talks, but was using language of intense reality. I certainly hold that Jesus was a poet. I think He was a poet to His fingertips. If poetry be simple, sensuous, and passionate, there never was speech more poetical than His. And yet, granting all that without reserve, I am constrained to think that when Christ spoke of death as sleep, men felt that He spoke, not in poetic figure, but in sober earnestness and truth. Let me suggest to you this one consideration, based on the passage at hand.

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July 5

The Rich Man and Lazarus

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day— Luk_16:14

The Passion Was the Same

Our Lord had been speaking against the sin of covetousness, when the Pharisees, who were themselves lovers of money (Luk_16:14), began to ridicule Him. In these circumstances the parable was spoken; it was meant to enforce the warnings against mammon (Luk_16:13). And there is something highly significant in the unexpected turn that the enforcing takes. Between the typical Pharisee and this rich man there was little outward resemblance. The bitterest enemy could not accuse the Pharisees of faring sumptuously every day. Whatever their faults were, they were austere and rigid. They honestly despised luxurious living. Yet in drawing this picture of luxurious living, there is no doubt that Jesus was thinking first of them. Now, where lay the point of contact, do you think? It lay in a common love of money. The Pharisee loved it, and he secretly hoarded it. The rich man loved it for the pleasure it bought. Each showed his passion for wealth in his own way, but the same passion was supreme in both. Learn, then, how one deep-seated vice may fashion itself in the most diverse garbs. A hundred miles may separate two rivers, but for all that, they flow from the one lake. Our eyes might fail to discover kinship between the secret hoarding of the Pharisee and the prodigal squandering of this rich man; but in the eyes of Christ, both ran down to a common selfishness, and to a common heart neglect of God.

The Strange Contrasts of the Worm

Here are two men, and day after day there is not the space of twenty yards between them, yet a distance like the sea divides the two. The one is rich, the other is a beggar. The one has every dainty on his table, the other gathers the crumbs to stay his hunger. The one is clothed in the fine linen of Egypt; the other on the doorstep is in rags. The one has servants to do his smallest bidding, they are fanning him in the long hot afternoon to drive away the flies; the other has no one to drive away the dogs when they gather round him and lick his sores with their unclean tongues. It would be impossible to conceive a greater contrast—and there is only a porch and a door between the two! Yet with such contrasts all the world is teeming. Do you live in a roomy terrace in a great city? There is want and misery within a stone's throw. Is your home a little villa in some quiet town? Learn something of that lane that you pass on Sundays going to the church. Are you a farmer's daughter? Who was that tramp that the dog barked off today? Wherever you are, there is a Lazarus near.

The Changed Conditions of Eternity

A great philosopher has written in his books that we should view all things sub specie oeternitatis. The boys who are learning Latin will tell us what that means: it means that we ought to consider things under the light, so to speak, of eternity. Now, I feel that it was under that eternal light that Jesus was moving when He spoke this parable. And why? Because we are told the beggar's name, but we are not told the name of the rich man. When a great man gives a public banquet, the newspapers tell us all about it. We get the names of the host and of all his guests, and we hear, too, how the ladies were dressed; but we never dream of finding in the newspaper the names and addresses of the poor around the gates. But when Jesus tells the story of this feasting, and tells it as it is written in the books of God, the beggar is named—and a noble name he had—and the host is only "a certain rich man." Here the one man is great and he is known; the other is a beggar and a nuisance. Here the one man has everything he wants; the other lives and dies in want of everything. But yonder, in the world beyond the grave, where the wrong is righted, and God's strange ways are justified, Lazarus lies upon the bosom of peace, and the rich man bitterly reaps what he has sown. Do you see the contrast between the now and then ? Do you mark the complete reversal of the lots? It is by such unveilings of eternity, that Christ has eased the problems of the world.

The Sin of the Rich Man Was Selfishness

There was nothing sinful in his being rich—Abraham himself has been a wealthy man. It is not hinted that the rich man of the story had made his money in unlawful ways. He is not charged with oppression of the poor, nor with enriching himself by others' ruin. Had you asked his boon-companions what they thought of him, they would have called him the finest fellow in town. It was neglecting Lazarus that was his sin. His crime was the unrelieved beggar at his gate. And he could not plead that he was ignorant of Lazarus, for he recognized him at once in Abraham's bosom. It was not want of knowledge, then, but want of thought that was the innermost secret of his tragedy. He was so engrossed in his own life of pleasure, that his heart was dulled to the suffering at his door; and every day he lived he grew more selfish till at last he went to his own place. Let the children learn how needful it is to begin doing kindly deeds when they are young. We grow so accustomed to misery by and by, that our hearts turn callous before we are aware. It is a priceless blessing when the sympathies of childhood are turned into the channel of activity. Caught in their freshness, and expressed in deeds, they form those habits of help and brotherly kindness that were utterly wanting in this rich man's heart.

It Will Never Be Easier to Believe Than Now

Did you ever read of the boy who stood on a muddy road, and who promised God that he would be a Christian if there and then God would dry up the puddles? He wanted a miracle to make him a believer; he thought he would become Christ's if he got that. Jesus here tells us that is a great mistake. It will never be easier to believe than now. The man who is not persuaded by the Gospel will never be persuaded by a ghost. Let no one wait, then, before accepting Jesus, for something extraordinary to happen. That something is never going to happen, and if it did, it would leave us as we were. Now is the time, under God's silent guidance, and in the quiet morning of our days, to range ourselves under the conquering banner of the great Captain who lives forevermore.

July 6

The Fatal Power of Inattention - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments— Luk_16:23

It Wasn't Inhumanity

There is a well-known picture by Gustave Dore, which portrays this parable of the rich man and the beggar. We are shown the rich man in the midst of Oriental luxury, and at the foot of the marble steps the diseased Lazarus. So far the picture is worthy of the genius, for it is vivid and full of rich imagination; but Dore has introduced one other feature which shows that he has misread the Savior's story. Over the beggar an Eastern slave is bending with a scourge of twigs in his uplifted hand. He has been commanded to drive Lazarus away, for his misery is as a death's-head at the feast. And Dore is wrong in introducing that, for our Lord does not hint that the rich man was disturbed—he was not consciously and deliberately cruel; he was only totally and hopelessly indifferent. What wrought the ruin of that pleasure-lover was not inhumanity so much as inattention. It was the fatal power of inattention that drove his barque on to the reef of woe. And on that fatal power of inattention, so strikingly and signally portrayed here, I want to speak a word or two.

I do so under a sense that it is needed, because that heedless spirit is so common. The attitude of innumerable people toward the great questions of the religious life is just the inattentive attitude of the rich man to Lazarus at his gate. There was a time when unbelief was militant, and when men were in arms against the cause of Christ; a time when Voltaire could write "Scratch out the Infamous," and the Infamous was the Redeemer of the world. But you find few militant atheists today—they are like voices crying in the wilderness; what you do find is something far more deadly, it is that height of insult which we call inattention. It is better, sometimes to hate than to ignore, for there is at least something positive in hatred. There is hope in the foe that someday he may prove a worthy friend. But the man who takes his ease and pays no heed is the most difficult of all to deal with; and such is the common temper of today. I have many acquaintances who never come to church, and some who have told me that they never pray. I can hardly think of one among them all who is the defined antagonist of Christ. They are simply inattentive to His claims, and spend their days in utter unconcern, disregarding His presence as completely as the rich man disregarded that of Lazarus.

The Perils of lnattention

How perilous the inattentive spirit is, we have only to open our eyes to see. It is one of the lessons that reach us every day as we walk through the crowded streets of a great city. Readers of Marcus Aurelius will remember how he bases the art of life upon attention. In the jostle and pressure of a modern city that truth has a very literal significance. Well could I understand the Highland farmer moving across the moorland inattentively. There is nothing within hail except the sheep, and the whirring bird that is startled at his tread. But for a man who lives in Glasgow or in London to move inattentively amid the rush of traffic is to augment by a thousand-fold the perils that are inevitable where life is swift and full. Not a day passes but in the city someone is maimed through being inattentive. I might put it in an even grimmer fashion, for every day in the streets someone is killed. They were not drunk, nor were they seeking death: I do not know what the coroner may say about them, but I know that a true verdict would be this: Slain through the fatal power of inattention. Now all that happens, not where life is meager, but where life is rich, and tumultuous, and full. Nowhere is it so perilous to be indifferent as within the sweep of mighty tides of life. And if the life that is revealed in Christ is mightier in its flow than that of Babylon, do you not feel the risks of inattention when that life is at your very door?

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The Fatal Power of Inattention - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Again we might throw light upon the matter by considering the common laws of health. There are certain principles with which we are all familiar, and to which we give the name of laws of health. They are written upon the framework of our bodies; they are not many nor are they hard to keep; but they are as certainly the laws of God as any commandment graven in the Decalogue. Now you never meet a man who hates these laws, or breaks them in a spirit of rebellion. But you meet many who are inattentive, and who constantly and recklessly neglect them. And I ask the doctors here whether that inattention is not a rash and perilous behavior, and is not certain in the course of years to bring the body of a man to ruin? You do not need to defy the laws of health to have the body taking vengeance on you. The body avenges far more than defiance; it inevitably avenges inattention. Many a man yet living is in hell, and lifts up his eyes towards heaven being in torments; and at the back of all his torments is not vice, but a persistent and foolish disregard. Now if confessedly that is true of the body, is it incredible that it should hold true of the soul? Are you certain to escape in spiritual things for a line of action that never escapes in physical? On the contrary, the higher that we rise, the more are we likely to suffer for neglect, just because the interests involved are of such tremendous and eternal consequence.

Before passing from this aspect, I should like to say that this is one of the ministries of pain. Whatever other functions pain may have, one is that it serves to fix attention. If there is anything harmful working in the body, it is supremely important that it should be localized, and so comes pain and rings the alarm bell, and concentrates attention on the spot. Pain is the bugle sounding the reveille. Pain is the watchman crying on the walls. We should sleep on while the foe took the citadel were we not roused by the trumpet blast of pain. And though it is hard thus to be roused sometimes, and we are prone to murmur at the summons, yet better, surely, to be rudely wakened, than to be beaten by an insidious foe. We shall never grasp some of God's dealings with us unless we class them with that call of pain. Sometimes it were cruel to let us sleep; sometimes the only kindness is to wake us. And there are sorrows and failures and bitter disappointments which we can never hope to understand, until we realize they are God's stratagems to fix our attention on the things which matter.

Causes of Inattention: Custom

I wish now to say a word or two on some of the causes of this inattention, and perhaps the commonest cause of all is custom. Someone has said that if all the stars ceased shining, and then after a hundred years shone out again, there is not an eye but would be lifted heavenward, and not a lip but would break forth in praise. But the stars were shining when we were little children, and they are there tonight, and will be there tomorrow, and we are so accustomed to that glory that we rarely give to it a single thought. What eyes we have when we travel on the Continent! Every river and hill and castle we observe. But in Glasgow, and by the banks of Clyde, a district rich in story and in beauty, there we are so accustomed to the scenery that we have eyes for nothing but the newspaper. "One good custom doth corrupt the world," and it does so, because it lulls to sleep. It is a bad thing to grow accustomed to the wrong. It may be worse to grow accustomed to the right. And that is why in the history of the church God sends the earthquake and the crash of storm, that men may be roused and startled to concern, and escape the fatal sway of inattention.

Causes of lnattention: Lowered Vitality

Another cause of inattention is a lowered vitality. I think we have all had experience of that. When we are weary, and the flame of life is low, somehow we can neither grasp nor grip. Everything becomes formless and elusive. We read, and hardly understand the page; we work, yet seem to master nothing; we pray, and might be praying to a shadow. Then comes the morning, it may be in the springtime, when the life within us is strong and full again. We are quickened to the finest fibbers of our being, and it is a pure joy to be alive. And at once, in that renewed vitality, we grow alert, attentive, able to grasp and grip; not a page but is radiant with meaning now, not a thing but has a thought behind it. "I am come to give abundant life," says Christ, and to give it here and now, and not tomorrow. Do you not see, then, how fellowship with Christ wakens a man's attention to the highest? It is in that life which may be yours tonight, and for which you do not need to wait till springtide, that you can seize with an attentive faith the things that are unseen and eternal.

Causes of Inattention: Lack of Love

But the deepest cause of inattention is still to be sought. The deepest cause is lack of love. Let a man once love a book, a land, a woman, and he will never be inattentive anymore. When a young man is paying court to somebody, do not the people say "he is paying her attention"? Love and attention, in the people's speech, have practically the same signification. It was love that made the father of the prodigal so quick to discern the figure of his son. It was love that made our Savior give such heed to the cry of the blind beggar by the road. And it is love to Christ which wakens the dulled heart not only to the things that are unseen, but to the infinite value of the soul that is lodged under the raggedness of Lazarus. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me"—that was the threefold question of the Master. Only when that was clearly ascertained, was there given the commandment, "Feed My sheep." For love is quick to see the need of others, and to read what is hidden from a thousand eyes, and to discern beyond the veil the things that matter; for only he who loveth, knoweth God.

July 7

Obedience and Blessing

And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed— Luk_17:14

The Faith of the Lepers Was in Believing

These words occur in the account of the miracle wrought on the ten lepers. It was in some unknown village, far from the great highways, that these ten miserable creatures met with Christ. Misery makes us "acquainted with strange bedfellows," and leprosy well illustrates that saying. Here were Samaritans and Jews herded together, though the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. In suffering and in profound affliction, as in the primary passions of the heart, there is the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. These ten lepers must have heard of Christ. They recognized Him afar off, and called Him Master. Some of them probably had known that leper (Luk_5:1-39) who was never done telling what Christ had wrought on him. And their faith was shown, not only in crying "Master," but in believing that what He could do for others, He would do, with equal willingness, for them.

A Very Unusual Command

Now whether it was to test them, or for some other reason, it may be quite impossible to say, but the answer of Jesus to the ten was one of the strangest words He ever spake. It was laid down in the Levitical law that a cleansed leper must come before the priest. It was the duty of the priest, according to that law, to give official declaration of the cleansing. One remembers how, when the leprous man was cleansed, in the beautiful story of the fifth chapter, the first order that the Master gave him was to go to the priest in the appointed way. There was nothing strange. Such action was according to the law. That leper, rejoicing in his healing, recognized at once the fitness of the order. But here the same command was given to men whose leprosy was on them still, and whose bodies did not show a trace of cleansing. It was a thoroughly staggering injunction. It would have tried the faith of many a saint. What! ask for a certificate of cleansing when the ghastly signature of death was on them? Yet that was the one thing that the Master said. He gave an order, and called them to obedience. Go show yourselves to the priests.

And then follows that very pregnant word, that as they went they were healed. They left the Master to obey the Master, and, doing so, they won the blessing. Had they remained stock-still in blank astonishment, I do not think we could have wondered at it. Had they discussed the matter, and stood arguing, we should have said that was entirely natural. But the fact remains, that had they acted so, and begged the Lord to deal with them more reasonably, they would have all descended into lepers' graves. The one condition of healing was obedience. Ordered, they must obey. If He was Master as they had cried He was, then let them prove their faith by their obedience. And the beautiful thing is, that as they went, taking the road that led away from Him, gradually they grew conscious of their healing. It was their obedience that the Lord rewarded. He was testing their faith by their response. Not everyone who calls Him Master is ready for the dynamic of His virtue. Quietly to do what He commands, and to do it without questioning or argument, is the appointed highway to revival. These men's knowledge of the Lord was scanty. Their faith, at the best, was rudimentary. But at any rate, here was a plain command, given by One whom they had called their Master. And all they longed for, the passing of their plague, their enrolment again in the brotherhood of man, sprang out of immediate obedience.

They Obeyed Even Though They Did Not Understand

One notes, too, that the command they got was one they could not hope to understand. It was the very last thing they were expecting. Had He touched them with His touch of power they would have hailed Him then and there as their Deliverer. Probably they were expecting that, from the wonderful stories they had heard. But to be turned away, without one gracious word, and sent on what must have seemed a bootless errand, that was something they would not understand. I believe they were disappointed men. This was so utterly different from their dreams. It was with heavy hearts and downcast mien that they set out on the commanded journey. But the point is that they went, whatever the anguish in their hearts, and as they went they were healed. Obeying, though they could not comprehend, though everything was dark and difficult: obeying, though the road they had to travel seemed to take them far away from Him, they were revived, radiant health returned, they were no longer outcasts from society. Controlled by the mastership of Christ, they found themselves in the brotherhood of man. I believe that many who are praying for new revival ought really to be praying for new obedience. It is as we go on the commanded road that we experience the commanded blessing. Let the Church obey the command of the Lord Jesus, and with enthusiasm evangelize the nations, and, as she goes, she will be healed.

July 8

Fainting in Prayer - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Men ought always to pray, and not to faint— Luk_18:1

Jesus Taught Men to Pray

This is one of the passages in which our Lord gave encouragement to prayer. He taught on many different occasions, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Our Lord says nothing, not one single word, about the intellectual difficulties of prayer. Just as He took the thought of God for granted, so He took the fact of prayer for granted. All the difficulties in prayer of which our Savior spoke are those which are natural to human weakness, and these He amply recognized. He knew how prone men were to give over praying. He knew how ready they were to faint in praying. He knew how hard it was for men and women to pray always. And therefore by parable and precept, and more particularly to His own disciples, our Lord taught that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

Jesus Lived Prayerfully

Not only did He give such encouragement in His teaching. He gave it still more emphatically by His example. Our Lord was a Man of prayer. The picture of our Savior which is enshrined in the tenderest memories of Christendom is that of the Man of Sorrows. But not less true would it be to all we who know of Him, and to the wellsprings of His being, if our most cherished picture of Him were that of the Man of Prayer. Often have men gathered together all the times in the Gospels when we find our Lord at prayer. It is a singularly helpful study and I commend it to you. But even when you have collected all these instances, and learned something of our Savior's habits of prayer, even then you have not gained a just impression of the place in the Savior's life which prayer occupied. His service was the other side of prayer. His sinlessness was the victory of prayer. His life in all its activity and suffering was the reflection of His Father's will. And if He always did what pleased His Father, and moment by moment was reinforced from heaven, it was because He always prayed and never fainted. Great then is the encouragement to prayer which we should draw from our Savior's teaching, but greater still is the encouragement we should draw from His example.

Jesus Lives Yet to Pray for Us!

Nor does that example end with His earthly life. It is carried over into His heavenly life. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. He ever liveth—to pray. Will you think of the wonder of that for a moment? In His earthly life our Lord was limited. He was made of a woman; made under the law. From the very fact that He had become our Brother, He had to limit Himself to certain forms of service. But from the moment of the ascension, glorified, freed from earthly limitations, it was for Him to choose, for the advancement of His kingdom, any of all the ministries of heaven. I shall not speculate on the ministries of heaven. Eye hath not seen and ear hath never heard them. I only want you to note this, that our Lord still chose the ministry of prayer. And nothing is better fitted to awe our hearts with a new sense of the magnificence of prayer, than that choice of the ascended Savior. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. He ever liveth to pray. Out of all the armory of glory He hath chosen the weapon of All-prayer. And so by His teaching, and His life on earth, and His life on the right hand of God, Christ exhorts us powerfully that we ought always to pray and not to faint.

Why, Then, Are We So Prone to Faint?

And yet there is no human activity in which we are so prone to faint. How often our prayers are as the morning cloud and as the early dew. In spite of the spoken encouragement of our Lord—in spite of the example of His life—in spite of the wonderful thought that now and always He is making intercession for us—how easily are we overcome in prayer. In our spiritual literature we have many diaries of men who were pre-eminently men of prayer. We have the diaries of Andrew Bonar and of McCheyne and of Boston and of Wesley. Ah, what a struggle in every one of them to maintain a living fellowship with God and how prone every one of them to faint! True, there come hours when prayer is easy, and often when they come we know not how. The wind bloweth where it listeth, that is all, and lo! The heart is going out to God. But day by day, amid life's duller duties, to maintain the life of prayer in its fervency, who to know that our Savior understands, to know in the midst of all the difficulty, that He encourages us to persevere. And if He, who lived in the sunshine of God's presence, needed the strengthening of prayer continually, who can estimate our need?

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Fainting in Prayer - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Prayer Is a Most Demanding Task

From this proneness to faint in prayer there is one thing that we learn, and it is something that is worth the learning. It is that prayer is work, and perhaps the hardest work in which a human being can be engaged. How ready we are to think of prayer as easy or as the occupation of a vacant moment. How seldom we come to it with that determined spirit which we bring to bear upon our daily business! There are fortunes, brother, to be made in prayer, far more lasting than any made in commerce, and yet how few apply themselves to prayer with the zest and keenness that they bring to business. In all work three parts of our being are involved. There is the understanding, by which we work intelligently; there is the heart by which we labor willingly, there is the will by which we labor doggedly. And yet I know not any kind of work that calls for all these three in constant exercise so urgently and so utterly as prayer. A handicraftsman may ply his task and yet his thoughts may go wandering far away. A student may set himself to work through habit, even when his affections are far away else where. But the moment prayer becomes habit it is dead, the moment the thoughts go wandering it is over, and the moment the heart is drawn away to other things, prayer is an idle repetition. All that is needed for our daily labor is needed for the exercise of prayer—our understanding that we may pray intelligently, our affection, and our will. And they are needed, moment by moment, every time we pray, in such activity, and life, and exercise, that prayer, true prayer, so far from being idleness, is one of the sternest labors in the world. That view of prayer is amply corroborated by the terms in which it is described in Scripture. It is a wrestling, a striving, a laboring; at its intensest with our Lord it is an agony. Clearly, then, prayer is no easy thing, no light employment of an idle moment. It is the most difficult, the most blessed, the most victorious labor that can engage the faculties of man.

Indeed, brethren, it's very difficulty is an argument for its efficiency. For nothing that a man can take in hand so rouses the antagonism of the powers of darkness. Let a man busy himself with preaching merely, and the devil will not tempt him above measure. Let him study or let him teach or let him visit, and he is not conscious of unseen antagonism. But the moment anyone begins to pray, to do it deliberately and earnestly, it is as if all the powers of hell had been let loose against him, to baffle him in his endeavor. Distractions and interruptions multiply as by the cunning of some unseen opponent. Thoughts that at other times are light as air acquire a strange and terrible insistency—it may be some name we have forgotten, it may be some rankling word that has been spoken, it may be something we have left undone. With a malevolence that is as real as it is subtle we are assaulted from without and from within. It is as if all the powers of darkness had combined to disgust us with the exercise of prayer. And that tremendous enmity that meets us, and fights against us, and never gives us rest, is but a proof how Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees. If prayer were powerless it would be easy. The prince of the powers of the air would not concern himself. He would let it alone, as he lets so much alone that we dignify with the name of Christian service. And the fact that no man ever yet began to pray but immediately he was tempted of the devil, shows what a mighty instrument true prayer must be for the pulling down of the strongholds of the night. My friend, Christ understood all that. He had proved the virtue of All-prayer. In His eyes it was the one victorious weapon that God loved and the devil hated. And therefore He went about urging men, knowing perfectly their human weakness, that they ought always to pray and not to faint.

How Real Is Prayer?

One of the great causes why we faint so readily is just that prayer seems to be so unreal. We cannot feel; we cannot realize; we seem to be speaking into empty darkness. We speak for instance to a friend, and there is a human face to answer ours. By the expression, by the eyes, by the attention given, we know that we are being listened to. But when we speak to God with open eyes it is only the empty air that is around us, and when the eyes are closed we see not anything. Nor does the unreality cease there. It goes a great deal deeper than such vacancy. For who does not know how it assails the heart again even when the most earnest prayer is over—as if nothing had happened, as if time were wasted, as if the world were just as it had been, and we as ready, at the first temptation, to give ourselves to the old sin again. It is this haunting sense of unreality that has led men and women to pray to the Virgin Mary. It is this which has led to praying to the saints which is so universal in Roman Catholic countries. And anyone who has ever sought to pray can understand that feeling perfectly—and yet
I show you a more excellent way.

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Fainting in Prayer - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

I was speaking the other day to a Belgian woman, and our talk fell on prayer. And I asked her if she prayed to the saints, and she said, "Oh yes, I pray to the saints." And then she added as a child might have done, and, adding it, was wiser than she knew—"but when I want anything very much, then I pray to the Father." My friend, that is what Christ has done. He has taught us to lift our hearts and say "Our Father." With all the loving reality of Fatherhood He has brought God very near to all of us. And for him who has dwelt in the Fatherhood of God, and learned even a little of its love, prayer can never be unreal again. That thought of Fatherhood dwelling in the mind, makes God as real as any living friend. It clothes the eternal Spirit with such tenderness that we can tell Him everything and know He hears us. We need no Virgin Mary anymore, bending down in womanly compassion, when we can say "Our Father which art in heaven." Oh, how close He is to all of us, that heavenly Father who will never leave us! How He is bending down and brooding over us to catch the faintest whisper of His child! Nothing has ever been taught us in the ages that has helped to make our prayers real like that—"Our Father which art in heaven."

You Are Being Summoned to Pray

I therefore call you, friend, to remember the ministry of prayer. The times are wakening us to the great need of it, and we must not miss the summons of the times. Some of you perhaps have never really prayed, though you have always kept to the daily habit of it. Some of you may have ceased long years ago even to preserve the form of prayer. And all of us, however we have been serving, know that our greatest failure has been here, for none of us have been praying as we should. My brother, God is using these present times to bring thousands back to prayer again. In every country of the world today there are multitudes praying who never prayed before. And if only you, with all your opportunities, will join in that mighty ministry of prayer, we shall yet live to see such blessings given as will make it bliss for us to be alive. It is not easy, but nothing high is easy. There is little time, but you can make time. For anything your heart is really set on, it is wonderful how time can be made always. Blessings are waiting us, and power is waiting us, and I believe that national peace is waiting us, waiting and ready for that hour when God is given His own place again. When our life is drawing to a close and we look back over the years that we have had, there will be a thousand things we shall regret, for they will seem to us then to have been vanity. But there is one thing that we shall not regret even on the margin of the grave, and that is the time we gave to prayer. Then it will be far more real to us than it was in the hour when we were praying. Then it will be far more real to us than things that once were of supreme importance. Then we shall wonder at our inveterate folly in having toiled and served and labored for the Master, and been so forgetful of the amazing promises that He has given to everyone who prays. My brother and sister, anticipate that hour. It is coming swiftly and it is coming surely. Live today as you would like to have lived when you look back from the end upon it all. And remember that whatever Christ hath taught you, by precept, by example, He hath taught you this, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

July 9

The Doctrine of Delays - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He would not for a while— Luk_18:4

A Freedom Only a Son Would Take

This parable, as the Scripture itself tells us, was meant to teach us importunity in prayer. Christ, who was tempted in all points like as we are, and who had wrestled through many a stern hour of intercession, knew well how the heart is prone to faint when the heavens we pray to are as brass. The judge in this parable is a venal and villainous creature, the kind of man who is still the curse of the East; and anyone but Christ might well have hesitated to compare his actions with those of the Almighty. But a Son can take large liberties sometimes; He will run the risk of being misunderstood. I know no parable that so assures me of the perfect freedom that Christ had with His Father; a servile courtier would not have dared to speak so. Love can be very silent and yet happy, but love has the boldest and the bravest of all tongues. There are hours when only love dares to say nothing. There are hours when only love dares to say everything.

How Long, Lord?

So to our text then, "He would not for a while." That is to say, this judge delayed to act. And that at once suggests to me for our consideration the great problem of divine delay. It meets us everywhere and in every sphere; there is scarce one heart but has been torn and tried by it. The delays of man may be infinitely vexing, but they are nothing to the delays of God. It meets us in nature, when men may be gaunt with famine, yet God will not hurry the harvest by one hour. It meets us in life where all that a man has toiled for often reaches him seemingly just an hour too late. It meets us in judgment when wrongdoers live and flourish till the cry from the altar rings in heaven, "How long?" Above all, it meets us in the sphere of prayer. How many patriots have prayed for their country's weal, yet the years rolled on, and there was no arm to save. How many mothers have prayed for their sons or daughters, and been well-nigh broken-hearted by delay. What a world of experience there is, and how the centuries vanish, when we hear the cry of the psalmist, "O God, make haste to help us!" It is as if his faith were flickering out into its ashes, under the torment of delay.

Divine Delay Is an Age-Old Problem

But the very fact that the psalmist prayed that prayer shows that the problem is a very old one. And we are so knit together in this our strange humanity, so touched into strength and courage by companionship, that often just to know the world-old pressure of a burden, gives a certain ease in our own bearing of it. Half of the bitterness of children's woes lies in the thought that they are all their own. They have no experience of life yet, their eyes are not opened; they have not learned the lesson of comparison. As we grow older, and see a little further, we find strange help in the brotherhood of trial. Now in this matter of delay it seems to me that not a few of God's people are still children. They think that God has some quarrel with them personally. They forget that the problem is as old as time. Noah felt it when he built his ark and the sun still shone in a heaven of unclouded blue. Abraham felt it when the promise of Isaac was given him, yet the summers passed and the hair of Sarah was silvered, and there was no rippling of childish laughter in his tent. David felt it—had he not been anointed to be king; yet here he was hunted as an outlaw on the hills. Paul felt it when he prayed, and prayed again, that the Lord would take away the thorn out of his flesh, yet he woke in the bright morning to his work; and for all his prayer, the thorn was with him still. Do not say, then, "God has forgotten me," because the burden of delay weighs heavy on you. We are brought into the fellowship of all the saints, by what we suffer as well as by what we gain. The problems of yesterday are but as gossamer, and a breath of tomorrow's wind will scatter them. It is the old, old problem, like the old, old joys, that reach the secret places of the heart.

Delay Is the Road to Greater Joy

It is well to remember, too, that the higher we rise, the more intense does the difficulty become. The very measure in which we feel its weight, is a kind of test of the things for which we seek. One summer perfects a flower in the field; but to perfect a child takes twenty or thirty years. And the very fact of the divine delay, in calling into their amplitude these childish faculties, is a proof that there is more of heaven in the child than in the most exquisite flower God ever fashioned. There are myriads of creatures who are born and dance and die in the short span of a bright July day. No one in watching them would ever dream of charging the Creator with delay. But a nation of men which is to serve the high ends of heaven is never fashioned hastily like that. Through pilgrimage and war and struggle and blood and tears, by heroism that oft seems unavailing and sacrifice that is like water spilt, it becomes the polished instrument of God. Delay, then, tends to become more marked, the higher you rise in the Creator's purposes. Great delays in the mystery of providence are the highway for the chariot of great blessing. The joy that cometh in the morning might be far less thrilling, had not the weeping from which it springs endured all night.

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The Doctrine of Delays - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Had Jesus Forgotten Mary and Martha?

We see this very clearly in the raising of Lazarus—that tenderest and most touching of all miracles. When Lazarus was ill—when his state had become critical—Martha and Mary, you remember, sent word to Jesus. Now Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters, and the happiest memories encircled that village home; yet the Gospel tells us that when Jesus heard the news, He abode two days still in the place where He was. There are seasons when two days seems like a moment; there are seasons when two days seems an eternity. When a life is in the balance half-an-hour is endless; twice four-and-twenty hours is unbearable. What did it mean? Had Jesus quite forgotten them? Was He deaf and dead to the prayers of the sisters' love? I think that Martha and Mary, with their eyes on dying Lazarus, knew the burden of divine delay. They knew its burden then; they know its meaning now. They see it irradiated with purpose and with wisdom. A little boon might have been granted instantly, but the great actions of God have tardy wheels. The greater and richer the blessing that we pray for, the more must we reckon on the delays of God.

Nor should we forget—for this is very important—what I might call the moral training of delay. Did we get everything we craved for in the very hour of asking it, I think it would be a long farewell to manhood. The one sure way to ruin a young child is to give it immediately all for which it asks; and to the Ancient of days, whose hairs are white as wool (see Dan_7:9), I fancy the oldest readers are but as little children. Think of Christ's treatment of the Syro-phoenician woman when she came to Him praying for her daughter. All her motherhood was on her lips and in her eyes as she pled and interceded for her child. Do you think it was cruel of Christ to answer her never a word? Do you think it was harsh to speak about the dogs? How much we should have missed, and how much Christ Himself would have missed, had it not been for that practice of delay! It was that which called out in her fine persistence, her faith, her wit, all that was brightest in her. She might have been anybody when she began, but she was a woman among women when she ended. And many a person has begun by being anybody, and ended by being a woman among women, because they were kept praying and pleading long for something that was to be granted by and by. Work reveals character, but so does waiting. Waiting shows the baby or the man. We need to be tested to prove if we be worthy just to receive and use the thing we crave. So it often is that God delays, and will not answer us, and keeps us waiting. It is not in scorn, but in the wisest love, that He will not for a while.

There Is Silent Preparation behind God's Delay

Then it is very helpful to remember that divine delay does not mean inactivity. God is not idle when He does not answer us; He is busier preparing the answer than we think. There have been men of genius who could only work irregularly; for long periods they seemed to do nothing at all. Then suddenly, and as if by inspiration, their powers took fire and they wrought at a white heat. You may be sure of it that the periods in between were not so idle as the world considered them. By thought, by reading, by communion with glad nature, half unconsciously they were preparing for their work. And when the kindling came, and the fire burned within them, when they were divinely swept into utterance or action, they owed far more than we should ever guess to the silent preparation of delay. As it is with men of genius, so with God, only in loftier and nobler ways. His delays are not the delays of inactivity. They are the delays of preparation. In an instant the tropical storm may burst and break, yet for weeks—unseen—the storm has been preparing. The sunshine of May comes, and all the world is green, yet on God's loom of January that robe was being spun. And the morning breaks when at last some prayer is answered, and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose, yet the answer was being fashioned in these very years when we said there was no eye to pity and no arm to save. It takes a million years to harden the ruby, says the poet, yet through all the years the hardening goes on. It takes a century for the sea to wear away one cliff, yet every night when we sleep the breakers dash on it. So when we pray and strive and nothing happens, till we are tempted to say "God does not know, God does not care," who can tell but that, behind the veil, infinite love may be toiling like the sea, to give us in the full time our heart's desire? "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." It is a mysterious word of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps God, like some of the busiest men I know, is doing most when He seems to be doing nothing.

There Is Love in Delay

And so in closing I would say to you: do not lose heart at the delays of God. Speed, after all, is but a relative term, and there is more love in God's slow method than you think. I was staying the other week with some friends in Ireland, when word came that our friend's place of business had been broken into. It was a holiday and he was away in Galway, and was not to be home again until that evening. Well, he came home, very tired and famished, and a foolish wife would have rushed out to meet him with the news; but his wife was not foolish, she was Scotch and sensible, and she let him wash and eat and rest himself a little; and then when he was ready to see things rightly she broke the news, and I saw there was wisdom and love in that delay. You who are mothers here, and who look back on those sweet years when your innocent children played about your feet, had you never some great news to tell your children, yet you deliberately withheld it for a time? "If we tell them tonight there will not be one wink of sleep; if we tell them when they waken, there will not be one bite of breakfast"; and so deliberately you held back the blessing, and you did it just because you loved them so. If ye then being evil, act like that, is it incredible that God should do the same? Is it fair to distrust our Father, to say He has no pity, to charge the heavens with being brass above us? I think it is wiser to pray on, strive on, casting all doubts to the devil who inspired them; believing in a love that never mocks us, and that will give us our heart's desire in His own time.

July 10

Zacchaeus

And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was…And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him— Luk_19:2-4

Jesus and Modern Man

The eighteenth chapter of Luke closed with Jesus giving sight to a blind man; Luk_19:1-48 opens with the priceless story of Zacchaeus. And that swift passage from the blind beggar to this high official well illustrates the rapid changes that meet us in the life of Jesus Christ. We are prone sometimes to think of the lot of Jesus as a very limited and circumscribed one. We think there was little in it of that movement and variety that characterize our life in modern times. And so (almost unconsciously) many have grown to feel that Jesus is standing far away from them. As a matter of fact, I question if there ever was a life so rich in its variety as Christ's. It is amazing how swiftly the scenes change; how constantly the environment is shifting. This rapid transition from the roadside pauper to the home of one of the richest men in Jericho is typical of the experience of Jesus.

There Is an Interest in Christ in Most Unlikely Quarters

If there was one man who might have seemed deadened to religion, it was this receiver-general of Jericho. He had had such treatment from the priests of Jericho (and Jericho was a very priestly city), as might have thoroughly disgusted him with religion. He had grown rich, too, in very questionable ways—and had not this Jesus spoken tremendous words about the perils even of clean riches? And yet Zacchaeus was aflame with eagerness to get into close touch with Jesus Christ. Why he was so, maybe we cannot tell. We do not know what he had heard from his collectors. We cannot tell what his home was in his childhood. We have no hint of the ministries of God in keeping his conscience alive through all the years. Ail we can say is that this was the most unlikely of all quarters, yet here was a hidden interest in Christ. Now I wish all parents and teachers to remember that. It will give them new heart and hope for certain children. Who knows what little boy may not be interested, when we recall the interest of this little man?

Where There's a Will There's a Way

Jesus was at the height of His popularity. Wherever He moved the narrow streets were crowded. It would have taken a Saul to have seen Him well; there seemed no hope for a small man like Zacchaeus; and had Zacchaeus had a small heart in his bosom, he would have gone home and said it was impossible. But Zacchaeus had had a great will to grow rich, and he had found there was a way to that. And now he had a great will to see Jesus, and he was not the sort of person to be stopped. He quite forgot himself, says Matthew Henry. He climbed the sycamore like a schoolboy. Perhaps he had heard that except we become as children we cannot see the kingdom of heaven—or the King. At any rate he was earnestly bent on seeing Jesus, and as a result he saw Him and was seen. All of which has been written down to teach us that the whole-hearted search for God is always crowned. What texts lay stress on that? "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." "Those that seek me early shall find me."

It Often Calls for Courage to Be Kind

Did you ever think how brave it was of Jesus to speak in this frank and friendly way to Zacchaeus? Had Jesus been intent on being popular, He would never have cast His eyes upon the sycamore. No class was more hated in Jewry than these tax-gatherers, and the richer they were the more they were detested. Yet Jesus, in the strength of His great purpose, deliberately set that hatred at defiance; He made no effort to conceal from the crowd that the man they loathed was going to be His friend. Immediately they began to murmur at Him (Luk_19:7)—it was the hoarse cry of a deep-seated anger. It was the breaking of the waves upon Him, which were soon, in floods, to go over His head. But calmly and very sweetly Jesus prosecuted the friendship; it called for wonderful courage to be kind. Would you have dared to act so, do you think? Have you ever tried it in your own small way? Zacchaeus forgot himself, says Matthew Henry. But that was nothing to the self-forgetfulness of Jesus.

The Moral Influence of Gospel Joy

We are told that Zacchaeus received Jesus joyfully; you can picture the tides of gladness in his heart. He had only hoped to get a glimpse of Jesus, and now he was going to be His host. And it was just the joy of it ail, I take it, filling his poor soul, and sweeping up into the empty creeks, that inspired him to the noble sacrifices of verse eight. I dare say the priests had often preached at him to go and give half his fortune to the poor. But somehow that had only closed his heart; they had never touched the spring of sacrifice. Now comes Jesus and fills him with great joy, and he cannot do enough for such a Lord—the joy of the Lord had indeed become his strength. Do you see the moral power of Gospel joy? Do you recognize the ethical worth of it? Even Jesus for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame.

How Various are the Tokens of the New Life

How did it show itself in the Philippian jailer? It showed itself first by his faith. And how in the woman who anointed Christ's feet. First, by her much love. And what were its clearest tokens in Zacchaeus? Repentance and earnest effort to amend. One life, yet showing itself in diverse fruits. One spirit, yet working outward in various ways. In which way is the hidden life of Christ revealing itself in those who read this page?

July 13

Cock Crow

And immediately…the cock crew— Luk_22:60

What You Hear Depends on What You Are

It is a deep truth, though not the whole truth, that what we hear depends on what we are. The meaning which we find in any voice is largely determined by ourselves. Peter was not the only one that night who heard the thrilling summons of the cock crow. Through that tense night of agony many would be wakeful in Jerusalem. But for Peter there was something in that note which was inaudible to anybody else; he heard it with the hearing of his soul. To the sufferer it meant that the darkness of the night was passing. To the laborer it was a sign and token that the toil of another day must soon begin. To Peter it was a swift reminder of his cowardice and of his boasting, and of the warning message of his Lord.

Our Memory Is a Light Sleeper

One notes here, what is so often true, how a simple common thing can wake the memory. Our Lord wanted to waken Peter's memory, and He did it by the crowing of the cock. In the dark hour when he was tricked and trapped Peter had forgotten everything. He had forgotten his loyalty and love, and his infinite indebtedness to Jesus. One might have thought that nothing but a thunder-clap would arrest that panic-stricken heart; but Jesus is wiser than our thought. There is no peal of thunder at the dawn. There is no angelic music as at Bethlehem. There is nothing but ordinary cock-crow, familiar to Peter since he was a boy. But our Lord, who knows our nature perfectly, knows that memory is a light sleeper, waking up at the very slightest knock. A bar of music or some familiar fragrance, and the past is all back with us again. A scrap of writing or a little shoe and we are wandering through vanished years. Often when we have sinned and fallen, and are in peril of the hardened heart, it is in such ways that memory awakes. Hence the simplicity of Christian sacraments. They are not anticipative; they are commemorative. They do not portray One who is unknown; their office is to recall One who has been here. So all that is needed is a bit of bread and a cup of wine upon the table—and we remember the Lord's death until He comes. Legend would have awakened Peter by some wild shattering of the elements. It would have sounded a trumpet in high heaven. Christ, who knows our frame, and is always economical of miracle, does it by the crowing of the cock.

Why Did the Lord Choose a Sign of the Dawn?

One detects also in this note of warning a message of high hope for Simon Peter. There are birds which start their singing when the evening falls; but cockcrow is the herald of the day. The cock was crying that morning was at hand. It was the scout of sunrise. Its call was a clarion that after the dark hours there was going to be hopeful light again. And I think that our blessed Savior chose that token to tell Peter that his night was passing, and that the dawn was going to redden on the hills. Might He not easily have made His note of time the paling or the setting of the stars'? Might He not have pointed to the soldiers' torches, and by the quenching of these torches dated things? But deliberately, right in the heart of warning, our Lord brought in the shrilling of the cock—and cockcrow is the harbinger of morning. Peter had known that since his childhood. He had heard that note across the sea of Galilee. After many a weary night of fishing it had broken with reviving power on his ear. And who can doubt that now, with all the bitter memories it awoke, it struck a chord of hope in Peter's heart? Sinner though he was, there was going to be another day for him. He was going to have another opportunity of showing love and loyalty and service. That deep blending of memory and hope is the authentic touch of Jesus, as we all find when we take the bread and wine.

One feels the beauty of that symbol more if we compare it with what we read of Judas. "Then Judas, having received the sop, went immediately out, and it was night." Between Judas and Simon Peter there was all the difference in the world—the one deliberate, calculating, cold; the other failing in temporary panic. And Judas, sinning, went out into the night; it was the symbol of his darkened spirit—but Peter, sinning, heard the bird of morning. The one had made himself the child of darkness; the other, for all his sin, was facing eastward. Judas had let night into his heart before he went out into the night. But Peter, for all the staggering of his cowardice, loved his Lord with a passionate devotion and immediately, when he had sinned, he heard the, cockcrow. There was bitter memory in that, but there was something more than bitter memory. There was something that Judas never got; there was the promise of another day. And how that day dawned, after the resurrection, and how Peter was restored to love and service, all readers of the Gospel story know.

July 14

The Road to Emmaus - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus— Luk_24:13

The Most Memorable Appearance of the Risen Christ

Of all the appearances of the risen Christ, none has a stronger hold upon Christendom than the one along the road to Emmaus. It has brought light to many darkened hearts, and comfort to innumerable souls. Christ revealed Himself to Mary in the garden, and that will always be precious to the Church. He revealed Himself to the eleven, and to Thomas, and to Peter and John beside the sea of Galilee. But this meeting on the Emmaus road, with its revelation of the living Savior, is engraven on the universal heart.

Who these two were we cannot tell. We know nothing about them except the name of one of them. And we are not at liberty to associate that name Cleophas with the Klopas who is mentioned in the Gospels. That they were not of the eleven disciples is certain, for it was to the eleven that they hurried with their news. They were clearly on intimate terms with the apostles, for they knew where they lodged when they went straight to them. But beyond that we know nothing of the men, neither their story in the days before the cross, nor yet their service in the coming years when the Holy Ghost was given at Pentecost. They were in no sense distinguished persons. They were not outstanding in their zeal or love. They occupied no place of proud preeminence among those who had been followers of the Lord. And I take it as characteristic of the Lord that in the glory of His resurrection life He gave Himself with such fulness of disclosure to those unknown and undistinguished men. It reminds one vividly of that earlier hour when He had talked with the woman of Samaria. She too was nameless, and utterly obscure, yet with her He lingered in the richest converse. And now the cross has come, and He has died and risen, yet being risen He is still unchanged, for He still reveals Himself to lowly hearts. Here is the Savior for the common man. Here is the Lord who does not spurn the humble. Here is the Master of all those obscure lives that are yet precious in the sight of heaven. Had these two travelers been John and Peter, we might have hesitated to take home their rich experience, but being what they were, they are our brothers.

The Two Travelers Were without Hope

First then let us try to understand the state of mind of these two travelers. And in the first place this is notable, that these two travelers had lost their hopes. There was a time, not so long ago, when their hopes had been burning brightly like a star. They trusted this was He who should redeem Israel—that was the glowing conviction of their hearts. And as they followed Jesus in His public ministry, and saw His miracles, and heard His words, brighter and even brighter grew the hope that this was the Christ, the Son of the living God. Even the cross itself had not dispelled their hopes, for they remembered that He had talked of that. They remembered that He had said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." But now the third day's sun was near to setting, and darkness was soon to fall upon the world, and a great darkness, heavier than sunset, was beginning to cast its shadow on their hearts. It was true that some women had come hurrying in, bearing the tidings that the tomb was empty. But it was one thing to be told the tomb was empty, and quite another to believe that Christ was risen. And even the women had confessed, when questioned, that they had not seen the Lord Himself, but only an empty grave, and the stone rolled away, and certain mysterious shapes they took for angels. Clearly, then, their Master had not risen. He was still sleeping somewhere beneath the Syrian sky. They would never see Him again, nor hear His words, nor follow Him through any village street. And so that evening, journeying to Emmaus, they were men convinced that they had lost their Lord, and having lost Him they had lost their hopes. Are there any today who are like these men? Any who have lost their hope in Christ? Any to whom Christ was very real once, and who now have a "name to live and yet are dead"? My brother and sister, if that be your condition—if once you had a hope that now is dimmed—you are like these two journeying to Emmaus.

They Were without Joy

Then in the next place this is notable, that these two travelers had lost their gladness. "What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another," said Jesus to them, "as ye walk and are sad?" Sometimes, as we pass along the streets, we meet a face of unutterable sadness. Sorrow is stamped on every lineament of it, all the more tragic because a smile is there. And when we see it, amid the crowd of faces that bear no trace of any great experience, it haunts us so that is it long ere we forget it. Now that is what our Lord seems to have noticed, graven deep upon the faces of these travelers. "What are ye talking about," He said to them, "as ye walk together and are sad?" The utter absence of joy upon their faces—the look of melancholy and of sorrow—touched at once His tender loving heart. And can you wonder that their looks were sad, when all that brightened life for them was gone? A hopeless heart may be a very brave heart, but I never heard that it was a merry heart. So these two disciples, having lost their hopes, had lost that gladness which is the child of hope, and as they walked together they were sad.

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The Road to Emmaus - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

So long as Jesus Christ had been alive, there had been a great gladness in their hearts. Only to see Him had been like music to them, as it always is with anyone we love. That they had had their troubles just like other people, is only to say that they were human. Perhaps they were farmers struggling with short harvests, or fishermen who had often toiled and had caught nothing. But this was certain, that in Jesus' company their deepest experience was a great gladness, a joy that they never could quite fathom, and yet which they knew to be intensely real. Always in His society there was delight. There was a feeling of peace and of security. When He was with them all their care and worry took to itself wings and fled away. But now their Lord has passed beyond their ken, and it was like the passing of the sunshine for them, and as they walked together they were sad. Now sadness is of many kinds. There is the sadness which the exile feels when he is far away from home and kindred, and when in the thronging of the crowd around him he catches no glimpse of a familiar face. There is the sadness which the aged feel, when they remember happy days now gone forever; and there is the sadness of the open grave. All these are elements of our mortality, but there is a spiritual sadness different from these, and the cause of it is an absent Lord. When in prayer the heavens seem as brass, when the Bible loses its fragrance and its dew, when spiritual books begin to pall on us, when the services of the House of God become a weariness, then is the heart of the true disciple sad. Then does one feel as if Jesus had not risen, and as if all one's hopes in Him had been a mockery. Then do men cry the exceeding bitter cry, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." And should there be any of God's children who are suffering from such spiritual desertion, I beg of them to remember that their frame of heart is like that of the two journeying to Emmaus.

They Were Not without Desire

But there is one thing more that is notable, and it is this, that these two had lost none of their desire. They had lost their hope and they had lost their gladness, but they had lost none of their desire. That afternoon, walking to Emmaus, their talk was all of the Lord Jesus Christ. And from a hint in the original, we learn that their talk was animated, intense, and eager. They were talking loudly, as Orientals do, and the words were being flung one to the other, for out of the fulness of the heart the mouth was speaking. Someone has said, and there is truth in it, that our friends are never really ours till we have lost them. Only then, undimmed and unobscured, does the vision of them arise within our hearts. And as it is with those whom we have loved, and who have left us and passed into the shadow, so was it with these disciples and their Lord. They never understood how much they needed Him until the day when they thought that He was gone. They never understood how much they loved Him, till the shadow of parting had fallen on their love. But now they knew it, and so, that dreary day, their talk as they journeyed was all of Jesus Christ, and the deepest desire of their hearts was this: Oh that I knew where I might find Him! Are there any reading these words who in the secret of their souls are saying that? Careless and prayerless, backsliding and worldly, are you coming to feel you cannot live without Him? If so—if as the hart for the water-brooks, unsatisfied, you thirst for the living God—remember you have a kinship with these two.

Christ Showed Them the Supreme Necessity of His Death

In the first place, then, and passing by minor matters, He showed them the supreme necessity of His death. "Ought not Christ," He said, "to have suffered these things, that so He might enter into glory?" We may take it for certain that these two disciples had never really grasped the need that Christ should die. They had shared in the common hope that He would reign, and it was a throne they were dreaming of and not a cross. If any dark surmising had arisen in them, stirred by the mysterious words of Jesus, they had crushed them as something too terrible to contemplate. That He whom they loved should die a felon's death was something too awful to believe. And when it happened—there, before their eyes—it seemed a hideous and irreparable calamity. It was as if there had been some mistake in heaven; as if the will of the Eternal had been battled; as if powers were abroad defying the Messiah, and hurrying His triumph into tragedy. And then Christ met them, and spoke about His death, and they learned that the crucifixion was no accident. It was no longer the greatest of calamities; it became the greatest of necessities. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things? And they saw its moral and spiritual grandeur; and it dawned upon them that the cross they loathed was something more wonderful than any crown. It was then that their hearts began to burn within them, and the light to break upon their darkened souls. And everything looked different to them now when they saw the meaning of the death of Jesus. And I venture to say that it is always so with hearts that are hungering for the living God—the primary step towards fellowship and peace is to come face to face with the death of Jesus Christ. That I am a sinner and cannot save myself—that God has provided an all-sufficient Savior—that He has died for me, and that I die in Him, and through His death I can reach up to heaven again—all this, so simple that a child can grasp it, and yet so deep that angels cannot fathom it, is the basis of our peace with God. Think not to comprehend all that it means. The deepest we can never comprehend. Call it a substitution if you will—call it an atonement, call it anything. The vital thing is not what you may call it; the vital thing is to grasp it and to feel it, and feeling it to find that in the blood of Christ there is peace of conscience and fellowship with God.

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The Road to Emmaus - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Christ Opened Their Eyes and Hearts to the Scriptures

Then the next step our Savior took was to lead them back to the Word of God again. "Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." We know from the Gospels how Christ had loved the Scripture in the days of His ministry before the cross. We know how He used it when He was tempted, and how He preached from it in the synagogue of Nazareth. And it is a sign to us that He is still the same, though He has passed into the resurrection glory, that He still goes back to the old familiar Scripture which He had learned beside His mother's knee. It is a singular thing that, after He was risen, Christ is never mentioned to have appeared to His mother even once. The name of Mary is never mentioned once in the forty days of our Savior's resurrection. But I sometimes think that when she heard these two rehearsing all that He had taught them from the Scripture, she would have her own sweet secret memories of the old home, and would be quietly certain she was not forgotten. Had these two travelers, then, been neglecting their Bibles? I do not think that that is the least likely. Probably they knew Moses and the prophets far better than any of us. But I want you to think what Scripture must have meant to them in all manner of unexpected depth and fulness, when the Interpreter of it was the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I may have listened to some saintly preacher drawing out the inner meaning of God's Word. And as we did so, our hearts burned within us, and we saw what we had never seen before. And if that be so with an erring, sinful minister, I want you to try to think what it must have been when the risen Son of God handled the Scripture, and showed these two the meaning of it all. Once again they heard of the Paschal Lamb, and of the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness, and of the smitten shepherd in Zechariah, and of the suffering servant in Isaiah. But hearing it all interpreted by Christ, the Bible became a living book to them, and in the hour when it became a living book, they found that Christ Himself was by their side. Once more do I venture to suggest that it is always so in the experience of the soul. One of the surest signs that Christ is nigh is when He makes the Bible live again. It is a living Christ who makes a living Scripture, and when He is going to reveal Himself to us, passages that we have known since we were children begin once more to live and burn for us. If Christ be absent, then all the lore of ages will never make the Word a living book. If Christ be dead for us, in heart and conscience, then is the Bible always a dead book. But when old texts take a strange grip of us, when they haunt us through the market and the street, when we cannot silence some gracious invitation, when we cannot shake off some oracle of warning, when promises come like music to our ear in days of despondency or hours of peril, when some great text that we have long ignored reaches out its loving hands to us, I say that when that happens to a man, the risen Savior is not far away. That was what the two disciples found. The Bible became a living book to them. And their hearts burned within them as they heard again the echo of the old familiar passages. And it all meant that He whom they thought vanished was not vanished but at their very side, though their eyes were holden, and they did not know Him.

Christ Revealed Himself in the Breaking of the Bread

And then He revealed Himself in the breaking of the bread, and it seems like an anti-climax, does it not? After all this marshaled preparation, shall we not look for something far more glorious? We shall have some vision that will strike the sense? We shall have some flash of glory on the eye? "And He revealed Himself in the breaking of the bread." It was in no sense a sacramental meal, as we use that word sacrament in our theology. It was a frugal supper in a village home of two tired travelers, and another. Yet it was then—in the breaking of the bread, and not in any vision of resurrection splendor—that they knew that their companion was the Lord. How that discovery flashed upon their hearts, the Bible, so wonderful in its silences, does not tell. It may have been the quiet air of majesty with which He took at once the place of host, when they had invited Him in to be their guest. It may have been the familiar word of blessing that awakened sweet memories of Galilean days. Or it may have been that as He put forth His hand after the blessing to take the bread and break it, they saw that it was a hand which had been pierced. However it was, whether by word or hand, they felt irresistibly that this was He. Some little action, some dear familiar trait, told them in a flash this was the Christ. Not in some vision of resurrection glory, but in some characteristic movement of the fingers, maybe, they recognized that they found their Lord. In daily life we are always meeting that—the revelation of the insignificant. A certain trick of speech—a tone, a look—and someone whom we have lost is at our side again. And so when a man has spiritually lost his Savior, and is being restored to the joy of his first love, it is often so that the Lord reveals Himself. Our commonest mercies come to gleam on us as the most wonderful of all created things. Our sicknesses, our trials, our disappointments, are all transfigured with a Father's love. Until at last though we have seen no vision, and have only had common meals and common mercies, we too are thrilled and say, "It is the Lord." When that deep certainty once fills a man it seems as if nothing else could ever matter. When that deep certainty once fills a man, in a real sense for him to live is Christ. When that deep certainty once fills a man, he will hurry like these two disciples to Jerusalem, and tell out, though he may not say a word, that he has seen the Lord.

July 15

The Burning Heart - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way ?— Luk_24:32

A Beautiful Story That Lives in Our Hearts

Every detail of this beautiful story lives in the imagination of Christendom. Never a week passes but some earnest heart is travelling with the two down to Emmaus. We see them joined by the stranger on their journey, and then the talk turns on all that has been happening. We see the three entering the house, and sitting down to supper, where the bread is broken. Then the eyes of the two disciples are opened; they recognize that their fellow wayfarer is Christ, and in the very moment of that recognition they glance again and He is gone. Like the followers of Cortez of whom Keats sings, they look at each other with a wild surmise; and in that moment of tumultuous excitement they speak out frankly, as in such hours men often do. "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?"

One Distinctive Mark of Christianity Has Been, This Burning of the Heart

Someone—I think it was Matthew Arnold—defined religion as morality touched with emotion. In all the fulness which such words are capable of bearing, that is conspicuously true of Christianity. We know how the Gospel has renovated morals, yet the Gospel is far more than any moral philosophy. We know how the Gospel has quickened and expanded intellect, yet the Gospel is not primarily intellectual. Its deepest appeal is not to the intelligence: its deepest appeal is always to the heart. I have seen a fountain with one great central basin, and round about it a dozen little basins—and of course it is always possible to fetch water, and to fill these lesser basins separately. But the fountain was not intended to be filled so. That was not the idea in the mind of the designer. He meant the water in the central basin to rise, and well up to the brim and lap and overflow, and in that superabundance from the center every vessel and receptacle in the structure would be filled. It is thus that the Gospel deals with human life. It does not begin with the brightening of the intellect; it begins with the burning of the heart. It touches what is deepest and truest in us by the power of a love passing the love of women; and all its influences in the world of conduct, and all its expansive action on the brain, and all the recreation of the nations, with the new ideals and aspirations of the ages, are the result of that burning of the heart.

We see this distinctive feature of the Gospel very clearly in its earliest days. What most impresses us in the Acts is not the heroism nor the resource of the first preachers. It is the extraordinary way in which the Gospel reached to the very center of men's lives, and filled them, sometimes in an instant, with a glowing ardor that was rich in promise. In the dead of winter, when the frost is keen, you know how sometimes our windows get frosted over. The glass is dimmed like the fine gold of which the prophet speaks, and ceases to be transparent through its frosted veil. We cannot see the figures in the streets, nor the trees in their beauty of ten thousand diamonds, nor the infinite depths of the cloudless winter sky—they are all hidden from us by that icy covering. Now, it is possible for a child to take his knife, and doggedly and steadily to scrape the frost away; but there is a simpler and surer and quicker way than that. Kindle the fire; set wood and coals a-burning; heighten the temperature of the room within the window, and in an hour the warmth will achieve for you what a whole day's rasping never would accomplish. It was the dead of winter when the Gospel came, and men were trying to scrape away the frost. Every honest effort that was being made to lead mankind to better and nobler things was like the child with his knife upon the pane. Then Christ, through His love and sacrifice, kindled the fire—heightened the temperature of the secret and mystical chamber—and the frost melted with incredible speed, and men recognized their brother in the streets, and nature was clothed in unexpected glory, and in the depths of heaven there was home. All that forces itself on us in the Book of Acts. That book is like the most valiant human lives: there is no glitter in it, but abundant glow. From the day of Pentecost with its tongues of fire, we hear as it were the echo of our text, "Did not our heart burn within us?"

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The Burning Heart - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

It has been noted by Professor Lecky in his work on the "History of European Morals," that one great change has come over the moral temper of Europe. That change may be summed up in a word by saying that the emotions and the affections—in a word the heart—have won a recognition for themselves in modern life, which they never gained in the life of the old world. We all have some idea of what a stoic was: we know how zealously he repressed all emotion; and though perhaps we are apt to overdraw the picture (for the human heart is always too big and strong to be effectively fettered by any iron creed), yet the fact remains that in the old pagan world the burning of the heart was not distinctive. It was not the virtues of the heart that were applauded; it was the virtues of the judgment and the will. Today as the very crown of all the virtues there stands love; but in the old world love was not a grace—it was an appetite. Today to be tender-hearted is a noble thing; but then to be tender was to be reckoned weak. Today it is a mark of the highest manhood to be pitiful; but in the eyes of the stoic, pity was a vice. Compare the cold severity of Grecian statuary with the warmth and tenderness of Raphael's Madonna; contrast the lot of woman in antiquity with the honor and glory of womanhood today, and you will feel that some power has been at work shifting the accent of the moral life. Somehow into the life of Europe there has come a recognition of the heart. Pity and tenderness and love and charity have won a hearing for themselves at last. The heart has been touched and has begun to burn; and it is the Gospel of Christ Jesus that has done it.

I think, too, that in this burning of the heart lies the great secret of Christian progress. A Gospel that carries this power in its message has little need of any other aid. Mohammed conquered, but Mohammed used the sword, and without the sword he would have made little progress. And Buddha conquered—he won thousands of followers—but the message of Buddha never kindled anybody. It lulled men to rest with dreams of infinite quietude, and with the hopes of Nirvana where they should cease to feel. But there is something more inspiring than quietude—it is ardor, enthusiasm, animated feeling; and there is a better secret than a brandished sword: it is the secret of a burning heart. And I humbly submit that if our Lord is conquering, and if His Gospel is going to be a universal Gospel, it is because He has touched that spring in human life. When a man is faced by any great endeavor, it is not more light he wants, it is more heat. Kindle his heart by any ruling passion—love, anger, indignation, pity—and he will fling himself on any obstacle. The only statesmen who ever move a country are the statesmen who can set the people's heart a-burning—and that is true of the Savior and the world. He meets men as they travel by life's ways and for every battle you will have new equipment, and for every temptation the necessary strength, and nothing will be too hard for you to try, and nothing will be too sore for you to bear, if you can but say like these two going to Emmaus, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us?"

The Gospel Ever Makes the Heart Burn as Christ Did Here

There are two things only which I ask you to observe. First, we should carefully mark that the hearts of these two men began to burn, not so much by learning what was new, as by a new interpretation of the old. These travelers were no strangers to the Scripture. They were Jews, and had read deeply in every book of it. When they were little children in their village homes, they had clambered round their father's knee on Sabbaths, and had listened to the stories of Moses and David and Daniel with the eagerness that our own young folk display. They had studied Jeremiah more intently than any of us, and they had heard it expounded in the synagogue. The Scripture was a familiar book to them. And what did our Lord do when He met with them? He took the book they had studied all their lives. He turned to the pages that they knew so well. He led them down by the old familiar texts. And in the old He showed such a depth of meaning, and in the familiar such a wealth of love, and He so irradiated the prophetic mystery and so illumined its darkness with His light, that not by what was absolutely new, but by the new interpretation of the old, their hearts began to burn within them by the way.

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The Burning Heart - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Does not our Savior always act like that when He begins to make our heart burn? He does not startle us with unexpected novelties; He touches with glory what is quite familiar. It is the familiar experiences that He explains. It is the familiar cravings that He satisfies. It is the familiar thoughts which have filled the mind since childhood that he expands into undreamed of fulness. We have known what sin was since we were at school. Christ meets us and talks about our sin—and we learn that sin is more exceedingly sinful than we had ever thought. In our most reproachful moments. We learn, too, that He died that we might be forgiven, and that there is pardon for our worst, this very hour. We have known what pain was and we have known what death was, and we have known that there was a heaven and a God; but when Christ meets us as we travel by the way and talks to us of these familiar things, there is such promise and light and love about them all, that everything becomes new. That is the first secret of the burning heart—nothing new or startling or revolutionary but the life we are living, and the sin we are sinning, and the death we shall die, and the God we shall all meet, set in the light of a love that is unfathomable, and interpreted through the consciousness of Jesus.

The Christ behind the Word

But after all, what set their heart a-burning was not the mere word of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Christ who was behind the word. It was their immediate contact with that personality, and the mysterious outflow of His life upon them, which stirred them, as only personality can do, and moved their nature to its very depths. I remember two experiences that illustrate this, the one from literature and the other from history. When the essayist Hazlitt was a young man at home, his mind was dull and his faculties unawakened. But in one of those charming essays that he calls "Wintersloe," he narrates how the poet Coleridge came to see his father, and young Hazlitt walked several miles home with him. Hazlitt tells in his own eager and eloquent way, all that the walk with Coleridge meant for him. It quickened his intellect, gave him a new world, put a new radiance into the sunset for him, and a new note into the song of every bird. His heart began to burn, and it was not the talk that did it; it was the poet who was behind the talk. The other instance is from the life of Napoleon. You will find it in Lord Rosebery's book The Last Phase. Napoleon was beaten, his great career was ended; he was a prisoner on St. Helena. Yet "everyone," said the French commissioner Montchenu, "everyone who has an audience of Napoleon leaves him in a state of most intense enthusiasm." Their hearts began to burn, and it was not the talk that did it—it was the titanic man behind the talk. Dimly, then, and very imperfectly, such instances help us to understand our passage. It was immediate contact with a living Person—true poet, yet captain of the armies of the universe; it was immediate contact with the Lord Jesus Christ that made their hearts burn as they journeyed to Emmaus.

Need I tell you that it has been the same in all the ages? The ardor of Christendom, its life and its enthusiasm, its countless efforts, its unwearied service—all that is rooted, not in any creed, but in the immediate presence of a living Christ. Why are men toiling in our slums tonight? Why are our sisters preaching in the heart of India, and living and suffering in central Africa? Why are men resolutely spurning what is base, and clinging to all that is pure and all that is noble? Ask them and they will say, "Christ died for me." There is no motive like it in the world. I beseech you to realize the love of Christ. That is the secret of the burning heart, and with the burning heart one can do anything.

July 16

The Mastery of Our Thoughts

Why do thoughts arise in your hearts?— Luk_24:38

Practicing the Control of Thought

We are all familiar with the difference that is made by the thoughts which arise within our hearts. Often they cast a shadow on our universe. A man may waken in the morning singing, and address himself cheerfully to duty, and then, suddenly, some unbidden thought may creep or flash into his mind—and in a moment the heavens become cloudy and the music of the morning vanishes, and there is fret and bitterness within. Things have not altered in the least. Everything is as it was an hour ago. The burden of the day has not grown heavier, nor has anybody ceased to love us. Yet all the world seems different, and the brightness has vanished from the sky under the tyranny of intruding thoughts. No one can achieve serenity who does not practice the control of thought. You cannot build a lovely house out of dirty or discolored bricks. The power of our thoughts is so tremendous over health and happiness and character that to master them is moral victory.

A Moral Task

This mastery of our thoughts is difficult, but then everything beautiful is difficult. The kind of person I have no patience with is the person who wants everything made easy. When an artist paints a lovely picture he does that by a process of selection. Certain features of the landscape he rejects; other aspects he welcomes and embraces. And if to do that even the man of genius has to scorn delights and live laborious days, how can we hope without the sternest discipline to paint beautiful pictures in the mind? So is it with the musician when he plays for us some lovely piece of music. Years of training are behind that melody which seems to come rippling from his fingers. And if he has to practice through hard hours to produce such melody without, how can we hope, without an equal effort, to create a like melody within? There are two moral tasks which seem to me supremely difficult and yet supremely necessary. One is the redemption of our time; the other is the mastery of our thoughts. Probably most of us, right on to the end, are haunted by a sense of failure in these matters. But the great thing is to keep on struggling.

We see, too, how difficult this task is when we compare it with mastery of speech. If it be hard to set a watch upon our lips, it is harder to set a watch upon our thoughts. All speech has social reactions, and social prudence is a great deterrent. If you speak your mind, you may lose your position, possibly you may lose your friend. But thought is hidden—it is shrouded—it moves in dark and impenetrable places; it has no apparent social reactions. A man may be thinking bitter thoughts of you, yet meet you with a smile upon his face. A typist may inwardly despise her master, yet outwardly be a model of obedience. It is this secrecy, this surrounding darkness, which has led men to say that thought is free, and which makes the mastery of thought so difficult.

Think on These Things

Now, the fine thing in the New Testament is this, that while it never calls that easy which is difficult, it yet proclaims that the mastery of thought is within the power of everybody. Think, for instance, of the beatitude: blessed are the pure in heart. Whenever our Lord says that anything is blessed He wants us to understand that it is possible. Yet no man can have purity of heart, as distinguished from purity of conduct, who is not able to grapple with his thoughts. Again by our thoughts we shall be judged—that is always implied in the New Testament. Christ came, and is going to come again, "that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." But I refuse to believe that men are to be judged by anything that lies beyond their power—to credit that would make the Judge immoral. Then does not the great apostle say "If there be any virtue .... think on these things"? It would be mockery to command us so to think if the controlling of our thoughts was quite beyond us. It may be difficult, as fine things always are, but the clear voice of the Word of God proclaims that it is within the capacity of everybody.

If, then, someone were to ask me how is a man to practice this great discipline, remembering the experience of the saints, I think I should answer in some such way as this: You must summon up the resources of your will. You must resist beginnings. You must remember that the most hideous of sins is to debauch the mind. You must fill your being so full of higher interests that when the devil comes and clamors for admission he will find there is not a chair for him to sit on. Above all, you must endeavor daily to walk in a closer fellowship with Christ. It is always easier to have lovely thoughts when walking with the Altogether Lovely One. For then He breathes on us, "soft as the breath of evening," and says "Receive ye the Holy Spirit," and in the Holy Spirit there is power. He who searcheth all things can direct and dominate the hidden things. He can empower us to bring every thought into captivity to Christ—

For every virtue we possess,

And every victory won,

And every thought of holiness

Are His alone.

Quote from: blackeyedpeas on July 16, 2006, 05:30:44 AM

Brother, this reminds me of a poem I posted some time ago

Mind your thoughts, for they become your words.
Choose your words, for they become actions.
Understand your actions, for they become habits.
Study your habits, for they will become your character.
Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.

July 17

Hands Beautiful - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Behold my hands— Luk_24:39

The Hand—A Symbol of the Active Life

The Bible is signally distinguished for this, that with a message from God it reaches the human heart, but not less remarkable is the attention which it directs to the human hands. In our Western speech, with its leaning toward abstraction, we speak of character and its outflow in conduct; but in the Eastern speech, which has always been pictorial, men spoke of the heart and its witness in the hands. "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ....? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart." "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off." "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." And Pilate, wishing to assert his innocence in a manner which the Jews could comprehend, did not cry, "My conduct is reproachless," but in the presence of them all he washed his hands. That is the symbolism of the hand in Scripture. It is conduct incarnate, the sign of the active life. It is the organ through which is sketched, as on a screen, the thought that is singing or surging in the heart.

Behold My Hands

Now if that be true of every human hand, it will be very specially true of the hands of Christ. He is always saying to us "Behold My heart": but in the same voice He says, "Behold My hands." Could any meditation, then, be more appropriate for some quiet evening of communion on a Sabbath? Try to conceive that Christ is in your midst, that Christ on whose body and blood mystical you fed today. Try to conceive that He is standing there and saying to everyone of you, "Behold My hands." What are these hands? What do they signify? We shall run through the Gospel story that we may see.

Hands of Brotherhood

Behold His hands, then, for they are hands of brotherhood. When Jesus came into Peter's house, we read, He saw his wife's mother sick of a fever. And what did He do? He put out His hand and touched her, and she arose and ministered to them. When He was in Bethsaida they brought a blind man to Him, beseeching Him that He would heal him. And what did He do? He took the blind man by the hand, and hand in hand they left the town together. And the world will never forget that scene at Nain, when Jesus met the sad procession to the grave, and moved with compassion He put forth His hand, and touched the bier. In all these cases, and in a hundred others, what men recognized in the touch was brotherhood. Here was no cold pity, no condescension, no distance of heart from heart. Christ came alongside of suffering and sorrow, brought Himself into living and actual touch with it; and the men who were standing by, and who saw it all, said, "Behold His hands, they are the hands of brotherhood."

And always, where the Gospel is at work, it stretches out its hands in the same way. Is not this the glory of the Christian spirit that it pulsates with the sweet sense of brotherhood. The poet Crabee, talking about charity, says:

A common bounty may relieve distress,

But whom the vulgar succor they oppress.

But the Christian never lowers when he helps, for with everything he gives, he gives his hand. It is not the way of the Gospel to isolate itself, and to give cold advice and help as from a distance. It bears men's burdens, understands their need, calls the poorest, brother, and the fallen, sister. Until men feel that the hands stretched out today are the very hands that touched the bier at Nain, and they know that the hands of Christ are hands of brotherhood.

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Hands Beautiful - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Hands of Power

Again, behold His hands, for they are hands of power. When Jesus went back the second time to Nazareth, do you remember what the villagers said about Him? What they could not fathom was how this carpenter's Son was endued with His unquestionable power. "What wisdom is this that is given Him," they said, "that even such mighty works are wrought by His hands." They had seen these hands busy at carpentering once, but now there was a power in their touch that baffled them. And then I turn to the Gospel of St. John, where our Savior Himself is speaking of His sheep; and He says, "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." Behold His hands, then, for they are hands of power; they are powerful to do and powerful to keep. There have never been hands on earth like those of Jesus, so mighty in action and in guardianship.

I read the other day in some book about China a remark that had been made by a young Chinese convert. He belonged to the literary class, and had studied Confucius, and the remark he made was something of this kind. He said, "The difference between Confucius and Christ is not so much a question of morality: for I find the golden rule in the sacred books of the East, and a great deal more that Jesus might have uttered; but the difference is that once I was told what to do, but left quite helpless and powerless to do it; but now with the ideal comes the power." The hand of Confucius was a cold, dead hand; it had written the maxim—it could not inspire the man. There was no power in its touch to kindle the dark heart, to animate the will, to change the life. But in contact with Jesus it was very different—that was the meaning of this Chinese student—there was healing and there was power in His touch. What is the power that has abolished slavery? What is the power that has given us a free Scotland? What is the power that has changed ten million lives, inspired the missionary, and made the social worker? The power is the power of the touch of Jesus; it is the impress and the impact of His hand. Behold His hands, then, in the advance of Christendom. Behold His hands in the change of countless lives. Behold them in the new ideals of the multitude; in the graces and perseverance of the saint. They are not only hands of brotherhood, for their very touch has been an inspiration. Behold His hands, for they are hands of power.

Hands of Tenderness

Then again, behold His hands, for they are hands of tenderness. Of all the exquisite pictures in the Gospel I think there is none more exquisite than the scene when "the mothers of Salem their children brought to Jesus." With a mother's instinct for a Man who was really good, they wished their children to be blessed by Him. And the disciples would have kept the children off: Christ was too busy with great affairs to heed an infant. They had never guessed yet that the kingdom of heaven was mirrored for Jesus in these childish eyes. Then Jesus drew the little children to Him, and blessed them; but He did more than that. It has sunk deep into the memories of the evangelists that in blessing them He laid His hand upon them. Do not spoil the act by making it sacerdotal. Do not imagine that He was communicating grace. It was an act of the sweetest and most natural tenderness, the gentle and caressing touch of love. When He laid His hand upon the infant's head, He was laying it upon the mother's heart. Do you think these mothers ever would forget it? Some of them would see that hand again. It would be pierced then, streaming with red blood, and they would say, "Look! that hand was once laid upon my child." Behold His hands, then, they are hands of power; but the mothers could tell you that they were hands of tenderness.

Is not that one of the wonders of Christ's touch—the union of power and gentleness that marks it? It is mighty to heal, mighty to raise the dead; but a bruised reed it will not break. Christ is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, so is He named in the Book of Revelation; but when John looked in heaven for the Lion, behold, in the midst of the throne a Lamb as it had been slain. Why is the Gospel so precious when the chair is empty and the grave is full? Can you tell me why in seasons of disappointment, in times of distress, anxiety, and sorrow, men find in the Bible their best and truest Comforter? It is not only because the hand of Jesus is powerful to console and to assuage; it is because when every other touch would pain, the touch of Jesus is exquisitely tender. Why are our Christian homes so full of gentle love, so different from the stern spirit of antiquity? There is only one answer, it is "Behold His hands": it is the touch of Christ which has achieved it. In the tender and happy grace of Christian womanhood—behold His hands. In the kindness and care that is shown to the dumb creatures—behold His hands. The very dogs, says Dr. Laws of Livingstonia, the very dogs here feel the benefits of Christianity. His touch is mighty, then, mighty to heal and save—there are those who vouch for that. But the hand that was laid so gently on the children has never been withdrawn from humanity.

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Hands Beautiful - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Hands of Suffering

Once more, behold His hands, for they were once disfigured. Their beauty was torn away from them with wounds. They were pierced with nails, and fastened to the cross, in the hour when Jesus Christ was crucified. I have often thought that the scribes and Pharisees must have had a twice-distilled pleasure when the hands were nailed. They would say "Behold these hands that once wrought such mighty deeds; they will never trouble or vex us anymore. Look at them ragged and torn, pierced through and through." It was an exquisite morsel of revenge. These hands had played havoc with the priest's hypocrisies: they had plaited the scourge and used it in the Temple. Look at them now on the cross—what hands in the world so powerless—their little day of authority is dead.

But the strange thing is that it is the hands which were pierced that have been the mightiest power in human history. Not the hands laid upon the blind man's eyes, not the hands laid upon the children's heads, have been so mighty in the world's redemption as the hands that were marred and wounded on the cross. Is not that strange? There was a little maiden whose mother was very beautiful—she was very beautiful excepting her hands, and her hands were shrunken and shriveled and unsightly. For a long time, with the delicate reticence of girlhood, the little girl said nothing on the matter; but at last her curiosity overpowered her. "Mother," she said, "I love your beautiful face, and I love your beautiful eyes and brow and neck; but I cannot love your hands, they are so ugly." Then her mother told her the story of her hands. She said, "When you were an infant sleeping in your cradle, one night the cry of fire rang through the house. I rushed upstairs—the nursery was ablaze—but God led me right to the cradle and I saved you; but ever since then my hands have been like this." The little girl was silent for a moment. Then she said "O mother, I still love your face: but I love your hands now. best of all. "Behold His hands, for they were pierced for us!

Hands of Reassurance

Lastly, behold His hands for they are hands of reassurance. After Jesus was risen from the dead, the disciples gathered together and Thomas was with them. And Jesus appeared standing in their midst, and said to them "Peace be with you." We all know how Thomas had doubted Him. He had said, "except I see in His hand the print of the nails." Nothing would satisfy or convince that realist except the print of the nail upon the palm. And Jesus said to him, "Thomas, behold My hand; is not that the hand that was nailed upon the tree?"—which, when hearing and seeing, Thomas falls before Him crying "My Lord and my God." I ask you ever to remember, then, that the hand of Christ is a reassuring hand. When we are tempted to doubt if He still lives and reigns, to us as to Thomas He says, "Behold My hands." Much may be dark to us and much may be inexplicable; we may not fathom the mysteries of grace. We know not where Jesus is, nor can we behold Him; but like Thomas we can behold His hands. In a thousand deeds and in a thousand lives there is the unmistakable touch of the Redeemer. Does not that reassure us and kindle our faith again? Does it not inspire our hope and nerve our faint endeavor? It is the risen Savior saying, "Behold My hands"; it is our answering cry "My Lord and My God."

July 18

The Ascension

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have .... And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?— Luk_24:39-41

Why Forty Resurrection Days?

Ten appearances of the risen Lord are recorded in the New Testament, and of these no fewer than five occurred on the day of resurrection. Of the ten appearances Luke narrates three—(1) that to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luk_24:13-35); (2) that to the ten apostles and others (Luk_24:36-49); (3) that on the occasion of the Ascension (Luk_24:50-51), separated by an interval of days from the preceding one, though we might not gather that from a hasty reading of the chapter. Let us remember, too, that from resurrection to ascension there elapsed a period of forty days, and let us recall how often a like period had figured in the story of the Bible. For forty days Moses was on the Mount, preparing for his deliverance of the law. For forty days Elijah was in the wilderness before he came forth for his great work in Israel. For forty days Jesus Himself was in the desert, at the beginning of His public ministry. May it not be that these forty resurrection days were a preface to that glorious ministry in heaven, which Jesus is to carry on forevermore?

They Believed Not for Joy

The disciples then were gathered together, probably in that very upper chamber which was now hallowed with all manner of blessed memory, when Jesus (though the doors were shut for fear of the Jews) appeared in their midst and said, "Peace be unto you." One marks the suddenness of Christ's procedure now. He had suddenly left the two disciples at Emmaus. He suddenly stands amid the ten disciples here. In the action and movement of the risen Jesus there is an unexpected and arresting swiftness that we do not find in the days before the cross. The disciples were scared (for the Greek word means that). It was Jesus, but so altered that He seemed a spirit. And once again we can do nothing but marvel at the timely and wise compassion of the Lord. He did not rebuke them—He knew that they were dust. He bade them touch Him and look at His hands and feet, and handle Him. It was only to a worshipping and adoring Mary that He could say, "Touch me not (thy faith hath made thee whole), for I ascend unto the Father." They touched Him, and never forgot that touch. One touch of a hand will alter a life sometimes. I think that John was living this hour again when long years afterwards he began his priceless letter by speaking of what our hands have handled of the Word of Life (1Jo_1:1). Then a great joy, like a tide, swept over them. And they could not believe, they were so glad. Not long ago Christ found them sleeping for sorrow (Luk_22:45), and now He found them disbelieving for joy. Do not forget, then, that joy can hinder faith. It may be as great a foe to faith as sorrow sometimes is. There was no door to shut or open here, as there was with little Rhoda in the Acts; yet when Rhoda opened not the gate for gladness (Act_12:14), she was like the ten, who believed not for joy.

That One Hour

But Jesus is very tender with such unbelief, for it is as if the sunshine (and not sin) were blinding men. He called for food, and they gave Him a piece of fish. Jerusalem was always well supplied with that. And I dare say the two who had walked with Him to Emmaus, thought He would break it, and suddenly disappear. But "God fulfills Himself in many ways," and Christ had other purposes to serve. He took it, and did eat before them. Who of them now could say this was a spirit? Once many had believed (on the hillside) when Christ made others eat. Now they believed because He Himself ate. Then Jesus led them into the heart of Scripture. He went back to the law and the prophets and the psalms. He read that old story in the light of all that happened till their hearts burned and glowed at the interpretation. Can you wonder that in the Book of Acts the disciples should be so mighty in the Word? A single hour will sometimes teach us more than the dull strivings of half a score of years. And in that one hour, in the upper chamber with Christ, Scripture became a new book to the disciples. Never forget how earnestly and constantly our Lord appealed to the testimony of the Word. Jesus dwelt deep in history and Psalm and prophecy. There never was such a student of the Scripture. He used it as His weapon in the desert. He confuted His enemies with their own sacred books. He found His solace in it. He read His mission there. He went back to its deep words when hanging on Calvary. He taught it more urgently than ever when He rose. The Bible was full of authority and power for a Savior who had risen from the dead.

A Fitting Departure

Then when the forty days were over, and the closing counsels and commissions had been given, Christ led His disciples through the streets of Jerusalem, and over Kedron, and past the shadows of Gethsemane. I think the little company were all silent; their hearts were too full of memories for speech. Then they passed out to the upland ground near Bethany, and Jesus lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And while He blessed them, a cloud gathered, and parted them, and Jesus was carried up into heaven. How simple and how reserved is the whole scene! There is no chariot of fire; no sound of music. It was a fitting departure of One who would not strive nor cry, and who had come down on the mown grass gently as the rain. And did the disciples sorrow or lament? They returned to Jerusalem with great joy (Luk_24:52). Christ had not left them; He would be with them still. Their Lord and they would never be parted again. A little before, they could not believe for joy. Now they were joyful just because they believed.

Brothers and Sisters,

This is really a beautiful thread, and there is much here for a good Bible study. There is a secret here, and it involves what our thoughts and hearts would be like without JESUS. But we, as children of GOD, do have JESUS, and we have the Holy Spirit of GOD living in our hearts. There has already been massive changes take place to the core of our beings. We no longer do things alone, and we are never alone.

We were once captives of sin and darkness, and those things were our masters. The good things that can be and have been given to us are from above, and JESUS CHRIST is now our MASTER! Do we really have to search very far or hard for peace, joy, and spiritual riches for our hearts? NO, these are things that GOD will give us freely if we want them, seek them, and pray for them. BUT, there is another secret here that isn't a secret at all. We can't expect GOD to fill us with with HIS PEACE and JOY if only give HIM a few minutes each day and wallow in the darkness of this world very much. We truly can't serve two masters, and we can't expect THE MASTER to freely give us all things when we don't make HIM the core, focus, and LORD over our lives.

1 Chronicles 28:9 NASB "As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.

Psalms 4:6-8 NASB Many are saying, "Who will show us any good?" Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O LORD! You have put gladness in my heart, More than when their grain and new wine abound. In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O LORD, make me to dwell in safety.

Psalms 19:14 NASB Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Romans 6:10-14 NASB For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Quote from: blackeyedpeas on July 21, 2006, 03:20:55 AM

Brother Tom you said some very important things here.
We must always keep in mind that we are never alone Jesus is with us at all times, even when we think we are alone and no one is watching. What we do, what we say, where we go, and what we think are all exposed to Him. There is nothing hidden from Him. He knows all our thoughts, He knows our hearts and He knows our intentions. With this said if Jesus was physically visible to us all the time and we were able to see Him go everywhere with us, and listen to everything we say and see everything we do, would we change or watch what we do, say and where we go? Or would we be walking in the Light completely confident that we are pleasing our Father.
We can never live two lives, that is impossible we wouldn't be successful with either one and we wouldn't be happy, we would always have to be looking over our shoulder, making sure no one is watching or hearing what we say. We have to completely give all our attention to one or the other.
I choose to always live and walk with Jesus, He is the only one I choose to please, and the only one Who matters, as long as I am walking with Him I can have peace and happiness knowing that He is my Helper, and my rewarder

July 19

John the Witness-Bearer - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

John bear witness of him and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me— Joh_1:15

The Large Place Witnessing Has in Scripture

The thought of witness-bearing finds ample expression in the Bible. "Witness" is one of the key words of the Scripture, occurring in the early records of Genesis and in the writings of prophets and apostles. It makes an interesting study to collect the passages in which the word "witness" is found. Sometimes it is God who is the witness; at other times it is the arching heaven above us. Then we read that when Joshua had made a covenant with the people, he took a great stone and set it up under an oak tree, and said, "Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us" (Jos_24:26-27). Christ Himself is spoken of as a witness — "Behold I have given him for a witness to the people" (Isa_55:4); Paul tells us that God had never left Himself without a witness (Act_14:17); and it was at the feet of that same Paul that the witnesses laid down their clothes in the hour when Stephen cried, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Act_7:59). Let us remember, too, that when we believe on Jesus, there is a witness which we have in ourselves (1Jo_5:10). Such passages as these help to make plain to us what a large place the witness has in Scripture. The Baptist is not isolated in his witness-bearing; he is one of a great and evergrowing company. Let us try, then, to gather up some of the things to which John bore witness. It may be that we also, like the Baptist, may be sent to be the witness-bearers of Christ Jesus.

Witness to the Presence of Christ

First, then, John bore witness to the presence of Christ. The Jews were eagerly expecting the Messiah. They were thrilled with the hope that He was coming. God had awakened such a longing in their hearts that they knew the advent was not far away. So were they straining their eyes to the east and to the south; so were they anxiously awaiting some splendor of arrival; and John bore witness that the Christ they looked for was standing among them even while he spoke (Joh_1:26). He was not hidden in the clouds of heaven; He was not lurking in some far concealment; He would not burst upon them in any visible glory, nor with any credentials that would be instantly accepted. Even while John spoke the Christ was there, moving among them as a man unknown—John bore witness to a present Lord. Now that is a witness which we all may share in. We may show our neighbors that Jesus is among them. We may make it plain to our visitors, as John did, that Jesus of Nazareth is not far away. And we do this not so much by speech or by having the name of Jesus on our lips as by revealing His love and power and patience in the general tenor of our lives. There are some men who immediately impress us with the fact that they walk in the company of Christ. There is no explaining the impression that they make unless it be that they are living with Jesus—their secret is, they have a Friend. That is true witness-bearing, and it is like the Baptist's. It is a witness to the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Witness to the Greatness of Christ

Again, John bore witness to the greatness of Christ. Of course the Jews were expecting a great Savior; all their long history made them sure of that. The threefold dignities of king and priest and prophet were to mingle in the person of Messiah. But greatness has diverse meanings; it is touched with a thousand differences on a thousand lips; and when a nation falls from its high ideals, as the Jews had fallen in the time of John, the great man of the popular imagination is not the great man in the sight of God. Now this was part of the witness-beating of the Baptist, to reveal the true greatness and glory of Messiah; to single Him out as He moved amid the people, and proclaim that He was greater than them all. There were no insignia on Jesus' breast; He was not clothed in any robes of state; there was nothing in His adornment or His retinue to mark Him off as one who was truly great. And it was John's work to pierce through all disguise and see the grace and glory of the Man and cry that though He had no beauty that men should desire Him, yet none was worthy to unloose His shoe-latchet (Joh_1:27). In different ways, and yet in the same spirit, we should all be witness-bearers to Christ's greatness. It is always possible so to think and act and live that men will feel we serve a great Commander. He who thinks meanly and does petty and foolish deeds and has no lofty ideals clearly before him is not commending an exalted Savior. It is in a spirit that is so touched to reveal spiritual greatness, however humble be the believer's daily round, that witness is borne to the greatness of the Lord.

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John the Witness-Bearer - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Witness to the Lowliness and Gentleness of Christ

Once more, John bore witness to the lowliness and gentleness of Christ. I think that if John had been a time-server, and had cared only to flatter Jewish prejudice, he would have told his audience that the Spirit had descended, not like a dove, but like an eagle. It was not a dove for which the Jews were looking. They wanted a power to expel the Romans. What a chance for a false prophet this would have been, considering the symbolism of the Roman eagles! But John could only tell what he had seen—a faithful witness will not lie (Pro_14:5) — and he bare record saying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove" (Joh_1:32). That means that almost in the teeth of his own stern heart, John bore witness to a dovelike Savior. There was to be a brooding peace about Messiah, a lowly gentleness, a still small voice. And when we remember what John's own nature was and think of the Christ of common expectation, we see how true and faithful was this witness-bearing. May not we, too, bear witness in our lives to the lowly tenderness of our Redeemer? May we not make it plain, as John did, that the Lord whom we know is filled with the dovelike Spirit? We do that whenever we master temper or check the bitter word or take the lowest place. We do that when our unforgiving hearts and our stubborn and proud and selfish wills become imbued with that love and thoughtful tenderness which is the very spirit of Christ Jesus.

Witness to the Sacrifice of Christ

Lastly, John bore witness to the sacrifice of Christ. "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (Joh_1:29). John had roused the conscience of the people; he had awakened in them the sleeping sense of sin. Jewish missionaries tell us that today that is still the first thing they strive to do. But when the sense of guilt was roused in them—what then? Then John's great work of witness-bearing reached its peak. So it may be with every one of us. We, too, may be witness-bearers of the sacrifice. We may so hate and abhor and shun all sin, we may so feel the price of our redemption, we may so live in the sweet sense of pardon, we may be so hopeful for the lowest and worst men, that our life (unknown to us perhaps) shall be a witness-bearing to Christ crucified.

July 20

The Unrecognized Christ

John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not— Joh_1:26

The Presence of Christ Is Perpetual

It is almost a commonplace to say that the world does not know its greatest men. To be very near is often to be blinded. It is only afterwards, in quiet reflection, that the large outlines of greatness are detected. Yesterday and tomorrow may deceive us, and indeed they very often do, but (as Dora Greenwell says) the real deceiver is today. Now our blessed Lord is different from the greatest in that His presence is a perpetual presence. He is continually moving in the world through the acting's of His gracious Spirit. And that is why such a text as we have chosen is not only true of days beside the Jordan, but is true always and to the end of time. There is an unrecognized Christ in every age. There is an unregarded Presence in all history. There is a spiritual Power moving in the world, though (like the wind) men know not whence it cometh. "There standeth one among you whom ye know not."

The Unrecognizable in Our Civic Life

One thinks, for instance, of our civic life—of all that meets the eye in a great city. If an old Roman were to come back to earth and move through the streets of one of our great cities, he would feel at home with our bazaars and barracks: he would say, "We had all these in ancient Rome." But show him the infirmary, the almshouse, the orphanage, the sick children's hospital, and these he would never recognize. It was the spirit of Christ that reared the hospital. It was His hand of love that built the orphanage. And yet how seldom does that thought intrude into the minds of those who throng the streets. In every city of our modern world, as by the banks of Jordan long ago, "there standeth one among you whom ye know not."

The Unrecognizable Ideals of Conduct

Again, think of our ideals of conduct and of the elements unrecognized in them. We might take a very simple illustration. When some poor, useless rascal has an accident and the doctor is summoned to his side, that doctor at once acts on the assumption that he must do everything in his power to save his life. Now why should he save it? Why should he preserve it? Would it not be better to let that rascal die? I want to know where the doctor got his thought that the sorriest life is infinitely precious. He certainly did not get it from his science nor from nature nor from evolution. The preservation of the rascal is the one thing evolution does not teach. When I see that doctor with his sleeves rolled up fighting desperately for a rascal's life, I feel that there is the Christ unrecognized. He is the light of every man who cometh into the world. Whenever a man does anything true and tender, when the fireman enters the flames to save a child, when the common sailor flings himself overboard to rescue someone who is bent on suicide, "there standeth one among you whom ye know not."

The Unrecognizable Ideals in Our Social Lives

Again, one thinks of the social unrest which is so much a feature of our life today. It is evident that the bad old times are gone. Then the poor were content to live in hovels; now they are not content. Then they were content with wretched wages; now they are not content. Then they were content that little children, untaught, should have their playground in the gutter; but such things are intolerable now. What lies at the back of that unrest? It is the dawning sense that the poorest and the humblest have equal rights with the richest in the land. And to discover where that sense originated—the infinite value of the bottom dog—is a matter that is worth consideration. It did not come from Satan; Satan has nothing to do with thoughts that liberate. It sprang from the heart of the Carpenter of Nazareth. Put the leaven in the meal and it ferments. Put the Kingdom of Heaven in society, and like the loaf, it rises. When I see the heavings of the masses now, the fermentation, the sara indignatio, I feel that "there standeth one among you whom ye know not."

The Unrecognizable Solver of Our World Problems

Lastly, take the problems of the world, for the world never had more agonizing problems. It seems to many of us as if the world were getting ready for the second and glorious coming of the Lord. National hatreds are not dead. National jealousies were never more bitter. National memories are rankling yet with the catastrophe of the Great War. It looks sometimes as if the only power abroad were that of the prince of the powers of the air—and then come soberer and wiser thoughts. What of the growing movements for disarmament? What of the slowly altering attitude of white men towards the black? Has the prince of the powers of the air begotten these? Someone is moving, though we recognize Him not. He does not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets. Evil is always clamorous and strident. He comes as the coming of the morning. So do I feel through all our great world problems, which sometimes chill the heart, that "there standeth one among you whom ye know not."

July 21

The First Disciples

Follow me. I saw thee— Joh_1:43-48

The Beginning of Changes

When a man has risen to great eminence, we are always interested in the story of his childhood. We listen eagerly to any scrap of information about his earliest days. And the deep interest that centers in these verses springs from the fact that here are the beginnings of fellowships and friendships that have changed the world. When we think of all that Christ was to be to John and of all that John was going to be to Christ; when we recall what the future had in store for Peter, we feel what great issues lay in these first meetings that are so simply and so quietly told. It is not often with any stir or uproar that the great moments come to men or women. They are not heralded with any sound of trumpet — the way of the Lord is not prepared like that. Quietly and unobtrusively two men follow Jesus, or a friend gives a word of welcome to a friend, or a brother goes and seeks out a brother—and from that hour all things shall be changed.

Christ Appeals to Different Natures

Note first to what different natures Jesus appeals. Four or five men are mentioned in our verses, and we know a little about the character of each. We know enough to convince us of the differences between the natures of these first disciples. Peter was eager and enthusiastic. John had a perfect genius for loving. Philip was slow, deliberative, cautious. Nathanael had a most unworldly and gentle heart. Yet all were drawn to the one Lord and Master and took their place in the ranks of the disciples. Some teachers appeal to certain kinds of men, or they attract those who are educated to one level; but it was one of the mysteries of Jesus that He drew to Himself such distinct and diverse men. Let the teacher of a class remember that. Let the mother lay it to heart among her children. Their natures are utterly different one from the other, yet all may find their friend in the one Lord.

Christ Leads Men to Himself in Different Ways

Again, mark in what different ways men are led to Jesus. When Andrew and the other disciples followed Jesus, they did so because of the Baptist's word. Their days of companionship with John had made them ready to enter into the fellowship of Christ. Now John was the last and the greatest of the prophets; he closes and embodies the spirit of the Old Testament. These two, then, were the first of those many thousands who have been led through Psalm and prophesy to Christ. Then follows Peter, and his was a different avenue. It was his own brother who brought him to the Lord. So Peter is the first of that great company who have been brought to Christ by the influence of home. But it was not even a brother that brought Philip. It was the voice of Jesus saying, "Follow me." Philip is the leader of all who have yielded and been obedient to the Master because they have heard Him calling them. Last comes Nathanael, and it was Philip who brought Nathanael. There was old intimacy between the two. Nathanael is a type of everyone who is brought in by the influence of a friend. Do you note the diverse roads into Christ's presence? There are a thousand paths converging to that spot. They used to say that all roads led to Rome; perhaps it is truer that all roads lead to Christ. One highway rolls along through Psalm and prophecy; another is built on the prayer and the peace of home. One path would not be known save for the Shepherd's voice, and another lies through the meadowland of friendship. Of all these, we have God's foreshadowing in the coming of the first disciples.

Christ Deals with Newcomers by Different Methods

Again, remark by what different methods Jesus deals with newcomers. We can never note too earnestly or gratefully the value, in the eyes of Christ, of one. It was for one coin the woman swept the house. It was for one sheep the shepherd went seeking. It was for one son the father watched and prayed. Christ preached to vast audiences on many occasions, and a great crowd moved Him to compassion; but the woman of Samaria did not get poorer teaching because she formed an audience of one. The same thing strikes us in Jesus' dealing with newcomers. They are not dealt with on any scale of ten. Each stands apart and has a separate treatment, for each was precious in the eyes of Christ. One newcomer has his motives searched and sifted—that is the meaning of the sharp "What seek ye?" (Joh_1:38). Another is convinced that he is known— "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile" (Joh_1:47). A third is summoned and strengthened by a word of command, "Follow me" (Joh_1:43). Let us not dream, then, that the Lord's way with us will be the same as His way with other people. Let us not despise our own peculiar welcome because no one else had ever quite the same. He knows us separately; separately He loves us; and every newcomer has his separate dealing.

The Kingdom Begins in Personal Acquaintance

Lastly, the Kingdom begins in personal acquaintance. Do you know how other societies are formed? They are formed by the drawing up of rules and statutes; and men are solemnly enrolled as officers, and everything is formal and exact. Here only, in quiet and simple ways, a Kingdom (though not of earth) is being founded, and it begins in acquaintance with the King. As it began so has it continued. The mark of citizenship is personal knowledge still. Strangers and aliens may say, "I know about Him." But the true citizen can say, "I know Him."

July 22

The Best Wine Last - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now—- Joh_2:10

With God, the Best Is at the End

Into the story of this memorable marriage I do not propose to go. Rather, I wish to base what I may have to say on this remark of the ruler of the feast. Why, do you think, did this saying so impress John that it lingered ineffaceable in his memory? Was it merely because of the pleasure it evoked to hear his Master's handiwork so praised? I think there was a deeper reason. John was by nature an idealist, loving to find the abstract in the concrete. In the particular instance of the moment, he was quick to see the universal law. And it flashed on John, hearing this chairman speak, that he was speaking more wisely than he knew and uttering a truth that had far wider range than the miracle at that wedding of Cana. Was it not true of many an earthly pageant that the best wine was given at the beginning? Was it not true wherever Christ was active that the best wine was kept until the end? In other words, take man apart from God and always it is the worse which follows; but take God in any of His thousand energies, and always the best is kept until the end.

Without God the Last Is the Worse

It is on these two truths I wish to speak. And first on the sadder and more somber of them. Think, then, for a moment of life itself, unsustained by the hope we have in God. Now I am not a pessimist as you all know; nor am I given to painting dark or depressing pictures; yet the fact is too plain to be gainsaid—afterward that which is worse. First comes childhood with its joy and wonder and with its world compact of mystery and charm. Then follows youth with its ideal and vision; then opening manhood with its glowing hopes. And the world is still a very noble place, and the gates of the prison house have not yet closed, and the body, whether for toil or joy, is still a subtle and a powerful instrument. Then come the heat and battle of middle age, and the weakness and the weariness of age, and the years when men say, "I have no pleasure in them," and when all the daughters of music are brought low; and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail, and they who were strong men once shall bow themselves. Is this the gallant youth of long ago, this bent and tottering and palsied form? Are these the eyes that once were bright with love? Is that the brain that was so clear and keen?

Last scene of all

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Afterward That Which Is Worse

Or think again of life's relationships on which the blessing of God is never sought. When character is unchastened and unpurified, how often do the years bring disappointment! Think of the tie of fatherhood and sonship. To the little child the father is a hero. No pictured saint wears such a golden halo as does the father in his children's eyes. His character is flawless and complete above all question and all criticism; it is the image in the childish mirror of the dim and shadowy character of God. Happy the child who, when its eyes are opened, still finds a character that it can reverence! But if the father is living without God, who is swifter to see it than the growing boy? And all that revelation of unworthiness, with occasional glimpses of what is darker still, makes the cup bitter which was once so sweet. And then the words were spoken at a marriage. Are they never true of that most sacred tie? Are there no wives or husbands who are whispering, "Afterwards that which is worse"? They remember a day when life was full of courtesy and of little attentions that were better than gold and of a charity that suffered long and of a kindness that was the breath of heaven. Where has it fled to, that kindness of the morning? Who set by the hearth these irritable, tempers? Is that cold voice the voice that was so tender in the gentle and sweet days of long ago? Unguarded by the consciousness of God, unchastened by the discipline of watchfulness, unwatered by the kindly dew of prayer, unhelped by the strength made perfect in our weakness; how many homes there are that know too well—afterward that which is worse.

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The Best Wine Last - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Sin Gives the Best in the Beginning

Once more you will think how true this is of sin. It is indeed the masterpiece of evil. It is the token and the triumph of all sin that it always gives the best wine at the start. That is why men of open and generous natures are often those most bitterly assailed. They do not calculate nor look ahead nor reckon seriously with the morrow. And sin is so fair and pleasant at the outset and hides its afterward with such consummate mastery that the reckless heart becomes an easy prey. Do you not think, now, if all the miseries of drunkenness were to meet a man upon the verge of drinking—do you not think he would cry out for help and turn from his accursed vice and flee? But drunkenness does not begin like that. It begins in the social hour and happy comradeship, and only afterwards there are the blighted prospects and the shattered body and the ruined home. Let any young man see what I as a minister have seen of the worse-than-death that follows social sin, and he will fall on his knees in prayer to God for strength to keep himself unspotted from the world. But sin is cunning and conceals all that; it sets on the table a delicious vintage; and only afterwards—but always afterwards—that which is worse.

Sin Conceals the Worse

And I cannot leave this darker side of things without asking, must all that stop at death? I wish most passionately I could believe it did; but I see no reasonable ground for that assurance. You tell me that you don't believe in hell. If you take hell to be a red devil with a fork, I don't believe in it either. But I believe in law; I believe in immortality; I believe in the momentum of a life. And if the momentum of a life be downward, and be unchecked by the strong arm of God, how can we hope that it will be arrested by the frail and yielding harrier of the grave? I hesitate to dwell upon that thought. All I wish to say to you is this. If sin conceals the worse behind tomorrow, may it not conceal the worse behind the grave? Sum up the issues of sin that you have known; the bitterness, the tears, the vain regret; think of its darkened homes, its blighted lives, its wreckage everywhere of broken hearts; then go, and as you gaze into a lost eternity, say, "Afterwards, that which is worse."

The Progress of God's Creation

But now I turn, and I do so very gladly, to the energies and activities of God. Wherever God in Christ is working, the best wine is kept until the end.
Think first for a moment of creation. There was a time, not so long ago, when religion trembled at the assault of science. It seemed as if science, flushed with her many victories and pressing forward to universal conquest, might drive from the field, in ignominious rout, many of the truths of revelation. One hears a great deal less of that today. The combatants have been laying down their arms. They have been learning that the field of battle was divinely meant to be a field of brotherhood. And nowhere have they better learned that lesson than in regard to the method of creation, for Scripture and science are agreed in this, that the best wine was kept until the end. First there was chaos and the formless deep; then light, and the ingathering of the waters. Then the first dawn of life in lowliest form, followed by bird and beast. And always the path was upward, from dull and shapeless horror, to what was better, richer, and more beautiful. And then at last, not at the first, came man, capable of communion with his Maker; greater, by that spark of God within him, than sun and moon and all the host of heaven. And it is in man, so noble though so fallen, so touched with heaven although so soiled with hell, that we discover it is the way of God to keep the best wine until the end.

God's Revelation Is Progressive

The same is true in the sphere of revelation, the revelation of the divine to man. Not all at once, in sudden burst of glory, did God reveal Himself to human hearts. We speak of revelation as progressive. That is a truth which we insist on now. Only as men are able to receive it will God reveal the riches of His grace. And so from age to age men were led on from the first flush and crimson of the dawn to the perfect radiance of Him who said, "I am the light of the world." Have you ever wondered why God delayed His coming, why the wheels of His chariot tarried for so long? Compared with all the ages of mankind, it is but a little while since Christ was here. But this is the meaning of that long delay, that the God of creation and of grace is one, and that in both activities alike, He keeps the best wine until the last. You remember how the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb_1:1-2). Precious are the promises of the Old Testament. Precious are the teachings of the prophets. Precious is every gleam that was vouchsafed to the waiting heart of patriarch and psalmist. But it is when we turn to Christ, the Son of God, the way, the truth, the life, the resurrection, that we cry with the ruler of the feast at Cana, "Thou hast kept the best wine until now."

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The Best Wine Last - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Calvary Was the Best at the Last

I think, too, we may apply this thought to the life of the incarnate Lord Himself. It was all blessed, yet it was most blessed, not in its beginning but its end. I turn to the manger-cradle by the inn when I wish to fathom His humiliation. I turn to His words and to His perfect life when I wish to know the Fatherhood of God. But when I realize I am a sinner and that my deepest need is pardon and release, then it is "Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee." Not on the teaching of Christ is the church built, although that teaching shall never pass away. Not on the example of Christ is the church built, though that example be its spur and goal. The church of God is built upon redemption, on pardon and peace that have been won through death; and that is why Christendom has looked to Calvary and said, "Thou hast kept the best wine until now." If the Sermon on the Mount were the whole Gospel, I confess that I could hardly understand it. It is so unlike all that we know of God to give all that is best at the beginning. But if the Sermon on the Mount be but a step in the ladder that leads upward to the cross, then, in the life and death of Jesus, I am in touch with the ways of the divine. It is that fact—the fact of a redemption—that fills and floods the apostolic page. It is that fact that has made the cross the universal symbol of the Gospel. "And he took the cup .... and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (Mat_26:27-28). Ah yes, Thou hast kept the best wine until now.

The Path of the Just Shines More and More

Lastly, and in a word or two, is not this true also of our Christian calling? The path of the just is as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. Not all at once does Christ reveal Himself when we go forward determined to be His. And the old life still struggles for the mastery, and we are in heaviness through manifold temptations. But the difference between Christ and the devil is just this, that the devil's tomorrow is worse than his today; but the morrow of Christ, for every man who trusts Him, is always brighter and better than His yesterday. Every act of obedience that we do gives us a new vision of His love. Sorrow and trial reveal His might of sympathy as the darkness of the night reveals the stars. And when at last the wrestling is over, and like tired children we lie down to sleep, and when we waken and behold His face in the land where there is no more weariness, I think we shall look back upon it all and find new meaning in every hour of it; but I think also we shall cry adoringly, "Thou hast kept the best wine until now."

July 23

The Miracle at Cana

Thou hast kept the good wine until now— Joh_2:10

Two Periods of Christ at a Feast

When a man has set his hand to some stupendous task that can only be achieved through years of suffering, there are two seasons when the strain is sorest. One is when the great work is but begun and the difficulties of it are coming into view; the other is when the work is well-nigh ended. At these two times, when the strain is most intense, the heart recoils from the common intercourse of life. It is very notable that at these two periods we should find Jesus seated and happy at a feast. When other men are fevered, He is feasting. When others cannot brook the common talk, He joins the conversation of the happy table. Could you have guessed, seeing that quiet stranger at the table, that but a week before, alone and in the wilderness, He had been tempted so fiercely by the devil? Could you have thought, seeing Him at the Last Supper with His own, that in a few days He would be crucified? The marriage feast at Cana and the closing banquet in the upper chamber not only tell us of His great love for men, they fill us with ever-deepening surprise at the wonderful serenity of Christ.

The First Miracle, a Counterpart to the First Temptation

First, then, let us observe that in this first miracle we have a counterpart to the first temptation. In the difference between Jesus' action then and now we have the first glimpses of His glory (Joh_2:11). Alone in the wilderness there came the whisper, "There is no bread; command that these stones be made bread." Now at the marriage feast there comes the whisper, "There is no wine," and Jesus turned the water into wine. Both acts would have called for equal power; they were identical if regarded outwardly, yet Jesus saw in the former a snare of evil, and by the latter He began to show His glory. Do you see the difference between the two? In the one, His power would have been employed upon Himself; in the other, it was at the service of His friends. He turned the water into wine for others, but for Himself He would not turn the stones to bread. He saved others, Himself He would not save. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. It was the golden dawn of a self-forgetful service that won its crown on Calvary.

Nothing Can Match in Quality What Christ Offers

Again, in this first miracle we have the first foreshadowing of the surpassing excellence of Jesus' handiwork. The home at Cana was a humble home; but at a marriage an Oriental home, however humble, found ways and means to have the choicest wine. It was its very excellence which proved fatal to it—had it been worse, it might have lasted longer. Then Jesus wrought, and the six waterpots of water became wine, and when the chairman tasted it, not knowing whence it came, he cried that this was the best wine of all. When the company sat down there was wine upon the table. Christ's vintage challenged comparison with that. No wine would match the quality of that wine which was introduced into the feast by Christ. Now, is not that a mystical foreshadowing of the abiding glory of the Lord? Are there not many things which Jesus brought to the world, the same in kind as the world had always had, yet overtopping them all in worth and excellence? I see the table of the world when Jesus came. There is the cup of love on it and the beaker of joy; there is the wine of hope and of peace and of human character. But when I compare the hope and love and joy that Jesus found with the hope and love and joy that Jesus gave; and when I place the highest pagan character with the noblest character that Christ has fashioned, I cry with the chairman, "This is the best of all"—no wine can match the wine of Christ in quality.

That Which Christ Gives Is Abundant

Once more, in this first miracle we have a first glimpse of the divine prodigality of love. Did you ever think how much these waterpots contained when the servants had filled them, perhaps in quiet humor, to the brim? They held about a hundred and twenty gallons. One-twentieth part of that would surely have been ample to satisfy the largest marriage company. But I hardly think that Jesus stopped to count whether the waterpots were six or twelve. Had He consulted His mother or the servants, they could have told Him exactly what was needed; but He consulted none but His own heart and God—and all the six are wine. Now turn to the wilderness again and to the first temptation. There, for Himself, Jesus would not turn one single stone into a loaf. Here, in the service of His neighbor, there is no bounty that can be too great. He gives with a lavishness that is sublime because it is the lavishness of love. Do you not think that as John looked back on this, he saw in the prodigality Christ's glory? I think he would recall this opening scene at Cana when the whisper went round, "To what purpose is this waste?" It was Christ's glory to lavish His all upon the world. It was His glory to die upon the cross. In the uncalculating lavishness of dying love, John saw the spirit that had made the water wine.

Whatever Christ Touches Acquires an Upward Trend

Lastly, in this first miracle, we have the first prophecy of the upward trend of Jesus' touch. There have been men who never entered the circle of a home or of a church or of another's heart, but they have left it a little lower than they found it. But there are other men whose faces shine although they wist it not, and it is easier to be brave while they are with us, and we shall walk till the evening with a firmer tread because we met with them in life's golden morning. Now, magnified ten-thousandfold, that was and is the way with Jesus Christ. There is an upward trend in all His influence: He touches nothing that is not adorned. The lilies of the field speak loud of God; the mustard-seed is the likeness of the Kingdom. Shifty Simon becomes stable Peter, and John the passionate grows into John who loves. The water becomes wine; the wine shall yet be the symbol of His blood. Have we all shared in this upward trend of Jesus' touch?

July 24

The Tidings of the Breeze - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit— Joh_3:8

The Night Wind

This is one of the profoundest sayings that ever fell upon a listening ear, and yet it bears to us every mark of being occasional and unpremeditated. The time was night—the place some quiet cottage—the theme the regeneration of the Spirit. And then it may be, right across the talk, there came the sighing of the night wind around the cottage. And Jesus, whose ear was ever quick to catch and use the parables of nature, said, "Hark, Nicodemus, don't you hear it? The wind bloweth where it listeth." It is Christ's parable, infinitely beautiful, of the life not of the flesh but of the spirit. It is Christ's picture of certain large realities in the experience of the regenerate. And the question which I wish to ask is what features of the breeze does our Lord seize upon as illustrative of the spiritual life?

As the Wind Blows Freely, So Does the Spirit

The first feature which our Lord selects is liberty—the wind bloweth where it listeth. In every literature and for every man the wind is the emblem of glad and glorious liberty. You may tell its direction, whether east or west; you may devise instruments to measure its velocity; you may watch its path across the field of corn or where the giants of the forest bow before it; but in spite of the minutest observation and all the imprisoning energies of science, the breeze still is gloriously free. You can raise no barriers that will block its progress. You can forge no chains that will confine it. You cannot divert it as it crosses the ocean, or bid it halt in its hurrying fox an hour. Tonight, as long centuries ago, the wind bloweth where it listeth.

Freedom Governed by Laws

Now there are two elements of this liberty which science has made very plain to us, and the first is that it is not a lawless liberty. I do not say that we understand its laws yet as we understand the laws of light, for instance. There is much that is obscure and very baffling in the origin and travelling of the wind. Yet for every zephyr of the summer evening and for every storm that whistles down the glen, there are adequate causes known to the Creator and gradually becoming known to us. The wind bloweth where it listeth, but it is never a lawless or capricious liberty. It is not the child of any sudden fury, irresponsible, arbitrary, uncontrolled. It is a liberty based upon a reign of law—enjoyed in harmony with the whole scheme of nature—obedient to the great Creator's purpose, no less than the seraphim around the throne.

Liberty of Services

But not only is it a liberty of law, it is also a liberty of service. There are few services more rich and wonderful than the service of the freedom of the wind. We never talk of the wind working, it is true; we talk of the wind playing in the forest. But sometimes, when our children are at play, they are working for manhood better than they know. And so when the wind, rejoicing in its freedom, is so happy that we say it plays, it is working magnificently all the time. It is ripening the seeds within a million flowers; it is filling the ears of corn across the field. It is building the cones of every Scotch fir tree; it is preparing for another harvest time. It is carrying a thousand ships across the sea, and cleansing away the vapors of impurity, and coming to many a slum in the great cities as the angel of purity and health.

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The Tidings of the Breeze - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free: where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And it is not freedom from the Law of God—it is not freedom to follow every passion—it is not freedom to do just as we please when hands are beckoning and voices calling. It is the freedom of an indwelling spirit poured into our hearts by Jesus Christ so that we are no longer in bondage to the outward, but moved by a principle of life within. And it, too, issues in unequalled service, for there is no service in the world like that which Christ inspires. It is the service of the son who loves and not the service of the slave who fears. And it thinks no toil too great to be attempted—and none so trifling that it may be despised—just as the wind that carries the great argosy carries also the pollen of the willow.

As the Wind Is Heard, So Is the Spirit

The next feature which our Lord chooses is its utterance—the wind bloweth, and thou hearest the sound thereof. And as He spoke, He said, "Hark" to Nicodemus, and they heard it sighing down the village street. Listening, they heard the nightingale calling as it winged its way in the darkness to the hills. Listening, they heard in yonder tavern the boisterous laughter of the village prodigals. And then there came a pause, and riot ceased, and the dogs out in the street were quietly eating, and Christ said, "Hark," and Nicodemus hearkened, and round the cottage they heard the sound thereof. It was a peculiar and distinctive music. There was no mistaking it for any other—no mistaking it for any sound of riot, not for the crying of any fevered child. And Christ—I fancy with that smile of His which must so often have lit up His words—said, "So is every one that is born of the Spirit."

Resistance to the Wind Brings Music, So Is It with Life in the Spirit

Again there are two elements in this utterance which it is well that we should bear in mind. And the first is that the music of the wind is the music of movement and obstruction. It is because the wind is moving that we hear it, but the music comes out not by movement only. It becomes audible to us in all its voices only when there is resistance in its path. As the breeze passes over the summer meadow, there is not a whisper to indicate its presence. We should never know that the wind was blowing there save for the tossing of a million daisies. But when it beats on the cheek of him who breasts the hill—when it hurls itself against the cottage gable—when it leaps angrily upon the armies of the forest, and they lift up their branches to defy it— then do we hear the music of the wind. So the spiritual life has its peculiar utterance because it moves, and moving, it is obstructed. If there were no obstructions, no obstacles, no difficulties, it might glide so silently that we should never hear it. It is in meeting these and overcoming them in the wonderful power of an indwelling Savior that men, marveling, hear the sound thereof.

The Wind Produces Music of Infinite Variety, So Does the Spirit

And then, as everyone of us has known, it is a music of infinite variety—from the faintest melody as of some distant harp to the magnificence as of some mighty organ. Now it is like the melancholy sighing of a human heart from which all hope has fled. Now it is like the murmuring of waters amid the rocks and under the thick heather. And now it is like the thrilling song of battle that warriors sing when the lust of fight is on them, and they have found foes worthy of their steel. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit—the life in Christ has got a thousand voices. It is no harsh monotone, constantly repeated, unvarying, unmusical, unending. It is infinitely varied as the wind is varied, with a thousand cadences as of the aeolian harp—from the loud note of the trumpet in the morning to the scarce audible whisper of the dying. Do not say that when a man is Christ's, he must show it in this way or in that way. Euroclydon is very different from zephyr, yet both of them are the breathing of the wind. So every life that is inspired of heaven has its distinctive spiritual utterance, for there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit.

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The Tidings of the Breeze - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Unknown and Mysterious Origin of the Wind

The next feature which our Savior seizes on is the unknown and mysterious origin of the wind. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it cometh. "Hark, Nicodemus, do you hear it—crying and calling in the village street? Come now, you are a master in Israel, answer me this: Where has it traveled from?" And then when Nicodemus deprecated, as if to say, "Lord, how could I tell that?" Christ in His infinitely winsome way said, "so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Now of course, to a certain limited extent, we always can tell which way the wind has come. We have our vanes to indicate its course, and a straw will show which way the breeze is blowing. If from the west it has traveled from the sea; if from the north it has reached us from the hills. If it be balmy, it tells of warmer lands; and if it be icy, it speaks to us of snow. And yet, when all is known that can be known, what a range and reach there is that we know nothing of! The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it cometh. Where did it come from, that breath of heavenly wind that fanned your cheek as you came to church? What glens—what moors—what villages—what cities has it traveled through and passed in coming hither? Sooner or later men find the source of rivers, though they be hidden and shrouded as that of ancient Nile. But the wind, that river of the upper air—thou canst not tell, says Jesus, whence it cometh.

The Mysterious Movement of the Spirit of God

Now if there is one thing clear and constant it is that of spiritual renewal that is true. There was never a man yet who was born of God who did not feel that it ran into the mysteries. Of course to a certain extent, as with the wind, we can trace back the course of spiritual renewal. Perhaps we can point to a sermon or a prayer or a quiet talk with somebody we trusted; perhaps we can point to a striking and signal providence, or to a terrible illness when we fought with death, or to an open grave when the dull earth that thudded seemed to be falling on our heart. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. We can trace out the history a little way. We can say it was this or that which changed us to the depths in the unerring providence of God. But when we have said all that, and said it gratefully, then overpowers us the wonder of it all, and saved by grace when we deserved the darkness, we can but whisper, "We know not whence it cometh. "Who can tell—or who shall ever tell—what was behind that hour of decision? What prayers of a mother when we were little children, and she stole in at night and prayed when we were sleeping? And that is many years ago, dear friend, and you have lived a sorry life since then, God knows; but tonight, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come"—yes, come, and thou knowest not whence it cometh. Respond to the infinite love of Christ, and His Holy Spirit will come down and fill you. And you will go out wondering and awed, and crying, "I have got it, and know not whence it came." But some day when the veil is lifted, you shall know, and you shall find behind it all a Savior's sacrifice and a mother's prayers and a minister's entreaty and a love of God that chose you in eternity.

Its Goal Is Unknown and Unreckonable

Then the last feature which our Savior seizes on is its unknown and Unreckonable goal. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whither it goeth. "Come, Nicodemus, thou who teachest others—thou hearest it—where is it going tonight?" "Lord, I cannot tell where it is going"—and so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Over the city, and then whither away? An hour hence, and where shall the breeze be? Will it fill some sail—ruffle the mountain lake—travel to cities where the speech is strange? Thou knowest not, brother; and I am here to tell you that if you open your heart to the Spirit of God, no man can tell what power and use and blessing thou shalt travel on to from this hour. There are men and women whom we know quite well whither they are going. They are going to useless lives and unregarded graves with not one tear of genuine regret for them. But let a man respond to Christ and receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—and thou knowest not whither thou shalt go. Thou shalt go to a life that is a joyous thing. Thou shalt go to a life that is a conquering thing. Thou shalt go to a power and usefulness and honor that will amaze thee, knowing what thou art. And then at last, kept by the power of God, and plucked as a brand by Christ out of the burning, thou shalt go to be with Him, which is far better.

July 25

The Three Centers of Love

God so loved the world— Joh_3:16

Christ also loved the church— Eph_5:25

The Son of God, who loved me— Gal_2:20

John's Assurance of God's Love for the World

We have first the love of God for the whole world, or, as we should put it, for all the human race. The world of John is not the world of nature, but the teeming world of sinful men and women. Now, the extraordinary thing is this, that such a statement should fall from Jewish lips. The ancient Hebrew was the true aristocrat looking with proud disdain on every Gentile. And it was because this Jew had companied with Christ and drunk deep of His spirit, that there had come to him the rich assurance that the love of God was for the world. Born of a Jewess, made under the law, Christ was the Son of man. For all mankind He lived and taught and died. He was the light of the world. It was in following Him and brooding on His mystery, that the eyes of John were opened by the Spirit to recognize the worldwide love of God.

The Universality of God's Love

The wonder of it deepens when we remember what the world of men is like. The Bible, for all its unconquerable optimism, never gives us a rosy view of man. It is the writer of our text who tells us that the whole world "lieth in the evil one." Like a precious vessel sunk in a foul stream, it is submerged under a tide of evil. And this is not only the view of the disciple, it is the view of our blessed Lord Himself—"the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." I could understand God loving the world of nature where the sunshine is sleeping on the lake. If the human heart is drawn to hill and meadow, how much more the infinite heart in heaven. But that that heart, knowing every secret, should love the teeming millions of mankind lies on the utmost verge of the incredible. It only becomes credible in Christ. It is a dream but for the Incarnation. Unless God gave His only begotten Son, worldwide love goes whistling down the wind. It was because this writer had learned, from personal contacts, the universality of the unspeakable Gift that he awoke to the worldwide love of God.

God's Love for the Church

The second center of divine love is the Church—Christ also loved the Church. And at once this question rises in the mind, why should the Church be singled out like that? Well, when you read the story of the prodigal, you feel that the father always loved that son. When he was far away rioting with the harlots, the father was yearning for him night and day. But only when that prodigal came home could the pent-up love be poured upon the child—and the Church is the bit of the world that has come home. The true Church is not an organization. It is not Episcopalian nor Methodist. It is the mighty company of quickened souls who could never rest content among the swine. Drawn by need, hungry and despairing, they have traveled back to "God who is our home," and found the love that had been always yearning for them. The prodigal was loved in the far country, but there no ring could be put upon his finger. So long as he was there no cry was heard, "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him." To gain these tokens of unwearying love, the poor rebellious child had to come home—and the Church is the bit of the worm that has come home. That is why the Church, and not the family, is the second center of the love of heaven. Some in the family may still be far away, living in utter heedlessness and sin. But no one in the true Church is in the far land. All are brought nigh by the blood of Christ, and love is able to show itself at last in the ring and in the shoes and in the robe.

God's Love for the Individual

The third center of divine love is the individual—He loved me, says the apostle. And it is just here that the love of God so infinitely transcends the love of man. No man can love a multitude with the intensity wherewith he loves his child. No patriot can feel towards all his countrymen as he feels towards his little daughter. But the wonder of the love of God is this, that with a compass that encircles millions, every separate soul is loved as if there were no one else in the whole world. Our Lord was moved to His depths by mighty multitudes. He brooded over them with infinite compassion. He came to be the Savior of the world, and He came because He loved the world. Yet, living for mankind, He gave His richest to the one who fell suppliant at His feet, and, dying for mankind, He gave His heart to the one who was hanging by His side. He loved the world—and gave. He loved the Church—and gave. But all would be incomplete could we not add, "He loved me and gave Himself for me." When we are tempted to doubt the love of heaven for the little unit in unnumbered millions, there comes a gentle voice across the darkness, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father."

July 26

The Casual Contacts of Jesus

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water— Joh_4:7

The Casual Encounters of Jesus

One notes, in the life of Jesus, how many folk there were who met Him casually. The meetings were in no sense prearranged; they were unplanned and unpremeditated contacts. One may hold that in the deepest sense no meeting with the Lord is really casual. Contingencies are not without the will of Heaven. Still, speaking in the way of men, no one can read the life of Jesus without observing how very full it was of what we call casual encounters. The woman of Samaria had no idea that she was going to meet the Lord beside the well. It was with no thought that he would meet with Christ that the man with the withered hand went to the synagogue. The impotent man beside the pool was not waiting for Him who is our Peace—he was waiting for the troubling of the waters. All these were casual meetings, speaking in the common way of men. They did not issue from definite intention as in the case of the Greeks who sought an interview. And how our Lord comported Himself in what we may call these casual encounters, is a deeply interesting study.

Meetings That Were Casual But Rich in Consequence

One might be sure, from all we know of life, that such meetings would be rich in consequence; doubly sure when we remember the radiant personality of Jesus. Mark Rutherford, in "Miriam's Schooling," tells us of a man who was now growing old. That man, when twenty years of age, had one day passed a woman on the street. And the spiritual beauty of her face, he tells us, haunted him and held him to the end. A thousand times it had rebuked him, and a thousand times it had redeemed him. Not infrequently, when we are dull or troubled, we meet someone in the most casual fashion, and instantly (such is personality) the time of the singing of the birds has come. Now multiply all that by the radiant personality of Jesus, and you grasp the consequence of casual contact. Life was going to be different forever to that Samaritan woman by the well. There was going to be work and happiness at home for the man with the withered hand. Yet these were but casual meetings — momentary encounters by the way—unpremeditated and unplanned. There is a line in a well-known hymn which says, "Not a brief glimpse I beg, a passing word." One understands that perfectly. It is love demanding the forever. But do not forget that a passing word of Christ—a single glimpse of the beauty of His face—may alter life down to its very depths and make the future different forever.

Christ Always Had Time for Casual Meetings

It is a beautiful and helpful thought that for these casual meetings Christ had always time, and the wonder of that deepens when one recalls the greatness of His mission. His was the most stupendous mission ever given to a son of man. He was here to bear the sins of the whole world. He was here to make all things new. It is when one thinks of that, and the weight and pressure of it, and the brief years allowed for its accomplishment, that one marvels at the leisurely serenity with which He took these casual encounters. With a baptism to be baptized with, living under the urgency of Calvary, who could have wondered had He been preoccupied, pushing aside every casual comer? Yet He had time to halt when Bartimaeus cried, and to sit and talk with the woman at the well, and to wait serenely till they discovered her who had gripped the tassel of His garment. That is often a very comforting thought when we come to Him upon the throne today. With the government upon His shoulder, can I reasonably hope He will have time for me? Yet on earth He always had the time and the heart at leisure from itself—and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Christ Always Gave Himself at These Casual Meetings

One likes to think, too, how in these casual meetings our Lord gave of His very best, and He did that because He gave Himself. It is a thought familiar in many a book and sermon that Jesus gave of His riches to the individual. That is profoundly true as every reader of the Gospel knows. But still more striking and suggestive is it that He gave of His richest to the individual He met casually. I could understand Him dealing with Nicodemus so, for Nicodemus deliberately sought Him. He took his courage in both hands and braved a great deal when he set out to meet the Lord that night. But that Jesus should give of His riches and His best to folk who met Him in quite casual contact—that is the kind of thing which gives one pause. He did that with the woman at the well. The words He spoke to her have changed the world. They have come ringing down the corridors of time, nor will men ever let them die. Yet she went out that noonday just to fill her waterpots, at an hour when she might hope to be alone, without one thought that she would meet the Lord. Now may I say quietly to all my readers that there He has left us an example. Sometimes going into company we say, "I must be at my very best tonight." And sometimes preachers, addressing certain audiences, say, "I must be at my very best today." But who can tell the good that we might do, who can explore the influence we might wield, if we only determined to give of our very best in the casual contacts of the hour? There may be a bit of the Kingdom in a handshake and a gleam of heaven in a happy smile. A word of cheer to some poor "down and out," may be as a well of water in a thirsty land. That, I take it, was the Master's way, and if in joy and peace it be our way, casual folk will be thanking God for us though we never hear anything about it.

July 27

The Woman of Samaria

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water— Joh_4:10

Scenes by Wells

It is remarkable how many of the choicest scenes of Scripture should be associated with wells. It was by a well that Abraham's servant met with the destined bride of Isaac in that loveliest story of the Book of Genesis. It was by the well that Jacob first cast his eyes on Rachel. It was at a well that one of the crises in the life of Moses came, when he stood up and rescued the daughters of Reuel from the shepherds. And all the memories and meetings of these Oriental wells are crowned by this story of the woman of Samaria. It was the hour of sultry noon, and the whole land was weary, and Jesus shared in the weariness of noonday. And then a woman of Samaria came to draw, thinking, remembering, dreaming as she came, and all so busy with her woman's heart that she hardly spied the dusty traveler till He spoke. So do we stumble on life's greatest moments. So coming to the well a thousand times unaltered, we come one day and everything is changed. Life's crises often come unheralded. God is not pledged to warn of their approach. They wear the garments of the common hours and come in the multitude of common duties, when lo! we are at the parting of the ways, and all things shall be different forever.

Christ Disregards Prevailing Prejudices

Now what struck the writer of this story first was the disregard that Jesus showed for the most cherished prejudices of His day. Christ was a Jew after the flesh, and the woman with the pitcher was Samaritan, and for long centuries, and notably since the rebuilding of the Temple, Jew and Samaritan had been so ripening in mutual spite that now they would not speak to one another. But Jesus sweeps these prejudices off. He bids defiance to conventionality. Behind the sinner and back of the Samaritan, He hears the cry of a soul that can be saved. Everything else becomes as threads of gossamer before His burning passion to redeem her. Now there are some men who scorn conventionalities just because they want to seem original. But there are other men so filled with a burning purpose that in the heat of it common prejudices die. That is a right noble disregard; it is the disregard of Jesus by the well.

Christ First Asks for a Favor

It is remarkable that the first words of Christ are an appeal. "Give me to drink," He said. It was the first time in all her life that she had ever been asked a favor by a Jew, and to be asked a favor by those whom we are certain would despise us, produces a strange revulsion in the heart. I do not know if even on the cross the humility of Christ is more apparent than in these humble pleadings that fell on this Samaritan's ears and still are calling to our hearts today. We, too, may feel certain that Jesus will despise us. We may think ourselves very loathsome in His sight. Yet He is pleading with us as a brother pleads and calling to us as a brother calls, and He is holding out His death to us and offering us His pardon and His power. Nay, more, whenever we give a cup of water to a little one in Jesus' name, then like the woman of Samaria we are giving Christ to drink. And in every kindly deed we ever did, we are responding to this pleading of the Master. In every face of pain, every distorted limb, every moan and sigh, and all the sobbing of the helpless children, Christ still is saying, "Give me to drink." And we had better cease to worship Him as Lord than fail to respond to such a pleading.

Christ Was Impressed by the Samaritan Woman's Ignorance

I note, too, that what roused the compassion of Jesus for this woman was her ignorance. "Ah! woman, if you only knew the gift of God: if you only knew who was speaking to you!" In Sychar the honest neighbors rather shunned this woman, not because she was ignorant, but because she knew too much. They hated her. They tattled of her. She was a bold and an unprincipled woman. Only Jesus in the whole wide world pitied her from the bottom of His heart. She was so ignorant for all she knew. She had so missed the prize for all her unhallowed grasping! O heart of Christ, so infinite in pity, teach us again the ignorance of passion, and make us pitiful to the men and women who have missed the mark, because they have not known God's gift of love!

Christ Offers Something Superior and of Permanent Value to the Inner Man
So Jesus gently deals with the Samaritan, reading her heart and showing her what she was and leading her upward from the well of Jacob to the wellsprings that are found in Jacob's God. "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Two features of this promised gift arrest us. (a) The first is that he that drinketh of the living stream shall never thirst again. But do we not find the Psalmist saying, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God"? Is every longing of the soul satisfied forever when we have tasted of the wells of God? Nay, God forbid. The more we drink of holiness, the more we thirst for it. The more we drink of purity, the more we crave it. The more we taste of God, the more we long for Him. But under the power of this new affection, sinful affections gradually die; and baser cravings that dominated once sink slowly in this newborn life in God until at last the very craving is forgotten, and having tasted God, we thirst no more. (b) And then this fountain is within our heart. This poor Samaritan had to take her pitcher and run the gauntlet of the village street whenever she wanted a draught of Jacob's well. But the gladness and the peace are within us when we have truly met with Jesus Christ. There is a sense in which a Christian is dependent. There is another sense in which a Christian is the most independent man alive. He can go singing under the dullest skies; he can have royal fellowship in crowded streets, for he carries his heaven in his heart, and heaven in the heart is heaven on earth.

July 28

The Dedication of the Will - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

My meat is to do the will of him that sent me— Joh_4:34

Is Religion Based on Reason or Feeling?

It has been a matter of controversy time and again which is the true wellspring of religion; and to this question, which is fresh in every age, there are two answers which demand attention.

On the one hand there are many reverent thinkers who trace the roots of religion to the reason. It is because we are reasonable beings that we know the infinite reason, which is God. A dumb beast is not endowed with reason though it has instinct. It is man alone, lifting his forehead heavenward, who is a truly reasonable creature; and in man alone, because he is so gifted, is there the craving for the eternal Being, and the assurance, at the back of all things visible, of a hand that guides and of a heart that plans. Thought is the lattice through which the human spirit peers forth upon the vista of eternity. Thought is the mystical ladder that goes heavenward and lifts itself through the silence to the throne. And if the angels, clad in their garb of ministry, move up and down upon its steps of radiance, it is because the head that lies upon the pillow is that of a reasonable man.

On the other hand, there have been many thinkers who have denied this primary place to thought. It is not from reason that religion springs, they tell us; it is from the deeper region of the feelings. How can the fragmentary thought of man reach forth to the perfect thought of the Almighty? Can any by intellectual searching find Him out, and are not His thoughts different from out thoughts? Do we not know, too, that an age of so-called reason is never a time when eternal things are clear, but always a time when voices are but faint that come with the music of the faraway? On these grounds there has been raised a protest against reason as the wellspring of religion. Not upon reason is religion based; it sinks its shaft into the depth of feeling. It is born in the longing you cannot analyze; in the emotion that is prior to all thought; in the craving for God that rests upon no proof, and stirs in a depth below the reach of argument.

The Wellspring of Personal Religion Is the Will

But when we turn to the word of Jesus Christ and to its translation in apostolic doctrine, we discover that neither thought nor feeling is laid at the foundation of religion. Christ had no quarrel with the human intellect. He recognized its wonder and its power. His own intellectual life was far too rich for Him to be a traitor to the brain. Nor was Christ the enemy of human feelings. He never made light of tenderest emotion. He who wept beside the grave of Lazarus could never be the antagonist of tears. But in the teaching of Christ, it is not thought nor feeling that is the wellspring of personal religion. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me"; the wellspring is in the region of the will. It is there that a man must pass from death to life. It is there that the path of piety begins—not in the loftiest and holiest thought nor in the rapture of excited feeling. The first thing is the dedication of the will; the response of a free man to a great God; the yielding of self to that imperious claim which is made by the loving Father in the heavens. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness"—"Let the dead bury their dead, follow thou me"—such are the words in which our Lord describes the primary and determinative action. A man may cherish the most reverent thought or may luxuriate in tenderest feeling, yet if he harbor an unsurrendered will, he knows not yet the meaning of religion.

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The Dedication of the Will - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Yield Your Will to Christ

It is thus that we begin to understand the condemnation of Christ on indecision. "He that is not with me, is against me"—"No man can serve two masters." No matter how ignorant a man might be, Christ never was without hope for him. No matter how depraved he was, there was a spark within him that might be fanned to flame. But of all men the most hopeless in Christ's sight was the irresolute and undecided person, the man who refused to take a spiritual stand and who was contented to drift aimlessly. It is very probable that Judas Iscariot was a man of such irresolution. It had been growing increasingly clear to him, as months went by, that he was hopelessly out of sympathy with Jesus. But instead of arising in some great decision that might have closed that mockery of following, he drifted, amid ever quickening waters, till suddenly the whirlpool and the cry. The man who hesitates, we say, is lost—but Christ has come to seek and save the lost. Am I speaking to any waverer, to any hesitating, undecided person? Till the will is right, nothing is right. No man is Christ's until the will has been yielded. "Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours to make them Thine."

Jesus Never Overpowered the Will

It is further notable in this connection that Jesus never over powered the will. It was His glory to empower it, but to overpower it He scorned. "Come unto me, and I will give you rest"—a man must come; no hand from heaven will drag him. No irresistible and irrational constraint will force him into the presence of the Savior. A man is something better than a beast—he is but a little lower than the angels—and as a man, or not at all, Christ will have the allegiance of the will. "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life" —there is the ring of an infinite pity about that; but the other side of that so baffled yearning, reveals the very grandeur of humanity. For it tells of a being whose heritage is freedom—not to be overborne by God Himself—of one who must come with a freely yielded will, or else not come at all. With Mohammed it was the Koran or the sword, and that compulsion was a degradation. Hence never, under Mohammedan dominion, has manhood risen to its highest splendor. But with Christ there was no compulsion of the will, save the compulsion of overmastering love, and that great recognition of our freedom has blossomed into the flower of Christian manhood. Do not wait, then, I would beg of you, as if a day were coming when you must be good. Do not think that the hour will ever strike when you will be swept irresistibly into the kingdom. At the last it is a matter of decision, and in all the changes of the coming years, never will it be easier for you to make the great decision than now.

Christ's Emphasis on the Motive

We might further illustrate Christ's emphasis on will by some of the relationships in which He sets it. Think first of its relationship to action. It is not the action in itself that Jesus looks at; He has a gaze that pierces deeper than the action. He sees at the back of every deed, its motive, and that is the measure of value in His sight. Viewed from the standpoint of the day's collection there was no great value in the widow's mite. One coin out of the pocket of the rich was worth a hundred such in some eyes. But there is a certain kind of calculation that is intolerant of all arithmetic, and it was always on that basis Christ computed. Was there no sacrifice behind that little gift which was dropped so quietly into the temple treasury? Was there no will so bent upon obedience that it must pour its all into the offering? What Jesus saw was not the mite; it was the dedicated will behind the mite. An action had no value in Christ's eyes unless at the back of it there was the willing mind. Deep down, in the unseen springs of a man's being, lay that which determined the value of his conduct. And that is the reason why Christ appraises action in a way that is sublimely careless of the common standards by which the world distributes applause.

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The Dedication of the Will - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

To Know, You Must Will

Or think of the relationship of will to knowledge if you want to know how Christ regarded will. "If any man will to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." If any man willeth to do His will—then at the back of true knowledge is obedience, and what we know of the highest and the best ultimately depends upon the will. Let a man refuse to submit his will to God, and the gateway of truth is closed to him forever. No daring of intellect will pierce its deeps, nor will any imagination see its beauty. Truth at the heart of it is always ethical, kindred in being to man's moral nature; and if that nature be choiceless and disordered, the power and majesty of truth are never known. That is the reason why the simplest duty has always an illuminative power. Do the next thing, and do it heartily, and the very brain will grow a little clearer. For the Word of God is a lamp unto our feet, and only when our feet go forward bravely will the circle of light advance upon the dark and reveal what is always shadowed to the stationary. It is not merely by His depth of thought that Christ has kindled the best thought of Christendom. It is by His urgent and passionate insistence upon the dedication of the will. And men have obeyed Him, and taken up their cross, and followed bravely when all in front was shrouded, to find that they were moving into a larger world and under a brighter heaven.

Fellowship Rests on the Will

Or think of the relationship of will to fellowship—man's spiritual fellowship with his Redeemer. That friendship is not based on kindred-feeling; it is based, according to Christ, on kindred-will. "Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee"; and Jesus answered, "Who is my brother? He that doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my mother, my brother, and my sister." It is not a question, then, of what you know, if you are to be a brother or sister of the Lord. It is not a matter of excited feeling nor of any glowing or ecstatic rapture. He that doeth the will—though it be often sore and though the way be dark and though the wind be chill—he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My sister and My brother. That means that all fellowship with Jesus Christ depends on dedication of the will We must say, "Take my will, and make it Thine," if we are to be numbered in His company. And if fellowship with Him be true religion—the truest and purest the world has ever known—you see how it does not rest on thought or feeling, but has its wellspring in the surrendered will.

Surrender of the Will

And in the life of Christ this is the crowning glory—a will in perfect conformity with God's. He is our Savior and our great exam-pie because of that unfailing dedication. Look at Him as He is tempted in the wilderness—is there not there a terrible reality of choice? Does there not rise before Him the alternative of self, to be instantly and magnificently spurned? And ever through the progress of His years, His meat is to do the will of God who sent Him; until at last, upon the cross of Calvary, the dedication is perfected and crowned. I want you then ever to remember that the will is the very citadel of manhood. To be a Christian that must be yielded up. Everything else without it is in vain. Religion founded on feeling is unstable. A religion of intellect is cold and hard. Total surrender is what Christ demands, and in it lies the secret of all peace.

July 29

The Cure of the Nobleman's Son

And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son for he was at the point of death— Joh_4:46-47

The Beginning of His Ministry

It is to be noted that all the miracles in this Gospel, with the exception of those of the loaves and the walking on the sea, are found in this Gospel only. We know that if all the works which Jesus did were written, the world itself could not contain the books thereof, and John was led to choose for us such deeds and such words of Jesus as should embody great principles in themselves and should not overlap the testimony of others. The life of Jesus is like the world we live in; there is room in it for the joyful use of all our gifts, and when we are rooted and grounded in love, as this apostle was, we shall have little heart to interfere with others. The miracle of Cana was the beginning of the showing of His glory. This miracle is a beginning too—it is the beginning of the Galilean ministry. A thing well begun is half-done, we say—note the noble beginnings of our Savior's ministry. Observe, too, that our Lord began exactly as He meant to go on. I have known folk beginning with enthusiasm, but in a little while how listless and dull they grew! Remember that whether it be in work or play, that is not the spirit of our Master. All through His life, and all through the after-centuries, our Lord has been turning the water into wine; He has never ceased to respond to the cry of faith nor to be a healer of worse sicknesses than fever. It is no chance, then, that with such displays of power His glory and His Galilean ministry began.

Illness May Lead Us to Christ

So Jesus was at Cana of Galilee again, and you can hardly wonder that the people received Him eagerly. You may depend upon it that the servants who had borne the waterpots, as they sat of an evening in the inn at Cana, would never weary of recounting what had happened when they had filled the vessels with water to the brim. The news of this mystery had traveled far; it had entered the doors of the palace of Herod Antipas; and some had wondered, and some had scoffed, and some had jestingly wished they had been there. But there was one courtier, or king's officer, at Herod's court, who pondered deeply on this so marvelous story, and when rumors came of Jesus in Judaea and of all He had done at Jerusalem during feast-time (Joh_4:45), he sifted them out and dwelt on them in secret, until at last, in the court of Herod Antipas (one of the unlikeliest places in the world), there was a heart that had begun to clamber upwards into the first glimmerings of faith. And then the son of this nobleman fell ill; physicians were useless; he was at the point of death. How vapid and vain was all the showy courtlife when there rang through it, in a voice he loved so well, the wild and delirious cries of raging fever! So oftentimes an illness may be used to tear away the tapestries around us and to lead us from the chamber of our worldly hopes into the presence of the living Christ. The nobleman came to Cana and we know what followed. If there is life in a look, there is life too in a word. The smoking flax was handled as only Christ could handle it till the flame of faith in this strong heart burned clear. The incident took place at one o'clock; the courtier set out for Capernaum immediately. The sun set, and a new day began, for with the Jew the day begins at sunset. And then his servants met him with faces of such radiance that the father had not to ask what was their news; and "Yesterday" they said (or as we should say "Today"), "at one o'clock the fever left him." That was an hour (to use the words of Jesus) when Capernaum was exalted unto heaven. In one of its homes, at any rate, that evening there was a very heaven of joy and love and gratitude. It was the second miracle which Jesus did in Galilee, and it also was a turning of water into wine.

Our Neglect of Christ in Our Quiet Years

Note first, then, as springing from this matchless story, how we may neglect the evidence of quiet years. "Except ye see signs and wonders," said Jesus to the courtier, and as He spoke He would turn to the people also—"Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Now what, think you, did Jesus mean by that? I think He meant something of this kind. "I was among you," He meant, "during my years of childhood. I spent my opening and my ripening manhood here; and I was the same then as I am today had you only had spiritual eyes to recognize Me; but you would not receive Me. I had no honor among you till I went to Judaea and wrought these mighty deeds, and now (though I am the same yesterday and today) you welcome Me gladly for the signs and wonders." Let us learn then to have an open eye in the years when God is moving among us quietly. Let us not wait for occurrences that startle ere we give a welcome to the Light of men. In the countless providence's of the common week, in the texts we read in the quiet of eventide, in the hymns we sing, in the preaching we hear, in all God's daily love and kindness to us, there is a call to everyone of us, "My son, give Me thine heart."

True Faith Is Followed by Activity

Then note, as signally illustrated here, how true faith is followed by activity. It was a journey of faith from Capernaum to Cana; it was not less so from Cana to Capernaum. All the love in the world for the poor boy would never have led the father Cana-wards unless within him there had been some spark of faith in the power and willingness of Jesus. Remember then that when a faith is real, working by love it will go forth in action. Remember too that there is no such source of action, nor anything so sure to make it high and noble, as an underlying faith in God's dear Son. It matters not what the children are going to be—sailors, soldiers, teachers, mechanics, nurses—whatever it is, they will do it all the more worthily, with purer motives, with more victorious gladness, if they begin life with the prayer of him who cried, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

July 30

Some Features of Christ's Working - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

My Father worketh hitherto, and I work— Joh_5:17

Christ Taught That Work Is Honorable

It is characteristic of the Christian Gospel that its Savior should be a worker. In the old world, it was hardly an honorable thing to work. It was a thing for slaves and serfs and strangers, not for freeborn men. Hence work and greatness rarely went together; and nothing could be more alien to the genius of paganism than a toiling God. Jesus has changed all that. He has made it impossible for us to think of God as indolent. It was a revolution when Jesus taught "God loves." But it was hardly less revolutionary when He taught "God works."

And He not only taught it, He lived it too. Men saw in Christ a life of endless toil, and "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Had Jesus lived and taught in the quiet groves of some academy, it would have made all the difference in the Christian view of work, and all the difference in the Christian view of God. But Jesus was a carpenter. And Jesus stooped to the very humblest tasks till He became the pattern and prince of workers. I want to look, then, at some features of His work, for He has left us an example that we should follow in His steps.

The Magnitude of His Aim

Looking back, then, upon the work of Jesus, what strikes me first is the magnitude of His aim compared with the meanness of His methods.

It is a great thing to command an army. It is a great thing to be a master of a fleet. It is a great thing to be a minister of state and help to guide a people towards their national destiny. But the aims of general and of admiral and of statesman, great in themselves, seem almost insignificant when we compare them with the purposes of Jesus. He claims a universal sovereignty. He runs that sovereignty out into every sphere. He is to be the test in moral questions. He is to shape our law and mould our literature. He is the Lord of life. He is the King and Conqueror of death. These are the purposes of Jesus, far more stupendous than man had ever dreamed of in his wildest moments. Will He not need stupendous methods if He is ever to achieve an aim like that?

The Meanness of Christ's Methods

And it is then the apparent meanness of His methods strikes us. Had He a pen of fire? He never wrote a line, save in the sand. Had He a voice of overmastering eloquence? He would not strive, nor cry, nor lift up His voice in the streets. Was there unlimited wealth at His command?—"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Were His first followers men of influence?—"Simon and Andrew were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers." Or would He use the sword like Mohammed?—"Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." It seems impossible that in such ways Christ should achieve His purpose. It is the magnitude of His aim compared with the meanness of His methods that arrests me first.

It should be so with every Christian toiler. It is a simple lesson for every man and woman who seeks to serve in the true Christian spirit. Meanly surrounded, he should be facing heavenwards. Meanly equipped in all things else, he should be mightily equipped in noble hope. If I am Christ's, I cannot measure possibilities by methods. My heaven is always greater than my grasp. If I am Christ's, I cherish the loftiest hope and am content to work for it in lowliest ways.

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Some Features of Christ's Working - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Difference between a Visionary and a Christian

And it is there the difference comes in between a visionary and a Christian. A visionary dreams his dreams and builds his castles in the air, and they are radiant and wonderful and golden, and the light of heaven glitters on every minaret. And then, because he cannot realize them now and cannot draw them in all their beauty down to earth, the visionary folds his hands, does nothing, and the vision goes. But the true Christian, with hopes as glorious as any visionary's because they are the hopes of Jesus Christ, carries the glory of them into his common duty and into the cross-bearing of the dreary day. And though the generations die, and the purposes of God take a thousand years to ripen, he serves and is content—

Jesus shall reign where'er the sun

Doth his successive journeys run.

Untiring Labor with Unruffled Calm

Once more, as I look back upon the work of Jesus, I find there untiring labor joined with unruffled calm.

There never was a ministry, whether of man or angel, so varied, so intense, or so sustained as was the public ministry of Jesus. He preaches in the synagogue at Nazareth. He preaches on the hill and on the sea. With infinite patience and unexhausted tenderness He trains the twelve. And all that we know of Him is not a thousandth part of what He said and did. Charged with that mighty task and with only three short years to work it out, shall we not find Christ anxious, and will we not light on hours of feverish unrest? There is no trace of that. With all its stir, no life is so restful as the life of Jesus. With all its incident and crowding of event, we are amazed at the supreme tranquillity of Christ. There is time for teaching and there is time for healing. There is time for answering and time for prayer. Each hour is full of work and full of peace. No day hands on its debts to tomorrow. Jesus can cry, "It is finished," at the close. Here for each worker is the supreme example of untiring labor and unruffled calm.

Let us remember that. It is the very lesson that we need today. There are two dangers that, in these bustling times, beset the busy man. One is that he be so immersed in multifarious business that all the lights of heaven are blotted out. The calm and quietness that are our heritage as Christians are put to flight in the unceasing round. Life lacks its unity, loses its central plan, becomes a race and not a stately progress, slackens its grasp upon eternal things, till we grow fretful in the constant pressure; and men who looked to us, as followers of Jesus, for a lesson, find us as worried and anxious as themselves. That is the one extreme; it is the danger of the practical mind. But then there is the other; it is the mystic's danger. It is that, realizing the utter need of fellowship with God, a man should neglect the tasks that his time brings him and should do nothing because there is so much to do. All mysticism tends to that. It is a recoil from an exaggerated service. It is the shutting of the ear to the more clamorous calls that we may hear more certainly the still small voice.

But all that is noblest in the mystic's temper and all that is worthiest in the man of deeds, mingled and met in the service of our Lord. Here is the multitude of tasks. Here is the perfect calm. And that is the very spirit that we need to rebaptize our service of today. God in the life means an eternal purpose. And work achieved on the line of an eternal purpose is work without friction and duty without fret. God in the life means everlasting love. And to realize an everlasting love is to experience unutterable peace.

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Some Features of Christ's Working - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

He Had a Mission with a Message

Again, as I look back upon Christ's work, there is another feature of it that strikes me. I find in it a mission for all, joined with a message for each.

Times without number we find Jesus surrounded by a multitude. Christ is the center of many crowds. Wherever He is, the crowd is sure to gather. And how He was stirred and moved and filled with compassion for the multitude, ail readers of the Gospel story know. Every chord of His human heart was set vibrating by a vast assembly. The common life of congregated thousands touched Him, true man, to all His heights and depths. He fed them, taught them. This was His parting charge, "Go ye into all the world and preach!" Yet for all this—the wide sweep of His mission—no teacher ever worked on so minute a scale as Jesus Christ. Did any crowd ever get deeper teaching than Nicodemus when he came alone? And was the woman of Samaria despised because she was companionless? How many sheep did the shepherd go to seek when the ninety-and-nine were in the fold? How many pieces of silver had been lost? How many sons came home from the far country before the father brought out his robes and killed the calf? Christ did not work on the scale of a thousand or on the scale of ten, but on the scale of one. Companionless men were born, and companionless they must be born again.

Jesus Insists on Quality, Not Quantity

We cannot afford, in these days, when all the tendency is toward the statistics of the crowd—we cannot afford to despise that great example. It is true, there is a stimulus in numbers. There is an indescribable sympathy that runs like an electric thrill through a great gathering; and heights of eloquence and song and prayer are sometimes reached where the crowd is that never could have been reached in solitude. But for all that, all Christlike work is on the scale of one. Jesus insists on quality, not quantity. And when the books are opened and the strange story of the past is read, some voices that the world never heard, as of a mother or a sister or a friend, shall be found more like Christ's than others that have thrilled thousands by their eloquence. Pray over that sweet prayer of the Moravian liturgy: "From the desire of being great, good Lord, deliver us." A word may change a life. It did for the Philippian jailer. A look may soften a hard heart. It did for Peter. To sanctify life's trifles, to redeem the opportunities for good which the dullest day affords, never to go to rest without some secret effort to bring but a little happiness to some single heart—men who do this, unnoticed through the unnoticed years, grow Christlike; men who do this shall be amazed to waken yonder and find that they are standing nearer God than preacher or than martyr, if preaching and if martyrdom were all.

Seeming Failure and Singular Triumph

Lastly, as I look back upon that life of Christ, I see another feature. I see in it seeming failure joined with signal triumph. If ever there was a life that seemed to have failed, it was the life of Jesus. For a time it had looked as if triumph had been coming. The people had been awakened. The national hope had begun to center round Him. A little encouragement, and they would have risen in enthusiasm for Messiah. But when Jesus went to His death, all that was changed. The people had deserted Him. His very disciples had forsaken Him and fled. His hopes were shattered and His cause was lost. His kingdom had been a splendid dream, and Jesus had been the king of visionaries. Now it was over. The cross and the grave were the last act in the great tragedy. Jesus had bravely tried, and He had failed. Yes! so it seemed. Perhaps even to the nearest and the dearest so it seemed. God's hand had written failure over the work of Jesus, when lo! on the third day, the gates of the grave are burst, and Jesus rises. And then the Holy Ghost descends on the apostles, and they begin to preach. And the tidings are carried to the isles and pierce the continents. And a dying world begins to breathe again: and hope comes back, and purity and honor, and pardon and a new power to live, and a new sense of God; and it all sprang from the very moment when they wagged their heads and said, "He saved others, himself he cannot save." Failure? Not failure—triumph! It was a seeming failure in the eyes of man; it was a signal triumph in the plans of God.

Seeming Failure Is Often True Success

O heart so haunted by the sense of failure, remember that. O worker on whose best efforts, both to do and be, failure seems stamped, remember that. If I have learned anything from the sacred story, it is this, that seeming failure is often success. When John the Baptist lay in his gloomy prison, it must have seemed to him that he had failed. Yet even then, a voice that never erred was calling him the greatest born of women. When Paul lay bound in Rome, did no sense of failure visit him? Yet there, chained to the soldier, he penned these letters that run like the chariots of Christ. God is the judge of failure, and not you. Leave it to Him, and go forward. Successes here are often failures yonder, and failures here are sometimes triumphs there.

One of our Scottish ministers and poets has a short piece he names, "A Call to Failure"-

Have I no calls to failure,

Have I no blessings for loss,

Must not the way to the mission

Lie through the path to the Cross?

But one of our English ministers and poets has a short piece that is a call to triumph: "He always wins who sides with God, no chance to him is lost." And is the one false, and the other true? Nay, both are true.

July 31

The Judgment of the Son - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

For the Father judges no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son— Joh_5:22

Not Future Judgment but Present

When we hear the word judgment on the lips of Christ we are prone to cast our thoughts into the future. Almost instinctively there rises in us some foreboding of the day of judgment. So powerfully has that last dread scene wrought on the imagination of mankind, that always when we light on the word judgment we seem to catch in the word a whisper of it; until often, as it seems to me, we lose the primary meaning of the Scripture and blind ourselves by a judgment that is future to one that is past or actually present. Now I want you to note the wording of our text. It is not the future tense that is employed here. It is not "The Father will commit"; it is "The Father hath [now] committed." That means that in the very hour He spake, Christ was invested with a judging power.

In the Presence of Jesus People Felt Self-Reproach

Now the great impression made by the life of Christ is not an impression of judgment but of love. Here, we say, is a Man of such compassion as never was witnessed on the earth before. There is a depth of tenderness about Him that is infinitely attractive and endearing. There is a wealth of the most helpful sympathy — a passionate desire to be a friend. There is a tenderness that is unparalleled, a sensibility to all distress, a love so deep and strong and true that life was not sufficient to disclose it.

Yet in the heart of that appealing tenderness we soon awaken to another element. We come to see that wherever Jesus was, there was the element of judgment. As He moved along these ways of Galilee, men and women knew that they were loved. With a like instinct, too deep for understanding, they knew continually that they were judged. The moment they stepped into that lowly presence the moment they looked into His face and heard Him speak, they felt they were standing at a judgment bar. It was not that they felt that they were known. We may feel that we are known and not be judged. We may be perfectly conscious that someone knows our motives, and yet it may never cause the slightest self-reproach. But there was always self-reproach where Jesus was. Men were ashamed of themselves, they knew not why. His life was an unceasing act of love, and yet it was an unceasing act of judgment.

Indirect Judgment

Sometimes it was His words that carried judgment, and carried it in quite a casual way. That is one office of the casual word, to reach the conscience and stir it unawares. None of us like to be directly judged. We are apt to resent the word of condemnation. To charge a man with such and such a fault is very often the way to steel his heart. But we all know how the casual word, said in our presence but never aimed at us, has a strange way of getting at the conscience. Have not you occasionally felt uneasy when the conversation took a certain turn? It was not meant for you, and yet it reached you; it found you out and made you feel your guilt. And what I say is that the talk of Christ had that strange power, in unequalled measure, of making men feel mysteriously guilty. Sometimes He hurled an open condemnation. Sometimes He cried "Woe unto you, Pharisees." But such words were not the sorest condemnation of His lips. It was rather the words which He was always speaking, and which were never meant to wither and condemn, and yet which had that strange and awful power of waking the agony of self-reproach.

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The Judgment of the Son - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Judgment through His Deeds

Sometimes it was His deeds that carried judgment, and here again, in general, indirectly. Directly, He judged a barren fig tree once; but it was not thus that His acts judged men and women. He did them not to judge men but to save them. They flowed from a heart that was the home of love. And yet when they fell upon the human conscience, they had a strange power of wakening self-reproach. "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." You remember how Simon Peter once cried that? And what had happened to make him cry that cry? Had Christ condemned him with a tongue of fire? It was not that which caused the bitter cry. It was the net that was so full of fishes. It was an act so wonderful and kindly that Peter saw, and seeing loathed himself. Have we not all experienced that judgment—the silent judgment of some noble act? Nothing was said, but something fine was done, and seeing it so done, we were ashamed. And I say again that in the acts of Jesus, all of them acts of love and acts of grace, there lay the power, in unequalled measure, of touching men with a strange self-reproach.

Judgment through His looks

Sometimes it was His looks that carried judgment, and looks are often powerful to do that. There are looks that are the cause of keener pain than any scolding of an angry lip. It does not take deeds to make us feel ashamed. It does not take words to make us feel ashamed. A look will do it and will waken remorse and make us hate ourselves for being vile. And if in human eyes where sin has lodged there be this power of waking self-reproach, how awful must it have been in eyes like Christ's. I do not wonder that the rich young ruler was sorrowful when I read that Christ had looked on him and loved him. I do not wonder that the crowd was stricken when Jesus looked round about on them with anger. I do not wonder that when Jesus turned and looked on Simon Peter in the hall, the heart of Peter was broken with the look, and he went out into the night and wept. Will anyone say that was a look of anger? It was a look of love. And the past was in it, and all its tender memories, and the dear days that were beyond recall. And it saved Peter when the night was past to think that the Lord had turned and looked at him; but first down to the very depths it judged him. No wild rebuke would ever have done that. It would have hardened him and made him reprobate. No word of Sinai, given in flame and thunder, would ever have carried conviction to that heart. One look of Christ did more than all the Decalogue. One look of Christ outmatched a thousand threatenings. One look of Christ showed in what height and depth the Father had given all judgment to the Son.

Judgment by Being What He Was

But even that is not all the truth. There was something more than word and deed and look. It was not only by what He did that Jesus judged; it was more by what He was than what He did. Is there anyone of us who has not known how character can judge? Is there not somebody you know and love who silently condemns you when you think of him? It is not that he is wanting to condemn you; nothing may be farther from his thoughts—and yet when you meet him and when you see what bets, you are ashamed of all that you have been. That, I take it, is what the Gospel means when it tells us that the saints shall judge the world. There is not a saint and not an earnest soul but unconsciously is judging every day. And men may mock at him and scorn him and call him an idle dreamer or a visionary, and yet who knows what self-reproach is stirring before that character of love and beauty? Now from all such earthly characters lift your thought to the character of Christ. Think how complete it was, how beautiful, how perfect in its finest and its strongest. Then tell me if you have ever realized how men must have felt, and felt as in a flash, when on the highway or in the summer field they found themselves in the presence of the Lord? They were ashamed, and knew not what it meant. They were convicted, yet not a word was spoken. Away deep down new thoughts began to burn of what their life might be and ought to be. It was the unconscious influence of character; the only perfect life the world had known. It was the witness, although they knew it not, that the Father had given all judgment to the Son.

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The Judgment of the Son - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Qualities of Christ's Judgment: Unerring

Now I pass on to a second thought: what were some of the qualities of this judgment? I shall touch on three, and the first is that it was unerring. It is notable that when men judged Christ, their judgment was very generally wrong. He was Elias, they said, or Jeremias, or He was the friend of Beelzebub, or He was mad. But if their judgment upon Him was often wrong, His judgment upon them was always right. There are men whose judgment is wonderfully sure so long as it moves within a certain area. A born teacher can always judge a boy, and a born detective can always judge a criminal. But the wonderful thing about our Savior's judgment is that it was a universal judgment—the Father committed all judgment to the Son. Born in a village, He met the men of cities; cradled in poverty, He met the rich. Unlearned, the men of learning moved around Him; a Man of peace, there came to Him centurions. And yet in all that many-colored throng which filed forever past His judgment bar, I never find that Jesus was deceived. "Thou art a rock," He said to Simon once, and Simon when he spoke was like the sand. And I can picture how the hearers smiled, and said, "It is evident He does not know him." And then the years went by and with resistless hand dragged to the light all that was deepest in him, till in the end of the day Jesus was proven right. Did you ever think of timid Nicodemus stealing to Him under the cloak of night? Was not that just the man to be distrusted—the last man in the world to tell a secret to? Yet Christ unlocked to him His richest treasury, detecting in an instant what he was—and Nicodemus embalmed Him when He died. Never forget that the judgment of Christ is an unerring judgment. You may be wrong in what you think of Him. He is never wrong in what He thinks of you. Might it not be well, then, that you should take that life of yours, of which you are so ignorant, and quietly yield it up unto the gaze of Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire?

A Surprising Judgment

In the second place, it was a surprising judgment. It was full of the element of unexpectedness. It ran completely opposite in a hundred cases to the accepted judgment of the world. One has described the writer Amiel as the master of the unexpected. But the master of the unexpected is not Amiel; the master of the unexpected is Christ. He was always surprising men by what He did. He was always surprising them by what He would not do. But above all else I think that He surprised them just by the kind of judgments that He passed. Think of the judgment He passed upon the lilies— "not even Solomon in all his glory." Have you any conception how the Jews were startled who first heard such audacity as that? Think of His judgment upon the little children, whom even His disciples would have kept from Him: "Except ye become as little children"—and they were beneath the notice of the Pharisee. He wanted an army that might win the world, and He judged that fishermen would be the men to form it. He wanted a woman who would kneel and worship, and He judged that a harlot might be the right material. My brother, if you have ever studied Scripture, and tried to get into living touch with Christ, you must have been thrilled, as I have so often been, with the arresting presence of surprise. Now remember that on the day of judgment that element is to have a conspicuous place. "Lord, when saw we thee naked or in prison?"—we are to be amazed that we are welcomed. And I mention this that you may learn that when the great white throne is set, and Christ is there, He will be the very same in action as when He walked upon the ways of Galilee.

An Unceasing Judgment

Then in the third place, it was an unceasing judgment. It was in action every hour He lived. The judgment of character is always that, just because character is always character. Our legal judges are not always judges. They have their seasons when they sit in judgment. And then they lay aside their robes of office, and they go back to private life again. But in Christ the robe of office was Himself never to be laid aside in life or death, and that means His judgment is unceasing. You feel it when He wrought and when He spoke. You feel it when He went alone to pray. Men were convicted when they knew He prayed, and they came and cried to Him, "Teach us to pray." Right from the baptism on to the cross of Calvary; right from that hour on to this hour, Christ has been judging men and judging women, and judging everything man's hands have wrought. You say you do not believe in the last judgment. But have you ever thought what that word last implies? It is not a spectacle, that day of judgment, suddenly breaking on an astonished crowd. It is the last, and if you want the first, go back to Galilee and look at history. As a reasonable man you cannot deny the first; is it quite reasonable to deny the last? The last page of a book is meaningless save through the pages that have gone before. The last note in a piece of music is nothing save through the music that precedes. And even the last judgment would be meaningless if it were isolated and apart; it is the close of what has gone before. Born in an age like this, when everybody seems to be judging Christ, will you remember there is the other side? Will you remember He is judging you? Meditate on that. Think what must His judgment be. You will then say, "God be merciful to me a sinner."

August 1

Finding Him on the Other Side

When they had found him on the other side of the sea— Joh_6:25

Men Sought after Christ

When our Lord had fed the multitude He constrained His disciples to depart. He wanted a season of solitary prayer. The sun set and the night grew dark, and He was alone with His Father in the hills; and then we read that in the glimmering dawn He came to His own, walking on the sea. Eager to know more of this great wonder-worker, many had lingered by the scene of miracle. They waited for daybreak and then searched for Him, but nowhere could they find Him. And then, says John, boarding the little craft that happened to ride at anchor in the bay, they crossed the lake, still searching for Him, and found Him on the other side. To a deep mystic like St. John, that simple fact was full of meaning. I think St. John laid his pen down then and thought how often it is true of human life that we find Christ on the other side.

On the Other Side of Political Liberation

Think, for instance, of the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day. They were all "looking for a king, to slay their foes and lift them high." Their great hope was the Messianic hope. They were watching and waiting for Messiah. They were eagerly praying for that Coming One who was to right the wrong and set them free at last. And the singular thing is that when Jesus came, the promised Messiah of the race, they found Him—on the other side. He was over against them, antagonistic to them, pouring on them the vials of His "woe." He was on the side of the "people of the land," whom the Pharisees and scribes despised (Joh_9:34). I wonder if John was thinking of all that when he took up his pen and wrote that day—they found Him on the other side.

On the Side of Needed Blessing

Or think again of the disciples when the mothers of Salem brought their babes to Jesus. A mother's heart is a very wonderful thing, and it always wants a blessing for the children. I do not doubt the disciples meant well when they tried to head these mothers home again. What! Had their Master not enough to do that He was to be plagued with crying infants? And I question if they ever would forget, though they lived until their hair was Grey, how they found Him that day upon the other side—on the side of the feeble little children; on the side of the tender, loving mothers; on the side of the helpless and the frail; on the side of all who coveted His blessing. I wonder if John was thinking of that day, never to be effaced from memory, when he took up his pen and wrote—they found Him on the other side.

On the Side of Assurance

Or think again, changing the figure a little, of those who are tossing in a sea of doubt. Dwell, for example, on St. Thomas. There are those who doubt because they want to doubt; it affords a certain latitude and license. Sometimes it is easier to doubt than to take up the cross and bear the yoke of Christ. But if ever there was a genuine doubter who would have given worlds to have his doubts removed, it was St. Thomas in the resurrection days. For him doubt was an interior agony; it was the dark night of the soul. It clouded the heavens, blotted out the stars, silenced all the singing of the birds. And the beautiful and encouraging thing is this, that when this poor soul had crossed the sea of doubt, he found Christ upon the other side. He found Him to be far more wonderful than he had ever dreamed in the old days of Galilee. He was no longer "Rabbi"—that is, "Teacher." He was "My Lord and my God." I wonder if John had a thought to spare for Thomas when, long afterwards, he took his pen and wrote—they found Him upon the other side.

On the Side of Resurrection

And is not that, when you come to think of it, the spiritual import of His resurrection? One turns, for instance, to Mary in the garden. In that garden Mary was brokenhearted. She thought her Lord was lost, and lost forever. Then she heard a footfall on the grass, and the old familiar voice was saying, "Mary." And what thrilled Mary and changed her night to morning and brought new hope flooding to her heart, was that she had found Him on the other side. We speak much about the cross, and we never can speak too much about the cross. The cross is the spiritual center of the universe. The cross upholds, when everything else fails. But the cross is of little use to me, whether to my soul or my intelligence, except I find Him on the other side. Only then am I sure that God has conquered. Only then am I sure I have a living Savior. Only then am I sure that Christ is justified (1Ti_3:16) in the magnificent adventure of His love. That is the triumphing note of the New Testament, not only that the disciples found Him here, but that they found Him on the other side.

One Can Find Him on the Other Side—Heaven

That, too, sums up our hope of heaven. It is all concluded and embraced in that. The rest and joy and liberty of heaven is just "to be with Christ, which is far better." What heaven may be like, I do not know. Perhaps it is better that I do not know. Eye hath not seen and ear hath never heard the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him. But I cherish the abiding hope in grace, that when I have captained my liner across the sea of time, I shall immediately "see my Pilot face to face." Here He is very hard to find sometimes. Often we suppose He is the gardener. We catch the goings of His insistent feet, but Himself He very often hides (Isa_45:15). But the great hope of the trusting heart is this, that when death comes and brings unclouded vision—we shall find Him on the other side.

August 2

The Drawing of the Father - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him— Joh_6:44

These Words Spoken in Pity

We get some light on these deep words by remembering the occasion of their utterance. They were spoken rather in pity than in sternness. Our Lord had just been speaking of Himself as the bread which cometh down from heaven. It would have been a bold word to say in any company, but to that company, it seemed like madness. They had never dreamed that One could come from heaven by the ordinary way of human birth. They thought Messiah would descend in glory. Do we not know His father and His mother? Do we not remember Him when He was just a child? It was that which irritated them and made them grumble as these stupendous claims fell on their ears. And it was then that Christ, as if pitying their deadness and half-excusing their disbelief in Him, said, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." Now in Joh_6:37 of this chapter, there is a statement which appears very like to this one: "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me." The two are always associated in our thoughts. The one inevitably suggests the other. Yet there is a world of difference in their tone which is well that we should bear in mind. In the one case Christ is gladly confident. He is not disheartened although He is deserted. Let men forsake Him and turn away in anger, ail that the Father giveth Him shall come to Him. But the other is not the utterance of assurance. It is a cry of pity for hearts that were like stone: "No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him."

You Come to Christ When You Believe on Him

In passing, let me express the earnest hope that we all know what Christ meant by coming to Him. It is one of those vivid and pictorial words that were so congenial to the Master's lips: "Come unto me, all ye that labor"; "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life"; "No man can come unto me except the Father draw him." Now, had our Lord never looked beyond His earthly ministry, we might have been tempted to take coming literally. We might have thought that Christ, when He said, "Come," spoke of a literal coming to His side. But if there be one thing certain, it is that Christ took a longer view than that. He thought of a coming that would still be possible when He was no longer on the streets of Galilee. Can we now come to Him as Mary came when He was dining in the house of Simon? Can we now come to Him as Jairus came when the keel of His boat was grating on the beach? With His faith in a Gospel that should still be preached when He had gone home to share His Father's glory, Christ thought of something different from that. What then did He actually mean? He has told us that Himself. "I am the bread of life," He said, "he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." Clearly, then, in the mind of Jesus, coming and believing were identical; the one was the vivid image of the other. You come to Christ, not by any pilgrimage. You come to Christ when you believe in Him. You come when, both for time and for eternity, all your trust is centered in Him. It is in that sense, and only in that sense, that the words of our text have any meaning— "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him."

This Drawing Does Not Involve Fatalism

It is then of very great importance that we should understand what this drawing is, and my object in choosing this great text is just to try to make it plain to you. Is it something mysterious and dark, or is it something that fails within our understanding? Is it a special work of the Almighty, or does it blend into our common discipline? Is it something that we may recognize, something which inevitably betrays itself, or may we be subjects of the Father's drawing and all the time be unconscious of it? There are many who have taken this text and made it the excuse for an unworthy and unchristian fatalism. They have made no effort to believe and said they waited the drawing of the Father. I want you to learn how sinful that is, and how opposed to the spirit of the Lord, and how dishonoring to the great thought of Fatherhood which is the thought on which the text is based.

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The Drawing of the Father - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

It Involves Man's Will; The Father Draws, Not Drags

The first ray of light upon the text is found in the word which Christ employs. He does not talk of the dragging of the Father. He talks deliberately of the Father's drawing. No man is hurried to the feet of Christ as the heifer was hurried to the Jewish altar. No man is pushed there by an almighty arm and in defiance of a protesting will. The Father does not drag. The Father draws. He bids the soul to come in gentle ways. He will have a man come willingly to Christ, or else He will not have him come at all. We may illustrate this meaning of the word from the only other occasion when Christ uses it: "I, if I be lifted up," He said, "will draw all men unto me." And, tell me, what is the drawing of the cross? Is it anything which tramples on our freedom? It is just the appeal to all that is within us of that spectacle of redeeming love. We are not forced to Christ by what we see. We are only appealed to by that wondrous spectacle. It puts to shame all that is bad in us. It woos and wins all that is best in us. And as it is with the drawing of the cross, so is it with the drawing of the Father. It is but the action of appealing love. I do not say it is not irresistible; but I do say it does not seem so. It is as sweet, as natural, as gentle, as the drawing of the sunshine on the earth. There is no pressure of an arresting hand; no force exerted to overpower the will; a man is not conscious that he is being dragged by a power that is mightier than his own. It is that thought which makes it such a peril for a man to await the drawing of the Father. It is not something that will flash in splendor and overpower a man into belief. It is something blended with the daily providence, and wrought into the fabric of the life, and intermingled with the lights and shadows that make the variables of our common day. Just as the sunshine falling on earth draws it into the pageant of the summer, just as the moon falling on the ocean draws it into the fullness of its tides, so not less silently, not less insensibly, does the grace of the Father fall upon the heart and draw it, when it thinks not of it, into readiness for Jesus Christ. That this is the right tone to give the word we may confirm in an interesting way. Christ found this word He used in the Old Testament, and it is illuminative to notice where He found it. There are three books in the Old Testament which are peculiarly the books of tenderness, three books above all others which contain what I might call the wooing note. The one is that mystical book we call The Song; the second is the Book of Jeremiah; the third is Hosea, who in his ruined home had learned the power and the pain of love. It is in these three books, and these alone, that the thought of drawing is found in the Old Testament. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." That is the accent of the Song of Solomon; that of Jeremiah and Hosea; and it is that accent you must still preserve when the prophet's word is used by Jesus Christ. He is not thinking, anymore than they, of a power that should be mighty to compel. He is not thinking of any sudden energy that should surprise a man into belief. He is thinking, with His prophetic forerunners, of all that wooing ministry of love which none can recognize except the loved one, and to which even he is often blind.

The Father Draws and Man Comes

But now we can go a little farther, for we have the commentary here of Christ Himself. In the verses which succeed out text, He throws His thought into another form. "No man can come unto me," He says, "except the Father which hath sent me draw him." And then immediately He adds, "Every man therefore that hath heard, and learned of the Father, cometh unto me." And so He tells us that the Father's drawing is just an expression for the Father's teaching, "for," says the prophet, "they shall all be taught of God." Now mark you, there are two kinds of teaching: there is an outward and an inward teaching. And it cannot be of the first that Jesus thinks or else these Jews would have believed in Him. If ever anybody had been taught of God, was it not just these men to whom He spoke? And yet they hated Him and crucified Him. A man may have the Scriptures in his hand; he may enjoy the truest spiritual teaching; he may read the name of God across the stars, and yet never may be drawn to Jesus Christ. It is only when that teaching becomes inward and moves the will and kindles the affections that it becomes the drawing of the Father. Christ does not think of a teaching of the head. He rather thinks of a teaching of the heart. He thinks of every providence that chastens us; of every providence that breaks and humbles us. It is by that teaching that a man is drawn and comes to feel his need of a Redeemer and realizes that his only hope is in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. We are not only taught by every craving. Christ means that by every craving we are drawn, by every sorrow and by every joy, by every touch of pain and hour of sadness, by all the love that meets us when we journey, by all the tears when hours of parting come; by all that, we are not only taught; by all that, we are drawn to Him. Clearly, then, our Savior did not mean that we were to sit inactive and just wait. He meant us to find, even this very hour, that the Father is drawing us to Him. He meant that if we only looked within and read our story in the light of God, we should find there today such elements as would prepare us for the feet of Christ. There was that in these Jews that, had they heeded it, would have proved to them the drawing of the Father. There is that in you today, which is undoubtedly the Father's drawing. Only let God interpret it to you and show you what it implies and what it needs, and it will draw you to the feet of Christ.

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The Drawing of the Father - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Drawing and Responding in Marriage

We may further illustrate what Jesus meant by thinking of our earthly friendships. There is a deep sense in which all human love would be impossible without the Father's drawing. Among all the mysteries with which we are engirded, there is none deeper than the mystery of love. It is the heart reaching to its own, and finding in its own its resting place. Viewed on its earthly side it is the drawing of sympathies that answer one another. Viewed on its heavenly side it is far more than that; it is just the drawing of the Father. Does not one of our oldest proverbs tell us that true marriages are made in heaven? It is not often that our proverbial wisdom lights upon a truth so deep as that. For it just means that when two hearts are knit into a union that only death can sever, it is the drawing of the Father that hath done it. The heart of the mother is drawn towards her child. The heart of the friend is drawn towards his friend. God is busy within us in a thousand ways when He is leading us to recognize our own. And so, when He is leading us to Christ, God is busy with us in a thousand ways, and it is in that preparatory ministry that there lies the drawing of the Father. Our loneliness—that is the Father's drawing; it is His whisper to us that we need a friend. Our weakness—that is the Father's drawing; it is His guidance to sufficient strength. And all our haunting sense of inability and our shame when we have sinned again, all that is but the drawing of the Father to the loving mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe as stoutly as the sternest Calvinist, that no man can come to Christ except the Father draw him. But I also believe with all my heart that He is drawing every man this very moment. It is not new drawing that men want. It is new vision to behold its meaning. Lord, open men's eyes, that they may see.
In Retrospect, Friendships, Especially with Christ, Were Not the Result of

Drifting But of Being Drawn

In closing, I desire to say that this is a truth which is abundantly verified in our experience. As life goes on and its meanings become plainer, our vision also clarifies a little. We stand, as it were, upon a little eminence and see more clearly our path across the heather. And it is then that often looking backwards we can set to our seal that this is true, we were drawn of the Father when we never knew it. Just as our human friendships, when we make them, seem to be often but the child of accident, yet afterwards as we survey it all we recognize that there was more than chance there. So the friendship of the Lord Jesus Christ may also appear to us a casual thing, yet every year that passes makes us surer that our steps were ordered when we knew it not. One of the insights of passing years is to eliminate the thought of accident. They touch as with the light of a great plan what in its hour seemed a happy chance. We come to see in sunshine and in shadow, in sicknesses, in shiftings of our home, the movement of a will that was not ours and that had seen the end from the beginning. So is it, brethren, with that great transaction which seals the covenant between the soul and Christ. It may come suddenly and unexpectedly, and we feel no will in it except our own. Yet as the years go by we trace a change. We waken to a wise and loving leadership. We thought in the passing hour that we were drifting. We now discover that we were being drawn. That strong impression deepens with the years. We become less; the Father becomes more. We realize that we are Christ's today simply and solely because the Father drew us. And so we take this as a word of hope based on the changeless love of Fatherhood, and we believe that now and always, the Father is drawing every human soul.

August 3

Our Lord as a Student

How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?— Joh_7:15

He Gave the Impression of a Student

What our text implies is this, that our Lord gave the impression of a student. The Jews as they listened to Him recognized the accent of a cultured, educated man. Our Lord stood up in the temple and spoke, and whenever the Lord spoke a crowd would gather. There was something about Him that compelled attention, though nobody could say just what it was. The one question that sprang to every lip was, "Whence hath this man letters, never having learned?" He had never been at any Rabbinical school, never graduated from any university, and was evidently only a common man from the province of Galilee. Yet as they listened to Him they recognized the student, the cultivated, educated man.

Those Closest to Him Recognized His Scholarship of the scriptures

It is also a very striking thing that the nearer men got to Him the more they recognized His scholarship. It was when men were in closest contact with the Lord that they found to their cost His scholarly exactitude. There are people who, from a little distance, give the impression of admirable scholarship, but whenever you get near enough to them you are pitifully disillusioned. But nobody who came right up to Christ was ever pitifully disillusioned; what happened was that they were overcome. Think for a moment of the Rabbis. They had given their lives to the study of the Scripture. They had scorned delights, and lived laborious days, poring over the sacred word of Scripture. Yet never one of them encountered Christ but was beaten ignominiously from the field; our Master was the master of them all. "What," He would say to them, "have ye never read?" How the very question must have rankled. Never read! They had been doing nothing else since they entered the Rabbinical university. Yet the proudest scholar of them all invariably was convicted of incompetence by this strange provincial from Galilee.

His Learning Was Detected Although Not Paraded

Nor did our Lord create that deep impression by any elaborate parade of learning. All parade was abhorrent to His soul. Among the Pharisees learning was largely pedantry, with endless citation of authorities. It had passed out of touch with all reality in its meticulous exposition of the law. And over against that pharisaical pedantry, which was the despair of common people, stands the perfect simplicity of Christ. With what perfect and unfaltering ease He used to handle the most abstruse of themes! With what homely and familiar figures He would lighten what was dark! Where others stumbled, groping in the mists, lost in large polysyllabic words, our Lord moved just like a little child. The last thing the Lord ever would suggest to me is that of a man groping. There is such perfect mastery about Him, such ease of conscious and consummate power. And whenever you find anything like that, it is more than the crown and blossom of an intellect; it is the crown and blossom of a life. His intellectual processes were beautiful, because His life and character were beautiful. He says, "I come to do thy will, O God." Our modern psychology stresses will as one of the organs and avenues of knowledge, but our Master knew that long ago.

Christ Had the Courage to Be Himself

I like to notice, too, that this so perfect student had always the quiet courage to be Himself, and the quiet courage just to be oneself is one of the finest kinds of courage in the world. I have known many a young minister who might have had an admirable ministry; but then he began imitating somebody, and afterwards he might as well have stayed at home. That is one great temptation of a student, to see things through other people's eyes; to see the Bible through Dr. Moffatt's eyes or Shakespeare through the eyes of Mr. Bradley. And one of the glorious things about this student was that He never saw things through other people's eyes; He always had the courage to be Himself. Trained in the home at Nazareth, steeped in the teaching of the synagogue, with what tremendous pressure the learning of His day must have been brought to bear on Him. And His refusal to be overborne by the tradition of His time is one of the features of the Gospel story. How fresh His expositions were! How He found the truth that everyone had missed! How He swept aside accepted meanings and reached unerringly the beating heart of things. No wonder that men listening to Him found their hearts beginning to burn within them as He talked with them by the way.

His Was Not a Leisurely Learning

That leads me, lastly, to suggest that our Lord never was a leisured student. All that He won from Scripture and from nature was won in scanty intervals of toil. It is commonly supposed, from certain inferences, that Joseph died when Jesus was still young, and from the way in which He is called "the carpenter," one would take it that the shop was His. So one pictures Him, growing up to manhood, the sole support of Mary and the children, working "from morning sun till he was done." Not for Him the leisure of the morning, that golden season for the student; not for Him the "endless afternoon," nor the roomy and large hours of evening. And the marvelous thing is that when at length He went out to His public ministry, He was perfect in intellectual equipment. The world had yielded all her treasure to Him. His mind was stored with the teaching of the fields. He was a perfect swordsman with the sword of Scripture at the very outset of His ministry. And all this, garnered in the years when the daily task was arduous and long and the hours of happy leisure very few. Some of you may be just like that. You may have little leisure for the higher things. Engaged in arduous and exacting toil, your time for study may be very limited. The Master understands. His earthly experience was the same. He has not forgotten on His throne in heaven that He was once the Carpenter of Nazareth.

August 4

There Are Things We Cannot Hear

Ye cannot hear my word— Joh_8:43

No One Could Complain That They Could Not Hear

I should think that when these words were spoken they must have caused a great deal of perplexity. They seemed a contradiction of the facts. There are speakers whom one cannot hear well. It is a common complaint against the clergy. But I do not imagine for one moment that this complaint was ever made of Jesus. He could be heard in the confines of the crowd. Every word He spoke was audible in the clear, still air of Galilee. Even the officers had to bear their testimony that never man spake like this man. And one can easily picture the perplexity of those who that day were round about Him when our Lord said, "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word."

Hearing Depends on Character

So one comes to feel that for our Lord, hearing was not a physical activity. It was rather the reaction of the soul on the syllables which fall upon the ear. Just as two men may look at the same scene, yet see in it very different things, so may they listen to the same set of words, yet hear the most dissimilar suggestions. It was of such hearing, such spiritual receptivity, that our Lord was thinking when He said, "Ye cannot hear my word." For it is not with the ear we hear; it is with the character and spirit. It is by all that we have set our hearts upon, by everything that we have struggled for. Every temptation we have ever met, every sin we have ever fought and mastered, determines the kind of thing that we shall hear as we take our journey through the world. Live meanly and you hear meanly, though you be listening to the Lord Himself. Live nobly and you hear nobly, though all that the ear catches is but commonplace. There is a great responsibility in speaking if for every word we are to give account; but our Lord was equally aware of the tremendous responsibility of hearing.

The Selective Power of Personality

One finds that selective power of personality in one of the best known of the Gospel narratives. For we read in St. John that when the Father's voice was heard, "some said it thundered, and others that an angel spoke to him." It was the same voice that broke on every ear, and yet to one it sounded like the angels, and to another there was nothing in it save the roll of the thunder in the hills. Had the ear been the one instrument of hearing, that diverse record would have been impossible. But these men were not hearing with the ear; they were hearing by what they were. All their past, their habit and their trend, their way of taking the common things of life, leapt to the light, unconsciously, in the interpretation of the Lord's voice. That is what is happening constantly. Our verdict on others is our own verdict. Often our judgment of minister or sermon is really the judgment of ourselves. We are listening, not with the bodily ear, but with our loves and hates, our grudges and dislikes. We are listening with the hidden heart. That is why the Master said so sternly, "Ye cannot hear my word." There was no physical impossibility. The impossibility was spiritual. Prejudices, jealousies, and antagonisms made the real Christ inaudible to them though His every syllable fell upon their ear.

What We Hear Is an Unconscious Revelation of Ourselves

Then one remembers how, in the Gospel of St. Mark, our Lord says, "Take heed what ye hear" (Mar_4:24). That is a very different thing from saying, "Take heed therefore how ye hear" (Luk_8:18). There is a sense, of course, familiar to everybody, in which we cannot help the things we hear. No one can escape the city's uproar when walking in the city streets. But our Lord knew that many things we hear really depend upon our character and would never reach us if we were only different. There are those to whom we would never dream of gossiping; they do not hear it because of what they are. Nobody brings them nasty or lewd tales, and that, just because of their known character. So very often the sort of thing we hear depends on the sort of character we bear, and therefore for what we hear we are responsible. That is why our Lord says, "Take heed what ye hear." The kind of thing we hear is an unconscious revelation of ourselves. And that is why, too, looking across His audience, to whom His every syllable was clear, He said, "Ye cannot hear my word." "My sheep hear my voice"—they hear it because they love the Shepherd. They hear it because, through faith and love, they are attuned to the message and the meaning. So does our Lord clearly recognize the tremendous responsibility of hearing. It is those who are of the truth that hear His voice (Joh_18:37).

August 5

The Eternal Son - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Before Abraham was, I am— Joh_8:58
Unto us a child is born— Isa_9:6

The Joy of Christmas

At Christmas, in common with all Christendom, our thoughts gladly journey towards Bethlehem. We see the manger, and the little Babe within it, and the shepherds listening to the song of angels. A birthday is always a great day, and Christmas is the greatest birthday of the year. There was no sounding of trumpets in any court about it, yet it was mightier than any birthday of the Caesars. We have only to think of all that Christ has been—we have only to think of all that Christ has done, to be thrilled by the ineffable grandeur of the hour, when unto us a Child is born.

Yet when we come to study the New Testament, there is one thing which very soon impresses us. It is that the birth of Jesus in its pages does not occupy the place we should have looked for. We might have expected that apostolic writers would have dwelt on it with adoring wonder. In every letter we might have thought to find unnumbered references to the birth of Jesus. Yet as we read the apostolic literature that is certainly what we do not find. There is many a thought flashed upwards to the throne. There are very few flashed backwards to the manger. It is not that Bethlehem is ignored. Still less is it that Bethlehem is denied. The impression rather is that it is lost in the full light of an overwhelming truth. It is lost, as it were, in the wonderful assurance that as their Lord is alive forevermore, so forever had He been alive in the bosom of the eternal Father. The fact is, we are out of touch a little with the apostles' conception of the Savior. For them His earthly life was like a valley between two peaks that rose into the heavens. And we are so fond of lingering in that valley that we almost forget the heights that close it in; but they, every hour that they lived, lifted up their eyes unto the hills. So profound was the spiritual impression that Christ had made on them that they could not conceive of Him as just another man. So overwhelmingly had He suggested God to them that they could not think of a time when He began to be. Hence they who had lived with Him and seen His glory did not dwell on Bethlehem and the manger, but wrote "In the beginning was the Word, . . . and the Word was God." To me it seems a very idle business to discuss the borrowing of that Logos doctrine. I shall be delighted if one shall prove to me that it was borrowed from the Alexandrian philosophy. To me the wonderful thing is that John did so find it as the expression of the divine activity, and felt in a flash it was a fitting category for the lowly Prophet he had known in Galilee. He had no august traditions to uphold. He had no orthodox doctrine to maintain. He had only the memory of the beloved Master upon whose bosom he had lain at supper. And yet he felt as he remembered Him that nothing was so true to that remembrance as to say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "The one thing the apostles never do is to date the career of Jesus from His birth. For them, with all their marked divergences, He was the eternal Son of God. They knew the gladness of the prophetic message, "For unto us a child is born," but they knew also with undimmed assurance that "Before Abraham was, I am."

Christ's Pre-Existence in His Own Words

Now if that were only apostolic doctrine, there are many who would treat the matter cavalierly. They would find for it historic parallels, and call the writers the children of their age. But the singular and indeed inexplicable thing is not that Christ's preexistence is apostolic doctrine, but that unquestionably it had its place in the mature consciousness of Christ Himself. Christ does not speak of Himself as being born. He says, "I am come," or "I was sent." "Father, glorify thou me," He says, "with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." And then there is the second of our texts, a word that always thrills me when I hear it, "Before Abraham was, I am." If words mean anything at all, these words imply personal pre-existence. You cannot explain them by thinking of the Son as eternally present to the thought of God. And remember it was not Paul who uttered them, nor Peter, nor the beloved John; it was Jesus, and Jesus was the Truth. I want to show you the bearings of that doctrine. I want to show you how all the joy of Christmas is really involved in its acceptance. I want to show you how vitally it touches all that is deepest and richest in the Gospel, all that has won the heart and changed the life of innumerable thousands of mankind.

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The Eternal Son - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Was Jesus Conscious of His Pre-Existence. During His Childhood?

But before doing so there is one difficulty that I should like to dwell on for a moment. It is a difficulty that often has been felt, and perhaps especially at Christmastide. Was Christ conscious of that former life of His? Was it known to Him when He was a child? As He played in the village street of Nazareth did the glory He had left lie open to Him? I think that everyone of us must feel that any such consciousness of pre-existence is fatal to the simple human charm of the infancy and youth of Jesus. Doubtless He had His childish dreams of that kingdom where time and space are not. Heaven lay about Him in His infancy as it lay about all of us when we were children. But to think that He was vividly conscious as a child that He had lived forever with the Father is to pluck the heart of childhood from His bosom and the innocent wonder of childhood from His eyes. I think that His birth was a sleep and a forgetting, though trailing clouds of glory He had come. I do not imagine that this knowledge reached Him by any easy way of reminiscence. I think that it was slowly formed within His mind as the choicest fruit of His filial obedience; that it emerged for Him into a perfect certainty out of the depths of His fellowship with God. When He was a Child He thought as a child, for unto us, we read, a Child is born. And then He grew in knowledge and in wisdom, and was baptized with the Holy Ghost. Until at last His consciousness of Sonship became so overwhelming and intense, that it transcended time, and rose above beginning, and showed itself as an eternal thing. The closer any being lives with God, the more he feels that time is but a dream. Beginnings and endings are but incidents when there is the grip of the everlasting arms. And it was when Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, entered into all the riches of His Sonship, that He realized in that absolute relationship something that had no beginning and no ending. Only thus, I think, can you preserve unsullied the perfect childhood of our dear Redeemer. Only thus can you believe at Bethlehem that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Only thus with all the joy of Christmas can we say, "For unto us a child is born"; and yet go out into the night and whisper, "Before Abraham was, I am."

Lose Sight of Christ's Pre-Existence and God's Love Is Dimmed

What, then, are the spiritual values of Christ's pre-existence? Let me indicate to you the three that are most evident. And the first is that when we lose our hold on it immediately the love of God is dimmed. For God so loved the world not that He thought—God so loved the world not that He said—God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for you and me. And the simple fact is that if Jesus Christ began to be in the hour when He was born, then in heaven there was no Son to cherish, and none in the fullness of the time to give. I learn the depth of a true mother's love from her unfailing spirit of self-sacrifice. I learn how dearly the patriot loves his country from his readiness to fight for it and die for it. And so alone do I learn the love of God, not from the beauty of the summer meadow, but from a deed of sacrifice more wonderful than ever mother or patriot achieved. It is not enough to tell me that God loves me. Life is far too tragic for that. You must show me a God giving His dearest for me if you would persuade me that I am dear to Him. And that is the one thing you can never show me if in the Godhead there was no society, no Son to love before the stars were kindled, and none in the fullness of the time to give. Take away the Lord's eternal being and the love of God is but a speculation. I have to gather it from broken syllables, some of them far too bloody to be legible. I have to do my work and face my music and bear my suffering and meet my death, sustained by nothing in this world of shadows but the shadow and surmise of desire. It is not thus that men are conquerors. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. We need to know, not merely to conjecture, that in the heaven of heavens there is love. And of that transcendent fact there is no certainty, such as can be of service in the shadow, save the assurance of the heart that knows that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. I turn to nature, and ask her, "Is God love?" And nature shows me an earthquake. I turn to life, and life throws back the napkin from the cold faces of little children. I turn to the earthly experience of Jesus, certain that there the love of God will shine, and lo, a cross, and a very bitter cry from it, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." Ah yes, but God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Once believe that to be the heart of history, and everything else can wait until the morning. Yet that is meaningless, and has no place in heaven, and ceases to be real as life is real, if Christ began to be when He was born.

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The Eternal Son - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Lose Christ's Pre-Existence and the Glory of Christ Is Dimmed

Again, if we lose our hold upon Christ's pre-existence, then the glory of the life of Christ is dimmed. It may still win us as a life of beauty, but it has ceased to awe us as a life of grace. For the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is certainly not the fact that He was poor. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is this, that though He was rich, for us He became poor. It is this which has thrilled and awed the hearts of men—not that He whom they worshipped was a servant, but that being in the form of God, He took on Him willingly a servant's form. When the supper was ended, He laid aside His garments and took a towel and washed His disciples' feet. It is a little picture, perfect in its outline, of the life of ministry that was so near its close. And what has awed men in that life of ministry has never been simply its lowliness of toil, but the thought that Christ in bending to His toil had laid aside His garments of eternity. Date everything from the birth-hour at Bethlehem, and you have nothing left but the poverty of Christ. His is only another of that roll of heroes who have served heroically in a narrow lot. However inspiring that may be, it is certainly not the inspiration that has founded Christendom and changed the hearts of men and kindled the adoration of the ages. Ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, for us He became poor. The conquering wonder of it all is not the poverty; it is the infinite wealth that was given up for poverty. It is not the manger—it is not the cross—it is the stooping from heaven to manger and to cross that has thrilled men as they never could be thrilled by any tale of patient, quiet endurance. In other words, remove the pre-existence, and you lose the infinite grace of the Redeemer. There were no riches to be given up if Christ began to be when He was born. And therefore if you would know the joy of Christmas, it is not enough to say a Child is born; you must launch out into the deeps and whisper, "Before Abraham was, I am."

If We Lose Sight of Christ's Pre-Existence, the Glory of Our Humanity Is Dimmed
Lastly, if we lose our hold of Christ's pre-existence, the glory of our humanity is dimmed. We have lost our historical and abiding argument for the nobility and dignity of man. There was a time when that was easily credited, for man was the tenant of a mighty world. His world was the fixed center of God's universe, and the stars in their courses were its obedient servants. It was for man that the sun arose in splendor; it was for man that the hosts of heaven were marshaled; it was to tell the petty secrets of man's destiny that the kindly planets moved into conjunction. Citizen of such a noble kingdom, there could be little question about man's nobility. Waited on by all these glittering servants, man was only a little lower than the angels. But now the world has lost her proud centrality, and heaven has shifted and gone far away, and sun and stars have other work to do than to tell strange stories of the death of kings. Heaven is removed and become astronomical. There is no Jacob's ladder that can reach it now. The earth, to which all creation did obeisance once, is now but an atom on creation's outskirts. And all this knowledge has so impressed the mind with the insignificance of this our dwelling place, that there has stolen on the heart, like a dark shadow, the possible insignificance of man. What is man that Thou art mindful of him—a creature of a day upon a distant satellite? What is man whose life is as a vapor, on a far atom of a boundless universe? From all such sense of nothingness, there is no argument so mighty to redeem as the argument that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for you and me. Christ took not on Him the nature of angels. He took on Him the seed of Abraham.

He, the eternal Son of God, was found in fashion as a man. Why, if that be historically true, then, son of man, stand upon thy feet! for thou, child of an atom and a grave, art great and honorable forevermore. Seasons come when we all feel our greatness, but we need more than feeling for assurance. We want to have feeling in its loftiest hours confirmed by the witness of historic fact. And this I find, like the sound of some great bell, swinging slowly across the driving storm, is the deep and solemn music of the truth, that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Never again can I belittle man, if the eternal Son became man. Never again can I despise humanity, if He was found in the likeness of humanity. And never again can I be quite so certain of the infinite value of mankind to God, if Christ began to be when He was born. "Unto us a child is born "—yes, the gladness of Christmas is in that. It has hallowed home and sanctified the child and given new radiance to the eyes of motherhood. But remember that deep is calling unto deep, where the little Infant is crying in the manger—and so go out into the night and say, "Before Abraham was, I am."

August 6

The Man Born Blind

Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? — Joh_9:2

The Self-Forgetfulness of Christ

The eighth chapter of John closes with the Jews insulting Jesus. Angered by His claim to have been before Abraham was, they had taken up stones to cast at Him. It was then that Jesus, going through the midst of them, passed by; and it was in passing by that He saw the man. Would you have had eyes for a blind beggar, do you think, after treatment such as Jesus got? Would you have been swift to benefit a Jew when the Jews had hardly dropped the stones to stone you? It reveals the self-forgetfulness of Christ, that after this rough handling by the Jews, He should handle a Jew so tenderly as this.

If there is one story which we know by heart, we have it here. Some of us never see a blind man by the pavement, but we think of these eyes that were opened long ago. There are men who have been blinded by disease or accident; this man was blind from birth. He had never seen the meadows or the hills; he had never looked on his mother when she kissed him. Was there any hope for lost eyes like these ? The cleverest doctor in Jerusalem said No; but Jesus of Nazareth passed by, and He said, Yes. It is Christ's way to delight in saying Yes when all the wisdom of the world is saying No. And then how Jesus made the clay, and bade the blind man wash his eyes in Siloam, and how the blind man went and washed and saw (like another Caesar with his veni, vidi, vici), all this the mother will tell to her delighted children.

Purpose in Our Sufferings

There are one or two lessons that we must not miss, and first, there is a purpose in our sufferings. That blind man was a puzzle to the disciples. The first thing Jesus thought of was to heal him; the first thing the disciples thought of was— "Who was the sinner, this man or his father?" They might have learned from Job, if nowhere else, not always to link sin and suffering together. Then Jesus taught them what the blindness meant. There was a purpose in these sightless orbs. They were to bring the heart that beat behind them somewhere to trust in the great Savior of mankind. How often had the blind boy asked his mother, "O mother, what is the meaning of this darkness?" And with a breaking heart his mother had had to answer, "My dearest child, I do not know; God knows." Now Jesus came, and mother and son were taught. The secret of the darkness was unlocked. It was that the works of God might be shown forth. Do I speak to any crippled lads? Shall this little article be read to some blind girls? Be patient; do not call it cruel and bitter. The day is coming, perhaps here, certainly yonder, when you will understand.

Christ Loves to Help Our Faith

Some miracles were accomplished by a word. When Jesus went to the grave of Lazarus, He only cried, "Lazarus, come forth." But here He made clay and anointed the eyes of the blind man with it, and the question is, Why did our Lord do that? Did He need to do it? No. Did He wish the cure to be reckoned doubly wonderful by adding obstacles that made it doubly difficult? I feel at once that is not Jesus' way. He wished to strengthen faith; that is the answer, for without faith there are no mighty works. Had the man not heard from his neighbors twenty times, that spittle and clay were medicinal for the eyes? Do we not read in Tacitus of a blind man who begged Vespasian to spit upon his eyes? Jesus began upon the man's own level. He quickened faith by starting from common ground. He was leading the man by an old village recipe to the faith through which a miracle is possible.

The Man Was So Changed, the People Hardly Knew Him

His friends were sore perplexed. One could have sworn this was the man who begged. Another was ready to swear that it was not. Some argued that he was very like the beggar, but every one of them recognized the change. Now there are many things that change a man. Absence will do it—we hardly know our friend when he comes home! Suffering does it—what a difference in your sister since that illness! But neither absence nor suffering so changes a man as does the wonderful handiwork of Jesus. It gives new hopes. It brings new outlook. It kindles new desires. It creates a new heart. Old things pass away under the touch of Jesus, and all things become new.

What Christ Had Done Kept Him Loyal

After his healing, the blind man was sorely tempted to be false to Jesus. There was trouble at home; his parents were endangered. The priests and Pharisees were passionately angry at this new jewel in the crown of Jesus. And to think that he—who yesterday sat and begged—should stand in the temple and argue with the Pharisees! I am sure that when he went to bed at night, he wondered in the dark how he had done it. And then, through the lattice of his room, he saw the twinkling of a single star. Ah! it was that, that eyesight, that had stirred him. It was what Christ had done for him that kept him loyal. Let it be so with every one of us. Remember Bethlehem! Remember Calvary! Recall what Christ has done for you, and then—

Should the world and sin oppose,

We will follow Jesus,

He is greater than our foes,

We will follow Jesus.

On His promise we depend,

He will succor and defend,

Help and keep us to the end,

We will follow Jesus.

August 7

The Pattern of Service - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day—- Joh_9:4

The Perfect Service of Our Lord

Our Lord came among us as one who suffereth, and so He has taught us how to suffer. He also came as one who serves, and so He has taught us how to serve. And in this day, when the idea of service exercises such control in western Christendom, it is well that we should turn continually to the perfect service of our Lord. Sometimes out in mid-Atlantic a little boat is caught in a great storm. And she heaves and tosses in the wild of the waters till every timber in her frame is racked. And then not very far away from her making for the same port across the ocean, majestically there sails on some mighty liner. Many a worker has so thought of Christ when the winds were contrary and the sea was violent. With what an ease—with what a sense of power—with what unconscious triumph He goes by! And so it is well that we should think of Him and find anew the features of His service, and it is on some of these that I want to dwell.

The Union of Obedience and Originality in Christ

If I were asked what is the keynote to all the manifold service of our Lord, I think I should answer that it was obedience. We speak of the Gospel of John as the Gospel of love, and certainly it thrills and throbs with love; yet if you read that Gospel, at the back of love you will find something else. You will find that in every act He ever wrought, Christ was but doing what the Father showed Him; you will find that in every word He ever spoke, He was but uttering what He had heard. There is a beautiful instrument which some of you may have seen and to which is given the ugly name of seismograph. It is an instrument for recording the tremors and vibrations of the earth. And so delicate is it that if in the heart of Africa the earth should tremble with the shock of earthquake, it will be caught and registered in England. It is far from here to central Africa; it may be farther still from here to heaven. It was no skeptic, but a prophet of the Highest, who spoke of the land that is very far away. And yet so infinitely sensitive and delicate was the truly human soul of our Redeemer, that every whisper of the voice divine was caught and registered unerringly. Not the tide when it obeys the moon and moves to its fullness at the appointed moment; not the swallow when in the destined hour it makes for the sunshine of the south again—not these, nor any angel in the heavens speeding to fulfill the will of God, are so perfectly obedient as was Jesus.

Christ's Originality

Yet the singular thing is that when men looked on Christ, it was not that obedience which impressed them. It was something which seems quite different from obedience—what impressed them was His originality. On the tomb of Oliver Goldsmith there is written, Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. It means that Goldsmith, with the charm of genius, touched nothing which he did not adorn. And if it be true of him, with all his weaknesses, a thousand times truer is it of the Master, who poured the infinite riches of His heart into His doctrine and His ministry. He touched the cottage, and from that hour to this, life in the cottage has been a different thing. He touched the heart, and in this heart of ours heights and depths appeared which had been hidden. And He touched language and it began to blossom, and He touched womanhood till it grew beautiful, and with His hands of love He touched the cross, and it has been bright with glory ever since. Had you asked Jesus with what eyes He saw, He might have answered "with the eyes of God." Had you asked Jesus with what lips He spake, He might have answered "with the lips of God." And yet men looked at Him and listened to Him and felt that here was a Man who was Himself. He was as fresh and wonderful and new as the first morning of another spring.

Now as you go out to serve, that is the first thing I want to leave with you. Your first duty is to be obedient to everything that you have learned from God. Never begin by trying to be original. That is always a tragic mistake. When men or women begin by trying that, they generally end by being useless. Begin by the great endeavor to be true to all that God has taught you and has shown you, and gradually in the lowliest service will come the touch that tells you are yourself. All service with that touch in it is blessed. All service without that touch in it is barren. It is a great thing to dare to be oneself whether in society or service. And Christ has shown us the way to that nobility—it is by being unfalteringly true to all that in the depths of our own soul we know to be the very voice of heaven.

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The Pattern of Service - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

In Christ, a Singular Union of Narrowness and Breadth

Now of course there is a sense of the word narrow which no one would ever apply to Jesus Christ. There is a narrowness which is very noble, and there is another which is very nasty. There is no love in it—no tenderness—no kindly touch as of a brother's hand. It is not generous as the sun is generous when it kisses the orchard of an autumn day. What then do I mean by narrowness? Well, take the story of the third temptation. "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." There, at the very outset of His life, when the world was all before Him where to choose, there was the stirring of imperial dream. "All these things will I give to thee." Might not this young prophet be a Caesar? Might He not go abroad into the world of men and show that He was the Master of them all? And instead of that He chose the narrow road and moved in quietness through little villages; and Roman historians, when He was dead, could not even spell His name correctly. Deliberately Christ drew His little circle, and inside that little circle He remained. And voices called Him, and hands were stretched to Him, and men besought Him, and He would not listen. Here was the place appointed Him of God, and not by a hand's-breadth would He swerve from it. That was the glory of His narrowness.

And yet once more the singular thing is this, that never was there a life so broad as Christ's. Narrowed in its sphere and in its service, the breadth of it is the marvel of the ages. Rich men like Nicodemus drew to Him. Poor men like Simon Peter loved Him passionately. Women of beautiful character revered Him. Women who were sunken would have died for Him. Men who were lawless like the zealot Simon would have fought for Him against the Roman army. And a centurion of that Roman army fell down at His feet and called Him Master. Was there ever a life so broad as this? Was there ever a life so rich in understanding? He knew the publican. He knew the mother. He knew the sufferer. He knew the child. And every bird that winged across the heaven and every flower that blossomed in the meadow, He saw, and, seeing, had these thoughts about them that oftentimes do lie too deep for tears. Intense with the intensity of God, He had the heart at leisure from itself. Feeling the infinite agony of Calvary, He felt the wonder and the joy of everything. Hating sin with an intense abhorrence, far more intense than we shall ever fathom, there was not a sinner from the streets of Magdala but somehow felt she had a friend in Him. It is such things as these that baffle me when I turn my eyes to Jesus Christ. So eaten up with zeal, and yet so tranquil; so narrow, and yet so infinitely broad. He had a baptism to be baptized with, and how was He straitened till it was accomplished—and yet He would dally with a little child as if He had nothing else on earth to do.

In Christ, a Singular Union of Failure and Success

I take it that when Christ was crucified, everybody thought that He had failed. Had you moved amid the crowds around the cross, that is the verdict you would have had from all. There was a time when He had seemed to triumph and when the people had been enthusiastic. And they would have taken Him and made Him King, and they cried "Hosanna to the son of David." But now the moment of the cross was come, and all the glory seemed to have been quenched, and the one word to write across the story was the most pitiful word in human speech. Perhaps there were one or two women who still trusted. Women can trust when everything is dark. Women will still hope about a man when every other voice is crying shipwreck. And so it may be that on the day of Calvary here and there a lamp of faith was still burning, each of them tended by a woman's fingers. But ask the disciples what they thought of it—ask the workmen what they thought of it—ask that young student, with his weary eyes, who had listened to the Lord until He loved Him. It was a splendid dream, but it was over now. It was a noble life, but it was ended. It was a fight for God in a corrupted church, and here at Calvary the church had won. Would Peter have written triumph on the cross? Could even John have written, This is victory? It was all dark to them, and all mysterious, for they had not grasped that He should rise again. If ever a service seemed to close in failure—failure dark and tragic and profound—it was the loving service of the Lord.

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The Pattern of Service - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And then what happened? You all know what happened. On the third day He rises from the dead. Then there comes the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, and the conversion of three thousand souls. And Peter is off to Babylon to preach, and Paul is off to Rome to tell the news—and Augustine is on his way to England, and Columba is on his way to Scotland—until now throughout our western world and to the farthest borders of the east, Christ is living, Christ is working, Christ is powerful in ten thousand ways. Give any name you like to that brief life, you dare not call it by the name of failure now. In all that it has done for men and women it is magnificent in its success. And yet that service, so mighty and so wonderful—so rich in impulse for a million hearts—flows from a life that once, in human speech, was branded with the bitter name of failure.

Our Seeming Failures May Be Successes in the End

Now as you go out to serve, will you engrave that upon your heart? When a man is in earnest about Christian service, he will be dogged and haunted by the sense of failure. I was talking to a doctor—a man who is well-known in his profession—and he told me how frequently there came to him a sense of uselessness that was unbearable. And I could not help thinking if that were so with him who had but the body for his sphere of service, much more would it be so with us who handle the infinite mystery of soul. I want you to believe that when you fail you may be succeeding all the time. I want you to feel you may be doing most, just when you think that you are doing nothing. I want you to look right back to Jesus Christ and to remember what they thought of Him and then to take you to your task again, leaving the issue in the hand of God. The one thing vital is that you persist. The one great treachery is to despair. To hold to it, when everything is gloomy, is the first task of every mortal man. And then some day, when all the gloom is passed, and the sun is shining and the wind is hushed, you will discover that your sorry failure was not quite so sorry as it seemed.

August 8

The Good Shepherd

I am the door of the sheep— Joh_10:7

The Man Born Blind and the Good Shepherd

Chapter nine of John's Gospel tells about the man born blind. Then in the following one is the lesson of the Good Shepherd. And I dare say it seems at first as if there were no link between the two. But if it is hard for us to find a link, it was all plain as daylight to the man born blind. He hid in the crowd and drank in every word that Jesus said; and as he heard that wonderful talk about the shepherd, he said to himself, "Every syllable of that is meant for me." Had not the Pharisees excommunicated him? Had they not slammed the door of blessing in his face? "I am the door," says the Lord Jesus. Had not the Pharisees been mad with rage that he, a poor lost sheep, should dare to teach them, the shepherds of the people? "I am the good shepherd," said Jesus. Christ knew what had happened. He knew the treatment His beggar-friend had gotten. It stirred His heart into this noble eloquence. And as the sunflower springs from its seed, so all the wealth and beauty of our chapter spring from the healing of the man born blind.

Many Were Called the Shepherd of the People

Of course, when Jesus calls Himself a shepherd, He is far from being first to use that figure. The originality of Jesus does not lie in saying things that were never said before. Old Homer (whom I hope many of my readers love) is fond of calling his heroes shepherds of men. It had been used of Cyrus in Isaiah; of rulers and prophets in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is the name given to the teacher of wisdom in Ecclesiastes. It comes to full bloom in the twenty-third Psalm. I wonder, too, if you have ever thought how many of God's great leaders had been shepherds. Abraham and Jacob both had to do with sheep. Moses was keeping Jethro's flock when God spake in the burning bush. When Samuel came to seek a king, the king, a ruddy lad, was shepherding. Amos the prophet was a simple herdsman. And Jeremiah, the prophet most similar to the Lord, would seem to have been a shepherd too. Did not Christ know all that? Had He not brooded deep upon these shepherds, as He wandered among the hills of Nazareth? Now, at the touch of need and under the impulse of a great compassion, He glorifies and crowns that ancient image by making it the express image of Himself.

As a Shepherd, Christ Knows His Sheep

Now you will note that Jesus knows His sheep. That thought was clearly before the mind of Christ. There was not a Pharisee who knew the blind beggar although they had passed his begging-place for years. But beggar or prince, it is all one to Jesus; as the Father knows Him, He knows His own. Mr. Moody used to tell about a girl who was very ill, and her mother sang to her and spoke to her and shifted her, but the little patient still tossed and fretted. And then her mother stooped down and took her in her arms, and the child whispered, "Ah, mother, that's what I want!" You see that even a mother, for all her love, can never be sure what her little one is wanting. But every want and every need, and every trial and every hope, of every separate boy or girl who trusts Him—it is all known to Jesus. The day is coming when Christ shall say to some people, "Depart from Me, I never knew you! "But that same Jesus is saying today, "I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep."

The Sheep Know Their Shepherd

Note once again that the sheep know their shepherd. There is a story of a Scottish traveler in Palestine who thought he would try an experiment upon the sheep. He had been reading this chapter of St. John, and he was eager to put it to the test. So he got a shepherd to change clothes with him; and the tourist wrapped himself in the shepherd's mantle, and the shepherd donned the tourist's garb, and then both called to the flock of sheep to follow (in the East the shepherd goes before his flock). And the sheep followed the voice and not the dress. It was the voice and not the dress they knew. So you see that every sheep in the flock has got an earmark—it can tell the voice of the shepherd from a stranger's. And every sheep in the flock has got a footmark—they follow the shepherd because they know his voice. Have you been branded on the ear and foot? Are these two marks of ownership on you? Samuel was but a child when he cried out, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth!" The Shepherd called him and he heard the voice.

The Good Shepherd Lays His Life Down for the Sheep

We never think of a shepherd as a hero. But in the East there is never a day that dawns but may reveal the hero or the hireling in the shepherd. Tonight there may spring a lion on the flock. Or who can tell but that yon swirling dust betokens the galloping of Bedouin sheep-stealers? If that be so—come, trusty blade! It must be battle now! For all my watching and my watering shall be vain unless I am ready to combat to the death! So is the Eastern shepherd faced with death. Serving amid fierce beasts and fiercer bandits, he may be called to die for his sheep tonight. And I am the Good Shepherd, says Jesus, and the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep. Learn, then, that the cross is Jesus' noblest deed. It is not an accident; it is an act. It is the crowning service of the Shepherd to the sheep, whom He loves too deeply ever to let them go.

There Is Only One Fold

Then, lastly, mark that the shepherd has sheep outside our fold. In the early Church there was a fiery saint, some of whose books our students study yet. And this "fierce Tertullian," as one of our poets calls him, said, "The sheep He saves, the goats He doth not save." But in the very days when Tertullian was writing, there were humble Christians hiding in the catacombs. And they loved to draw the figure of the Good Shepherd, and many of their rude drawings are there still—and often the Good Shepherd is carrying on His shoulders, not a lamb, but a kid of the goats. To the Jew there was but one fold—it was Israel. Jesus had other sheep outside that fold. And whenever we send a missionary to China, whenever we pray for the savage tribes of Africa, we do it because the Good Shepherd has said this: "Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd."

August 9

Eternal Life - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly— Joh_10:10

What Is Life?

Amid all the mysteries which engird us there is none deeper than the mystery of life. We recognize life by a thousand evidences, and yet we know not what it is. When we see the surging crowd upon the streets under the glaring lamps of a great city; when we watch the children in their lighthearted glee come pouring from the school when it is over, we whisper to ourselves, What life is there! And yet, though it looks at us through countless eyes and speaks to us through innumerable voices, what that life is which is so manifested remains one of the hidden things of God. We probe for it with the lancet, and it flees us. We have our hand on it, and it escapes. It meets us in the surging of the city and in the quietness of nature's solitude. And yet this life, familiar as the sunshine and common as the sand upon the shore—what is it? We know not what it is.

If Life Is a Mystery, Much More Is This True of Life Eternal

Now if that be true of all life, as we encounter it in common days, much more may we expect it to be true of what the Scripture calls eternal life. That may be something which we can perceive. It may be something which we can enjoy. It may have qualities which flash upon us and tell us that eternal life is there. But if the life in any tiniest weed is something unfathomable and untouchable, eternal life must be a secret too. If a child's storybook in a foreign tongue is given you and you cannot understand a word of it, it is scarcely likely that you will comprehend a poem by a genius in that language. Nor is it likely that we will ever fathom the profound mystery of life eternal when we are baffled daily by life's rudiments. What do you mean by life eternal, is perhaps a question you may ask of me. Well then, in our Scottish fashion, I shall ask you a question or two in return. What is that life which waves in the green grass? What is that life which dances in the butterfly? What is that life which looks as from the depths through the eager eyes of little children? There is an agnosticism which is the child of pride. There is another which is the child of wisdom. It is a great step upon the road to light when a man will bow the head and say, I do not know. Even our Lord, though He was the Son of God, was not above that honoring humility, for of that day and hour, He said, knoweth no man, not even the Son, only the Father.

One Word Sums up the Gospel: "Life"

And yet though all life be a mystery and though the springs of it be wrapped in darkness, I want you to remember that it was this mystery which was the great message of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sum up His Gospel in a single word, and that one word is life. Get to the heart of all He had to teach, and life is nestling against that heart. One thought determines every other thought; one face interprets and arranges everything, and that one fact, so dominant and regal, is the deep fact of life. Deeper than faith, for faith is but a name unless it issue from a heart that lives; deeper than love though God Himself be love, for without life love would be impossible. Life is the rich compendium of the Gospel and the sweet epitome of its good news and the word that gathers into its embrace the music and the ministry of Christ. Of course, like the perfect preacher that He was, Christ was ever varying His message. He did not always harp on the same string. He did not always knock with the same summons. He cast His message in a hundred forms in His consuming earnestness to save, for every heart has its own tender spot and will not open to any other call. No words could be more occasional than Christ's. No life could be less trammeled by routine. No word that He spoke, no deed He ever did, but fitted the moment with a perfect niceness. Yet always, underneath that large variety which is the freedom of the Son of God, there was the undertone of life eternal. "The words that I speak unto you," He said, "they are spirit, and they are life." "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "I am the way," He said, "the truth, the life." "I am the resurrection and the life." All that He came to teach—all that He was—is summed up and centered in that little word.

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by George H. Morrison

Life Is a Good Thing

Now the very fact that Jesus spoke of life so is our assurance that life is a good thing. Whatever it be, in its unfathomed depth, it must be good since Christ has spoken so. When I recall the life of Jesus, I sometimes wonder that He did not weary of it. Baffled on every hand and disappointed, was there anything in that life to make it sweet? He was no dreamer in a shady solitude where all the voices of the world were calling peace. "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Always, upon His sunniest hour, there was the shadow of the cross of Calvary. Always beside Him, in His frankest moment, were the suspicious eyes of His betrayer. And yet that Christ whose life was so environed—who could not move without the serpents hissing—held to it that life was a good thing. This was the human life that He had known; yet "I am come that they might have life," He said. Baffled and bruised, He never longed for death. He never preached the solace of the grave. He preached that life is good, not in its trappings, but in that secret which we can never fathom: "I am the resurrection and the life." It is just there that Jesus Christ our Lord stands separated by all the world from Buddha. For Buddha was so touched by human pain that he wanted to have done with life forever. But Christ, who knew a sorrow far more terrible than had ever fallen on the heart of Buddha, tells of a life that is to be eternal. He was not manifested to take life away: He was manifested to take death away. Buddhists believe that the last enemy which shall be destroyed is life. But Jesus Christ has never spoken so, nor has the Gospel which conveys His spirit. It is our hope—it is our trust—that the last enemy which shall be destroyed is death.

Eternal Life Is Something Different from Immortality

Along that line, then, we come to understand what is the meaning of eternal life. We see, for instance, that eternal life is something different from immortality. Christ did not come that we might have immortality. We should have had immortality without Him. We are not immortal because Christ was born and because He died for our sins upon the tree. We are immortal by the touch of God who in His sovereign pleasure has created us and in whose gift there is the stamp and seal of an existence that shall never cease. Immortality is the Creator's heritage—eternal life the gift of Jesus Christ. We are immortal whether we will or no. We cannot stamp out life by any suicide. But eternal life we can refuse. It is a gift, and we can spurn the gift: "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." "This day," said Jesus to the dying thief, "This day thou shalt be with me in paradise." Brought into living touch with Jesus Christ, he had won the secret of eternal life. Both malefactors had immortal souls, and both would live forever although crucified, but only for the one was there a paradise with the Lord walking there among the lilies.

Now perhaps we shall understand that deep distinction best by touching on what we notice every day. It is the difference between mere existence and living in the true sense of the world. I take it that for all of us there are periods when we just exist. We rise and sleep; we eat and do our work, but we are dull and heavy and inert. There is no gladness when the morning comes; there is no swift response to our environment, and it is always upon that response that the wealth or poverty of life is based. And then what happens? Something like this happens. There comes to us an hour when all is changed. Sorrow may do it—some great call may do it—the mystical touch of a great love may do it. And everyone we meet is different now, and every sound has got a different music, and yesterday we existed like the beasts, and today, in that deepening, we live. Something like that, as I conceive it, is the difference between immortality and life eternal. I mean they are not different in kind. I mean they are different in degree. Eternal life is but our immortality quickened into its fullness by the Christ, touched by His love, wakened by His call, into a glory that is life indeed. You must exist or you could never live. It is the one that makes the other possible. The one is the harp of life—and then comes love, and with its masterhand draws out the music. So up and down the chords of immortality there moves the hand that was once pierced for us, and then, and only then, there sounds the music which is eternal life. Deep down below the special gift of Christ there is the universal gift of God. He is the God of Abraham and of Isaac. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And then comes Christ, and by His love and passion, and by the breathing of the Holy Ghost, He deepens—heightens—brightens immortality into the splendor of eternal life.

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Eternal Life Means a Different Quality of Life, Not Quantity

Put in another way that just means this, that Christ is thinking of quality, not quantity. Life is eternal in virtue of its quality, rather than in virtue of duration. You can never measure life by its duration. The two are not commensurate at all. We take the equal hours that the clock gives, and we mould them in the matrix of the heart. And one shall seem to us to be unending, it is so weighted with a leaden sorrow; and another shall have but flashed upon us when it has passed away, and that forever. There have been hours for you when you have lived more than in the passage of a hundred days. There have been moments when you have seen more deeply than in the groupings of all a heavy winter. Life mocks at time. Life will not recognize it. Life tramples in disdain upon the calendar. Life's truest measurement is never quantity. Life's truest measurement is quality. Do you think that because two men have lived till seventy, the one life must be equal to the other? Do you think that Christ, who died at thirty-three, had not lived more than many a man of seventy? It is not length of years that makes the different. It is the depth of it. It is the quality. The question is not how long a man may live; the question is how much.
It was of that, that Christ was thinking when He spoke of life eternal. Not even He could lengthen out its span, for God had made it immortal at the start. He was not thinking of the flight of years. He was thinking of the depth of being. He was thinking of a life so full and deep that the very thought of time has passed away. When a river is dry and shallow in the summertime, you see the rocks that rise within its bed. And they obstruct the stream and make it chafe and fret it as it journeys to the ocean. But when the rains have come and the river is in flood, it covers up the rocks in its great volume, and in the silence of a mighty tide flows to its last home within the sea. It is not longer than it was before. It is only deeper than it was before. Measure it by miles, it is unchanged. Measure it by volume and how different! So with the life that is the gift of Jesus. It is not longer than God's immortality. It is only that same river deepened gloriously, till death itself is hidden in the deeps. Knowledge is perfected in open vision; love is crowned in an unbroken fellowship; service at least shall be a thing of beauty, fired by the vision of the God we serve. That is eternal life, and that alone. That is its difference from immortality. That is the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ to the immortal spirit of mankind.

Eternal Life Is Continuous—It Begins Here and Never Ends

In closing, I should like you to observe that in the eyes of Jesus all that life was one. There was no break in it. It was continuous. It carried over the first into the last. He that believeth hath everlasting life—it is not something we are still to get. "He that believeth in me shall never die"—death is an incident in continuity. Wonderful as life beyond shall be and exquisite beyond our wildest dream, remember that at the heart of it, it will not differ from the life we know. Take the parable of the talents. Do you remember what the Master promised? "Because thou hast been faithful over few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." That was the joy and that was the reward; not singing praises in a heaven of idleness, but carrying on in an unbroken service with all the capacity that earth had shaped. Nothing that we have fought for will be lost. Nothing that we have striven for ignored. Every battle we have fought in secret will make the life beyond a grander thing. Every task that we have quietly done, when there were none to see and none to praise, will give us a heaven which is a sweeter place and a service nearer the feet of the Eternal. I don't know how it is with you, but I know certainly how it is with me. No other thought of the beyond appeals to me. No other thought inspires me as does that. And of this I am sure, if I am sure of anything, that that is what Christ meant by life eternal. God grant us faith in Him that we may have it!

August 10

The Thing Incredible

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life .... No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself— Joh_10:17-18

History Has Come Full Circle

It is strange how often in the course of history the wheel has "come full circle." The impossibilities of yesterday have proved the commonplaces of today. Our Christian faith has always had its elements which powerfully commended it to men, and always there have been aspects of it which were obstacles to its acceptance; but the singular fact which steadily emerges from a growing knowledge of its story is how often the glory of the past becomes the difficulty of the present. One sees that in regard to miracles. Once they were confirmations of the faith. For multitudes the Gospel was authenticated by the signs and wonders of the Lord. And now for multitudes these very miracles are obstacles and stumbling blocks, only making it harder to believe. Today it is the divinity of Christ which so many find it difficult to credit; in the early days of Christianity there was far more difficulty over His humanity. Today we have to battle with agnosticism, which is the denial of all certain knowledge; but in the early Church the conflict was with gnosticism, which, of course, is agnosticism's opposite.

The Change in Attitude Towards Christ's Death and Resurrection

Something of the same kind is seen in regard to our Lord's death and resurrection. Nobody today questions that He died, but many question if He rose again. That He incurred the bitter enmity of men by the fearless proclamation of His message, that the passions He inevitably roused finally brought Him to His death—all this seems so natural to us that no one has any trouble with the cross now, viewed, I mean, just as a fact of history. The problem for us is not that Christ should die; the problem is that He should rise again, with the very body which the nails had pierced and which had known the thrusting of the sword. Multitudes of earnest souls have difficulty in crediting that. This is seen in the various attempts of modernism to explain away His resurrection. No one tries to explain away His death now. It is universally accepted that He died. Nobody finds it a thing almost incredible that at last He was hung upon a tree. The thing almost incredible to many is that on the third day He rose again, in all the power of an endless life.

The Mystery of Mysteries for the Early Disciples

And yet, if I do not greatly err, the opposite was true in the first days. For those who stood nearest to the Lord the staggering difficulty was His death. They had seen Him in conflict with all the powers of darkness, and from every conflict He had emerged victorious. He had challenged evil in all its ugly forms, and as a Conqueror driven it from the field. He had marched on in triumph, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and every foe of full abundant life had been forced to acknowledge His supremacy. Blindness had vanished at His word. Leprosy had departed at His touch. Fevers had fled away, and the withered arm had become strong again. Even death itself, that universal conqueror, had been forced to render up its prisoners at the kingly command of the Lord Jesus. All this they had seen with their own eyes. It was the constant experience of comradeship. They had walked with One who had matched Himself with death and compelled death to acknowledge he was beaten. And to them the thing incredible was this, that He, who had triumphed all along the line, should Himself become a prisoner of the tyrant. For us the resurrection is the staggering thing: the death but the inevitable end. For those who had corn-partied with Jesus it was the other way about. That He should die, that death should conquer Him, that over Him the grave should be victorious, was to them the mystery of mysteries.

Almost certainly some such thought as this moves through the disciples' aversion from the cross. It underlies their incredulous astonishment when our Lord began to speak about the end. That they heard with horror of a death of shame is in consonance with human nature. Mingling with that horror was the agony of losing their Beloved. But perhaps we shall never fully understand their wild and incredulous astonishment till we recall the personality of Jesus. Men find it difficult to associate death with powerful and arresting personalities. From Nero to Lord Kitchener we trace the conviction that the dead are living. And for men who had companied with Jesus and seen the energies of His victorious life, it must have been extraordinarily hard to picture Him under the power of the grave. That He who was the life should be overcome by the opposite of life, that He who was continually giving life should be powerless to retain His own, this was what perplexed those earliest followers mingling with their love and sorrow, whenever Jesus turned their thoughts to Calvary. It was easy to think of Him as living; it was impossible to think of Him as dead. How could death, whom He had faced and beaten, overthrow that radiant personality? And now the wheel has "come full circle," and it is not the fact of His death that staggers anybody; it is the assertion that He rose again.

Christ's Death Was a Glorious Act of Service

And it was then, brooding in the darkness, that the word of Jesus came back to them with power. They recalled how He had told them once, "I lay it down of myself." That death, which was so hard to understand, was not the ghastly token of defeat. It did not mean that He who had raised Lazarus had Himself been beaten by the enemy. It meant that He had given Himself, in the wise and holy purposes of love, into the clutching fingers of the tyrant. His death was not a dark necessity. It was a glorious and crowning act of service. The very love that had conquered death for Lazarus submitted to it for the sake of sinners. So did the death of Jesus for these sorrowing men cease to be an inexplicable problem and become the center of their hope and joy.

August 11

The Man Who Does No Miracle

John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true— Joh_10:41

The Brilliant and the Average

The kind of man who does no miracle is the kind we are meeting every day. He is the man who never makes us marvel. There are men like Shakespeare who cannot take up a pen without enriching us with miracles of wisdom. There are women who delight us with miracles of song. But the average man is different from that. One can reckon on the thing that he will do. It is the sort of thing that we can do ourselves. Now, brilliance may be perilous; but mediocrity also has perils. Remember that in the Master's story it was the man of the one talent who made shipwreck. So it may help us to consider briefly what Scripture has to teach about a man who never did a miracle.

Even Though John Didn't Do Any Miracles. He Had a Lofty Character

First, the Baptist did no miracle, yet he had a lofty character. Perhaps we should be aware of that more vividly if the Baptist did not stand so close to Jesus. A flower is apt to blossom unobserved if it be near one that is altogether lovely. And our blessed Lord, in that perfect poise of His, was "altogether lovely." So that often we are likely to miss, from its very proximity to what was perfect, the grandeur of the character of John. How true he was in every relationship! How wise in the midst of tumultuous excitements! How brave both in the desert and the dungeon! How exquisitely and gloriously humble!—and all this loftiness and moral worth found, not in the child of genius, but in the man who never did a miracle. Character does not demand great gifts. Character can ripen in the commonplace. Men who have no wonder-working genius can "come smiling from the world's great snare uncaught." And to do that, when life is difficult, and skies are dark and temptations are insistent is to reach the sunrise and the crown.

John Had a Special Work to Do

Again, the Baptist did no miracle, yet God gave him a special work to do. It was the work of witnessing to Christ, and John fulfilled it in the noblest way. Others dreamed that the Messiah would come in splendor: John witnessed that He was in their midst. Others dreamed that He would appear in sovereignty: John witnessed that He was the Lamb of God. And this great mission, of such supreme importance in the loving purposes of heaven, was given to a man who did no miracle. We are so apt to think that special service is only given to very special people, that great tasks are not for common folk but for men of wonder-working gifts. And the beautiful lesson of our text is this, that though you may have no power to do a miracle, for you, too, there is a special service-something that only you can do; something that won't be done unless you do it; something the world needs, which you and you only can supply—you, not dowered with any gift of miracle. Business men in a humble way of business, mothers in undistinguished homes, riveters working in the shipyards, clerks and typists in the city offices—such do no miracles and never will save the one miracle of patient drudgery; yet God for each has a special work to do.

John's Influence

Then the Baptist did no miracle, yet he exercised a deep and lasting influence. It was of that, in part, our Lord was thinking when He said that John was greater than the prophets. In the long history of Israel none were more influential than the prophets. They stirred the conscience; they revived the state; they brought God to bear on daily life. But even greater than that prophetic influence was the influence of John the Baptist—yet John was a man who never did a miracle. Is not that true of human life? Most of us in our journey through the years have met with some who had the gift of miracle—some who could take a common thing and touch it, and it would blossom into a world of beauty. And for all these wonderful gifts we shall be grateful, for every good and perfect gift is from above, but—are these the folk who have influenced us most? Is it not far more often common, humble people, dowered with no extraordinary gifts?—a wife or mother, a wise and faithful friend, a minister whom none would call a genius? It is one of life's most perfect compensations that influence does not depend on brilliance but comes to those (like John) who do no miracle.

God's "Well Done" Is for the Faithful Man

Lastly, the Baptist did no miracle, yet he won the highest praise of Christ. "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John." A man may lead a false and rotten life and yet win the praise of men. The acid test of the successful life is this: does it win the praise of Christ? And the fine thing is that to win that praise one does not need to be wonderful or striking: it is given to those who may do no miracle—to those who trust Him when everything is dark; to those who keep their faces towards the morning; to those who, through headache and through heartache, quietly and doggedly do their appointed bit; to those who "endure" with a smile upon their lips; to those who help a brother by the way; to those who look for a city which hath foundations. In this big world there is room for every gift and for every genius who has the power of miracle. But in this big world there is room and power and victory for the great multitude who do no miracle. It is not "Well done, thou good and brilliant servant," else would there be little hope for millions. It is "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

August 12

The Number of the Hours - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Are there not twelve hours in the day?— Joh_11:9

The Disciples' Misunderstanding of Christ

These words were spoken by Jesus at the time when news had been brought Him that Lazarus was sick. For two days Jesus had made no move, but had abode with His disciples where He was. The disciples would be certain to misconstrue that inactivity—they would whisper, "Our Master at last is growing prudent"—and therefore their amazement and dismay when Christ announced He was going to Judea. They broke out upon Him with expostulation—"Lord, it was but yesterday that You were stoned there. It is as much as Your life is worth to think of going—it is the rankest folly to run that tremendous risk." And it was then that Jesus turned upon the twelve with a look which they never would forget and said to them, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" It is on these words that I wish to dwell a little. I want to use them as a lamp to illumine some of the characteristics of the Lord, for they seem to me to irradiate first, the earnestness; second, the fearlessness; and third, the fretlessness of our Savior.

The Earnestness of Christ

What first arrests us, reading the life of Jesus, is not His strong intensity of purpose. It is only gradually, and as our study deepens, that we feel the push of that unswerving will. If you put the Gospel story into the hand of a pagan to whom it came with the freshness of discovery, what would impress him would not be Christ's tenacity, but the variety and the freedom of His life. Never was there a career that bore so little trace of being lived in accordance with a plan. Never were deeds so happily spontaneous; never were words so sweetly incidental. To every moment was perfect adaptation as if that were the only moment of existence. This hiding of intensity is mirrored in the great paintings of the face of Christ. In the galleries of the old masters I do not know one picture where the face of Christ is a determined face. For the artists felt with that poetic feeling which wins nearer to the heart of things than argument, that the earnestness of Jesus lay too deep to be portrayed by brush upon the canvas.

But when we reach the inner life of Christ, there passes a wonderful change over our thought. We slowly awake, amid all the spontaneity, to one tremendous and increasing purpose. As underneath the screaming of the seabirds we hear the ceaseless breakers on the shore, as through the rack and drift of driving clouds we catch the radiance of one unchanging star, so gradually, back of all stir and change and the varied and free activity of Christ, we discern the pressure of a mighty purpose moving without a swerve towards its goal. From the hour of His boyhood when He said to Mary, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business," on to the hour of triumph on the cross when He cried with a loud voice, "It is finished," unhasting and unresting, without one check or falter, the face of Jesus is set in one direction; and it is when we come to recognize that unity hidden amid the luxuriance of freedom that we wake to the sublime earnestness of Christ. I think that the apostles hardly recognized it till He set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. Before that, they were always offering suggestions: after that, they offered them no more. They were amazed, we read; they were afraid. The eagerness of Jesus overwhelmed them. At last they knew His majesty of will and were awestruck at the earnestness of Christ.

Christ's Certain Knowledge of His Limited Time

There were many reasons for that wholehearted zeal which it does not fall to me to touch on here. But one was the certain knowledge of the Lord that there were only twelve hours in His day. Before His birth, in His pre-existent life, there had been no rising or setting of the sun. After His death, in the life beyond the grave, the day would be endless, for "there is no night there." But here on earth with a mighty work to do and to get finished before His side was pierced, Christ was aroused into triumphant energy by the thought of the determined time. "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work." That must—what is it but the shadow of sunset and the breath of the twilight that was soon to fall? A day at its longest—what a little space! Twelve hours—they are ringing to evensong already! Under that power the tide that seemed asleep moved on "too full for sound or foam."

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It is always very wonderful to me that Christ thus felt the shortness of the time. This Child of Eternity heard with quickened ear the muffled summons of the fleeting hours. It is only occasionally that we hearken to it; far more commonly we seek to silence it. Most men, as Professor Lecky says, are afraid to look time in the face. But Christ was never afraid to look time in the face; steadily He eyed the sinking sands, till moved to His depths by the urgency of days, the zeal of the house of His Father ate Him up. Have you awakened to that compelling thought, or do you live as if your sun would never set? There are but twelve hours in the day, and it will be sunset before you dream of it. Get done what God has sent you here to do. Wait not for the fool's phantom of tomorrow—Act, act today, act in the living present!

Christ's Fearlessness

In the next place, our text illuminates Christ's fearlessness, and that indeed is the textual meaning of it, for it was when the disciples were trying to alarm Him that Jesus silenced their suggestions so. "Master," they said, "It is a dangerous thing to show Yourself at Bethany. Remember how You were stoned on Your last visit; it will be almost certain death to go thither again." And it was then, to silence all their terror and with a courage as sublime as it was simple that Jesus asked, "Are there not twelve hours in the day ?" What did He mean? He meant, "I have my day. Its dawn and its sunset have been fixed by God. Nothing can shorten it and nothing can prolong it. Till the curfew of God rings out, I cannot die." It was that steadying sense of the divine disposal which made the Christ so absolutely fearless and braced Him for every "clenched antagonism" that rose with menace upon the path of duty. When Dr. Livingstone was in the heart of Africa, he wrote a memorable sentence in his diary. He was ill and far away from any friend, and he was deserted by his medicine-carrier. But he was willing to go anywhere provided it was forward, and what he wrote with a trembling hand was this: "I am immortal till my work is done." That was the faith of Paul and of Martin Luther, the faith of Oliver Cromwell and of Livingstone. They had caught the fearless spirit of the Master who knew there were twelve hours in the day.

The Strength in Knowing That God Appoints Our Times

Now it is always a source of buoyant strength when a man comes to see that his way is ordered. There is a quiet courage that is unmistakable in one who is certain he is led by God. But remember, according to the Master's doctrine, our times are fixed as surely as our ways; and if we are here with a certain work to do which in the purposes of God must be fulfilled, no harm can touch us nor is there power in death till it draws to sunset and to evening star. What is it that makes the Turk such a brave soldier that with all his vices we cannot but admire him? It is his conviction of a relentless fate which he cannot hasten yet cannot hope to shun. In the name of freedom, Christ rejects that fatalism; but on the ruins of it He erects another. It is the fatalism of a love that is divine, for it includes the end in the beginning. Never shirk dangers on the path of duty. On the path of duty one is always safest. Let a man be careful that he does his task, and God will take care of the task-doing man. For always there are twelve hours in the day, and though the clouds should darken into storm, they cannot hasten the appointed time when it is night.

And just here we ought to bear in mind that the true measurement of life is not duration. We live in deeds, not breaths—it is not time; it is intensity that is life's measurement. Twelve hours of joy, what a brief space they are! Twelve hours of pain, what an eternity! We take the equal hours which the clock gives, and we mould them in the matrix of our hearts. Was it the dawn that crimsoned in the east as Romeo stood with Juliet at the window? It seemed but a moment since the casement opened, and—"It is my lady, O it is my love." But to the sufferer tossing on her sickbed and hearing every hour the chiming in the dark, that night went wearily with feet of lead, and it seemed as if the dawn would never break. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" said Jesus—yet Jesus died when He was thirty-three. The dial of God has got no minute hands; its hours are measured by service and by sacrifice. Call no life fragmentary. Call it not incomplete. Think thee how love abbreviates the hours. If God be love, time may be fiery-footed, and the goal be won far earlier than we ever dreamed.

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by George H. Morrison

Christ's Fretlessness

Then lastly, and in a word or two, our text illuminates Christ's fretlessness. For never was there a life of such untiring labor that breathed such a spirit of unruffled calm. We talk about our busy modern city, and many of us are busy in the city, but for a life of interruption and distraction, give me the life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Some of us could hardly live without the hills—a day in their solitude is benediction; but when Jesus retired to that fellowship of lonely places, even there He was pressed and harassed by the crowd. Every day was thronged with incident or danger. There was no leisure so much as to eat. Now He was teaching—now He was healing—now He was parrying some cruel attack. Yet through it all, with all its stir and movement, there is a brooding calm upon the heart of Christ that is only comparable to a waveless sea asleep in the stillness of a summer evening. Some men are calm because they do not feel. We call it quiet, and it is callousness. But Christ being sinless was infinitely sensitive—quick to respond to every touch and token. Yet He talked without contradiction of His peace—"My peace that the world cannot give or take away"—and down in the depths of that unfathomed peace was the thought of the twelve hours in the day. Christ knew that if God had given Him a twelve hours' work, God would give Him the twelve hours to do it in. To every task its time, and to every time its task, that was one great method of the Master. And no man will ever be calm as Christ was calm who cannot halt in the midst of the stir and say, "My peace"; who cannot stop for a moment in the busiest whirl and say to himself, "My times are in Thy hand." God never blesses unnecessary labor. That is the labor of the thirteenth hour. All that God calls us to and all that love demands is fitted with perfect wisdom to the twelve. Therefore be restful; do not be nervous and fussy; leave a little leisure for smiling and for sleep. There is no time to squander, but there is time enough—are there not twelve hours in the day?

August 13

We May Live Too Long

Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him — Joh_11:9-10

The Confidence of Christ

These words are the recoil of Jesus from the fearfulness of the disciples. They had just told Him that if He went into Judaea, He did it at the peril of His life. To that, the answer of their Lord was, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? Is not My life planned out for Me by God? Are not My times in His hand? Till the appointed hour strikes, ten thousand may fall at My right hand, but it shall not (and it cannot) come nigh Me." It was this confidence, not in a dark fate, but in the perfect ordering of love, that kept our Savior undismayed and tranquil when fear was on every hand. There were twelve hours in His day, and till the sands of the twelfth hour had run, His enemies were powerless to touch Him.

In View of the Glory of the Cross

Now this was spoken by our Lord when He knew that Calvary was not far away. The miracle He was about to work on Lazarus was to prove to be the crisis of His life. When St. John speaks of the Savior being "glorified," he is almost always thinking of the cross. That lifting up of Jesus was His glory: the cross was His crown. And when our Lord says here that the sickness of Lazarus was for the glorifying of the Son of God (Joh_11:4), He knew that the impending miracle was to lead Him straight to the bitter way of Calvary. There were twelve hours in His day—with what swiftness these winged hours had fled! It seemed but yesterday since He had played at Nazareth, and now the sun was setting. What deep thoughts of life and opportunity, and of the flying shuttle on the loom of time must have occupied the heart of Jesus as, deliberately, He moved onward to Judaea! Must He die just then? Might He not prolong His life a little? It was a sweet, glad thing to be alive—could He not postpone the agony a season? If He was tempted in all points like as we are, surely He was tempted thus when He went forward to raise Lazarus—and to die (Joh_11:53).

Heavenly Light on the Pathway of Life as Long as It Lasts

And then out of these deep and solemn musings come these wonderful words that stir the heart—"But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth." The figure is, that as long as daylight lasts the traveler has the light of heaven to guide him. But let him push on into the falling darkness, and he stumbles, for the light is gone. And Christ fought back the insidious temptation to escape death and to live a little longer by that awful thought of stumbling in the night. Just as long as His twelve hours endured He had the promise and certainty of light. Led by His Father, He would be kept from stumbling, however hard and perilous the way. But let Him push on, past the appointed time, into the service of a thirteenth hour, and His feet, which had been beautiful upon the mountains, would stumble in the bewilderment of night. In other words, He must not shun the cross. To escape it would only lead to tragedy. A year gained by avoidance of the agony would be a year bereft of the shining of God's face. So He set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem and refused the aid of the legions of angels and cried with a loud voice, "It is finished."

Prolongation of Physical Life at Spiritual Detriment

And for us the lesson is just this—and there are times when we all need to learn it—that we may purchase a few years of added life at far too great a spiritual cost. When a believer, in times of persecution, lengthens his years by being false to Christ; when a minister shuns the sickbed of infection lest he catch the infection himself and perhaps die; when a physician flees at the approach of plague; when anyone evades or shirks the cross, he is prolonging his life into the night. I do not think I have known a single young fellow who got exemption in the war to save his skin whose character has not deteriorated steadily. Life thus lengthened is always unillumined. There is no sunshine in the thirteenth hour. To shirk one's duty that life may be prolonged is to gain years that are not worth the living. And yet how often gentle, kindly hearts beg us to take care and not run risks, just as Peter did when he heard about the cross. We are immortal till our work is done. There are twelve hours in the day. Possibly by shirking dangerous duty a man might add to his day a thirteenth hour. But if he does, says Jesus, no birds will sing for him nor will the light of the glad sun direct his feet— he will walk in the night and he will stumble.

August 14

The Tears of Jesus - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Jesus wept— Joh_11:35
He beheld the city, and wept over it— Luk_19:41

Only Two Occasions of Jesus Weeping Are Recorded

There are but two occasions in the Gospels on which we light upon our Savior weeping; only two instances in which we see His tears. It is true that in the Epistle to the Hebrews we have a glimpse into the inner life of Christ, and there we read that He made supplication with tears and strong crying unto God. But into that interior life of prayer when Father and Son had fellowship together, we cannot enter, for it is holy ground. The point to observe is that in His recorded life we only hear of the tears of Jesus twice; once at the grave of a man who was His friend: once when Jerusalem lay spread out before Him. And both, not in the earlier days of youth when the human heart is susceptible and quivering, but in the later season when the cross was near. Goethe confesses in his autobiography that as he grew older he lost the power of tears, and there are many men who, as experience gathers, are conscious of a hardening like that. But our Savior, to the last moment that He lived, was quick and quivering to joy and sorrow, and His recorded tears are near the end. Never was He so conscious of His joy as in the closing season of His ministry; never did He speak so much about it nor so single it out as His most precious legacy. And so with weeping, which in the human heart is so often the other side of joy—it is under the shadow of His last days that it is recorded.

Both Weepings Prompted Not by Suffering,but by Divine Compassion

I am going to speak on the differences between these two Weepings; but first I ask you to observe one feature in which the two are beautifully kin. There are tears in the world, bitter and scalding tears, which are wrung out by personal affliction; tears of anguish, of intense corporeal anguish; tears caused by cruelty or mockery. And the point to be ever observed is that our Lord, though He suffered intensely in all such ways as that, never, so far as we read, was moved to tears. He was laughed to scorn—He of the sensitive heart—yet it is not then we read that Jesus wept. He was spat upon and scourged and crucified; but it is not then we light upon Him weeping. And even in the garden of Gethsemane where great drops were falling to the ground, drops which would have looked like tears to any prying child among the olives, Scripture tells us, as with a note of warning lest we should misinterpret what was happening there, that they were not tears, but drops of sweat and blood. The tears of our Lord were not wrung out by suffering, however intense and cruel it might be. On the only two occasions when we read of them they are the tears of a divine compassion. And whenever one thinks of that, one is impressed again with the wonder of the figure of the Christ, so infinitely pitiful and tenderhearted; so unswervingly and magnificently brave.

The First Tears Were Shed for the Individual, the Second for Many

Now if we take these two occasions on which the weeping of Jesus is recorded, and if, having found their common element, we go on to note the points on which they differ, what is the difference that first would arrest you? Well, I shall tell you what first impresses me. It is that the former tears were shed for one, and the latter tears were shed for many. Jesus wept beside the grave of Lazarus, for one single solitary friend; for a man who had loved Him with a great devotion and given Him always a welcome in his home. There is no such human touch in all the Gospels, nothing that so betrays the heart of Christ, as to be simply told that Jesus wept when He went out to stand before the grave of Lazarus. Here is a heart that has known the power of friendship, that has known the infinite solace of the one; a heart more deeply moved when that one dies than by all the cruelties which men can hurl at Him. And then, having learned of His infinite compassion for those who have had one heart to love and lose, we read that Jesus wept over the city. Picture Jerusalem on that Sunday morning, densely crowded for the Passover. Every house was full and every street was thronged; there were tens of thousands gathered there. And when our Lord, turning the crest of Olivet, saw before Him that crowded city, then like a summer tempest came His tears. Tears for the one; tears for the twice ten thousand: how typical is that of the Redeemer! Never was there a compassion so discriminative, and never a compassion so inclusive. Our separate sorrows—He understands them all, and our hours of solitary anguish by the grave; but not less the problem of the crowd. There are men who are full of sympathy for personal sorrows, but have never heard the crying of the multitude. There are men who hear the crying of the multitude, but have never been broken-hearted at the tomb. Christ has room for all and room for each. He loves the world with a divine compassion. And yet there is no one here who cannot say, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me."

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The Tears of Jesus - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Tears Shed for Death and for Life

The next difference which impresses me is this—and it is a suggestive and profound distinction—it is that the former tears were shed for death, and the latter tears were shed for life. There was something in the death of Lazarus which made a profound impression upon Christ. He was troubled; He groaned in spirit; He wept. Often He had been face to face with death before, with death in some of its most tragic aspects. He had looked on the still, cold face of Jairus' daughter, and had seen the anguish of the widow of Nain. Yet it is only now, upon the road at Bethany, that we see the storm and passion of His soul when faced by the awful ravages of death. Nobody ever fathoms all that death means until its hand has knocked upon his door. It is when someone whom we have loved is taken that we understand its meaning and its misery. And Christ, being tempted like as we are, felt the anguish of it in His soul with intensity. Death had come home to Him—attacked Him at close quarters—carried one of the bastions of His being. How utterly cruel was the last great enemy. The Lord groaned in spirit and was troubled: a storm of passion swept across His soul. He wept for all that death had done and all that death was doing in the world. And so these tears of His are sacramental of all the sorrow of the aching heart when the place is empty, and the grave is tenanted, and the familiar voice is silent.

Now with that dark and dreary scene will you for a moment contrast the other scene? It is a city shimmering in beauty under the radiance of a Sunday morning. Children are playing in the marketplace; women are singing as they rock the cradle; men are at business and regiments are marching—there is movement and there is music everywhere. Friends are meeting who have not met for years for Passover was the great season of reunion, and eyes are bright and hearts are beating bravely in the gladness of these old ties reknit. Out on the Bethany road there had been death; here in the teeming city there was life; life in the crowd—life in the marching soldiery—life in the little children romping merrily; life everywhere, in the indistinguishable murmur which rises where there are ten thousand people who have waked in the sunshine of another morning to the traffic and the concourse of the day. It was all that which swept into the gaze of Christ, and it was that which swept into the heart of Christ that Sunday morning when from the brow of Olivet He looked across the valley to Jerusalem. As a lad of twelve He had looked, and looking wondered, with all the thrilling expectancy of boyhood. Now we read that He looked, and looking, wept. They were not tears for death, but tears for life; tears of divine compassion for the living; tears for the might-have-been—the vanity—the awful judgment that was yet to be; tears for the living who have gone astray and who are hungering for peace and have missed it and who have had their opportunity and failed. There is a sorrow for the dead which may be intense and very tragical. It may wither every flower across the meadow and take all the summer sunshine from the sky. But there is a sorrow deeper than sorrow for the dead—it is the sorrow for the living; and it is much to know that Jesus understood it. The bitterest sorrow has no grave to stand at, no sepulchre to adorn with opening flowers; the bitterest sorrow wears no garb of mourning, and receives no beautiful letters by the post. The bitterest sorrow does not spring from death; it springs from that mystery which we call life; and Jesus felt it to His depths. Thou who art mourning for the dead, for thee there is Jesus by the grave of Lazarus. Thou who art mourning for the living, for thee also is that same compassion. He understands it all. He shares it. Like a great tide it flowed upon Him once, when in the morning from the brow of Olivet, He looked upon Jerusalem and wept.

Tears Others Shared in and Tears None Could Understand

I close by pointing out one other difference that stands out very clearly in the Scripture. The former tears were such as others shared in; the latter were tears that no one understood. Read that chapter in the Gospel of John again, and you find that Christ was not alone in weeping. Martha and Mary were there, and they were weeping also, and the Jews who had known Lazarus and loved him. There was a kinship in a common sorrow there, a fellow feeling which united hearts, a sense of common loss and ache and loneliness. Now turn to the other scene, and what a difference! It is a pageantry of enthusiastic gladness. The cry goes ringing along the country road, "Hosanna to the Son of David." And it is amid these shouting voices of men beside themselves with wild enthusiasm that the Scripture tells us Jesus wept. At the grave of Lazarus many an eye was wet. Here every eye was dancing with excitement. No one was weeping here; nobody thought of weeping; it was the triumph of the Lord—Hosanna! And all alone, amid that welcoming tumult, in a grief which nobody could pierce or penetrate, the tears came welling from our Savior's eyes. In this our mortal life there are common griefs, touches of nature which make the whole world kin. But how endlessly true is the old saying of Scripture that the heart knoweth its own bitterness. And in those bitternesses which words can never utter and which lie too deep for any human help, what a comfort to know that our Savior understands! In all the common sorrows of humanity He is our Brother, and He weeps with us. He stands beside the grave of Lazarus still, clothed in the beauty of His resurrection. But in that lonely unutterable sorrow, which is the price and the penalty of personality, we may be sure He understands us also.

August 15

Unwarrantable Interferences - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him— Joh_11:48

The Error of the Pharisees

There was a sense in which the Pharisees were entirely wrong. Historically, and in the sovereign will of God, it is just because the Pharisees did not let Christ alone that we believe and worship Him. Had they let Christ alone, I speak with reverence, there would have been no Calvary for Jesus. And had Jesus never been lifted up on Calvary, He never would have drawn all men to Him. They were quite wrong, then, these Pharisees, in one sense. Their interference was a predestined thing. They plotted and schemed and compassed the death of Jesus. And they said, That ends it, none will believe Him now. Yet the King in His beauty is the crucified Redeemer still.

Jesus Left Alone Shows Forth His Glory

But if there was one sense in which the Pharisees were wrong, there was another sense in which they were entirely right. With a meaning they never saw, it was quite true, "If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him." For Pharisaism is not only a sect. It is a spirit. It is living still, disguised, perhaps, but unchanged. And if a sinful world is to believe on Jesus, if men and women are to see His majesty and hail Him as Redeemer, and adore Him, it is a new sight of the King Himself we want: the Pharisee must leave the Christ alone. Truth unadorned is then adorned the most. And "I am the way, the truth, the life," said Jesus. I would that many a commentator, many a dogmatist, many a highly intellectual preacher even, had learned that simple lesson from our text: "If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him." For there is a charm, a constraining beauty about Jesus, that draws like a magnet the wandering hearts of men. But tampering hands have been laid upon the Lord. He has been shrouded, hidden, removed from the garden of humanity, till many a simple soul can only cry with Mary, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."

And so I am led to our central thought, that of "letting alone," and I wish to treat it in a Biblical way. First, then, we shall fix our minds on this: there are times when we must leave God alone.

Don't Leave God Alone When He Wants to Be Prayed to

Now the strange thing is—and I call it strange though to the man who knows his Bible it is quite familiar—the strange thing is, that the times when we must leave God alone are not the times when God appears to wish it. Go back to the story of Exodus, for instance. Recall that sad scene of the golden calf. The people made their idol and they danced around it, and they played the harlot and forgot God around it till the anger of God was like a scorching flame. And what did God cry to Moses? "Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, that I may consume them." And Moses simply refused to let God be—he fell on his face, entreated passionately, saved the people, and was never more Christlike than in that splendid disobedience. Or take the cry of the Syrophoenician woman. "Lord, save my daughter, save my daughter, Lord!" And if the silence of Christ meant anything at all, and if His word about the lost sheep of the house of Israel meant anything at all, it meant, "Let Me alone." But her mother's heart refused to let Christ alone. She pleaded, she parried, she found a choice argument in His refusal, till Christ was mastered by that most disobedient persistency, and she went home to find her daughter healed.

I think you see now what the lesson is. With a life to live and with a death to die, never let God alone by not praying. "Let me alone," the God of science is crying, "for I work by my inexorable laws, and I shall not change them at my creature's bidding." "Let me alone," the God of providence is crying, "for your neighbor yonder has not prayed for years, and yet he has all he needs." But I take sides with Moses and that woman. And if new depth, new insight, new power for the little self-denials of everyday, new cravings for holiness, new humility—if these things rise in me as the tide rises, come to me like a bird upon the wing, I shall thank God that I have learned the lesson of never letting Him alone in prayer.

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Unwarrantable Interferences - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Let God Alone to Have His Way with You

That, then, is one sphere where the earnest heart cannot leave God alone. And I have thought it right to touch on that to safeguard our topic from abuse. But there is another sphere where God is sovereign. It is the sphere of action. It is the realm of life. And there it is wisdom, it is peace, just to let God alone to have His way with you. I suppose there never was a general, not even Lord Roberts, who was more loved by his soldiers than the Viscount de Turenne, who was marshal of France in the time of the great Louis. It was he who, if he gained a battle, used to write we won, and if his army were defeated, wrote I lost. Well, I have read how one night, going the round of his camp, he overheard some of the younger soldiers bitterly murmuring at the discomforts of the march. And an old veteran just recovering from a wound was saying, "You do not know our father. When you are older, you will never talk like that. Be sure he has some grand end in view that we cannot make out, or he would never allow us to suffer so." And brave Turenne, who tells the story himself, used to say that that moment of eavesdropping was the proudest and happiest moment of his life. The young men were bitter and angry at his leadership. Things would be different if they were in command. But the old veterans who had fought with their general in many a field and marched with their general many a weary mile, they let him alone because they loved him so.

Do that with God. It is one secret of a strenuous life. The deepest philosophy comes to its crown in that. I have known fathers whose hearts turned hard as adamant when the angel of death stooped down and kissed their children. They are the raw recruits in life's great army, and they cannot let their General alone. But the trained soldier trusts Him, believes in a life-plan that he cannot see, and prays for submission to the will of God, though the cup be bitter and the cross be sore. O follower of Christ, let God alone. Perhaps it is kinder to bring the rod upon thy back than to put the jeweled ring upon thy finger. He has a path for thee. He has a plan for thee. He has a heaven for thee. Watch, wait, cooperate, accept, but do not insolently interfere.

I believe, too, that there is a wider sense in which we are called to let God alone. For I am conscious in the religious life of our time of a certain fretful anxiety and unrest and the absence of a quiet and solemn dignity that gave a grandeur to our fathers' piety. I am amazed, indeed, to note how men and women can be engaged for years in so-called Christian service, and it never seems to dignify their characters, and never lifts them an inch above the world, and never sweetens their so unkindly tongue. Do you remember Uzzah? Do you remember how the ark of God on the new cart was jolted and shaken by Nachon's threshing-floor? And Uzzah, in terror lest the ark should fall, put out his hand, took hold of it, and steadied it. And the anger of God was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there, and he died. Happy for Uzzah had he let God alone! And the spirit of Uzzah is abroad today. There is an irreligious anxiety for God. And while I thank Him for all loyal service, and praise Him for all consecrated hands, I want men to believe the ark is holy, and I want men to believe that God is sovereign, and I want a little of the reverence and of the wonder and of the awe brought back again that befit the creature serving his reigning King.

Times We Must Leave Men Alone

If there are times when we must leave God alone, there are times when we must let men alone. And that is our second thought; there are times when we must let men alone.

And here again, as was the case with God, these times are rarely the times when men would like it. The very hour when a man cries to be let alone may be the very hour when I dare not do so. The Bible is full of instances of that. One notable one springs up, and it is this. It is the morning when Jesus entered the synagogue at Capernaum, and there was a man with an unclean spirit there. And the man cried, "Let us alone, what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?" And Jesus? Jesus rebuked him saying, "Hold thy peace and come out of him." It was impossible for Christ, just because He was the Christ, to let that devil-ridden soul alone. And wherever men are living on in sin, helpless and bound, strangers to peace and God, the Church of Jesus cannot let them be. A sinful soul may cry, Let me alone! But with a sweet and masterful intolerance, Christ is still deaf to that; and we must help, and we must save mankind, even against their own wishes.

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Unwarrantable Interferences - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

This grace, then, of letting alone, frees no man from his moral responsibility either towards his wandered or his heathen brother. Where, then, does it enter into human life? We shall take another Gospel incident and see. I find Christ sitting at Simon the leper's table, and the woman who was a sinner is kneeling there, and she has broken the alabaster box and is pouring the precious ointment on the feet of Jesus. And the disciples murmur and are indignant. They cannot understand this gross extravagance. "Might not this ointment have been sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" Let her alone, says Jesus, why trouble ye the woman? Let her alone, you do not understand. She is serving with a service of her own, moved by the passion of an all-pardoning love: there is one work; there is one character for her; there is another service and another life for you.

And that is one glory of the Gospel. It does not crush men into one common mould, but it gives the greatest freedom to individuality and perfects and crowns each struggling soul uniquely. You are never yourself till you are Christ's, and woe to that preaching of an exalted Lord that forces men's service into a common type! It is not because I want to be original, it is because I want to be a Christian, that I say to all murmuring disciples, let me alone; I have my box to break; it is not yours. I want to see the keen man, the man who is honorable and Christian in his business. And I want to see the philanthropist, the man who is eagerly bent on doing good. And I want to see the dreamer, the man who feels the beauty of the world, and never does anything, perhaps, except reflect it. And I wish to say to the philanthropist, Do not upbraid the merchant. And I wish to say to the keen man of business, Do not despise the dreamer. Let him alone. He too is serving God. There is need for the purification of the market. There is need for heroic work among the poor. There is need that the beautiful should be interpreted. And when all is over and the morning breaks and the manifold service of a million hearts is unified in Christ, you will be thankful that you let others alone, for there will be more "well dones" than you have ever dreamed!

Pray That God Never Lets You Alone

There are times, then, when we must leave God alone. There are times when we must let man alone. I just want to say this in closing: Heaven grant it that God never lets you or me alone.

There is a terrible text in the Old Testament: "Ephraim is joined to his idols: let him alone." I have pleaded with Ephraim, says God, for years. I have pleaded with Ephraim as a father with his child. But Ephraim has spurned Me; he has given his heart to his idols; and Ephraim is reprobate. His day of grace has set. "Ephraim is joined to his idols: let him alone." Drive on thy chariot, Ephraim, to thy hell. There is a terrible text in the New Testament. It is when Jesus says to Judas, "What thou doest, do quickly." For I have pleaded with thee, O Judas; I have prayed with thee. And now his doom is sealed; let him alone. Out, Judas, get it over, get it done, and to thine own place, hastily.

The hour may come when God lets us alone.

Do you say that hour will never come to you? Watch! For it is not by a desperate career, and it is not by one black and awful deed, that a man shall sin away the grace of God. It is by the silent hardening of our common days, the almost unnoticed tampering with conscience, the steady dying-out of what is best under the pressure of a worldly city; it is by that the spiritual dies, it is by that men become castaways. Better the harshest discipline than that. Great God of mercy, let none of us alone! Deal with us, lead us, chasten us as Thou wilt, if only we be sanctified, ennobled, and drawn out of self into the light of Him who is chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely.

August 16

Undeveloped Lives - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone — Joh_12:24

Waste in Nature

In the summer, when the world is at its fairest, one thing that impresses us very strongly is what I might call the prodigality of nature. Every flower is busy fashioning its seeds; there are trees with thousands of seed pods on them; and we know that of all these millions of seeds being formed, not one in ten thousand will ever come to anything. Now, I am not going to speak of the problems suggested by that wastefulness. I wish rather to say a word or two upon the subject of undeveloped lives. In every corn of wheat that finds no congenial soil, there are undeveloped possibilities of harvest; and that suggests to me the question that often confronts us, the question of undeveloped lives.

The Possibilities of Life Often Overwhelm Us

There are some seasons when we feel this more acutely. Allow me to recall some of these times to you. One is the hour when we are brought into contact with a strong and radiant personality. There is something very stimulating in such company, but often there is something strangely depressing too. Most of us have felt some sinking of the heart in the presence of exuberant vitality. I do not mean that we are repressed or chilled; it is not the great souls, it is the little souls, that chill us. But I mean that the possibilities of life so overwhelm us, in the splendid outflow of a radiant nature, that we feel immediately, perhaps to the point of heart-sinking, how undeveloped our own life must be.

Again, we feel it in these rarer moments that come to us all sometimes, we know not how—moments when life ceases to be a tangle, and flashes up into a glorious unity. In such hours it is a joy to be alive; thought is intense; things quiver with significance. There is a passing expansion of every power and faculty, touched by mysterious influences we cannot gauge. I think that for Jesus every hour was like that. For us, such hours are like angels' visits. But when they come they bring such visions of the possible, that we feel bitterly how poor are our common days. If this be our measure we are not living to scale. If this be our waking, is not our life a sleep? It is in the rarer and loftier moments, then, that we apprehend the meaning of undeveloped life.

Early Death Brings Sorrow of Undeveloped Lives

But perhaps it is in the presence of early death that the thought reaches us with its full pressure. For the tragedy of early death is not its suffering; it is the blighted promise and the hope that is never crowned. I scarcely wonder that in well-nigh every cemetery you shall see a broken column as a monument. It is hardly Christian, but it is very human, and I do not think God will be hard on what is human. Wherever death is, you have mystery. But in the death of the young the mystery is doubled. And where there were high gifts of heart and intellect, the mystery is deepened a thousandfold. Why all this promise? Why this noble overture? Why, when the pattern is just beginning to show comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears and slits the thin-spun life? The great mystery of the early grave is the sorrow of undeveloped lives.

The Pain of God in Seeing Undeveloped Lives

Now there is one thing that I should like to say in passing. It is that in the light of undeveloped lives there must be infinite pain in the omniscience of God. Do you remember how Robert Browning sang, "All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God"? God recognizes the value and the power of the possibilities we never even see. We take men as we see them, for the most part. We do not trouble about hidden talents. If our eyes were opened in the city street to the undeveloped love and gifts and character in the crowd, what a new sense of hopelessness would strike us! But the hungering of love we never dream of, and the craving of hearts, and the gifts that cannot blossom, all these are clear as a star to the Eternal, and that is one sorrow of divine omniscience.

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Undeveloped Lives - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Christ's Influence in Developing Lives

Now one of the first things to arrest me in Christ Jesus is His influence in developing the lives He touches. It is as if God, in that sorrow of omniscience, had charged His Son to call forth all possibilities. I doubt not there were other publicans with gifts as good as Matthew's, and other doctors quite as sincere as Luke; but under the influence of Jesus Christ the gifts of these men so developed that they have made all Christendom their debtors, while the rest are sleeping in unrecorded graves. When Simon Peter first steps upon the scene he is a rash, impulsive, and impetuous man. One recognizes the slumbering greatness in him; but one feels the boundless possibilities of evil. So Jesus takes him and uses him as a master musician might use his beloved instrument, till the chords are wakened into such glorious music that the centuries are ringing with it still. Jesus touched nothing which He did not adorn. And He adorned, not as we decorate our streets, but as God adorns the lilies of the field. He drew from the worst their unsuspected best. He kindled the love and pity that were sleeping. He roused into most effectual exercise whatsoever gift or talent was concealed. And if today the aggregate life of Christendom is infinitely deeper, fuller, and more complex than any life the world has ever known, we largely owe it to the influence of Jesus in the development of human life.

Development Does Not Depend on Time

The question, then, which I desire to ask is this: What were the forces that Jesus used in this great work? And I wish you to notice, as it were by way of preface, how the historical career of Jesus makes the thought of development independent of the years. We say that the days of our years are threescore years and ten. We get to think that three score years are needed if human life is to come to its fruition. And then we are confronted with the life of Jesus, a life symmetrical, proportioned, perfect, and Jesus of Nazareth died at thirty-three. Most lives are just awaking into power then; but the life of Jesus was perfect in its fullness. Most of us would cry at thirty-three, "It is only now beginning"; but Jesus upon the cross cried, "It is finished." And the great lesson which that carries for every one of us is that we must not measure development by time. There may be years in which every talent in us is stagnant. We live in a dull and most mechanical way. Then comes an hour of call or inspiration, and our whole being deepens and expands. A crushing sorrow, a crisis, or a joy, develops manhood with wonderful rapidity, and may do the work of twelve months in a week. Let us remember, looking unto Jesus, and noting the shortness of that perfect life, that the scale of development is not the scale of years.

"Love Lifted Me"

What, then, were the great forces Jesus used in developing undeveloped life? The first was His central truth that God is love. He taught men that in heaven was a Father; that the heart that fashioned them and ruled them, also loved them; and in that vision of the love of God, men found a magnificent environment for growth. I think we all know how love develops character. I think most of us have known that in our homes. If in our childhood we were despised or hated, the most expensive schooling could not right things. A mother's love is the finest education. When a man is afraid he never shows his best. When all the faces around him are indifferent, there is no call to stir upon his talents. But when love comes, then all the depths are opened, and life becomes doubly rich and doubly painful, and every hope is quickened, and every desire enlarged, and common duties become royal services, and common words take a new depth of meaning. We all know how love develops character. That was the first power that Jesus used. He said to a repressed and fearful world, "God loves you." And if human life has been developing in Christendom into amazing and undreamed-of amplitude, it is primarily a response to that appeal.

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Undeveloped Lives - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

To Develop One Must Surrender

But there was another power that Jesus used. It was the human instinct of self-surrender. It is the glory of Jesus that He called self-surrender into the service of our self-development.

There was one religion in the ancient world that strove with all its power to make man complete. It was the beautiful religion of the Greeks, and its aim was to make life a thing of beauty. It did not fail; but it slowly passed away. It proved unequal to the terrible strain of life. And one reason of its decadence was just this, it had no place for the grandeur of self-sacrifice. Then rose the philosophy of Stoicism, and it grasped with both hands the truth of self-surrender. It said the first duty of man is to surrender, till he has steeled himself into impregnable manhood. It failed, because life insisted on expansion. It failed, as every philosophy and creed must fail, that says to the God-touched soul, "Thus far thou shalt come and no farther." It had grasped the vital need of selfsurrender, but by self-surrender it had really meant self suppression.

And then came Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God. And He said, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." Surrender thy sight, if need be; but then why? That the glories of heaven may break upon thy soul. And if thou hast ten talents, give them out; and why? That thou mayst have thine own with usury. And if thou art a rich young ruler, sell all thou hast; and why? That thou mayst enter into the deeper, larger life that comes from the wholehearted following of the Lord. The Greek philosophy had said, "Develop and be happy." The Stoic had said, "Surrender and be strong." But Jesus said, "You never shall develop till you have learned the secret of surrendering." I think, then, that that was Jesus' second power in advancing the development of life. He did not only say, "Take up thy cross." There were other teachers who might have said that too. But He said, "Take up thy cross that thou mayst follow Me"; and He is life abundant and complete.

Our Life Shall Go on Developing Forever

Lastly, and this is the crowning inspiration, our Lord expanded life into eternity. Our life shall go on developing forever, under the sunshine and in the love of God. "I go to prepare a place for you," He said. The environment of heaven shall be perfect. Love is at work making things ready for us that we may ripen in the light forevermore. I know no thought more depressing than the thought that all effort is to be crushed at death. It hangs like a weight of lead upon the will, when a man would launch into some new endeavor. But if death is an incident and not an end, if every baffled striving shall be crowned, if "All I could never be, All men ignored in me," is to expand into actuality when I awake, I can renew my struggle after every failure. It is that knowledge, given us by Jesus, that has inspired the development of Christendom. I affectionately plead with you to make it yours

August 17

Spiritual Analysis - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him— Joh_12:29

Christ's Agony and God's Assurance

The visit of these Greeks to Jesus was a very memorable hour in His experience. It opened up prospects to Him of a worldwide recognition, and in that recognition lay His glory. But immediately there pressed upon His heart the dark road by which that glory must be won, and as the vision of a cross rose clear before Him, His soul grew exceeding sorrowful even unto death. "What shall I say," He cried, "Father save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father thy will be done, I take the cup: glorify thy name, whatever the cost to me." And then there came a voice from heaven saying, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again." It was God's assurance in the darkest hour that through agony and death Christ would not be forsaken. It was the divine token given when needed most, that the love of heaven would not let Him go. And when the people heard the voice some said it thundered, and others that an angel spoke unto Him.

Now that at once suggests two thoughts to me, and these two, to which I ask your attention for a little, are: First, there are many things to which we can give either a lower or a higher meaning. Second, it is when we give such things their higher meaning that we are nearest to the truth.

Higher or Lower Meanings

First, then, there are many things to which we can give lower or higher meanings, and we see how clearly this is illustrated in the scene from which I have taken our text. There came a voice from heaven; it was the voice of God, that voice which is as the sound of many waters, and with the same accent of unutterable depth it fell on every ear of the awed bystanders. And to some it was nothing but the roll of thunder, there was nothing miraculous or supernatural about it; it was only the muttering and brooding of the storm that had been threatening to break perhaps since sunrise. But to others, gifted with finer sense, and among them it may be the shepherds who had been on the hills at Bethlehem, there was something in the sound that was inexplicable unless it had fallen from the lips of angels. It was the same note that struck on every heart. At the back of all we see and hear there is our character, and our character reacts on everything that reaches it. So to the separate men there came the voice of God, and they all heard it—how could they help but hear it; yet when they heard it some said it thundered, and others that an angel spoke to Him.

In Nature You See What You Are

Now I might illustrate this truth in many spheres, and first let me ask you to think of the world of nature. It is the same world to everyone of us, yet to everyone of us how different it is. You send a geologist out into the country, and he has eyes for every rock and dip and cutting. You send a botanist out into the country, and every flower on the hedgebank speaks to him. To a poet there is a voice in every breeze, sermons in stones, books in the running brooks; but to Eugene Aram, cursed with a sense of guilt, every branch in the forest seemed to point a finger, and every zephyr whispered of detection. "The thief doth fear each bush and officer," says Shakespeare. Milton, writing of the nightingale, calls it "bird most musical most melancholy"; yet the poet Coleridge, in a well-known passage, speaks of it as the merry nightingale. The fact is it was Milton who was melancholy, and it was not the nightingale but Coleridge who was merry: both listened to the same exquisite music, and then their sad, glad hearts made all the difference. My point is that they are always doing that. Unto the pure all things are pure. Our life and mood and character and temper react on everything we see and hear, until for one man this is a poor dead universe, and for another the very home of God. One world—yet some will call it a machine, and others will find it instinct with divinity. One voice—yet some said it thundered, and others that an angel spoke to Him.

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Spiritual Analysis - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Oneness in Our Deepest and Highest Lives

Or turning from nature we might think of human life, the common life we are all leading. It is very surprising, when you get deep enough, to discover the oneness of all human hearts. It is our surface-life that really separates us; it is largely outward and accidental things that drive us asunder. When you get beneath the surface into that deeper region where the truer and intense life is lived, it is wonderful how soon you find that touch of nature—the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Men tell us that if in one room you place two well-tuned harps and strike a note loudly on one harp, immediately upon the other harp you will hear the same note faintly yet clearly echoing: and so when the chords of these souls of ours are touched by the one hand that is the Master of their music, there is not a soul within hail but may be set vibrating in most mysterious and kindly unison. In our great experiences we understand each other. In our deeper joys and sorrows we are one. In our elemental passions, in our hopes and fears, our social distinctions crumble in the dust. There is an essential oneness in our deepest and highest life as there was in the voice that fell upon these bystanders.

We Color Life Differently

But then the strange thing is that men should take that life, that common stock and harvest of experience, and should view it so differently and give it such different colorings as it passes through the alembic of their characters; that for one man life becomes a glory and for another man life becomes a curse. What is a pessimist? He is a man who holds that life for all its sunshine is a tragedy. What is an optimist? He is a man who holds that for all its tragedy life's brow is towards the sunrise. Yet pessimist and optimist alike, with a whole world between their interpretations, are looking out on the same crowded theatre and listening to the same human voice divine. You remember how the poet Keats describes this life:

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and specter thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

I should call that the pessimistic view.

And you remember how Longfellow describes this present life:

Life is real, life is earnest,

And the grave is not its goal.

I should call that the optimistic view. Yet before both there passed the same procession, and it was the one world which inspired both their songs. Some said it thundered when the voice was heard, and others said an angel spoke to Him. Some could hear nothing but a threatening tempest; others in the same voice detected angel music. And so with life at large, men are so different—may I not say they have made themselves so different—that where to one there is only the muttering storm, to another there are the broken syllables of God.

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Spiritual Analysis - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Importance of Interpretation of Experiences

And is it not the same with our own life's experience? What different meanings we extract from it! It is not what we meet with that is of supreme importance, it is how we interpret what we meet with. The same joy will make one intensely selfish, and make another to be intensely grateful; and the same sorrow will make one man blaspheme, and bring another broken-hearted to God's feet. How many have cried in some desolating hour when they have been stripped of the savings or of the love of years—how many have cried, lifting rebellious hands, "This is cruel; I cannot believe God loves me." Yet Job, stripped in a day of everything, crushed, humbled, ruined, orphaned in an hour, could only cry, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Do not forget, then, that it is our privilege and our power always to react on whatever God may send. The speech of God has always double meanings, and the interpretation is not God's but ours. By all we have made ourselves, by what we strive for, by our faith, our love, our real and vital manhood, do we extract the meaning of our providence's and get just what is really our own. "We all get what we bring." Some said that it thundered, others that an angel spoke—it was the same voice transmuted through different hearts. And the vast distinction between the lives that triumph and those that go drifting out into the night, is not so much the kind of thing they meet with as the kind of way in which they understand it.

Christ's Life Differently Interpreted

Then I often think of our text and of its bearings when I read the Gospel story of the life of Jesus. What a moral test and touchstone was that life—take some of His great miracles and see what happened. "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," the scribes said; and His friends and relatives said, "He is beside himself." But the common people, when they saw the miracles, immediately glorified the God of Israel. How is it with us as we face that life today? What do we make of these deeds, these words, that death? God does not force us to accept the truth; He says, "There are the facts, interpret them for yourselves." Happy the man who in a simple faith has been so nourished and upbuilt by Jesus Christ that though all the world should gainsay him he would still be confident that no one less than an angel spoke to him.

Attributing Higher Meaning Brings You Closer to the Truth

Thus far then of the first thought I wished to illustrate, that things may be capable of deeper or higher meanings; now secondly, and in a few sentences in closing, this: It is when we give such things their higher meaning that we are nearer to the truth.

Now I ask you to observe in the passage of our text that none of the bystanders gauged the voice correctly. Some said it thundered, and yet it did not thunder. Some said it was an angel, and yet no angel spoke. Both parties were wrong; both were beside the mark; as a matter of actual fact, both were astray. Yet the men who interpreted the sound most loftily were far nearer to the truth than were the others. Whose was the voice that spake? It was the voice of God. And not one in the crowd recognized it as God's voice. To that extent everyone of them was wrong, the wisest of them no less than the most foolish. But if an angel, with his magnificent intelligence stands nearer to God than a dead thunderbank, and if the voice of an angel that expresses reason is more akin to God's voice than the brooding storm, then the men who interpreted the sound most loftily—who said it was not thunder but an angel— were far nearer to the truth than were the others.

Need I expand that lesson ? I think not. You can take it with you and practice it. The chances are that in nine-tenths of our judgments, you and I like these Jews are quite astray. But whatever you are judging, lean to the nobler side. If it is thunder or angels, vote for the angels. I care not what it be, whether your neighbor's character or your own trials or public men or Scripture. And though when the morning breaks we all may be proved astray—for who dare be dogmatic in this world of shadows—I think we shall find that if we took life at its highest and interpreted everything at the largest, not its least, we shall be nearer the truth as it is in Jesus, than if we had chosen in any lower way.

August 18

The Cross and the World - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel— Mat_15:24
I, if I be lifted up…will draw all men unto me— Joh_12:32

Christ Came to and for Israel

We have but to read the record of the Gospels, to find confirmation of the former of these texts. The whole activity of Christ on earth shows Him as sent to the lost sheep of Israel. Within the boundaries of Israel He was born, and within the boundaries of Israel He died. With the one exception of the journey here recorded, He never in His maturity left the Jewish land. His twelve disciples were of the Jewish faith; His friends were inhabitants of Jewish homes; His enemies were not the Romans, but His own, to whom He came and they received Him not. For His teaching He sought no other audience than the men and women of the Jewish villages. For His retirement He sought no other solitude an that of the Galilean hills. And all His miracles, with rare exceptions, which were recorded because they were exceptional, were wrought for the comforting of Jewish hearts, and for the drying of tears in Jewish eyes. The whole story of the Gospel, then, is a witness to the truth of our first text. In the fulfilling of His earthly ministry Christ confined Himself to Jewish limits. And He did so because of His assurance, that He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Christ, However, Anticipated a Wider Ministry

But as we study the words of our Redeemer, one thing gradually grows very clear. It is that He anticipated a ministry that should be wider than these Jewish limits. I am not thinking just now of any words He spoke after He was risen from the dead. I am thinking only of His recorded utterances in those crowded years before the cross. And what I say is that no reasonable man can study the discourse of the historic Jesus without discovering that He foresaw a ministry which was to be as wide as the whole world. There is, for instance, the second of our texts today—"I will draw all men unto me." There is that beautiful word of an earlier chapter, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold." There is that utterance at Simon's table, when the woman broke the alabaster box, "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, this that she hath done shall be told of her." I ask you to observe that these great sayings have stood the test of the most searching criticism. They are so germane to the mind of Christ that they have come triumphant through the fires. And they tell us this, that through the earthly ministry, confined as it was within the house of Israel, Christ had the outlook of an approaching lordship over the nations of mankind.

The Cross and the Worldwide Empire

But these utterances tell us more than that, and to this I specially invite attention. They tell us that in the mind of Jesus His death and His worldwide empire were related. So far as we can learn about the mind of Christ, we can with reverence say this about it. It was when the cross was clearest in His thought that the worldwide empire was most clear to Him. If you will think of the texts which I have cited, and consider the occasion of their utterance, you will understand quite easily what I mean. Take for instance that most beautiful word, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold." What are the words which immediately precede it? "The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." At the very moment when the thought of shepherding kindled the vision of the shepherd's death, at that very moment there flashed upon the Lord the vision of the sheep beyond the fold. Take again the scene at Simon's feast where Jesus spoke of a Gospel for the world. "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there this deed that she hath done shall be remembered." And what was it that the woman had done under the interpreting eyes of Jesus Christ? She had anointed His body for its burial. In other words that womanly act of hers had spoken to Jesus of His coming death. Over the table where the guests reclined, it had cast the awful shadow of the cross. And it was then, anointed for His burial by an act which no one else could understand, that Christ in vision lifted up His eyes and saw the Gospel preached to the whole world. Clearly, then, Christ looked upon His death as the great secret of a worldwide empire. When the one grew vivid in His thought, there rose on Him the vision of the other. And that to me is a matter to meditate on, as one of the most momentous of all truths, by every man and every woman who is interested in the world empire of the Lord. Now the question is, can we follow out that thought, and see even dimly where the connection lies? It is that which I should like to attempt to do.

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August 19

Seeing Jesus Is Seeing God

He that seeth me seeth him that sent me— Joh_12:45

Utterances of Transcendent Importance

That these words are of profound importance we may gather from two considerations. The one is that our Savior cried them (Joh_12:44). As a rule our Savior did not cry. lie did not cry nor lift up His voice in the streets. But now and then, in some exalted hour, the Gospels tell us that He cried (Joh_7:37). And in every instance when He cried, we have words that take us to the very heart of things. Also, remember that in these verses we have our Lord's last public sermon. From the beginning of chapter thirteen onwards our Lord is in seclusion with His own. And we may be certain that every word He uttered in His final and farewell discourse would be of infinite significance.

Does God Meet Man's Need?

We recognize that infinite significance when we face the problem of our faith today. Our problem is not to believe there is a God, but to be sure that He answers to our highest thought of Him. We may justly and seriously question if any man be really an atheist. Some think they are, in moments of recoil; others assert it on street corners. But it seems to me that the thought of God is intermingled with our deepest being, as the sunshine is intertangled with the daffodils which are making the world beautiful. Our difficulty is not to believe there is a God. The atheist has been replaced by the agnostic. Our real difficulty centers in His character—is He equal to our highest thought of Him? For when life is difficult, and ways are shadowed, the soul can never have quietness and confidence unless the Rock be "higher than I."

Is There Any Cruelty in God?

This difficulty is profoundly felt in the modern study of the world of nature. "I find no proof in nature," wrote Huxley once to Kingsley, "of what you call the Fatherhood of God." Nature is quick with whisperings of God as every lover of her knows. That was one reason why our Savior loved her and haunted the places where the lilies were. But no one can seriously study nature without finding there elements of cruelty, and at once the thoughtful mind begins to ask, "Is there, then, cruelty in God?" If there be, He may be still "the Rock," but He is not "the Rock that is higher than I." We never can trust Him in an entire surrender if there be a shadow of cruelty in His nature. And that is the difficulty of many students now, not to credit the existence of a God, but to believe that He is higher than our highest.

Is There Any Injustice in God?

Or, again, we turn to human life, eager to find God in human life. That is a perfectly reasonable inquiry, for "in Him we live and move and have our being." Now, tell me, when we turn to human life are there not things in it that look like gross injustices — injustices that do not spring from character nor from any harvesting of sin? And if man be not responsible for these, at once the thinking mind begins to ask, "Is it God, then, who is responsible for these?" Granted that He is, God may still exist. Atheism is an illogical conclusion. But granted that He is, how can we ever love Him with our whole soul and strength and mind? If in Him in whom we have our being there be the faintest suspicion of injustice, we never can trust Him in utter self-surrender. Take everything you find in life and nature and transfer it to the heart upon the throne, and how extraordinarily difficult it is to believe that the Rock is higher than ourselves. And yet unless it be infinitely higher, there is no help for us when the golden bowl is broken nor when the daughters of music are brought low.

God Is What Jesus Is

And then we hear the word of the Lord Jesus, "He that beholdeth me beholdeth him that sent me." Or, as He said to Philip only a little later, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." We are not commanded to take all we find in nature or in life and carry it up to the heart upon the throne. "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." But we are commanded, over and over again, to take everything we find in Jesus, and by that to read the character of God. Just as a little moorland pool will reflect all the glory of the heavens, so Christ, in the limits of His humiliation, is the mirror of the heart of God. That is what the writer to the Hebrews means when, at the beginning of his magnificent epistle, he calls Christ the "reflection of His glory" (Heb_1:3). That is a very splendid act of faith in this seemingly unjust and cruel world. But that is the act of faith which marks the Christian. We by Him do believe in God (1Pe_1:21). If he who hath seen Christ hath seen the Father, then we can trust the Father to the uttermost, and leave all other difficulties to be cleared when the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

August 20

The Washing of the Disciples' Feet

He poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples, feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded— Joh_13:5

Jesus' Love for His Disciples

From this point onward in the Gospel of St. John, we have the private communion of Jesus with His disciples. When one is leaving for a distant country, and has transacted all necessary business with the outside world, he is fain to spend the few remaining hours in the sweet intimacy of the family circle. So Jesus, when the shadows of His departure stole around Him, dwelt in loving communion with His own. It is to this that John is pointing when he says, "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end" (Joh_13:1). He does not mean until the end of life. He means unto the end and limit of all love. Christ's love, like His life, is endless and unchangeable. There is no yesterday and no tomorrow in its depths. But in the latter hours of that now shadowed communion, there was such outwelling of the eternal passion, that John felt that its tides were at the full. Christ always loved them; now He loved them utterly. That was the thought borne in on the disciple. Yet mark that this uttermost showing of Jesus' love did not lie in unchecked and passionate avowals, but in an action of the lowliest service, and in teaching that would make the loved ones strong. The noblest love must always keep its secrets. It becomes weak when it protests too much. The love of Jesus is the perfect pattern of what the love of every young man and woman ought to be. Note, too, that in this little prologue (Joh_13:1-3), there is the note of knowledge as well as of love. The proverb has it that love is blind; but the love of Jesus was very far from that. He knew that the hour was come that He should depart (Joh_13:1). He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands (Joh_13:3). He knew who should betray Him (Joh_13:11). It was under the illumination of that knowledge that Jesus washed the feet of John and Judas. Does not that augment the wonder of the deed? Does it not set the crown upon its lowliness? Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich.

A Lesson on Humility

While supper, then, was proceeding, on the night before the Passover [for so we ought to translate it, instead of "supper being ended" (Joh_13:2)], Jesus rose from the table to perform this deed. Now the customary time for washing the feet of guests—and where men wore sandals and the heat was sweltering it was a very grateful and a very gracious practice—the customary moment for cleansing the feet was not during the mealtime, but before it. Here, then, there had been some little delay. The service had been omitted on this occasion. And I feel certain it had been omitted because no disciple was lowly enough to offer it. Probably it was about this very hour that they were disputing who should be the greatest (Luk_22:24). They were men like ourselves (we may thank God for it), and they had almost everything yet to learn. And was Peter, who had been arguing for his precedence, going to stoop down and wash the feet of John? And was John (who had his own thoughts about the traitor) going to play the servant to Iscariot? It was intolerable. It was impossible. They were willing to do much, but never that. So with hot feet (and hotter hearts) they went to supper, and Jesus saw it all and loved them still. Then Jesus rose and laid aside His garments. The bitterest rebukes are deeds, not words. He poured the water into a basin. He took the towel and girded Himself for service. And I think that when John, in his revelation on Patmos, saw the Son of Man girt with a golden girdle (Rev_1:13), he would recall this girding at the supper. So Jesus (whose own feet were to be pierced so soon) washed His disciples' feet, and dried them. Did He say to Himself, as He washed the feet of Thomas, "These feet will be beautiful upon the distant mountains"? Or did He say, as He dried the feet of Judas, "These will soon lead the mob into the Garden"? I do not know. But I am sure that in the stern and stormy years to come, not one of the eleven would ever have his tired feet washed, but he would recall this memorable hour.

One Major and Many Minor Cleansings

Meanwhile Jesus was approaching Peter, and the eleven were wondering what Peter would do. Perhaps Peter had been the noisiest in asserting that they would never catch him playing the foot-washer. And now, what a tumult there was in Peter's breast. What a tangle of good and evil in the man. All that was best in him (his reverence for his Lord), and all that was worst in him (his pride), made him draw up his foot as if the Lord's hand had stung it. But there was one thing that was all the world to Peter. It was the friendship of his glorious Master. And his Master (who is the unrivalled Master of the heart) touched, with His exquisite tenderness, that chord. "If I wash thee not, thou has no part with me." The very suggestion stabbed like a dagger. Peter thrust out his hands and bent down his head to Jesus: "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." Then Jesus teaches the lesson of the bath (Joh_13:10). If a man has bathed, and then has soiled his feet, must he plunge his whole body into the bath again? Will he not be truly cleansed (after his bath) if the particular defilement be removed? So, once and for all, a man is justified; once and for all, he is regenerated. And it is the stain here and the defilement there (contracted on the hot and dusty highway) that the risen Savior cleanses every sunset.

Deferred Understanding / Conditional Partnership / Humble Service

Now let us note three lessons on the story. First, we may not understand Christ at the time (Joh_13:7). There is not a child but must do a hundred tasks that she cannot see the worth and meaning of. There is not a mother but might croon to her little baby, "What I do, thou knowest not now." Do not wonder, then, if Christ acts as our mothers do. All children live by faith and not by sight. Next notice Christ's condition of having part with Him. "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." It is not, "If I teach or lead thee not"—far less is it, "If I love thee not." The one condition of partnership with Jesus is to be cleansed by His Spirit and His blood. Last, note Christ's call to loving and lowliest service. That is the center and sum of the whole story. "If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet" (Joh_13:14). We sometimes talk of the language of the hands. And sometimes of the language of the eyes. But I think there is also a language of the feet, and I could translate the whole Gospel into it. For first comes Jesus (when we are bowed with sin) and He says, "Son of man, stand upon thy feet." And then comes Jesus (when we wish to serve Him), and He says to us, "Wash one another's feet." And then in the morning, when we are His forever, it is at His feet that we shall cast our crowns.

August 21

The Loneliness of Sin - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night— Joh_13:30

He Made His Bed in Hell

What first strikes us here is the utter loneliness of Judas. No word-painting, however vivid, could give a deeper impression of that than these few words of John: "He ... went immediately out: and it was night." Within, there was light and gladness, and the richest fellowship this world had ever known. For Christ was there, and John was leaning upon Jesus' bosom, and the talk was on high and holy themes that evening. Outside was fierce hostility. Outside was dark. And no man drove out Judas. No push and curse hurried him to the door. It was the momentum of his own heart and life that impelled him to choose the darkness rather than the light.

Shall we follow Judas into the dark street? He turns and looks, and the light is gleaming from the window of the upper chamber. He hurries on, and the streets are not empty yet. A band of young men, like himself, goes singing by. The sounds of evening worship come stealing from the houses. And everything that tells of love, and breathes of fellowship, and speaks of home, falls like a fiery rain on Judas' heart. The loneliness of Judas was intolerable. He had made his bed in hell. A friend of mine was once preaching on that text in the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh. And when he left the hall and was stepping homewards, a young man rushed across the street and grasped him by the arm and cried, "Minister, minister, I have made my bed in hell," and disappeared. And the lonely misery of that cry will ring in my friend's ears till his dying day. There was a loneliness in it like that in Judas. He was estranged, apart. "He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night."

In a Sense Everybody Is Lonely

There is a sense in which every person is lonely. Each has his different road, his different trial, his different joy; and these differences are invisible barriers between us, so that even in fellowship we walk apart. We say we know that woman thoroughly, and we believe we do, till someday there comes a new temptation to her, or a new chance to be heroic, and all our reckoning are falsified, and there are depths our plummet never sounded. I cannot utter forth all that I am. Gesture, speech, even music are but rude interpreters. The dullest has his dream he never tells. The very shallowest has his holy ground. There is an isolation of the soul that brings the note of pathos into history, and makes me very reluctant to judge my friend, and leads me to the very feet of Christ.

In a Sense Christ Was Lonely

For there is a deep sense in which Christ was lonely too. And it is strange that on the night of the betrayal, perhaps the two loneliest figures in the world were the sinful disciple and his sinless Lord. But oh, the world of difference between the two! Christ lonely because He was the Son of God, bearing His cross alone and going out into the glory. And Judas lonely because he was the son of perdition, with every harmony destroyed by sin, and going out into the night. Now towards which figure are you making, friend? For towards one or the other your feet are carrying you. There is a loneliness upon the mountain top. There is a loneliness in death and in the grave. And the one is the isolation of the climbing heart, and the other the isolation of the lost. Towards which are you headed? Is it "To the hills will I lift up mine eyes" or "The wages of sin is death"?

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The Loneliness of Sin - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Sin Separates

This, then, is one continual effect of sin. In every shape and form, in every age and country, it intensifies the loneliness of life. We talk of social sins. All sin is ultimately anti-social. We hear of comradeship's based upon common vices. All vice in the long run grinds the very thought of comradeship to powder. Sin isolates, estranges, separates; that is its work. It is the task of God ever to lead us to a richer fellowship. It is the work of sin, hidden but sure, to make us lonelier and more lonely till the end. From all that is best, and worthiest, and purest, it is the delight of sin to separate. And I want to touch on the three great separations that sin brings, making life a lonely thing.

Sin Separates Man from His Ideal

First, then, sin separates man from his ideal. When I have an ideal, I can never be quite lonely. When I have the vision beckoning me on, when I have something to live for and to struggle for higher than coin or food, there is a fervor in my common day, and a quiet enthusiasm for tomorrow, that are splendid company for my secret heart. And even if my ideal be a dream, it is so. In the famous battle between the clans on the North Inch of Perth, rendered immortal in the story of Sir Walter Scott, you will remember how the old chieftain Torquil sent out his sons to fight for Hector. And as one son after another fell under the smiting blows of Hal of the Wynd, the old chief thundered out, "Another for Hector," and another of his sons stepped forward to the battle. And they were all slain, every one of them, for Hector—and Hector was a coward. Let the ideal be a dream, yet men will fight for it; and fighting, the heart forgets its loneliness.

And the work of sin has been to separate the world from its ideals—to blot out the vision and to say to men, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Sin lays the emphasis on what I see. Sin holds me back from what I would be, and binds me a prisoner to what I am. Until, at last, through years of weary failure, all that we hoped and longed to be is gone, and the beckoning hands have vanished, and the vision is fled, and we are alone with our own poor selves. Sin separates a man from his ideal. Judas had his ideal once, but the devil entered him, and the ideal died out; and from that hour Judas drew apart.

Sin Separates Man from Man

Not only does sin separate man from his ideal, it separates man from man. When Cain slew Abel, he became an outcast. When David fell, he had to fly. When Peter denied Christ, he went out and wept bitterly. Sin broke life's ties for them, sundered the bonds that bound them to their fellows. Read over every narrative of sin within the Bible, and underneath the outward form of it—it may be passion, envy, treachery, revenge—you will detect, from Genesis to Revelation, the sundering of ties between man and man.

And sin is always doing that. There is not a passion, not a lust or vice, but mars and spoils the brotherhood of life, and tends to the loneliness of individual souls. God meant us to be friends. God has established numberless relationships. And God is righteousness and God is love, and the Spirit of righteousness and love inspires them all. And sin has been unrighteous from the first, and shall be cold and loveless till the end. O sin, thou severing and separating curse! There is no tie so tender but my vice will snap it. There is no bond so strong but sin will shatter it. It separates the father from his child; it sunders hearts; it creates distances within the home, till the full harmonies of life are lost, and the deep fellowships of life impossible. And the world is lonelier because of sin.

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The Loneliness of Sin - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And Jesus Christ knew that. Christ saw and felt sin's separating power. And so the Gospel, that rings with the note of brotherhood, centers in Calvary upon the fact of sin. The social gospel is but a shallow gospel, false to the truth and alien from Christ, unless it roots itself in the divine forgiveness and the inspiring power of the Holy Ghost. The poet Whittier tells a story of the Rabbi Nathan, who long lived blamelessly but fell at last, and his temptation clung to him in spite of his prayers and fastings. And he had a friend, Rabbi Ben Isaac, and he felt that his sin had spoiled the friendship. But he would go to him and speak to him and tell him all. And when they met, the two embraced each other; till Rabbi Nathan, remembering his sin, tore himself from his friend's arms and confessed. It was the separating power of sin. But when Rabbi Ben Isaac heard his words, he confessed that he too had sinned, and he asked his friend to pray for him as Rabbi Nathan had asked himself. And there in the sunset, side by side, they knelt and each prayed with his whole heart for the other. "And when at last they rose up to embrace, each saw God's pardon in his brother's face."

Sin, separation—pardon, brotherhood; it is the order of the universe and God.

Sin Separates Man from God

And so sin separates a man from his ideal and a man from men. But the most awful separation of all, the one that reaches the very heart of loneliness, is this: sin separates a man from God.

I can never be lonely in God's fellowship. When I detect His glory in the world, and trace His handiwork in field and sunset; when I recognize His voice in conscience, when I feel the power of His love in Christ; "there is society where none intrudes," there is the sweetest company in solitude; and I may dwell alone, but I can never be a lonely man. "For me to live is Christ," said the apostle; and the friendship of God was so intense for him, that even in the prison at Philippi he had society.

But from the first it has been sin's great triumph to separate the soul from God; and the deepest loneliness of sin is this, that it blinds me to One whom not to see is death, and bars me from the fellowship of Him whose friendship is of infinite value to my heart. If in the sky and sea, if in the call of duty, if in the claims of men, if in the love of Christ, if in all these I see and hear no God. this is a lonely world. And sin has blinded me, and made lonely, as the prodigal was lonely when far from his father and father's home. Shall I arise and go to Him tonight? Shall I return by the way of Calvary to God? I have been separated from holiest and the best. I have been living far from goodness and from God. But -

Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

—Charlotte Elliott

August 22

Tribulation and the Untroubled Heart

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions— Joh_14:1-2

He Speaks Peace in the Midst of Tribulation

There are few more profitable studies than that of comparing spiritual things with spiritual. In the light of this, I should like to compare our text with that of Joh_16:33 —"In the world ye shall have tribulation." In certain selected seasons of our life it is easy to keep the heart untroubled. There are days in life, as in the world of nature, when everything is radiant and serene. But when our Lord says, "Let not your heart be troubled," He is not thinking of such days as that, as is evident from our texts. Tribulation is a spacious word. It comprehends a largeness of experience. It embraces everything from common worry up to fierce and bitter persecution. And it is in lives familiar with all that, and moving in an atmosphere like that, that our Lord looks for the untroubled heart. He is not legislating for recluses. He is not counseling such as live in shelter. He is speaking to men who are thoroughly familiar with the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." It is to them He says, in that quiet way of His, which in its quietness carries the ring of sovereignty, "Let not your heart be troubled."

Jesus Promises a Peaceful Heart, Not an Untroubled Life

From this we gather that in our Lord's intention great emphasis is to be laid on the word heart. And when we turn to the Greek we find that this is so, for the word heart is put in the last place. Our Lord does not call us to an untroubled life. His own life was very far from that. He never asks us to shirk responsibilities, nor to rid ourselves of duties or of cares. But He wants us, as we move through life, playing our part and shouldering our burdens, to have a kind of interior tranquillity. In the world we may have tribulation, and the world for each of us is just our own environment; we may have dark anxieties in business; we may have a heavy load of care at home. But through all that, however hard and worrying, we are to move with a quiet undisturbedness, if we are to live as He would have us do. On the circumference may be a score of frets: these frets are never to reach into the center. Whatever the noise of battle in the field, the soul is to be garrisoned with peace. It is of that interior and sweet serenity that the Lord is thinking when He says, "Let not your heart be troubled."

Three Things Necessary: A Quiet Faith in God

For this undisturbedness, He tells us, there are three things which are necessary. The first of them is a quiet faith in God. If He be the God of Abraham and of Isaac, then He is the God of individuals. He does not deal with us upon the scale of thousands; He deals with us upon the scale of one. And our Lord means that to recognize that dealing, and to trust Him, often in extreme opposition to the senses, is one great secret of interior peace. If trials be only the bludgeoning of fate, if things that meet us be only chance occurrences, it is incredibly hard for common men and women to be victoriously serene within. But the moment we say, "This thing is of God," however dark and inscrutable it be, then the birds start singing in the trees. If underneath are the everlasting arms, if not a sparrow can fall without our Father, if He who sees the end from the beginning is ordering everything in perfect wisdom, however hard life be, or unintelligible, there comes a radiant quietness at the center, and in that quietness we overcome the world. We are not here to be beaten. We are here, the weakest of us, to be more than conquerors. A deep faith in the sovereignty of God overthrows the tyranny of things. All of which our blessed Savior knew so well, from His immediate communion with the Father, that He could say, "Let not your heart be troubled."

Faith in Jesus Christ

The next secret of the untroubled heart is a strong faith in the Lord Jesus. To trust Him fully is to be at rest. One is ready to think that when we follow Christ there is going to be exemption from life's hardships. But discipleship gives no exemptions—in the world ye shall have tribulation. Discipleship may not remove the trouble, but it gives such a new setting to it all, that the interior disquiet departs, and there comes the peace that passes understanding. Through Him we get a grip of God that was simply impossible before. Walking with Him, we learn the love of God with a fullness hitherto unknown. Looking to Him, so radiant and restful, under the very shadow of the cross, we find His spirit entering into us. When we do that, life may not grow easier. The thorn in the flesh may not be taken away. Burdens may weigh heavy on us still, and uncongenial tasks be very irksome. What is given is not a tranquil world, nor is there any promise ora tranquil life—what is given is the tranquil heart. We lose the fearfulness of manhood and reach the happy confidence of childhood. We have a Friend beside us in the darkest mile. We have a Savior who can save unto the uttermost. All of which, in the deep places of our being, unseen by any human eye, ushers in a certain shining peacefulness which the world can never take away.

A Living Faith in the Beyond

The last secret of the untroubled heart is a living faith in the beyond. "In my Father's house are many mansions ... I go to prepare a place for you." There every question will be answered, and every chastisement reveal its loving-kindness. There we shall reach the crowning and completion of all we have tried to do and failed to do. There these partings, which were so very bitter that for a time they almost wrecked our faith in God, will be justified in the gladness of reunion. Our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, will work for us an exceeding weight of glory. We shall arrive, and arriving understand. Heaven will make perfect our imperfect life. It was because our blessed Savior lived and died in this divine assurance that He said to His disciples, and says still, "Let not your heart be troubled."

August 23

The Great Affirmation

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you— Joh_14:2

Christ Knew about Death; Socrates Only Speculated

It is not by any amplified detail that these words so appeal to human hearts. It is rather by the quiet, assured confidence with which the Savior speaks of the beyond. In the whole of literature there is but one scene worthy to be compared with this. It is where Plato tells of the last hours of Socrates in prison before he drank the poison. I know few things more admirably fitted to reveal the preeminence of Christ than a comparison of these two incidents. Like Christ, Socrates is going to die. Like Christ, his thoughts run on immortality. He discusses it with the friends who come to visit him; he speculates, he argues, and he wonders. What a perfect and stupendous contrast between that and the attitude of Christ. Socrates speculates about a life unknown. Christ speaks of a life that He has known, a realm as real and familiar to Him as my study is to me. It is not what He says so much; rather it is the tone in which He says it that has reached the heart and comforted humanity and given it an anchor for the soul. Where others speculate, the Savior knows. Where others question, He is quietly sure. Where others see but dimly in the shadows, He sees with the certainty of God. And all this on the night of His betrayal, when all that He had lived for seemed in ruins, and nothing seemed to lie before Him but a grave.

Man's Instinct for Immortality

These great words of Jesus corroborate the longings of the heart. All that we crave and hope for in the deeps here is countersigned by the Lord Jesus. Deep and ineradicable is the instinct of man for immortality, witnessed in every age, in every country, in every religion. Even when men deny it with their lips, still do they confess it with their lives, for life has its arguments no less than intellect. By the powerlessness of the whole world to satisfy the poorest heart; by the cargoes we all have on board of things that are not wanted for the voyage; by the passion for truth, the craving for perfection, the glimmering of ideals we never reach, man stretches out his hands to immortality. Whoever loved without longing for forever? Deep affection postulates eternity. Love does not want a year or a millennium. Love cries for immortality. And now comes Christ and looks upon mankind and sees the secret hunger of their souls and says, "If it were not so, I would have told you."

There are beliefs that influence life but little, like the old belief that the sun went round the earth. We may cling to them, or we may give them up, with little difference to conduct. But there are other beliefs that touch and mold and color every action of the common day, and among these is the belief in immortality. In the light of it everything is altered. Altered is our outlook on the world. Altered is the discipline of life, and the import of the chastisements of heaven. Love is different, and hope is different; duty gains august and awful sanction if that instinct of immortality be true. Changed is the face of suffering, of infirmity, of weakness, and of pain. Changed is the loneliness of dying; changed the horrid darkness of the grave. And Christ says, "Children, do you think one instant that if that were an error I would let you keep it? If it were not so, I would have told you. Believe if you like that the sun goes round the earth. That does not matter. I shall not interfere. You may be Mine; you may be washed and sanctified though you believe that the sun goes round the earth. But that deep instinct for immortal life affects profoundly everything you do, and if it were a deception I would have told you."

"I Would Have Told You So"

He would have told us because He loves us and cannot bear to see His own deceived. He would have told us though it almost broke His heart to see the vanishing of hopes and dreams. He would have told us because He was the Truth and refused to let His people live and die under a hope that was the devil's falsehood. Christ corroborates our deepest longing for an immortal life that shall be personal. And He does it in His own quiet way, confidently, with perfect, full assurance. No wonder, then, that this is the favorite chapter with millions of the human race. No wonder that when Lockhart read it to Sir Walter, his big heart was rested and was comforted. No wonder that in Margaret Ogilvy's Bible the pages would fall open at this place, and when she could not read, she stooped and kissed it.

August 24

The Way, the Truth, the Life

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life— Joh_14:6

Love Prepares a Welcome

No one was more ready than Jesus to detect the anxieties of those He loved. We picture Him, as He taught the twelve, watching intently the expression on their faces to learn how far His words were understood. Jesus had noted, then, tokens of heart distress (Joh_14:1). The disciples felt His departure like a torture. And it was then that He consoled them with such simple and glorious speech that all Christendom is the debtor to their agony. They thought that His death was an unforeseen calamity. Christ taught them it was the path of His own planning. They thought that heaven was very far away. Christ taught them it was but another room in the great home of whose many mansions this beautiful world was one. He was not stepping out into the dark. He was passing from one room to another in the house. But the mightiest encouragement of all came when He told them, "I go to prepare a place for you." This, then, was the purpose of His going, that love might have all things ready when they arrived. When a child is born here, love has all things ready for it. It will be the same when we awaken in eternity. When a boy or girl comes home from the boarding-school, has not some heart at home been busy in preparation? There is someone at the station, and the bedroom is arranged, and the lights are lit, and the table is spread, and all day there has been happy excitement in the home because James or Mary is coming home tonight. So Jesus says, "I go to prepare a place for you. I go to have all things ready for your coming." And though there are depths in these words we cannot fathom and mysteries we cannot understand, they mean at least that love is getting ready to give the children a real welcome home.

For Wanderers in the Night: I Am the Way

Then Jesus utters the Via Veritas Vita: and first of all He says, "I am the way." It was the very word that the disciples wanted, for they all felt like wanderers that night. Do you know what it is like to lose the road? Did you ever, when out walking across the fields, find the track through the heather grow faint and disappear? There was a helplessness like that in the disciples when Jesus announced that He was soon to leave them. So far, they had all walked with Jesus. Now, at the cross, that pathway seemed to cease. We can hardly grasp the depth of comfort in it when they heard that Christ was to be the Way forevermore. It was in Him they were to fight and conquer. It was in Him they were to live and die. It was in Him they were to reach the glory and stand in the presence of the Father at the end. They felt there was a new and living way. Among the wonders of the old Roman people were the roads they made from end to end of Europe. And the Roman cities are in ruins now, and their palaces and their temples are destroyed, but men are still walking on the Roman roads. So Jesus, our Redeemer, is still the Way. A thousand things have gone, but that remains. It is through His death, and His rising from the dead, and through our daily fellowship with Him that we walk heavenward and reach home at last.

He Is the Truth That Sheds Light on Darkness

Then Jesus says, "I am the truth." He does not say, observe, I speak the truth. There was a deeper meaning in His mind than that. I hope that every child will speak the truth; yet every child, as his experience grows, will discover with shame how untrue he is at heart. Christ is the sum and center of all truth. Where Christ is not, there is a false note always. And one of the great joys of knowing Jesus is the sweet assurance that truth is ours at last. Before the discovery of the law of gravitation, there were a thousand facts that no man could explain. There was no key to them. There was no plan in them. They could never be gathered into a worthy system. But when the great truth of gravitation was discovered—so simple, so universal, so sublime—a flood of light fell on the darkness, and disorder became order everywhere. And it is just so when we discover Jesus. That truth sheds light upon a thousand facts. Things that were quite inexplicable once—sorrows and joys and hopes and fears and haunting—become intelligible through this great discovery. Did not some one say that if you would find the truth you must seek for it at the bottom of a deep well? The glory of the truth that is in Jesus is that it is found in no dark well, but on the way. Quid est veritas? asked jesting Pilate. And in one of the best anagrams the world has ever had, the answer is given, Est vir qui adest.

He Is the Source of Life

Then lastly Jesus says, "I am the life." In Thackeray's great story, Vanity Fair, we read of Amelia Osborne and her baby George. And Thackeray, speaking of the baby, says, "How his mother nursed him and dressed him and lived upon him need not be told here. This child was her being." That is a little picture of the way in which one person can be the life of another. It helps us to understand what Jesus meant when He said to the disciples, "I am the life." There is no book in any literature so filled with the message of life as the New Testament. If there is one word that sums up the Gospel, it is life. And here we are taught that that life is in Jesus Christ. He is the source of it. It is treasured in Him. And there is no way to gain it and to keep it but by trusting and by loving Him.

I cannot solve mysterious things,
That fill the schoolmen's thoughts with strife;
But oh! what peace this knowledge brings—
Thou art the Life!
Hid in thy everlasting deeps,
The silent God His secret keeps.
The Way, the Truth, the Life, Thou art!
This, this I know; to this I cleave;
The sweet, new language of my heart—
"Lord, I believe."
I have no doubt to bring to Thee;
My doubt has fled, my faith is free!

August 25

The Ladder of Promise

I will love him, and will manifest myself to him .... we will come unto him, and make our abode with him— Joh_14:21-23

The Ascending Scale of Promise

Out of all the riches of these verses, let us take what the Lord says about Himself. Let us select the words He uses of Himself. We may not disentangle in experience the acting of the Father and the Son, but often we may disengage in thought what we cannot disentangle in experience. So here we may reverently lay aside, in thought, what the Lord says about the Father and think only of what He says about Himself. When we do that, how beautiful it grows! We see a gradually ascending scale of promise. We see the Master adding thought to thought till He reaches at last a magnificence of climax. And all this in glorious response to the great waves of doubt and depression which must have rolled over the hearts of His disciples. Let us try, then, to view this ladder of promise from their standpoint.

His Departure Did Not Separate Them from His Love

I take it that the primary dread within their hearts was that, departing, He would cease to love them. He was going away far beyond their presence, and His love would be nothing but a memory. So long as He had companied with them, His love had made all the difference in the world. It had wrapped them round and sheltered them. It had been their refuge and their tower. Now He was about to leave them—to pass over into another realm—and that love would be nothing but a memory. They knew perfectly that for full rich life something more than memory is needed. Left with memories of love and nothing more, how could they be strong to face the future? And then the Lord said (for He knows our thoughts), "Children, I will love you, in the future just as in the past." His love was not to cease when He was slain. It was not to cease when He went home to heaven. It was to be as real, as watchful, and as comforting as in the dear dead days beyond recall. What a joyful message for these poor disciples aware that something awful was impending, dreading the bitter thought of separation!

His Love Would Manifest Itself to Them

Then would follow another wave of doubt: He will love us, but shall we ever know it? Separated from us and far away in glory, if He loves us shall we be conscious of it? Many a congregation loves its minister, but it never tells him of that love. Many a husband loves his wife, but the years go by and the husband never utters it. And I suppose the disciples, in that parting season when their Lord assured them He would love them still, fell to doubting if they would ever know it. When He was with them, they knew it every hour. He showed His love in innumerable ways. Now He was going home, and though He loved them still, would there be any apprehension of that love? And it was then that the Lord, the Master of the heart and of all the swift questionings of the heart, said, "Children, I will manifest Myself to you." That is, not only was He going to love them, but He was going to show them that He loved them. He was going to make His love as clear and manifest as in the days when He walked with them in Galilee. And one can picture the gladness of His own and the new light that would leap into their eyes when they heard that second promise of their Lord.

His Promise to Come to Them Personally

But a new wave was on the point of breaking. Doubts and difficulties had not vanished yet. Would the showing of His love include His presence? If not, the past was richer than the future. Men can tell their love by letter. They can tell it and be a thousand miles away. Many a young fellow in the war did that, and the letters are cherished to this hour. At home and living in the house, they never told their mothers how they loved them, but they wrote it from faraway places. Now try to get inside the hearts of the disciples; they were hearts extraordinarily like our own. Would they not instantly begin to speculate how the Lord was going to show His love? And I daresay, being Jews, they thought of the mediators of the ancient law, and began dreaming of angelic messengers. Tidings would be flashed from far away. White-robed ministers would bring the news. The Lord, remote, in the land of the far distances, would have His means of showing that He loved them. And immediately every one of them would feel that this was something less than the dear past when they had His presence in the fields of Galilee. Then, in early morning, He had come to them. He had come to them across the sea. He had come in the hour of their utmost need as from the mountain of Transfiguration. And our blessed Lord, understanding perfectly these thoughts that were surging in their hearts, said thirdly, "Children, I will come to you." I am not going just to send a message, telling you that My love is still unaltered. I am not going to commission any angel. As in the old days, when My presence went with you and gave you rest, I am going to come to you Myself.

His Promise Was to Come and Stay

But when we love somebody very much it is not enough that he should come to us. We want him—do we not?—to stay with us. Now, then, think of these disciples. The Lord had promised that He would come to them. But if He came and swiftly went away again, how their house would be left unto them desolate! And yet what more could they expect, a little band of very lowly folk, now that their Master was the King of glory? If the government was on His shoulder, if He was seated at the right hand of power, if He was in control of the whole universe and Captain of the hosts of heaven, how much of His time could they expect, a little handful of humble Galileans? At the most, a brief glance, a passing word—and before, they had had Him all the time. At the most, a coming for a few blessed moments, followed by the sadness of farewell. And then the Lord, reading all their thoughts and, it may be, smiling at their childishness, said, Children, I will abide with you. I will love you. Yes, Lord, we believe it, but what if we should never know it? I will show my love to you. Yes, Lord, we believe it, but Thou mightest be very far away and show it. I will come to you. Yes, Lord, we believe it, but think of the darkness when Thou goest away again. Foolish children, I will abide with you. There is nothing more to be said. It is all there. Love's questionings and anxieties are silenced. The ladder of promise is complete.

August 26

Religion and Remembrance

The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance— Joh_14:26

The Holy Spirit Quickens the Things of Christ

One great office of the Holy Spirit is to quicken and refresh the memory. He is given to vivify and make intensely real things that we were in danger of forgetting. He does not deal in novelties nor in unrelated revelations. He does not bring to us anything out of harmony with what we have learned from the historic Christ. Nothing new beyond and above that which is taught in Scripture is imparted to a man when his soul awakens to God. Through the Holy Spirit there leaps into his consciousness what in his unregenerate life he had not understood—for in Him we live and move and have our being.

We might illustrate that from what we know of poetry. When a genuine poet comes along and utters something that is profoundly true, that never reveals itself as novelty, but as the expression of our deepest selves. Instantly we recognize it; we say "Yes, that is true"; what we discover is but the perfect voicing of something which always was our own. The question is why should we recognize it; why should it not come to us as strange; why should we hail it as something that is ours, though we never had the power to say it? It is because deep is calling unto deep; it is because the poet, in his hour of inspiration, brings to remembrance what is deepest in us, buried under the ashes of our Aetna. So comes the Holy Spirit. He does not traffic in untested novelties. He brings to vivid and powerful remembrance the things of the Lord Jesus. And so doing He touches and awakens all that is deepest in our soul, for Christ is the light of every man. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men" (Joh_1:4). The business of the Holy Spirit, then, is to display the glories of Christ in us.

The Holy Spirit Aroused the Prodigal's Memory

This spiritual office of remembrance was largely insisted on by the Lord Jesus. We might take, for instance, His story of the prodigal. To that young fellow, feeding among the swine, there came no startling and unexpected news. There did not flash across his starving soul something he had never known before. He remembered; he recalled; he recollected the plenty of his home—and then "I will arise and go unto my father." What drew him homeward was not any novelty. It was not any attainment of new knowledge. What made him start and take the trail for home was the uprush of fond and tender memory. And our Lord means that when anyone starts for home, out of the far land where swine are feeding gluttonously, he always does it in some such way as that. God does not convey new facts to him. He comes to him and whispers, "Son, remember. Remember that you are still a child, though sunken in an alien filth." That is to say, the office of the Spirit, in drawing the sinful soul to higher things, is the deep and mystical office of remembrance.

Peter's Memory Aroused

Again we might think of Simon Peter when he went out into the night and wept. What were the means our blessed Savior used to break his heart and save him through his tears? Argument? There was not one word of argument. Peter did not need to be convinced. Rebuke? There was not a syllable of that, whatever was hidden in those loving eyes. That cock-crow, that loving look of Jesus, awakened remembrance in the heart of Peter. Peter "remembered what the Lord had said," and he went out into the night and wept. What broke the heart of Simon Peter was the swift and anguished surging up of memory. In his panic fear he had forgotten everything. Now he remembered and was saved. So Jesus, like the other Comforter, brought all things to remembrance, and by remembrance rescued and redeemed.

The Lord's Supper Quickens Our Memory

Lastly we might think a moment of the holy hour of the Lord's Supper. Many of my readers will agree with me that that is a profoundly moving time. It is an hour when Christ draws very near to us, and we grow strangely aware that He is present. Earthly things recede into the shadows, and the things of heaven become intensely real. Excuses vanish; we know that we are sinners; we begin to long for a fuller consecration in the quiet hour when we gather at the Table. If ever religion is a real thing, it is real in the season of communicating. If ever we are touched and awed and elevated, it is in that mystical and blessed moment. And then heaven reaches us, and the divine arrests us, not by the impartation of a novelty, but by the Holy Spirit's way of stirred remembrance. At the Lord's Table we get nothing new, nothing beyond and above the preached Gospel, nothing that is not found in Holy Scripture and in the proclamation of the Word. Quickened remembrance does the gracious work. We remember the Lord's death until He come. It is the blessed office of the Holy Ghost to bring all things to our remembrance.

August 27

Peace, the Possession of Adequate Resources

My peace I give unto you— Joh_14:27

What Is Peace?

Talking with a young fellow some time ago, I was struck by a remark he made. It followed on a sermon which we both had listened to on the subject of interior peace. "It's not peace," he said, "we young fellows want. What we want is thrills." That was a very candid utterance, and one likes young fellows to be candid. It set me wondering whether inward peace was really so grey as it is sometimes painted. And just then, in the book of an honored friend, I lit on a sentence which arrested me. He said peace is the possession of adequate resources. That seemed to me a very fruitful thought with a strong appeal in it for vigorous minds, and it is well worth considering a little.

Peace in Business Is the Possession of Adequate Resources

Think, for instance, how true that is of business. When long seasons of depression come and when business is stagnant, if not moribund, what is it that makes all the difference between intense anxiety and peace? It seems to me, who am not a business man but one who watches things with an observant eye, that it is just the possession of adequate resources. If there be little capital and almost no reserves, how terrible these dead times must be! I sometimes wonder how a business man can sleep not knowing if he can tide it over. But how different, when these dead seasons come, for any business that has great reserves and is strong in the possession of vast capital. Scanty capital means sleepless hours. Inadequate resources spell anxiety. What fears and miseries must haunt the breast when there is almost nothing to fall back upon! I venture to think that in the realm of business when times are bad and everything is stagnant, peace is the possession of adequate resources. The multimillionaire does not need to be unduly concerned about paying his current expenses or investing a sum of money in some new venture.

Creative Genius Means Possessing Adequate Mental Resources

The same thing is true of other spheres. Think, for example, of creative genius. Contrast the toiling literary hack with the man of genius like Sir Walter Scott. The one, very imperfectly endowed, is always in misery lest he be running dry. I have known preachers who were just like that, haunted by the fear of running dry. But the man of genius is serene and confident as Sir Walter was serene and confident, because he is conscious of perfectly adequate resources. "Here is God's plenty," as Dryden said of Chaucer. I have known three or four great men in my life, and there was one feature common to them all. They never worried and they rarely hurried. There was a leisurely serenity about them. And that peace, whatever their task might be, whether laying the Atlantic cable or building the Forth Bridge, found its basis in the possession of adequate resources, not in the bank but in the brain.

Christ's Peace Was the Result of Adequate Resources

Then one turns to our Lord and at once discovers how true that was of Him. It was one of the secrets of His rich serenity. Look at Him in the storm—how calm He is! Look again—He is lying fast asleep. He is peaceful amid the raging elements, slumbering like an infant in its cradle. And all the others, Peter, James, and John, agitated, excited, and alarmed, are fearful amid the terrors of the sea. Their fear betrayed their helplessness. It showed them unequal to their problem. They were not equipped for battling with storms. They had no reserves to call up for a tempest. But He was peaceful and sleeping like a child though the wind was howling and the boat was filling, and His peace was the possession of adequate resources. Picture the anxious look upon the host's face when the wine gave out at the marriage feast at Cana. Even Mary was distressed about it, worrying over the honor of the family. Christ alone was carefree. Christ alone was radiant and serene because He was conscious of perfectly adequate resources. "My peace"—it was a very wonderful peace. No sounding of our thought can ever fathom it. There was perfect fellowship with God in it. There was full and unconditional surrender. But one element, one vital element, witnessed in a score of incidents, was the possession of adequate resources.

By Possessing Christ, You Can Possess Adequate Resources

Then the Master comes to you and says, "My peace I give unto you." And, perhaps, like my young friend, you say, "I do not want that peace. I want to have a vivid, thrilling time of it." Many people are saying that today. Well, now, think of it like this—lay aside the unwelcome sense of peace, as if peace meant taking the color out of life and robbing experience of its vividness. Instead of that, say to yourself quietly, and say it again and again till you have mastered it: peace is the possession of adequate resources. You want to live a full, abundant life; but are you really equipped for such a life? Is your will strong enough—your feeling fine enough—your conscience quiet enough—your heart deep enough? Then Christ comes, and says, "Friend, enter into My fellowship today, and I shall give you the resources that you need." Christ can take the sting out of the conscience. Christ can strengthen the weak, unstable will. Christ can exalt and purify the feeling. Christ can deepen the undeepened heart. He can possess you with His divine resources for a full, abundant, and victorious life, and in that possession there is peace. Peace is harmony. Peace is intense life. Peace is being equal to the problem. Peace is possessing adequate resources for an overcoming and abundant life. That is the kind of peace which Jesus gives, not a dull and joyless resignation, but all the resources a guilty sinner needs to enjoy eternal life "in Him" now.

August 28

Christ with Us - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Arise, let us go hence— Joh_14:31

The Need of Christ After the Last Supper

When the Last Supper was concluded and Jesus had finished His teaching of His own, He said to them, "Arise, let us go hence." It is on these words I wish to dwell a moment as we too consider the communion table. One would have thought that on such a night as that, the deepest craving of Jesus would have been to be alone. We have all had hours when we craved to be alone, when we could not stand the intrusion of society. And if this be so with us in our lesser sorrows and anxieties, a thousandfold more so must it have been with Jesus when the sorrow of the world was on His heart. How He needed the cooling of the night. How He needed the healing of the silence of the stars. How He was craving just to be alone that He might speak with His Father of the coming agony. And yet He said, "Arise, let us go hence." He could not leave them to go out alone. He loved them far too deeply for that. They might forsake Him, as they were soon to do. It was impossible for Him to forsake them. And so, when they left the table, He went with them, walked with them through the streets of the city, mingled with them as they crossed the valley out to the quiet garden of Gethsemane.

Christ Does Not Send Us Out Alone but Comes with Us

Now what was true that night is just as true now. Our faith is rooted in the conviction that Christ is the same yesterday and today. Very brief is the hour of sacrament. In a moment or two it is over, and we leave the place that we all love so well, and we go back to our homes and to our duties. And what I want you to be sure of is this, that Christ says to none of us, "Depart." But He does say to everyone of us, "Arise, let us go hence." That means that wherever we are going, we may have Christ with us all the time. He does not send us out to be alone. He will never leave us nor forsake us. And though of course we cannot see Him now, nor touch His hand, nor listen to His voice, yet nontheless that fellowship with Him may be the most real thing in human life. Are we not sometimes nearer to our own when their bodily presence is not with us? Are we not closer to their heart, do we not understand them better, when they are with us in spirit and not in body? And so emphatically is it with our Savior. Near as were the eleven to Him, you and I may be still nearer to Him every day. I plead with you as you leave the communion table to believe that Christ goes with you. That is not mysticism nor sentimentalism. It is the most inspiring of realities. As constant as the light by which we see, as constant as the air by which we live, so constant with everyone of us will be our Lord. And just in proportion as we realize this, deep results will emerge in our experience. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me."

====================See Page 2

Christ with Us - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

When Christ Is with Us, It Is Enough

In the first place, if Christ go with us, there are many questions that we can leave unanswered. There is a text 1 want to give to you. It occurs in the 16th chapter of this Gospel, the 4th verse, and the last clause of the verse. There we read these words: "These things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you." Ponder these words, friends. What do they mean? Why, they mean this. They mean that in the minds of the disciples there was many a question that Jesus might have answered. They mean that had He cared to do so, He might have explained to them a thousand mysteries. But instead of that He walked with them and lived with them, and showed them what was the secret of His heart, until they felt that that was enough for them. They were content now to be very ignorant. They were content that mysteries should baffle them. They were not restless now to find solutions for the insoluble problems of the universe. It was enough for them that Christ was there. They had His fellowship and that sufficed. There was much yet that they could never fathom, but they had come to
Him and they had rest.

Now, friends, as it was with them, so should it be with every one of us. Since Christ goes with us as we leave the communion table, there are many questions that we can leave unanswered. We shall not vex our hearts as we once did by doubting and wondering if God is love. We shall not be burdened with the weary weight of all this unintelligible world. Knowing that Christ is with us in the darkness, we shall feel that every answer is beside us, and, feeling that we are but little children, we shall be content to leave it there. His love will teach us of the love of God. His patience will interpret that of God. The marks of the nails upon His hands and feet will tell us that somehow suffering is not vain. Our deepest answer will not be added knowledge. Our deepest answer will be closer intimacy. To know Him is to be happy not to know. One of our greatest Shakespearean scholars has remarked that Shakespeare never gives little answers to great questions. He leads you out under the vault of night and there in the presence of mystery he leaves you. And I want you to believe, you Christian people, that that is far more true of Jesus Christ. He never gives little answers to great questions. A Christian is not one who can explain everything. A Christian is the truest of agnostics. He knows that to that finite mind of his the infinite must always be inexplicable. A Christian is a man who walks with Christ, who sees in Christ the very heart of God, and seeing that can lay the burden down till the day break and the shadows flee away.

If Christ Goes with Us, We Have Nothing to Fear

Then, in the second place, if Christ goes with us, there is nothing that we need fear to face. I suppose that no one ever studied the earthly life of Christ without being arrested by one feature of it. That feature was His extraordinary resourcefulness. No one was ever more suddenly assailed, no one ever more cunningly approached. Traps were laid for Him, temptations reached Him, all in an instant, and with amazing subtlety. And yet He was always equal to the problem, always sufficient for the sudden call, always Lord in the unlooked-for moment. Now by a wonderful turn of dialectic, now by the most exquisite of parables, now by a miracle as when He stilled the storm or fed the thousands on the hill—always when the need arose He triumphed; always when the tempter was most subtle He was confident as a man prepared. There was no emergency He could not meet. There was no summons that He could not answer. He could change in an instant, and could change magnificently, saying to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan." And this resourcefulness, this perfect mastery, this fine equality to every summons, was never so manifest or so magnificent as when He was shielding and sheltering His own.

My brother and sister, do you believe that Christ is the same today as He was then? Then what I say is that if He goes with you, there is nothing you need fear to face. Do you think He has lost that power of defending because He is seated on the throne of God? Do you think He is less wonderful today than when He tabernacled in a human body? Oh! Could we but realize that Christ is living, as really as you and I are living, what a difference it would make for some of you. "Arise, let us go hence," He says today—into the darkness of the untrodden future. And life is there and duty that is hard, and a little suffering perhaps, and then the grave. Thanks be to God, if Christ is with us in all the energy of His upholding love, in Him we shall be more than conquerors until at last we know as we are known.

Brother Gary,

There comes a time in every Christian's life where the best thing to do is just put everything at the feet of JESUS and pray. Then it's time to wait on the LORD and know that HE will work everything out for our good because we love HIM and trust HIM. It might not seem the best for us at the time, but the MASTER knows everything from one end of our life to the other.

Brother, I'm thinking about a post that someone made recently. It involved a person trying and trying, but finally just saying, "Let GOD." HE really is like the old hymn, "A Shelter In The Time of Storm." There is something good about these storms if we yield to the LORD. These hard times can turn out to be times where we grow closer to the LORD and stronger in HIM. There really are many times that we need to know that we are just men and HE is GOD. Brother, there is a peace that's hard to describe when we yield completely and give it to GOD. These sermons from George H. Morrison are old but extremely beautiful. He does have a way of putting words to our intimate times with the LORD, and it's obvious that dear Brother Morrison is home with the LORD.

A Shelter In The Time of Storm

The Lord’s our Rock, in Him we hide,
A Shelter in the time of storm;
Secure whatever ill betide,
A Shelter in the time of storm.

Refrain

Oh, Jesus is a Rock in a weary land,
A weary land, a weary land;
Oh, Jesus is a Rock in a weary land,
A shelter in the time of storm.
A shade by day, defense by night,
A shelter in the time of storm;
No fears alarm, no foes afright,
A shelter in the time of storm.

Refrain

The raging storms may round us beat,
A shelter in the time of storm
We’ll never leave our safe retreat,
A shelter in the time of storm.

Refrain

O Rock divine, O Refuge dear,
A Shelter in the time of storm;
Be Thou our helper ever near,
A Shelter in the time of storm.
Refrain

Brother, I'll be praying for you.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Colossians 1:29 NASB For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

August 29

The Great Comparison

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you— Joh_15:9

The Love of Christ

That their blessed Master loved them was one thing which the disciples never doubted. It was the crowning glory of their years. There are those who always find it easy to believe that other people love them. They accept love as the flowers accept the sunshine in an entirely natural and happy way. But there are some who find it very hard just to be certain that other people love them, and one or two of the disciples were like that. Our Lord had to deal with very various temperaments in that extraordinary little company. Some were responsive and receptive; others, like Thomas, wanted proof of things. And yet there was one thing that they never doubted through all the change and variableness of the years, and that was that their Master loved them. The fact was evident to every heart, and yet behind the fact they felt a mystery. There was something different in the love of Jesus from all the human love that they had known. No love of wife, nor of any precious child, nor of friend, nor of father nor of mother, fully interpreted the Master's love. It did what these had never done. It demanded what these had never asked. It spoke sometimes with an unearthly accent, quite alien from that of human love. They were baffled occasionally, and perplexed, so profoundly new was the experience that came to them in the love of the Lord Jesus. It was then that Jesus made this great comparison that threw such a vivid light on everything. "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you." And long afterwards, when hours of darkness came and they were tempted to wonder if He loved them still, what comfort must these words have brought them!

His Father's Love Sent Jesus to Die

They would recall, for instance, how the Father's love for Christ inspired Him for the service of mankind. It was the Father's love that sent Him to the world, not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Human love is often prone to selfishness. It wants to grasp the dear one and to keep him. It shrinks from the thought of charging the beloved with any embassy whose end is death. Yet on such an embassy, whose issue was a cross, God sent not an angel, but His Son— and the Son was certain that the Father loved Him. Inspiring all His service for mankind, quickening Him for every lowly ministry, holding Him to His appointed task, was His profound conviction of His Father's love. And then, on that last night of earthly fellowship, He turned to His disciples with the words, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you." How these words would come back to them again in their evangelization of the world! It was love that had given them their work to do, no matter how difficult or perilous. And to find in our work, however hard it be, an argument for the love of the Lord Jesus is one of the quiet triumphs of the spirit. His is not a love that gives us ease, any more than the love of the Father gave Him ease. It sends us out, morning after morning, to a service which may be only drudgery. And what illumines duty and warms its chilly hands and brings a song into the heart of it is the certainty of love behind it all. It made all the difference to Christ that the Father's love had given Him the task. It made the task a love-gift and touched it as with the joy of heaven. And then He says to all His toiling followers in every century and country, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you."

The Father's Love Did Not Exempt Jesus from Suffering

They would recall again how the Father's love for Christ did not exempt Him from the sorest suffering. He was the well-beloved Son, yet a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. If there be one thing we all crave to do, it is to shield our loved ones from the sting of pain. That passion is in the heart of every mother as she clasps to her breast her little child. Yet here was the love of the Father for the Son, that gave the Son, and did it quite deliberately, to bitter suffering ending in a cross. Often when our beloved suffer we are powerless. We know the agony of being helpless. We have to witness excruciating pain, impotent to do anything that might relieve it. But the Father, clothed in His omnipotence, with a single word could have put an end to suffering—and yet He loved His Son and did not do it. I wonder if the disciples thought of that when afterwards they recalled this word of Jesus. Stoned, shipwrecked, persecuted, tortured—could it be possible their Master loved them still? And then, clear as a silver bell, these words would strike upon their ears again, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you." He was loved, and yet He suffered sorely. He was loved, and yet His face was marred. He was loved with an everlasting love, and yet all the billows of this mortal life went over Him. What an unspeakable comfort for these gallant souls, tempted through suffering to piercing doubts, this as and so of the Lord Jesus. All God's children must remember that when they are tempted so to doubt the love of heaven. Have not many cried beside some bed of agony, "How can God be love if He permits this?" In such an hour argument is powerless, but there is one Voice that is never powerless. It is His who suffered—and was loved.

The Father's Love Triumphed in the Resurrection and Ascension

They would recall, too, that the Father's love for Christ was a love that justified itself at last. There came at last the hour of resurrection and of ascension to the right hand in heaven. Was it love that gave Him to the earth? It was love that lifted Him above the earth. Was it love that permitted Him to suffer? It was love that crowned His sufferings in glory. The final issue of the Father's love was not the quietness of a garden-grave. It was song; it was dominion; it was liberty. What a magnificent hope for these disciples, persecuted and in prison. What a magnificent hope for every disciple just when things are growing unendurable! A little patience and the love that grips us is going to justify itself magnificently. That is bound, as with hoops of steel, to the as and so of the Lord Jesus.

August 30

The Joy of the Lord

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full— Joh_15:11

The Joy of Christ Was an Intense Reality

Our Lord, especially as the days advanced, frequently spoke about His joy, and the notable thing is that when He spoke so, none of His disciples were surprised. Nobody ever asked Him what He meant. They did not look at each other in perplexity. To them it seemed entirely natural that the Master should make reference to His gladness. From this we gather that the joy of Christ was something they were perfectly familiar with, both in His radiant and lofty hours and in His periods of lowly duty. There is much that is quite dark to us unless His joy was an intense reality. There is the note of exultancy in the New Testament. There is the attitude of His Pharisaic enemies who, trained in the prophets, understood His sorrow but never could understand His joy. It was not because He was a man of sorrows that the religious leaders looked askance at Him. It was because He was a man of joy, utterly different from John the Baptist. They were looking for a lone Messiah whose face would be marred more than any man's, and our Lord proclaimed Himself a bridegroom. His joy, then, was an intense reality even on the witness of His enemies. It is because He stands at the back of the New Testament that the New Testament is an exultant book. And it is a profoundly interesting question, and a question which concerns us all, to try to discover at least some of the sources of the joy of Christ.

His Joy Resulted from the Fullness of His Life

One of the sources of His joy, for instance, was the fullness of life which He possessed. It is remarkable how often that word tidiness is brought in as descriptive of the Lord. We all know how when physical life is full, its concomitant and sacrament is joy. We see that on every hand in nature; we see it in the healthy little child. And when one thinks of the inner life of Christ and of the fullness that characterized that inner life, one begins to understand His joy. Morally, He was in perfect poise with heaven. Spiritually, He had the fullness of the Spirit. No slightest disobedience to the Highest ever cast its shadow on His soul. And that fullness of His inward life, like the fullness of physical life in nature, had its concomitant and sacrament in joy. I am come, He said, that others might have life, and that they might have it abundantly. He came to give what He Himself possessed. And that abundant life, rooted in His sinlessness and continually enriched by new obedience, was one of the splendid secrets of His joy.

His Joy Resulted from the Father's Abiding Love

Another never-failing source was His abiding in His Father's love. We see that very clearly in the verse which immediately precedes our text (Joh_15:10). From it we gather that the joy of Jesus was rooted in the presence of the Father, realized every moment that He lived. There is a well-known story of a Scots divine, how once, walking on the grassy hills, he met a shepherd with a joyless look and said to him quietly, "Do you know the Father?" And some years afterwards, so the tale is told, when the minister had forgotten all about it, the shepherd, with gladness in his face, came up to him and said, "I know the Father now, sir." That shepherd had passed out of his isolation into the great fellowship of God. He had moved out of all his worrying care into the calming certainty of love. And in a vision of that love unparalleled, the Good Shepherd lived and toiled and died, and that was one great secret of His joy. To Him it was a shelter from the storm and a shadow from the heat of life. It comforted His heart when men were mocking Him. It sustained Him in the hour of agony. His joy was not only rooted in His fullness, it was rooted in the love of Heaven which to Him, every moment that He lived, was closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet.

His Joy Resulted from His Entire Surrender to Vocation

And then we must not forget one other source: it was His entire surrender to vocation. Our Lord gave Himself, in utter self-surrender, to the task appointed Him of God. The first impression which the Gospels make on us is that of the freedom of the life of Jesus. He moves hither and thither in sweet liberty. Like the song of the thrush, His words are unpremeditated. And then we read more closely and discover that through all the varied freedom of that life, like the beat of the screw in some great ocean liner, is the throb of a sovereign dominating purpose. "I come to do thy will, O God. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me. I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." And that devotion, that utter self-surrender, that dedication to a high vocation, was for Him, as it is for every man, one of the deep sources of His joy. Neglect your work and you are never glad. Do it half-heartedly, and gloom is everywhere. But give yourself to it, with heart and soul and strength, and all the birds are singing in the trees. And it was just because our Lord so gave Himself to a vocation which led Him to the cross that "God, even his God, anointed him with the oil of gladness above his fellows."

August 31

The Testimony of His Enemies - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

They hated me without a cause— Joh_15:25

Love Is Not Blind

I take it that if you want to understand a person, the first essential is that you should love him. It is only love that sees into the deeps and reads the story in the light of God. There is a proverb which says that love is blind. If that were true, then God would have no eyes. Love is not blind. It has the keenest sight. It can read the smallest print without assistance. And we call it blind because the things we see and, seeing, can detect no beauty in, are to the eyes of love transfigured, like a window that reflects the sunset. It is when I am told that God is love that I commit all judgment to Him gladly. It is when I believe that someone loves me that I am never afraid to be myself. And so with Jesus—it was those who loved Him who saw the heights and depths of what He was, and it was always to the men who loved Him that He unlocked the treasures of His heart.

Value of Our Enemies' Estimate of Us

Yet while that is true both about Christ, and about every person be he great or small, it is also true that there may be a value in the testimony of one's enemies. I am not speaking of those malicious slanders which may assail a public reputation. These are a breath out of the mouth of hell to be scorned by every honorable man. I am rather speaking of those hasty comments that are made in the presence of a lofty character, and made, not by those who understand it, but by those who are antagonistic. Whatever in that character is weak is instantly detected by the envious. Whatever in that character is strong is wrested and distorted to a fault. And so through the haze of things that are half-true—back of the mists of prejudice and passion—we sometimes can discern, if we be wise, the lineament and figure of the truth. Now what I want to do is this. I want to look at Jesus Christ like that. I want to look at Him, not through His friends' eyes, but through the eyes of enemies and ill-wishers. I want to ask what qualities arrested them, no matter how they were travestied or torn, as they saw the deeds or listened to the words of this perplexing Personage from Galilee.

His Enemies Were Impressed by the Reality and Courage of His Comradeship
Well, the first thing the enemies bear witness to is the reality and courage of His comradeship. They looked on Jesus as an enemy, and yet they have taught the world that He was a Brother. "He is the friend of publicans and sinners"—that was the charge which they were always hurling. They thought that if nothing else could ruin Him that would forever blast His reputation. And now we take that charge and we accept it, and we believe it because His haters made it, and to us it is the witness and the seal of the magnificent comradeship of Christ. It is almost impossible for us to realize in what odium these publicans were held. Tax collectors for detested Rome, they were one and all of them traitors to their country. And their money was tainted and their hands were foul, and if one made an oath to them it was not valid. They were as loathsome as the hungry dogs that prowl for refuse in the eastern streets. It was of such that Jesus was the friend. Was not that enough to blight His reputation? And He not only spoke with them in public, He went to their houses and He ate and drank with them. And His enemies rejoiced when they saw that, and they said, "His tastes proclaim Him as a sinner"; and we accept the fact and say, "No, not a sinner; His action proclaims Him as a brother."

Jesus Impressed His Enemies as a "Gluttonous Man and a Wine-Bibber"

Then once again we gather from His enemies that He impressed them as a genial man. For you remember another charge they hurled at Him, "Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber." Any charge more villainously false it would be impossible for malice to conceive. Probably they only half-believed it although they used it in their campaign of calumny. Yet am I thankful it has been preserved and preserved, too, by the lips of Christ Himself, for through the vileness of it we discern a truth that is far too precious to let die. It is this that the enemies have borne their witness to—that Jesus was not ascetic and austere. He was no John the Baptist in His robe of hair shunning the pleasant fellowship of men. He was genial. He loved a kindly company. He sat and was happy at the social table. He moved among men not with a face of gloom; He moved among them with a face of gladness and joy. The bitterest foe would never have said that about Isaiah or about Jeremiah. The vilest slanderer would have been laughed at had he ventured so to speak of John the Baptist. And the very fact that men so spake of Jesus, and found an audience who would listen to them, is a witness of unequalled value to His gladness and His geniality.

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The Testimony of His Enemies - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Jesus' Composure in the Midst of Gloom Impressed His Enemies

Of course it is true that we read that Jesus wept while nowhere do we read that Jesus smiled. And some have concluded that He never smiled because the Gospel does not mention it. It seems to me that that is the wrong conclusion. Is not the other way about more natural? Is it not likely that His tears are mentioned because they were exceptional and rare? Let a thousand men be walking in the streets, and you never read in the newspapers of them. But one of them is crushed—meets with an accident—and it is of him you have the paragraph. So everyone noted it when Jesus wept. It was so unusual, so exceptional. And to the evangelists, when they sat down to write, these tears of Christ were hot and burning still. But His gladness was perennial and pervasive, so common that it did not need a chronicle, and we might almost have been blind to it save for some illuminative slanders. I do not forget that Christ was a Man of sorrows. I do not forget that He foresaw the cross. But of this I am sure, that in this weary world He never moved in a parade of gloom. He hid it deep—all that He had to bear. He went apart when He would agonize. And when the sorrow broke upon the surface, men were amazed and said, "Behold, He weeps!"

His Enemies Were Impressed by the Reality of His Power in Working Miracles
Once more, we have the testimony of His enemies to the reality of His power in working miracles. To me there is nothing more significant than that in the whole record of the Gospel. There is a good deal of talk on the miracles today. There are many to whom the miracles are stumbling blocks. There is something lawless in these displays of power to many who have been trained as we have been, but I am not going into that subject. It is too great to be treated by the way, but I want to suggest to you two considerations which seem to me of singular importance.

The first is that those who knew Christ best never expressed amazement at a miracle. It is always the people who are amazed at miracles, never any of the twelve disciples. I never read that Peter was amazed. I never read that Thomas was amazed. It was not they; it was the village crowds who were filled with wonder at these mighty deeds. And that just means that as men got nearer Christ, the less and less amazing grew the miracles. The more they knew Him—the more they understood Him—the more natural did the miracle appear. It was a deed of wonder to the ignorant just because they were ignorant of Christ. They judged Him by the other men they knew, and so His deeds of power were amazing. But to John, who lay upon his Master's bosom and had fathomed the infinite secret of His heart, it was not the miracle that was so wonderful. It was the wonderful Christ who was behind it.

And then the other suggestive fact is this. Christ's enemies did not deny His miracles. They never said, "He does not cast out devils by Beelzebub." Now, would not they have denied them if they could? Were not the miracles a mighty trumpet blast? Can you not imagine how the news would spread and be the talk beside a hundred hearths? And yet these miracles that drew the crowd and awed the reckless and thrilled a thousand hearts, these never once in the whole Gospel story were denied by the bitterest enemy of Christ. He casteth out devils by Beelzebub. They had to admit, you see, the casting out. It would have been their triumph to dispute it. There is not a trace they ever tried to do so. And what I say is that that bitter taunt which blights the motive, yet cannot touch the fact, is one of the strongest of all the lesser arguments that the miracles of Jesus Christ were real.

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by George H. Morrison

Jesus' Enemies Were Impressed by His Intensity

Then once again I gather from His enemies something of the intensity of Christ. They went to see Him, and they went to listen to Him, and they said, "He hath a devil, and is mad." It was not everyone who passed that verdict. There were simpler men who took another view. Thrilled by the depth and beauty of His speech, they could only say, "Never man spake like this man." But to the cold, precise, and formal Pharisees this baptism of fire was but insanity. And they steeled their hearts against the burning of it, and they said, "He hath a devil, and is mad." Had He been cold as they themselves were cold, how utterly foolish such a charge as that! The people would have turned on them and torn them and bidden the physician heal himself. What made the charge pass for truth for an hour was just the burning intensity of Christ, the fire that glowed at a white heat within Him, and shone through every syllable He spoke. There are two charges the enthusiast has to bear. Sometimes he is drunk, and sometimes mad. On the day of Pentecost, it was the one. With Paul as he stood before Festus, it was the other. And so when the enemies of Christ stood by and smiled and shrugged and said, "The man is mad," it only tells us what a fire was burning and what an intensity was glowing there.

His Enemies Were Impressed by His Calmness

I sometimes think our thoughts are not quite right in regard to the calmness of our Lord and Savior. Do we not dwell upon the rest of Christ in a way that is apt to rob Him of His power? l believe that Christ was infinitely calm. I believe He was unutterably restful. "Come unto me and I will give you rest"—and men looked upon His face and felt it true. Yet "He that is near to Me is near the fire," is one of the unwritten sayings of the Master. The rest of Jesus is not a rest that dulls and stupefies, the rest of Jesus is a rest that glows and irradiates. There is a calm which is the calm of sleep. There is another of intensest life. When all the powers are in perfect equipoise, then there is rest though energy be infinite. That is the calm of the expanse of ocean when we say it sleeps under the silver moon, and yet that sleep is but the perfect balance of the most mighty and stupendous forces. I like to think of the calm of Christ like that. His peace was as the sleeping of the sea. There was not a ripple on the expanse of water and not a breaker to frighten a child. And yet it was intense—the rest of God—and spoke of unseen powers that were tremendous; and so men looked at Him and smiled and shrugged and said, "He hath a devil, and is mad."

Jesus' Enemies Were Impressed by His Trust in God

Then in the last place and in a single word—His enemies witness to His trust in God. That was the last taunt they flung at Him. It was the bitterest, and it was the truest. "He trusted in God," they cried when He was crucified. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him. Ah, how cruel it was—how diabolic—while the nails were through His feet and through His hands. And yet I think I see the face of Jesus lighting up with a glad look of triumph. Even His enemies had to confess at last that through storm and sunshine He had trusted God. Now tell me, have you any enemies? If you have friends you probably have foes. Well, now, if they began to taunt you, could they say with a sneer of you, "He trusted God"? Happy the man of whom that can be said! Happy the heart which has that hostile witness! Happy the life which has revealed its trust to the watchful eyes of malice and of hate!

September 1

The Candor of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world…and in secret have I said nothing— Joh_18:20

Jesus' Words Cannot Be Separated from His Person

In the revived interest which is felt today in the person and character of Jesus Christ, it is inevitable that close attention should be directed to His words. There are teachers whose life you can separate from their words, ignoring the one while you regard the other; but you never can create a gulf like that between the words and the character of Jesus. To His own mind, His sayings and His person were correlated in the most vital way. He carries over from one sphere to the other some of the richest blessings of discipleship. What the flower is to its deep-hidden root, what the rays of sunshine are to the sun, that is the oral teaching of our Lord to His gracious and unfathomable person.

Jesus Was Frank and Bold

Now among the attributes of our Redeemer's speech one which arrests attention is its candor. In our text our Lord lays claim to a great openness, and it is a claim which cannot be disputed. The whole impression made by the life of Jesus is that of a Teacher who was frank and bold; of one who would not hesitate to speak, whatever the consequences to Himself might be; of one who rejoiced in liberty of utterance out of a heart that was full to overflowing, as a stream rejoices to make the meadows musical when fed from the springs of the everlasting hills. There is many a reserved and silent man who has to be coaxed and wheedled into speech. There are those who are eloquent in high-strung moods, but almost inaudible in common days. But the impression which Christ makes is not such; it is that of one to whom utterance was a joy and whose words, out of unfathomed depths, welled over in the beauty of unpremeditated wisdom.

Christ's Candor Was Always at the Service of His Love

Of course this candor of our Lord and Master was always at the service of His love. It was the instrument of a pure and perfect sympathy which knew that there were seasons to be silent. No passion is so free of speech as love and none has the secret of such winning eloquence; yet love, which can unlock the dullest lips, is also mistress in the art of sealing them. And the perfect candor of our Redeemer's talk was ever subservient to that noblest love which dares to speak when other lips are silent and to be silent when other voices speak. "I have yet many things to say to you," said Christ, "but ye cannot bear them now." New truths were welling up, seeking for utterance, yet remained unuttered at the behest of love. The time was coming when hearts would be established and able to bear the weight of revelation; but until then, in the judgment of the Master, to be candid was only to be cruel. There is a candor which is the child of ignorance, for fools rush in where angels fear to tread. There is a candor which betrays the bitter heart, for it speaks the truth but does not speak in love. But the candor of Jesus goes hand in hand with reticence, and both look up to catch their inspiration from the most loving and sympathetic eyes that ever beamed upon a sinful world.

We may trace this candor of our Lord in many spheres; in His treatment, for instance, of those who came to Him. He scorned to disguise the truth about the future from those who sought an entrance to His kingdom. Think of that scribe who came to Him bubbling over with enthusiasm. "Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest," was his eager and excited cry. Now had Jesus said to him, "I welcome thee—thou art a child of Abraham indeed," none would have doubted that the text was genuine. There are seasons of dejection and depression when any disciple seems better than none at all. There are times when the loyalty even of shallow hearts is very precious to a suspected leader. And was not this man a scribe—a learned person—one of the class who were bitter foes to Christ; and would not his allegiance, once secured, be more important than that of twenty fishermen? All that might have weighed with other leaders; it was light as gossamer to Jesus Christ. His only care was to be frank and true to a soul that did not know what it was doing. And so the word of welcome was not spoken; but instead, a word as sad as it was searching: "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." Christ will have no disciple on false pretences. He issues no rosy prospectus of His kingdom. He never hides from those who wish to serve Him that right in the path of the future is a cross. And this is the candor not of indifference but of love, which shrinks from the least appearance of deception and will have no man say in bitter moments that he was tricked unto discipleship by guile.

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by George H. Morrison

Christ's Candor in His Charges against the Pharisees

Again we note the candor of our Lord in the charges which He hurled against the Pharisees. In the whole range of human utterance there are no more deadly or awful accusations. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees" — how dreadful is the reiteration of that doom, like the recurring mutterings of thunder over a meadowland of summer beauty. Most of us have had moments when we wished that these dark and dreadful words had not been spoken. They are so hard to reconcile with love and with that gentleness of Christ which makes us great (Psa_18:35). Yet all these charges, so fearless and so frank and so utterly regardless of all consequence, were part of the battle which Jesus Christ was fighting on behalf of misguided and downtrodden men. There is a deep sense in which it was Christ's candor that brought Him at last to His death upon the cross. Had He refrained from His speech against the Pharisees, He might have escaped the fury of their hate. But for Christ such silence would have been betrayal of the very cause that He had come to battle for, and therefore to be silent was impossible. It was not because the Pharisees despised Him that Jesus flashed on them in splendid anger. Our Lord was sublimely and superbly heedless of indignities that were offered to Himself. But it was because they marred the Name of God and sullied the fair features of religion and changed the happy service of the
Father into a burden too heavy to be borne.

Now there are times in every life when it takes a certain courage to be quiet. To every man and woman there come seasons when the path of duty is the path of silence. All that is basest in us bids us speak, for there is a candor that is the child of hell; but all that is noblest in us checks our speech lest to someone we do irreparable harm. But remember, if it takes courage to be quiet, it also may call for courage to be frank. To speak the word that we know ought to be spoken may rob the eyes of sleep through a long night. And when the heart is sensitive and tender and shrinks instinctively from causing pain, the duty of candor becomes doubly difficult. All that ought to be borne in mind when we consider the candor of our Lord. No one could charge Him with being hard or cold. He was gentle-hearted and exquisitely sensitive. Yet frankly and fearlessly, not in a blind fury, but as a duty that had to be discharged, He swept the Pharisees with withering scorn. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"

Christ's Candor of Confessing He Knows Not the Hour of His Return

Again we note the candor of our Lord in saying that there were things He did not know. Think, for example, of the account He gives of the final coming of the Son of Man. It is a wonderful and awful picture, fresh from a heart that had a vision of it. Clothed in the imagery of the ancient prophets, it is yet something mightier than the prophets dreamed of. But immediately, having described that hour, our Savior adds that He does not know that hour—"Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the Son, but the Father." To me there is nothing startling whatever in the mere fact of such an ignorance. Was it not part of that humiliation to which our Lord had voluntarily stooped? Surely the humiliation would have been incomplete had the mind of Jesus been excluded from it by still retaining, in all its height and depth, the perfection of knowledge which is God's. It is not the ignorance that is so wonderful. It is the frank confession of that ignorance. It is the way in which Christ, who made such mighty claims, said to His followers, "I do not know." And it seems to me that such a splendid candor, with all the inevitable risks it brought, is a mightier argument for trusting Christ than many which the theologians adduce. When a man who is a master in some science says to me candidly, "I do not know," I am always readier to trust that man when he unlocks the riches of his knowledge. And so when Jesus, quietly and frankly, says to His own, "I do not know that hour," somehow it makes me readier to believe Him when He speaks of duty, of heaven, and of God. People who only know a little are the people who are afraid to show their ignorance. Those who know most are always the most ready to tell you frankly what they do not know. And so when Jesus Christ declares His ignorance, and does so freely and without compulsion, I feel I am in the presence of a Master whose statements can be absolutely trusted. There is a lack of candor in some Christian teachers which is utterly alien to the Master's spirit. If they would only tell us what they mean, it would be easier to know what they don't mean. It is not the mark of the greatest and the best to be tortuous and "irrecoverably dark." In all the greatest there is a certain candor akin to the simplicity of Christ.

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Christ's Candor in His Fellowship with His Disciples

Then the last sphere in which I note this frankness is in His intercourse with His disciples. With an open and overflowing heart Christ gave Himself to the friendship of His own. It was said of Cardinal Newman by one who ought to know, that he had the capacity for whole-hearted friendship. It is not such a common capacity as we imagine though the name of friend be often on our lips. But certainly it was possessed by Jesus and exercised in such fullness towards His own that life and death, and love and pain and joy, were different ever afterwards to them. Now one of the marks of the capacity for friendship is the power to give oneself in happy confidence. There is the opening towards a friend of many a door that is fast barred in the presence of the world. Heart goes out to heart in simple trust, and mind is kindled at the touch of mind, and the reserve and coldness which the world necessitates are quite forgotten in that tender intimacy. No man can ever hope to be a friend who looks on candor as a doubtful virtue. There is no friendship worthy of the name for the man who wraps his nature in reserve. And the very fact that Christ was such a friend that His friendship made all the difference to the twelve is the best proof, if proof were needed, of the glorious frankness of the Savior. Read over again the Gospel of St. John which is so full of His conversation with His own. Compare and contrast it with the other Gospels that are the record of His public ministry. Do that, and you will speedily discover how frank was the self-disclosure of our Lord when in the company of those who trusted Him and whose hearts "burned within them while He spake."

In closing may I say a single word about the response this should evoke from us? Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby says this, "Among men who have any sound and sterling qualities, there is nothing so contagious as pure openness of heart." Christ, then, opens His heart to you; will you not respond by opening yours to Him? Christ wants to deal with you in perfect frankness; will you not be frank and honest in return? Make no concealment. Do not excuse yourself. Trust Him, and tell Him all the story. A confidence like that He always honors with a blessing which is heaven begun.

September 2

It Is Finished

He said, It is finished…and gave up the ghost— Joh_19:30

The Power of a Single Word

These three words, "It is finished," are in the original a single word. That has been called the greatest single word which ever broke upon the ear of man. Often, when one is preaching, it is not the whole sermon that God uses. It is a single word or thought coming home with power to the hearer. The one word Yes uttered by a woman may alter the whole future of a man and lead his life to power or ineffectiveness. A single word has changed the course of history and affected the destiny of empires. Who can exhaust the heartbreak and the tears that are hidden in the word Farewell ? But the greatest of all single words that ever broke upon the ear of man is this word of Jesus upon Calvary. Finished was His work on earth for God, finished His work for man. Finished were those sufferings which made His face marred more than any man's. We have security and peace and joy, not less than absolution and release, in the finished work of our Redeemer.

The First Utterance of Jesus Was about His Life's Work

As we read this word our thoughts go winging back to the first recorded utterance of Jesus. He was a lad of twelve when He said, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Some people saunter through the world; their great ambition is an easy life. But our Lord, even in His boyhood, had an intense conviction of vocation. The claims of home and the appeal of family were submerged in the intense conviction that He must be about His Father's business. What that conviction meant to Him in boyhood it is impossible for us to estimate. It would grow with every prayer He prayed; it would deepen as He pored over the Old Testament. But even then it mastered and controlled Him, and to the end this was His burning thought: "I must work the works of him that sent me." It is always a quietly glad thing to complete the task even of a day. But when the task is lifelong and has absorbed the years, far greater is the gladness of completion. That is why we never really penetrate the gladness of this cry of Jesus till we remember that His labor was His life. It was not a service of selected hours. It was a service that included everything. His sufferings and His prayers were part of it as surely as His teaching on the hill. There was in it an obedience which was passive as well as an obedience which was active—and now that work for God and man was ended.

The Joy of Performing One's Work Faithfully

Again, we reverently remember the fidelity with which that work was done, and done in the teeth of every temptation, for He was tempted in all points like as we are. When we do the humblest bit of service faithfully there is always a certain joy when it is done. Perhaps there is no joy to equal that, unless it be the happiness of home. It does not matter what the task may be, whether in the kitchen or the college—to do it faithfully sets the joy-bells ringing. The man who is unfaithful in his duty is continually defrauding other people. But he is doing something even worse than that—he is continually defrauding his own soul. For him the joy-bells never ring, nor does he hear the music of high heaven, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Now think of the fidelity of Christ, tempted in all points like as we are; tempted by weariness and by His friends and by all the appearances of ghastly failure, yet through the bitterest and darkest hours faithful to His vocation till He cries on Calvary, "It is finished."

Jesus and His Work Were One

Again the moment of this cry reveals to us that Jesus and His work were one. His work was not finished even in Gethsemane: it was finished in the article of death. There are multitudes whose work is over before the hour when they are called to die. The teacher must retire at the age limit; the preacher must hand his scepter to another. And there are many whose work is just beginning, like some fair flower opening in the garden, when "comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, and slits the thin-spun life." With Jesus it was different. He cried, "It is finished," and gave up the ghost. His task was not ended before the final breath, nor did death smite Him and leave it incomplete. Bound together into a radiant unity were the vocation of our blessed Lord and the life and death appointed Him of God. You cannot separate Jesus from His words, and you cannot separate Jesus from His work. I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. Come unto Me and I will give you rest. That is why all fellowship with Christ gives us a richer conception of His work and why the humblest sharing in His work gives us a deeper knowledge of His person.

The Finishing of Christ's Work on Earth Was the Beginning of Another in Heaven
But the finishing of work, in our experience, is not invariably a happy thing. If we have loved our work and given our hearts to it, the hour of ending may be an hour of sadness. There are well-known instances of writers who laid down their pen with an infinite regret. They have told us that as they wrote the closing sentences their eyes were wet with tears. And sometimes when one resigns his post and honorable men convene to do him honor, no praiseful fellowship can quite conceal his bitterness that the career is over. One thing alone can dissipate that bitterness. One thing alone can banish it entirely. It is the assurance that what we call an end is in another aspect a beginning. And for Jesus there was that full assurance, for did He not say to the penitent thief on Calvary, "Today thou shalt be with me in paradise"? He was dead and is alive forevermore. The end was the beginning. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. In pardoned sin, in present fellowship, in the conquering power of His completed work, He sees of the travail of His soul.

September 3

The Garden and the Cross

In the place where he was crucified there was a garden— Joh_19:41

The Proximity of the Cross and the Garden

To a deep-seeing eye like that of John, this proximity was more than a coincidence. John felt that there was an inward harmony between the garden and the cross. The cross was the crowning service of Christ's life. It was love going to the uttermost. It was the final and voluntary sacrifice for the salvation and service of the world. And to John it was no mere coincidence that in the place of that supreme surrender there should be the fragrance and the blossoming of flowers. One might have thought to find a desert there. One might have counted on a bleak and dreary scene. What struck the mystical eye of the apostle was that everything was the opposite of that. Christ died. He gave Himself for men. He poured out His life in full surrender—and in the place where all this happened was a garden.

There Is Always a Garden When We Share in the Self-Surrender of Our Lord

So do we touch the profound truth that John, in the spirit of poetry, is hinting at. He hints that there always is a garden when we share in the self-surrender of our Lord. Let any man deny himself, let him willingly lay down his life for others, let him surrender what is dearest to him in the self-abandonment of love, and the strange thing is that everything grows beautiful, and the flowers begin to blossom at his feet in a way they never did before. It seems to be a hard, bleak life, the life of a continuous self-denial. It seems to rob one of self-realization and of many a sweet thing which is the gift of God; but John saw it was entirely otherwise. Live for self, and you move into a wilderness. Sooner or later the scenery grows desolate. The music goes; the fragrance disappears; the world grows cold and meaningless and ugly. Live for others; give yourself for others; lose your life for the sake of those who need you; and in the place where you are crucified there is a garden.

Joy Seekers Are Unhappy

One might think of daily work a moment, for work, to many, is uncongenial drudgery. It is hard to be tied to counter or to desk when the voices of the bigger world are calling. To feel that one is missing things always brings an ache into the soul. And there are multitudes, chained to their day's drudgery, who have the restless feeling that they are missing things. What a wonderful difference it would make to them, burdened with their daily crucifixion, if they would write this text upon their hearts. I was talking to a doctor once who practices on the Riviera. Most of his patients are the kind of people who spend their lives following the sun. And when I asked him if such folk were happy, he answered in words I never can forget: "Happy! They're the most miserable people on God's earth." We are not here to follow the sun. We are here to follow Christ. We are not here to do just what we like. We are here to do just what we ought. Did not Wordsworth say of the man who does his duty, "Flowers laugh before him in their beds"? When we do our bit we never miss the best. The road to the garden always lies that way. Sometimes it seems a daily crucifixion, especially in the leafy months of summer. But sooner or later do we all discover what the eye of John was quick to note, that in the place where He was crucified there was a garden.

Cross-Bearers Find Themselves in a Garden

Or, once again, we think of cross-bearing, for cross-bearing is a universal thing. Every life has the shadow it must enter, and every life the cross that it must bear. Now sometimes it is very hard to bear the cross. There are seasons when we are tempted to rebel. If our cross were gone, how happy might we be. Life would be like "a melody in tune." Yet who can look on life and watch its issues and follow the track of patient cross-bearing without discovering that the flinty track is God's appointed road into the garden? I knew a girl who was left motherless. She had to be mother to the younger children. And sometimes she was tempted to grow bitter, for it meant stern self-surrender every day. But the children have grown up and call her blessed now, and they enfold her with loving admiration, and in the place where she was crucified there is a garden.

Self-Denial Is the Way to Joy

Lastly, one's thoughts turn to the Christian life, for the Christian life is never easy. I always distrust things that are too easy, especially a too easy Christianity. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way. If thy right hand offend thee, cut if off. They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh. Is that an easy life? One might well think that such a life as that would be a desolate and dreary business, and there are many who shun it on that score. What! Surrender up my life with its freedoms and its sweet and secret pleasures? Turn my days into an arid desert where no passion-flowers can ever grow? But the strange thing is that with the great surrender there comes gladness, and birds begin to sing, and every common flower takes new beauty. Self-surrender is the road to service. Self-denial is the way to song. To be made captive by the Lord Jesus Christ is to have the freedom of the universe. Then one goes back to this quiet word of John and begins to understand the depth of it—in the place where He was crucified there was a garden.

September 4

The Resurrection

The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre— Joh_20:1

Failure to Believe Christ for the Present

Although Jesus had been teaching His disciples with increasing clearness that He would rise from the dead, none of them had grasped the full meaning of His words. The company of Jesus had been so sweet to them that they had refused to let their minds dwell upon His death, and the hints of death and of His resurrection were so vitally connected in the teaching of Jesus that to ignore the one fact was to reject the other. When Jesus told Martha that her brother would rise again, Martha answered that she knew he would rise at the last day. So, doubtless, when Jesus spoke darkly of His own resurrection, the disciples would dream of some far distant hour. Long ages after Elijah had been carried heavenward, some of them had seen him on the Mount of Transfiguration. So it might be that when the centuries had run, they would meet in glory the Lord they loved so well. They could believe for some far distant day. Their point of failure was not the future but the present. The day would come, no doubt, when Christ would rise. The incredible thing was that He was risen now. Are we not all tempted to an unbelief like that? Is it not easy to believe that God will work, but very hard to believe that God is working? Strong faith not only deals with the far past and with the years that are still hidden behind the veil, it is radiant for the present hour and sees the hand of God at work today.

Mary Magdalene's Mission to the Tomb

Early in the morning, then, of the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala steals out into the garden. She had been there before when they were burying Jesus, and she had marked the spot where they had laid her Lord. Now it was dark; the sun had not yet risen; the children in Jerusalem were dreaming happy dreams. But the Sabbath had been one of misery for Mary, and little sleep had visited her that night. And what was it that drew her to the garden? It was not curiosity; it was love. It was love with a passion for service at the heart of it—there was still something she could do for Jesus. Joseph and Nicodemus had embalmed the body. But it had been hastily done, for the Sabbath was at hand. Mary was going to complete the embalming, and she would have the quiet hour of dawn for her sad task. But who would help her to roll away the stone? That thought had been troubling her all the weary night. Her heart was full of it as she lifted the latch of her lodging and stepped out into the chill morning air. As she entered the garden, the sky was reddening. The dawn was flushing up out of the East. And she looked and saw at a glance that something strange had happened—the stone, that she had been vexing herself about all night, was gone! Now often, when one trouble is removed, there comes a greater trouble in its place. We looked for peace when the thing that vexed us vanished, and instead of peace we were plunged in deeper sorrow. So Mary, instead of rejoicing at what she saw, was launched out upon a wider sea of agony. It flashed on her in a twinkling that the body was stolen. Under cover of night her Lord had been taken away. She dropped the spices and ointments she was carrying. There were other women there; Mary forgot them. She hurried back through the streets of the wakening city. Breathlessly she told Peter and John what she had seen. And then we read how Peter and John ran out and how Peter impetuously pushed on into the tomb. And there were the graveclothes lying on the stone slab; and on the stone pillow, raised a little above them, the napkin, still coiled in a circle as when it bound His head. The linen clothes, weighted with spices, had sunk flat; but the empty napkin kept the form of the Savior's brow.

The Risen Christ Appeared to Mary First

Then follows the appearance of the risen Lord to Mary. It was not to Peter that Jesus first appeared. It was not even to John, "whom Jesus loved." It was to Mary out of whose heart Jesus had cast seven devils; it was to Mary who loved much because much had been forgiven her. After discovering that the grave was empty, the disciples had gone away home again (Joh_20:10). But Mary, whose home had been the heart of Jesus, could not tear herself away from the garden and the grave. It was desolation to think that Christ was lost. Not even the white robed angels could console her. We are never so sure of the depth of Mary's love as when we see her weeping by the tomb. A great scholar, in studies of the resurrection, points out the different features emphasized in the accounts of the four evangelists. Matthew dwells chiefly on the majesty and glory of the resurrection. Mark insists upon it as a fact. Luke treats it as a spiritual necessity; and John, as a touchstone of character. And when we see Mary weeping in the garden, overwhelmed with her unutterable loss, we feel that here is the touchstone of her character. In the depth of her loss we find the depth of her love, and she loved much because she was forgiven much. So Mary stood in her sorrow beside the grave, thinking perhaps that Jesus was far away; and Jesus was never nearer to her than in that moment when she thought Him lost. She turned round; there was someone behind her. It was Jesus, but she thought it was the gardener. Some mysterious change had come on the Lord she loved, and it was dawn, and her eyes were dim with tears. Then Jesus said, "Mary," and she knew the voice. What a glorious joy must have taken her poor heart! She cried, "Rabboni!" She would have clung to Him. She would have held Him in the old grasp of human tenderness. And Jesus had to say to her, "Cling not to Me; hereafter, Mary, you shall walk by faith and not by sight." Then Mary received Christ's message for the disciples; and with a new heart, and in a world that was all new, hastened to tell them that she had seen the Lord.

September 5

Love and Grief - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping…she turned herself back and saw Jesus standing .... Jesus saith unto her, Mary — Joh_20:11, Joh_20:14, Joh_20:16

Mary's Grief

In this beautiful and ever memorable incident I wish first to dwell on Mary's grief, trying to make plain to you the greatness of that grief; and the first glimpse we get into its deeps is that Mary shows no wonder at the angels. At all the crises of the life of Christ we read of angels. We read of them at His birth, His temptation, and His agony. At these great moments His attendant bodyguard breaks through the veil, as it were, and becomes visible. And now in this great hour of hard-won victory, when death, the last great enemy, is beaten, there is a vision of angels in the tomb. There are two of them, in the tenderness of God, who would not send one alone to a dark sepulchre. They are clothed in white, the uniform of heaven; they are seated, as in the calm of glory. Yet Mary, stooping down and peering in and catching a glimpse of these beings more than mortal, has not a fear and scarce a thought to give them, she is so brokenhearted for her Lord. There is nothing more absorbing than great grief. It banishes fear, surprise, dismay, astonishment, and from the utter absence of all such feelings here, we learn how terrible was Mary's grief.

The same intensity is manifest again when we notice how her grief embraced her world. Turning round in the dim dawn, she saw a man, and she supposed that it had been the gardener. Now she had never seen the gardener before; he was a stranger to her and she to him. The circle that he moved in was not hers; he had his wife and children, his home and joys and sorrows. Yet she offers no explanation or apology; never mentions the name of Christ, just talks of Him—her grief is so overpowering that she cannot conceive that others should remain indifferent in her sorrow. I think that many of us have had times when our feeling was akin to that of Mary. In seasons of overwhelming sorrow—when the golden bowl is broken—the noisy life out in the streets is like an insult. It is incredible how others should be laughing and going about their work with eager hearts, when for us there is not a star within the sky and not a sound of music in the lute. Now of course that is an unreasonable mood, and we soon outgrow it if we are strong in God. But whether reasonable or unreasonable, it is human—the sign and symbol of overwhelming grief. And it is when we see Mary so absorbed that everyone she meets must know her sorrow, that we realize her womanly despair at the loss of her Savior and her Lord.

Her Grief Made Her Blind

Then, too, her grief had made her blind. That also reveals the depth of her dismay. She heard the sound of a footfall, and there was Jesus standing, but Mary did not know that it was Jesus. Now there were many things to prevent that recognition; there was the dim and dusky light of early morning. There was the change that had passed upon the form of Christ now that He was risen in triumph from the grave. But the deepest cause was not in the morning light; the deepest cause was not in the face of Jesus; the deepest cause was in the heart of Mary. I have heard mourners gathered at a funeral say afterwards, "I could not tell you who was there." All the great passions in their full intensity have got a certain blinding power about them. But neither love nor hate nor jealousy nor anger is more effectual in sealing up the eyes than is the pressure of overwhelming grief. So she turned herself round when she heard the quiet footfall. And Jesus was there, and she knew not it was He. Does that tell you that Jesus Christ was changed? It tells me also that Mary was brokenhearted.

And the strange thing is that had she only known it, the cause of her grief was to be the joy of ages. It was for an absent Lord that she was weeping, yet on that absence Christendom is built. "They have taken away my Lord," said Mary; "let me but find His body and I shall be happy." But supposing she had found it, and been happy, have you ever thought what that would have involved?-no resurrection, no sending of the Spirit, no Gospel, no Christendom, no heaven. And so I learn that in our deepest griefs may lie the secret of our richest joys, that there may be "a budding morrow in midnight." It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth. That does not mean it is better to be melancholy. The evangel of Christ is tidings of great joy, and no one has such a right to be glad as a true Christian. It means that, like Mary, in our sorest grief we may light on that which all the world is seeking, and that everything may be radiant ever after because of the one thing that caused our tears.

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Love and Grief - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Mary's Love

So far, then, on the depth of Mary's grief. Now let us turn to the depth of Mary's love. And how intensely she loved may be most surely gathered from her refusal to believe that He was lost. "Then the disciples went away to their own homes": there was nothing more to be done; the grave was empty. They had examined the tomb and seen the napkin there; nothing was to be gained by aimless waiting. But Mary, though she knew what they had seen and had not a particle more of hope than they—Mary could not tear herself away, but stood without at the sepulchre weeping. There is a kind of love that faces facts, and it is a noble and courageous love. It opens its eyes wide to dark realities and bowing the head it says, "I must accept them." But there is an agony of love that does not act so; it hopes against hope and beats against all evidence. It is only women who can love like that, and it was a love like that which inspired Mary. No one will ever doubt John's love to Jesus. No one will ever doubt the love of Simon. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? .... Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee." But the fact remains that on that Easter morning Peter and John went to their homes again, and only a woman lingered by the grave. I have not the least doubt that they urged her to go with them. They had been too long with Jesus not to be true gentlemen. It was cold and raw there, and the grass was wet, and it was dangerous for a woman with these Roman soldiers. But Mary simply replied, "I cannot go." She must linger and watch in the teeth of all the facts. And I say that measured by a test like that, there is not a disciple who can match the love of Mary.

Mary's Love Brought Glad Obedience

The depth of Mary's love is also seen in her instant and glad obedience to her Lord. She would have flung herself upon His breast in her great joy, but Jesus said to her swiftly, "Touch me not." You remember what Christ said when He appeared to Thomas? "Thomas, reach hither thy hand, and feel my wounds." To that disciple, torn with the stress of doubt, says the risen Savior, "Come and touch me." But to Mary whose doubts had all been scattered and who was filled with the wild joy of recognition, the Christ who said to Thomas, "Come and touch me," said very swiftly and imperiously, "Touch me not." What He meant was, "Things are all different now. You are to walk by faith and not by sight now. Do not think that My death is but a moment's break and that the former life will be resumed. I ascend to the Father—old things have passed away—do not try to revive or recall these old relationships. Touch Me not, but go unto My brethren—tell them I am going home to God." That must have been a bitter disappointment to a heart so ardent and so intense as Mary's. The one thing she wanted was to be with Christ, yet that was the one thing which He denied her. And it is when I read how sweetly she obeyed, renouncing her own will to do Christ's bidding, it is then I realize how deep and true was the love of Mary for her Savior. There is a love that is loud in passionate protestations, but "methinks the lady doth protest too much." Mary says little—does not protest at all—one word "Rabboni," and then her Master's bidding. And it is in that immediate obedience, which cut at the very root of all her joy, that he that hath eyes to see and ears to hear can gauge the height and depth of Mary's love.

Christ's Revelation to Mary

In the last place, a word or two upon the revelation of the Lord to Mary. The unceasing wonder of it all is this, that to her first He should have shown Himself. Simon Peter had been at the tomb that morning, and "on this rock," said Jesus, "I will build my church." John had been at the sepulchre that morning—the disciple who had leaned upon Christ's bosom; yet neither to John nor to Peter had there been a whisper—no moving of pierced feet across the garden—all that was kept for a woman who had been a sinner and out of whom there had been cast seven devils. It is very notable that the first word of Christ after He had risen from the dead was Woman. "Woman, why weepest thou?" These are the first words which fell from the lips of Christ when He arose. And they tell us that though everything seemed different, yet there was one thing which death has failed to alter, and that is the eyes of Christ for those who love Him and the sympathy of Christ for those who weep. You remember how, when Christ was in the wilderness, He was tempted to cast Himself down from the Temple. He was tempted to reveal Himself in startling fashion as the Jews expected that Messiah would. But Christ resisted that spectacular temptation and showed Himself quietly to kindred hearts; and now after the grave has clone its work, He is the very same Jesus as had His home in Nazareth. There are some arguments for the resurrection of the Lord which I confess do not appeal to me. They are too elaborate and metaphysical; they always leave some loophole of escape. But there is one argument that is irresistible, and to me is overwhelming in its artless evidence, and that is the argument of this sweet incident. I could have believed the story was a myth if Christ had shown Himself upon the Temple steps. Had he appeared to Pilate and said, "Behold the Man," I could have believed it was an idle story. But that He should pass by Pilate and the people, and His mother and John and James and Simon Peter, that He should show Himself first and foremost to a woman who had nothing to her credit but her love, I tell you that even the genius of a Shakespeare could never have conceived a scene like that. The strange thing is that what Christ did that morning, He has been constantly doing ever since. The first to see Him in all His power and love have been the very last the world expected. Do not pride yourself on your apostolate. There are things that you may miss for all your privileges. And some poor Magdalene, to whom you send the missionary, may be the first to hear the footfall on the grass.

And then Christ made Himself known by a single word. One word was enough when it was the woman's name. Jesus saith unto her, "Mary," and she turned herself and saith unto Him, "Rabboni." When Joseph made himself known unto his brethren, he stood in their midst and said to them, "I am Joseph." There are times when Jesus acts as Joseph did and lifting up His voice cries, "I am Christ." But far more often when He reveals Himself, the first word that we hear is like this garden voice. It is not "I am Christ" that we first hear; the first word that we hear is "Thou art Mary." I mean by that, that we are drawn to Christ by the deep and restful sense that we are known. Here is a Man who understands us thoroughly, who knows what we most need and what we crave for. And it is in response to that—which is the Gospel call—that we turn our back on the grave as Mary did to find at our side One who has conquered death and who lives to be our Friend forevermore.

September 6

Turning Back to See

She turned herself back, and saw Jesus— Joh_20:14

The Love of Mary

We must remember that Mary in the garden was eagerly seeking for the Lord. She was filled with a love that would not let Him go. Others might leave the garden in despair: Mary must still haunt the sacred precincts. It was dark, and the soldiers were about. This was no place for a solitary woman. "But," says St. John, "there is no fear in love," and the love of Mary swallowed up her fear, and she was alone in the garden, seeking Jesus. Right in front of her there was a grave, and Mary scanned it, but Jesus was not there. In the grave were two shining ones of heaven, but the shining ones were not enough. When the heart loves somebody very much, not even the shining presence's of heaven can take the place of the beloved. Then Mary heard a rustling in the grass. It was not in front of her; it was behind her. Instantly the angels were forgotten—might not this be the footfall of her Lord? And then, in words that seem but incidental, yet are fraught with an infinite suggestiveness, we read that she turned herself back and she saw Jesus.

Turning Back to the Old Testament We See Jesus

Think how true that is of the Old Testament when we recall how the Old Testament was written. Holy men of God, we read in Peter, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, when a man is moved by the Holy Ghost, there is much in his utterance quite beyond his grasping. If that be true of the deepest words of genius, how much more of the words of inspiration! Men speak to their own times and their own countrymen, but if they be moved by the Holy Ghost their words have issues they can never follow. So David wrote his Messianic Psalms. So Isaiah wrote his fifty-third chapter. Moved by an inward passion they were preachers: moved by the Holy Spirit they were prophets. And now we, like Mary in the garden when the sun was rising on resurrection morning, turn ourselves back, and we see Jesus. It is His love we see in Canticles; His triumph in the Messianic Psalms. It is His bruised form that meets us in Isaiah; His sacrifice we find in the slain lamb. "Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

Turn Back and Become Like a Little Child to See Jesus

Again, think how true this is of the spiritual wakening of the soul. Take the matchless story of the prodigal. When he came to himself in the far country, he did not go forward on a further pilgrimage. He did not press on into more distant lands, in the hope that there he might be satisfied. He turned himself back, and found his soul again. "Except ye become as little children ye cannot see the kingdom," says the Lord. No one becomes a child by going forward. One only becomes a child by turning back to simple faith and to unworldliness and to the trust which every child displays in the providence and provision of a father. No wonder Nicodemus was astonished when the Lord said, "You must be born again." How could he, a grave and reverend seigneur, turn himself back into his mother's womb? And then one thinks of Mary in the garden, longing for a glimpse of the Beloved, and she turned herself back, and saw the Lord.

The Church Needs to Turn Back to See Jesus

And what is true of individual life is true also of the larger life of Christendom. Whenever Christendom has been refreshed and quickened it has been by the way of Mary in the garden. The Church has never been revived by novelties: it has always been revived by turning back to a simpler faith, to a lost vision, to a rediscovery of the Lord Jesus; to something which is as old as Calvary and which has been lost to view in the dull years till it shines again on resurrection morning. Luther did not deal in novelties. He sent the Church forward because he turned her back to the forgotten doctrine that the guilty sinner is pardoned and justified by faith. And then one thinks of Mary in the garden, when right in front of her there was a sepulchre, but she turned herself back, and she saw Jesus.

In Retrospect, You Can See Jesus

Think lastly how true this is of the year drawing to a close. Is not a time like that given for looking backward? The present has a strangely blinding power. It is always difficult to read today. Today is so compact of little things that one can scarcely see the forest for the trees. It is never harder to trace the love of God and His wisdom and the ordering of His providence than in the detail of the passing day. Like the man who stands too close to the oil painting, we stand too close to today to see its meaning. We very rarely fathom anything in the actual moment of its happening. But surely many who read this are just like Mary on resurrection morning when she heard the footfall of the Lord behind her. They recognize that Someone has been guiding, though at the time they could not understand things. They recognize that mercy has been busy, though at the time it was all dark to them. In the hour of retrospect and memory, catching like Mary the rustling of their yesterdays, they turn themselves back, and see the Lord.

September 7

The Intrusiveness of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When the doors were shut…for fear of the Jews, came Jesus— Joh_20:19

A Time of Conflicting Emotions

This was a very memorable Sunday evening, one of the most memorable that history has known. The grave was empty; Christ Jesus had arisen, and slowly the glad truth was reaching the disciples. First had come the tidings of Mary Magdalene, then the thrilling experience of Peter, and now the two travelers to Emmaus had come in and had just finished telling what had befallen them. Can we not imagine what a conflict of emotions surged and throbbed in the disciples' hearts? Some believed instantly; some could not crush their doubt; some passed in swift alternation through glory and despair. And it was then when the doors were shut for fear of the Jews, that Jesus came and stood in the midst of them. How exquisitely fitting was His first word, "Peace!" Peace was the very thing which they lacked that evening. We may always trust Christ, in His unerring tact, to say the right word at the right moment.

But the words I ask you especially to consider are these: "when the doors were shut for fear of the Jews." They suggest to me two lines of thought which I shall ask you to follow for a little. The first is, we may close the doors on Christ unwittingly. The second is, though we close the doors on Christ, we do not shut Him out. May God grant us His guidance as we proceed.

We May Close the Doors on Christ Unwittingly

First, then, we may close the doors on Christ unwittingly; that, you see, is what the disciples did. When they shut and locked the doors of the upper chamber, they never meant to bar them against Jesus. They were afraid of the Jews, the Gospel frankly tells us—and there are few books so frank as the Bible is. They had not been born yet into the heroism of Pentecost; they had not been baptized with the Spirit of fearlessness. Had they heard the trampling of Jewish feet upon the stairs and the beating of Jewish staves upon the door, I daresay they would have thought that all was lost. So they made fast the door for fear of the Jews. That was their only object when they barred it. Yet you and I, reading the story together, detect that they were doing more than they imagined, for unwittingly they closed the door on Christ.

Now there is a lesson in that thought on which you and I do well to ponder. It is that we may close the door on all that is best and worthiest, and yet we can honestly say we never meant to do it. I do not think there are many who have deliberately resolved to shut out Christ. This is an age of such uncertainty that most men are too uncertain even to be skeptics. But there are doors we may close, never thinking of Christ Jesus; there are lines of conduct in common life we may pursue, and we never dream that we are raising barriers between ourselves and the highest and the best. But in the end of the day for us, as for the disciples, it will be found that we have done more than we imagined—we have closed the door unwittingly on Christ.

Many of you will remember the experience of Mr. Darwin which with his customary truthfulness he has chronicled. He tells us that through years of absorption in science, he lost the power of appreciating Shakespeare. He had no quarrel with Shakespeare—how could he have? He knew that he stood peerless and unparalleled. But Darwin for years had given heart and brain, with magnificent persistency, to certain studies. Every power had been riveted and every faculty absorbed in the enthusiastic search for certain truths—and then, when he came back to Shakespeare once again, with kindling memories of how he had loved him once, he had closed the door unwittingly on Shakespeare. It is a comparatively small matter when Shakespeare is concerned. It is supremely important when it is Jesus Christ. It may even be worthwhile sometimes to close the door on Shakespeare. But to close it on Christ is always a tragic thing. I beseech you, see that you are not living and acting as the disciples did upon that Lord's day evening when for fear of the Jews they shut the door, and unwittingly closed it on their Lord.

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The Intrusiveness of Christ - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Friendships and Choices May Shut the Door on Christ

There are many ways in which men commit this error. Think for example of the formation of friendships. Many a young man is ruined by his enemies, but more young men are ruined by their friends. It is amazing how easily some people form their friendships, how they make them on the line of least resistance, how they fail to realize what is implied in that mystical and mighty name of friend. So friendships are lightly and improvidently made, and slowly and secretly character degenerates; until at last that friendship (unworthy of the name), begun in the comradeship of some light-hearted hour, closes the door on a hundred noble things, and among them on the beauty of Christ Jesus. Or think again of the choices that we make—and we exercise our noblest prerogative in choosing. Every morning that we rise and every day that we go forth, our choices make us or our choices mar us. Someday a choice more momentous than usual comes. We are face to face with one of life's great decisions. And we have not been living on high levels, and so we choose amiss, for a man's whole life is in every choice he makes. Then the days pass, and the issues show themselves, and the choice works itself out in life and character, and a hundred glorious things are tarnished and are tainted as the result of one disastrous choice. We never meant to shut out power and purity, but they have receded into the dim distance ever since. We never thought to grow heart-weary and world-weary, but that may follow from one mismanaged choosing. Like the disciples beset by some poor fear, unwittingly we have closed the door on Christ.

Levity Can Close the Door on Christ

But perhaps the commonest of all causes of this great error lies in the spirit that will not take things seriously. I would never ask a young man or woman to be solemn, but I would always urge a young man or woman to be serious. We read the parable of the marriage feast, and we note how the invited guests made light of it. Do you think these guests had been serious and earnest men up to the hour when they received that invitation? God does not tamper with character like that. No man begins to be frivolous by mocking kings. When they were children they had made light of home and had thought little of a mother's love; when they were youths they had made light of purity, for they thought that to be immoral was a manly thing. Now comes the invitation of the king, the crowning and decisive moment of their lives, and in that moment all their past is concentrated, and Scripture tells us they made light of that. One thing is certain, they never meant to do it. They never thought that it would come to this. Thoughtlessly they closed the door on reverent feeling, on devoutness and on chivalry and on purity. But the curse of such levity is that it involves far more than we shall ever know till the years have unrolled their story. In tampering with the least we touch the greatest. We begin by closing the door on little decencies, and unwittingly we close the door on Christ.

Though We Close the Doors on Christ, We Do Not Shut Him Out

But now I pass on (and I do so very gladly) to the second and evangelical message of our text. That message is, though we close the doors on Christ yet we do not shut Him out. That night in Jerusalem the disciples found it so. Suddenly, though every lock was turned, Christ was among them. They had closed the door on Him not knowing what they did, yet for all that they did not shut Him out.

In studying the life of Christ on earth I have often been struck with that note of the inevitable. Men tried to escape Him—adjured Him to depart—yet though all the doors were shut, Jesus confronted them. I think of the Gadarene demoniac in the tombs. He was an object of terror so that all men fled from him. He had shut out his nearest and dearest by his wildness, but for all his wildness he could not shut out the Lord. "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God—art thou come hither to torment us before our time?" He could escape from his chains; he could not escape from Jesus. Lo! he is sitting clothed and in his right mind.

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The Intrusiveness of Christ - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

For the Jews, Christ Was Unavoidable

Or I think of Christ in relation to Jewish history, and I feel once again that He was unavoidable. For the whole struggle of scribes and Pharisees and priests was to close the door on Christ and keep Him out. They refused to acknowledge Him and they would make no place for Him; He was a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber; not this man but Barabbas! Everything that malevolence could do was done; everything that spite could suggest was swiftly practiced to discredit the name and sully the reputation of this prophet who mourned with tears over Jerusalem. Did it succeed? Was the door really shut? Was Christ barred out from the destinies of Judaism? Ah, sirs, every page of Jewish story reveals the futility of that endeavor. The most potent influence in Judaism is Christ Jesus. He has determined its fortunes and its fall. He is inextricably blended with its blood and anguish. He is the daystar of its only hope. They closed the door on Him—beat Him off—said He is done with now: but for all that they could not shut Him out.

You May Shut the Door, but Christ Can Still Reach You

If that was true in history I want you to believe that it is true now. For weal or woe, whatever walls you raise, Christ passes through them all and gets to you. There are deeds that we did long since, perhaps twenty years ago, but to this hour unexpectedly they rise and meet us. There were moments of exquisite happiness in our past, and even today their memory is like music. You cannot shut out the thought of intense hours; no change of years will prevent them winning through. And like the ineffaceable memory of such scenes is the presence and the beauty of the Lord. Christ is inevitable. Christ is unavoidable. I want that thought to sink into your hearts. Close every door against Him if you will; the mystery is that you do not shut Him out.

To Avoid Christ Is an Impossibility.

Sometimes He comes through the closed door just because all life is penetrated with Him. We talk of the Christian atmosphere we breathe, but the atmosphere is more than Christian, it is Christ. This is the Lord's day—who then is this Lord? We may have closed the door on Him, but He is here. We cannot date one letter in the morning but we mean that so many years ago Christ was born. He meets us at every turn of the road, in every newspaper, and in every problem. Our life is so interpenetrated with Christ Jesus that to avoid Him is an impossibility.

We Meet Christ through a Genuine Christian

Sometimes He meets us in a noble character, in a man who is a living argument for religion. And though we have resolved to have nothing to do with Christ, yet we feel in a moment that Christ is by our side. Creeds may mean nothing to us; we may have left off church-going; the dust may have gathered thick upon our Bibles; but accidentally we meet some man or some woman, having the hallmark of the genuine Christ, and through the shut door we know that Christ is here.

We Meet Christ in Our Moments of Sorrow

And sometimes it is in our deeper hours that He so comes. It is in the darker and more tragic moments of our life. It is when the sun has ceased to shine, and the birds have ceased to sing; when we are baffled and broken and disappointed. We closed the door on Him when we were strong and vigorous, for we did not want the intrusion of the Cross; but when life's deeps are uncovered then it is God we need, and through the shut doors Christ is in the midst.

Christ Can Break Your Hopelessness

In closing let me say this single word: am I speaking to any whose sin has made them hopeless? It may be there is someone who seems to have closed every door upon Christ Jesus. Have you been living for years in secret sin? Or has one great sin besmirched and blackened everything? The result of it all is that you seem utterly callous, incapable of faith, cold as a stone. My brother or sister, things are not utterly hopeless. Even now you may have the benediction. Through every barrier—in the teeth of every obstacle—that presence which is life and power may be yours. Christ is a spirit—nothing can hold Him back. There is no road-maker in all the world like love. Cry out, "Thou Son of God, come to my heart!" and though all the doors have been shut, He will be there.

September 8

The Doubting of Thomas

But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe— Joh_20:25

The Supreme Importance of the Resurrection

There is no reader of the New Testament who has not observed the supreme importance given to Christ's resurrection. It underlies all arguments; it inspires all pleadings. It is the mould in which the apostles' thought is cast; it is the morning star that lights their feet. I do not know that we have kept the accent there. We are so fond of asking what would Jesus do, that we almost forget the most stupendous thing that Jesus did. It calls for a tingling sense that Christ has risen to give us back again the apostolic music. In the Life of Dr. Dale of Birmingham there is no passage more arresting than the page where he tells how it flashed on him that Jesus lives. He had been ministering, preaching, praying, when suddenly, as in an inspiration, there broke on him the sense that Jesus was alive. We need to be touched like that. We need a new faith that the stone was rolled away. We need a new baptism of the conviction of Thomas, when, clasping those risen feet, he cried, "My Lord and my God."

The Character of Thomas Gives Weight to His Conviction

First note, then that the character of Thomas gives tremendous weight to his conviction. Do we not sometimes wonder at the Master's choice of disciples? Do we not feel that some of the twelve must have been very uncongenial company for Jesus? Why did He choose them, then? I can understand how a St. John would serve the world. But what service could a man of the character of Thomas render? I think the chief service of Thomas to the world was his magnificent witness to the resurrection. Peter was passionate, impulsive, rash, springing to his conclusions just as he sprang that morning on the waves; but when a great miracle is in the balance, I want the witness of another character than that. And John?—John loved so splendidly, that a loveless world has ruled him out of court. But the world cannot rule Thomas out of court; his character gives tremendous weight to his conviction. For Thomas was a very stubborn man. There was a grim tenacity about him that almost made him dour. Some men have only to see a thing in print to credit it. They would believe anything on the joint testimony of ten friends. But the ten disciples came hurrying to Thomas; and Peter and James and John were crying "We have seen the Lord," and Thomas knew what truthful men they were, yet Thomas stubbornly refused to be convinced. There was something very dour in that—and it was wrong, as stubbornness generally is—but in the measurements of history it was superb. If that man is convinced, I am convinced. If the man who snaps his fingers at Peter and John comes round, I yield. And the next Sunday Thomas is on his face, crying "My Lord, my God." Then, too, Thomas was a despondent man; brave but despondent, a more common combination than we think. Do you remember how when Christ was summoned to the grave of Lazarus, it was such a hazardous thing for Him to venture near Jerusalem that His disciples tried to dissuade Him from the journey? "Goest thou thither again?" said one. "Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well," parleyed another. But Thomas said, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." It was the word of a brave but a desponding man; a man who naturally saw the darker side—and we can thank God there was such a melancholy heart among the twelve. It is easy to persuade a merry heart. When I am full of hope, I shall credit the sunshine, though all the sky be cloud. But a melancholy man is hard to turn; and when a melancholy heart like Thomas's turns in an hour, passes from death to life, accepts the joyfullest fact in the world's history and worships, I bow the head before the infinite wisdom that set such a man among the twelve.

His Conviction Was Reached by the Dark Road of Doubt

So the character of Thomas gives tremendous weight to his conviction. Now mark, in the second place, that this conviction was reached by the dark road of doubt. I wonder if we could classify this doubt of Thomas? Well, there are some who doubt because their will is biased. That doubt runs down to life and character and is a dishonest, miserable thing. "Ah, if I only believed what you believe," said one to Pascal, "I should very soon be a better man." "Begin by being a better man," Pascal replied, "and you will very soon believe what I believe." There are those who will tell you they doubt this or that and give you a score of reasons for their doubts, and at the bottom it is a moral question. There is some habit that would have to go; there is some doubtful practice that must cease; there is some little reputation that would vanish, and the cloak of doubt is used to dally with sin. But no man would charge Thomas with that; whatever he had, he had a clean heart. He was a despondent, but not a dishonest doubter. Then there are others whose doubt is intellectual, and this is the prevalent doubting of today. But I do not think that is the doubt of Thomas. I cannot think that a man who had seen Lazarus's resurrection could be intellectually skeptical of the resurrection of Lazarus's Lord. His doubt sprang from another source than that. He doubted because he felt so deeply, and that perhaps is the sorest doubt of all. You mail a score of letters in a week, and you never doubt about their safe arrival. One day, you mail a precious manuscript, and instantly the possibilities of some mischance are wakened, and you cannot rest, you doubt its safety so much. It is because you feel so strongly, that you doubt. And Thomas felt so strongly that he doubted too. For the rising of Jesus meant everything to him. His heart was agonized lest it were false. Perhaps there would be more of Thomas's doubt today if there were more of Thomas's love.

Thomas's Doubts Were Dispelled by Christ's Gentleness

Lastly, these doubts were dispelled by the gentleness of Christ. Thomas set up one test. "Comrades," he said, "I love you; but it is all too wonderful, and I cannot believe you. But hark, when I see with these eyes the gashes of the nails, and put this hand into the wound which the spear made, I shall believe our Lord is risen." Then the next Sunday evening Jesus is in their midst, transfigured, beautiful; and He is saying, "Thomas reach forth thine hand, and touch, and be convinced—it is thy test." And do we ever read that Thomas did it? Never. And do you dream he peered into the gashes? Here was his little test, and he forgot his test. The little particular was swept aside in the overwhelming argument of love. It was the look, it was the tone, it was the love and gentleness of Christ that won the day. Thomas was at His feet crying, "My God!"

September 9

Desertion and Drudgery - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing— Joh_21:3

In the Absence of the Master

When the feast of Passover was ended, the disciples left Jerusalem for Galilee. It was there, amid the scenes of tender memory, that Christ had promised to meet with them again. One would have thought that having such a promise they would have hurried north without delay. We should not have expected them to linger in Jerusalem when it was in the highlands they were to see their Lord. But we must bear in mind that it was Passover and that the disciples were believing Jews to whom it would have seemed impiety to quit the city before the feast was ended. That was why they waited for ten days and only then set out for Galilee. And when they reached it and its familiar scenes, everything was as it had been in the past. Unruffled by the tempest in the south, unshadowed by the darkness of the cross, the simple life was flowing on as usual, and the meadows were beautiful with lilies. After the strain and agony of Calvary, that rural quietude would be like heaven. There would be no thought of instant labor, for any moment Jesus might appear. But the days went on and the Master did not come, and every evening the fishing boats put out until at last it was too much for Peter, and he cried impulsively, "I go a fishing." John would never have suggested that. Like Mary, he had the gift of sitting still. But he saw the wisdom of it when it was suggested as did the others of that little company, and it is on that resolve I want to meditate. Will you follow me then while I handle it in this way: first, there are seasons when Christ seems to be lost; second, in such seasons duty still remains; third, through duty lies the road to restored fellowship.

There Are Seasons When Christ Seems to Be Lost to Us

When the disciples went northward into Galilee they traveled in the radiant hope of meeting Christ. It was not in their thoughts that they would have to wait; they were expectant of seeing Him at once. Before He was crucified Christ had told them that it was in Galilee that He would meet them. Then, lest perchance they had forgotten it, the angel in the grave repeated it. And as if to make assurance doubly sure, Christ Himself, on resurrection morning, charged the women to go and tell the brethren to go to Galilee, and they would see Him there. Three times over the promise had been given, and they did not doubt it for a single instant. And they went northward eager with expectancy, saying, Tomorrow we shall see the Lord. And tomorrow came, and the sunshine lit the waters, and the smoke rose heavenward from cottage fires, yet no one moved into the village street having the marks of the nails upon His hands. Their thoughts were full of Him—that made it all the harder. Everything that they saw suggested Christ. There was the very boat upon the beach in which He had preached one memorable day. And so they woke and wandered by the shore and spoke of the dear, past days beyond recall; and the sun set, and the glittering stars came out, and nowhere did they have a glimpse of Jesus. They needed Him, and yet they could not find Him. They watched and waited, and He did not come. And their hearts sank within them and were heavy, and they looked at each other with despairing eyes. And the sky was as blue as it had ever been, and the peace of God was sleeping on the lake; but for them there was no peace, no rest, no beauty, because the Lord they loved seemed to be lost.

When His Presence Seems to Be Withdrawn

Now no one here has seen Christ in the flesh, nor shall we look on Him with our eyes on this side of the grave; yet in spiritual senses is it not still the fact that there are seasons when He withdraws Himself? There are times when Christ seems absent from the world, and evil triumphs without hindrance. There are times when Christ seems absent from the church, and its worship is only fashion or routine. And there are times when Christ seems absent from the soul, and faith is dead, and comforts are departed, and one is ready to cry again with Mary, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." It is then that one prays, and prayer seems a mockery. It is then that the Bible loses all its dew. It is then that one comes to church and bows the head with a heart that is a thousand miles away. And one is never glad in such a season; one is fretful, irritable, weak, and every day is but a makeshift, and the grasshopper becomes a burden. Such seasons are always hard to bear. They cast a shadow on the leafiest June. When we have known Christ and when we seem to have lost Him, it takes the sunshine and the joy from everything. It is in such hours a man is prone to fall and to clutch again at what he had forsworn. It is in such hours that, for a word of sympathy, a woman will bow down her head and weep.

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Yet He Is Near

May I say in passing to any in that state that there is a word of comfort for them here? Christ had withdrawn—He was not to be seen—yet was He watching the seven all the time. They looked for Him and He never came. They had His promise and He disappointed them. And they went out to fish and it was night, and they were unsuccessful and alone. And all the time, not very far away, standing upon the beach and watching them, was the Master whom they thought that they had lost. They were never more precious to Him than they were that night. They were never dearer to His heart. The future of the world was in that boat, and Christ in an agony of love was watching it. And yet they thought He had forgotten them, and they were dejected because they could not see Him, and perhaps they fancied that in the company of angels He was too mighty now for humble fishermen. I beg of you, then, not to misjudge Christ. When He seems lost, He is not far away. He is standing on the beach, within call, when the net is empty and the heart is sick. Only it takes a little love to see Him and to cry in the grey dawn, "It is the Lord"; and it takes a little courage to leap out and make for His pierced feet upon the shore.

In Seasons When Christ Seems to Be Lost, Duty Still Remains

So far, then, upon our first thought—there are seasons when Christ seems to be lost. Now a word or two upon the second—in such seasons duty still remains.
When Simon Peter said, "I go a fishing," you are not to regard it as a sinful impulse. It has been taken so, and by some eminent scholars, but I am quite convinced that they are wrong. It was not a counsel of despair. It did not mean that Peter was now hopeless. It was not a return to the old life in Galilee as if the discipleship had been a dream. It was the action of a man of energy to whom it was torture to be sitting idle, and who would fill in the hours till his Lord appeared by doing the plain duty at his hand. There were many things that Peter could not do. He was not a scholar; he was not a farmer. But there was one thing he could do, and do well—and it was not a great thing—it was fishing. And I say that that is Peter at his best, the man who was waiting to see his Lord again, and who in the meantime, when it was dark as night, went doggedly and quietly to duty. No one could have blamed these seven disciples had they wandered listlessly along the shore. They were unsettled; they were tossed and torn; they had a score of excuses for not working. But Simon Peter said, "I go a fishing"—there is work to do and I am going to do it. There was no joy for him—his Lord was absent—but the doing of his duty still remained.

Our Duty in Times of Sorrow

Now that is a lesson we all need to learn, and it is not always an easy one to learn. Think, for example, of the time of sorrow. There are sorrows in human life so overwhelming that they seem to blot out the love of God. It is so hard to see the meaning in them—so difficult to discern the hand of pity. And life seems shattered into a thousand fragments, and summer shall never be so sweet again, and how shall one pray when prayer has been mocked, and the heart is empty and the coffin full? It may be idle to talk of trust in God. That is the very thing that has been crushed. But at least you can rise out of an idle grief and say with this gallant heart, "I go a fishing." For there is still some duty you are called to; there is still someone who is in need of you; there is still some service in your power to render lying by your hand this very day. It is hard to take the cross up in the sunshine. It may be harder to take it in the night. But hard or not, that is what Peter did, and that is what you must do if you would triumph. For always that is the pathway to the music and to a peace more exquisite than music and to a trust in God that blossoms red, although its roots are in the silent grave.

Or think again of a young man who has won his liberty and lost his faith. He was nurtured in a Christian home, and he believed implicitly the Christian doctrine. He believed in it because he loved his mother. He came to church because his father did. And every night he knelt and said his prayers as he had been taught as a little child to pray. But now it is different—now he is a man—now he has begun to read and think; and for a little Christ has disappeared, and God is but the shadow of a shade. There is nothing to be proud of in that state. There is nothing to despair of in that state. Christ understands it—He has seen it often—He is not far away though He be hidden. But now, if ever, a man must rouse himself and cling to duty and cleave to what is good. Now, if ever, like Simon Peter, he must cry to his comrades, "I go a fishing." He must be good however hard it be. He must be pure however keen the battle. He must believe, although the heavens are silent, that it is better to play the man than play the beast. He must struggle up the mountain in the night, and then, when the day dawns and it is sunrise, he will have such a prospect at his feet as will tell him that the climbing was worthwhile.

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Through Duty Lies the Road to Restored Fellowship

And so I reach the last truth I want to give you—through duty lies the road to restored fellowship. It was when they had toiled, and toiled heroically, that they discovered Jesus on the shore. There is something magnificent in their persistence all through the weary hours of that night. Time after time their nets were shot, and time after time their nets were empty. And yet they held to it till every light was quenched that had been twinkling seaward from the village, and the only sound that broke upon the silence was the calling of the night-bird on the lake. The wonder is they did not give it up. They must have been intensely disappointed. The fish were there, for other boats were taking them, and they were quite as skilful as the best. And yet they held to it all through the night and till the dawn was crimsoning the east, and it was then that Jesus Christ came back. They did not find Him because of their success. They found Him because of their fidelity. He did not come after a day of triumph. He came after a night of toil. Not in despair, but from a sense of duty had Simon Peter cried, "I go a fishing"; and he discovered when the morning broke that duty was the road to restored fellowship.

My brother and my sister, may I impress on you that it is always so? When the gladness and the glory are departed, that is the way to come at them again. You cannot always walk upon the mountains. You cannot feel like singing all the time. We are so strangely wrought of soul and body that such exultancies are sure to pass. But at least you can say when darkness is around you, "Please God, I am going to be faithful"; and to you, as to Simon Peter on the lake, that will restore the vision by and by. It is sweet to pray when the gates of heaven are open. It is sweet to serve when everyone is grateful. But I will tell you something that is not so sweet, and yet may be worthier in the sight of God. It is to pray when the heavens are as brass. It is to serve when nobody is grateful. It is to do one's work, and do it well, though there is not a star in all the sky. That is the way into strength of character. That is the avenue of inward peace. That is how men, victorious over moods, come to discover Christ upon the shore. Any baby can say, "I go a fretting"; but Simon Peter said, "I go a fishing," and he went fishing, and he toiled all night, and then there came the morning and the Master.

September 10

The Boat's Breadth - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Cast the net on the right side of the ship— Joh_21:6

Turning Back to Old Tasks

There are few scenes in the Gospel more impressive than this scene in the early morning by the sea of Galilee. Not even the meeting between Christ and Mary in the garden is more touching or tender than this incident. Calvary was past; the night of darkness was ended; Jesus had risen and the awful strain was over. It is in such hours that men instinctively turn again to the common toils which the strain has interrupted, and in such an hour Peter said, "I go a fishing." So Peter and his comrades toiled all night, but for all their toil, their fishing was a failure.
Night—nothing—how these words chime together; night—nothing, morning—Master. For in the morning the risen Christ stood by the lake and cried to them, "Children, have ye any meat?" There was only one answer to that straight question—it was No (we may be near to Christ and yet be starving); then He said to them, "Cast the net on the right side of the ship." They cast it therefore, and it was filled with fish. Whereon in an instant the disciple whom Jesus loved, and to whom the love of Christ gave eyes like the eyes of an eagle, turned to his comrades and Said, "It is the Lord."

The words, then, that I wish to dwell upon are these: Cast the net on the right side of the ship. And what do they suggest to me? These three important truths. First, what we long for is often nearer than we think. Second, we should never be afraid to change our methods. Third, Christ can manage things for us better than we can ourselves.

What We Long for Is Often Nearer Than We Think

You see at a glance that it was so that morning. Somehow, within the sweep of their nets, was the harvest of the sea these men were looking for. All night they had toiled without one sign of fish; they had lost heart; they were weary, hungry, hopeless. "Ah!" they would whisper, "this lake is sadly changed; there used to be good fish in it. There doesn't seem one in it now." But the fish were there, as plentiful as ever, nor were they far away in remote bays and creeks: cast the net on the right side of the ship—and it was full of great fishes, a hundred and fifty and three. What they had toiled for all night was not remote. What their hearts were set on was not far away. When Peter and Thomas and John recalled that morning amid the stress and the struggles of the after years, it would flash on them as one of its sweetest memories that what we long for may be nearer than we think.

Now often in reading the Bible I am struck with the divine insistence on that truth. And I take it that when God repeats a thing, He is bent on getting it graven on our hearts. Let me only recall to you the case of Hagar when she fled with Ishmael under the taunts of Sarah. Her flight lay through the desert with her child, and in the desert her womanly strength gave out. There was no water there was no sign of water; and her child was perishing, and she cried to Abraham's God. And then and there God opened Hagar's eyes and within a stone's cast of her child there was a well. She would have given all the world for water, and it was running near her all the time. She thought of the well beside the tent of Abraham, and there was a spring not a hundred yards away. And the days would pass, and Hagar would reach Egypt; and she would dwell among the temples of idolatry, but she would remember, when all her hair was silvered, that the things we long for may be nearer than we dream.

Everyone of us needs to learn that lesson We are so prone to think that the best is inaccessible. But all that we long for—happiness, love, peace, power—like the hundred and fifty fishes, is just here. Ah, if all that we craved for was remote, life would not be so tragic as it is. If all that we craved for was very far away, the story of humanity would be less pitiable. But the pity of a thousand lives is this, that love and joy and power and peace are here, yet by the breadth of a fishing boat men somehow miss them, and all their life they are toiling in the dark. It is easy to run away from home. It is not so easy to run away from self. Believe that the kingdom of heaven is within you. Believe that the best and the brightest is just here. The things that we crave for, without which we cannot live, which make all the difference between morn and midnight, these things are always nearer than we dream.

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The Boat's Breadth - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

And if that is so of happiness and love you may be certain it is so of Christ. Peter and Nathanael and James and John made that discovery beside the lake. The scene was full of memories of Jesus: every light that twinkled on the lake shore recalled Him. I do not think one hour would pass that night, when the nets were shot and the fishing boat was rocking, but the name of Jesus would be on Peter's lips. They were longing for Him with a longing quite immeasurable; they missed Him unutterably; they could not live without Him. And they learned in the morning when He stood on the shore and called them that the Christ they longed for was nearer than they thought. Do I speak to any who are longing for a Savior—to any who have toiled all night and have caught nothing—to any who are saying "My life is a sorry failure, although God knows I have struggled in the dark?" Behold! I stand at the door and knock, says Christ—the very power and presence that you need. It is easy to believe what Christ wrought in Galilee. It is easy to believe His power in the past. The hard thing is to believe that here and now there is One who can redeem and save and change you. Yet that is what you are longing for now. No one else knows it; they think you are quite satisfied. But you are not satisfied, and I tell you that all that you long for is nearer than you dream.

We Should Never Be Afraid to Change Our Methods

Just think what would have happened by the lake if the disciples had been mastered by that cowardly fear. All night they had cast their nets on the left side—there may have been some fisherman's superstition in the matter—they were simply doing what they had been taught to do; they were holding fast to universal custom. Then in the morning came the ringing voice "Cast the net on the right side of the ship. Try a new method now. Adopt new plans. Strike out on a new course in the grey dawn." What a deal the disciples would have lost if they had sullenly refused to make that venture! No mighty fish would have filled their net to breaking. No one in the boat would have cried, "It is the Lord." The figure would have vanished from the shore; the hot sun would have mounted, and a dreary day would have followed a weary night. But they cast their nets and everything was different. They altered their plans, and the day became divine. It was Christ who was near them; the Savior whom they loved. They had a day of royal fellowship with Him. And I think that in after years when Peter and James and John were fighting their Lord's battles in the world, as often as they recalled this scene in Galilee they would never be afraid to change their methods.

In our moral and spiritual life we must get rid of this debasing fear. When we have been toiling all night and have caught nothing, it is time to cast the net upon the other side. Henry Drummond used to tell us of a duel that he had witnessed in one of the German universities. The combatants faced each other, and the swords made rapid play, and stroke after stroke was given, parried, baffled. Then suddenly, quick as a flash, one fighter changed his tactics; with the swiftness of thought he gave an unlooked-for stroke, and by the unlooked-for stroke the first blood was drawn. We are all fighting heavenward and Godward in a duel far more terrible than that of German students. There is not one of us in whom the flesh does not lust against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and sometimes it seems as if victory were impossible. Try some new plan tonight. Strike out upon fresh lines. Have the courage to adopt a novel stroke. You have been fishing on the left and failing long enough. Cast the net on the right side of the ship.

Of course, I would not have anyone imagine that Jesus is putting a premium upon fickleness. There is no more hopeless character in the world than that of the fickle and inconstant man. The very fact that all through the weary night the disciples had evidently fished on the left side shows that in all of them there was that noble doggedness without which strong character is never forged. The man who can toil all night though he gets nothing is the rough material out of which saints are made. There is something heroic in all quiet persistency, especially when not one fish comes to the net. But to all of us, I imagine, there come mornings like the morning that dawned on these fishers at the lake; hours when we feel more intensely, when we see more vividly, when hopes are born in us and when new vistas open. It is in such hours, if we be men at all, that we will never hesitate to make great changes—we will cast our nets on the right side of the ship. We have never really prayed, but we shall pray now. We have never been thankful, we shall be thankful now. We have let devotion take the place of service, or we have let service take the place of prayer. Beware of the tyranny of habit in religion. There are ruts for the heart as well as for the wheels. We have toiled all night upon the left and have caught nothing. Cast the net on the right side of the ship.

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The Boat's Breadth - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And that is not only a lesson for the individual; it is a lesson for the whole church of Christ. I am no advocate of ill-considered changes. A mighty church must always be slow to move. I love old sanctuaries worn by the hand of time, and the grass-grown corners where our fathers sleep. I love to worship simply and in quiet places where the leaves brush against the windows and the birds are singing, where there are rugged faces round me that have known what tears are, and where I can bow in reverence before Almighty God. I love solemnity and dignity in worship. I love a church mellowed and grey with years. But the question of questions is not what I love. The question of questions is what about the nets? Are they full; are they empty; are there any fish in them? Are men being saved? Is the world being redeemed? If it is not, then let the dead past bury its dead, and cast the nets on the right side of the ship. Do not be eager for a change of methods. Do not be afraid of a change of methods. Measure the matter by the nets, and the nets only—by the power of the church with a dying and lost world.

New occasions teach new duties,

Time makes ancient good uncouth,

They must up and ever onward

Who would keep abreast of truth.

Christ Can Manage Our Daily Lives Better Than We Can Ourselves

Now just think of it, Peter and James were fishermen. They had been falling into that lake since they were babies. They knew every bay in it and every trick of the wind and every art and secret of the fisherman's craft. Then Jesus came to them. He gave directions. Did they resent it as gross interference? They did what He bade them, and doing it they found that He could manage their business better than they themselves.

Now after we have preached, businessmen sometimes say, "Ah! the minister knows nothing about business." That may be true, yet I should like to say in passing that the more I know businessmen, the more I honour them. In the face of risks we ministers know nothing of, they show a courage and a patience that put some of us to shame. I have felt a hundred times that had I but half the consecration to my business that I see in the lives of some businessmen to whom I preach, I might be less haunted with the sense of doing nothing. But that is by the way, my point is this—though the minister does not understand, remember Christ does. He can give advice to the most cunning fisherman, and the fisherman will never regret that he adopted it. Consult Him when all your labour is a failure. Go to Him on the eve of every venture. Tell Him all about it. Ask His advice on it. He knows far more about fishing than Peter ever did. It is such a pity that the fish should all be there, and that by a boat's breadth you should miss your share of them—the share which God in His providence meant for you and which you lose because you will not take His way.

September 11

The Reversions of Jesus

When he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me— Joh_21:19

The First Command

It is deeply significant to notice the reversions of our blessed Lord. The last command that Peter got (Joh_21:19) was the first that ever broke upon his ear. When Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee He saw Peter busy at his fishing. It was not the first time that they had met, as we learn from the Gospel of St. John (Joh_1:42). The Lord had met him and seen his latent strength and given him his new name of rock, but hitherto Peter had been free. It was of that our Lord was thinking when He said: Once thou "walkedst whither thou wouldest" (Joh_21:18). Peter had no Master then. He was free to go wherever his heart took him. And the first command that Jesus laid on him was "Peter, follow Me," and Peter left his nets and followed Him. Then the Lord of Galilee was risen. In a little while He was going to the Father. He was laying His last commands on the disciples in view of the years that were to come. And the last command He gave to Peter, in that never-to-be-forgotten interview, was the first command that Peter ever got.

The Same Command Came at the End with Deepened Meaning

One thought which springs from such reversions is how words are deepened by the years. How beautifully in this instance is that illustrated. When Peter first heard that word of Christ he was a young man, dreaming the dreams of youth. Conscious of power, he was growing restless at the thought of spending a lifetime dragging nets. And when the Lord said, "Peter, follow Me, and I will make you a fisher of men," He struck home, with His unerring touch, to that slumbering and uneasy discontent. That was what following meant for Peter then. It meant the realization of his dreams. It meant a loftier and nobler service than he could hope for by the sea of Galilee. Peter was like a Highland lad, rebelling at being a tenant farmer all his days, and then one comes and calls him to the ministry. Now the years had passed, and life had come. Peter had been in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had witnessed the suffering of Jesus and learned the necessity of cross-bearing. What a depth of meaning now in the words "Follow me," a depth that he had never dreamed of once, when he first heard the call beside the lake.

And when we come to think of it that is what life does with every one of us. It does not give us new words after the years; it fills the old words with a deeper meaning. Think of the word war, for instance. How little it meant to us twenty years ago. It was a word of history and far-off battlefields, in those quiet and peaceful days. Then came the Great War, pouring its tides into our hearts and homes. And what a depth of meaning we never dreamed of once is wrapped up for us now in the word war. Think of the word mother. When we were young we took the word for granted. We never saw the patience and the sacrifice sleeping in that word mother. Now with the flight of years we understand, and the word is richer by ia thousand times than when it was uttered by the lips of childhood. Life does not come to us with new words. It comes to us with old familiar words. By joy and sorrow, by suffering and striving, it fills them with meanings which once we never saw. And that is just what Jesus did with Peter, when at the end, infinitely deepened, He gave him the first command he ever got.

Return to the Old and Simple Things

Again how often, after life's experience, do we come back to the old and simple things. That is precisely what Simon Peter did under the perfect handling of the Lord. These three years that he had spent with Jesus had been the greatest years of Peter's life. Old things had passed away; they were years of exploration and adventure. Walking with Christ is always a fine adventure; it is a launching out into the deep, and so had it proved itself with Peter. He had been led to a new thought of God; he had fathomed the secret of his Lord; he had stood on the summit of transfiguration; he had eaten the sacramental bread. And now, in the hour of Christ's departure, when he might have looked for something strange and wonderful, he was led back to the old simplicities again. "Follow me" was the earliest word in Galilee, when the morning was beautiful and life was tranquil. Since then the windows of heaven had opened and all the deeps had been broken up. And now, after that spiritual voyaging, Jesus lays on him anew the first command, and leads him back to the old and simple things.

And so does life do in many different ways, often, for instance, in reference to the Bible. From all the glory and the wealth of literature, life brings us back to that old Book again. Need I recall to you Sir Walter Scott, dying beside the music of bagpipes. "Lockhart," he said, "read to me from the Book," and Lockhart answered, "Which book, sir?" And then Scott, the same great heart in dying as he had been in living, said, "My dear, there is only one book." What a poorer world it would be for many of us without the glorious stories of Sir Walter. What a poorer world it would have been for him without his ballads and his Dryden and his Shakespeare. Yet, when the hand of God had touched him, and deep was calling unto deep, "My dear, there is only one book." He was back to the old simplicities again. Mortal needs conspired to bring him back. And what mortal needs conspired to do for him Christ did for Simon Peter. He brought him back to the old and simple word which he had heard in the morning by the sea of Galilee, "Follow thou me."

September 12

Waiting

And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?— Act_1:10-11

The Ascension — Christlike and Natural

Our lesson begins with the narrative of the Ascension, and the reader will remember that this is the second account of the departure of Jesus into heaven. The Gospel of Luke closes with the story, and now the Acts of the Apostles opens with it. The event that ends the earthly ministry of Jesus begins the ministry upon the throne. We are not to think of Jesus' work in heaven as something quite different from His work on earth. All He accomplished here was but the beginning (Act_1:1) of a service that He shall carry on forever Now the Ascension is the link between the two. It is the passage of the unchanging Lord from the lower to the higher sphere of service. Hence Luke concludes his Gospel with it and then puts it in the forefront of the Acts. Note, too, in the descriptions given by Luke, how sober and subdued the coloring is. When Luke tells of Pentecost, he is thrilled with excitement. He is vivid and picturesque, almost dramatic, when he relates the healing of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful. But a few simple and very quiet words are all that he uses for the Ascension, yet to us that seems the greatest wonder in the world. Two thoughts are suggested by Luke's simple statement. The first is, how Christlike the Ascension was. He who came down like rain on the mown grass, and who would not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets, will not go home with any sound of trumpet. And the second is, how natural it seemed to the little company who went forth to Olivet. They had always felt that Jesus lived in heaven. Could they be greatly surprised when He went there? The disciples were astounded at the cross. Death seemed so alien from the life of Jesus. But they were not astounded at the Ascension. They worshipped, and went to the city with great joy.

The Upper Room with So Many Memories Became the Place of Waiting

So the little company returned to Jerusalem, and we read that they went up into an upper room (Act_1:13). There can be little question that it was the very room that was already fragrant with memories of Jesus. Here, on the night on which He was betrayed, the bread had been broken and the cup had been drunk. Here they had sat, with the doors barred for fear of the Jews, when Jesus had appeared in their midst on the Lord's day. Probably from this very room they had gone forth to witness the Ascension upon Olivet. They were not forgetting the things that were behind when they returned under the familiar roof. The past was blending with the future for them; the agony, with the words "until He come." Try to imagine the company gathered there. There are the women who had ministered to Jesus and had held fast to Him when everyone else had fled. There is Mary, His mother, and this is the last glimpse we get of Mary, and she is worshipping the Son she once had nursed. His brethren are there, and only six months before John tells us they did not believe in Him. It was not so long ago since these very brethren had sought to have Him arrested as a madman. And now, for the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost, that company continues in united prayer. Their hearts are changed; their doubts have passed away; the command of Jesus is of supreme importance now. They are waiting for the promise of the Father, for the impending baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Replacing Judas

But one preparatory act still remained to be done. The number of the disciples was not complete. The little band must be at its full strength when the Spirit of God touched them with sevenfold power. So Peter rises— the same, and yet how changes How different from the impulsive, boisterous Simon! He is spokesman yet (such men are chieftains always), but a great fall has bowed him to the dust, and a great love has set him on a rock, and there is a quiet dignity of sweet restraint about him now that makes him ten times the man he was in Galilee. He would have hurled hard names at Judas once. Now Judas "was guide to them that took Jesus." He would have pictured his doom in fiery colors once. Now Judas has just gone "to his own place." If ever a man came out of the darkness glorified, I think that man was gallant Simon Peter. At Peter's request, then, and after a brief sermon, a disciple was chosen to fill the place of Judas, and we may note these two features of the action. Firstly, everyone present had a hand in it. They all prayed and all gave forth their lots. Secondly, the qualification of the disciple was twofold— he must have companied with the Lord Jesus from His baptism, and he must have been a witness of the Resurrection. Matthias was chosen. The lot fell on Matthias. Can the reader cite instances of the lot from the Old Testament? It was entirely discarded after Pentecost, and I think that the Moravians are the only body of Christians who still practice the casting of the lot.

Lessons to Be Learned:

1. God Does Not Want Us to Be Always Gazing. The disciples would have stayed on the Mount of Transfiguration, but a demoniac boy was waiting at the fool The women would have lingered where their Lord was laid but they were bidden to depart with the glad news that Christ was risen. So here the two men in white apparel said, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing?— have you no duties to fulfil at home, and do you not know that Christ will come again?" 2. There Are Unknown Disciples. No man on earth knows who Matthias was. There is not a trace of him in any Gospel; we never meet him in history again. Yet he had been with Jesus since His baptism and seen Him after His rising from the dead, and now it is the unknown follower who is chosen to take the honored place of a disciple. God, then, has many hidden servants. We do not know them, but the Master does. If they are faithful in the toil that no one sees, they shall have the ten cities by and by. 3. There Is Purpose in God's Delay. For ten days the disciples had to wait. God did not send the Holy Spirit at once. It must have been hard to abide in that upper room and keep the glorious secret of Ascension. Yet the ten days were educative days. The power of fervent prayer was realized; the company were knit into a surer brotherhood upon their knees; the glory of Christ shone on them more transcendently. There was a deep purpose in that delay of God. He had a fatherly meaning in His tarrying. And whenever in our life the delays of heaven seem hard, we do well to remember that upper room.

September 13

The Sabbath Day's Journey - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey— Act_1:12

A Three-Quarter Mile Journey

A Sabbath day's journey with the Jews was a quite exact and definite expression. It was a journey of about three-quarters of a mile. In the Exodus, you will remember, the tabernacle was in the center of the camp. On every side of it were ranged the tribes of Israel. From the tabernacle to the farthest tent was a distance of about three-quarters of a mile and that was a Sabbath day's journey. Such was the technical import of the word, but like other words, it got a vaguer meaning. It came to mean a short and easy journey, a journey such as anyone might take. And it will help us to understand our text and some of the wealth of meaning in it if we keep that looser significance in mind.

The Mount of Olives Is Associated with Loneliness

As most of you doubtless are aware, though it may not often be present to your thought, the division of our Bible into chapters is a comparatively modern device. In the ancient Greek Testament there are no chapters. Now unquestionably, on the whole, the division into chapters is a help; yet there are cases where it is not a help but, on the contrary, obscures the meaning One such unfortunate division bears directly on the Mount of Olives. At the end of the seventh chapter of St. John we read, "Then every man went away to his own house." At the beginning of the next chapter, "Jesus went to the Mount of Olives." And it is only when we take these two together and let them lie together in the mind that we feel what the writer wanted us to feel, the spiritual loneliness of Christ. Every man went unto his own house; Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives. It haunts the memory, that lonely figure, homeless when all the company went home. And then, deepening the feeling greatly and throwing light on the loneliness of Christ, we are told here that the Mount of Olives was but a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem.

The Loneliness of Christ

Now loneliness is of many kinds, just as love is of many kinds. And there are many pictures of loneliness in Scripture, that perfect mirror of the human heart. There is the loneliness of Cain when he was driven out from the face of living men. There is the loneliness of Abraham when he went out not knowing whither he went. And there is the loneliness of the apostle John when he was an exile on the isle of Patmos where in the evening when the sun was setting he could perhaps sit by the sad waves on the seashore. All these were far away from friends and kindred. They were separated from all the ties of home. Their eyes looked out on unfamiliar scenes where was no form of comrade or of brother. But the loneliness of Christ was of another kind. It was the loneliness of Olivet, and Olivet was but a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem. Not far away from Him were happy homes. He saw the sunshine flashing on the walls. In the still evening He could hear the voices of the children who were playing in the marketplace His was a loneliness amid familiar scenes and not far distant from familiar faces where men were toiling and cottage fires were smoking and mothers were rocking their little ones to sleep.

Loneliness Amid Men

Perhaps we better recognize the truth of this when we compare our Savior with the Baptist. The Baptist was a very solitary figure. The Baptist withdrew himself from human companionship— retired to the solitude of deserts— moved apart from men, far from the markets, where the lonely reeds were shaken by the wind. And yet the Baptist, for all his desert-solitude, does not touch one with such a sense of loneliness as Christ who moved among the haunts of me, The one was a recluse and dwelt apart; the other the friend of publicans and sinners. The one was a harsh and rigorous ascetic; the other was infinitely genial. And He loved the children, and He went to marriages, and He moved in the traffic of the village street; and yet I wonder if in all the centuries there has ever been such loneliness as Christ's. The loneliness of John was desert loneliness; it was the loneliness of isolation. But the loneliness of Christ was not like that. His was the loneliness of Olivet.

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The Sabbath Day's Journey - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Unutterable Loneliness

And is it not the case that loneliness like that is very often the most intense of all? It is not those who are alone who are most lonely.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.

There is a rapture by the lonely shore.

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.

But often there is a loneliness unutterable in the crowded city where the street are thronged and the windows are brilliantly lighted in the evening. That is the loneliness of every city, it is the loneliness of every Christmas, where love and life and sympathy and comradeship may be so near and yet so far away. And that, too, was the loneliness of Olivet where Jesus went when everyone went home, only a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem.

Mount of Olives Associated with Agony

Secondly, let us recall how the Mount of Olives is associated with agony. It is there that we find the agony of Christ; you remember the story of that agony? When the supper was ended they sang a hymn together, and then they went out to the Mount of Olives. They went down to the valley and across the brook and so upward to that place where was a garden. And there, under the silvery olive trees, with the light of the harvestmoon making them beautiful, our Savior was sorrowful even unto death. There He wrestled in spirit with His cross till his fast falling sweat was red as blood. There He fought His battle for the crown. There He conquered the shrinking of the flesh. And all this anguish which has redeemed the world was experienced upon the slope of Olivet, only a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem.

Now as with loneliness, so is it too with agony. There is agony of many kinds in Scripture. There is every sort of human anguish there in that immortal mirror of mortality. There is the agony of Abraham when he climbed Moriah to sacrifice his son. There is the agony of Hagar out in the desert with her little Ishmael. And you must take such agonies as these and compare them with that under the olive trees to understand the agony of Christ. The agony of Abraham was on the lonely mountain where never a sound was heard except the calling wind. That of Hagar was in a dreary desert where could not be heard the beating of another heart. But the agony of Christ was in a garden, a garden under the shelter of Mount Olivet, and Olivet was but a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem. All that anguish, not on the lonely moor, but known in its bitterness under the olive trees; amid familiar scenes where folk were moving and where the bridles rang upon the path, and Jerusalem but a little distance off, where mothers watched and little children dreamed, where some were toiling and some were making merry and some were brokenhearted.

The Greatest Suffering Is Not in Isolation

Now does it not occur to you, my friend, that that is an illuminating thought? The greatest and most poignant sufferings— are they not always near the haunts of men? Men fly to the wilderness and suffer there as many a hermit and anchorite has done. Men scale the snowy cliffs and suffer there as in heroic adventure on the Alps. Yet perhaps I the sorest and most bitter suffering is not the suffering of distant solitude's, but that which (like the Lord Himself) is not far away from anyone of us. It is suffering within hail of home and in the midst of familiar faces. It is the suffering of love despised, of friendship broken, of service unrewarded. It is the suffering of being true to God in daily duty and at every cost; it is the suffering of fatherhood and motherhood. Such agony is not a distant thing; it is not like that of Abraham or Hagar. It is near at hand, amid the lives we cling to, within the sound of voices that we love. It is the anguish not of Mount Moriah where everything was desolate and still. It is the anguish of the Mount of Olives.

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The Sabbath Day's Journey - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Triumph of the Mount of Olives

In the third place, and lastly, I observe that the Mount of Olives is associated with triumph: it was the scene of the Ascension of the Lord. It is not often that farewells are victories; very often they are tragedies. Had we

Never met or never parted

We had ne'er been brokenhearted.

But the farewell of our Lord was not a tragedy; it was the crowning hour of all that He had lived for, "who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame." That hour was the coronation of His work. It was the completion of His career of service. It was the victorious ending of His toil and tears, of His humiliation and His sacrifice. And to me it is beautiful that all this happened, not in some remote and shadowy region, but within a Sabbath day's journey of Jerusalem.

The Comparison between the Death of Moses and Christ

Compare, for instance, the going home of Christ with the going home of Moses. One feels the difference between Christ and Moses by a comparison like that. Moses went home upon a lonely height far from the pleasant stir of human life. It was a desolate and dreary spot where God unlocked the gate and took him in. But Christ went home amid familiar scenes and with the voices of those He loved around Him, not far away from the city of His ancestry. The eagle was wheeling and the wind was calling when "God kissed Moses, and he slept." His work was over, his splendid service finished, and the scene was far and desolate and lonely. But the triumph of Christ was of another kind. He went to the liberty of heaven from Olivet, and Olivet— a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem.

Now did it ever suggest itself to you how exquisitely beautiful that was? Christ triumphed then where He has triumphed always, near to the ordinary home and ordinary heart. There is a triumph of the lonely student keeping his vigil separate from men. There is a triumph of the Arctic traveler when he wins at last the silence of the pole. But every victory that Christ has won has been wrought out where men and women are, amid those hopes and fears and passions and affections which are the warp and woof of all humanity. It is Christ who has transfigured home and the lot of childhood and the love of motherhood. It is Christ who has ennobled common life, touching it with the glory of the infinite. He has won His victories where He was lonely; found His triumphs where He found His agony, not far away in any voiceless wilderness, but within sound of the voices of the city, That is why we can turn to Him tonight, certain that He is not far away. That is why we can say with glowing hearts, "I triumph still, if Thou abide with me." And that, I take it, is why He passed victorious into that heaven where His Father dwells from a familiar little hill called Olivet, which is but a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem.

September 14

Filled with the Spirit - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place— Act_2:1
Be filled with the Spirit— Eph_5:18

Pentecost Was a Great Day for the Church

That the day of Pentecost was a great day for the Church is one of the plainest facts in Christian history. It is described, and not inaptly, as the Church's birthday. Up till that hour we were separate individuals putting their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have Nicodemus and Zacchaeus and Martha and Mary and the Magdalene. But now in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we have separate individuals drawn together into the fellowship of faith and worship.

It Was Also a Great Day for the Disciples

But if Pentecost means a great deal for the Church, it also meant much for the disciples. There is a true sense in which we may regard it as the great day, even the birthday, of their lives. Just as for Paul there ever stood out one day when he had met with Christ on the Damascus road, just as for Luther there ever stood out one day when there had rung on his ear that "the just shall live by faith," so for the disciples, through all their after-history with its journeyings, its persecutions, its service, and its martyrdom, there stood out clear and definite the day of Pentecost. And it was not the excitement of the day that made it memorable, for they had passed through many an hour of high excitement. Nor was it the outward miracle of tongues of fire, for they had witnessed far greater miracles than that. What made it memorable was the profound overwhelming change within them that had been wrought by the ascended Christ when He filled them with the Holy

Pentecost for the Disciples Was Not the Beginning of Discipleship

We are to notice, then, that this filling with the Spirit was not the beginning of discipleship. These men had been disciples, loyal disciples, long before the day of Pentecost. With one exception, they had all been called by Christ in the days of His humiliation And they had heard the call, and followed Him, and shared in the unspeakable blessing of His intimacy. And they had gone apart into a desert place with Him and listened to all the riches of His wisdom, and then on that night on which He was betrayed, they had sat as His guests at the communion table. Nay, more, they had seen Him in His resurrection, and He had breathed on them the Holy Spirit then. He had come among them in the upper chamber and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." And yet with all that wonderful experience of Christ as Teacher, Savior, and Friend, they were still waiting for a larger blessing. That blessing came to them beyond all question, and our text tells us when it came. It came when the day of Pentecost arrived, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. It was then that they were changed down to the depths, and it was then that everything was changed for them. They were new men, in a new universe, after the filling with the Holy Spirit.

Every Christian Ought to Be Filled with the Spirit

Now one cannot look abroad upon the Christian Church today without becoming conscious of the fact that multitudes of men and women have never reached the experience of Pentecost They too, like the disciples, have heard the call of Christ, and, like the disciples, have obeyed the call. And He has taught them, and He has breathed upon them, and they own Him sincerely as Prophet, Priest, and King And yet, with all their allegiance to the Lord and all their trust in Jesus as Redeemer, they have never known that Pentecostal blessing that makes a man in Christ a new creation. They have never been filled and flooded by the Spirit They have never been mastered by the living Christ. They have never felt themselves as empty vessels into which Christ was pouring grace and power. And so their lives, however loyal and dutiful and however blessed in their willing service, are not the Christ-filled and Christ-empowered lives that are the peculiar creation of the Gospel. For Pentecost, as I understand the Scripture, is not a mere matter of Church history. It is a privilege which every believer ought to claim. it is a blessing which every believer ought to have. Pentecost is the filling with the Spirit, and we are commanded in Scripture to be filled with the Spirit, just as plainly as we are commanded there to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

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by George H. Morrison

The Holy Spirit Changes Our Spirits

With that remark, then, I proceed to ask what change did Pentecost work in the disciples, and in the first place we shall observe how mightily it changed their Spirit. As a simple matter of historical fact, that hour in the upper chamber of Jerusalem gave a new heart and a new outlook to every member of the company. It was not that it led them to believe in Christ; they had believed in Christ for many a day. It was not even that it led them to love Christ; for one had cried, "Thou knowest that I love Thee." But it was that in the filling with the Spirit, everything was so vitalized and vivified that old beliefs seemed new men shadowy as dreams and they felt themselves in a new world. Before Pentecost they had been uncertain; after Pentecost they bore unfaltering witness. Before Pentecost they had been dimly groping; after Pentecost they were in full assurance. Before Pentecost they had been afraid and gathered in silence not knowing what might happen; and after Pentecost, like Christian knights, they were ready for battle with the world. When you contrast that quiet upper chamber with its door shut against intruding feet, with its seclusion, with its shrinking from publicity, with its avoidance of the big and bitter world, when you contrast that scene with the scene that immediately follows it of men aflame and fearless and heroic facing the crowd, lifting up their voices, coveting the opportunity of preaching— I say when you contrast these scenes and think that both belonged to the same day, you know that something mighty had occurred. And it was not anything outward or spectacular, such as a shaken house or tongues of fire. It was the promised fullness of the Holy Spirit filling every nook and every cranny of these rich natures that had been prepared for it by faith in Christ and fellowship and prayer.

The Fullness of the Spirit Belongs to Every Believer.

So when to any man who names the name of Christ there comes in the goodness of God the hour of Pentecost, in him there is repeated this old miracle and he knows himself a new creature in Christ Jesus. He does not become a believer, for he had through many a believed cloudy day. Nor does he then begin to love his Savior, for he has truly loved Him and striven to obey Him. But, filled now with the Spirit of Him who lives, everything is energized and vitalized, and his old faith, in which he sought to serve, seems shadowy and unsubstantial as a dream. Now comes the time of which the apostle speaks in that magnificent chapter, the eighth of Romans, "The law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death." So the old conflict is practically ended, and peace reigns and liberty and joy, "Not by might and not by power but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." All this in a magnificence no words can utter, is the purchased inheritance of every Christian. No man who names the name of Christ should rest till he receives that fullness of the Holy Ghost. And sometimes God leads His children by strange ways, and by dark and devious and humbling paths, that He may bring them in His infinite mercy to the full blessing of the day of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit Gave the Disciples a Fuller Comprehension of the Truth

The second thing we must observe is this, and it is equally evident with what I have now said. It is how mightily the day of Pentecost the disciples apprehension of the truth. Not only did it affect changed their nature, but it had a profound effect on their comprehension of the truth, Now we should have expected that it would be so, for they had the promise of Jesus that it would be so: When he, the Spirit of truth, is come he shall guide you into all truth and again, as if to interpret that great promise, "He shall take of mine and shew it unto you"— He shall take of what you have all seen and heard in Me and shall shew you what it really means. If ever a promise was literally fulfilled, brethren, it is that promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. For, as a simple matter of historical fact, that is precisely what Pentecost achieved. It did not teach the disciples any new truth, but it brought to their remembrance all the old; it so quickened it and showed its meaning that it became a gospel for the world. You read the sermon that Peter preached on the morning of the day of Pentecost, and there is not a thought in it but you shall find embraced in the teaching and the life and death of Jesus,. And yet to think of Peter preaching that before his filling with the Holy Spirit is a thing that is utterly incredible. Think of John not knowing what spirit he was of, then go and read the Epistles of St. John. Think of Peter crying, "I go afishing," and then go and read the First Epistle of Peter. Something has happened— something mighty and wonderful has happened. And that something so mighty and so wonderful is the promised fullness of the Holy Ghost.

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Filled with the Spirit - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Holy Spirit Creates in Us an Infallible Spirit

And so when a Christian man comes to his Pentecost, he too shares in the promise of his Lord. The Spirit not only makes him a new creature, but He guides him into all truth In that great experience of blessing, a man is not taught what he did not know before. The life of Jesus, His death, His resurrection— all that he has long known and studied. But when the promised Spirit is vouchsafed all that, and all the doctrine it involves, becomes so living and so intensely real that it is grasped as it never was before. The Spirit witnesseth with our spirit, and in that twofold witness we have a great assurance. Taught by the Holy Ghost, we apprehend what intellectually we failed to grasp. We find in our own experience the truth of what we had read for many a year in Scripture, and reading, had striven humbly to believe, on the authority of the Word of God. Now we no longer struggle to believe. Now, to disbelieve would be impossible. The outward witness of the Word of God is confirmed by the inward witness of the Spirit. And we need no argument to prove the truth nor any commentary to explain it to us. It is within us a living, mighty thing through the blessed indwelling of the Holy Ghost. What does a man want with an infallible church who has that infallible witness in his heart? The only fallible church is in the soul which is illuminated by the Holy Spirit let a man seek the authority of councils when he is still groping and wandering in darkness. He will never seek it, and he will never need it, when God in His mercy has brought him to his Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit Gave the Disciples New Power to Serve

And then, lastly, I ask you to observe what is also equally and singularly evident. It is how Pentecost, coming to the disciples, mightily changed them in their power for service. Not only did it revivify their natures; not only did it illuminate their minds; it gave them an actual power for service such as they had never had before. Of course they had all been used before; they had been used from the hour when they were called. From the very beginning of their following of Jesus they had been honored to be the Master's instruments. Long before a man has come to Pentecost he may have faith as a grain of mustard seed, and Christ has told us what a man can do if he has a faith like that. Let not a syllable fall from my lips to disparage the earlier toils of these disciples. Would God that you and I were found as faithful as they were in the Galilean ministry. And yet think of that earlier ministry, and them compare it with the later ministry, and it is all as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine. Think of the mighty effects of Peter's sermon— three thousand were converted in one day. Think of the churches that sprang up and grew in the teeth of the most terrific oppositions. Think of the Gospels and letters that they wrote that came with such power to a dying world and which the world will not willingly let die. My brother, it was not the atonement that did it. It was not the resurrection or ascension, It was the Holy Spirit taking the atonement and making it a mighty thing It was the day of Pentecost that gave the power, and that too had been foreseen by Christ, for "Tarry ye here." He said to His disciples, "till ye receive power from on high..

September 17

Peter and John before the Council

The priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus— Act_4:1, Act_4:2, Act_4:13

Miracle and Sermon Distasteful to the Rulers

An old writer has said that a miracle was like the bell before the sermon, it caught the attention of the people and brought them together for the preaching of the Word. Now that was true of the miracle at the Gate Beautiful. As with the summons of some clear-toned bell, it brought a vast congregation to the disciples. And in the closing part of the third chapter, we have the sermon that Peter preached to them. But the miracle and the discourse which followed it were very abhorrent to the ruling powers. They thought that they had triumphed over Jesus, and here was His cause more visible than ever. Peter and John were apprehended instantly. They were going to the Temple and were taken to prison instead. I think that Peter and John sang hymns that night as lustily as Paul and Silas did at Philippi. Then in the morning they were led before the rulers. The council of state was set, and they were stationed in the midst of it. And they were asked (as if the questioners did not know) by what authority or name they had done this. Peter, briefly, respectfully, and manfully, declared that the power had been the power of Jesus. He showed his auditors how prophecy was fulfilled. He declared that there was no salvation out of Christ. And though to the hearers this was hateful doctrine and though they would willingly have silenced it forever, yet there was the lame man— lame no more— among them, and that was an argument not to be gainsaid. What could be done? Was there no help for it? Could none devise means for stopping the rising tide? That most august and venerable council revealed their impotence in the course they took. They laid a charge on Peter and on John that the name of Jesus was not to pass their lips. They might as well have charged the breaking sea to cease its thundering when the tempest blew. Peter and John were bound to disobey. Even as Jews, must they not be loyal to God? So they were loosed, and being loosed, they went (as we all do) to their own company (Act_4:23).

Ready to Envy Others' Influence

Now the first thing that arrests us here is this, how ready we are to envy others' influence. You would have thought that the Pharisees and priests, having the interests of their land at heart, would have been heartily glad to get a lame man healed. You would have thought that they might have argued like this, "Whoever did it is a secondary matter; the great thing is that suffering has been ended, so let us all give thanks to God for that." Instead of that we read that they were grieved. They were heart-harassed; they were quite sick with envy. If one of their own rank had wrought the miracle, it had been well. But it was all wrong when Peter and John did it. Do you think that that spirit has quite died away? Sometimes we call that spirit party-spirit, but in its essence it is nothing less than envy. It would have been sweet if we could have done this or that, but—someone else has done it and it is torture. We must remember that God has many instruments. We must pray and struggle for a new humility. We must take as our spiritual motto that "God fulfils Himself in many ways."

You Can Tell Who Has Been with Jesus

The next thing that we observe is this, there is no mistaking one who has been with Jesus. When they saw the boldness of Peter and of John, they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. That is not the mere statement of a fact of history. It does not mean that it dawned on the council then that these men had been in Jesus' company. John was on friendly terms with the authorities, and I fancy that all of them had heard of Peter. It means that when they saw the boldness of the two, they recognized the spirit of Jesus Christ. Like a flash, the demeanor of Christ upon His trial rose up before them; it was He who spoke through the two prisoners. There is no mistaking one who has been with Jesus. He may speak out as Simon Peter did, or like John he may not open his lips, but the world has an instinct for the Master's presence and can tell when a man has truly been with Christ. I dare say you have all heard the eastern story of the lump of clay that exhaled an exquisite fragrance. And when someone asked it how it smelled so sweet, it replied that it had been lying near a muskrose for days. There is an unmistakable fragrance in a life that dwells continually near the Rose of Sharon.

Loyalty to God Our First Duty

Again this noble truth breaks from these verses, that loyalty to God is our first duty. It must have been hard for Peter to disobey the council. I think it would be harder still for John. They were both Jews both steeped in Jewish feeling, nor had they lost their reverence for Jewish rule. Now comes the moment of crisis in their history. They are faced by the greatest choice to which a man is called. On the one hand is the past— the world— authority. On the other hand is the clear will of God. We know what Peter and John chose in that hour. It was very simply and very quietly done. Yet the future would have been far different for them both, and the story of Christendom would have been altered, had they swerved from the will of God in that decision. We can never tell the issues of our choices. They reach far further than we ever dream. We only know that when we choose as Peter did, we may leave the future with John's and Peter's Lord. The scene reminds us of Luther at the Diet, refusing to comply or to retract, and saying "Here stand I. I can do nought else. God help me. Amen."

Factual Demonstration of the Resurrection

Lastly, we mark this in the story, the great arguments for a risen Christ are facts. It was not the preaching of Peter that silenced the council. It was the presence of the man who had been healed. It was a man, touched by the power of heaven, who was the sure witness of an ascended Lord. It is by facts that we prove the resurrection. It is by the long history of Christendom. It is by the experiences of countless hearts that are inexplicable save for a living Christ. Men may deny that rising from the dead. They may think it is but an idle tale. But when they behold the man who has been healed, like the Jews they can say nothing against it.

September 18

Peter and John before the Council

The priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus— Act_4:1, Act_4:2, Act_4:13

Miracle and Sermon Distasteful to the Rulers

An old writer has said that a miracle was like the bell before the sermon, it caught the attention of the people and brought them together for the preaching of the Word. Now that was true of the miracle at the Gate Beautiful. As with the summons of some clear-toned bell, it brought a vast congregation to the disciples. And in the closing part of the third chapter, we have the sermon that Peter preached to them. But the miracle and the discourse which followed it were very abhorrent to the ruling powers. They thought that they had triumphed over Jesus, and here was His cause more visible than ever. Peter and John were apprehended instantly. They were going to the Temple and were taken to prison instead. I think that Peter and John sang hymns that night as lustily as Paul and Silas did at Philippi. Then in the morning they were led before the rulers. The council of state was set, and they were stationed in the midst of it. And they were asked (as if the questioners did not know) by what authority or name they had done this. Peter, briefly, respectfully, and manfully, declared that the power had been the power of Jesus. He showed his auditors how prophecy was fulfilled. He declared that there was no salvation out of Christ. And though to the hearers this was hateful doctrine and though they would willingly have silenced it forever, yet there was the lame man— lame no more— among them, and that was an argument not to be gainsaid. What could be done? Was there no help for it? Could none devise means for stopping the rising tide? That most august and venerable council revealed their impotence in the course they took. They laid a charge on Peter and on John that the name of Jesus was not to pass their lips. They might as well have charged the breaking sea to cease its thundering when the tempest blew. Peter and John were bound to disobey. Even as Jews, must they not be loyal to God? So they were loosed, and being loosed, they went (as we all do) to their own company (Act_4:23).

Ready to Envy Others' Influence

Now the first thing that arrests us here is this, how ready we are to envy others' influence. You would have thought that the Pharisees and priests, having the interests of their land at heart, would have been heartily glad to get a lame man healed. You would have thought that they might have argued like this, "Whoever did it is a secondary matter; the great thing is that suffering has been ended, so let us all give thanks to God for that." Instead of that we read that they were grieved. They were heart-harassed; they were quite sick with envy. If one of their own rank had wrought the miracle, it had been well. But it was all wrong when Peter and John did it. Do you think that that spirit has quite died away? Sometimes we call that spirit party-spirit, but in its essence it is nothing less than envy. It would have been sweet if we could have done this or that, but—someone else has done it and it is torture. We must remember that God has many instruments. We must pray and struggle for a new humility. We must take as our spiritual motto that "God fulfils Himself in many ways."

You Can Tell Who Has Been with Jesus

The next thing that we observe is this, there is no mistaking one who has been with Jesus. When they saw the boldness of Peter and of John, they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. That is not the mere statement of a fact of history. It does not mean that it dawned on the council then that these men had been in Jesus' company. John was on friendly terms with the authorities, and I fancy that all of them had heard of Peter. It means that when they saw the boldness of the two, they recognized the spirit of Jesus Christ. Like a flash, the demeanor of Christ upon His trial rose up before them; it was He who spoke through the two prisoners. There is no mistaking one who has been with Jesus. He may speak out as Simon Peter did, or like John he may not open his lips, but the world has an instinct for the Master's presence and can tell when a man has truly been with Christ. I dare say you have all heard the eastern story of the lump of clay that exhaled an exquisite fragrance. And when someone asked it how it smelled so sweet, it replied that it had been lying near a muskrose for days. There is an unmistakable fragrance in a life that dwells continually near the Rose of Sharon.

Loyalty to God Our First Duty

Again this noble truth breaks from these verses, that loyalty to God is our first duty. It must have been hard for Peter to disobey the council. I think it would be harder still for John. They were both Jews both steeped in Jewish feeling, nor had they lost their reverence for Jewish rule. Now comes the moment of crisis in their history. They are faced by the greatest choice to which a man is called. On the one hand is the past— the world— authority. On the other hand is the clear will of God. We know what Peter and John chose in that hour. It was very simply and very quietly done. Yet the future would have been far different for them both, and the story of Christendom would have been altered, had they swerved from the will of God in that decision. We can never tell the issues of our choices. They reach far further than we ever dream. We only know that when we choose as Peter did, we may leave the future with John's and Peter's Lord. The scene reminds us of Luther at the Diet, refusing to comply or to retract, and saying "Here stand I. I can do nought else. God help me. Amen."

Factual Demonstration of the Resurrection

Lastly, we mark this in the story, the great arguments for a risen Christ are facts. It was not the preaching of Peter that silenced the council. It was the presence of the man who had been healed. It was a man, touched by the power of heaven, who was the sure witness of an ascended Lord. It is by facts that we prove the resurrection. It is by the long history of Christendom. It is by the experiences of countless hearts that are inexplicable save for a living Christ. Men may deny that rising from the dead. They may think it is but an idle tale. But when they behold the man who has been healed, like the Jews they can say nothing against it.

September 19

Elective Affinity - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And being let go, they went to their own company— Act_4:23

After a Miracle, a Sermon, an Arrest and Release from Prison

The healing of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful of the Temple had stirred an intense excitement in Jerusalem. Like the church bell which summons people to church, it had attracted a crowd to the disciples. And Peter, who never saw a crowd but he longed for the opportunity to preach to it, began to preach— there were about five thousand gathered— and many of his hearers were converted. The priests and the captain of the Temple and the Sadducees were very indignant at this powerful doctrine. They put an arrest on Peter and John and committed them to prison for the night, and the next day they had them out and examined them on their authority for this miracle. We know how bravely and nobly Peter answered: what a change from that night of denial before Calvary! We know into what a sorry pass the council came: they threatened Peter and John, and let them go. So by the narrative of facts we reach our text, "And being let go, they went to their own company."

When We Are Released from Our Particular "Prisons"

I wish, then, to spiritualize our text, for it seems to me to be full of rich suggestion. It hints at facts which lie very near to us, and which are worthy of our observation. None of us are prisoners in a literal sense. We are not immured in the dark or damp of dungeons. The age of persecution in its barbaric forms has fled from our land of liberty forever. But for all that there are shackles which still bind us, and we are under many constraints from day to day, and it is true of us as of Peter and John that being let go, we go to our own company. Like the carrier pigeon which, freed from it cage, wheels for its bearings and then starts for home; like the mountain stream which the little child may dam but which when released goes hurrying to the sea— so all of us are subject to constraint, but being let go, we go to our own company. That is the thought on which I wish to dwell.

When Freed from Home

First, then, I think of the constraint of home. It is the earliest pressure which we know. In the years when we are climbing towards maturity, we are in the sweetest of all earth's imprisonments. We are engirded by love then and by a father's ordering. We have to yield our wills up to another's will. It is not the child who chooses or decides; it is the father and the mother who do that. But the day comes when a young man leaves home. Like Peter and John in our story, he is let go. He has to face the world now on his own resources, and the day of authority and of command is over. It is in such a time, when the restraints are gone which were the safety and the strength of home, that a man steadily goes to his own company. What were the thoughts that were smoldering and burning under the gentle but firm constraint of home? What kind of life was being lived in secret under the quiet routine and through the family worship? What sort of ideal was glimmering and forming of which the mother knew absolutely nothing? It is not their liberty that wrecks men— what we call wreck is often revelation— it is the kind of life which they have led in secret before the hour of liberty arrives. The bonds of authority are broken now. There is no will to consult but a man's own. So being let go, with many a "God bless you," and hidden tears and prayers to a father's God, for all that is noblest or for all that is poorest, men go to their own company.

The Prodigal

You know the parable of the prodigal son by heart. Did you ever think of the story in this light? I am sure you would never have guessed how vile that youth was if you had seen him living with his father. But no man becomes a prodigal in one swift hour. If he went to the harlots he had been dreaming of them. There was not a hillside and there was not a field at home but could have told stories of his unclean heart. Then came the tales of his wild life abroad, and his brother said, "I could not have believed it." But in the sight of God the riot was revelation; being let go, he went to his own company.

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by George H. Morrison

Example: Jesus As a Boy

And you have often read of Jesus in the Temple. Did you ever think of that story in this light? Has it not been preserved for us out of these voiceless years because of its exquisite glimpse into that boyish heart? I doubt not that, as the companies turned homeward, other sons besides Jesus were missing from the crowd, and other mothers besides Mary of Nazareth went back to Jerusalem to look for them. And one would find her son among the soldiers, and another would find her son in the bazaars; Mary alone found her son in the Temple. As naturally as the sunflower to the sun, the heart of Jesus turned to that holy place. There was nothing on earth of such concern to Him as to ask and hear about eternal things. His mother thought that her dear son was lost, and she knew not where amid the crowds to find Him; but being let go, He had gone to His own company.

When Freed from Work

Again, I think of the constraint of work. There was a little book published some time ago with the attractive title Blessed be Drudgery, and I think that most of us, as the years pass, learn gladly to subscribe to that beatitude. What moods and whimsies does our work save us from! How it steadies us and how it guards us! If it were not for that bondage of our toil, how intolerable some of us should be to live with! I have known busy men who through the week would have scorned the very suggestion that they ailed, yet somehow they often ailed on Sundays. Of course there come seasons when such bondage irritates. We have all known how difficult it is in the summertime. When the cloudless mornings come and the shimmer of heat, and we hear the calling of field and lake and river, it is not easy then with quiet heart to get to the study and the office desk. But for all that, work is a wise constraint and a happy circumscription of God's finger, a narrowing of our way with such a hedge as will blossom into beauty by and by.

Where You Go after Work Shows Your Makeup

But being let go, we go to our own company. Every evening in a great city explains that. Men are imprisoned all day in the routine, but when the evening comes, they gravitate to their own. Here are three young fellows who work at the same desk. They are fellow clerks in the same city office. You will find all of them at the desk during the day; but the question is, where will you find them at night? You will find one of them in the dancehall, that most uninspiring of all haunts. You will find one at home with his few prized books around him, superbly happy in his Shakespeare or his Stevenson. You will find one down in the mission-hall, enthusiastic over his Boys' Brigade. What is your company? Where do you gravitate? When you can follow your own sweet will, where will it lead? Say to yourself when work is done tomorrow, "Being let go, I go to my own company"— and then thank God for it, or be ashamed.

When Freed from Self lnterests

Once more, and touching on more delicate matters, I think of the constraint of our self-interest. I speak of the bondage which everybody knows and which arises from our social system. No man is free, in an intricate society, to say and do exactly what he pleases. The most uncharitable people I ever met were the people who took pride in being candid. I grant you that in the heroic nature the thought of self-interest has hardly any place. But I am not talking about heroes now; I am talking of the average man in the average Christian city. And what I say is that he is so interlocked in this great mechanism which we call society that something of the rough and vigorous and outspoken liberty which characterized our forefathers is gone. It is expensive for the average citizen to speak out his whole mind. There are accommodations and compliance's and silences that are well understood on every exchange and market. And one of the hardest tasks for any man is to keep a clean conscience and an unsullied heart while bowing to those restraints of self which society or wise self-interest demands.

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Elective Affinity - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

But that bondage is not a perpetual bondage. All are released from it in various ways. If action be fettered, thought at least is free, nor is there any veil by the fireside at home. Or it may be that when a man has made his fortune he feels that at last he can dare to be himself, for he no longer depends for his advancement on the kindly offices of any brother. The question is what are you then? What judgements do you pass by the fireside? Are you less courteous and kindly now that you are made, than in the years when your career was making? Being let go from social entanglement and from the grim and ceaseless pressure of self-interest, steadily and silently and surely men go like the apostles to their own.

When Freed from Evil Habit and Sin

Again I think of the constraint of evil habit. One of the most arresting of Christ's miracles is the curing of the Gadarene demoniac. In his isolation and in his lonely misery the man is a type of sin's separating power. He had been very happy once in Gadara; his wife had loved him, and so had his little children. He was well thought of in his little village, and the evenings were pleasant there when work was done. Then fell on him the curse that ruined him, wrecking his intellect and all his happiness and driving him apart from those he loved until that hour when he was faced by Christ. In that great hour it was farewell to bondage. His fetters were broken and he was a man again. Fain would he have followed his deliverer and shared the fortunes of his Galilean healer. But Jesus said to him, "Go home again. Thy wife has been praying for thee and thy children love thee." So being let go from the tyranny of sin, the poor demoniac went to his own company.

And that is always one of the plagues of sin. It separates a man from his own company. We may be under the same roof as our own company, and yet be a thousand miles away from them. There is a burst of temper, and then misunderstanding, and then the pride which will never ask forgiveness— and hearts that were fashioned in eternity for one another go drifting apart like ships upon the sea. Sin separates the father from the son. Sin separates the mother from her child. From all that is ours by birthright of humanity we are barred out by the tyranny of evil. And then comes Christ and gives us spiritual freedom, rescuing us from the bondage of the years, and being let go we go to our own company. For the best is our true company and not the worst. We were made for goodness; we were not made for evil. It is love and tenderness and purity and light which are the true society of a God-created spirit. So when a man is released from sin's imprisonment by the word and present power of his Redeemer, being let go, he hastens to his own.

When Freed from the Constraint of Life

Then lastly, I think of the constraint of life, for there is a deep sense in which this life is bondage. We are the children of immortality and not of time, and here we are cribbed and cabined and confined. Nothing is perfect here, and nothing rounded. We are not built to the scale of three score years. There is no such thing as ultimate success here; the only success is not to give over striving So are we fettered and hampered and imprisoned, and the bird is beating its wings against the bars; but when death comes, the spirit is set free, and being let go, it travels to its own. Did you ever think of eternity like that? It is an arresting and an awful thought. It is far wiser to think of it like that than to go about saying you do not believe in hell. I never read that even Judas went there. I read that Judas went to his own place. Being let go by his own act of suicide, he went to his own company— the rest is silence. God grant us all such love for what is good, such kinship of heart with the brave and the pure and the lowly, such secret comradeship with all who are wrestling heavenward in the living fellowship of Jesus Christ, that when death comes and the prison doors are opened and we go to our own company at last, we may go to be forever with the Lord.

September 20

Philip and the Ethiopian

And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert— Act_8:26

God Removed Philip from the Middle of Evangelistic Success

Philip was in the full tides of work for Christ when the message came from God that he must leave it. He had been preaching in Sebaste, the old city of Samaria, and his preaching had been crowned with wonderful success when suddenly there came the angel of the Lord with this summons to get southward towards Gaza. It was a strange command, swiftly and well obeyed. There was nothing of the spirit of Jonah about Philip. Perhaps Philip remembered Jesus in the desert and thought he was going to meet his Master there. Then came the hour when the chariot rolled by. It was a very picturesque and lordly equipage. Its occupant was the chancellor of the Nubian exchequer, and he was reading aloud, as the Eastern custom is. A few broken syllables fell on Philip's ear in the brief respites of the jolting and the jarring, and Philip (to whom the Old Testament was doubly precious now) recognized the priceless chapter of Isaiah. Did he remember the prophecy of the psalms, "Ethiopia soon shall stretch out her hands to God" (Psa_68:31). Here was the stretched-out hand of Ethiopia, and God had so ordered it that it was not stretched in vain. Philip ran up to the side of the chariot— it was going very slowly on that rough desert road. He asked the courtier if he understood the chapter. The answer came, "How can I, without a guide?" And the passage closes with the preaching of a Savior, and with the conversion, baptism, and joy of this true seeker from afar for God.

From Crowds to an Individual: the Value of an Individual

Note then the value of a single soul. It must have seemed very strange and dark to Philip that he should be summoned from his Samaritan work. The tide was with him; enthusiasm was heightening vast crowds were moved by the preaching of Christ crucified. It would have been hard to leave all that through sickness; it was doubly hard to do it when well and strong. Could no one else be found for that desert work? Was it right to leave the thousands in Samaria for the single chariot of a southern courtier? I am sure that Philip had many a thought like that, for he was a man of like passions with ourselves. Then gradually it would grow very clear to him that a single soul must be very dear to God. He would remember how the shepherd had left the ninety and nine that the one sheep in the desert might be found. From that hour on to the day he died, Philip held fast in all his work for Christ to the infinite worth, in the eyes of Christ, of one. We must never forget that in a busy city. Where God is, we are not lost in any crowd. We are separately precious and separately sought. In the love of Jesus we all stand alone. One by one we are found and led and humbled till the day break and the shadows flee away.

Disappointed in Jerusalem, the Courtier Did Not Quit

Again observe that the earnest do not despair when disappointed. There is something very noble in this courtier. There is a touch of true greatness in the man. In a heathen court and with everything against him, his life had grown into a great cry for God. Somehow, he had got his hands on the Old Testament. Never a Jewish trader came to Meroe but the chancellor had earnest converse with him until at last nothing would ease his heart but the resolve to journey to Jerusalem. The Temple was there, and the priests and scribes were there—would he not learn all that he craved for there? And now he is returning homeward, a weary, baffled, disappointed man. He had craved for bread— they had given him a stone. He had cried, like Luther when he first saw Rome, "Hail, Holy City"; and the holy city had brought no solace to him. How many a man, in such a disappointment, would have cast his Scripture to the winds of heaven? But the eunuch was of another mould than that. His was too great a heart to nurse despair. He must still seek; he must still read; he must still study. He was deep in Isaiah on that desert road. And it was in that hour when his journey seemed so useless and his hope was quenched and his heart was sick and weary— it was then that he stepped into the light of Christ. We must remember there are disappointments in all seeking There come times when we all seem baffled in our quest. We are tempted to ask, What is the use of it? Is it worth while? Had we not better give in? We are often brought to the point of losing heart. In such moods recall the Ethiopian. He would still hold to it in spite of all failure. And on the day when everything seemed vain, the footsteps of the dawn were on the hills.

God Ordained What He Thought a Chance Meeting

Then lastly, God is behind many a chance meeting. I think that the driver of this Nubian chariot was not a little startled to see Philip; it was an unlikely place to light on any traveler. And when he got home to the stables of his master and told the story by the fire at night, all would agree that this accidental meeting had been one of the strange chances of the road. But we know that the meeting was not that. The hand of God had ordered and prepared it. It had been arranged for in the plans of heaven, though it seemed an accident to the dusky charioteer. We must believe that it is often so. Our friendships and comradeship's do not begin haphazard. We seem to be thrown across each other's path, but the hand of God has been ordering the way. Two people meet— we call the meeting chance. But life will be different evermore for both. It were well to strike out chance from our vocabulary, and in its place to put the will of God.

September 21

The Revelation of Duty

Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.— Act_9:6

Sudden Conversion but Gradual Revelation

The first thing to be taught us in these words is how duty is gradually revealed. Our blessed Lord, in His knowledge of our hearts, never overloads His revelations. It is characteristic of the great apostle that he should instantly react on his experience. Vitality is measured by reaction— when we fail to react, then we are growing old—and Paul, vital to his fingertips, instantly reacted to the Lord— "Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to do? Tell me now. Make my future plain. Show me the service I can render Thee, and I shall do it even to the death." And it was then that Jesus answered him, "Arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee there what thou must do." Suddenly was Paul converted. Gradually he learned what that involved. Paul found that illumination of the soul is different from illumination of the future. Step by step, duty after duty, each faithfully taken and performed, was the road to his service and his victory.

Obey As to Your Next Duty

That lesson which the apostle learned is one secret of victorious living still. The next duty is the key to everything. When the future is dark to us as it was dark to him, when we cannot discern the larger will of God, when we want to be used and cannot find the road, when we are dubious of our capacities, always for us as for this great apostle there is a present and commanded duty on the doing of which everything shall hinge. Often it is a very lowly duty, and that is where so many people fail. Dreams may be spun upon the looms of God, but remember that dreams may be our traitors. We dream of voices, heavenly voices, crying to us, "Arise, do big things worthy of your powers"; and the voice on the Damascus road is crying, "Arise and go into the city." Had Paul not gone, he would never have learned his mission. He learned it by obedience. He learned it by unquestioning acceptance of the first dull thing that was demanded. And whatever the particular service be that God has in store for anyone of us, we learn it just as the apostle did. Service is gradually given. Duty is gradually shown. Do the thing that is demanded now, and out of that the vision shall emerge. It was a poor, dull thing for that illumined soul to go tramping on another mile or two, but it led him to the service of his life.

New Vision for the Old Environment

The other profound lesson of the words is that new vision is for old environment. Converted, changed in his whole being, Paul has to step out on the old road. To Damascus the apostle had been journeying when he set out to persecute the Church. Then came the flood of new life within him and the overwhelming experience of conversion. And the beautiful and Christlike thing is this, that Paul was not swept into any new surroundings but bidden to hold on the old road. Wert thou making for Damascus, Paul? To Damascus thou art still to go. There is no new path for thee across the hills. There is nothing but the old familiar highway. Resume it. Set thy face to it again. Take up and prosecute thy interrupted journey. The new vision is for the old environment.

Shining in the Familiar Environment

Now that is a lesson we do well to learn if we want to handle life aright. For the old roads never seem so dusty as after some great stirring of the heart. There are long periods when we are content. We are happy in the daily round. We are satisfied with our nutshell, unlike Hamlet, because we have no dreams. But then some day to us there comes the vision— the light that never was on sea or land— and there is born the passion to escape. It may come when the glow of youth is burning, or when the beauty of the world has caught us, or when love has wakened with its divine unsettlement, or when the chair is empty and the grave is full. Who has not felt in seasons such as that the longing that arises in the heart to have done with the road that is leading to Damascus? It is not easy to go quietly on then. It is not easy to get back to duty. We hate the drudgery— it is intolerable— we crave a more congenial environment. And it is then that to our restless hearts Christ comes as He came that noonday to St. Paul, saying, "Arise and go into the city." He does not offer us a new environment. Vision is not given for new environment. It is given that we may take the glory of it and shine it on the old and the familiar. It is given that the common round, the irksome and unceasing drudgery, may be illuminated and transfigured.

September 22

The Blindness of Vision - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

When his eyes were opened, he saw nothing— Act_9:8

It Was When His Eyes Were Opened That He Could See Nothing

Blinded by the flash of light from heaven, the apostle was flung prostrate on the ground. It was then that the Savior said to him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me." For a little space his eyes were shut, as eyes instinctively shut in self-defense. That flash of light from heaven would have blinded him had it burst on the unguarded eyeball. And then in a moment or two the apostle rose and looked around him and scanned the heavens above him, and when his eyes were opened he saw nothing. Half an hour before he had seen everything: the road, the palms, the gleaming city walls. Now he saw nothing— no human face nor form— no battlement— no cloud upon the sky. And the singular thing is that this loss of vision, this forfeiting of the sweet sight of things, came to him when his eyes were opened.

Now that is a very remarkable conclusion; we are tempted to say it is absurd. It is so different from what we might have expected as a consequence of the opening of the eyes. There was a young man once, in Old Testament times, who was sorely frightened by an Assyrian army. And the prophet, in pity for him, prayed to God, "Lord, open the young man's eyes that he may see." And when the eyes of that young man were opened he saw a sight to make any coward brave, for the mountain was full of the chariots of the Lord That is the fitting consequence of vision. It reveals to us what we never saw before. It shows us in common hearts unlooked-for things and in common scenes an undiscovered glory. But here, on the road to Damascus, and at midday, it is the very opposite which meets us; when his eyes were opened he saw nothing The question is, in our own life' s experience is there anything analogous to that? Is there any opening of the eyes which leaves us with a vision forfeited? That is worthwhile pondering a little.

A Little Knowledge Blinds Us

In the first place, let us think of nature and of all that the world of nature meant to men once. There was a bygone time when nature was alive; when every wood had its dryad or its faun:

Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long

Such was the outlook of man on nature once. It was all haunted by mysterious life, in every spring, in every whispering forest, in every glade where shadows lay and lengthened. The great god Pan was moving with his music where the brooklets and the summer winds were calling, and sometimes he was nearer than they knew. Well, all that of course had had to go. Increase of knowledge has banished it for ever. No school child believes in fairies now. And I suggest, to those who have ears to hear, that there are thousands for whom a little knowledge just means that when their eyes were opened they saw nothing.

When We See the Larger Life, We Become Blind to Little Grievances

Putting the matter in another light, suppose we think of the little frets of life, of the little pinpricks and unkindness which most people experience as they journey. There are folk who brood upon such things as these, until they practically see nothing else. They tend and water all their little grievances till their blossoms would take prizes at a show. And what I have noticed of such folk is this, that when through the mercy of God their eyes are opened, of all these little pinpricks they see nothing Their eyes have been opened to what real suffering is. They were only playing before at being miserable. Their eyes have been opened to that larger life which is always given us in Christ. And the beautiful thing about that life is this, that worries which were overwhelming yesterday, somehow have vanished so that we cannot see them in the love commended on the cross. Every rock and ridge is clear and glistening in the Highland burn when it is low. But when the summer rain falls or the winter snow, then they become invisible. And I have found it so in many a man's life when a new tide of being has possessed him; things that were sharp and hard and hurt him yesterday, somehow have become invisible today. "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us"— they felt the sting of it and thought that He was unfilial. But when their eyes were opened they saw nothing; that filial ingratitude had vanished. So when we see, many a thing vanishes; many a thing which hurt and fretted us, and met us everywhere, and barred the sunshine out, and silences all the music in the dwelling.

==========================See Page 2

The Blindness of Vision - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Years Dim Our Vision toward Things Once Admired

Does not the same thing often happen also with that opening of the eyes which the years bring? We experience it in many different ways. Here, for instance, is a child who thinks the world of a certain picture. It hangs on the wall of the nursery at home and is perfectly beautiful to him. It is only a rough and inartistic daub— a crude, gaudy, glaring oleograph — but to the child it is a joy forever. Then the years pass, and the little brain is educated, and these two little eyes are taught to see — taught to distinguish what is really beautiful from what is only a travesty of beauty— and then the child comes back to that old oleograph which long ago was a very heaven of gladness, and now that its eyes are opened it sees nothing. We can mark our progress by our growing vision. We can also mark it by our growing blindness. Not only do we see more as the years pass; if we are spending them rightly, we see less— less in certain books we thought the world of and in certain societies we held delightful and in certain characters we thought ideal. How many a madly infatuated girl had had the experience of our text. In spite of the warnings of a mother's love, she insisted on idealizing somebody. And perhaps she married him, and then her eyes were opened in the long dusty highway to Damascus, and when her eyes were opened she saw nothing— nothing of the manhood she had dreamed, nothing of the strength that she had conjured; nothing but selfishness where she had looked for service; nothing but coldness where she had looked for love. May heaven be very merciful to such on the desert-road when the ideal has vanished, for it is always a perilous season on life's journey.

When Your Eyes Are Opened, Old Philosophies Vanish

Then our text, as it seems to me, applies again to many of those messages with which the world is ringing. There are faiths and philosophies which vanish when you see. When the sun is shining on you and the world is beautiful, you go, for instance, to hear a certain preacher. You have never been plunged into the depths yet and have never felt your utter need of Christ. And the man is artistic, or he is intellectual, or he has the fire and passion of the orator, and you feel as if you would never want another message. My brother, if the sun were always shining, it may be that that message would suffice you. But this is a strange, grim world, with lightning flashes and storms that cry havoc and waves that cruelly beat. And when these days come and you feel your need of Christ and of an arm to lean on and a hand to save you, no charm of speech— no intellect nor artistry— can reach and grip and satisfy the soul. You want a power to hold you out of hell. You want a love that goes unto the uttermost. You want a heart on which to lean securely though the whole universe should fall in ruin. And whenever through trial and suffering and sorrow your eyes have been opened to see that, then in the fine artistic preaching you see nothing. Nothing to pluck you from the miry clay. Nothing commensurate with sin and hell. Nothing that can be heard across the battle, like the voice of the trumpet summoning to victory. That is why your old and chastened saints who have suffered and struggled, battled, conquered, fallen, feel sometimes that there is not a word for them in preaching which may be exquisite as music.

When the Eyes of the Disciples Were Opened, They Could Not See Jesus

I want also to say in passing that our text has got another application. It applies to the recognition which we give to men— too late. I think of two, long centuries ago, who were joined by a third as they journeyed to Emmaus. And though He opened the Scriptures to them till their hearts were burning their eyes were holden and they did not know Him. And then they invited Him in to share their evening meal, and in the breaking of the bread their eyes were opened, and they knew Him and He vanished from their sight. When their eyes were opened they saw nothing The One who was all the world to them was gone. There was the cup He had drunk from in their company, and there the couch on which He had reclined. Thou son or daughter, here in this church tonight, with a mother who loves thee with all a mother-love, see that thy recognition of her presence be not a gazing at vacancy like that. Thou takest her as a matter of course this evening Thine eyes are holden; thou dost not recognize. Thou dost not dream what pleasure thou couldst give by a little self-sacrifice for her who loves thee so. I bid thee awaken, while the days are flying lest when it is all too late and thou are motherless, thine eyes should be terribly opened and see nothing.

When Our Eyes Are Opened, We Cannot See Our Good Works

I close by suggesting that in the case of Paul, and in the case of many a man since Paul, this is what happens when through the Holy Ghost our eyes are opened to see that we are sinners. There was a Pharisee once who came up to the Temple, and he thanked God he was not as other men. He fasted and was an exemplary person; he was proud of all he was and all he did. And in that same temple was a publican whose eyes had been opened by the grace of God, and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. Nothing of all his fasting and his tithing nothing of all he had ever striven to do. His best was sinful. His life had been a failure. "God be merciful to me a sinner." My brother, when you see nothing, you see Christ. When you see that your best is rags, you see His riches. When you see at last that you have naught to plead, you are ready for all the gladness of His grace.

September 23

Aeneas and Dorcas

And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints who dwelt at Lydda— Act_9:32

In the City, Peter Found One Who Needed Healing

When the fierce fires of persecution had died out, Peter set forth on a tour of visitation. He was eager to find how the churches had been faring Jesus was whispering to him, "Feed my lambs." He went from town to town and village to village, comforting, cheering and inspiring and it was in this tour that Jesus led him to the bedside of the palsied disciple in Lydda. Lydda was some thirty miles from Jerusalem on the high road from the capital to the coast. It is a little town that has had a strange and chequered history; its story is full of sieges and assault. Tradition tells us that St. George was born there— St. George, who fought with the dragon; but it is not through St. George, it is through St. Peter, that the name is so familiar to our ears. Aeneas, then, lived in Lydda, and Peter found him there (Act_9:33)— found him, I take it, because he was looking for him. It is the things we look for that we are quick to see, and Peter had won the eyes of Jesus now. If a Jewish merchant had come down to Lydda, he would have discovered much, but never Aeneas. It took a Christian missionary, filled with love, to find this sickbed and show it to the world. What do you find when you go to a strange place? What do you see when you travel in foreign countries? Is it only the mountains and the waterfalls and castles and the dresses so different from those at home? A Christ-touched spirit will see far more than that— it will see the need of saving and of healing The man of science finds new species of plants; the explorer finds strange customs and observances; but the apostle finds a certain man who has been eight years bedridden with the palsy. The boys who read Homer or Virgil have heard of another Aeneas. He was the hero and the champion of Troy. And once, when that Aeneas had been wounded, he was healed by the intervention of the gods. All that is fable; but this story is no fable. Peter said to Aeneas, "Jesus Christ maketh thee whole." And his palsy left him that very hour, and he arose immediately.

Peter in Joppa Raises Dorcas and Stays with Simon the Tanner

A few miles from Lydda lay the town of Joppa, and Joppa was the seaport of Jerusalem. Those who have read Charles Kingsley's Heroes, and who remember how Perseus rescued Andromeda, will be interested in knowing that the old world believed that it was at Joppa that Andromeda was chained. It was here that the materials were landed which were used in the building of the Temple. And it was from the port of Joppa that Jonah sailed when he thought to fly from the presence of the Lord. Here, then, lived Tabitha called Dorcas, and Tabitha means gazelle. The gazelle was one type of beauty for the Jew. And whether Tabitha was beautiful in face or not, we all know that she was beautiful in character. Probably she had been a fine sewer as a girl; but in her girlish days it would be fancy work. The fancy work never became real work till the pity of Jesus touched her womanly heart. She was not a speaker; she never addressed meetings. I dare say she envied the ladies who could speak. But she learned that there was a service quite as good as that, and that was the service of a consecrated needle. In the glimpse which our verses give of Tabitha, we see how deeply and sincerely she was mourned. And we can picture the joy of many a home in Joppa when the news came that Tabitha lived again. The tidings traveled through all the town, we read, and many believed in the Lord. And then our passage closes with telling us that Peter lived for a long time with the tanner Simon. Do you know why the Bible tells us Simon's occupation? It is because the Jews thought tanning disgraceful work. No rigid and formal and self-respecting Jew would ever have demeaned himself by lodging there. And the narrative wishes to show us Peter's mind and how he was rising above Jewish prejudice, and how he was getting ready for the vision that we shall have to consider in our next lesson.
Peter in Raising Tabitha Imitates His Lord in the Raising of Jairus' Daughter
Now let us note the close resemblances between the raising of Tabitha and the raising of Jairus' daughter. Peter had never forgotten that memorable hour, and now he could not follow his Lord too closely. Peter had been boastful and self-willed and impetuous once; he had loved to suggest and dictate and take the lead. But now, with all the past graven on his heart his passion is to follow in Jesus' steps. Had Jesus put all the mourners from the room? Then Peter must be alone with Tabitha. Had Jesus said Talitha cumi? Then Peter will say Tabitha cumi. Had Jesus taken the maiden by the hand, and given her back again to her rejoicing friends? Then Peter will present Tabitha alive. The one point of difference that I find is this: our verses tell us that Peter knelt down and prayed. In that one clause there lies the difference between the work of Jesus and that of His disciple. For the power of Peter was delegated power. It was Christ who was working and to Christ he must cry. But Jesus was acting in His inherent sovereignty. In His own right He was Lord of life and death.

Three Little Lessons

Three minor lessons shine out from these incidents.

(1) We may witness for Christ even in making a bed The first sign of power demanded of Aeneas was that he should arise and make his bed. Now the words may not quite mean what we understand by them. His bed was a carpet and had to be stowed away. But they do mean that in a little act like that—the rolling up and disposing of a rug—a man may show that Christ has dealt with him. You remember the servant girl who was asked by Mr. Spurgeon what evidence she had to show that she was a Christian, and she replied that she always swept under the mats now. I dare say she never thought about Aeneas, but the two arguments for Christ are close akin. (2) The sight of a man may be better than a sermon. "All that dwelt in Lydda saw him, and turned to the Lord." And (3) We must help with our hand as well as with our prayer. When Peter was left alone beside dead Tabitha, we read that he kneeled down and prayed. Had he not prayed, he had not wrought the miracle. But when Tabitha sat up, wrapped in her strange garments that hampered her limbs and made it hard to move, then Peter gave her his hand and lifted her up. I wonder if he remembered how Jesus had said, "Simon, Simon, I have prayed for thee," and then, on that wild night upon the lake, had put forth His hand and held him up? The heart and hand of Jesus had saved Peter. The heart and hand of Peter won back Dorcas. And it takes both the he art that prays and the hand that helps to bring the kingdom even a little nearer.

September 24

Peter and the Angel

And behold, an angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shone in the prison; and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands— Act_12:7

Plotting Versus Praying

At the time when Christianity was spreading and getting its first welcome in the pagan world, Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, began to persecute the disciples in Jerusalem. James, one of the three whom Jesus had drawn closest to Him, was sent to be with Christ (which is far better); and then to conciliate the Jews, who were mightily annoyed at Peter's traffic with the Gentiles, Herod had an arrest laid upon Peter also. Now Peter had broken prison before. It would never do that that should happen again. Sixteen soldiers were thereupon sent off to watch him, between two of whom (taken in turn) Peter was chained. Everything looked very black for Peter then. His execution after Easter seemed inevitable. The king was against him, and the guard of soldiers, and the thick walls and bolted gates of the prison. What could a little band of well-wishers effect in the teeth of great worldly powers like these? Had they been faithless, they would have taken to plotting; but being faithful, they took to praying instead. We can often accomplish a great deal more by prayer than by all the plots and plans that seem so clever. For on the night before his execution Peter was sleeping and dreaming perhaps of heaven in the morning, when suddenly the ward was filled with light, and Peter stood up to find himself at liberty. The angel of the Lord had come to him; it all seemed like a dream to Peter. They passed out under the open sky, and after going through one street, the angel left him. And then the passage closes in the house of Mary, and I am sure that no one in that house of Mary would ever doubt the power of prayer again.

No Squandering of Divine Power in Any Miracle

First note, then, that there is no squandering of divine power in any miracle. When Peter rose up, his chains fell from his hands. It took the power of heaven to do that. And as he passed from the first ward to the second and through the iron gate into the street, the way was opened by divine assistance. Peter was powerless to achieve his liberty, and God did what Peter could not do. Still, there were many things that Peter could do, and heaven did not interfere in these. He had to gird himself and bind on his own sandals and cast his garment about him and step out. God was ready to do His proper work, but nobody but Peter must do Peter's. Now, the point I want the reader to observe is the economy of power in Bible miracles. That is one mark of the authentic miracle in contrast with the cheap marvels of a corrupted Church. At Cana, Jesus used the water pots and called on the servants who were standing there. In raising Lazarus the stone had to be rolled away, but no word of Jesus made the stone remove. At the feeding of the thousands on the hillside, the provisions of the young lad were taken, and the food was distributed by human hands. No one could have supplied the wine but Jesus; no one else could have brought Lazarus to life; no one could have fed the famished thousands— if these things are to be done, Jesus must do them. But there, as here, there is much that man can do. There are helping touches that human powers may give. And in the very heart of every miracle where the divine power is most signally in exercise, we find that these human powers are employed. That is the spiritual side of the old proverb that God helps those who help themselves.

Angels Depart When Their Work Is Done

Next, note that the angels depart whenever their work is done. The angel led Peter out of the prison ward; he was too dazed to grope his way in the dark corridors. And then they passed on through one street together under the first flushing of the Easter sunrise. Meanwhile the chill air was striking on Peter, he was coming to himself in the still street. He heard his own footfall echoing in the stillness; he recognized this house and that. It took the swift walk through one street to do it— swift, for I don't think that angels ever lag. But by the time one street was traversed, Peter was cooled and steadied, and forthwith the angel departed from him (Act_12:10). Now, sometimes the angels leave us, for our sin. It would stain the whiteness of their wings to walk with us. We live so meanly and have such unworthy thoughts that we are not fit company for angels. But there is another doctrine of the departing angel. They leave us as they left Peter, for our good. It would be very sweet to walk beside an angel. We should be certain never to take the wrong turn. We should move on through all the streets of life with never a tremor, under that angel guidance. But then— why has God given us our faculties? And what is our reason for, and what our will? You may depend upon it these would never waken, nor grow into their strong and godlike fulness if the white wings were always on ahead. If manhood is to come, childhood must go. There is no liberty where the angel is. It is where the spirit of the Lord is that there is liberty. So we all pass out of that angel street, to think ourselves alone in the chill morning But we are not alone, for God is with us; and we shall reach the door we are seeking as did Peter.

Even Our Gladness May Become a Hindrance

Last, note that even our gladness may become a hindrance. When Samuel heard the voice of God in the sanctuary, he got up in the morning and opened the Temple doors. But when Rhoda heard the voice of Peter, she left the door shut in Peter's face. Was she afraid to open at that hour? Like the sister in Comus, she was too innocent to fear. She opened not the door for gladness. It was her joy that kept her from her duty. Joy, then, may sometimes hinder duty. Do we ever read of joy hindering faith? When the disciples were gathered together within closed doors and suddenly the risen Jesus stood in their midst, Luke tells us that they believed not for joy (Luk_24:41-45). Now, joy is a serious and holy thing. Christ wants us all to be sharers in His joy. But remember there is a joy that sometimes hinders duty, and there is a joy that sometimes hinders faith. May not that be the reason why in our spiritual life God sometimes has to take our joy away? It is so supremely essential that we do our duty; it is so imperative that we believe. Perhaps some mother, glancing at this page, thinks of the child she used to call "my joy." It may be a little plainer to her now why the flower was transplanted to the brighter garden.

September 25

The Angel and the Sandals - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals.
And so he did— Act_12:8

Peter, the Prison-breaker

There is a vividness of detail about this story which assures us that facts are being recorded. No imagination, however lively, could have conceived the scene that is presented here. When a man has played a part in some great hour or been an eyewitness of some memorable action, there is a note in his telling of it, no matter how he blunders, which is better than all the periods of historians. And unless we be blinded by a foolish prejudice which deadens the literary as well as other faculties, we cannot but distinguish that note here. Peter had been in prison once before, and once before he had escaped miraculously. Now, having in their hands again this prison-breaker, the authorities were determined there should be no more miracles. But when prayer arises like a continual incense and when God puts out His mighty arm to help, "stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Behold, the angel of the Lord came upon Peter, and a light shined in the darkness of the prison. And he smote Peter on the side and raised him up, and the chains fell off from his hands and he was free. Then dazed with the sudden light as Peter was, thinking he dreamed and that his dream was idle, the angel said to him, "Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals."

Asleep the Night Before His Execution

These words are rich in spiritual suggestion. In the first place, they are the angel's argument that what had happened was actually true. Peter was fast asleep when the light shone; asleep, and it was the night before his execution. A man must have a very good conscience, or a very dead one, to be able to sleep on such a night as that. Then in a moment the cell was all resplendent, and the glory of it pierced the sleep of Peter, and he opened his eyes, and the visitant was there, and he was dazed and "dark with excessive bright." Was this a dream, and waking would be vain?— "Peter, bind on thy sandals, gird thyself. Art thou in doubt as to whether it is real? Employ the light I bring to tie thy shoe-latchet. Do not seek to handle me; do not inquire my name. Do not wait there wondering if it is all a dream. Gird up thy mantle and bind thy sandals on, and thou wilt speedily discover all is true." I do not think that Peter, however long he lived, would ever forget that lesson of the angel. Every morning as he stooped to tie his sandals he would say, "Even this may be an argument for liberty." Not by remarkable and striking proofs nor by the doing of anything uncommon, not in such ways was Peter made to feel that all that had happened to him was reality. It was by doing an ordinary deed— girding his cloak and putting on his shoes— but doing it now in the light the angel brought, a light that "never was on land or sea."

Using the Sight We Have in Ordinary Deeds

Now I think that that angel-argument with Peter is one that ought to be powerful with us all. There is no such proof that the new light is real as just the use of it for common deeds. We are all tempted to put things to the test in ways that are remarkable and striking We want to say to the puddle, "Be thou dry," as Bunyan did in his untutored youth. But the voice of the angel says to us, "Not so; but buckle thy mantle and bind thy sandals on, and prove in the quiet actions of today that the vision which shone on thee was not a dream." It may be a mighty proof of a man's patriotism that he is willing to drain his veins for his dear country; but to fight for that country's welfare day by day, in the face of abuse and slander, is a greater. It may be a mighty argument for love that one would lay himself down and die for Annie Laurie but to be courteous and kind to Annie Laurie daily is the kind of argument that all the angels love. (I refer of course to the refrain of the exquisite and anonymous song, "Annie Laurie" — "And for bonnie Annie Laurie; I'd lay me down and dee.") Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. Use the light to tie the sandal on. Be a better father among your growing children. Be a better sister to your provoking brothers. I think that Peter would always have such thoughts when he recalled all that had happened in the prison.

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The Angel and the Sandals - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Divine Economy of Power

Then once again our text suggests what I might call the divine economy of power. "Gird thyself; do not expect me to do it; what thou canst do for thyself, that thou must do." It was not pride that kept the angel from that service. Things we would scorn to do are done by angels gladly. If it was not beneath Christ to wash the feet of Peter, it was not beneath an angel to tie his shoe-latchet. But the angel refrained (as angels always do), in that economy of strength which is divine, from doing for Peter in his hour of need what it was in his power to do himself. Let Peter strive all night, he cannot loose his chains, and therefore it is the angel who does that. No beating of Peter's hands will burst the gate, and therefore it is the angel who unbars it. But "gird thyself, and bind thy sandals on"— even when God is at work there is something thou canst do; and that something, which is within thy compass, will never be performed by heavenly visitant.

The Miracles of Jesus

We see this same economy of power when we study the miracles of Jesus Christ. It is an added evidence for Jesus' miracles that the miraculous is kept down to the lowest point. He makes the wine, but will not fetch the water, it is in the power of the servants to do that. He feeds the famishing thousands on the hill, but the disciples must bring the bread and distribute it. The hand of man must roll away the stone when Lazarus is to be summoned from the grave, and when the breath of life has been bestowed, it is for others to unwrap his cerements.

Do Not Expect God to Do What You Can Do

Do you see the meaning of that divine procedure? It makes us fellow workers with the Highest. Peter needed the angel for his rescue, but for the rescue the angel needed Peter. "Gird thyself and bind thy sandals on; do the little thou canst do to help me"— so Peter was lifted out of mere passivity and made a fellow laborer with God. I think of this text when I see the harvest field where men are busy amid the golden grain. The ministry of God has given the harvest, and now the ministry of man must bring it home. I think of it when I see men struggling heavenward, wrestling towards heaven "just a little 'gainst storm and wind and tide." It is God who has wrought in them to do His will, and now they must work out their own salvation. Do we not sometimes wonder why it should be so hard to win the crown which God delights to give? Redeemed by blood, why should we have to fight so, why struggle in deadly fashion to the end? And the answer is that thus we are ennobled and called into fellowship with the divine and raised to be sharers in that work of grace which rests on the satisfaction of Christ Jesus. All that you cannot do, God will do. All that you can do, God will never do. Trust Him to free you by bursting iron doors and leading you triumphantly from prison. But gird thyself; do not ask God to do it. Do not wait for the angel to tie on the sandal. It is only a fool who would be idle because he was assured the light had come.

Leisureliness in God's Procedure

Lastly, the text suggests to me a certain leisureliness in God's procedure. The angels are always bent upon their ministry, but we never find an angel in a hurry. We know the kind of man that Peter was and how ardent and impulsive was his nature. He was always swift to speak and swift to act, too often without any reckoning of consequence. But had the calmest and most phlegmatic spirit been the tenant of that apostle's breast, it might well have been stirred into feverish haste that morning. Every moment was precious, and every moment perilous. Another instant and the soldiers might awake. Alive to his danger and to his opportunity, can you wonder if Peter clean forgot his sandals? And then the angel, calm amid that tumult, with a calmness born of fellowship with God, said "Gird thyself and put thy sandals on." I wonder if the girdle was ever so rebellious as on that morning in the prison house. I wonder if his sandals were ever so refractory as when every moment meant life or death to Peter; but there was something imperious about this angel, and Peter had no choice but to obey. It seemed an age to Peter while he stooped in his great agony of apprehension. What mattered the securing of his cloak when every moment was infinitely precious? But when Peter came to look back upon it all, he would see the meaning of the angel's conduct and learn the lesson (which is so hard to learn) that there is no hurry in the plans of God.

September 26

The Departing of the Angel - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him— Act_12:10

The Ministry of Prisons

In the verses that precede our text we have the familiar story of Peter's release from prison. Perhaps the story would have been still more familiar, and would have impressed itself still more vividly on Christendom, had it not been overshadowed by that other scene when Paul and Silas sang in the jail at Philippi. The world would have been a great deal poorer but for its prisons. We owe more to our prisons than we think. Shining virtues have been developed in them; miracles of heaven have been wrought in them; immortal literature has been written in them, and these are things we could ill do without. And we could not do without that word of Jesus either— Sick and in prison, and ye visited Me.

No Prison Walls Can Shut Out an Angel

Peter, then, had been imprisoned by Herod. He had been cast into the inmost ward. You can hear door after door shut behind him with a re-echoing clang And then, to make assurance doubly sure, he is chained to two soldiers as Paul was, afterwards, in Rome. Perhaps Herod thought that if Peter's Master when He was left for dead had burst from the sealed grave, it were well to make assurance doubly sure when the prisoner was one of Jesus' henchmen. But there were some truths that Herod had yet to learn. And one of them was that when God Almighty works, "stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Behold the angel of the Lord came upon Peter, and a light shined in the prison. You can shut out a man's nearest and dearest from him, but no authority can shut the angels out. And the angel touched Peter, and the chains fell off him. And the angel led him out from ward to ward. And the iron gate swung back upon its hinges, and Peter was out under the stars again. And the angel and Peter passed on through one street, we read, and forthwith the angel departed from him.

Why Did the Angel Lead Peter Out of the Prison and Then Leave Him?

Now, do you see why the angel left the disciple then? There is strong doctrine in the departing of the angel. Sometimes the angels leave us for our sin. We are so coarse, and evil-inclined and worldly, it would stain and sully their white robes to walk with us. They try it for one street— for we have all our chance— but it does not prove "the street which is called Straight." There is always a dying out of vision when a man or woman loses the childlike heart, and the dying of vision is the departing angel. Sometimes then, the angel leaves the soul— the brightness fades, the heavenlies disappear, the presence of white-robed purity is lost— and all because a man is growing worldly.

But that was clearly not the case with Peter. Right to the end, through all the struggle and the storm of life, Peter preserved, as only the greatest do, the great heart of a little child. If every child has got its guardian angel, I do not think that Simon's would be lacking. Yet for all that, when they had passed through one street, forthwith the angel departed from Simon Peter. And I think it is not difficult to see why. The angel's work was done; that is the point. There was no more need for the ministry of miracle. Peter was a man among men now; in the familiar streets, freed from his shackles, and with friends to go to— it was at that point the angel went away. There was the presence of Christ for Simon Peter now; there was God in His eternal law and love; but there was no need for the angel any more. His task was over when the chains were snapped, and the last gate between Peter and liberty swung wide.

God Intervenes Only in Extraordinary Difficulties

I wonder if you grasp, then, what I should venture to call the helpful doctrine of the departing angel? I think it is a feature of God's dealing that has been somewhat neglected in our thought. It means that in extraordinary difficulties we may reasonably look for extraordinary help. It means that when we are shut in prison walls and utterly helpless to extricate ourselves, God has unusual powers in reserve that He is willing to dispatch to aid His own. But when the clamant need goes, so does the angel. In the open street, under the common sky, do not expect miraculous intervention. It was better for Peter's manhood, and it is better for yours, that only the hour of the dungeon should bring that. The angel departs, but the law of God abides. The angel departs, but the love of Christ remains. And I think that all God's leading of His people and all the experience of the Christian heart might be summed up, with not a little gain, in the departing angel and the remaining Lord.

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The Departing of the Angel - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Israel in the Wilderness

I want then to take that suggestion and bring it to bear on various spheres of life. And first we shall think of Israel in the wilderness. There was a helplessness about Israel in the wilderness like the helplessness of Peter in the prison. It was a terrible journey through that gloomy desert, twice terrible for these newly emancipated slaves. There were mighty barriers between them and Palestine quite as impassable as any prison doors. They would all have perished but for angelic help. Hungry, the flight of quails came from the sea, and the ground was covered, in the red dawn, with manna. Thirsty, there flowed a stream of water from the rock, and they drank of the spiritual rock which followed them. The Red Sea became a highway for their feet, and they found a road right through the swellings of Jordan. It was the angel of God smiting their fetters off. It was the angel of God bursting the gates before them. Out of the dungeon and prison house of Egypt they were carried by the constraint of irresistible power. But then, when they reached Canaan and had, as it were, passed through one street of it, forthwith the angel departed from them. The manna ceased to fall after one harvest. They drank no more of the water from the rock. There came days when they were hunted down by enemies, yet the Jordan never stayed its flood again. Jehovah was with them still in love and law; the mystical presence of Jesus was their shield. But the need was past; the prison gates were broken, and they learned the doctrine of the departing angel.

In the Course of the History of the Christian Church

Or we might think of the history of the Christian church in this light. We might compare Pentecost with after centuries. There was a radiance and a spiritual glory about Pentecost that remind us at once of Peter and the angel. There were tongues, as it were of fire, on every head; the doors of that upper room were opened wide; the bonds of that little company were loosed; they were filled with joy, and they got new gifts of speech. It was a season of wonder and of miracle; it was the intervention of heaven for an hour. And then the church passed on through one street mystical, and forthwith the angel departed from them. Could Justin or Jerome or Augustine work miracles? Does God give any missionary now the gift of tongues? Can we heal the lame with a word as Peter did? Can we shake off the serpent as Paul did at Malta? There are some men who would have us believe we can; and there are more who, knowing that we cannot, think it impossible that it was ever done. I beseech you to avoid these two mistakes. Remember the doctrine of the departing angel. We are out in the streets now under the stars of heaven; miraculous ministries would simply ruin our manhood. Once, when there were prison gates to open, the angel came and gave the church her liberty. But now the Lord is our shepherd and our stay; the grace of an abiding Christ suffices. The angel has been summoned home to God.

In the Unfolding of Our Individual Life

I think, too, that we become conscious of this truth in the unfolding of our individual life. There comes a time in the life of every one of us when, not for our sin but for our deepest good, the angel leaves us as he left Simon Peter. In childhood we were very near the angels; we heard the beating of their wings sometimes when the world was hushed and everything was dark. We never thought of law or will or character; we lived in a dreamland, and the great dream was God. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." In my church in the far north— and a beautiful church it was— we had curtains on each side of the pulpit. The way into the pulpit was through the curtains. And I often used to notice a tiny girl gazing at these curtains with very eager eyes. It was quite clear it was not the minister she was looking at. It was whenever the curtains moved that she would start and stare. I found out afterwards what all the interest was. The little child thought that heaven was behind the curtains. It was only a wilderness of joists and planks, but she thought that Christ was there; she thought that God was there; she thought that the minister stepped out from God into the pulpit, and every time the curtain rustled— little heart, little eager, beating heat! who could tell but thou mightst catch the shimmer of an angel there? Ah, well, she has passed on through one street since then, and forthwith the angel has departed from her. She will never mistake an organ-loft for heaven again. She never expects to see the gleam of wings now. And it may be that she looks back half wistfully to the day of glory in the grass and splendor in the flower. But my point is that the angel must depart if we are to walk the street of life in our true dignity. We are not here to dream that heaven is near us; we are here so to live that heaven shall be within us. And if at every turn the angel met us and the vision of a dream enchanted us, we should lose heart and nerve and power for the struggle and be like the lotos-eaters in ignoble quietude. The angel may go, but duty still remains. The vision may disappear, but truth abides. We never understand what will is, we never realize what we can do, we never feel the worth of personality moved by the spirit of an ascended Lord, till the hour when the angel goes away. Therefore, in the interests of highest and holiest manhood, we shall thank God for the angel-atmosphere of childhood, and thank Him nonetheless that when we have passed through one street, forthwith the angel has departed from us.

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The Departing of the Angel - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

In the Experience of the Death of a Loved One

I think, too, we may swing this thought like a lamp over the dark chamber of the grave. In a great congregation there are always mourners, and I do not like to close without a word for them. It may be there is someone here who, looking backward, remembers an angel presence. Perhaps it was a mother, perhaps a sister;, but they were so gracious, so gentle, and so patient, that you see now it was of heaven, not of earth. And you thought it was going to be a lifelong comradeship; you would travel on through all life's streets together. But you only passed on through one street, and forthwith the angel departed from you. And you are not yourself yet, any more than Simon was. The streets seem strangely unreal; how the wind bites! But like Peter when he came to himself, you too shall say, "It was the Lord who sent His angel to deliver me." There was some work to do, and it was done. There was some help to give, and it was given. There were chains to break and prison doors to open, and you can bear witness that it was all accomplished. Remember the doctrine of the departing angel when the heart is empty and the grave is full.

September 27

Rhoda - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a maid came to hearken, named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate— Act_12:13-14

Her Name Meant "Rose" and She Was One Indeed

In visiting a sickroom where there is so much that speaks of suffering one is often met by a single spot of brightness. It is a flower that has been brought by loving hands to gladden and refresh the weary sufferer. The room is darkened to shut out the sunlight which might beat too fiercely on the aching head. The nurse as she moves upon her tender ministry does so with a noiseless footstep. Everything is quiet and subdued, suggestive of days and nights of anguish, save it may be one rose of perfect loveliness that opens its petals beside the sufferer's couch.

In some such way in this chapter of the Acts do we light on Rhoda, and Rhoda means a rose. She blossoms here in the presence of much suffering and glows like a flame of brightness in the gloom. The chapter opens with the death of James and with the imprisonment of Simon Peter. It closes with the tragic death of Herod when he was smitten of God in the midst of his great pomp. And it is in that environment of gloom, with the shadow on it of suffering and death, that we light on Rhoda— that is, Rose— and whose name is fragrant as a rose until this hour. Rhoda is no great lady playing a mighty part. We never hear of her before or after. And yet I think that God has set her here and given her an immortality she never looked for, not for her own sake but for ours, that we might be better because she has been.

A Servant Who Partook in Family Worship

In the first place, then, we shall observe that she shared in the devotions of the family. She was as eagerly interested in Simon Peter as anyone who was in the house that night. It is probable that Mary was in comfortable circumstances and that her home was a roomy and well-appointed one. She was the aunt of Barnabas, and Barnabas was a wealthy man who had had great possessions in the isle of Cyprus. And then we read that on this eventful night there was a large company in Mary's house, and that would point to it as a roomy dwelling, as of one who was in comfortable circumstances. We may take it, then, that in the home of Mary, Rhoda was not an only servant. She was one of several; she held an inferior place; it is likely that the other slaves would all be men. Yet here we find her at worship with the household, taking a share in their unceasing prayers, and overborne by a very tide of gladness when she heard the voice of Peter at the gate.

Mistress and Slave on Their Knees Together

Now there is one thing we must be on our guard against when we think of slavery in the ancient world. We must never carry into our thoughts of Jewish slavery the stories we have read of Greek and Roman slavery. A Roman was often very cruel to his slaves; it was very seldom that a Jew was that. There lingered in Jewry the older and kindlier feeling of the household of patriarchal times. And yet granting all that, as we must grant it if we have an eye for the hand of God in history, do you not think we have here in Mary's household a trace of the growing influence of Jesus? It is only eleven years since the resurrection, yet what a beautiful Christian home is this one. The mistress is still the mistress in the dwelling and the slave has not yet ceased to be a slave. Yet something of a common sisterhood has touched them; in their deepest and dearest they are united now; they have sat at the Table of the Lord together, and together they have prayed through the long night. That is how Jesus handled social problems. He was never a wild and reckless revolutionary. He never came to Mary and said, "You must let Rhoda go: it is against the law of God to have a slave." What He did do was to draw into sweet sisterhood the mistress and the menial at her gate; to fill up the gulf with His redeeming love until you find them on their knees together.

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Rhoda - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Nevertheless Rhoda Performed Her Common Duties

Once more let us notice about Rhoda that she was not above her common duties. It was her task, as we say in Scotland, to mind the door, and our story tells us that she did it faithfully. In Jewish households, let me say in passing, it was generally a female slave who had this work to do. In our wealthier homes, I know not why, this duty is generally given to a manservant. But even among the wealthiest of the Jews and when every other servant was a man, the office of attending to the door was invariably entrusted to a woman. Even in the High Priest's palace it was so, as Simon Peter knew so bitterly. Was it not the maid who kept the door there who had taunted him into his base denial? How different was that porteress from Rhoda, for she had known him by his voice and spurned him, but Rhoda when she heard it was so glad that she was powerless in the very joy of it.

Rhoda Was Spiritually Liberated and Yet Was Satisfied with Her Menial Tasks
That, however, is by the way. What I want you to note just now is something different. It is how Rhoda, in spite of her new sisterhood, was still active in her menial duty. Do you not think she felt in these eleven years how the spirit of that home was altering? Was she not conscious of a new kindness and regard as for a little sister for whom Jesus died? Yet in spite of that and of the place it gave her and of the new liberties that clustered round it, she was just as faithful to her humble task as in the old days when she was nobody. Whatever her emancipation did, it did not make her fretful at her post. She did not think that she could play the mistress because for her and her mistress the one blood was shed. Rather I think did Rhoda realize now, as she had never realized before, that the very stamp and seal of Christian character is that one should be faithful in the least. It is never a mark of a true Christian liberty that it makes us discontented with our duty. It makes us discontented with ourselves, but never with the task that God has given us. Nay, on the contrary it glorifies that task, treats it as something that can be done for Christ's sake, and never forgets that the Master whom it serves could find a kingdom in a mustard seed.

We Need the Example of Rhoda's Service

Now I think, friends, there are few truths that need to be more pressed home today than that. If we need a great deal more of Mary's love, we need a great deal more of Rhoda's service. I heard of a theatre manager the other day who was talking to a friend about his difficulties. And he said that one of the greatest of his difficulties was this, to get people who would throw themselves into the humbler parts. He could always get actors to take the leading roles and who thought themselves perfectly competent to do it, but what troubled him was to get those who would do well in obscure and insignificant positions. That is a complaint we hear on every hand— a widespread unwillingness to do the lowlier services. And men lay the blame of it on education and on the new ideas that have followed education. But what we want is not less education: we shall never go back, please God, in that direction. What we want with all progress and all emancipation is more of the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you think that there ever dwelt upon our earth one with a grander outlook than our Lord had? You recall how He said, "The Son shall make you free," and how He added, "Then are ye free indeed." And yet with all that freedom which was His, that largeness of heart as the sand of the seashore— how lovingly and how patiently He toiled in the lowly ministry of Galilee. That is the spirit we still need if we are to be saved from the perils of today. The boundaries of the past are being trampled on. The fences around the fields are breaking down. And you may depend upon it that with that enlargement there will be growing restlessness and trouble, unless we learn from Christ as Rhoda learned the sacredness of common duty. Samuel on the morning following his call opened the doors of the House of the Lord as usual. Rhoda returned to the duty of the slave though lifted up in Christ to be a sister. And Jesus, knowing that He came from God and went to God, knowing His past and future on the throne, did what? took a towel and girded Himself and washed His disciples' feet.

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Rhoda - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

In Her Gladness She Forgot Her Duty to Open the Door

But that is not the whole truth about Rhoda, though it is true and we do well to ponder on it. The fact remains that though not above her duty, yet she forgot her duty in her gladness. Like a cautious maid she did not open at once. That would have been perilous at such an hour. Someone was knocking and was knocking lustily, and she went to see if it was friend or foe. And it was then she recognized the voice of Peter, and it filled her with such an overmastering gladness that she was back in an instant with the news, and left the door barred in Peter's face. There was something, I take it, in Peter's voice that haunted the memory of those who heard it. And Rhoda knew it well. Had she not heard him preaching? Had she not often let him in before? And Peter would always have a word for her and always a smile of greeting when he passed, all which I have a shrewd suspicion had been the means of leading her to Christ. No wonder that her heart was rent in twain when she heard that Peter was at the point of death. No wonder she was ecstatically glad when she recognized his voice out in the street. And it is one of those touches which none could ever counterfeit and which in themselves are worth a score of arguments— to read that in the delirium of her joy she quite omitted to let Peter in.

The Danger in Our Gladness to Forget the Voices That Call from Without

Now, brethren, joy is a holy thing and gladness is a commanded duty. "Rejoice in the Lord always," says Paul, and, "again I say, Rejoice." There is a vast deal in the Gospel we profess that tends to foster a glad and joyous spirit. It is glad to be loved, and we are loved in Christ with a love that triumphs over sin and death. Yet in all gladness when it is overflowing do we not recognize a certain peril— the peril of forgetting just as Rhoda the voices that are calling from without. People whose lives are uniformly happy are very rarely generous in their sympathy. They do not understand; they have no eyes to see; they have no ears to hear the voice that cries. It takes the touch of sorrow to give that, and the bearing of burdens heavy to be borne, and the shadow that seems to bar the sunshine out and yet is the shadow of the wing of God. I think that God would give us far more happiness if He were only sure that we would use it well. If we would only use it to make others happy we should have it in full measure, running over. But there is something of Rhoda in us all, a tendency to forget for very gladness, and so we can thank God as in the hymn we sang, that our joys are touched with pain.

Rhoda Persisted

In closing shall we not notice this of Rhoda, that she was not to be laughed out of her conviction. Let them say what they would of the stranger at the gate, she constantly affirmed that it was Peter. It was very strange they should have disbelieved her, for this was the very thing they had been praying for. By night and day their prayers had been ascending that Peter might be restored to them again. Yet when their prayers were answered and he knocked and Rhoda came running to say that it was Simon, the only thanks she got from that prayer meeting was to be plainly told that she was mad. You see that people who attend prayer meetings can be pretty hasty in their judgments sometimes. It was not courteous and it was not kindly: what is more important still, it was not true. But we do not read that Rhoda lost her temper or left the room peeved because they doubted her. She constantly affirmed that it was so. She couldn't argue and she didn't try to. She showed her wisdom when she didn't try to. It is not for a maid to argue with her mistress, or for a mistress to argue with her maid. But mad or not mad, one thing Rhoda knew, and that was that she had heard the voice of Peter, and I honor her for the firm and steadfast way in which this girl adhered to her convictions. There is another voice that some of us have heard. It is the voice not of Peter, but of Peter's Lord. Long ago it may be, He stood at the door and knocked, and we knew His voice and opened and let Him in. God give us all something of Rhoda' s courage, that we too may be steadfast and immovable, though every man and woman whom we meet with should mock at us just as they mocked at her.

September 28

The Grace of Continuance - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

But Peter continued knocking— Act_12:16

A Person Should Not Be Judged by a Single Action

It is perilous to judge a person by one action. Life is too complex and intricate for that. It is as if one were to judge a countryside by a single and isolated clump of trees. Ruskin has it that if out of a Turner landscape you cut a quarter of an inch of sky, within that single quarter of an inch you would feel the infinity of heaven; and it may be there are lives like that, so penetrated with purpose or with passion, that wherever you touch them you get the real character. As a general rule, however, it is a perilous thing to judge a man by any single action. In his great hours he may be greater than himself; possibly he may be less than his true self. And always it is wisest, if you would judge a person not by the tenor of his life but by an action, to take an action of a usual kind. There was an hour, for instance, when Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the priest's servant with it. There was another hour— never to be forgotten— when, panic-stricken, he denied his Lord. But if I wished to know the real Peter, I should not turn to either of these hours; I should rather choose an action such as this— Peter continued knocking. Shall I tell you what it reveals in the apostle? Three things that are well worth observing.

I: Peter's Courage

In the first place, this common act shows Peter's courage. It makes that unmistakable. Whoever it was who stood there in the street, it was not a panic-stricken man. When Peter broke prison we know what hour it was; it was the fourth watch of the night, between 3 and 6 in the morning. This indicates that it was no longer dark; the day was beginning to glimmer in the east. And the smoke of the household fires was mounting heavenward, and the first footfalls were echoing on the pavements, and Peter continued knocking. Shrouded in the darkness of the third watch, he might have been reasonably safe out in the street. But in the fourth watch, when the sun was rising, it was at his peril that he delayed a moment. Yet Peter, who had once been panic-stricken and in an agony of fear denied his Lord, was evidently not panic-stricken now. It was a very usual thing to do, and yet it was a courageous thing to do; far more courageous than that whirling passion which plucked the sword out of the scabbard once. And it sprang from the certainty that God was with him, and having rescued him would not desert him now. "The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me."

The Courage to Continue Knocking

Now that is a lesson we would do well to learn about the essential quality of courage. Just to continue knocking patiently may be braver than the most gallant deed. I grant you there come moments in our lives when courage may flash into dramatic splendor. There are hours for men of crowded life which are worth an age without a name. When the soldier dismounts to save a wounded comrade— when the fireman risks his life to save a child, there is something in that which strangely moves the heart. But that is the courage which is thrilling rather than the courage which is telling. The truest courage in this life of ours is seldom momentary or spectacular. It moves in the shadow of the dreary street; dwells in the dull seclusion of the home; continues doing things, with quiet heart, when the natural impulse would be to turn and flee. Just to get up each dull and dreary morning and say, "Please God I shall play my part today"; just to go out and do it quietly in the teeth of weariness and ingratitude; just to shut our ears to calling voices and bear our daily cross victoriously, is the finest heroism on this side the river. No man is ever far from the heroic who has learned to do things when he feels least like them. There is little hope for a man in this strange world who surrenders to his whimsies every morning To trample under foot all moods and feelings— to get to our duty and our cross in spite of them— to do that summer and winter till we die is the one road to the music and the crown. That was pre-eminently true of Christ. His was the courage of continuance. Through ridicule, through obloquy, through suffering, Christ continued knocking.

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II: Peter's Understanding

In the second place, this common action reveals to us Peter's understanding. Clearly he did not misinterpret what was happening within the house. Contrast him, for instance, with Naaman. When Naaman was bidden go and wash in Jordan, he thought that the prophet was making light of him. So Naaman turned and went away in a rage because he misinterpreted the prophet. And if Peter had misinterpreted like that, he too would have gone away in a great rage; but Peter continued knocking. We are always ready for misinterpretation when we knock or ring at a door and no one answers; doubly ready when we see peering faces behind the glass of the door or through the blind. And that is precisely what Peter had to bear, for Rhoda came and looked and went away again, and yet Peter understood it perfectly. The fact is he understood their feelings by what had happened that morning to himself. That is always how we understand people; by the kind of thing which has happened to ourselves. Half an hour earlier Peter had seen an angel, and he had been dazed and thought it was a ghost; and now they think that Peter is a ghost, and Peter instantly grasps the situation. That is why he did not grow indignant. That is why he did not stalk away. He understood from his own stupefaction how terrified they would be for a few moments. And so he stood there, out in the street at daybreak, and continued knocking and showed by his action that he understood.

Is it not usually in that way that people come to know we understand them? "Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." To be misunderstood is a true grief. It is a grief which Christ experienced to the full. A man is never himself— never at his best— when he is surrounded by misunderstanding But when a man feels that he is understood, he casts aside reserve and is himself, and he generally feels that through common touches. There are people who would give their bodies to be burned, and yet you never feel they understand. There are others who do no splendid services, and yet have a genius for understanding, By a kindly question, by a homely word, by a little deed of kindness light as gossamer, men waken to find that they are understood. All great leaders of men have had that gift. It is really the secret of personal attraction. No power of organizing mighty armies will ever explain Napoleon, for example. Along with that must be the touch which tells and the mystic sympathy that breaks down strangerhood if dying legionaries are to cry "My Emperor." If thou canst serve in great and splendid ways, then go and serve thus, and the Lord reward thee. If thou hast genius or if thou hast wealth, consecrate them all to noble causes. But if thou canst only do quite common kindnesses, do not neglect them while the days are hurrying, for they tell men that they are understood.

III: Peter's Consecration

Then, in the third place, this common action reveals to us Peter's consecration. He stood there knocking— and half an hour before he had been in the royal company of angels. It is all very well for a beggar to stand and knock. But Peter had had an experience that morning which had lifted him up into the courts of heaven. He had been made a little lower than the angels, for he had had an angel for his visitor., and yet in the dawn out in the common street Peter continued knocking. A little while before, that very morning, Peter had come to a great iron gate. And at a single touch of the angelic finger that gate had opened to let Peter through. And now he was at no massive iron gate, but at the humble door of a very humble dwelling— and he continued knocking Had this chapter been a medieval legend, you would have had that cottage door fly open also. But the Book of Acts is no Arabian Nights: it is true to experience, and it is true to character. For sometimes the massive gates which we have dreaded fly open at the touch of God when we reach them, and the little doors are the hardest to get through. That is why I say a touch like this shows Peter as a consecrated man. He had been exalted up to heaven, and difficulties had vanished from his path. And now he was back again among life's obstacles, and the street doors that everybody knows— and he continued knocking.

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Now unquestionably, as it was with Peter, so is it with every one of us. There is no such certain mark of consecration as just to return like that to common levels. We too, like Peter, have our hours of vision. We have our seasons when the heavens are opened. We have our mornings when we see the angels in the light that never was on sea or land. It may be in church— it may be in the country; it may be when love comes in and sings her music; it may be when someone very dear is taken, and the heart is emptier than the home. In such an hour as that we are like Peter. The angels are never far away. In such an hour as that, whether for weal or woe, we see our visions and we dream our dreams. And then we have to go back to common doors where there is no mystery of blood upon the lintel, and the question is what shall we do then? There are some who are too unsettled to do anything. They could have knocked yesterday; they cannot knock today. They have lost all interest in common tasks, and the dreary round of duty is unbearable. But he who is consecrated as Simon Peter was through the pardoning and restoring love of Christ— he will continue knocking. He will be a better father to his children. He will be a more chivalrous brother to his sisters. Deepened by sorrow, purified by love, he will go with a faithful heart to his day's drudgery. He will continue knocking till the door shall open, and faces that he has loved will answer his in a fellowship where time and space are not.

September 29

The Stoning of Paul

And when there was an assualt made .... They were aware of it, and fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about; and there they preached the gospel— Act_14:5, Act_14:6-7

God's Purpose in Persecution

Driven from Antioch by the outbreak of persecution, Paul and Barnabas moved on to Iconium. There was a distance of some ninety miles between the two towns, and now they might reasonably hope to be at peace. Iconium was a fine strategic point. The Roman roads between east and west ran through it. Many a morning Paul would be wakened from sleep by the noise of some caravan under his window as it rolled westward with its eastern merchandise. And again it would be the tramp of Roman legions as they marched eastward along the military way. All this would set the heart of Paul a-throbbing Might not his word reach to the end of the world from Iconium? Paul might have settled at Iconium for years if God had not said to him, "This is not your rest." That is one purpose which persecution serves. It is God's way of bidding His soldiers march. Jesus was thinking of far more than personal safety when He bade His disciples flee from city to city (Mat_10:23). Just as the gale beats on the falling rain and drives it away till it falls on distant fields, so persecution, striking on the Gospel, carries it to unexpected spots. Paul and Barnabas had to fly from Iconium. It was the Jews who stirred up trouble again. The apostles were learning, in a very bitter way, how a man's foes are they of his own household. There is no foe so dangerous or so relentless as an old friend who has turned dead against us.

Into the Land of Wolves for a Purpose

About forty miles from Iconium lies Lystra in the wild and dreary plain of Lycaonia. Lycaonia means the Land of Wolves, and we can picture the desolate region by the name. I think that when Paul crossed the marches of that wolf-land he would remember the saying of his Master, "Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves" (Mat_10:16). To Lystra, then, Paul and Barnabas fled, and there they preached. And at Lystra, by the power of Jesus, Paul healed the cripple. You could tell that the writer (Luke) had been a doctor by the fond minuteness with which he describes the disease. Most writers would just have said that the man was lame. But the physician made a much fuller diagnosis. The man was impotent in both his feet; he had been so from birth; he had never walked. Do you see how all the training we have had can be used in the long run towards glorifying God? Luke never thought of that when he was studying medicine; but the miracle is doubly vivid just because he studied. So every interest we ever had, and every pursuit we were ever zealous over, and every hobby that once fascinated us, no matter how childish or slight it may have been— all these, when we are Christ's, shall prove of service. It is the vessel full of water that becomes wine.

The People of Lystra Recalled the Legend of Baucis and Philemon

Now there was a legend very well known in Lystra, for the scene of it was that very region—it was the legend of Baucis and Philemon. The Lystran children used to gather around their mothers and beg for the story of Baucis and Philemon. Baucis and Philemon were two humble cottagers to whom Jupiter and Mercury had come disguised. The gods had knocked in vain at every other door, but these two lowly souls gave them a welcome. It is a sweet story, exquisitely told by Ovid; it was devoutly believed in the homes of Lystra. Many a mother would call her son Philemon with the prayer that Jupiter might come again. Who, then, were these two strangers in the town who had healed the lame man in such a marvelous way? Was not one of them august and kingly and the other all life and activity and eloquence? It ran like wildfire through the marketplace that here were Jupiter and Mercury returned. Paul did not understand what all the stir was. The excited people fell back on their own dialect. He felt as helpless as a Londoner would feel in the middle of a crowd all speaking Gaelic. But when a solemn procession halted before his lodging, and he saw the oxen with garlands on their heads, it flashed on him in a moment what was happening, and he and Barnabas sprang out to stop the blasphemy. Had it been Jews whom Paul was called to speak to, you would have had plenty of texts from the Old Testament. Had the crowd been an Athenian crowd, there would have been swift appeals to history and art. It shows the infinite tact of the apostle that with these rude folk he argued from the rain (Act_5:17). It was a sore disappointment to excited Lystra; the current of feeling very swiftly changed. We are not surprised a few days later to find Paul stoned and left for dead.

Paul Saw That the Cripple Had Faith

Now note, first, the keen eyesight of a saint (Act_5:9). Paul saw in a twinkling that the cripple had faith. There was something in the face of this poor sufferer that told the apostle that true faith was there. Our Savior was always on the outlook for faith, and Paul had caught this secret from the Master. There is nothing like love and fellowship with Christ for revealing the best points in a poor beggar's face. Next note, there is a meaning even in a raindrop (Act_5:17). It had often spoken to Paul of the Creator. And, lastly, mark (we cannot learn it too young) that today's sacrifice may be tomorrow's stoning. One day, with Jesus, it was "Hosanna"; a little afterwards, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him." And one day, with Paul, it was "He is a god"; a little afterwards, "Stone him and cast him out." Now I want no one to become cynical. The world is a kindly and happy and pleasant place. We are amazed as we struggle on through manhood at the loyalty and love that ring us round All that I want my readers to do is to set their affections on things which are above, not to rate very highly human praise, not to be greatly depressed by human censure. Had Paul been desperately anxious to please Lystra, I fancy that that stoning would have killed him.

September 30

The Baffling of the Spirit - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

They assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not— Act_16:7

The Circumstances of the Hindrance Were Not Clear but the Message Was.

Paul was on his second missionary journey when he was hindered thus by the Spirit of his Lord. He had made up his mind to go northward to Bithynia when somehow he was divinely checked. How the door was thus shut on him we are not told: it is one of the wise reticence of Scripture. Perhaps he was warned by some prophetic voice or visited by irresistible conviction. On the other hand, if one prefer it so, we may think of the pressure of circumstance or health, for Paul would never have hesitated to find in these the checking power of the Holy Ghost. Whatever form the prohibition took, you may be sure it was very dark to the apostle. Paul was not at all the kind of man who took a delight in being contradicted. When he had set his heart on going northward, not selfishly, but in the service of his Lord, it was a bitter experience to be so checked and to have the door shut in his face.

Paul Was Honored by Being Hindered

But the point to note is that though it was dark for Paul, it is bright as the sunshine of a summer morn for us. He was never more wisely or divinely guided than in the hour when he thought that he was baffled. What would have happened to him had the door been opened, and he suffered to go into Bithynia? He would have turned away home again through lonely glens with his back to the mighty empires of the West. He would never have landed on the shore of Europe, never have lifted up his voice in Athens, never have preached the riches of his Savior beside the Roman palace of the Caesars. Paul was a true Jew in this respect: he had no ear for the calling of the sea. He would a thousand times rather have lived in inland places than by the surge and thunder of the ocean. And it was only when every other path was barred that he was pushed unwillingly to Troas where for him and for Europe everything was changed by the vision of the man from Macedonia. He was checkmated, and yet he won the game. He was thwarted, and it led him to his crown. Eager to advance with his good news, there rose before him the divine "No Thoroughfare." And yet that hour when he was hindered so was the hour when God was honoring him wonderfully and leading him to such a mighty service as at his highest he had never dreamed.

We Are Sometimes Baffled That We May Not Be Beaten

Now I think there is something in that thought on which it would do us good to dwell a little, for all of us, like the apostle Paul, are sometimes baffled that we may not be beaten. It is very pleasant to have an open road and to accomplish what our hearts are set upon. We can all be grateful when our toil is crowned, and the dreams we have cherished for years are realized. But when our plans are thwarted and our wishes crushed and all we have assayed is proved impossible, it is not so easy then to hear the music or to cherish the spirit of the little child. I think there are few things sadder on this earth than what we call a disappointed man. He is so cheerless and apt to be so bitter;, there is such lack of luster in his life. And the pity is, it is not his disappointments that have made him a disappointed man, it is the way in which he has brooded on them and let them sink into his heart and soul. There are people whom no baffling can tame, people whom no thwarting can embitter. They believe in a love divine that disappoints and may be exquisitely kind in disappointing. And so when they are barred from their Bithynia and led to the cold shore where the waves break, they can be happy and expectant like a lover, as trusting that their service lies that way.

The Baffling of Our Childish Dreams

Now I shall try to illustrate that truth by thinking of some of the spheres in which God baffles us. And in the first place, let us dwell a moment upon the baffling of our childish dreams. Do you remember what you were going to be when you were a happy child in your old home? It was to be nothing commonplace, I warrant you, like the commonplace occupation of your father. There were seas in it and desperate adventure and distant lands and daring and excitement. There is not a ragged child in any street but has his childish vision of Bithynia. Ah well, the years have come and gone since then, and somehow or other that door has been shut. You are not a sailor, not a wild adventurer: you are a respectable and quiet-living citizen. And the point is that with the passing years you were never suffered to realize your dream, just that you might be led, almost unwillingly, to the very place where you could be of use. 'Twould be a poor world without the dreams of children. 'Twould be a poorer, if they were fulfilled. For everything splendid there would be a thousand candidates. For everything ordinary, not a single one. So we assay to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit suffers us not; and thus are we carried to those common tasks which build up character and help the world.

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When God Blocks Your Maturer Hopes by Ill Health

Or think again of our maturer hopes, born when childish things are put away. It is easy to be glad when they are reached; it is less easy when the way is barred. Sometimes it is a matter of the health. It is the body that becomes the barrier. I have known an artist whose arm was paralyzed when he was on the verge of his career. I have known those who would have given anything to go and preach the Gospel to the heathen; but when they assayed to go into Bithynia, the Maker of their frame would not allow them. Sometimes it is a matter of plain duty. A man must yield his hopes for those he loves. All he has hoped for and striven for and longed for must go by the board at once for others' sakes. A father has died, or there have been reverses, and the preparatory years are now impossible, and a man has to turn himself to other work which is far away from the calling of his dreams. There is always something noble in the man who takes these hours quietly and well. His very life was in those cherished plans, and he is laying down his life when he discards them And yet remember that if God be God, ordering and opening and shutting, it is along the pathway of such baffling that you shall come to your place and to your power. You do not know yourself— God knows you thoroughly. He knoweth your frame and remembereth that you are dust. There are some characters that need the heightening of success. There are others that need the deepening of denial. So you assayed to go into Bithynia, and God— not fate, not chance— suffered you not; and for you as for Paul, life has been far richer since the bridle-road across the hills was blocked.

When We Are Baffled by the Inadequacy of Self-Expression

Again I like to apply our text to the baffling of our attempts at self-expression. How much there is that we desire to utter, yet in every effort to utter it, are thwarted. It may be some thought that swiftly flashed on us, thrilling us with a truth unfelt before. It may be some comfort we are fain to give to those who are sorrowful and weary-hearted. Or it may be some deep experience of God when He meets us in the secret of the soul and in His lovingkindness speaks to us in another voice than He uses to the world. How powerless we have all felt in times like these to give expression the thoughts within us. We cannot grasp them or clothe them in fit speech or body them forth that others may be helped. And what I want to impress on you is this: that in such baffling of our desire for utterance there may be more than the stammering of the tongue; there may be the wisdom and the love of heaven. If a man could tell abroad all that he felt, before long he would cease to feel. It would be very perilous if we had the power to voice all that is deepest in the soul. For God has His secrets with every human heart, and in the silence of that heart they must be cherished, nor will He ever suffer us to utter them lest they should be tarnished in the telling. Never be discouraged if you can find no words to tell all that is deepest in your being, When you are baffled in your attempt to reach it, it may be God who keeps you from Bithynia. For in the deepest life there must be silence—the silence as of the mountain and the glen— and the awaiting of that perfect fellowship which shall be ours in the gladness of eternity.

The Baffling of the Cravings of the Heart

Once again, may we not trace our text in the baffling of the cravings of the heart? There are people whose whole life is little else than a hunger and a thirst for love. They do not want to be rich— they do not envy the kind of life they see among the rich. They do not want to be famous— they have never felt "that last infirmity of noble mind." They are not troubled with intellectual questioning; for them the one thing real is the heart, and all they ask of God and life is this— someone on whom to lavish all their love. The strange thing is how often they are baffled in that divinest of divine desires. And the years go by, and they have many friends; but the one friend of their dreaming never comes. And that is always a very bitter thing no matter how it be fought against in secret, for while an unsatisfied intellect is sore, a heart unsatisfied is sorer still. They have assayed to go into Bithynia, but somehow the pathway has been barred for them. Others have reached the sunshine on the hill; for them there has been no highway thitherward. And yet how often, for all its hidden loneliness, that ordering is found to be of God who trains His nobler children very sternly that they may come at last to rest in Him. Paul never would have heard that cry from Europe had he been suffered to go where he desired. It was when he was thwarted in his longings that "Come over and help us" rang upon his ear. And there are many of God's servants still who never would have had their call to serve had the Spirit not darkly barred to them the way which led to the Bithynia of the heart.

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The Baffling of Our Desires for Rest

In closing, may we not take our text of the baffling of our desires for rest? For as life advances rest becomes more sweet, and the comfort and the peace of life more dear. We ask for less and less as the years pass. That is always one sign of growing older. The land that we long for now is not a mountain-land; it is a land of quiet peacefulness and comfort. So we assay to go into Bithynia where we shall be comfortable and contented, and then comes God and bars the journey thither and says to us, "This is not your rest." He does it sometimes by the hand of sickness falling on the children whom we love. He does it sometimes by the hand of death, shattering the contentment of our days. He does it by conscience keeping us uneasy; by fear of tomorrow in our most sure estate; by the shame which visits us when we see other lives so strenuous and so gallant to the end. God uses all that to drive us from Bithynia and to send us onward to the shore at Troas. He blocks our way when we would settle here and urges us mightily to the beyond until at last a man lifts up his heart to things that are eternal and unshaken, and finds his rest where there is no more death and where Christ is at the right hand above.

October 1

The Gospel in Europe

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; there stood a man of Macedonia, beseeching him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us— Act_16:9

Europe was Reached with the Gospel through the Vision of One Man

It was in the second missionary journey of St. Paul that the passage was made to our own coast of Europe. Kings have made the crossing with great armies; peoples have come pushing westward over the sea; but no irruption of Asiatic hordes, and no army bent on a world-conquest, has made such a change upon the life of Europe as did this traveler of our lesson. I think we all know how Paul found himself at Troas, and how, when there, the vision appeared to him. I think that among all the men mentioned in the Bible, there is none more familiar than this man of Macedonia. And then the voyage and the visit to Neapolis and the preaching at the riverside at Philippi — have we not known all that since we knew anything?— there is no page of history that we love more. What little beginnings the mightiest issues have! How insignificant is the start of mighty movements! It is good to think of Western Christendom today with its long record of saintly men and women, with its vast cathedrals and its countless churches, with its hospitals and infirmaries and asylums, with its innumerable charities, with its homes for the aged and the children, all of which owe their existence to the Gospel— it is good to think of that wonderful and rich life with its thousand activities that we call the Christian life, and then remember that we can trace it back to these few travelers on the quay at Troas. Do not despise the smallness of beginnings. The fate of a continent may be in one little boat. Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.

Visions Come Only When We Obey

Now three truths arrest me in this story. First, it is only when we obey that visions come. Scholars have disputed about the "region of Galatia" (Act_16:6), whether it is a great territory or a small one. But there is no dispute about a much more important thing, namely, that two wills are seen at work right through these verses. On the one hand there is the will of Paul saying, "I think I should go here; I must go there." On the other hand there is the will of God closing this door and that before the apostle. Of course there was no physical force exerted. If Paul had been weak enough to be an obstinate man, he could have got to Asia or to Bithynia nicely. But Paul recognized that the say must lie with heaven, and he yielded himself up in freest self-surrender. He was willing that his own plans should be shattered and that his schemes and dreams should vanish if God bade, and it was thus that he was led to Troas, and it was then he had his vision in the night. Now that just means that if we are ever to have visions we must walk along the path of self-surrender. We shall never see the best and brightest things unless (as Jesus says) we are pure in heart. If we are blindly and obstinately set on our own way, the likelihood is that God will let us have it. We shall go away into half-wild Bithynia, and perhaps we shall never be heard of again. But it is when we hold our own plans very lightly and are ready to yield them up to God, if need be— it is then that we reach our Troas and get our vision of a larger service than we had ever dreamed of.

The Vision Must Be Followed by Endeavor Immediately

Next, the vision must be followed by endeavor. There is one great word in the vocabulary of the Bible that would make an excellent study for our leisure. It is the word immediately. There were no laggards among the Bible heroes. Life was a great thing, and time was very precious. When the trumpet sounds and the call from heaven comes— look in the next verse and you will find immediately. So it was here. Paul was asleep when he had his vision at Troas. Self-surrender makes an easy pillow. It was in a dream that the man of Macedonia appeared, crying "Come over to Macedonia and help us." And I think I see Paul leaping from his couch, in the burning certainty that God had spoken, and sending Luke post-haste down to the harbor to see when the next ship was likely to set sail. "Immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia." The vision must be carried out in action. All effort must be made loyally to fulfil what had come to Paul in the glory of the night. Now what does that mean for us? It just means this. We must interpret our bright gleams in instant duty. All that is highest comes to us in vision, and we must translate it into the common task. When we awaken to God, that is a vision; it is a vision when we first see Jesus as our Savior. It is in a vision that we first see life's possibilities and the way ahead of us and the cross we shall have to bear. And all life, if we mean to live it well, will be little else than the endeavor to carry out that vision through the dust and dreariness and song and sunshine of the years that are going to be our life.

In Spite of His Obedience, the Task Was Hard

Lastly, the endeavor often seems to contradict the vision. You note that it was a man who appeared to Paul. It was a man's voice that summoned him to Europe. And in the man's words there was a great appeal; it was as if Macedonia hungered for the Gospel. Yet there is no trace that Neapolis welcomed Paul. And the first convert was a woman, not a man. The first men whom we read of in the story are the angry masters of the poor neurotic girl. I have often wondered if Paul was disappointed. The work was so utterly different from the dream. He had seen in his vision the hands of Macedonia stretched out, and now they were indeed stretched out, but only to lead him to the inner prison at Philippi (Act_16:24). It was a strange and startling contradiction. A weakling would have been tempted to deny the vision. But Paul was far too faithful to despair, and we see now that God was in it all. So when the vision of Jesus comes to us, and we set out to do some little service for Him, there will not be a task and there will not be a day in which the vision will not be contradicted. Our service may not turn out as we hoped; our prayers may not be answered as we wished; we may get no welcome from those who seemed to call us; we may look for liberty and find a prison house. But God makes no mistake. The work is His. He can transmute our failures into tomorrow's triumphs. When the dawn of the cloudless morning breaks above us, we shall waken to find He hath done all things well.

October 2

Unconscious Ministries - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And the prisoners heard them— Act_16:25

An Unconscious Ministry in Music

Strangers in a strange city, Paul and Silas had very violent treatment. They were seized and, without semblance of a trial, were thrust into the inner prison. It was a gloomy and miserable place and might have appalled the spirits of the bravest. Men had been known in that dark cell to curse and some, in black despair, to kill themselves. But never, since these walls had been embattled, had any prisoner been known to sing there, and yet at midnight Paul and Silas sang. It was dark, and yet all bright to them. It was exceeding loathsome, and yet beautiful. Stone walls did not a prison make for them, nor iron bars a cage. And so they sang like the lark at heaven's gate— although for them it was a prison-gate— and as they sang, the prisoners heard them. Probably some of these prisoners became Christians afterwards. It was they who told the story to the Church: told how at dead of night, dull and despairing— hark the sound of music. And one would recall how it held his hand from suicide, and another how it revived his hope, and another perhaps how it brought back the memory of his mother and his childhood and his home. Of all that service the men who sang knew nothing They were totally unconscious of such ministry. They sang because Christ was with them and was cheering them. They sang because they could not help but sing And all the time, although they never dreamed of it, they were serving others better than they knew, touching old tenderness, reviving courage, making it easier to suffer and be strong.

We All Exercise Unconscious Ministries

Now something of that kind we all are doing We all of us exercise unconscious ministries. When we never dream we are affecting anybody, we are touching and turning others all the time. We fret, and others feel our fretting, though never a syllable has passed our lips. We play the game, and just because we play it, folk we have never heard of play it better. We sing at midnight because God is with us and will never leave us nor forsake us, and prisoners in other cells are cheered. One of our writers, a man of genius— yet a man whose moral character was vile— has told us how, when in the grip of shame, somebody took off his hat to him. It was only a custom of familiar courtesy— the instinctive action of a gentleman— yet to him it was a gleam of heaven in his hell. We never know what we are doing when we do it. Our tiniest actions are touched to freest issues. Like Faithful, in the Valley of the Shadow, we lift up our voice because our heart is strong. And some poor Christian, stumbling on behind us on his way also to the Celestial City, thanks God and takes courage at the music. Be quite sure that the very humblest life is full of beneficent unconscious ministries. There is not a note of song we ever raise but the ear of some other prisoner will catch it. Words that we utter and then quite forget—a smile in passing— the clasp of hands in comradeship— have got their work in God's strange world to do and will meet us in the rosy-fingered dawn.

The Ministry of Happiness

This unconscious human helpfulness is one of the chiefest ministries of happiness. Happiness is sometimes selfishness; but happiness is also sometimes service. He who resolves at all costs to be happy is generally a very miserable person. In this wide world the things we set our hearts on are so often the things we never get. But when anyone is genuinely happy, with a heart at leisure from itself, then happiness is unconscious benediction. One of the most beautiful poems of Robert Browning is a wonderful thing that he calls Pippa Passes. It is a story of murder and of guilt, portrayed with the passion and the truth of genius. And then below the house of all this vileness where vows are treachery and kisses shame, in the exquisite summer morning, Pippa passes. She is only an innocent girl, supremely happy, and because she is happy, as she goes she sings. She has no thought of doing good to anybody. She is quite oblivious of listeners. And yet that simple song of girlish happiness, entering the open casement of the house, comes with the very ministry of heaven. Happiness will sometimes do what bitterest reproach can never do. The man who can sing at midnight because God is with him is doing something for others all the time. To be happy— to be serene and radiant— when the shadows deepen and the cross is heavy is one of the finest of life's unconscious ministries.

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Unconscious Ministries - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Influence of Children

A similar unconscious service is the sweet and tender helpfulness of childhood. Childhood never dreams that it is helping, yet its benedictions are incalculable. A well-known writer has told us that after anxious days he completed a certain book he had in hand. It had cost him much laborious research, and now it was completed. And all the joy of that completed toil, he tells us, was nothing to the gladness he experienced in the pattering footsteps of some little children whom he had taught to love him. Do you remember what they wrote upon the tombstone of a little girl who had gone home? They wrote her name and then beneath it this— It was easier to be good while she was with us. And that is what little ones are always doing— they are making it easier to be good. How many a man has been true to what is pure through the constraining influence of his children. How many a selfish heart has grown considerate when the mystery of motherhood has come. Those eyes of innocence, those pattering feel those lips that are only still when they are sleeping, have done more to beautify and bless the world than all the legislation of the sages. There is no more real ministry than that, and the wonderful thing is it is unconscious. No child awakens on a summer morning and says, "Today I am going to be a blessing" He is a blessing and he never knows it. He plays in the marketplace and Christ is gladdened. He sings like Paul because he cannot help it— and the prisoners hear.

The Service of Passivity

The same unconscious ministry, again, is often a beautiful feature of the sickroom. Patient suffering may be finest service. It is told of Dr. Norman Macleod that on one occasion he went to pay a visit to a Sunday school scholar of his own. He found him stretched upon a sorry bed, for the lad— an invalid— was dying amid scenes of crime and destitution. Norman Macleod was not a great preacher; Norman Macleod was a great human. Stooping over the bed he said, "My poor lad, I'm afraid you're very weak." "Yes, sir," was the reply, "I'm very weak, but I'm strong in Him." The following Sunday, Dr. Macleod told that story from the pulpit. It was published in religious newspapers both in England and America. And by and by, from Scotland, England, and from far-off villages of the United States, came testimonies that the story had been blessed. Out in the High Street other lads were serving, Men and women were toiling for the Master. Here in the garret, above the crowded street was a sufferer who would never serve again. Yet, like Paul and Silas in the dungeon, he sang in his midnight because God was with him, and far away the other prisoners heard. I have heard women lamenting they were useless because they could never leave their little room. Others were out and active in the world; they were nothing but cumberers of the ground. And yet that little chamber was a Bethel, and to enter it was to feel that God was there, and through the streets one walked a better man because of that patient beautiful endurance. Never forget that among life's many ministries, the freest may be the unconscious ministry. There is an exquisite service of passivity as surely as a service of activity. When the lights are low, when the strong ones bow themselves, when the silver cord is at the point of breaking, you may be serving better than you know.

We Are All Preachers

This too is the real value of genuine and unaffected goodness. It is exercising every day a beautiful unconscious ministry. A man may forget all that his mother told him. He will never forget all that his mother was. He may lose count of all his father's counsel, but never of his father's character. It is not the things which we can utter glibly— it is often things we have no power to utter— that fall on other lives with benediction. When Sir Walter Scott was building Abbotsford in England, he put the lawn in a peculiar place. And at one corner of it he built a little summerhouse where he might sit in the evening after dinner. And he told Lockhart why he built it there; was it because the view was beautiful? not so, but that he might sit there and listen to the evening worship of his coachman. Old Peter was a real old Scottish servant. He would not have talked religion for the world. But every nightfall in the year he took The Book, and "waled a portion wi' judicious care." And then a psalm was sung, and travelling heavenward to Him who understands the Scottish reticence, Sir Walter heard it, and hearing it, was comforted. Old Peter was preaching better than he knew. He was preaching when he never thought to preach. That is what all of us are doing constantly, though we were never in a pulpit in our lives. There are Spurgeons in unlikeliest places, apostles who are cheering all the prison, and they never know that they are doing anything

The Only Thing Worth Living for

Indeed, I believe that much of our Christian service must always be of that unconscious character. When that is lacking, the other is formality. I trust that when this hurrying life is over, you and I shall each have the "Well done." That is the only thing worth living for. It is the only welcome which I want. But I have sometimes thought that if I ever hear it, one of the great surprises of the dawn will be the kind of thing for which it is given. Perhaps all these sermons at which I have daily toiled will never be mentioned in that summer morning And certain ministries of which I knew not anything as I went in and out among you in the shadows here, will waken the trumpets on the other side. Men who do their best always do more though they be haunted by the sense of failure. Be good and true; be patient; be undaunted. Leave your usefulness for God to estimate. He will see to it that you do not live in vain.

October 3

He Called for Lights

Then he (the Philippian jailer) called for lights (R. V.), and sprang in, and came trembling— Act_16:29

The Human Heart Protests Darkness

That call of the Philippian jailer is the deepest call of every human heart. It distinguishes man from the dumb beasts. Give a beast its food, it is content. It asks for nothing more; it never questions. It never tries to understand its instincts. Its farthest horizon is present satisfaction. But man is always calling out for light. What is history but the call for light? What is science but the call for light? What is philosophy, with all its groping, but the call for light in the darkness of the prison? On every problem, on every unsolved riddle, on every mystery of earth and heaven, we call for light like the Philippian jailer. Why do men risk their life to reach the Poles— what lures them to the top of Everest— why does the thought of a place unexplored draw men as a magnet draws the steel? It is the human heart protesting against darkness as something alien from its deepest being It is the call for light of the Philippian jailer.

The Call for Light Came After the Earthquake

It should be noted that this call for light came after the moment of the earthquake. The jailer called when everything was shaken. At midnight, generally, men are content with darkness. They are weary; their craving is for sleep. Look down the street when the clock is striking midnight, and well-nigh every window is in shadow. But let there come the rumbling of explosion, or the cry of fire, or uproar in the street, and lights are flashing from a hundred windows. So was it in the jail at Philippi. On ordinary midnight's no one wanted lights. It was when things were shaken, and solid walls were rocking, that the Philippian jailer called for light. And never is the call for light so urgent in the lives of men and in the tale of history as when familiar things begin to reel and tremble. Do you remember the last great war? It was an earthquake worse than that of Philippi. It broke suddenly into our ordered life like some terrific catastrophe of nature. And instantly, from a thousand human hearts, as from the lips of the Philippian jailer, there was a call for light. Why did God permit the war? Could He be sovereign and suffer this to be? Was progress a chimera? Was Christianity only a veneer? Such questions were scarcely vital questions in the quiet and settled years before the war—but after the earthquake came the call for light.

The Call for Light Comes at the Time of Death

You will remember, too, this call was made by a man who was within an inch of death. A moment before he was on the point of suicide. Death was very near to him that night. He had been standing on the margin of the grave. He thought to shuffle off this mortal coil. He faced the grim extremity. And it is when death is near and knocking at the door, or when the open sepulchre is at our feet, that we call for light like the Philippian jailer. What mother did not call for light when her dear boy went off to war? What father did not call for light when his beautiful child was lying in its coffin? More than anything— more than the heaviest cross or the bitterest reverse of fortune— it is the fact of death that inspires the call for light. What does it mean, this silence and this darkness — this borne from which no traveler returns? Are powers given never to be perfected? Are we never to look on our dear dead again? The ceaseless questionings, the dim surmising; these, of which dumb animals are ignorant, are the crown and title of humanity. We are great because we call for light. We are better than dumb, driven cattle. We want to know; we yearn to understand; we crave to penetrate the mystery. If from darkness we came, darkness would content us. Gloom and shadow would be our native air. But God has made us, and we call for light, and so tell of the Light which is our home.

The Servant Who Brings Light

I close by noting in this thrilling story that when the jailer called for lights, he got them. Cannot you see them flashing through the corridors? Who brought them we are not informed. It is one of the ministries of nameless people. Nameless people may do far more good than those whose names come ringing down the centuries. He called, and he was given. He called, and in the darkness torches flashed. He called, and servants heard the call and answered. Now, did you never hear of One who took on Him the form of a servant? Who willingly came down into our prison-house and was among the prisoners as one who serveth? And do you think, if these Philippian servants heard the call for lights and flashed their torches, that this Servant would not do the same? He flashed His torch on suffering He flashed His torch on sin. He flashed it on the hidden heart of God and on the age-long mystery of death. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid; in My Father's house are many mansions. He who has that light wants no other light. It casts its radiance on the murkiest passages. He may still tremble like the Philippian jailer, but in that light he has the power to spring. He has light for duty and for disappointment now; light on the heart of God and on the grave. "I am the Light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness."

October 4

The Attraction of Agnosticism - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD— Act_17:23

Atheism and Agnosticism

Not very long ago in Glasgow there was a criminal trial which attracted much attention, not only by reason of its peculiar circumstances, but also because of certain observations of the judge. When the prisoner was being examined by counsel one of the questions asked was, "Are you an atheist?" That was a very unusual question to be put in a modern court of law. No one, therefore, was very much surprised when Lord Guthrie, in giving the charge to the jury, dwelt with undisguised severity on that unusual interrogation. Now had the learned lord done nothing more than that, the aspect of things would have been entirely legal. But your true Scot is a theologian born— especially if he be born a Guthrie. And so we had a little discourse on theology in which we were very wisely told that there are no atheists nowadays— only agnostics. I was struck by the very widespread notice which was given to that dictum of the judge. It found its way into all sorts of papers and was commented upon from every point of view. And so I have thought this might be a fitting time to say one or two words about agnosticism.

The Difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic

Now I venture to think there are few who do not know the meaning of these words. An atheist is one who denies that there is a God; an agnostic one who denies that we can know God. The word agnostic is quite a modern word. It was coined, if I remember rightly, by Professor Huxley. It was suggested by that verse in the Acts of the Apostles which tells of the altar raised to the unknown God. It is very significant that the view of things which utterly denies all revelation should have had to borrow its title from the Bible. An atheist has the courage of conviction. He lifts up his eyes and says there is no God. For him, heaven is a vacant place, and there is no eternal Personality. But the agnostic does not deny there is a God. All he asserts is that we are so constituted intellectually that to know God is utterly impossible.

Agnosticism Is Not Born of Humility

You will observe that this agnostic attitude has nothing in common with Christian humility. It does not spring from the majesty of God, but from the limitations of our finitude. There are octaves of sound, in high and sunken registers, which no human ear is capable of hearing, yet to say that a thousand tones are imperceptible is not at all to say that man is deaf. And so the Christian reverently holds that there are heights and depths in God he cannot know, and yet he is convinced that God is knowable. "Now we know in part and see in part"; there is an agnosticism which is apostolic. There is a reverent veiling of our mortal gaze under the burning mystery of heaven. But to hold, as every Christian holds, that there are depths in God beyond our fathoming is not to assert that God cannot be known. On the contrary, for the Christian consciousness, there is no such intense reality as God. He is nearer than breathing, closer than hands and feet, more subtly present than any summer morning; and this though logic be powerless to reach and argument ineffectual to demonstrate Him, and life, in all the seeming tangle of it, too intricate a riddle to reveal Him. "And when I saw him," says John, "I fell at his feet as dead"; there were depths in the Infinite which overwhelmed him. Yet that same John— with what triumphant certainty does he ring out the clarion cry, We know. And this is the glory of our Christian faith that, with the fullest confessions of great ignorance, it can yet lift up its voice out of the darkness and say, I know whom I have believed.

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The Attraction of Agnosticism - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The First Christian Church Battled Against Gnosticism, Not Agnosticism

It is significant, let me say in passing, that the wheel of antagonism has now come full circle. This last subversal of the Christian faith is the intellectual negation of the first. When the new Gospel was fighting for its life, it had one foe more deadly than others. Some of you probably have never heard its name, though the later epistles are full of references to it. It was more deadly than any Jewish hatred. It was more subtle than any pagan ridicule. It wrought more havoc in the infant Church than the most cruel and bloody persecutions. Across the Empire, from Ephesus to Lyons, there was not a Christian community but suffered from it. It sapped the spiritual life of congregations and blighted the promise of countless catechumens. And this so subtle and insidious enemy, with which the infant Church fought for its life, was called by the forgotten name of gnosticism. Now the word gnostic, as students are aware, means exactly the opposite of agnostic. The Gnostic is a man who says I know; the agnostic a man who says I don't know. And the singular thing is that the Christian faith, which began by battling against a spurious knowledge, should now have to battle against a spurious ignorance. I regard this as a very hopeful sign for the ultimate triumph of the Gospel. There is less hope for the man who says that he knows everything than for him who thinks that he knows nothing, For the one is unteachable, and in a world like this to be unteachable is to be condemned; but the other has at least the aspect of humility. That is why in early gnosticism the prevailing temper was one of scornful arrogance. And that is why in our modern agnosticism we can so often detect a note of wistfulness. It is always a humbling thing to say, I do not know; doubly so to a keen and brilliant intellect; trebly so when the things it does not know are known to the humble farmers in the glen.

Agnosticism Contradicts Man's Deepest Instinct

Indeed it is this last fact, when you consider it, that makes the attraction of agnosticism so remarkable. It contradicts the deepest of all instincts: yet it is acceptable today. That there is a God, and that that God is knowable, is the universal verdict of humanity. That there is a God, and that that God is knowable, is the instinct and affirmation of the soul. Yet when agnosticism throws out its challenge and repudiates these universal witnesses, it finds a welcome in the modem mind. That is a very remarkable phenomenon, well worthy of our consideration. At gnosticism we all smile today; but at agnosticism no one thinks to smile. And what I suggest is that this is only explicable on the ground of a certain specious affinity between the negative creed of the agnostic and the general spirit of the age. Professor Lecky has taken pains to show that it is not argument which kills beliefs. It is rather those slow and subtle changes which gradually permeate the spirit of a people. But not only do these slow and subtle changes explain the destruction of ancient superstition; they explain also the emergence of beliefs. Every creed demands its fit environment as absolutely as does the Alpine flower. Without that environment it will never flourish though it be preached with genius and passion. And I want to show you how the agnostic creed, which once would have been treated with derision, has found a fitting environment today.

Agnosticism's Fitting Environment

Agnosticism, for instance, seems to answer readily to our altered thought of the dwelling-place of man. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him" has meaning for us the psalmist never knew. So long as man deemed that the world which he inhabited was the great and glorious center of the universe, so long was it natural for him to hold that he was important in the eyes of heaven. But if his dwelling place be but an atom flying through boundless space where worlds are numberless, then things assume a different complexion. Now that is exactly what modem science has done. It has dislodged our world from its centrality. It has robbed us of our cosmical importance and made us the creatures of a tiny planet. And it was inevitable that this altered thought, which has so profoundly influenced man's attitude to nature, should have influenced also his attitude to God. It was natural to believe that God was knowable when just beyond the clouds He had His throne. But heaven has gone very far away now, and we sweep the depths of space and cannot find it. And so having learned, on evidence unquestioned, the actual insignificance of earth, we begin to doubt the significance of man. It is to that temper agnosticism comes. It is the creed which answers that suspicion. It is not presumptuous as was atheism. It does not dare to say there is no God. It only says that for creatures such as we are, fashioned of the dust of a little distant planet, the proper attitude is one of ignorance.

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The Attraction of Agnosticism - Page 3
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But if men would only think a little, they would see the fallacy of that appeal. There is a little cottage down in Ayrshire to which pilgrims turn with tender hearts. It has no grandeur as of marble staircase nor spacious rooms with decorated ceiling. Yet he who was born there would have been no greater had he been cradled in a kingly palace, nor was he less a genius because a cottage-child. It is not the dwelling place that makes the man; it is the man that makes the dwelling place. There may be depths of meanness in the lordliest home and moral grandeur in the poorest mountain hut. And to argue that man must be a cipher because the world is not a lordly dwelling place is like arguing that Bums was not a genius because he was a cottage-child. On the contrary, it seems to me that the evidence is the other way. For it is not in palaces nor lordly manors that moral and spiritual worth is oftenest found. It is in humble homes with lowly roofs which have no beauty that we should desire them and which never obtrude themselves upon the passerby. Search through Scotland for the men who know, and you will not find them in the grandest dwellings. It is not in the castles of Dumbartonshire that you find the students who know Shakespeare. And so to argue that God cannot be known unless the world be the castle of the universe is to move contrary to all experience.

Agnosticism in an Environment of Rejection of Dogmatism

But there is another attraction of agnosticism which helps to explain its prevalence today. It is in apparent harmony with an age that cannot brook the accent of finality. To say I do not know is not dogmatic, at least it does not seem to be dogmatic, and so it answers to that prevailing spirit which cannot tolerate the thought of dogmatism. Probably we are suffering today for the over dogmatism of the past. You will very generally find an age of doubt after an age of overconfident assertion. And it may be that the preaching of a former generation, which was so absolutely confident of everything, has given us an age which is confident of nothing. Whatever the cause be, this at least is plain, that men today are not in love with dogmatism. They may have a wistful yearning for the Christ; but they are easily irritated at the creed. They do not accept the sufficiency of formulas. They are no longer held by orthodox beliefs. They are impatient at the suggestion of finality. That there is a nobler side to this impatience, I think it is only fair to recognize. It is always the characteristic of an age that is trembling on the verge of discoveries. And that we are now trembling on the verge of such discoveries as will revolutionize our life and thought, I have not the shadow of a doubt. Now whenever there is such expectancy abroad, the one intolerable standpoint is finality. To be dogmatic in a world of mystery is to seal the eye so that it cannot see. And any creed which cuts as with a saber into the heart of all dogmatic doctrine is certain to receive a kindly welcome. There have been ages when a teacher had no audience unless he could lift up his voice and say I know. But today a far more powerful appeal is to lift up the voice and say I do not know. And that is the attraction of agnosticism to an age that is a little weary of dogmatics and is beginning to feel again, in countless ways, the wonder and the mystery of things.

Agnosticism an Intolerant Dogma

But the curious thing is that agnosticism has proved itself the most intolerant of dogmatisms. Professing to be the foe of all finality, it is itself the most final of all creeds. Through all the ages the Gospel has maintained itself with an infinite and living power of adaptation. It has responded to all the growth of knowledge and never forfeited its central verities. But agnosticism in these past forty years— and what are forty years to twenty centuries— has only saved itself from utter ruin by the very dogmatism which it scorns. To say we have no evidence for God may sound like intellectual humility. It may seem to indicate a very different temper from the blatant atheism of fifty years ago. But when you are dealing not with things but with persons, to say that you have no proof of their existence is really to deny that they exist. There might be gold under the snows of Greenland though we had no evidence that gold was there. But if there were little children in a home, would they not be certain to betray their presence? And if you found no nursery nor cot, no picture books nor fragmentary toys, would not that mean there were no children there? That would be the verdict of the briefest visit: but what if you lived for years within the dwelling? What if you lived there day and night for years and never found one proof that there were children? You see in a moment that to find no evidence is to be driven to deny their being; and as with little children, so with God. If even a shipwrecked sailor on an island leaves unmistakable traces of his presence, how much more the Creator of the universe.

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October 5

The Perils of Unsettlement - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

None of these things move me— Act_20:24

These Words Paul Spoke on His Way to Jerusalem

Paul was journeying to Jerusalem when he spoke the words of our text. They were addressed to the elders of Ephesus whom he had summoned to meet him at Miletus. It was a journey attended by much hazard, and Paul was aware how hazardous it was. The spirit of prophecy, in every city, had testified to the hardships that awaited him. Yet though bonds and imprisonment were in his prospect, and perhaps a shadow darker than imprisonment, the apostle was able to say in all sincerity that none of these things moved him. With an unwavering and undaunted heart he held to the route that he had planned. Like his master, in a still darker hour, he set his face stedfastly towards Jerusalem. In other words, this great apostle had overcome the perils of unsettlement, and it is on the perils of unsettlement that I should like to speak for a little while this evening.

The Prospect of Christ's Return Provided the Spirit of Unsettlement

Now no one can read the New Testament without observing that this was one of the deadliest perils of the apostolic church. However fiercely other evils tried them, this one seems to have had peculiar power. The early Christians, like the Elizabethan mariners, had broken into an untravelled sea. They were beyond the experience of the ages. They lived in the daily hope that Christ was coming And all this wrought such a ferment in their hearts, and seemed to release them so from common obligations, that with all its victories and all its virtues the early church was a-quiver with unsettlement. Men threw their tools down and refused to work. They studied everything save their own business. Why should they take provident care against tomorrow when at sunrise tomorrow Christ might come again? So did there spread through apostolic days a spirit of unquiet and unrest, and men, through the very wonder of it all, were prone to be unbalanced for a little.

We Too Are Beset by an Age of Unsettlement

But though circumstances are very different now, this peculiar danger has not vanished. Today, not less than in the days of Pentecost, we are beset by the perils of unsettlement. I am not speaking of the characteristics of the age, though it is the fashion to call this an unsettled age. I take it that every age which has had life in it has been an unsettled and unsettling age. I speak rather of these large experiences which befall each of us upon our journey when I say that we are still exposed to the swift and subtle perils of unsettlement. Sometimes they reach us through a staggering sorrow which lays the palace in ruins at our feet. Sometimes through the thrilling of good news, or the excitement or variety of travel. Sometimes through the calling of the summertime, with its mystery of light and beauty, touching our hearts and strangely stirring them with cravings which we cannot well interpret. In such ways, and in other ways as evident, are we all in danger of unsettlement. We lose our grip on what we used to cling to. We begin to drag our anchors unexpectedly. We are restless and know not what we want, and we lack the unity that makes for power, and so do we learn out of our own experience the perils which the apostle mastered.

Unsettlement Caused by the Monotony of Life

Indeed, the very concentration of today leads to the intensifying of this danger. When life is narrowed into a dull routine, unsettlement is very easily wrought. In the old days, when life was larger, men were less ready to be thrown off their balance. Familiar with a wider range of circumstance, they were not so lightly moved away by novelty. But now when that large liberty is gone, and men have to concentrate unceasingly, they have lost the power of responding quietly to what is new or strange or unexpected. They are more easily cast out of their reckoning than men who traveled across a larger field. When life is monotonous, even a little incident has the power of disturbing greatly. And so the very monotony of labor, which is so characteristic of today, makes it an easier thing to be unsettled.

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The Perils of Unsettlement - Page 2
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Unsettlement Is the Pain and Privilege of Youth

Let me say in passing that this is a peril from which no man can hope to be exempted. No quiet sheltering of home or task will ward off the inroad of unsettlement. It is true that as life advances it grows less. With the passing of years comes the passing of unrest. In the fulness of its disturbing strength, unsettlement is the pain and privilege of youth. Yet God has so ordered this strange life of ours that into every lot, however sheltered, sooner or later there break out of the infinite those things which are mighty to unsettle. There are perils which we can shun in prudence. We can shape our course so as to avoid them. But this is a peril which we cannot shun, though we had all the wisdom of Athene. Suddenly a great sorrow is upon us, or the thrilling of unexpected joy, or we waken to hear, with hearts that burn within us, the calling of another summertime. From such disturbance there is no escape. We cannot expel the angels when they visit us. We must open the door to them and bid them welcome, and say, "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord." Only thus can we hope to use for good that recurring disturbance of the heart which falls upon us all, in diverse ways, amid the joys and sorrows of humanity.

Unsettlement Makes our Work Harder to Perform

Well now, let us consider one or two of the evils of unsettlement, and the first and most evident perhaps is this, that it makes our work harder to perform. For most men work is hard enough, even when they give to it an undivided mind. It takes every power and faculty which they possess to be honest toilers in the sight of heaven. But work becomes doubly hard for all of us, and to certain natures grows well-nigh impossible when these powers are inwardly distracted and will not answer the summons of the hour. It is not easy to do the common duty under the shadow of overwhelming sorrow. It is not easy to ply the daily task under the new glow of a great joy. It is not easy to take the burden up and to go quietly to our familiar place when the glad and open world is calling us. That is the commonest peril of unsettlement, and I take it there is no one here but knows it. Labor grows irksome; duty becomes irritating; drudgery is well-nigh intolerable. And yet this drudgery, for every one of us, from the dullard to the loftiest genius, is the one road that leads, o'er moor and fen, to the sunrise and the welcome and the crown.

Unsettlement Relaxes the Hold of Our Good Habits

Another peril of unsettlement is this, that it relaxes the hold of our good habits. We come to find, in our unsettled hours, that they do not hold us so firmly as we thought. Most of us are the creatures of habit in a far larger measure than we think. If it is to them that we owe many a weakness, it is to them also that we owe many a virtue. There are few men who can look back upon their lives, with gratitude to God that they have done a little, without recognizing what a debt they owe to one or two habits which were early formed. Such habits may be very simple, yet they have a wonderfully redeeming power. They redeem every day from being wasted and every energy from being ineffectual. If a bad habit is the worst of curses and leads by the road of bondage to the dark, a good habit, through the grace of God, is one of our surest and most priceless blessings. Now it is always one peril of unsettlement that it relaxes the hold of our good habits. It lifts us out of the embrace of good ones and throws us into the embrace of evil ones. For always, when we lose our self-control, sin, as the Scripture says, coucheth at the door waiting to call us to what we practiced once but have long through the grace of God forsworn. All men have a hunger for the good, but all men have a bias to the evil. It is that bias which the devil uses in the season of a man's unsettlement. Torn from his center by unexpected incidence, caught into new and strange environment, a man is in peril because his grip is weakened on the steadying and simple habits of his past.

Unsettlement Is the Enemy of Prayer Regularity

And especially, will you let me say in passing; is this true of the sweet habits of the interior life. Unsettlement is the peculiar enemy of regularity in private prayer. I take it that most men pray in secret. I trust I am not mistaken in so thinking It may be only a few words— it may be very formal— yet is it better than no prayer at all. But who does not know how this interior grace, which we may have learned beside a mother's knee, is apt to be shed off like an old garment when the hour of unsettlement arrives. I grant you that in a great catastrophe there is an instinct in the heart to pray. It is often then, when all the deeps are broken, that the pride which never prayed is broken too. But in all the lesser unsettlements of life when there is disturbance only, not catastrophe, there is the constant peril of forgetting the sweet and secret exercise of prayer. I have known men who prayed through years of drudgery, and who ceased it when great good fortune came. I have known men who prayed right through the winter, yet somehow in summer they forgot to pray. I have known men— yes, and women too— who would never have dreamed of omitting prayer at home, who yet omitted it, not once only, amid the excitement and the stir of foreign travel. That is a grave peril of unsettlement. There is not one of us but is exposed to it. It is appalling how lightly we are held by the secret habits of the interior life. A glimpse of liberty, a day of sunshine, a stroke of luck, a touch of one we love, and it may be— God only knows— that we shall throw ourselves upon a prayerless bed tonight.

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by George H. Morrison

Resolute Continuance Is a Mark of a Great Character

Now it is always one mark of a great character not to be easily or lightly moved. A certain quiet and fine stability is generally one of the hallmarks of the noble. When Saul was chosen to be king of Israel and when the people shouted "God save the king," we could scarce have wondered if that swift elevation had unsettled him and turned his head a little. And it has always been held as a proof of Saul's nobility that he passed with a quiet heart through that great hour, and with the cry of the people in his ears went back to guide his father's plough again. Of course there are natures more prone than others to yield to the pressure of unsettlement. There are dogged natures and responsive natures, and there always shall be till the trumpet sounds. Still speaking broadly and generally, we may say that to be unsettled lightly is a bad sign, and that one mark of nobility of character is a quiet and resolute continuance. The question is then how we, not being great, can hope to attain to that continuance. How can we organize into victory the common perils of unsettlement?

Aloofness Is Not the Answer to Unsettlement

Let me say first, and in a negative way, that it is but a sorry victory to stand aloof. It is not thus, as I understand my Bible, that God would have his children live. There are men who never take a holiday, they are so filled with dread of its disturbances. Knowing how certainly it will unsettle them, they prefer to forego it altogether. And while in the aged or the infirm of body such a reluctance is easily understood, with others it is a road to peace that is perilously near to cowardice. We were never meant to live our lives so. We were never meant to bar the gates like that. To shut the summer out, and to shut love out, is not victory, it is defeat. In many of the choicest gifts of God there is a terrible power of unsettlement, and a Christian was never meant to reject the gift because of the unsettlement it brings. There was once a philosophy which wrought along these lines. It was called the Stoical philosophy. It sought to achieve serenity of life by steeling the soul against the passions. And do you know what happened as a fact of history? Well, I shall tell you what actually happened— one of two results was found in life. Sometimes men won the serenity they craved, but they won it at a tremendous cost. For love was banished and the charm of things and the touch of sympathy that makes us brothers. And sometimes in the very hour of victory, nature, trampled on, rose to her rights again and in her passionate and overmastering way swept down the defenses they had built. It is no use fighting against nature. It is worse than useless fighting against God. We are not here to stand aloof from things and to steel our hearts against disturbances. We are here to welcome whatever God may send, whether it be sunshine or be sorrow, and somehow out of all unsettlement to wrest the music of our triumph-song.

Unsettlement Is Helped by Seeing Things in Their Proper Proportions

Well now, one great help to that is learning to see things in their true proportions. Without a certain feeling for perspective, we can never be quiet in the thick of life. You remember what Dr. Johnson said to a friend who was worrying about a trifle? "Think, sir," he said in his wise way, "think how little that will seem twelvemonth hence." And if we only practiced that fine art of thinking how little many a thing will seem twelvemonth hence, we should be freed from much unsettlement today. It is good to know a big thing when we see it. It is not less good to know a little thing. There are people to whom the tiniest burn is as swift and dangerous as the Spey. And always when you have people of that nature who have never taken the measurements of life, you have people who live on the margin of unsettlement. Next to the grace of God for through bearing, there is nothing more kindly than a little humor. To see things in a smiling kind of way is often to see them in the wisest way. For as there are things, and always shall be things, that strike to the very heart of human destiny, so are there things, and always shall be things, that are so trifling as to be ridiculous. It is amazing how many worthy people seem never to have learned that simple lesson. You would think they had never heard the words of Jesus about swallowing the camel and straining at the gnat. And so are they always in peril of unsettlement, not because their experience is exceptional, but because they have never learned in life to see things in their true proportions.

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The Perils of Unsettlement - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

See the Hand of God in Everything

But the greatest help of all is this, it is to see the hand of God in everything When a man has come to see the hand of God in everything, he touches the secret of the weaned heart. I have noticed among domestic servants one very common reason of unsettlement. It is that they do not know who is the mistress and have to take orders from half a dozen people. And all of us are servants in God's house and always in our service we shall be irritable unless there be one voice we must obey and one will which gives us all our orders. That was the meaning of the peace of Job. He saw God always, and he saw Him everywhere. "The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away," said Job, "blessed be the name of the Lord." It was not God today and fate tomorrow. It was not heaven in the morning and blind chance at night. Through light and shadow it was God to Job, and that was one secret of his rest. So is it with us all. To have many masters is always to be restless. "I have set the Lord always before me," said the Psalmist, "therefore I shall not be moved." To see His hand in the least and in the greatest, in the burden no less than in the blessing, is the sure way, amid all life's unsettlement, to have the heart at leisure from itself.

October 6

Paul before His Judges

But after two years Porcius Festus came into Felix's room; and Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound— Act_24:27

Paul's Two Years in Prison

After being five days at Caesarea, Paul was formally indicted by the Jewish party. The case against him was conducted by Tertullus who was as unscrupulous as he was eloquent. Felix was no stranger to the matters in debate; he had lived long enough among the Jews to grow conversant with them. He therefore refused to decide the matter offhand; he would wait till his captain from Jerusalem came down. Now, whether the captain was unwilling to come or whether he got a broad hint not to hurry, is a question we need not trouble to decide. The fact remains that we have no trace of his visit during Paul's two years of confinement at Caesarea. What was the apostle doing all that time? We cannot be certain that he wrote any epistles. Do you think he was fretting? Or worrying over his churches as he paced his prison battlements by the blue sea? We may be absolutely certain he was doing nothing like that— he was growing and ripening in his own inward life. For twenty years he had been fighting for Christ amid the excitement and stress of a glorious campaign. New views of Christ had been borne upon his heart; new aspects of the Gospel had arrested him. It wanted leisure now to focus everything, and God bestowed that leisure at Caesarea. Compare the letters that were written after these years with the letters which we know were written before them. Note the richness and depth and glory of the later ones— their exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ; their fresh insistence upon spiritual union; their recognition of the possibilities of sainthood; their method of bringing the most majestic doctrines to bear on the common duties of every day— and you will see what these two years did for Paul. I dare say the soldiers thought him very idle. Had you asked them, they would have said he was doing nothing Yet all Christendom is deeply in God's debt for making Paul come apart and rest awhile.

Paul before Felix and Drusilla

Only one incident has been enshrined for us out of these two years at Caesarea. It is the scene with which our passage opens when Paul was brought before Felix and Drusilla. Drusilla was the youngest daughter of King Herod Agrippa I. She was a beautiful young Jewess of some eighteen years of age. But there were dark shadows lying across her path that would have marred the fairest womanhood. It was not God who had made her Felix's wife. She had a home already when Felix cast his bad eyes on her. And it may be that a guilty conscience and a torn heart and a mind that could not forget urged her to hear the Gospel of this prisoner. Do you observe what Paul was asked to speak about? He was asked to speak "concerning the faith in Christ." And do you note what Paul did speak about? He reasoned of righteousness and self-control and judgment. Righteousness— and Felix was a promise-breaker and had procured the murder of the High Priest Jonathan. Self-control— and there at his side, eagerly listening, sat beautiful Drusilla. Judgment— that was the very thought that haunted Felix, only it was the judgment of his emperor, not of his God. No wonder Felix trembled. He had the soul of a slave, says Tacitus, and the power of a sovereign. He would hear no more; Paul was dismissed; "when I have a convenient (not more convenient) season, I will call for thee."

Paul before Festus

About the year 60, Felix was recalled and was succeeded in the governorship by Porcius Festus. Festus seems to have been a better ruler, and probably he was a better man than Felix, but, like a Roman, he cared little for religion and could not understand religious earnestness. He was perplexed about this Jewish prisoner; it occurred to him that he might try the case at Jerusalem; and it was then that Paul, apprehending the danger he was in, took the great step of appealing to Caesar. That is not in the passage to be read, but it must be touched on to illuminate the passage. For it was not till Paul had appealed to Caesar that Agrippa and Bernice came to Caesarea. Might not they be able to unravel Festus' difficulties? They were Jews and understood the points at issue. Festus arranged that a court should be convened at which Agrippa and Bernice might be present. It was then that Paul made that most noble defense which is recorded in the twenty-sixth chapter. He told the story of his conversion again, for his greatest defense of all just lay in that. And our passages take up the narrative at the point where Paul has touched on resurrection and has been rudely silenced by Festus crying out in a loud voice, "Paul, thou art mad!" Paul instantly, and without losing self-command, repels the charge. He appeals to Agrippa on the grounds of Jewish prophecy. And Agrippa replies in these memorable words, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." Do we know what Agrippa really meant? He did not mean "I am almost persuaded." The Greek words that have been translated so are not capable of bearing such a sense. What Agrippa meant was "Paul, do you think that with a little persuasion you are going to persuade me to be a Christian? It is a far harder task than you imagine."

Three Simple Lessons

Now let us note three simple lessons, and first the peril of tomorrow. Someone has said that today has two great enemies— the one is yesterday, the other is tomorrow. Are we not reminded of that whenever we think of Felix whose evil past was such a burden on him and who talked of a convenient time— which never came. Next mark how history reverses human judgments. Peter and the other disciples were despised, because they were ignorant and unlettered men. Paul was put to scorn by Festus for just the opposite reason— he had learned too much. Men thought the prophets of Israel raved. They said of Jesus that He was beside Himself. Is there any one now who would harbor such a thought? Lastly, see the perfect courtesy of the apostle— "I would you were altogether as I am except these bonds." "Courtesy," says St. Francis of Assisi, "is the sister of charity, which quencheth hate and keepeth love alive." Never forget that God's mighty missionary was one of the truest gentlemen who ever breathed.

October 7

Paul's Voyage and Shipwreck

And when it was determined that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners unto one named Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band— Act_27:1

Paul's Mediterranean Voyage

All of us love stories of voyages and shipwrecks, and our lesson of today deals with these themes. I do not know any chapter in the Bible that is more alive with thrilling interest. So far, we have seen Paul in many perils; we have followed him through many strange adventures; but just as the hero in the schoolboys' storybooks is never quite perfect till he has suffered shipwreck, so is it with this traveler and missionary. Can we briefly outline the fascinating story? Well, Paul embarked at Caesarea under the guard of a centurion, Julius. The vessel was only a coasting-vessel; they would have to change if they were to get to Rome. Fortunately, at Myra in Asia Minor, a corn-ship from Alexandria was in the harbor. It was bound for Rome to distribute its cargo there, and Julius and his prisoners got a passage. But the season was late, and the winds were getting stormy; it was with great difficulty that they made a port in Crete. Here they would have remained throughout the winter had they hearkened to the advice of Paul. But who was Paul that he should be attended to? Had not the captain made this voyage twenty times? The prospect of wintering in Crete was quite intolerable when the stir and gaiety of Rome were waiting them. So the harbor was left; the sails were trimmed again; a favoring breeze gave every one new heart when suddenly the ship was caught in a typhoon— one of the wild and dangerous storms of the Mediterranean. The boat was hoisted on board; the sails were furled; stout ropes were passed round the body of the ship; not a glimpse of the sun could be got and not a star was visible;— for fourteen days they drove on under bare masts. Then at midnight there arose the cry of "Land!" Soundings were taken; the water was getting shallower. Four anchors were cast out of the stern; they held, and the ship rode safely till the morning, Then as the light dawned and outlines became visible, a little bay among the cliffs was seen. The cables were cut, and a desperate effort was made to beach the vessel on the rock-engirdled sand. It partly failed, the currents were so strong. The ship was driven ashore and sorely battered. But though she soon went to pieces, and everything was lost, "it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land."

Circumstances Reveal the Man

Now among the many lessons of this chapter, note first that the hour reveals the man. When Paul stepped on board, he was one of a batch of prisoners. Neither captain or sailors would give two thoughts to him. They had carried all manner of desperadoes Romeward, and there was nothing striking about this little Jew. But gradually, as the voyage became more perilous, Paul moved out from the darkness to the light. It was he who advised and encouraged and commanded. It was he who put new heart and hope in everybody. He went on board an unregarded prisoner, but the hour of need struck, and he stood supreme. Do not such hours come to all of us when for weal or woe we stand in our true colors? "There is nothing hid, but shall be revealed." It was Paul's years of reliance upon God and of secret prayer and of steadfast loyalty that broke into the rich blossom of this hour. Will there be such secrets to reveal in us?

Faith in God Keeps a Man Calm in a Storm

Next note how faith in God keeps a man calm. Perhaps that is the most notable feature in this story. Amid a scene of excitement and of terror, we are arrested by the quietude of Paul. The sailors, panic-stricken, were for fleeing; the soldiers were crying out to kill the prisoners; but the apostle was cool, collected, confident, and he was so because of his faith in God. Men used to feel that, too, about General Gordon. There was something mysterious in his calmness in moments of peril. Those who had fought in many a desperate battle and witnessed many shining deeds of heroism would say there was something in the courage of Gordon that was unlike anything they had ever seen. We know now what that" something" was. It was living and glowing and conquering trust in God. It was the same faith as gave Paul the quiet mastery in the confusion and panic of the storm.

God Saves Many for the Sake of One

Again, we must not omit to notice here that many may be saved for one man's sake. When the ship was driving westward before the wind, an angel of God, we read, appeared to Paul. And the message which the angel brought was this: "Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar; and lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee"— that means that for the apostle's sake every man on board the vessel would be saved. How little any of them ever dreamed of their obligation to this despised Jew! In after days when the sailors told the story of the wreck, they would say it was a miracle they were not lost. But the only miracle was the will of God in choosing their vessel for His servant's journey. And we are like these sailors in this one respect. We all owe debts where we little dream of it. A father's example and a mother's prayer, the presence of good men and women in our childhood, the spirit of Jesus breathing in the world and falling on us like the blowing of the wind, these influences mould us when we never know of it and may save us in our hours of gale and storm.

We Should Not Just Wait but Cast Some Anchors

Then, lastly, it is not enough to wish for the day (Act_27:29); there are some anchors that we all should cast. One of them is faith; another is a good conscience. Without these, says Paul, some have made shipwreck (1Ti_1:19). A third is hope: "which hope we have as an anchor of the soul" (Heb_6:19). We are all voyaging on a dark and boisterous sea. Our hearts and our eyes should ever be toward the morning. Meantime let us thank God that we have anchors by which the weakest may ride out the night.

October 8

The Life of Drift

When the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we
let her drive— Act_27:15

Causes of Drifting: Internal Breakdown

It is interesting to remember some of the causes that make vessels drift. Often it is a breakdown in the engine room. So long as the engines are in perfect order the vessel holds to its appointed course. But let the shaft snap, as sometimes happens, and immediately the ship begins to drift. And as it is with ships, so is it not infrequently with lives; they drift because of interior breakdown. It may be a breakdown in morality, though no one knows anything about it yet. It may be a breakdown in the will, for the will is the shaft of life. It may be a breakdown in some sweet and simple piety like that of prayer in the secret place— and the ship goes drifting on the sea. There is a story of an officer in the Great War who went drifting and was finally cashiered. He came back again to his old home and entered the little bedroom of his boyhood. Then, turning to his mother, "Mother," he said, "the whole thing began when I stopped praying as a lad beside that bed."

Drifting Caused by the Rising of the Tide or Change of Circumstances

Again, we must not forget that boats may drift because of the rising of the tide. One has had that experience on summer holidays. You draw the rowboat high up on the shore, and you leave it there, thinking it is safe. But the night is the night of a spring tide, and concurring with the tide there blows a gale. And in the morning you go to get the boat, only to find that it is gone: the spring tide has come and set it drifting. That is often how young people go drifting. Youth is the spring tide of life. Passions awake, tempestuous and turbulent; new thought and knowledge lap around the gunwale. And lives that once were safe, beached in the securities of childhood, go drifting like ships upon the sea. That often happens when a lad goes to college out of an orthodox and godly home. He enters a new world of thought and gains a new conception of the universe. And the ship that was so safe once amid the unquestioning pieties of home, finds itself drifting on the deeps. Spring tide has come, and spring tide is of God. God is in the flow as in the ebb. Lives that drift like that can be recaptured. There is One who is out to seek and save. I find a perennial and profound significance in a Savior who could walk upon the sea. Drifting stops when He is taken aboard.

A Drifting Ship Is a Danger to Other Shipping

It is well to note, too, that a drifting ship is always a danger to the other shipping. Every captain would corroborate that. You can chart a quicksand or a reef, and having them on the chart you can avoid them. But nobody can chart a drifting ship; it may be on you in a moment in the night. It is well to remember that in that regard a drifting life is like a drifting vessel; it is fraught with peril and disaster. When a man drifts from his anchorage in Christ, he affects a hundred other lives. No one can tell the hurt that he may bring when he drifts into indifference and worldliness— spoiling the fair name of Christ, damping the zeal of zealous, eager people, making it always easier to be skeptical and always harder to be true. One of the signals of a drifting iceberg is a rapid lowering of the temperature. Drifting lives are just like drifting icebergs: wherever they drift there is fall in temperature. They chill the church. They chill the congregation. They chill the eager loyalties of youth, not because they are notoriously bad, but just because they are drifting.

Christ Warns Us of Drifting Lives

That is one reason why our blessed Lord is always dead against the life of drift. He condemns it in a score of instances. Think how He describes the days of Noah. According to Genesis the earth was full of violence; but our Lord says nothing about violence as the precursor of calamity. He says that in the days before the flood men were eating, drinking, merrymaking, marrying— and then, suddenly, the flood came. Noah was a man of action, of swift decision, of determination. The others went drifting on from day to day, thoughtless, heedless, irresistible. It is the Lord's warning against the life of drift as leading to disaster, and He is always insisting upon that. The man of the one talent took no risks. He forfeited everything for doing nothing. The man who built his house upon the sand found that in the drift was his destruction. The man who worshipped God today and tomorrow was the slave of mammon was intolerable in the eyes of Jesus. Christ calls for action, for decision, for determination of the will. If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off. Nobody knew better than our Savior that we are here not to drift but to decide if we are ever to have the music and the crown.

Christ Was Never Accused of Drifting

And how beautifully is that exemplified in His own so perfect life! Scoffers said He drank, but no one ever said He drifted. By a magnificent energy of faithful will He put from Him all the kingdoms of the world. He chose the long, hard trail and held to it, though His feet were bleeding and His heart was breaking Far off He saw the cross in its agony and shame and ridicule, and He set His face steadfastly towards Jerusalem. Nothing could divert Him nor break the steady power of His purpose, no tempting friends nor cheering multitudes nor bitter desertion nor betrayal. The great word in the life of drift is may, but the great word in the life of Christ is must, and must is the last triumph of the will. No man can share His spirit who lives on in aimless indecision. Nobody can have His joy who shrinks from full surrender. The life of drift never reaches harbor. It reaches the quicksand and the reef— from which may God in His mercy save us all.

October 9

Social Consequences of Individual Faith

Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe God— Act_27:25

What You Believe Affects the Lives of Others

It might seem as if what a man believed were no concern to anybody else. That is his own affair and his alone. Let a man be honest, industrious, and straight, and it does not socially matter what his creed is. Others are not the better for his faith nor the worse for his want of it. One hears frequent expression of that view, and sometimes it is buttressed by the text, "Hast thou faith? Have it for thyself." As a matter of fact, what a man believes has profound and pervasive social consequence. It affects the lives of all he comes in contact with. It inspires or depresses them. And all this is more beautifully illustrated in the story of the shipwreck of St. Paul than perhaps in any other piece of Scripture.

Doing and Being

We note, for instance, how the faith of Paul made him intensely and practically useful One is reminded of the exclamation "What practical fellows these great mystics are." We could well imagine somebody dilating on the compelling preaching of St. Paul, but quite certain that in storm and shipwreck he would be altogether useless. And yet in such an hour, when things were darkest, Paul was the most useful man on board, and he was so because he believed God. The same thing is profoundly true of Jesus who lived in a perfect and unwavering faith. That did not make Him an ineffectual dreamer; it made Him intensely and socially useful. It filled the nets, and fed the hungry folk, and restored the withered arm to service, and brought joy and singing to the home at Bethany.

Paul's Faith Brought Hope to All Aboard

We help people by what we do. Perhaps we help them more by what we are. We prove ourselves useful when we give our money. We are still more useful when we give ourselves. And no man has his whole self to give, in all the expansion of his possibilities, until he has aligned himself with God.

We note again how the faith of the apostle brought new hope to everyone on board. These despairing souls were saved by hope. One moment there was not a star in all their sky. They were drifting on to certain death. The best of them would be crying to their gods; the worst would fail to cursing and blaspheming. And then, like the first faint flushing of the dawn, hope came stealing into every heart because there was one on board who believed God. Things were just as dark as they had been before. There was no cessation of the raging storm. They were still drifting on to an iron shore, their ship the sport and plaything of the elements. But one man believed God and because of that was radiant and serene, and it brought hope into the heart of everybody. What does it not matter what you believe? Is faith entirely devoid of social consequence? It mattered supremely for these despairing sailors. It matters every time. Have faith in God— have it for yourself— be strong and quiet and confident because of it, and everybody on shipboard is affected.

Faith Radiates the Atmosphere of Hope

For that is always one of the fruits of faith. Faith radiates the atmosphere of hope. The presence of a strong and living faith calls out the music of a thousand hearts. A son may be a prodigal, and everybody may think him past redemption. But his mother never thinks him past redemption because of the faith in her big mother-heart. And because of the faith in the heart of the Lord Jesus, hope has dawned on twice ten thousand people who, like these shipwrecked sailors, were despairing It is a great thing to give weary people hope. It is like sowing grass on a parched and arid land. And in all our weakness, one sure way to do it is the old sweet way of Jesus and of Paul. Have faith in God. Live it out in storms. Be strong and quiet when others cry in terror. And in mysterious ways we cannot trace hope will dawn upon the hearts of men.

Paul's Faith Brought Good Cheer to Others

Not only did the faith of Paul give hope; it also gave the blessing of good cheer. It brought the comfort of a happy confidence to every desponding heart on board. I have read somewhere of an ocean liner caught in the fury of a terrific storm. Men were panic-stricken— women screamed— and then the captain smiled. And the faith that lay behind that smile, that the ship he knew so well would weather through, brought good cheer to every soul on board. So was it with St. Paul. He believed God and he could smile. When others were terror-stricken and beside themselves, he could give thanks and quietly take his breakfast. And men, seeing it, forgot their fears and plucked up heart again and became cheerful— and all because one person believed God. It is a fine thing to do kindly, helpful deeds. It is one of the very finest in the world. But there is something finer than the helpful hand; it is the helpful heart. To be brave and radiant when things are darkest has an impact upon everybody, and for that one must believe God. My dear reader, longing to cheer others, begin by having faith in God. Fix the one point of your compass there, and let the other sweep as widely as you will. A strong faith is the secret of all helpfulness. Nothing can ever take the place of that. This is the victory that overcomes the world— even your faith.

October 10

The Broken Things of Life

Some on broken pieces of the ship…escaped…safely to land — Act_27:44

Broken Time

Among the broken things of life one would think first of broken time. Time, says Benjamin Franklin, is the stuff of life: it is a stuff which is very easily tattered. When a man is eagerly plying his own work, interruptions are intensely irritating. Sometimes they are inevitable; at other times they spring from thoughtlessness. And one of the lessons everyone must learn who wants to achieve anything in life is how to hold to things through recurring interruption. That is how the worker comes ashore. That is how most of the world's work is done; not by men of an unbroken leisure— is very rarely fruitful. It is done by men who have to seize their hours, rescue and redeem their opportunities, gather up the fragments that remain. I think of Shakespeare with all a player's worries; of Milton burdened with the cares of State; of Spurgeon founding colleges and orphanages yet preaching those magnificent discourses. They seized their hours, rescued their opportunities, toiled on in the teeth of interruptions, and on broken pieces of the ship they came ashore.

Broken Health

Again, the words have comforting suggestion for those who are suffering from broken health. Doubtless there are some of my readers in that category. Once they were strong, vigorous, and tireless; now they are very easily tired. Once it was a great, glad thing to live; now it is rather a burden to be borne. There is so much that they would gladly do if only they had the strength to do it. It is so very bitter to feel useless. My dear friends, health is a priceless blessing. Rubies and diamonds are nothing to it. Without it, castles and carriages are vanity; with it, the tiniest cottage is a kingdom. But never forget that with a little courage and trust in God and patient, quiet endurance, you may get ashore on broken pieces of the ship. Think of Calvin with his sickly body; of Pascal, all his life an invalid; of Richard Baxter tortured by disease; of Mrs. Browning on her couch. Think of the great Apostle to the Gentiles with his ophthalmia and his malaria. They never knew what perfect health was; they did not sail in any golden galleon; they did not waken in the morning singing, feeling as if they were capable of anything. But they did their work, wrote immortal literature, altered Europe, changed the course of history, clinging to the broken pieces of the ship. I knew an invalid in quite a humble home who used to lament to me that she was useless. Her brothers and sisters were in splendid health; she was only a burden to them all. And yet no wages that the sisters earned brought such an enriching to that home as the presence of her who thought that she was useless. Her gentleness was like the rain from heaven—her patience a rebuke— her happy smile for everybody was gladdening as the sunshine in November. She earned no wages, wrote no poems, never made a dress nor cooked a dinner— and yet on broken pieces of the ship she came ashore.

Shattered Faith

Now I want to go a little deeper, from a shattered body to a shattered faith. There are many in the world today whose early faith is very sorely broken. Trained in Christian homes, there was a time when they accepted things. They prayed; they read their Bibles; they attended Sunday school; they went to church. And now the years have gone, and everything is different, and the old, sweet assurance has departed, and clouds and darkness are around the Throne. Once their faith was like a gallant vessel with the sails set and the flags flying. They thought, once, that they would reach the harbor so— and now that gallant vessel is a wreck. And I want to tell them, quietly and earnestly, for I fervently believe that it is true, that on broken pieces of the ship they can make shore. Much is lost; something yet remains, something they can cling to in the dark something they cannot doubt, divine and unalterably true. And I say that if they only cling to that, like the shipwrecked sailor to a spar, it will buoy them up and bring them to the shore. There are those who make the haven gloriously. They have a prosperous and sunny voyage. Their love is burning, and their faith is bright; they live and die in the fulness of assurance. But I thank God that men can reach the haven clinging to a spar, for the Lord God is merciful and gracious. Trembling on the borders of agnosticism, questioning the fatherhood of God, uncertain of the authority of Scripture, critical of the Church and of its ministry, let them grip Christ, the little bit they know of Him; let them tell Him that they will not let Him go, and He will pluck them out of the deep waters.

Broken Character

Lastly, and in a word or two, I apply the words to broken character, to those whose character is sorely broken and who today are on the margins of despair. I think of the prodigal son in the far country; his conduct had disgraced the name of son. I think of Peter when he denied his Lord, and his whole life seemed toppling to ruin. I think of Rahab in her life of sin that must have crushed all that was fairest in her. I think of the woman who was called the Magdalene. Not perfect characters, very far from that; rent and torn by the fury of their passions; characters that sin had battered as the storm had battered the vessel of St. Paul. And then, thanks to the grace of God that is able to save unto the uttermost, on broken pieces of the ship they came ashore. The prodigal came home again, and there was music and dancing in the house. The Magdalene was drawn out of the mire into the garden of a saintly womanhood Some who read this have been living carelessly, and their character has gone to pieces in the dark. Thank God that there is still a shining hope for them as for the shipwrecked comrades of St. Paul.

October 11

Kindness at Melita

And when they were escaped then they knew that the island was called Melita— Act_28:1

On the Island of Malta

When at last the shipwrecked company reached shore, they learned that the island on which they were cast was Melita. There can be no reasonable doubt that Melita was the island known to us as Malta. Though small, it is of the highest importance. It is an important island in the Mediterranean. Its fortifications are extraordinarily strong. It is one of the most thickly populated islands in the world, and the natives love it—they call it "the flower of the world"; and in springtime at least, when it is carpeted with blossom, one would not readily quarrel with the name. Do boys know what a Maltese cross is like? And have they ever heard of the Knights of Malta? These names remind us of the part that Malta played in the inspiring and yet tragic story of the Crusades. It was on this island, then, that Paul was cast and found himself in the midst of a barbarous people. Now we must not think from that word barbarous that the Maltese were wild and dangerous savages. A barbarian was just a man whose speech was like bar—bar—bar—there was no sense in it to a Greek or Latin. Today the natives speak a corrupt Arabic with a strong flavor of Italian in it. But perhaps in Paul's time it would be a debased Phoenician dialect, and that would just be bar—bar—bar to the apostle.

God Fulfils His Promises

Now the first thing to impress me in this story is how thoroughly God fulfils His promises. His care did not cease nor His lovingkindness vanish when the peril of the breakers was removed. You remember what God had whispered in the storm? He had promised to give to Paul the lives of all on board (Act_27:24). And in the strict sense that promise was fulfilled when the whole company got safe to land. But what if the island had been a desert island? Or what if the natives had attacked the crew? The rescue from the wild surf in St. Paul's Bay would have been of little service if it had led to that. It is when I read of the kindness of the islanders, and of their hospitable welcome to the shipwrecked, that I see what a large and liberal interpretation we should always give to God's promise of protection. When Jesus had passed through the storm of His temptation, angels came and ministered unto Him. It was a desert place, the haunt of ravening beasts, yet even there God had His angels ready. So here when the peril of the sea was over, there are ministering hearts and hands upon the shore. It is always wise to take the words of God, not at their lowest but at their highest value. We need never hesitate to pour a wealth of meaning into the simplest and briefest of His pledges. As Paul looked back on this exciting voyage and traced the action of God's hand in it, he must have felt that God had done for him far above what he could ask or think.

An Ill Wind That Blew Untold Good to Malta

Once more this lesson admirably illustrates the proverb that it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. This was an ill wind for the Alexandrian corn-ship. I dare say it almost broke the heart of the good captain. He had carried so many cargoes safe to Rome that this sudden calamity was overwhelming. Sailors are often very superstitious, and they were invariably so in the old world. They never dreamed of starting on a voyage without offering sacrifices and taking auspices. What was the meaning, then, of this ill-wind? Were the gods offended, or were they simply mocking? I think we see now that the furious gale was blowing a blessing upon heathen Malta. There would be much corn washed up on the shore. The beach would be covered with the grain from Africa. But it was not food like that that was the storm's best gift for the islanders who knew not God. It was the message of Christ that the apostle preached to them; it was the prayers which were offered in the name of Jesus; it was the healing of the sick and the diseased. There was not a sailor but muttered, "What an ill wind is this," yet it was blowing untold good to Malta. Can we recall, from the Bible or from history, any other great storms that blew a blessing anywhere? There are two that will suggest themselves at once. One was the tempest on the Lake of Galilee that so enriched the disciples in their knowledge of Christ. The other was the storm which fell on the Armada and drove it asunder and dashed it on wild rocks— an ill wind, but a wind which saved our country and wrought incalculable good for Europe.

Even a Snake Can Benefit the Gospel

Again our lesson shows us this, that even a viper may help on the Gospel. We all know the story of the viper. It is one of the Bible scenes we never forget. We see the creature torpid in the brushwood; we watch it stirring as the heat of the fire gets at it; and then— irritated— it grips the apostle's hand and is shaken off into the fire. You see that if Paul had let others tend the fire, he would have escaped this sudden peril. But it is always nobler to run the risk of vipers than to sit idle and let others do the work. And then what happened? Every eye was fixed on Paul. He came to his own rightful place at once. They thought that he was a murderer; then that he was a god. The captain and mate and crew took a second place. Paul would be spoken of that night in a hundred cottages, and before morning Publius would know of him. The viper was the bell before the sermon. It stirred up interest and centered it on Paul. He would not have to wait for an audience now when he began (through an interpreter) to preach. Note then that even poisonous creatures may be used to advance the message of Christ Jesus. It is a great thing to believe that we serve a Lord who can turn even a snake into an argument. No man ever gave himself up to what was highest without stirring up the venom in the firewood; but as the world looks back upon these noble lives, it sees that all things were working for their good.

The Sure Reward That Followed a Kindly Welcome

Then lastly, the great lesson of these verses is the sure reward that follows a kindly welcome. We have all heard of the Cornish wreckers and of the heartless cruelty that characterized them. A wreck was an act of God not to be interfered with, and strange stories are told of how men were left to die. Such wreckers were true barbarians (though they called themselves Christians), and no blessing ever followed their vile gains. How different is this scene at Malta! The islanders gave the shipwrecked a kind welcome; they did it instinctively, looking for no reward. But when their fevered were cured and their diseased were healed, they found they had got far more then they gave. No generous welcome is ever thrown away. Kindnesses, not less than curses, come home to roost. Writ large, over all the passage, is the golden text, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Heb_13:2).

October 12

The Saving Power of Hope

We are saved by hope — Rom_8:24

It is not difficult as one looks out on life to recognize the saving power of hope. One thinks, for instance, to what a large extent it is hope which saves humanity from idleness. When a student faces an examination, it is his uncertainty that makes him toil. Were he perfectly sure that he would fail or pass, that would take all the zest out of his studies. Hope is the kindly instrument of God for rescuing mankind from inactivity, and inactivity is sister to stagnation. It is in hope that the writer wields his pen; it is in hope that the sower casts his seed. Search deep enough into the springs of action — you always catch the whispering of hope. In a large sense, we are saved by hope from the tragedy of doing nothing in a world where there is everything to do.

Hope Rescues Us from Giving In

Akin to that is the great fact of life that we are saved by hope from giving in. For the great multitude of men hope lies at the back of perseverance. That may not be true of elect natures. It was not true of Marcus Aurelius, for instance. Never was there a more hopeless man than he, yet how magnificently he persevered. But for the rank and file of ordinary mortals on whom the Gospel always keeps its eye, hope is essential to holding on. One thinks of the story of the little lame boy who was "hoping to have wings some day." He could not race nor leap like other boys, but he was hoping to have wings some day. It was that hope which helped him to endure and taught him to bear the burden of his lameness, and so it is largely in this life of ours. From giving in when things are very difficult, from breaking down just at breaking point, from losing heart when all the lights are dim and the clouds return after the rain, in deep senses we are saved by hope.

Hope Saves Us from Losing Faith

Equally true is it of life, that we are often saved by hope from losing faith. Think, for instance, how often that is true of our Christian hope of personal survival. When his friend Arthur Hallam died, Tennyson was plunged into the depths. It seemed as if the foundations were destroyed and the moral universe had fallen in ruins. And then, as one may read In Memoriam, morning broke with the singing of the birds through the shining Christian hope of immortality. Nothing could be more dreary than the inscriptions on old pagan tombs, but pass to the catacombs and everything is different: they are radiant with trust in God. What millions have been saved from loss of faith in the hour when the heart was desolate and empty by the burning hope of a blessed immortality. "My soul, hope thou in God." His name is love, and love demands forever. "Forever" is engraven on the heart of love as Calais was engraven on the heart of Mary. When life is desolated by the hand of death so that faith in Fatherhood is very difficult, multitudes have been upheld and comforted by the saving power of hope.

Christ Inspired Hope

Now, it is very beautiful to notice how our Savior utilized that saving energy. Think how often He began His treatment by kindling the flame of hope within the breast. One might take the instance of Zacchaeus, that outcast from the commonwealth of Israel. He had been taught there was no hope for him, and he believed it till the Lord came by. And then, like the dawn, there came the quivering hope that his tomorrow might differ from his yesterday, and in that new hope the saving work began. Often hope is subsequent to faith. The Scripture order is "faith, hope, charity." But it is equally true, in the movements of the soul, that hope may be the forerunner of faith. And our Lord, bent on evoking faith, that personal trust in Him which alone saves, began by kindling hope within the breast. That is how He often begins still. He does not begin by saying, "Trust in Me." He begins by kindling these hopes of better things that are lying crushed in every human heart. Despair is deadly. It is blind. It cannot see the arm outstretched to help. Our Lord begins with the quickening of hope.

Christ Kept Hope Alive

One reads, too, in the Gospel story, of the pains He took just to keep hope alive. That, I think, is most exquisitely evident in His handling of Simon Peter. One would gather that Peter had a nature very prone to access of despair. He was the kind of man to climb the mountaintop and then swiftly to drop into the valley; and the pains, the endless pains that Jesus took to keep hope alive in Peter's breast, is one of the most beautiful things in history. One day he had to call him Satan. What darkness and anguish that must have brought to Peter! He would move through the crowding duties of the day saying despairingly, "The Master called me Satan." And then, within a week, when our Lord went up the Mount of Transfiguration, He said, "Peter, I want you to go with Me." It was not Peter's faith that needed strengthening. Peter trusted the Lord with all his heart. It was Peter's hope that needed to be strengthened, crushed by that terrific name of Satan. And then one remembers how on resurrection morning after the black hour of the denial, the angel (commissioned by the Lord) commanded, "Go, tell the disciples and Peter." The Lord had to wrestle with the despair of Peter. He had a mighty work to keep his hope alive. He had that same work with Luther and with Bunyan and perhaps with many a one who reads these lines. All of whom, rescued from despair by the divine hopefulness of Christ, understand what the apostle meant when he wrote that we are saved by hope.

October 13

The Separating Power Of Things Present

Things present — Rom_8:38

It is notable that in his enumeration of things which might dim the love of God to us, the apostle should make mention of things present, and by things present I take it that he means the events and trials of the present day. Many of us know how things to come may tempt us to doubt the love of God. The anxieties and forebodings of tomorrow often cloud the sunshine of today. But Paul, who knew all that as well as we do, for his apostleship gave no exemptions, knew also the separating power of things present. The task in which we are presently engaged, the thronging duties of the common day, the multitude of things we must get through before we go to bed at night, these, unless we continually watch, are apt to blind us to the great realities and to separate us from the love of God in Christ.

Things Present May Blind Us to the Brilliance of Things Distant

In part that separating power arises from the exceeding nearness of things present. Things which are very near command our vision and often lead to erroneous perspective. When I light the lamp in my quiet study, the moon may be riding through the sky, the stars may be glittering in heavenly brilliance, proclaiming that the hand which made them is divine. But the lamp is near me, at my side, and I read by it and write my letters by it, and most often the stars are quite forgotten. Things present are things near, and near things have a certain blinding power. You can blot the sun out with a penny if you only hold it near enough to the eye. And yet the sun is a majestic creation, beautifier and conserver of the world, and the penny is but a worn and trifling coin. For most of us each day that dawns brings its round of present duties. They absorb us, commanding every energy, and so doing may occasionally blind us. And that is why, in busy crowded lives where near things are so swift to tyrannize, we all require moments of withdrawal. To halt a moment and just to say "God loves me"; to halt a moment and say "God is here"; to take the penny from the eye an instant that we may see the wonder of the sun, that, as the apostle knew so well, is one of the secrets of the saints, to master the separating power of things present.

Things Present Are Difficult to Understand

Another element in that separating power is the difficulty of understanding present things. It is always easier to understand our yesterdays than to grasp the meaning of today. Often in the Highlands it is difficult to see the path just at one's feet. Any bunch of cowberries may hide it or any bush of overarching heather. But when one halts a moment and looks back, generally it is comparatively easy to trace the path as it winds across the moor. So we begin to understand our past, its trials, its disappointments, and its illnesses; but such things are very hard to understand in their actual moment of occurrence, and it is that, the difficulty of reading love in the dark characters of present things, which constitutes their separating power. Many a grown man thanks God for the discipline of early childhood. But as a child it was often quite unfathomable, and he doubted if his mother loved him. And we are all God's children, never in love with the discipline of love, and in that lies the separating power of things present.

Things Present Distract Us

Another element of that separating power is found in the distraction of things present. "Life isn't a little bundle of big things: it's a big bundle of little things. "I read somewhere of a ship's captain who reported that a lighthouse was not shining. Inquiries were made, and it was found that the light was burning brightly all the night. What dimmed the light and made it as though it were not to the straining eyes of the captain on the bridge was a cloud of myriads of little flies. "While thy servant was busy here and there, the man was gone." What things escape us in our unending busyness! Peace and joy, and the power of self-control, and the serenity that ought to mark the Christian. And sometimes that is lost, which to lose is the tragedy of tragedies — the sense and certainty of love divine. Preoccupied, it fades out of our heaven. The comfort and the calm of it are gone. The light is there "forever, ever shining," but the cloud of flies has blotted out the light. Nobody knew better than the apostle did, in the cares that came upon him dally, the separating power of things present.

Through Christ We Overcome the Separating Power of Things Present

Of spiritual victory over present things, the one perfect example is our Lord. It is He who affords to us a perfect picture of untiring labor and unruffled calm. He gained the conquest over things to come. When Calvary was coming, He was joyous. He set His face steadily towards Jerusalem where the bitter cross was waiting Him. But, wonderful though that victory was over everything the future had in store, there was another that was not less wonderful. Never doubting the love of God to Him, certain of it in His darkest hour, through broken days, through never-ending calls when there was not leisure so much as to eat, not only did He master things to come, but He did what is often far more difficult —He mastered the separating power of things present. Do not forget He did all that for us. His victories were all achieved for us. In a deep sense we do not win our victories: we appropriate the victories of Christ. That is why the apostle in another place says, "All things are yours —things present, or things to come — and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

October 14

Maintaining the Glow

Maintaining the spiritual glow — Rom_12:11 (Moffatt)

All of us have hours in the interior life when we are conscious of the glowing spirit. Our hearts burn within us as we journey. Sometimes these hours reach us unexpectedly; sometimes after periods of prayer. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and so is every one born of the Spirit. But when such hours come, the inward life grows radiant, and in the light of heaven we see light. In such hours we learn a great deal more than we ever gained from unillumined study. In such hours heaven is very near. In such hours, as by unseen fingers, the veil is taken from the face of Scripture, and the Word, that was marred more than any man, now shines on us as altogether lovely. We have caught the spiritual glow. We are in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. There steals on our ear the distant triumph song. We behold Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Such glowing hours of spiritual warmth and radiance come with greater or with lesser frequency to everybody who is stepping heavenward.

Maintaining the Spiritual Glow

But the great difficulty in the interior life is to maintain that spiritual glow. The problem is not to catch it, but to keep it. Seasons come when we are overwrought and when the keepers of the house do tremble. We may have overdriven "our brother the ass," as St. Francis used to call his body. Or it may be, in the providence of God, that for long days we have to take our journey through a dry land where no water is. It is easy to lose the glow in such experiences. It fades into the light of common day. The Bible loses its fragrance and dew. Heaven recedes; we miss the golden ladder. And yet the divine command is laid on us, poor unstable mortals though we be, that our duty is to maintain the spiritual glow. It can be ours in spite of feeble health. It can be ours whatever be our temperament. It is not given for rare or precious moments. It is meant for every mile of the long journey. And just there the difficulty lies, of maintaining, through dark and dreary days, the radiance and the warmth of hours of insight. He who does that is victor. Having done all, he stands. He "makes a sunshine in a shady place." In weakness he is strong. And we may be certain that when God commands a thing, He never mocks us with impossibilities. When He commands, He gives the power to do.

The Spiritual Glow Is Not a Luxury but a Necessity

For what we must always bear in mind is this, that the spiritual glow is not a luxury. If it were that and nothing else than that, it would never reach us as a divine command. There are tasks that no man will accomplish unless he be gifted with a glowing spirit. There are victories that call for radiance. They never can be accomplished in cold blood. To come victorious out of this present life, unembittered by its tears and tragedies, is beyond the compass of the stoic heart. "No virtue is pure that is not passionate." The song of the Lord must sound above the sacrifice. For the campaign of life we need the song just as surely as we need the sword. Those who have conquered and are robed in white do not flash the glittering sword in heaven. They sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. That is why the inspired volume bids us to maintain the spiritual glow. It is not that we may be happy all the time. It is that we may be triumphant all the time. There are valleys we shall never cross unscathed, and there are temptations we shall never master without a certain glow within the soul.

To Love the Lord Gives the Glow

Now it is just there that we thank God afresh for the unspeakable gift of the Lord Jesus. To love Him gives the glow. Nobody ever has a glowing heart because he is ordered to do certain things. Paul never found that his big heart was glowing when he struggled to obey the ten commandments. But when the ten commandments are incarnate in a living Lord whom we can love, then obedience is set to music. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Love is law translated into melody. Love laughs at difficulties, just as it is said to laugh at locksmiths. And when, right at the center of our being, there is real love for Him who died for us, cold and heavy obedience is gone — it is replaced by the spiritual glow. Thus to continue glowing is to continue in the love of Christ. It is to live in the experience of His great love for us and in continual response to that experience. The one way to maintain the spiritual glow is to maintain fellowship with Christ, and that is possible for everybody. Every day we may open our hearts anew to receive anew the Holy Spirit. We may begin each day, however dark and dreary, by saying, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." So maintaining, through heavenly supply, our loving personal fellowship with Him, we maintain (and yet not we) the glowing heart.

October 15

The Things That Make for Peace - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Let us therefore follow after the things that make for peace — Rom_14:19

Peace! There is a benediction in the word! It is one of the fairest words in human speech. All that is brightest and happiest in life is associated with peace. There is a substance known as ambergris which is found floating in the ocean. Absolutely odorless itself, its use is to enrich the scent of odors. And peace has a quality like ambergris; it heightens and enriches every blessing. What is a congregation without peace; what without peace a home? It may have money, art, refinement, luxury, but if peace is wanting everything is wanting. All that wealth can give is but a mockery, all that art can furnish but a show, without the beatitude of peace. It was of peace the angels sang when Christ was born in Bethlehem. It was a message of peace that was first breathed from the lips of the risen Savior. And the sum and substance of all Gospel blessings, wrought out for sinful man by the Redeemer, is the peace of God that passes understanding. No wonder then that our Lord pronounced His blessing on the peacemakers. No wonder that the Scripture urges us to seek peace and ensue it. No wonder that this great apostle, who had known the havoc of dissension, cannot close his letter without this: "Follow after the things that make for peace."

Social Peace Is a Goal To Be Striven For

You will notice in our text that social peace is pictured as a goal. It is a thing to be followed after. It is a thing to be lived for, to be striven for, to be followed through ill report and good report. It is the end, not the beginning, of endeavor. That is in keeping with the peculiar form which our Lord gave to His beatitude. He did not say, "Blessed are the peaceable" — He said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Social peace was a thing that must be made. There are some blessings that we do not make. They are freely given us by God. We do not make the sunshine or the grass or the summer evening or the sea. But in all the greatest spiritual blessings, you and I are workers with the Infinite. They are bestowed, and yet we have to make them. It is so with love, so with every talent, so with the nobility of Christian character. We are saints from the hour of our electing mercy, and yet to the end, a thousand leagues from sainthood. And as it is in all these highest blessings which make life strong and beautiful and rich, so it is with peace. We do not start with social peace; in a fallen world like this we start with enmity. To the seeing eye this world is all a battlefield, and every living creature is in arms. And then there falls the blessing of the peacemaker, and we see that peace is something to be striven for; the goal, the difficult and distant goal, of the struggle and the anguish of the ages. Remember that when there is not peace at home. Remember it when there is war in the world. We have not really lost what once was ours. We have failed to achieve the infinitely difficult. Social peace is a thing we follow after. It is not the beginning but the end, the long last goal that we are making for, through Nazareth and the desert and Gethsemane.

Peace Is a Goal Attainable by All

I remark in passing that this is an end that everybody can set before himself. The Master's blessing on the peacemaker is a blessing within the reach of all. I remember a sentence in Dr. Bonar's diary to this effect. "God has not called me," he writes, "as He calls Dr. Chalmers, to do great service for Him: He calls me to walk three or four miles today to be a peacemaker in a disunited family." My Christian friend, God may not have called you to follow the things that make for power. And only rarely amid life's multitudes does He call men to follow the things that make for fame. But there is nobody, whether old or young, whether mother or business man or child, but is called to follow the things that make for peace. For social peace, one of the choicest blessings, can be ruined by the most trifling of causes. It is like a delicate and jeweled watch that is disordered by a single hair. A word will do it, or a fit of temper, or a suspicion, or the discovery of falsehood — how great a matter a little fire kindleth! You may destroy the lute by breaking it in two, and there are hearts and homes that lose their peace that way. But a little crack within the lute makes all the music mute. And it is just because the things that make for peace lie so largely among life's common elements that this is a calling that everyone can share.

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The Things That Make for Peace - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Peacemaking Requires a Watchful and Charitable Silence

One of the first things that makes for social peace is a watchful and a charitable silence. No man or woman can ever be a peacemaker who has not learned to put a bridle on his lips. Every student of Christ must have observed the tremendous emphasis He puts on words. Of every idle word, He tells us, in the day of judgment we are to give account. And if you want to understand aright the passion and the depth of that, you will remember the beatitude, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Think of the infinite harm that can be wrought by a malicious or a thoughtless tongue; think of the countless hearts it lacerates; think of the happy friendships which it chills. And sometimes there is not even malice in it- only the foolish desire to be speaking, for evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart. There is no more difficult task in life than to repeat exactly what someone else has said. Alter the playful tone, you alter everything. Subtract the smile, and you subtract the spirit. And yet how often do we all repeat things that are almost incapable of repetition and so give pain that never was intended. You can say good-bye in such a tone that it will carry the breaking of a heart. You can say it in such a tone that it is a dismissal of contempt. And yet how seldom do we think of tone, of voice, of eye, of smile, of personality when we pass on the word which we have heard. There are times that call for all outspokenness. No man ever denounced like Christ. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees." "Go, tell that fox." All that I know, and yet the fact remains that as we move along life's common ways, one of the mightiest things that makes for social peace is a wise and charitable silence. Not to believe everything we hear, not to repeat everything we hear, or else believing it to bury it unless we are called by conscience to proclaim it, that is a thing that makes for social peace, a thing within our power today, and it may be along that silent road lies our "Blessed are the peacemakers."

Peace Comes as a Result of a Happy Conscience

Another thing that makes for social peace is the possession of a happy conscience. Conscience not only makes cowards of us all: it overshadows our society. He who walks with an uneasy conscience because he is unworthy or unfaithful is an unfailing source of social upheaval. I need not remind you how the Gospel insists upon wholeheartedness. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, it says, do it with all thy might. And it insists on this not only because all honest labor makes the doer happy, but because — so interwoven are our lives — it brings happiness and peace to others too. Here is a man, for instance, who comes home at evening after a day of honest, manly toil. He has done his work, faced his difficulties, resisted temptation when it met him. Such a man, when evening falls, not only enjoys serenity himself; he also spreads serenity around him. He feels a kinship with the children's merriment. There is that in him which augments the merriment. His wife has been toiling patiently all day —there is nothing to reproach him there. His happy conscience is a source of peace not only to himself, but to everyone with whom he comes in contact. Contrast with him another man who has squandered the precious hours of the day, who has not faced his work as a man should, who has yielded weakly to soliciting: such a man when he goes home at evening is not only unhappy in himself, he is also a source of unhappiness to others. He is almost certain to be irritable. He is very likely to be quarrelsome. On bad terms with himself, he is ready to be on bad terms with everybody. Like those widening ripples on the lake which the stone makes when cast into its stillness are the outward goings of the heart. None is so ready to foment a quarrel as he who has a quarrel with his conscience. None is so angry with the innocent as the man who is angry with himself. Half of those brutalities which shock us when the drunken ruffian beats his wife are but the outward sign of that dumb rage which the poor wretch feels against himself.

Happy People Are Rarely Quarrelsome

It therefore needs to be very clearly said, and it needs to be constantly remembered, that one of the things that makes for social peace is the possession of a happy conscience. Happy people are very rarely quarrelsome. They are not often abettors of turmoil. How often have I seen some newborn happiness act like magic on a bitter tongue. And there is no happiness in life more real, none that is more deserving of the name, than that of the task that is well done, of the cross that is well borne. Let any man so live his life then, and he shall not miss the blessing of the peacemaker. He may never know it. He may never dream of it. He may never interfere in any quarrel. Yet all the time in that brave way of his, he may be spreading the sunshine as he goes, and that is one of the things that makes for peace.

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Righteousness Makes for Social Peace

Then there is another thing that makes for social peace on a larger and a grander scale. It is righteousness. It is the passion, the long endeavor, on the part of the individual or the nation, to be unfaiteringly true to what is right. Very often to a hasty judgment it is the opposite that seems the truth. There is not one of us here but has been tempted to secure peace at the expense of righteousness, and many succumb to that temptation. There is indeed one temperament which is peculiarly exposed to that temptation — not the temperament of the hero, but that of many most delightful people — the temperament that loves all human kindliness —is courteous, deferential, genial —that shrinks from struggle and from contradiction. To such a temperament, a text like ours may come as a positive temptation. It is tempted to follow the things that make for peace at the expense of things more glorious than peace. Yet is it not alone in being tempted so. When a child is tempted to a lie rather than confess and bear its punishment, when a mother is tempted to wink at disobedience rather than have the sorrow of chastising, when a man dishonors his convictions, when a nation takes refuge in neutrality, then righteousness and peace seem far apart. My Christian friend, they are not far apart. They are eternally, inextricably one. Freedom from pain and struggle is not peace. Freedom from struggle may be the devil's peace. That momentary calm, that short escaping, that lull that is possible where truth is forfeited, is but a travesty of peace as we have learned it from the lips of Christ. Do you think that child knows anything of peace that has secured exemption by a lie? Do you think that mother knows anything of peace who has secured it by being false to duty? Do you think that land knows anything of peace that has taken refuge in a base neutrality when the voice of the feeble which is the voice of Christ is crying out for protection in its ears? That is not peace. That is ignoble quiet. That is the stillness which betokens death. That is not the peace of Him who followed it through Gethsemane and Calvary. He knew — He had a right to know- that the world of His Father is founded upon righteousness, and that neither for man or nation is there peace unless it be broad-based on that. My Christian friend, lay it to your heart that cowardice can never make for peace, neither can lying, whether in man or nation, neither can neutrality. Such peace is but the quivering of moonlight. Such peace is but a sleep and a forgetting. Such peace is a dream from which a man awakes to find he has lost the angels and the stars.

Being Reconciled to God Leads to Peace

I close by suggesting in a word — I should be false to my calling if I omitted it — I close by suggesting that there is one thing more that contributes most wonderfully to social peace. It is the experience of being reconciled to God. And so pervasive is the eternal spirit, so really does it determine everything, that so long as man is out of touch with God, he cannot be in perfect touch with anything. Then through the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, a man is reconciled to God. All the love that has been waiting for him flows in a tide into his life. And then at last, in harmony with God, he feels himself in harmony with everything, with bird and beast, with sunset and with hill, with every brother-man and sister-woman. There is no experience in life that makes for peace so steadily as that. Drawn into loving unity with God, we are drawn to a new brotherhood with everybody. That is how our Savior is our Peace. That is how He, Himself, has been the peacemaker. And that is how every man who really knows Him follows after the things that make for peace.

October 16

Joy and Peace in Believing

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing — Rom_15:13

It is a question we ought to ask ourselves, in our quiet hours of meditation, whether we really know the joy and peace which are the benediction of our text. It is a great thing to be resigned amid the various buffetings of life. Resignation is better than rebellion. But resignation, however good it is, is not peculiarly a Christian virtue; it marks the stoic rather than the Christian. The Christian attitude towards the ills of life is something more triumphant than acceptance. It has an exultant note that resignation lacks. It is acceptance with a song in it. It is such a reaction to experience as suggests the certainty of victory — the victory that overcomes the world. It is a searching question for us all, then, whether we truly know this joy and peace. Does it characterize our spiritual life? Is it evident in our discipleship? And that not only on the Lord's day and in the sanctuary, but in our routine dealings with the world.

Joy and Peace in Daily Life

Contrast, for instance, joy and peace in believing with joy and peace in working. Many who read this are happily familiar with joy and peace in working. It is true that work may be very uncongenial; there are those who hate the work they are engaged in. There are seasons, too, for many of us, when our strength may be unequal to the task. But speaking generally, what a good deal of joy and peace flow into the lives of men and women in prosecuting their appointed task. Again, think of joy and peace in loving; how evident is that in many a home. What a peaceful and happy place a home becomes when love lies at the basis of it all. The splendid attitude of children, their gladness that makes others glad, spring not only from the heart of childhood, but from the love that encircles them at home. Now Paul does not speak of joy and peace in working, nor does he speak of joy and peace in loving. His theme here is different from these: it is joy and peace in believing. And the question is, do we, who know these other things, know this in our experience of life and amid the jangling of our days.

The Joy and Peace of God Is for Every Christian

Think for a moment of the men and women to whom St. Paul originally wrote these words. Their cares and sorrows were just as real to them as our cares and sorrows are to us. They were called to be saints, and yet they were not saints. They were very far from being saints. Some were slaves, and some were city shopkeepers, and some were mothers in undistinguished homes. Yet Paul, when he writes to them, makes no exceptions. This blessing was for everyone of them. It never occurs to him that there might be anybody incapacitated for this joy and peace. We are so apt to think that an inward state of mind like this can never be possible for us. We have anxieties we cannot banish; we have temperaments we cannot alter. But just as Paul never dreamed there were exceptions in the various temperaments he was addressing, so the Holy Spirit who inspired the words never dreams there are exceptions now. This is for me. It is for you. It is for everybody who knows and loves the Lord. Not rebellion — not even resignation when life is hard and difficult and sorrowful- but something with the note of triumph in it, a song like that which Paul and Silas sang, a peace that the world can never give — and cannot take away.

The Marriage of Joy and Peace

Lest anyone should misread this inward attitude that is the peculiar possession of believers, note how here, as elsewhere in the Scripture, joy and peace are linked together. There is a joy that has no peace in it. It is feverish, tumultuous, unsettled. It is too aggressive to be the friend of rest; too wild to have any kinship with repose. Its true companionship is with excitement, and, like other passions, it grows by what it feeds on, ever demanding a more powerful stimulus and at last demanding it in vain. There is a peace that has no joy in it. "They make a solitude and call it peace." It is like a dull and sluggish river moving through an uninteresting country. But the beautiful thing is that on the page of Scripture as in the experience of the trusting soul, joy and peace are linked in closest union. The Kingdom of Heaven is not meat and drink; it is righteousness and joy and peace. The fruit of the Spirit is not love and joy alone; it is love and joy and peace. And our Lord in His last great discourse, when He declares His legacy of peace, closes with the triumphant note of joy. "These things have I spoken unto you" (and He had been speaking of His peace) "that your joy might be full." Whom God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. There is a joy that has no peace in it. There is a peace that is dull and dead and joyless. But the mark of the followers of the Lord is the mystical marriage union of the two. It is joy and peace in believing.

And how eminently fitted is the Gospel message to sustain this fine reaction on experience. The Gospel is good news; it is the most joyful news that ever broke upon the ear of man. Sweet is the message of returning spring after the cold and dreariness of winter. Sweet is the message of the morning light after a night of restlessness or pain. But a thousand times sweeter, a thousand times more wonderful, is the message which has been ours since we were children and which will be ours when the last shadows fall. Do we believe it? That is the vital question. Do we hold to it through the shadows and the buffetings ? Do we swing it like a lamp which God has lit over the darkest mile our feet have got to tread? Then, like joy and peace in working and in loving (with which we are all perfectly familiar), we shall experience with all the saints joy and peace in believing.

October 18

The Limits of Liberty - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient- 1Co_6:12

It has been said by some one, I forget by whom, that a Christian has no rights, he has only duties. That is a very striking statement, and seems to sound the note of the heroic. Now in a loose and popular way, there may be some justification for that statement. It may have served its purpose as a word of warning to men who were always insisting on their rights. But for all that it should never have been spoken whatever purposes it may have served, for it is utterly antagonistic to the spirit of the Gospel of our Lord. If there is one thing Paul insists on more than another, it is the rights of the believer in Christ Jesus. He argues with a passionate intensity for the liberties of every Christian. Never is his style so animated, never so bold and luminous his thought, as when he fights the battle for his converts of their liberties in Jesus Christ. He knew that everything depended upon it, that the very life of the church depended on it. On it depended whether the church of Christ was to stand out or to be lost in Judaism. And so, sometimes by appeal to the Old Testament and always on the broad ground of grace, he appeals to his hearers to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free.

Liberties and Limitations

But then, following hard on this insistence and in some measure just because of it, we soon come to detect in the apostle the presence and pressure of another thought. Just as you have right through the Old Testament tremendous insistence on the awfulness of God, and then when God has been safeguarded so, we have the revelation of Christ that God is love. So in Paul you have first the splendid doctrine of the inalienable liberties of every Christian, and then the limitation of these liberties. So far from it being the case that a Christian has no rights, there is no man with rights so incontestable. They are to be cherished at whatever cost and in the teeth of angriest opposition. But then, having insisted upon that with all the emphasis of inspiration, Paul, with his wonderful knowledge of the heart, flashes light on the dangers of that liberty. All things are lawful to me, but all are not expedient. A Christian is one who is willing to forego. He uses his liberties as not abusing them; he recognizes limits in their exercise. And it is on these limits of our Christian liberty — limits, mark you, always self-imposed- that I wish to speak. Such limits, as I understand my Testament, are determined by one or other of three interests.

Liberties Determined by Interests in Personal Safety

There is a passage in one of the Epistles which says, "Touch not; taste not; handle not." I know no passage in the Scripture that is oftener misunderstood than that one. It has been quoted as inspired direction to those who were yielding to temptation. It has been used as the motto of abstinence societies, as though it embodied apostolic counsel. Whereas as a matter of fact, if you read the passage carefully, you will find that the very opposite is true: these are the words of Paul's antagonists, and against their view of life he is in arms. The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof— that is the ringing note of the apostle. There is nothing in it common or unclean: everything is to be received with thanksgiving. But then, having uttered that grand truth which we must never forfeit for any popular clamor, Paul proceeds to limit it in exercise by the consideration of his immortal well being. All things are lawful to me, says the apostle, but I will not be brought under the power of any. I will not let anything usurp dominion over this temple of the Holy Ghost. In other words, this brave and thoughtful man who insisted so passionately on his rights in Christ deliberately limited these rights in the interest of his individual safety. I know few sentences in literature more touching than the closing sentence of the ninth chapter here. "I keep under my body .... " says the apostle, "lest...I myself should be a castaway." I keep under my body is our version, but the word in the original is far more graphic. It is a word borrowed from the prize ring: it means, I beat my body black and blue. Now whatever Paul was, he was no ascetic and certainly he never preached asceticism. I can imagine the scorn he would have poured on the wild asceticism of the Middle Ages. Yet here, lest he should be a castaway, lest he should be rejected at the end, deliberately and in sternest fashion, he limited his great liberty in Christ. Think of it — this great apostle haunted with fears of being cast away: never quite sure of himself — never quite certain that he might not be tripped some day and overthrown! It seems incredible and yet to Paul it was so far from being incredible that he crushed his body down in terror of it. "Stand fast, therefore," he says to the Galatians, "in the liberty with which Christ hath made us free." Cherish as a principle that is inestimable the fullness of your liberties in Christ. But then remember that you are only human and weak and very liable to fall, and use your liberty as not abusing it.

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The Limits of Liberty - Page 2
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Principles Versus Safeguards

Now as that was the apostle's practice, so it ought to be the practice of all Christians. It is along these lines that in Christ Jesus we ought to seek to regulate our lives. There are many who would exalt into a principle what may be only a salutary safeguard. There are many on the other hand who in the name of liberty pave their way to misery and ruin. But he who is wise — he who is taught of God — will be careful to avoid these two extremes, for neither of them has the mind of Christ. On the one hand, he will assert his liberty. He will say all things are lawful unto me. He will give no place in the charter of his rights to the touch not and the taste not and the handle not. But then recalling the awful possibility that in his voyage he should be cast away, he will impose upon himself stern limitations. He will remember how the best have fallen and fallen tragically in unexpected ways; he will remember that life is full of peril and that for the surest foot the ground is slippery; and so in the interests of individual safety — and we cannot afford to trifle with our safety — he will say all things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient.

And may I say in passing that such action is in full accord with the teaching of our Lord. I say it because there are so many nowadays who want to distinguish between Paul and Jesus. Now it is true that through the life of Christ there breathes the spirit of most glorious freedom. Think of His teaching on the Sabbath for example; think of Him at the marriage feast at Cana. There is a geniality, if I may put it so — a human breadth in His teaching and example which has no better witness than just this, that it made every Pharisee indignant. All that is gloriously true, yet remember that this is also true. Never was there a teacher sent from God who could be so stern and severe as Jesus Christ. It was not the ardent and impetuous Paul — it was the gentle and genial Savior who said, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." Is there anything radically bad in the right hand? It is the organ that I stretch out in prayer. Is there anything radically evil in the eye? God has made it, and what He made is good. And yet according to the word of Jesus, the hour may come when for a man's own safety it were wise to forfeit the gladness of the eye and cut away the glory of the hand. Mark you, if thy right hand offend thee — there is no talk of anybody else. It is in the interests of a man's own life that he must use this drastic limitation. And so you see Paul is but echoing what he had learned from his Redeemer when he says, in the interests of personal safety, all things are lawful but all are not expedient.

Liberty Limited in Interest of Christian Brotherhood

The classical instance of this Christian attitude is found in this first Epistle to the Corinthians. It is so interesting and so significant that you will bear with me if I give it in detail. The apostle pictures a Corinthian Christian invited to dinner by a friend. That friend is a heathen man and in comparatively humble circumstances. Now in the food that was set upon the table it was almost certain there would be temple meat: meat, that is, of beasts that had been sacrificed and then sold to the market by the priests. And the difficulty for the Christian guest was this, was he at liberty to eat that meat? If it had been offered to idols in the temple, would not eating it mean fellowship with idols? It was about that difficulty that they wrote to Paul, and his answer is supremely noble. Go to your dinner, he says, and ask no questions. Eat what is set before you and be thankful. If you start worrying about things like that, you will do conscience irreparable mischief. The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.

But now suppose that next to that Christian brother there is sitting another and a weaker Christian. He is struggling to be true to Christ, but the pull of the old life is terrible. And he turns to his stronger brother by his side, and he says to him anxiously, "That is temple meat." The question was (and it was a daily question) what was the stronger brother to do then? If he partook, his neighbor might partake, and that might be opening the gate to ruin. He would go home beset by the dark sense that he was again in fellowship with devils. But, on the other hand, if he did not partake out of consideration for that weaker conscience, what became of his liberty in Christ? So they wrote to Paul about that also, and I think you know how he replied. As a Christian man, he said, you are duty-bound to consider the weakness of your brother. Knit into fellowship by Jesus Christ, called to the bearing of each other's burdens, God forbid that you should use your liberty to offend one of these little ones. Mark you, there is no word of personal safety now. The stronger brother was perfectly secure. For him an idol was nothing in the world, and he could eat and drink with a good conscience. The only question was, how would his action affect the tempted and weak Christian by his side, and Paul says that is to be determinative. It might be very annoying to be hampered so. One might regard his neighbor as a nuisance. It was hard that a man should not enjoy himself because he had a weakling looking on. And it is then that Paul, in that great way of his, lifts up the matter into such an atmosphere that the man who is tempted to chafe at his restrictions bows his head in shame. Have you forgotten, says the apostle, that for that weak brother Jesus died? Have you forgotten that Christ endured for him the agony and the anguish of the Cross? Compared with that, how infinitely little is any sacrifice that you are called to make in the restriction of your Christian liberty.

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by George H. Morrison

Limited by Love

And so we are taught this second lesson about the limits of our Christian rights. We are bound to limit them not only for our own sakes; we are bound to limit them for our brother's sake. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. If we believe in the Fatherhood of God, then we believe in the brotherhood of man. And only he has the mind of Christ to whom that thought of brotherhood is regulative, not only in the exercise of power but also in the exercise of liberty. There are many things in life that are quite lawful and on whose lawfulness we must insist. There are things that you and I could practice safely, and be all the happier for our practice of them. But if to our brother they be fraught with peril and if they make it harder for him to do what is right, then for our brother's sake, if we are Christians, we are called to the limitation of our liberty. Mark you, there is no room in Christianity for the over-scrupulous and worrying conscience. We are in Christ, and the Son hath made us free, and we are never to lose the gladness of that freedom. All that the Scripture insists upon is this, that we are to use it in the bonds of love and never to hesitate to limit it if so doing we can help a brother. You say that is hard? I grant you it is hard. The Gospel admits that it is hard. It may be irritating when we want to live to have to consider the weak brother so. And then, flashing upon us in its glory, there comes the thought that Christ has died for him — and after that we do not find it hard. Once realize the sacrifice of Christ and all our little denials are as nothing. He gave His life up for that weaker brother, and shall not we give up our liberty? It is thus that we come to have fellowship with Him and to know Him better as we take our journey, for fellowship grows not alone but by what we get: it grows also by what we yield.

Limited in the Interest of the Gospel

In the ninth chapter of this epistle we have a great instance of that motive. Paul has been arguing with overwhelming power for the right of the preachers of the Word to receive payment. He appeals to Scripture- he argues by analogy- he urges the great plea of common sense. He gives a demonstration irrefutable of the right of Gospel preachers to be paid. And then with one of those swift turns of his which help us to know him and to love him, he says, but I — I have not used this right lest I should hinder the Gospel of Christ. There is an instance also in the life of Jesus which will help you to understand my meaning. It is when He was asked to pay the temple tax. It is only Matthew who narrates that incident, and it is natural that he should tell it for Matthew had been a tax-gatherer himself once and would be interested in taxes all his life. Well, when Jesus heard of the demand, you remember what he said to Peter? What thinkest thou, Simon, of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute — of their own children or strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers; and Jesus answered, Then are the children free. What He meant was that He was free, for the temple was His Father's house. He could have claimed exemption as a right. It was part of the liberty of sonship. But then had He insisted on His rights, is it not easy to see what would have happened? Jesus saw in an instant what would happen. He had proclaimed the sanctity of law: now men would say He was a lawbreaker. He had urged obedience to Moses' representatives: now He would be openly defying them. And so, not with His eye upon His own but with His eye on the unbelieving world, the tax was paid lest they should be offended. In other words, Christ limited His liberty in the supreme interests of the Gospel. Deliberately did He forego His rights when to assert them might have been a stumbling block. He was come to seek and save the lost, and though the lost might hate Him and revile Him, He would do nothing howsoever lawful that might make them harder to be won.

As it was with Jesus, so must it be with you and me. If we are members of the body of Christ then we have a duty to the world. It is no part of a believer's calling to consult the opinion of the world. A man may sometimes bear the greatest resemblance to his Lord when his action is laughed at by the worldly wise. All we are taught is that in our use of freedom we must remember those who are without, and how, by what we allow ourselves in Christ, they are like to be affected towards the Gospel. If the kind of life that we are living makes it less easy to believe in Christ; if our behavior whether at work or play is silently hardening anybody's heart, then, though everything we do is justified and well within the boundaries of our liberties, in the eyes of Jesus there is something wrong. All things are lawful, but all are not expedient, sometimes in the interests of our safety. All things are lawful, but all are not expedient, sometimes in the interests of our brother. All things are lawful, but all are not expedient, because around us there is a Christless world and men with their poor blind eyes are judging Christ by what they see in His professing people.

The Grace of Happy-Heartedness - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Temperament

Now we are all apt to think that such a happy disposition is just temperamental. We are apt to think it is just born with people, and of course in a measure that is true. There are those with a perfect genius for the sunshine, and those with a perfect genius for the shadow. There are those who will carry a burden in a happy way without the slightest aid from any faith, and you, who wrestle in prayer about the thing, are bowed with it to the very ground. And not only is it temperamental. We might go further and say that it is racial. Broadly speaking, as we survey the world, we find it to be a national characteristic. For the Irish have it and the Scots have not; and the southern peoples and not the northern peoples; and the Kaffir boy out in South Africa will go singing and laughing over his work all day while his Dutch master, for all his Bible reading, will have a face as long as his prayers.

A Virtue To Be Won

But there is one thing in the Bible I have often noticed. I wonder if it has occurred to you? It is how often it classes with virtues to be won what we have reckoned to be gifts of nature. The Bible is always true to the great facts. It never diminishes nor distorts anything. It recognizes in the most liberal way the infinite divergences of nature. And yet I am often struck by how often it takes these natural endowments and says to you of what you do not have —"that is a virtue to be won." Think of courage — do not we regard that as a gift? Don't we know that certain men are born courageous? Do you think every boy could say what Nelson said: "Fear, mother — what is fear?

I never saw it"? And yet this courage, which with perfect justice we are in the way of regarding as temperamental, is viewed in Scripture as something to be won. Take joy. Are we the masters of our joy? Is not the capacity for joy inherent? Are there not those who gravitate to joy as there are others who gravitate to gloom? And yet our Savior says to His disciples, "These things have I spoken to you, that in me ye might have joy." And the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace.

Well now, as it is with these, so I take it as with happy-heartedness. In the eyes of God and in the light of Scripture it is a shining virtue to be won. It may be easier for some than others just because of the nature God has given. But remember we do not win our best when we have won our most congenial virtues. A happy disposition is possible for all — that is what I want to urge tonight —and the unfailing secret of it lies in the casting of the burden on the Lord. It does not matter what the burden be. Burdens are just as various as blessings: They may be secret, or they may be public. They may be real, or they may be imaginary. But once a man has learned this deepest lesson that God is with him and will see him through, I say to the weariest and most desponding soul that happy-heartedness is in his grasp. Many of the heaviest burdens men can bear have to be borne where eyes can never pierce. Many of the heaviest burdens men can bear fall on them through the relationships of life. It matters not. There can be no exceptions in the magnificent impartiality of God. Cast thy burden on the Lord.

Depending upon God

Now I want you to notice — it is very important — the words in which our text is couched. It is "cast thy burden on the Lord"; it is not "cast thy burden anywhere." I think there is nothing poorer or more cowardly than just the desire to be rid of burdens. It is always the mark of meanness in a character and the sorry witness of a contracting soul. For life grows richer by what we have to bear, and sympathies grow tenderer and broader, and the world expands into a richer place through things which we once thought would make us poorer. They say that the Indian by putting his ear to the ground can hear far off the galloping of horses. Erect, there is not a sound upon the breeze. Prone on the earth, he hears the distant trampling. And I daresay there are some here tonight who lived and moved upon a silent prairie until somehow they were bowed into the dust. The Bible never urges any man recklessly to cast his cares away. As soon would it urge the captain of a ship to cast out his ballast when he was clear of port. Knowing the preciousness of what is heavy, it bids us summon to our aid the power of God, and it is that which makes all the difference in the world. Now we know we are in the hands of One who providently caters to the sparrow. Now we know that on the line of duty we shall have strength for all that must be done. Now we can laugh with the children in the thick of it, and have our sunshine even in December, for God is with us and His name is wonderful and underneath are the everlasting arms.

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The Grace of Happy-Heartedness - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Christ Makes the Difference

In closing I have one thing more to say — one thing I never think of without shame. It is how much easier this secret is for us than it ever could have been for David. "Cast thy burden on the Lord," he wrote — and of course he had first done it for himself. Now tell me, what was that Lord to David- that Lord into whose keeping he committed everything? He was the King eternal and invisible, and clouds and darkness were around His throne, and men looked to the left hand and He was not there, and to the right and lo! they could not find Him. Was not the faith of these old Jews magnificent? Could you have trusted in such a God as that? Could you have believed that the infinite Creator would open His arms and take your burden in? It might have been easy for a Greek to do it for he believed in the divinity of man, but how a Jew rose to a faith like that is to me as wonderful as any miracle.

But do you see how everything is changed now? We have Christ and that makes all the difference. For do you remember how, when Christ was here, men came and cast their burdens upon Him? Everyone did it, and did it as by instinct — it did not matter what the burden was — and "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Run through the gamut of our human burdens, and tell me if there were any that they failed to bring. They brought their sicknesses and they brought their fears. They brought their children and they brought themselves. And the strange thing is that though Christ was angry sometimes, and His eyes flashed in righteous indignation, not in a single instance do you find Him angry because anyone cast a burden upon Him.

We Can Achieve Joy

My brother and sister, if your faith is to be real, shall I tell you what you must always do? You must always carry into your thought of God what you have learned and seen of Jesus Christ. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father:" He is the express image of His person. You must carry up into your thought of God all the revelation of His Son. And I tell you that when you once do that the Fatherhood of God becomes so wonderful that even you, with your weak and trembling faith, are able to cast your burden upon Him. It took a hero to achieve it once. The weakest woman can achieve it now. It was once the act of a sublime enthusiasm. It is now within the reach of everyone of you. So sure are we in Christ of God's deep sympathy and of His care for us and of His love, that there is not a man or woman here who may not know the strength of happy-heartedness. Therefore I charge you in the name of Christ that you are not to let that burden weigh you down. I charge you to remember that you sin if you live in gloom and miserable wretchedness. Never frivolous, but always reverent-happy-hearted just because He knows — I know no better way in this strange world of glorifying the Father and the Son.

The Wonder of That Night - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Christ's Confidence in Spite of Human Betrayal

It is that wonder which is deepened as we recall the season when it was exhibited. Do we not feel afresh the marvel of such confidence on that night in which He was betrayed? Now it was evident beyond dispute what was moving in the heart of Judas. Now at last came leaping to the surface the treachery that had been brooded on in secret. And if this was the issue of the years of fellowship — this unutterable malice of today — was it likely there would be a bright tomorrow? Christ had spared no pains on His betrayer. He had lavished His love upon him constantly. He had done everything to woo and win him, and every effort He had made was baffled. And it was then, in such a bitter hour, when He well might have lost His faith in human loyalty, that He looked forward with confidence unquenched to the loyal remembrance of the ages. Christ knew in the quiet of that evening what was involved in the treachery of Judas. Already He saw the shadow of the cross and heard the evil voices crying "Crucify him." Yet with so much to drive Him to despair — so much to suggest to Him that He had failed — with a heart as calm as any summer sea He looked away to the loyalty of time. "This do in remembrance of me: ye do show the Lord's death till he come." Think of it, this grand unfaltering confidence amid the despairing horrors of that night! It would have been wonderful at any time, but surely we feel afresh the wonder of it when we remember that it was exhibited on the night in which He was betrayed.

The Wonder of Christ's Love

The Lord's Table is a feast of love, and yet the word love was never spoken at it. It is the picture of a love that is commended to us not so much in words as in deeds. In the early church they used to have a love-feast, and the love-feast was at first associated with the communion. But gradually and with growing insight the love-feast fell into disuse. Men came to feel that they did not need a love-feast to express the love that was in Christ; it was exhibited in all its height and depth in the simple ritual of the Last Supper. Here in the quiet of the upper chamber was given the pledge of a love that was unquenchable. Here there was gathered into one swift moment the yearning and the tenderness of years. Here did there flash out as in a flame of glory the love which had been striving through the past and which tomorrow, on the cross of anguish, was to be consummated and crowned in sacrifice.

Now do you not feel the wonder of that love afresh as you recall when it was pledged and sealed? That sealing would have been wonderful at any time, but on such a night as that it passeth knowledge. Had it been some Pharisee who was betraying him, we should not have marveled at it so. But it was no Pharisee —no enemy — it was His own familiar friend in whom He trusted. Yet in the very hour of His betrayal when any other heart might have grown bitter, Christ deliberately seized his opportunity to show forth and to seal His dying love. Mazzini, that great-heart of Italy, tells us something of his sad experience. He tells us how bitter he grew — how sick of soul — when the men who had followed him fell away from him. But on that night when all forsook Him there is not one trace of hardening in Christ; on the contrary, it was that hour He chose to institute the memorial of His love. Is not this the wonder of Christ's love, that right through that betrayal it survived? And the question is, have not we too betrayed Him since we last gathered at the Communion Table? God knows we have, yet shall we eat and drink because of a love that has survived our past- that has forgiven everything in mercy, and in mercy will not let us go.

October 21

The Tyranny of Type - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

There are diversities of operations — 1Co_12:6

There is a constant tendency in social life to reduce men to a common level. Society is not only an organ of expression; it is an organ also of repression. Men who have spent their days in lonely places are often of unusual character. They are rugged and intensely individual; they look on the universe with their own eyes. But when they move into a crowded city where a thousand interests are interwoven, immediately a social pressure begins to work which silently brings about uniformity. Conformity, says Emerson in a great essay, is the virtue most in demand in society. Society has its standard, whether low or high, and by that standard it measures everybody. Hence is it that in social life there is increasingly felt the tyranny of type. Hence is it that in advanced societies it is not easy for a man to be himself.

Conformity in Religion

Now if that is true of social life, it is true also of religious life. One might almost take the words of Emerson and say, "The virtue most in demand in religion is conformity." In its origin, regarding it historically, there is nothing so individualistic as religion. It is born in a universe that is untenanted, save for the individual and his God. But gradually this solitary yearning finds itself echoed in the heart of multitudes, and then religion broadens into fellowship. It is no longer a solitary life: it has now risen into a social life. It has its wide and interlacing interests — its complex and multifarious relationships. And so just as in secular society, though with far greater havoc here than there, you have in religion an increasing tendency to reduce everything to common levels. It is the constant danger of the church to have room only for one particular type. She is tempted increasingly to look askance on everything that does not conform to that. And it is when we are likely to be overridden by what I call the tyranny of type that we ought to remember the infinite divergences which are indicated in our text. There is one God who worketh all in all. That is the bond of union and of unity. At the back of everything, as an unfailing reservoir, is the plenitude of His power and His grace. But as from our earthly reservoirs there will flow water to serve a thousand purposes, so with the manifesting of the grace of God. To change the figure, sunshine is but one, yet how diverse are its operations. It touches the hedgerows, and they are green again. It falls on the waters, and the vapors rise. It lights on the sleeping lilies of the field, and they awake and clothe themselves with scarlet so that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore if God works so in nature, shall He not work as variously in grace? It is a temptation we must guard against, that of imposing our standards on the infinite. And on that temptation and some correctives to it, as we see it in certain spheres of our religion, I should like to elaborate.

Conversion

In some of our old theological treatises we find what is called the ordo salutis. That is to say, everything is handled in a certain definite order of salvation. There are distinct and peculiar experiences following each other in well-defined succession, and it is expected that every child of God will show these in his discipleship. In regard to conversion, this passion for conformity is best witnessed in revival times. It was so in Wesley's day, and it was so in Moody's, and it was so in the late Welsh revival. Men were hardly considered to have come to Christ — they were not soundly converted, as the expression is — unless they could bear personal testimony to a certain definite experience. That experience began in misery, through the convicting power of the Holy Ghost. Then it passed into agonizing prayer, and then in an instant into light and liberty. And always there was the lurking feeling that if a man knew nothing of these depths and heights, it was questionable if he was savingly united to Christ Jesus. That feeling, in our quieter times, is perhaps less prevalent than in revival times. Yet even now when we speak of coming to Christ or when we use that fine old word "conversion," is there not a tendency to exclude everything except one recognized experience?

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The Tyranny of Type - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Diversities of Conversion Experiences

Now against that craving for conformity I want to put you on your guard. It is not by one road that men come to Christ. There are as many roads as there are hearts. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth. And so, says the Lord Jesus Christ, is everyone that is born of the spirit: there is the freedom of the breeze in the new birth. It took the earthquake to convert the Philippian jailer, but it took no earthquake to open Lydia's heart. It took the glare of light to convert Paul, but there was no such light for the Ethiopian eunuch. The one was dazzled and heard a voice from heaven and was smitten to the earth and blinded — and the other was quietly reading in his chariot. There are people who insist that every Christian must have a dated and definite conversion. There are others, and they are poor psychologists, who have no faith in sudden conversion. But who are thou to limit the Almighty, either on this hand or on the other? The wind bloweth where it listeth, saith the Lord. We all know the hour of Paul's conversion — can you give me the hour of Timothy's conversion? From a child he had known the Holy Scriptures and had been cradled in the love of Christ. For him the tide was not like that of Solway, rushing inland faster than the horseman: for him it was like our estuary tide, moving in sweet silence to the flood. There are men who have to starve in a far country before they awaken to a Father's love. There are others who awaken to that love who have never left the shelter of the home. There are men who have to be crushed into the dust by the convicting power of the Holy Ghost. There are others who are gently wooed and won. There is one God who worketh all in all. Beware of putting limits upon Him. Give Him His freedom when He stoops from heaven to get into living touch with living men. On one man He will flash like lightning. On another like the sun He will arise. There are diversities of operations.

The Twelve Gates of the Heavenly City

That thought is very beautifully hinted at in one of the visions of the Revelation. John saw a city — it was the heavenly city — and it had not one gate, but twelve. On the east three gates, and on the north three gates, and on the south three gates, and on the west three gates —it was John's commentary on his Master's word, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." He had leaned upon that Master's bosom and known the infinite riches in that little room, and now brooding upon all that, he saw these avenues. On the east three gates — then men shall come to Him with the gladness of the sunrise on their brow. On the north three gates — then men shall come to Him out of a bitter and a barren wind. On the west three gates — then men, whose hopes have sunk like the sun into the sea shall seek the city. On the south three gates — then from a lovely land they will reach One who ir altogether lovely. If you are traveling by the great north road, do not think that yours is the one road. If you have a friend upon the eastern highway, do not imagine that you must go with him. What I mean is, the one important thing is to find Christ; it is not which route you take to come to Him.

Who Are Saints?

There is a word that Paul is fond of using in the opening of his letters to the churches. He addresses his converts by the name of saints — "unto the saints which are in Ephesus." Now mark you, Paul was not writing to a few people only. He was writing to everyone who was in Christ. He was not selecting a few outstanding Christians when he wrote "unto the saints which are in Ephesus." He was thinking of the master and the slave — of the mother — of the soldier in the guardroom, and what varieties of character were there it does not take much genius to discover. Unto the saints which were in Ephesus — and one of them would be a strong stern man, and one would be a shy and shrinking girl, and one would be a blundering agitator interfering with everybody's business, and one would be a dreamer of sweet dreams. Unto the saints which are in Ephesus — the point is that all of them were saints. There was room in the word, in its grand Pauline usage, for every variety of man in Christ. And you have but to think what it means now as you catch it falling from the lips to recognize how it has been contracted. A saint? We all know what that connotes. Perhaps we have known a saint — she was our mother —gentle and unworldly, and there was the light of heaven on her face. My sister, I know she was a saint; but where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, and I want to ask you what right you have to narrow to that type the grand old term. Cromwell, in that grim way of his, called his choicest regiment- the saints. They were not childlike: they were grizzled veterans whose ears were ringing with the clash of steel. Saints? It sounds absurd to call them saints; and yet, mind you, Cromwell had the right for he knew that for the battered soldier there was sainthood as well as for the sweet and gentle soul. I want to see room made within the church for every type and variety of character. I want to see the man of action there, and the thinker and the scholar and the laborer. And I want each to feel that in the eyes of Christ there is no favored or peculiar type, for there are diversities of operations.

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by George H. Morrison

Basic Likeness

Of course there is a certain general likeness between all who are in Jesus Christ. If we walk in the light, says the apostle, then have we fellowship one with the other. Just as men engaged in perilous callings are molded broadly into a common likeness such as the miner who has his peculiar stamp and the fisherman his unmistakable bearing, so in the perilous calling of the Christian there are powers as of the mighty deep at work which silently impress a common likeness. A true Christian, whatever be his temperament, will always differ from a true Mohammedan. An ardent Buddhist could never be mistaken for an ardent follower of Jesus Christ. But the wonderful thing about that common life, in which all share who are in Jesus, is that it comes not to repress but to intensify the individuality.

Christianity Preserves Personality

Let me point out in passing how clearly this is shown in the case of the first disciples of our Lord. What you see in them all as they companied with Christ is the intensifying of their personality. One might have thought that a fellowship like Christ's would have had a certain repressing influence. It was so overpowering, that fellowship, it was so penetrative and commanding. But the strange thing is that so far from doing that, somehow it touched the strings of personality, and every man of them became himself when he became a follower of Jesus. Peter never grew like John. John was never the replica of Peter. Thomas — you would have known him anywhere, he was so gloomy and so doubting and so loyal. Each of them was empowered to become —not what his neighbor nor what his brother was —but what he was himself in God's eyes, according to the pattern in the mount.

Variety of Service

Lastly, and in a word or two, let us think of Christian service. One of the most familiar scenes in Scripture is the fight of David and Goliath. To me the choicest moment of that scene is when David was getting ready for the fight. I see Saul lending him his armor, and it was a very honoring bestowal. I see David, restless and uneasy, handling the great sword as if he feared it. And then I see him laying all aside and crying out, "I cannot go in these," and fingering his well-loved sling again. For Saul there was but one way of fighting. He had never dreamed of any other way. There was only one tradition in his chivalry, and every fighter must conform to that. But David, fresh from the uplands and the morning and the whispering of God among the hills, must have liberty to fight in his own way. The one was all for immemorial custom. The other was determined to be free. The one said, "It has been always so," and the other, "I cannot go in these." And remember that it was not Saul who was in the line of God's election, but that young stripling from the Bethlehem pasturage who in his service dared to be himself.

Now in our thought of Christian service, we need to be reminded of that scene. We must guard against narrowing our thought of service into half a dozen recognized activities. When Christ was on earth, the twelve disciples served Him, and it was a noble and a glorious service. But have you exhausted the catalogue of services when you have named their preaching and their teaching? The woman who washed His feet was also serving, and Martha when she made the supper ready, and the mother who caught up her little child and brought it to Him that it might be blessed. "I cannot go with these, I have not proved them. I cannot use the helmet and the shield." Who wants you to? There are hands which can wield no sword but which can carry a cup of water beautifully. There is something thou canst do in thine own way — something for which the church is waiting. Do that, and do it with thine heart, and perchance thou shalt do more than thou hast dreamed.

October 22

Forewarned, Forearmed - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

We are not ignorant of his devices — 2Co_2:11

This is a chapter of autobiography. It is one of the glimpses we get into the great human heart that everywhere throbs in these epistles. Some men's doctrine is so divorced from their life and their experience that the two seem separate spheres not to be thought of at the same moment. But it is never so with a really sincere man: and it is never so with Paul. What he believed was so bound up inextricably with what he was that he can pass from doctrine to his own history, and from his history back again to doctrine, and it all seems quite natural. O why is life so separated, part from part! Why are there these great gulfs between our Sunday and our Monday, our brain and heart, our doctrine and our practice! All Paul's theology is useless — God may condemn us by it — unless the tides of it sweep into every creek and inlet of this so broken and mysterious shore.

Well, in this chapter of autobiography our text occurs. "We are not ignorant of his devices." Do you observe that gracious we? Only God's perfect gentleman would have written that. As a matter of fact, these men of Corinth were ignorant of the devices of the devil. Had they but known them, he never could have spread such havoc in the church as these two letters reveal. An uninspired man, blind to the possibilities in others, would have said I. But Paul wrote in the Holy Ghost and had the outlook and the hope and the magnificent prospects of the Holy Ghost for every man within him. And in the power of that, he elevates these Corinthians to his own level — some day they shall be there — and he says we. It is the way of Paul. It is the way of Christ. It is the way of love: expecting great things from the most ignorant man; and by the very sunshine of the expectation, starting the growth of them.

Now I want in a simple way to expound on some of these devices. "Knowledge is power," said Lord Bacon: and to know some of the subtleties of that malevolent power that fights against us is so far to be forearmed. Paul does not tell us what the devices were. But probably the devices of today are very much the same as in Paul's time. For underneath all changing years and the growing complexities of life, this heart keeps wonderfully constant; and the arts that take it and that snare it now, took it and snared and slew it eighteen hundred years ago. We are not ignorant of his devices — what, then, are some of these?

Satan Labels Evil Things with Pleasant Names

There is a tendency in all language to do that. Whether it springs from a very natural desire to hide the uglier sides of human life or whether it is the survival of some old pagan feeling that tried to propitiate the gods of nature by fair words, we cannot tell. But every language has been rich in what grammarians call euphemisms-those nice and delicate words that cover some offensive truth. When Prince George of Greece went over to Crete to become governor, there had been fierce rioting and bloodshed between the Muslims and Christians. And when he arrived and was received with great enthusiasm, the correspondent of the Times gave a very curious description of the scene. "The long rows of ruined houses, beneath which in some cases, the fire is still smoldering," he wrote, "are almost concealed by festoons and banners." It was an attempt to decorate and hide the tragedies. And language is always doing that. No man has ever loved to call the seamier side of things by its right name or to look the darker facts of life straight in the face. And from the first, language has been busy in fashioning its own festoons and banners to hide these ugly things. It is this tendency of human speech that is caught up and wrested by the devil into an engine and instrument of ill. If, in the natural shuddering at death, I shrink from saying, "My mother is dead," and say instead, "She is gone," there is no harm in that. But if by any trick of speech I veil the filthiness of sin, or if I cannot see how odious evil is because I have dubbed it with some pleasant name, I have been ignorant of his devices. Who called the world of self and pleasure the happy world? Who named the business man whose transactions border on the shady the smart man? Who said that the adulterer who is breaking his wife's heart had his little weakness? Who smiled and said the profligate was only fast? or called the sowing of a harvest of misery for children's children the sowing of wild oats? 0 cease that speech! Call vile things by their vile names, and be not ignorant of his devices.

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Forewarned, Forearmed - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Satan Makes His Onset on Our Strongest Side

Our characters are complex products, and in every one of us strong elements and weak are strangely blended. The strongest Achilles has his defenseless heel. And the worst of us is not altogether bad, the weakest of us not altogether weak. There is something that still rings true; there is some chord that will still make some music in us. Thou hast a worst side, and generally men take thee on thy worst side. But thou hast a best side, and God takes thee on that. And Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light, assails on that side too.

The Bible has many instances of that. Who above all patriarchs and prophets was noted for his meekness? Was it not Moses? Yet it was Moses who broke the tables in a passion and failed in the grace that most distinguished him. Whom do we call the father of the faithful? Is it not Abraham? Yet the worst sin in Abraham's life sprang out of want of faith. And patient Job sinned through impatience: and the brave Peter fell through cowardice. And gentle and most tolerant St. John, in that one hour when he would have the fire on the Samaritan villagers, was like to be the most intolerant of all. And did not Christ know this ? Christ's loftiest passion was for the kingdoms of the world that He might bring them into obedience to God. And it was there that the Prince of Darkness struck at him: "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

O friend, remember that. Where thou art strongest, watch! Where thou art best and bravest, be on thy guard! The choicest gifts that God has dowered you with may be your snare, and all that is best in you may be your ruin. The victim of intemperance might have been a happy man today but for the kindly heart and splendid fellowship that made him the darling of the social company. It was the best in him that gave a standing-ground for Satan. All that was best in him has proved his curse.

Satan Uses Tools

It is one mark of practical genius to choose the right instruments to do its work. A born administrator is a man who not only works hard himself, but has the skill of choosing the right men to be his assistants. That is always a mark of practical capacity. And a true general shows his genius to command by the way in which he uses each branch of the service—cavalry, artillery, and infantry- for its proper work. Every administrator must make use of agents; and he displays the greatest genius for administration who picks his agents with the greatest skill.

What a magnificent administrative genius that power must be that plots our ruin if we judge it by a test like that. Could you conceive a finer choice of instruments than Satan makes when he is seeking to overthrow a human soul? Out of a hundred gates into your hearts and mine, he passes by those that are barred and chooses one that will open at a touch. His is the plan and his the whole device. But he gets other hands and other hearts to do the work; and the whole history of the tempted world, and the whole story of your tempted heart, tells the consummate genius of the choice.

Think of our Lord's experience. First, in the wilderness Satan tempted Him. He came himself that time: he sent no messenger and used no agent. It was a personal conflict between the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Life. But the next time the baffled tempter fell back upon this old device. Next time he does not come in person: he comes incarnated in Simon Peter. What, was it not a master-stroke of genius to reach at the heart of Jesus through the loyal heart of that disciple? And when Jesus turns and detects Satan's voice in Peter's tongue and cries, "Get thee behind me, Satan, thou savourest not the things of God," He was not ignorant of his devices.

And do you think that artifice is disused today? Has Satan's brain grown blunted in these latter times ? It is not the men who hate us and it is not the men and women we despise who tempt us most. It is those we trust and those who love us best who often prove hell's aptest messengers. If we but hated those who tempt us, life would become a very easy thing. It is because we love and reverence them so that for a thousand men and women life is hard. Come, tempter, in thine own cursed shape, and any coward shall beat thee off. But come through the loving heart of Simon Peter, and look through the loving eyes of Simon Peter, and speak through the loving lips of Simon Peter — and only Christ can make us strong to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

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Forewarned, Forearmed - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Satan Shams Defeat

To sham defeat is a well-known trick in warfare. Nothing will sooner disorganize a regiment than to see the enemy routed on the field. While the fight rages, a man is nerved and strung for he is carrying his life in his hand and knows it. But with the victory there comes reaction, and men grow careless; and there are battles where the enemy has shammed defeat just to inspire that careless spirit. O sirs, we are not ignorant of his devices! This old device of sham defeat- have you not seen it? You fought like a man with your besetting sin and mastered it. God keep you watchful. God keep you on your guard. One careless hour and the routed sin is at the gates again, and the whole battle has to be fought anew. We thought the sin was dead, and it was only sleeping. We thought that we had slain that habit, and it is stealing over us again. We thought we had defeated Satan, and Satan only shammed defeat. Keep the loins girded and the lamps burning and the hand upon the sword until the end. Our unseen foe is a consummate strategist. Many a soul has been lost because it won —won in the first encounter, then said all's well and laid its arms aside — till the old sin crept up again and sprang and the last state was worse than the first.

Satan Lays the Emphasis upon Tomorrow

We are always prone to put the accent there. It is very hard to grasp the true splendor of the present. Today seems insignificant; tomorrow shall be the real day for us. God never speaks that way. God's Bible never speaks that way. It tells us that the present is divine, and lays the whole emphasis upon today: "Now is the accepted time." And the Holy Ghost is saying, Today.

And this is the arch-device of the arch-tempter. In every life, for every start and every noble deed, God says, Today. In every life for every start and every noble deed, the devil says, Tomorrow. Is it conversion? Today, says God:

Tomorrow, whispers Satan. Is it the breaking with that sin? Tomorrow. Is it the starting on a higher level? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, always tomorrow ! till by tomorrow's road we are at Never — and the chance is gone, and the dream has vanished, and the hope is dead. O friends, young men and women, be not ignorant of that device. It will never be easier to come to Christ than now. It will never be easier to make the start than now. God says, Today, tonight! And God who says it is here to give the power that can save now, and can cleanse now, and can send you home now with old things passed away and all things new in Jesus Christ.

October 23

The Inescapable Elements of Life

Approving ourselves.., in necessities — 2Co_6:4

When the apostle speaks about necessities he does not think of necessary things. That is not the sense of the original. There are things, the opposite of luxuries, without which we could not live at all. Such are food and drink, and the air of heaven to breathe, and the refreshing ministry of sleep. But "necessities," in the idiom of the Greek, does not connote such necessary things; it means experiences from which is no escape. It is in such experiences Paul wants to be approved —to show himself a gallant Christian gentleman. He is determined to reveal his faith and joy in the inescapable elements of life. And so, brooding upon the text, one comes to ask the question, what are those things no one can escape from, in the strange and intricate complex of experience?

Inescapable Burdens

One thinks first of certain bitter things that reach men in the realm of mind or body. There are sufferings which pass away; there are others out of which is no escape. If a man falls ill of diphtheria or fever, he recovers, in the good providence of God. If he meets with an accident and breaks his arm, that fracture may be perfectly united. But there are other things, in the range of human ills, from which there is no prospect of escape in the long vista of the coming years. There is blindness, lameness, deafness, or congenital deformity of body. There are brains that never can be brilliant and faces that never can be beautiful. There are thorns in the flesh, messengers of Satan, hindering influence and power and service that are going to be present to the end. It is in things like these that Paul is quite determined to show himself an approved minister of God- brave and bright, faithful to his task, free from the slightest trace of jaundiced bitterness. And to do that is a far higher thing than to come untarnished from temporary trial. It is to "come smiling from the world's great snare, uncaught."

Temptation

Then one's thoughts go winging to temptation, for temptation is one of the "necessities" of life. Separate from each other in a thousand ways, we are all united in temptation. A man may escape the gnawing tooth of poverty or the anguish and the languor of disease. He may escape imprisonment's and stripes and the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." But no man, be he wise or simple, rich as Croesus or poor as Bartimaeus, ever escapes the onset of temptation. Temptation is a most obsequious servant. It follows a man everywhere —into the church, into the sheltered study, into the sweetest and tenderest relationships. Men fly to the desert to escape temptation only to find that it is there before them, insistent, as in the crowded haunts of men. That is the reason why our Lord was tempted. A Christ untempted is no Christ for me. He might be the Son of God in all His fullness, but He never for me could be the Son of Man. It is in such "necessities," or, in our Western idiom, such inescapable elements of life that the apostle yearns in Christ to play the man. Is there any finer victory than that? To resist the devil when he leaps or creeps on us clad in the most alluring of disguises; to do it not once, but steadily and doggedly, for when the devil comes he always comes again — that is a far higher thing than to pass untouched from temporary trial. It is to stand (as Browning says) pedestalled in triumph.

Our Cross

Another of the "necessities" of life is what our Savior calls the cross. Just as in every lot there is a crook, so in every life there is a cross. You remember how our Lord declared this — "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross" — not certain men in strange peculiar circumstances, but any man, right to the end of time. From which we gather that in the eyes of Christ the cross was universal in experience, one of the things that nobody escapes. The cross is anything very hard to carry- anything that takes liberty from living — anything that robs the foot of fleetness or silences the music of the heart. And men may be brave and hide the cross away and wreathe it with flowers so that none suspects it, but, says Jesus, it is always there. There are only two things men can do with crosses —they can take them up or they can kick against them. They can merge them in God's plan of life for them, or they can stumble over them towards the glen of weeping. And what could be finer, in the whole range of life, than just to determine as the apostle did to be divinely approved in the cross? To take the cross up every morning and to do it happily for Jesus' sake — never to quarrel with God for its intrusion —never to lose heart nor faith nor love — that fine handling of one of life's "necessities" is indispensable to following Christ and is, through Him, in the compass of us all.

Death

One last "necessity" remains: it is the grim necessity of death. For sooner or later death comes to every man; from the grip of death nobody escapes. Men used to ponder deeply upon death. Philosophy was the preparation for it. Books were written that dealt with holy dying. Preachers preached "as dying men to dying men." Now that has passed — men's thoughts are turned to life — they have abandoned the contemplation of the grave; and yet from death nobody escapes. Death is the last and grimmest of "necessities." "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Death, like temptation and the cross, is an inescapable element of life. And then the apostle says: "In that last hour, when my eyes close on the familiar faces, God grant me grace to show myself approved." I go to be with Christ which is far better. O death, where is thy sting? The Lord God is merciful and gracious blotting out our transgressions like a cloud. With such a hope, with such a Father-God, with such a Savior on the other shore, the very weakest need not fear to die.

October 24

A Plea for Simplicity

The simplicity that is in Christ- 2Co_11:3

There are some words that have a tragic history. To the hearing ear and to the understanding heart they whisper strange secrets about human progress. If we could follow them through all their changing meanings we should be reading the story of mankind. Nor, indeed, when we think of it, is this to be wondered at, or language is the echo of the soul. And whenever the soul of man has struggled heavenward I shall hear its echo high among the hills. The man who thoroughly knew the English tongue could almost sit down and write an English history. It is because we now rise and now fall that words become ennobled or debased.

Now one of the words that has a pitiful history is that word simple. It has wandered far from the simplicity of Christ. It has so changed its meaning and lost its early character that we are almost ashamed to use it in any other than a derogatory manner. Once, to be simple meant to be: free from guile .

Simplicity, was the opposite of duplicity. But in the struggle with the world s sharp wits, the guileless man has generally fared so badly that the simple man has become the simpleton. I warrant you there was a world of holy meaning in the word innocent when Adam and Eve first felt the taint of sin. Yet now we look at the idiot, and we pity him, and we say, "He is an innocent. So once to be simple meant to be a Nathanael. And now it almost means to be a fool.

Great People Are Simple

And yet, if we have ever studied history at all, we must have been struck with a certain sweet simplicity about the characters of the very great—men. There is something of the child about the greatest; a certain freshness, a kind of sweet unconsciousness; a happy taking of themselves on trust; a sort of play- element throughout the drama. And all the time, powerfully, perhaps silently, they were swaying and steering this poor tossed world. Did you never feel that simplicity in Martin Luther? And did it never arrest you in George Washington? And did you never mark it in the great Duke of Wellington? One of the finest odes Tennyson ever wrote was his ode upon the death of that great duke. And I do not believe in all the noble verse of it, it rises to anything loftier than this: —

Foremost captain of his time,

Rich in saving common-sense,

And, as the greatest only are,

In his simplicity sublime.

Sin Imitates Simplicity

The greatest souls, then, have been truly simple. It is that simple element that has charmed the world. And I cannot think of any better witness to the abiding charm of true simplicity than the way in which vice has always tried to imitate it. Make up your mind clearly on this point: that sin is never simple, it is subtle. No matter how we interpret the story of Eden, the insinuating serpent is still sin. All sin is subtle, intricate, involved; leading a man into an infinite maze. It can give a hundred reasons for its counsel, when a good conscience is content with one. Do you remember how the great poet of Germany in his immortal tragedy of Faust- do you remember how he pictures Mephistopheles as the master of a consummate subtilty? He is always changing, that evil incarnation. He is always compliant: he is never the same. To Margaret he is one thing, and to Faust another. He is exquisitely accommodating everywhere —until we feel afresh how subtle sin is, what an utter stranger to genuine simplicity! And when sin shams that it is very simple — and it is very fond of that device —we learn how attractive simplicity must be. It is a well-known practice of the hypocrite to make believe he is unusually candid. One of the last arts of an abandoned woman is to act like an innocent young girl again. IT is the unwilling tribute of the bad to that simplicity of soul that in charms the world, but which is lost when the eye ceases to be single and when the conscience ceases to be true.

The Simplicity of Christ

Now the most casual student of the life of Jesus must have noted the simplicity of Christ)In a sense far deeper than any other captain, our Lord is in His simplicity sublime. His name shall be called Wonderful, it is quite true. He was the Counselor, the everlasting King. But He was holy, harmless, undefiled; and a little child shall lead them, said the Prophet.

Think of His mode of life: was it not simple? It puts our artificial lives to shame There is a music in it, not like the music of the orchestra, but like the music of the brook under the trees. He loved John and Peter, not the Pharisee; and He drew to the children, not to the scribe'), and it was(all so natural and simple)that the blind Jews said, this is not the Christ. Had He come greatly with the sound of a trumpet, they would have hailed Him and cried, Behold! Messiah cometh. But they missed the divinity of what was simple, and He came unto His own and they received Him not.

Think of His teaching: was not that simple too? It puts our sermons and our books to shame. There is a false simplicity that springs from lack of thought, and there is a spurious and forced simplicity that I have heard some ministers adopt when they began, with a smile, to the children, and how the children hate it! But preach to true.

October 25

The Apostolic Paradox - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

As unknown, and yet well known — 2Co_6:9

It will at once occur to you how true this was of the apostles. There is not one of that first band of missionaries who were sent out to evangelize the world of whom we might not say in the words of our text, that they were unknown and yet well-known. There are no names in Christendom today more honored than the names of these evangelists. Wherever the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and wherever the Word of God is read and loved, the names of Peter and James and John and Thomas are familiar in our ears as household words —yet how little we know of any one of them! We have a few glimpses of them in their work; we hear them speaking a few words of arguments, or it may be we have a brief writing from their pen. But what their childhood was and who their friends were; how they looked or what befell them in old age — all this, and much more, is shrouded in darkness. Of all the disciples, then, it is singularly true, that they are unknown and yet well-known.

Jesus Was Unknown and Yet Well-Known

Nor does this hold only of the disciples. It is equally clear in the case of our Lord Himself. If our lot had been cast in Galilee while Jesus lived, there would have been few days in which we should not have spoken about Him. Men were intensely curious about Jesus, and every scrap of information was treasured. He was the daily topic of the marketplace; when women gathered at the well they spoke about Him; the dullest peasant in the remotest village had been startled to attention by His miracles —Jesus of Nazareth was indeed well-known. Yet after all how little they understood Him! In what obscurity He lived and wrought! Some thought He was Elias; others that He was Jeremiah; and not a few said "He is beside Himself." And outside of Palestine was the wide and noisy world with its senates and its markets and its armies, and into its voices of business and of pleasure there had never come one whisper of the Savior. You see how true it was, then, even of Christ, that He was unknown and yet well-known.

The Unknown Life

But if the words were true of the disciples and of Christ, they are not without truth for you and me. If we are striving to live the Christian life, this will also be one mark of our endeavor. I wish then to handle that rich theme, and to show how the Gospel carried out in life will make a man unknown and yet well-known.

First, then, "unknown" — I shall suggest to you some of the reasons that make the Christian life an unknown life.

Well, to begin with, Christianity lays its chief stress upon qualities that do not impress the imagination of the world. There is nothing to startle and nothing to arrest in the kind of disposition which it inculcates. The spirit that is enforced in the beatitudes is not the spirit which the world applauds. What are the qualities that men admire? What is it that draws the attention of the crowd? Is it not brilliant gifts, ingenuity, physical dexterity, or audacity? I need not remind you that you look in vain for these in the program of the Galilean. "And He opened His mouth and taught them saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn; blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers." It is not a moral attitude such as that which makes a man the idol of the street. Our Lord deliberately laid His emphasis on the undramatic qualities of life. With a true insight into what was noblest and a true scorn for what was merely show, He caught the mighty and hurled them from their seat and exalted those of low degree. Instead of pride, Jesus proclaimed humility; instead of revenge of injuries, longsuffering; endurance was to supplant retaliation, and tender mercy the old and passionate hatreds. And it is the crowning of these unobtrusive virtues and the recognition of these voiceless things that make the Christian as a man unknown.

The Private Worship of the Christian

The distinctive exercises of the Christian are exercises which he never can reveal. Among all the differences between the pagan faiths and the faith which is our treasure and our glory, none is more marked or more notable than the change from an outward to an inward worship. It is almost impossible for us to realize how wholly external the old religions were. The idea that a man might move among his fellows, carrying all his religion in his heart, would have been laughed to scorn in pagan Rome. It was under the shadow of consecrated temples, or where the altar stood ready for the oxen, or within the sacred circle of the augur, or in the brilliant procession through the streets, it was in such scenes that the religious life of paganism found its peculiar and distinctive exercises. It knew not the secret of the closed door nor of the head anointed during fasting.

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The Apostolic Paradox - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

I need hardly stay to tell you how Jesus Christ has come and changed all that. The distinctive exercises of the Christian life are not procession and sacrifice and augury. The distinctive worship of the Christian life is worship which we never can reveal. Could you conceive of anyone in earnest making a parade of secret prayer? Are there not hours of fellowship with heaven which would be tarnished if we talked of them? Do we ever speak of the minute denials or of those strengthening of the will in little things which every honest Christian practices? All that is most distinctive in the Christian — his prayer, his battle, his joy, his cross-bearing — takes place in the mystical room with the closed door. And it is this- the silence and the secret — that makes the Christian as a man unknown.

The Service of the Christian

Again, the distinctive service of the Christian life is not a service that attracts attention.

When a man embarks on a political career, he knows that the reward of eminence is fame. Just in proportion to his genius or eloquence will the eyes of a waiting nation turn towards him. When a man adopts a military career, he hopes for some action that may bring him glory. He dreams of doing some gallant deed and waking to find that he is famous. In the life of politics then, as in the life of war, a certain fame is quite inevitable, and he who wins the laurel in the senate or shows conspicuous courage in the field is certain to attract attention.

But the distinctive service of the Christian life is not a service that attracts attention. There is no glitter and no glamour in it. There is none of the pomp and circumstance of war. It is a quiet and lowly service; it is a work of faith and a labor of love; like the Lord who inspires it, it will not strive nor cry, nor lift up its voice in the streets. It climbs the dark stair and enters the wretched home where the poor wife, perhaps, is lying on a sickbed hoping against hope and praying to God that her husband will not come reeling home tonight, and there it ministers with unwearied patience and with a love that will not let go. It gathers the children into the mission school, prays over them and visits them at home, and in spite of discouragement it perseveres for it hears the Savior saying "Feed my lambs." It visits the fatherless and widows in affliction, it sings in the hospitals, it stands at the prison gates. It comes like a glimpse of sunshine to the poorhouse; it takes the fallen by the hand and calls her sister. All that is going on in this great city. Yet when you open your paper you never read of that. You read of pantomimes and of concerts and of the fiscal question and of the discussions in the House of Commons. The truest service of the Christian life is never a service that attracts attention. The kingdom cometh not with observation. The seed was growing while the farmer slept. It is this lowly and unnoticed service, done for the sake of Him who died for us, that makes the Christian as a man unknown.

The Life Hid With God

But I have yet to mention the deepest of all reasons, and I shall give it to you in the apostle's words. "For ye are dead," says Paul in a great passage, "and your life is hid with Christ in God." Mysterious words — deep beyond our searching; yet boundless in encouragement and hope! For they tell us that if we be Christ's indeed, our true life cannot be seen of men; it is hidden with Jesus Christ in God's pavilion till the day comes when it shall be revealed. When on a frosty night you look up at the Northern star, have you never said of it "unknown and yet well known?" There is not a sailor in our hemisphere but knows it. It is the first star which we point out to our children. There are countless stars whose name we never learn, but the Northern star is well-known to all. But are there mountains in it and are there valleys? Are there lakes and seas or are there living creatures? "Ah," says the sailor when I ask him that, "I don't mean that I know it in that sense." Unknown and yet well-known, you see, and unknown because hung aloft in heaven; and ye are dead and your life is hid in heaven with One who is the bright and morning star. If, then, you are truly following Christ never be anxious to explain yourself; do not be eager to be understood and never grow impatient to be recognized. Take up thy cross; study to be quiet; redeem the time; follow the gleam bravely. Remember that with all the saints you are to walk heavenward as a man unknown.

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The Apostolic Paradox - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

"Yet Well-Known."

But in spite of the obscurity of the Christian life, it is true that the Christian is well-known.

First, he is well-known when he little thinks of it. I have often been struck in preaching throughout Scotland with one feature of our church's life. I do not think I was ever in a parish where there was not one elder who stood out from all his brethren as a man of wisdom and of the spirit and of prayer. Those of you who were trained in country homes, perhaps more especially in country manses, will, I am sure, corroborate what I say. The elder may have lived in the humblest circumstances and been utterly unknown to the great world beyond, but everyone trusted him and everyone revered him and knew that he was a man of God. No one had ever seen him at secret prayer, yet no one ever doubted that he prayed. He never whispered what his right hand was doing, yet somehow all the village had the news. He moved about happy to be unknown and yet never dreaming how well-known he was. There is a deep sense in which that holds true of all loyal followers of Christ. Their life is telling where they may never think and their influence is far wider than they dream. The world is full of eager and watchful eyes, and there is not a man so poor but he has his audience. Some one is always helped or always hindered by the kind of life we lead from day to day. Back to thy duty then; take up thy cross. Resume thy service with all its disappointment. There are hearts that are thanking God for thee today — thou art unknown, and yet well-known.

Well-Known in Heaven

Again, the Christian is well-known in heaven. In that great world where God the Father is and where there is one like to the Son of Man; in that eternal home where the angels are and where they watch with profoundest interest this earthly drama, there is nothing of more absorbing interest than the struggle and the service of the saint. Many of our estimates are overturned in heaven. There are strange reversals of magnitude in glory. Things that seem mighty here are trifles there, and the world's least is sometimes heaven's greatest. We often read of deafening applause, and it may be that the applause is deafening in the little area of some city hall. But the same applause given in the Highlands would hardly waken an echo in the valley and not a sound of it would reach the ear of him who was standing on the mountaintop.

So, much of the noisy cheering of the world has died away before it reaches glory, and yet all heaven was watching Jesus Christ who would not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets. It is the trials and triumphs of the spirit that are of vital interest to the heavenly hosts. It is the cry and the yearning of the soul which echo in the heart of the Redeemer. There is not a prayer that we utter but He hears it. There is not a temptation we master but He sees it. We cannot do the smallest deed of kindness but like a dove it flies back to the ark. Unknown — yes, the Christian is always that, and yet I think he is well-known in heaven.

Well-Known at the Judgment

Then, lastly, the Christian may be unknown now, but he shall be well-known in the last judgment.

If there be any truth in the Gospel which we preach, the day is coming when the books will be opened and the small and great shall be summoned before God. You will be there and I shall be there; we shall be face to face with Almighty God at last. And swift as a flash of thought all that we were and did shall leap into light before ten million eyes. I forbear to dwell upon the awful misery of the man or woman whose life has been a lie. Faced by that God who is a consuming fire, and still more, faced by the love of Christ, what words in the whole range of human speech could tell the horror of that last unmasking? God grant that it be not thus with you and me! But ah! what words shall ever tell the joy of the last judgment if we have really been trusting Christ and fighting heavenward! "Lord," we shall say, "was it I who prayed these prayers, was it I who gave that cup of water to the little one? I had quite forgotten it. It had passed with time." But the Lord shall answer, "Child, I never forget." "Lord," we shall say, "was it I who won that soul in the days when I labored in Sunday School? I thought my work was a failure with the boy." So all that we ever strove to be and do, our secret hope and cry and struggle and victory — all shall be written out and meet us again when we stand before the judgment seat of God. And then we shall understand what our text means, "As unknown, and yet well-known."

October 26

Free Grace - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. — 2Co_12:9

What the thorn was of which the apostle speaks is a question we never can answer. A hundred explanations have been given, yet certainty has never been obtained. Each age has its own interpretation, each commentator has his chosen theory, and we are still as far away from exact knowledge as ever. We may learn a little, it is true, from the language in which the apostle tells us about it. He tells us his trouble was a thorn. It was not like a cut of sword or a gash of a saber; it was something to all appearance insignificant, but how it festered! It was not in the spirit, it was in the flesh; it was a bodily and not a mental torment. Thus far Paul himself is witness; but beyond that we go at our own risk. Paul was not at all the kind of man to dwell with evident relish on his ailments. Paul was a gentleman and hid all that, kept a happy face to the wide world, and only when the cause of God demanded it, when he might help to glorify the Lord, did he touch in the most delicate fashion on the things that were given him to suffer.

But if we cannot tell what the apostle's thorn was, we can at least discover what it did for him. It was as rich in blessing for his soul as the sweetest promise of his Lord. In the first place, it helped to keep him humble when in peril of spiritual pride; in the second place, it drove him to his knees, brought him as a suppliant to the throne; and thirdly, it gave him a new experience of the sustaining of the grace of God, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

The Kingliness of Grace

Now, what is grace? Is it the same as love? Yes, at the heart of it, it is the same as love. When you get deep enough down to the heart of it, love and grace are indistinguishable. The difference is that love can travel anywhere, upwards, or on the levels of equality, but grace can only travel downwards. A king can always be gracious to his subjects; a subject can never be gracious to his king. He may love his king and be intensely loyal, but he can never be gracious to his king; for grace is love able to condescend to men of low estate, leaning down with royalty of pity to the lowly and wretched and lost. That is why we call it sovereign grace; it is a peculiar prerogative of sovereignty. That is why we talk of free grace. That is why, when we think of the grace of God, our thoughts go out immediately to Christ, for it is in Christ and Christ alone we learn the love of God to sinful men.

So far, then, for the setting of the words. And now I want to speak of certain seasons when you and I, as Christian people, find this text upon our hearts. True, we need its message every hour, for we are not under the law but under grace; but for the grace of God in Jesus Christ there is no hope, even for a day; and yet to us as to the apostle here, seasons come of quite peculiar need when, like a cry of cheer across the storm, we hear, "My grace is sufficient for thee." On one or two of these seasons let me briefly touch.

The Sense of Sin

This word is full of joy when we awaken to a sense of our own sin. It is, we notice, one of the features of our age that it is shallow in its sense of sin. It does not feel the burden of its sin in the profound way our fathers did. Partly owing to that lack of quiet which is so notable in recent years, partly owing to the attention which is now directed to the social gospel, believers are not so deep in their own hearts as were the Christians of an older school. Now, that may be true or that may not be true, but this, I think, has never been gainsaid: sooner or later if one believes in Christ, he is wakened to a sight of his own sin. It may be given him at his first approach to Christ, be the cause that leads him to the Savior; or, being brought to Christ in gentler ways, it may visit him further on his journey. Sometimes he is awakened in the heart by contact with a pure and holy life; sometimes it is by the preaching of the Word or by the singing of a simple hymn. Sometimes it is in the seasons of the night when a man is alone with his own conscience; sometimes it is by reading the Bible; or it is born of great sorrow falling, not upon us, but on another; there is something in the suffering of our loved ones that makes us feel mysteriously guilty. It is in these ways, as in a hundred others, that the Spirit of God convicts us of our sin. We get a swift glimpse of what we are — see what we are for ourselves. Now there is no talk of reformation, we want something more radical than that; and for the first time we cry despairingly, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." Is it not in such an hour that our text reveals the richness of its meaning? It is then we awaken to the Godhead of Christ: "My grace is sufficient for thee." Deeper than our deepest sinfulness is the grace of God in Jesus Christ; able to forgive and to redeem is the love that was revealed on Calvary. Suppose that in the whole of history there had never been anyone so vile as you, yet even to you this very moment is offered abundant and everlasting pardon. It was sufficient for David in his lust, so terribly aggravated by his birth and station; it was sufficient for Peter when he denied his Lord who was going to shed His blood for him. The penitent thief found it enough for him. It was enough for him who had the seven devils. There is nothing that grace will not attempt, and there is nothing that grace cannot achieve. When we are awakened to a sense of sin the only word to rest upon is this, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

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by George H. Morrison

Grace in Suffering

Once more this word is full of comfort in the seasons when we are called upon to suffer. It is a condition of our present life that no one ever is exempt from suffering. That is a stated part of the agreement on which we get our leasehold of the world. To one suffering is of his body, to another it may come in mind. One it may reach in his material fortunes, another through a brother or a son. In one case it may be swift and sharp, vanishing like a summer tempest, while in another it may be long and slow and linger through the obscurity of years. There are many to whom God denies success, but to none He denies to suffer. Sooner or later, stealing from the shadow, it lays its piercing hand upon our hearts. Had it been otherwise the heart of man Would never have been a man of sorrows to suffer as He suffered who is our ideal.

Now when we are called to suffer there is nothing more beautiful than quiet fortitude; to take it bravely and quietly and patiently is one of the noblest victories of life. There are few sights more morally inspiring than that of someone who has a cross to carry; someone of whom we know, perhaps, that every day must be a day of pain, yet we never hear a murmur from him, he is always bright. He is so busy thinking about others that he never seems to think about himself. I have known people such as that; I do thank God that I have known them! There is no sermon so moving in its eloquence as the unuttered sermon of the cheerful sufferer. Among all the thoughts that God has given to make that victory possible to us, there is none more powerful than this, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

A friend of mine not long ago was visiting one of the hospitals in London. She was greatly touched by the look of happy peace on the face of one of the patients in a ward. A little while afterwards she asked a nurse who was the greatest sufferer in that ward, and the nurse, to her intense surprise, indicated the man she had first noticed. Going up to him, she spoke to him and told him what the nurse had said, and how she admired his courage when night and day in such pain. "Ah, miss," he said, "it is not courage; it is that," and he pointed to his bed head, and there was a colored text with this scripture upon it.

It was that which upheld him in the night; it was that which sustained him in the day. It was the love of God in Jesus Christ making itself perfect in his weakness.

Grace in Temptation

Then there is the hour when we are assaulted by temptation. Like suffering, temptation is universal, and like suffering, it is infinitely varied. Probably in all the human family no two are ever tempted quite alike. It is true that temptations may be broadly classified, clustered, as it were, around common centers. There is one class that assails the flesh, another that makes its onset on the mind; yet every temptation is so adapted to the person tempted that perhaps in all the ages that have gone no one was ever tempted just like me. To me there is no argument so strong as this for the existence of a devil. There is such subtlety in our temptations that it is hard to conceive of it without a brain. We are tempted with incomparable cunning; temptation comes to us all so subtlety and so sure that nothing can explain it but intelligence. Temptation is never obtrusive, but it is always there. It is beside us in the crowded street; it has no objection to the lonely moor; it follows us to the office and home; it dogs our footsteps when we go to church; it insists in sharing in our hours of leisure, and kneels beside us when we go to pray. At one and twenty we are sorely tempted, and say, "By-and-by it will be better; wait till twenty years have passed away, temptation will no longer assail us." But forty comes and we are tempted still; not now as in the passion of our youth, but with a power that is far more deadly because it is so hardening to the heart. There is not a relationship so sweet and sacred but temptation chooses it for its assault; there is not an act of sacrifice so pure, but temptation meets us in the doing of it. It never despairs of us until we die. So tempted as we are, is there any hope for us at all against that shameless and malevolent intelligence? Yes, we are here to proclaim that there is hope in unremitting watchfulness, there is hope in every breath of prayer. "Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees"; but above all there is hope in this: when we are tempted and are on the point of falling, we can lift up our hearts to Christ and hear Him say "My grace is sufficient for thee." Was He not tempted in all points like as we are, and yet was He not victorious? Did He not conquer sin, lead it captive, and lay it vanquished at His feet forever? And now you are His and He is yours; that victory which He had won is yours. It is at your disposal every hour. Say to yourself when you are next tempted, "He is able to keep me from falling. He that is with me is mightier than they that are against me." Better still, say nothing, but just listen as He rises up beside His Father's throne and calls to you, His tempted children, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

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Grace in the Hour of Death

Again, shall we not need this word when life is ending, when we come to die? There is no pillow for a dying head except the grace of God in Jesus Christ. When I was a young minister in Thurso I was called into the country one beautiful summer day to the bedside of an elder who was dying. He was a godly man, a grave and reverent saint, a man whose only study was the Bible; summer and winter he was never absent from his familiar comer in the sanctuary. And now he was dying, and, as sometimes happens even with the choicest of the ripest saints, he was dying in such a fear of death as I have never witnessed since that hour. Outside the open window was the field with a shimmer of summer heat upon it; far away there was the long roll of the heavy waves upon the shore; here in the cottage was a human soul that walked reverently and in the fear of God, overmastered by the fear of death. Well, I was a young man then, very ignorant, very unversed in the deep things of the soul, and I tried to comfort him by speaking of the past — what an excellent elder he had been; and I shall never forget the look he gave me, or how he covered his face as if in shame, nor how he cried, "Not that, sir, not that! There is no comfort for me there." It was then I realized for the first time that the only pillow to die on is free grace. It was then I felt how all we have done is powerless to uphold us in the valley of death, for all our righteousness are as filthy rags and bring no ease upon a dying bed.

This is our only stay: "My grace is sufficient for thee."

October 28

The Offense of the Cross - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Then is the offense of the cross ceased— Gal_5:11

Paul Longed for the Salvation of the Jews

One thing which marks the ministry of Paul is how he lovingly yearned over the Jews. With a quenchless and intense desire, he prayed that they might be brought into the fold. Never did mother so long for the saving of her son as Paul longed for the saving of his countrymen. He was willing to suffer anything or everything, if only his people Israel might be won.

It is when we remember that deep longing that we realize what the cross meant for Paul. For the great stumbling block of faith to the Jews—the offense that made the Gospel of Christ smell rank to them—was, as our text indicates, the cross. Take that away, and it would be a thousand times more easy to win the Jews to the acceptance of the Lord. Say nothing about that, just slur it over, and you would take half the difficulty out of the way of Israel. Yet in spite of his yearning to see Israel saved, that was the one theme which Paul would not ignore. God forbid, he says, that I should glory save in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord. There is a great lesson there for Christian teachers and for all who are trying to advance Christ's kingdom. The more earnest and eager they are to have men saved, the more willing are they to go to all lengths to meet them. And that is right, for we must be all things to all men—to the Jews as a Jew, to the Romans as a Roman; but remember there are a few great facts we cannot yield, though they run counter to the whole spirit of the age. It were better to empty a church and preach the cross than to fill it by keeping silence like a coward. It were better to fail as Paul failed with the Jews than to succeed by being a traitor to the cross. Religion can never be a pleasant entertainment. When the offense of the cross ceases, it is lost.

The Cross an Offense to the Jews

Now I want to make it a little plainer to you why the cross was an offense to the Jews and to put things in such a way that you may see at once that the same causes are operative still.

It Blighted All Their Hopes

First then, the cross was offensive to the Jews just because it blighted all their hopes. It shattered every dream they ever dreamed, every ideal that ever glimmered on them. No telegram of news full of disaster, plunging a man into unlooked-for poverty—no sudden death of one to whom the heart clings, laying a man's life in ruins at his feet—not these more certainly shatter a man's hopes than did the cross the vision of the Jews. They had prayed for and had dreamed of their Messiah, and He was to come in power as a conqueror. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight"—you can almost hear the tramp of victorious feet. That was the light which burned in the Jewish darkness; that was the song which made music in their hearts. Then in the place of that triumph, there comes Calvary. In place of the Christ victorious, Christ crucified. And was this the Messiah who was to trample Rome, pierced in hands and feet by Roman nails? To the Jews a stumbling block: you cannot wonder at it when every hope they had formed was contradicted. Yet in spite of it all Paul preached Christ crucified, and that was the offense of the cross.

Now I venture to say that that offense of Calvary is just as powerful now as it was then. If I know anything about the ideals men cherish now and about the hopes that are regnant in ten thousand hearts, they are as antagonistic to the cross as was the Jewish ideal of Messiah. Written across Calvary is sacrifice; written across this age of ours is pleasure. On the lips of Christ are the stem words, I must die. On the lips of this age of ours, I must enjoy. And it is when I think of the passion to be rich and the judgment of everything by money standards; of the feverish desire at all costs to be happy, of the frivolity, of the worship of success; it is when I think of that and then contrast it with the "pale and solemn scene" upon that hill that I know that the offense of Calvary is not ceased. Unto the Jews a stumbling block—unto far more than the Jews: unto a pleasure-loving world and a dead church. Therefore say nothing about it; let it be; make everything interesting, pleasant, easy. Then is the offense of the cross ceased—and with it the power of the Gospel.

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Second, the cross was an offense to the Jews because it swept away much that they took pride in. If there was any meaning in Calvary at all, some of their most cherished things were valueless. The Jews were preeminently a religious people, and this is always one peril of religious people. It is to take the things that lead to God and let the heart grow centered upon them. There was the ceremonial law for instance, with its scrupulous abhorrence of defilements. No one who has not studied the whole matter can ever know what that meant to the Jew. And there were the sacrifices smoking upon their altars, and the feasts and festivals and journeys to Jerusalem. And there was the temple, that magnificent building, sign of their hope and symbol of their unity. At least let this be said of that old people, that if they were proud, they were proud of worthy things. It is better to be proud of law and temple than to be proud of battleship and millionaire. Yet all that pride, religious though it was—that pride, deep-rooted as the people's life—all that was swept away like autumn leaves if there was any meaning in the cross. No more would the eyes of men turn to Jerusalem, no more would sacrifices fill the altars, no more was there room for ceremonial law if the Son of God had died upon the tree. And it was this crushing into the very dust of all that was dearest to the Jewish heart that was so bitter an offense of Calvary.

A Man Must Come with Empty Hands

And today has that offense of the cross ceased? Has that stumbling block been removed out of the way? I say that this is still the offense of Calvary, that it cuts at the root of so much that we are proud of. Here is a woman who strives to do her duty. God bless her, she does it very bravely. Here is a student proud of his high gifts. God prosper him that he may use them well. But over against reliance upon duty and all attempts of the reason to give peace, there hangs the crucified Redeemer saying, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." Here is the offense of the cross in cultured ages. It is that a man must come with empty hands. He must come as one who knows his utter need of the pardoning mercy of Almighty God; and in an age like ours that leans upon its heritage and is proud of its magnificent achievement, that call to unconditional surrender is the offense of evangelical religion. We are all tempted to despise what we get freely. We like a little toil and sweat and travail. We measure the value of most things not by their own worth, but by all that it has cost us to procure them. And Calvary costs us nothing though it cost God everything; the love and the life of it are freely offered; and to a commercial age and a commercial city there is something suspicious and offensive there. Ah sirs, if I preached salvation by good works what an appreciative audience I could have. How it would appeal to many an eager heart! But I trample that temptation under foot, not that I love you less but that I love Christ more, and I pray that where the gospel is proclaimed, the offense of the cross of Christ may never cease. I do not believe that if you scratch a man you will find underneath his skin a Christian. I do not believe that if you do your best, all is well for time and for eternity. But I do believe—

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfil Thy law's demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Third, the cross was an offense to the Jews because it obliterated national distinctions. It leveled at one blow those social barriers that were of such untold worth in Jewish eyes. It was supremely important that the Jews should stand apart; through their isolation God had educated them. They had had the bitter-sweet privilege of being lonely, and being lonely they had been ennobled. Unto them were committed the oracles of God; they were a chosen nation, a peculiar people. The covenants were theirs, theirs were the promises, the knowledge of the one true God was theirs; until at last, almost inevitably, there rose in the Jewish mind a certain separateness and a certain contempt, continually deepening, for all the other nations of mankind. They had no envy of the art of Greece. They were not awed by the majesty of Rome. Grecians and Romans, Persians and Assyrians —powerful, cultured, victorious —were but Gentiles. There is something almost sublime in the contempt with which that little nation viewed the world. Then came the cross and leveled all distinctions; it burst through all barriers of nationality. There was neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor barbarian, but Christ was all and in all. Let some wild savage from the farthest west come to the cross of Christ pleading for mercy, and he had nothing less to do and nothing more than the proudest Jew who was a child of Abraham. One feels in an instant the insult of it all, how it left the Jew defenseless in the wild. All he had clung to was gone; his vineyard-wall was shattered: he must live or die now in the windswept world. And this tremendous leveling of distinctions—this striking out Jew and writing in humanity—this, to the proud, reserved, and lonely people, was no small part of the offense of Calvary.

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At the Cross, All Distinctions Are Obliterated

Now I would not have you imagine for a moment that Christ disregards all personal distinctions. If I sent you away harboring the thought that all who come to Christ get the same treatment, I should have done Him an unutterable wrong. In everything He did Christ was original because He was fresh from God into the world, but in no sphere was He so strikingly original as in the way in which He handled those who came to Him. So was it when He was on the earth; so is it now when He is hid with God. There is always some touch, some word, some discipline, that tells of an individual understanding. But in spite of all that and recognizing that, I say that this is the "scandal" of the cross, that there every distinction is obliterated, and men must be saved as lost or not at all. You remember the lady from a gentle home who went to hear the preaching of George Whitefield? And she listened in disgust to a great sermon and then, like Naaman, went away in a rage. "For it is perfectly intolerable," she said, "that ladies like me should be spoken to just like a creature from the streets." Quite so: it is perfectly intolerable—and that is the stumbling block of Calvary. Are you who may be cultured to your fingertips to be classed with the savage who cannot read or write ? It would be very pleasant to say No—but then were the offense of the cross ceased. A friend of mine who is a busy doctor in a thriving village not ten miles from Glasgow was called in the other day to see a patient who, as was plain at the first glance, was dying. And the doctor, a good Christian, said, "Friend, the best service I can do you is to ask, Have you made your peace with God?" Whereon the man, raising his wasted arm and piercing the questioner with awe-filled eyes, said, "Doctor, is it as bad as that?" I want to say it is always as bad as that. I want to say it to the brightest heart here. You do need pardon and peace with God in Christ as much as the wildest prodigal. Accept it. It is freely offered you. Say, "Thou, O Christ, art all I want." And then, just as the wilderness will blossom, so will the offense of the cross become its glory.

October 29

Acceptance in the Beloved

To the praise of the glory of his grace through which he hath made us accepted in the beloved— Eph_1:6

Forgiveness Does Not Necessarily Imply Acceptance

It ought to be noted carefully by all who ponder the interior life that acceptance is something different from forgiveness. One might be forgiven and not accepted. If a man wrought me some deadly injury, by the grace of heaven I might forgive that man; yet I might warn him that he must keep his distance and never cross the threshold of my home. So conceivably might God forgive the guilty sinners of mankind and yet forbid them entrance to His dwelling-place. At the pleading of the woman of Tekoah, David forgave Absalom. Yet for two years that forgiven child never looked upon his father's face (2Sa_14:28). The palace gates were barred for him; he had no access to the royal chambers; he was forgiven, but he was not accepted. Acceptance is reconstituted fellowship. It is liberty of access to the palace. It is an authoritative welcoming to the home and heart of God. And though always this implies forgiveness, the two are not identical whether in the affairs of earth or heaven.

Acceptance Is Another Miracle of Grace

It ought again to be noted that acceptance does not necessarily follow on forgiveness. It is not an inevitable consequence; it is an added miracle of grace. When the prodigal took his homeward way he had a deep conviction that he would be forgiven. But he had no assurance that he would be accepted and so have the run of the old home. Forgiven, he would have been well content to be as the lowest of the hired servants and lodge with the other servants in the shed. The father forgave him when he ran to meet him. There was fatherly forgiveness in the kiss. But what amazed the prodigal and broke his heart was the welcome which followed on forgiveness. The ring on his finger, the robe upon his back, the filial liberty in the old home, these were the acceptance of the prodigal. He might have been forgiven without these. These were not of the essence of his pardon. These were the signs and tokens of a love that could never do enough for the forgiven. That is why the apostle tells us here that the amazing experience of acceptance is "to the praise of the glory of His grace." Acceptance is not a necessary corollary. It is not an implication of remission. It is an implication that we are in the hands of One who in His love can never do enough. He might pardon us and make us hired servants; but love can never be content with that. It crowns forgiveness in the welcome home.

Christ Makes Us Fit for Fellowship

Again we are told (and the words are haunting words) that this acceptance is in the Beloved. One can fittingly illustrate that thought from what one has seen in human life. A well-beloved, perhaps an only son, announces that he is going to be married. His mother who has been praying about that waits eagerly to see his choice. And sometimes seeing, she is disappointed, and her mother's heart is very sore within her for the girl "is not like her son at all." Then frequently follows something very beautiful. I have seen it a score of times with admiration. That foolish, giddy, ill-adapted girl gets a most tender welcome to the home. She is treated with an infinite consideration; she is borne with, her faults are overlooked not for her own sake, but for that of the dear boy who has chosen her to be his bride. She is accepted in the beloved: for his sake she gets that tender welcome. She is cherished and treated as a daughter and made one of the family because he is dear. And something like that is in the writer's mind when he finds the secret of divine acceptance not in us, but in the well-beloved Son. Pardon does not instantly make holy, and without holiness how shall we see God? We are worse adapted for that heavenly fellowship than the most foolish maiden is for marriage. But if the Son hath chosen the Church to be His bride, and if the mother-heart be a sacrament of God, then in the Well-beloved there is welcome. For His sake we have the run of home. We are adopted into the family of heaven. We are loaded with unfailing kindness. We are always taken at our best. With the heavenly Father as with the earthly mother there is welcome for the chosen of the Son. We are accepted in the Beloved.

Accepted for Service

I should like to close upon another thought—we are accepted in Him that we may serve. Very often in that word acceptance there is the suggestion of expected service. When a candidate for office is accepted, that acceptance is the road to usefulness. When an editor accepts a manuscript, that means that the manuscript is going to be used. And when God not only pardons but accepts, it implies that He is set on using us "to the praise of the glory of His grace." Just as election is not a selfish privilege but heaven's method of broadcasting its blessings, so acceptance (election's other side) is heaven's prelude to spiritual fruitfulness. For the slave knoweth not what his lord doeth and his best obedience is mechanical, but he who has the run of home is free. We are accepted not for an hour or two; we are accepted that we may abide. And abiding, as our Lord has taught us, is the secret of all fruitfulness. Accepted service is not brilliant service—brilliance is very often fruitless—it is the service of those who never cease to wonder that they are accepted in the Beloved.

October 30

The Evangelical Grace of Tenderheartedness - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted— Eph_4:32

Paul's Hard Heart

The first thing to impress me as I read these words is the change which had been wrought in the apostle. There had been a day, not so far away, when you would scarce have expected such a word from Paul. When Paul first appears on the scene, he seems the incarnation of hardheartedness. He is a Pharisee, cruel and intolerant, delighting in sacrifice and not in mercy. He holds the clothes of the murderers of Stephen, intensely interested in that ghastly spectacle, and he makes havoc of the Church of Christ. Is it not remarkable that such a man should become the advocate of tenderness? No softening of the years could have wrought that. It is a tribute to the power of Christ. For if it was Christ in Paul that made him great and inspired him to be the evangelist of nations, it was also Christ who made him tenderhearted. There are men who are constitutionally tender, but I do not think that Paul was of that kind. He had to fight his way out of the stony ground into the green pastures of this grace. And when we remember how Paul had lived at Ephesus and how he had labored night and day with tears, we feel what an urgency his word would have, "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted."

Tenderheartedness Is Different from Weakness

There is a tenderness—and it is very common—which is the antithesis of strength. There is no justice in it, no morality, no love of the good, no hatred of the bad. It is the overflowing of an easy nature that often works irreparable wrong just because it has not strength enough to take a firm stand for what is right. It is weak. Not such is the tenderheartedness of Paul. It knows the cleavage between light and darkness. It knows that it may be cruel to be kind and that sometimes it may be kindest to seem cruel. But it also knows how lonely people are; how sad the heart may be for all the laughter; how heavily the burden of the cross may weigh, although the face is always brave and bright. Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted. You can never tell what that other soul is bearing. The men and women you are inclined to envy—if you knew all, you might not envy them. And it is this—this instinct for the deeps, this surmise of what is hidden in the shadow —it is this that gives to tenderheartedness its power and its place in Christian brotherhood.

Causes Which Make Tenderheartedness Difficult

1. Custom — There are several causes working in the world which make it a hard thing to keep the tender heart. One of the commonest of all is custom. Do you remember, in the parable of the sower, what happened to the seed by the wayside? It fell on the pathway that led across the field, and the birds of the air came and picked it up. It was not stony ground on which it fell; it was not foul with thistles and with thorns; it was good ground, but it was beaten hard by the passing of innumerable feet. Little children had gone that way to school; grave and reverend men had gone to the synagogue. And the feet of happy lovers had been there, and the weary step of the farmer going home, until at last, under that ceaseless traffic, the surface had become impenetrable, and the strip that might have been golden with a harvest was just the happy hunting ground of birds. Are we not all exposed to such a hardening with the constant traffic of our days? Ah friends, what open hearts we had when heaven lay about us in our infancy! But now we are dulled down a little; we are less sensitive, less eager, less receptive; and one inevitable peril of all that is the peril of ceasing to be tenderhearted.

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2. The struggle to live — Another enemy of this same grace is the fierce struggle which many have to live. Men say it is difficult to be true today; it is equally difficult to be tender. You could hardly expect a soldier on the field to be a perfect pattern of gentleness. At home he might be that—with his own children—scarcely amid the rigors of the war. And in that city battle of today which we disguise with the name of competition, a man must be in deadly peril of losing the genius of the tender heart. In simpler communities it was not so. Life was easier in simpler communities. And time was longer, and men had more leisure, and the sense of brotherhood was not quite lost. But in the city with its stress and strain, with its pressure at every point, and with its crowd, life may have the joy of growing keen, but it has also the risk of growing cruel. It is not often that the successful man is what you would call the tenderhearted man. The battle has been too terrible for that: there has been too much crushing underfoot; and always when a man tramples upon others, he tramples in that hour on his own heart. Now I want you to remember that when Paul wrote to Ephesus, he wrote to a city like Glasgow or like Liverpool. He was not addressing a handful of quiet villagers. He was writing to a commercial metropolis. And that, I take it, just means this, that Paul was alive to the dangers of the city and knew how supremely difficult it was there to keep the secret of the tender heart.

3. Sin — But the greatest enemy of tenderheartedness is the old sad fact of sin. Sin is the mightiest antisocial power that ever alighted with curse upon the world. Sin blights all that is fairest in the character; sin coarsens everything that is most delicate; sin in the long run softens nothing; it hardens everything it touches. You would think from the popular novels of today that sin is something which transfigures life. Young men and women, don't you believe it; that is the most tragic of fallacies. Sin at the heart of it is always vile. Deck it in any garments that you please, sin leaves us narrower, impoverishes life, always ends in hardening of the heart. There is an old legend of the goblin horseman whose steed might be heard galloping at midnight. And the legend was that where the hoofs alighted, the grass would nevermore be green again. I think that is a parable of sin when a man gives it the rein within his heart; "it hardens all within, and petrifies the feeling." Sin hardens a man's heart towards his wife. It hardens a man's heart towards his children. It hardens him to the touch of human need and to the call which the world makes upon his sympathy. And that is why the grace of tenderheartedness is so conspicuously a Christian virtue—because it betrays that conquest over sin which has been won for us in Jesus Christ.

Think for a moment of the case of David to illustrate what I have been saying. By nature David was a gallant soul, and he was as tenderhearted as heroic. When a shepherd, he had faced a lion; when sent to the army, he had faced Goliath. No one could question the magnificent courage of one who had these fine actions to his credit. And yet this David, when he lit on Saul asleep alone in a cave and at his mercy: this David, who had matched himself with giants, was too tenderhearted to destroy him. One blow, and he was monarch of a kingdom. One blow, and a crown was on his brow. And there was not a Jewish warrior in his train but would have said "It is the will of God." But David could not do it—it was impossible, and David was never greater than just then, when at the back of all his bravery he showed the chivalry of the tender heart. But then there came the day when David sinned, and I shall draw a veil over his sin. But who is this plotting against Uriah and making him drunk and sending him out to die? Ah friends, this is that very David who had once been so chivalrous and gentle but who now, in the grip of a dark passion, has forfeited his tenderness of heart. I thank God he got it back again when he cried in penitence to heaven. "Create in me a clean heart," he cried, "O God, and renew a right spirit within me." But I thank God too that the story is all here to warn us against the hardening of sin, to teach us how all that is fairest in the best may be blighted by the power of its curse.

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The Evangelical Grace of Tenderheartedness - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Disguise of Our Lack of Tenderheartedness

I know no virtue that is more often disguised than the virtue of which I am speaking. It is not one of the qualities of which men are proud as they are proud of courage or endurance. On the contrary, they are a little ashamed should one suspect them of being tenderhearted. And so very often they hide it out of sight and wrap it up in the most strange disguises and assume a manner that is so far from gentle that it takes a little while to guess the truth. It is not always those of gentle manners who really possess the gentlest hearts. Some of the tenderest men I ever knew have had a rough, even a boisterous, exterior. They were like Mr. Boythorn in Bleak House who was always for hanging somebody or other and all the time was feeding the canary that nestled without a tremor in his hand. I am not sure that had you seen our Lord, you would have fathomed His tenderness at once. Had you seen Him when face to face with Pharisees, I may say without a doubt that you would not. It was one of those secrets that was revealed to children, for children have far quicker eyes than we, and they detect, as by a kind of genius, the gentleness that is hidden in the heart. The French have a proverb which says this—there is nothing so tender as the austere man. Like other proverbs, that has its exceptions, for there are austere men who are not tender. But at least let it teach us not to be rash in judgment, not to sum up at once against our brother. There are men who seem to have a face of brass, and all the time they have a heart of gold.

Memory in the Service of Tenderheartedness

This, too, is one of the works of memory. God has given our memories that calling. It is one of the great works of memory to keep a man tenderhearted in the struggle. I always remember that story of John Newton with whom Christ dealt in such a signal way. As a young man he was desperately wild as if God had given him over to work iniquity. And yet in the wildest of it all, he tells us, he could never forget the soft hand of his mother. Although he was a thousand miles away, he felt that soft caress upon his head. "I will arise and go unto my Father"—was not that the memory of home? "And the Lord turned and looked on Peter"—do you not think the past was in that look? Peter was hardening his heart that night; he was a reckless and a desperate man; and the Lord looked, and all the past revived, and then like summer tempest came his tears. Do we not all have hours like that when the past revives to make us tenderhearted? That is one of the offices of memory where the heart is in daily peril of hardening. And it may be that is the deepest reason why men so often grow tenderer with age. Once they were living in the fierce light of hope; now in the softer light of memory.

Fellowship with Christ Makes Us Tenderhearted

But the great secret of the tender heart lies in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. It is a continual wonder about Jesus that He was so strong and yet so tenderhearted. No authority could make Him fearful; no array of power could ever daunt Him, and yet a bruised reed he would not break, and smoking flax He would not quench. He was not tender because He knew so little. He was tender because He knew so much. All that was hidden from duller eyes He saw—all that men had to bear and battle through. Their helplessness, their crying in the night, their inarticulate appeal to heaven—all this was ever audible to Jesus and kept His heart as tender as a child's. And He never lost this tenderheartedness even in the darkness of the cross. Men scorned Him, and they spat on Him, and crucified Him, yet "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." And what I say is that when that mind of Christ is given by the Spirit to you and me, then whatever happens, however we are treated, we shall be kind one to another, tenderhearted.

October 31

The Uplift of the Body - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He is the savior of the body— Eph_5:23

The True Charter of the Human Body

Students of the New Testament have often remarked how much mention is made of the body. Our text is only one of many passages which arrest us with this unusual emphasis. Of all the books in the world's literature, there is none which insists upon the soul so urgently; yet there is no book in the world's literature which has done so much to dignify the body. One of the errors of popular evangelism is that it thinks of nothing but the soul. That too was one of the errors of monasticism, and indeed ultimately proved its overthrow. It was false to the noble proportions of the Bible and tried to spurn what Scripture never spurns, and in the long run had to pay for that by being swept into oblivion. It is extraordinary how many people want to be a little wiser than the Bible. It is extraordinary how many people want to be a little more spiritual than Christ. They take the part and treat it as the whole; they are blind to everything except the spirit; they never seem to have caught the flash of glory that the Bible has cast upon the body. "We ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for…the redemption of our body" (Rom_8:23). "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost who is in you?" (1Co_6:19). "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye pre sent your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God" (Rom_12:1). Such words, and they might be multiplied by ten, are not at all impertinent intrusions. They are inwrought into the web of Scripture, and they are part and parcel of its mess age; until at last, by such recurrent whispers and by a hundred other hints and shadowings, we came to see that the Word of God in Christ is the true charter of the human body.

The Pagan Versus Christian Attitude

Now I question if we always realize the importance of this Gospel emphasis. For we have never known the outlook of the heathen, nor have we been "suckled in a pagan creed." To know what Christianity has done for women, we should need to have lived before Jesus Christ was born; and we should need to have lived before Jesus Christ was born to know what it has accomplished for the body. It is true that among the ancient Greeks, whose worship was just the worship of the beautiful, the charm of physical beauty was appreciated as perhaps it has never been appreciated since. But a nation, like an individual, may be exquisitely sensitive to beauty, and yet may wallow, as I fear the Greeks wallowed, in horrible and disgusting sin. To the pagan the body was a slave, and no one could care less how to treat a slave. To the pagan the body was a curse, for evil had its seat and center in the flesh. Or at the best the body was a clog, a sorry prison for an immortal spirit, a scaffolding that would be knocked in pieces when the palace-courts within were perfected. You cannot wonder that with attitudes like these, the pagan world was sunk in immorality. You cannot wonder at what we read in Romans when you remember what the Romans held. And what I say is that you must remember it—you must remember the depth and the disgrace—if you would understand what Christ has done in rescuing the body from dishonor. No longer can we treat the body as an alien. We have learned that it is a friend and not an enemy. It is no prison house with grated windows; it is a temple where the Spirit dwells. And such is the honor that has fallen upon it that even the bodies of our dead are precious and are clothed in new garments and laid in a quiet grave with a certain gentle reverence and respect. It was one of the first effects of Christianity that it put a stop to the burning of the dead. Men felt that it was a kind of sacrilege to burn a temple of the Holy Ghost. And that alone, which everywhere and always accompanied the preaching of the Gospel, will show you what a change had been effected in the popular concept of the body. Now this is the question which I want to ask, How did the Gospel of Jesus work that change? How did it lift the body from the mire and crown it with glory and with honor? What are the new facts, or what are the doctrines, which have given to the body such high dignity that we may say of Christ unhesitatingly, He is the Savior of the body?

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The Uplift of the Body - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Incarnation Provided Dignity for the Body

The first is the great fact of the Incarnation. It is the coming of the Son of God in human form. The Son of God dwelt in a human body, and that has clothed it forever with nobility. If human flesh and sin were indistinguishable, do you think the Word would have become flesh? Had the flesh been ineradicably vile, would the Son of God have worn it as a garment? Wherever sin may have its source and spring, it is not in the human body, else when Christ took a body to Himself, He would have taken to be His comrade what was vile. So long as you think of God as far away, so long it is possible to degrade the body. For the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and every sense may be a road to ruin. But if the Son of God has tabernacled here—if perfect purity and love have dwelt here—if the immortal King has stooped to earth and taken to Himself the seed of Abraham, then the body never can be despised again. It was that fact which altered the world's standpoint and cast a glory on the human frame. The body had been the instrument of sin; now it was made the instrument of Christ. Through human lips the voice of God had spoken. Through human eyes the pity of God had looked. The love of God had wrought through human hands and gone its errands upon human feet.

We may throw a certain light upon that change by remembering what has happened in other dwellings. If someone whom we reverence has been born there, the place is never ordinary to us again. There is a house in Stratford built of common brick, not differing outwardly from other houses, yet in that home the poet Shakespeare lived, and to it thousands of pilgrims turn their feet. There is a cottage in Ayrshire, just an old clay building, low-roofed, confined and damp, yet in the fulness of the time Burns was born there, and it is not a mean place to Scotland now. It is the genius who adorns the house. It is the saint who glorifies the dwelling. Wherever the home has been of one we love, there forever is a hallowed spot. And when we think of all we owe to Christ, when He became poor for our enriching, it helps us to realize a little better how His coming has glorified the body. He took upon Himself the seed of Abraham. Can you dishonor the seed of Abraham now? He passed through the doorway of this little cottage. And will you spit upon the cottage wall? The flesh is vile, said the old pagan thinker—the flesh is the great enemy of the spirit. And John, looking that old world in the face, said, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (Joh_1:14).

Christ's Compassionate Care for the Body

The second factor in this change of view was the compassionate care of Jesus for the body. And I sometimes think we scarcely realize what is meant by the healing miracles of Christ. We study the separate miracles apart till we almost forget the import of the whole. We treat them as isolated incidents or as witnesses of Christ's divinity. But the miracles are really more than that. They are a revelation rather than an argument. They are not added to confirm the mission, but are themselves a vital part of it. They teach us that this despised body is part of the manhood which the Lord redeems. They teach us that the love of God for man is love for the body as well as for the soul. They teach us that there is no part nor organ, nor any faculty nor sense nor limb, but has a share in that redeeming work which brought our Savior from the throne to Calvary. Do you remember how Christ refused to interfere when one wanted Him to interpose about his property? "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me"—and Jesus refused to speak a word. But tell me, did He ever refuse to interfere when the blind eyes looked up to Him for sight?—or when the foot was lame or when the arm was helpless or when the tongue was sealed within the lips? Always remember that the love of Christ encompasses every organ we possess. It is the love of God touching the human frame that it might never be bestial any more. We have a beautiful hymn which we are fond of singing. It is "Jesus, lover of my soul." But I want someone to write me another hymn, beginning "Jesus, lover of the body."

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The Uplift of the Body - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

I think, too, that when we remember this, we see more clearly why miracles have ceased. I daresay to some of you it has seemed strange sometimes that there are no such miracles today. Have you not longed for a miracle of healing when someone whom you loved was very ill? Have you not thought how all the world would sing if that cold face would only smile again? And if Christ is the same today in love and power as when He moved along the ways of Galilee, why, you wonder, should it not be so? Still in the world are eyes that cannot see and lips that crave for utterance in vain. Still in the world are little suffering children and loved ones whose brows are drawn in anguish. And Christ—where is His hand of healing, and where is His touch that brought the strength again, and where is His voice that spoke and men were cured and the light of life came thrilling to the dead? Now will you just remember what was the deep purpose of these miracles? Will you remember that they were wrought to teach us that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? And if that lesson has been learned by Christendom so that Paul could say "He is the savior of the body" (Eph_5:23), then the work of the healing miracles is done. Nay, I beg of you, say not it is done. Its spirit is moving in a thousand channels. It has founded the hospital and built the infirmary, and inspired the science and the skill of Christian medicine. It has passed into the life of every doctor who is walking worthy of his high vocation. It has possessed the heart of every true nurse. The lesson of the miracles was mastered, and the great Teacher laid aside the lesson-book. But when a lesson has been learned—what then? Does it not mean that we are fit for greater things? So "greater works than these shall he do" (Joh_14:12) said the Lord—greater things even than a miracle; and in the sympathy and skill and care of Christendom that promise has been abundantly fulfilled.

The Resurrection of the Body

Then the third factor in that change of view was the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

One of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world, in what is perhaps his choicest dialogue, has given us in his own matchless way some of the reasons why men should welcome death. He felt that the fear of death was an unworthy fear, and he tried to combat it by quiet argument, and one of his strongest arguments is this, that at death we are done forever with the body. We shall never more be clogged and troubled by it. It will never hamper the bright soul again. Death is the bird escaping from its cage. Death is the prisoner breaking from his cell. The kindliest attribute of death, for Plato, was not just that a man would be at rest then. It was that a man after his weary battle would be done forever with a body.

Brethren, who name the Name of Christ with me, do you always remember that that is not our faith? We believe in the Holy Ghost and in the Catholic church and in the resurrection of the body. That is one thing which Jesus never doubted. That is one mystery He never questioned. And now it has passed from the consciousness of Christ into the consciousness of ail His people. If there is any meaning in His empty grave and if our bodies are a living sacrifice, then in the future, body, soul, and spirit, we shall be forever with the Lord. It was that mystery, touching a thousand hearts, which set a halo of glory on the body. It was the thrill of resurrection-doctrine, and the open secret of the empty grave. It was the certainty that the glad day was coming when the body of our humiliation would be changed and would be fashioned by the power of God into the likeness of the body of Christ's glory.

Watch the Sins of the Body

And so I ask you, as I close, to think again of sins against the body. In the light of all I have been trying to say, I ask you to set aside these sins you know so well. No one could think that much harm was done if the scaffolding round some temple were defaced; and when the Roman sinned against his body, it was only the scaffolding he seemed to touch. But the Gospel has banished forever that conception, for in the light of Christ the temple is the body, and hence the heinousness of all such sins for every man who calls himself a Christian. If the body after all were but a cage, it might not be very wrong to be a sensualist. If the body after all were but a prison, the guilt of drunkenness might not be great. But if the body was the home of Jesus—if it is the temple of the Holy Ghost—if Christ has come to ransom and redeem it—if it is to be raised incorruptible and glorious—then drunkenness and uncleanness and excess, and every defiance of the laws of health, are sins not easily to be forgiven. Young men, keep yourselves pure. Young women, be scrupulously modest. You can train your body to be the best of comrades. You can train it to be the deadliest of enemies. What multitudes there are in this great Babylon who have presented their bodies to the devil! I call you to present yours to God, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable.

November 2

The Shield of Faith

Withal taking up the shield of faith— Eph_6:16 (R.V.)

The Power That Protects Us

The armor of the ancients was of two different kinds, and both kinds were absolutely necessary. It was partly armor for attack and partly armor for protection. Now very generally, in the New Testament, faith is one of the weapons of attack (1Jo_5:4). We see that magnificently illustrated in the pageant of the eleventh of Hebrews. But here, and it may be only here, Paul looks on faith in quite another light, for he sets it among the armor of protection. Faith is not here the power that leads to victory; it is the power that protects us in the battle. It keeps us unembittered and serene amid the mysteries and buffetings of life. To believe that love is on the throne and that through everything there runs a loving purpose, is in the deepest of all senses to be shielded.

How effectual that shielding is, is shown by the apostle's choice of words. An exquisite and unfailing niceness of selection is the real meaning of verbal inspiration. There are two words in the Greek tongue for shield; the one is common and the other rare. The one connotes a little shield or target; the other a frame that covered the whole man. And it is notable that only here—nowhere else, I mean, in the New Testament—is the latter word employed. Faith is not a partial protection; it casts its defense over the whole of life. It is a means of safety for the intellect, as surely as for the passions of the heart. It guards the feet when they are prone to wander, and the hands when they are growing weary, and the eyes when they are drawn to what is wrong. The shield of faith is an all-embracing shelter. It is coextensive with our being. Faith in God through our Lord Jesus Christ is nothing less than a universal safeguard. All was choicely shown to the Ephesians by the word which the apostle used when he bade them take up the shield of faith.

Faith Is Given to Guard Life in Everything; Not from Everything

But if faith be a protecting shield, what then of the apostle's own experience? So far from being defended from life's ills, he knew them all in an abounding measure. He was not protected from cold or heat or hunger, nor from shipwreck, nor from the hand of robbers (2Co_11:1-33). He was not protected from bodily infirmity, for he suffered from his lacerating thorn (2Co_12:1-21). Everything that makes life bitter was mingled in the cup of the apostle, and yet he dares to speak of faith's protection. I think there are many who have still to learn that faith was never intended for exemption. Faith is not given to guard the life from anything; it is given to guard the life in everything. It empowers one to bear, and to bear cheerfully, what otherwise would break the heart and darken the loving ordering of God. To pass through the very worst that life can bring, undismayed in soul, and unembittered; to tread the darkest mile and sing in it; never to lose heart, or hope, or love; that is what faith achieved for the apostle and can achieve for everyone of us, and that is the shielding power of faith. So was it with our blessed Lord. When He came here, He was offered no exemption. He was a man of sorrows, and He suffered, and He was tempted in all points like as we are. Yet to the end, in a faith that never faltered, He was loving, tranquil, and forgiving and under the cross spoke about His peace.

This Protecting Faith Has to Be Taken Up

One should notice, too, that this protecting faith is one that we require to make our own. In the apostle's words, we have to take it up, in the same way as we take up our cross. There is a faith that is part and parcel of our being. It is ours without any conscious effort. We believe quite naturally when the sower sows his seed that there will be a harvest in the autumn. But to believe, when life is stem and sorrowful, that God is with us and loves us as a Father, that is not natural to sinful man. We have to take it up, in the apostle's words. We have to summon up the resources of the soul. We have to use our will in a deliberate effort, if such a faith is to be part of life. And it is just there that the Lord Jesus makes all the difference to us in our weakness, for God commendeth His love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

November 3

The Tactfulness of Love

And this I pray, that your love may abound…in all judgment— Phi_1:9

Tact—the Grace of Touching Others Gently

The word that is here used for judgment is a very interesting word. It occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Its primary signification was perception by any of the senses, but gradually it got specialized into perception by the sense of touch. And so, rising into higher spheres (for words have their own moral history), it came to mean what we describe as tact. Tact is the same word as touch. Tact is the kind of way in which we touch things, but not in a material sense like wood or stone. It is the unseen substance of which life is made with its sensibilities and shrinking, its strange and instantaneous reactions. Such contacts we are forced to make in every period of life. Our years are spent in ceaseless interaction with the lives of other people. And whenever we learn to touch these other lives delicately and understandingly, then we possess the charming grace of tact.

Tact Grows with the Deepening of Love

Now it is notable that Paul connects this grace with the growth and deepening of love. When love abounds, it inevitably blossoms into all kinds of delicate perception. These Philippians to whom he wrote seem, happily, to have been ignorant of heresy. But they were very ready to misunderstand each other; there was a good deal of social bitterness in Philippi. The grace they lacked, sometimes without ever meaning it, was that interior delicacy which would not hurt or irritate another. There are many people who mean well yet are always rubbing others the wrong way. Often they are quite unconscious of it and never dream of the hurt that they are causing. And one can gather from this letter that in Philippi, for all its orthodoxy, there was a good deal of that social unpleasantness. Paul was perfectly aware of that. He had his hand on the pulse of all his churches. He saw how it spoiled the joy and peace and harmony that ought to reign and rule among the saints. And the notable thing is he does not waste his time in exhorting his children to a greater tactfulness—he prays that they may have a greater love. He goes right down to the heart of things. He fixes his attention on the center. Let love have a controlling place, and the touch will become infinitely delicate. What to avoid, what not to say or do, that is not a secret of the intellect; it is always a secret of the heart.

You Are Tactful with What You Love

This tactfulness of love is apparent in many different spheres. Watch a botanist handling a flower—you can tell that he loves it by the way he touches it. Look at a mother with her little baby—her very touch reveals the mother-heart. I can often tell if a young fellow loves books, not by the clever way in which he speaks of them, but by the way in which he handles them. Let a rough, coarse man once love a woman, and it is amazing how tactful he becomes. He begins to divine, by the genius of the heart, the delicate attentions she is longing for. For there are little acts of courtesy and grace that mean far more than any gold or silver to such as may be sensitively inclined. It is always a sure mark that love is dying when tact takes to itself wings and flies away. When the delicate perceptions disappear, it is a token that the heart is hardening. And that is the tragedy of many lives, not the blighting touch of infidelity, but the roughened touch (so rough that it may hurt) which betrays the decadence of love.

Tactfulness Is Different from Diplomacy

In its roots as well as in its fruits, true tact differs from diplomacy. I would venture to say that tact is always spurious when it is not rooted in the soil of love. There is a kind of tact that springs from fear, though no one ever may suspect its origin. It shuns offense, not for the sake of love, but because offending might prove perilous. The eye may be fixed, not on the other person, but on one's own quietness or prosperity, either of which may be endangered by the rough or ill-considered touch. True tact is different from that. It owns no kinship with cowardice at all. It is one of the finest flowerings of love; it is the exquisite perception of the heart. That is why Christian tact so far surpasses anything the world had ever known in any of the religions of antiquity. The gospel has done tremendous service in the education of the heart. Giving it at last a worthy motive, it has released the hidden capacities of loving. And so doing, it has poured a wealth of meaning into the gracious tactfulness of love.

The Tactfulness of Our Lord

Nowhere do we find this tactfulness of love so perfectly revealed as in our Lord. The infinite delicacy of His touch is the measure of His loving heart. When the leper cried for healing, we read that the Lord touched him; it was not alone His hand that touched him, it was a yearning and redeeming love. That lonely, isolated soul got far more than the cleansing of his leprosy: he got the glad assurance of a Friend. Christ had an exquisite way of understanding people, of handling them with unexampled delicacy, of avoiding what might vex or irritate. And all this sprang not from a quick intellect, priding itself on knowing human nature, but from the depth and wonder of His love. That was where Paul learned his lesson. That taught him what to pray for. It was no use praying for a finer tact unless first there was a fuller love. First the roots, and then the fruits. First the deepening, and then the delicacy. First the dew of heaven on the heart—and tactfulness blossoms as the rose.

November 4

The Subjugation of Our Higher Longings

Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you— Phi_1:23-24

Paul's Love for Christ

One cannot wonder that the Apostle Paul had a desire to depart and to be with Christ. He longed for the consummation of his fellowship. Whatever difficulty there may be in reconciling Paul's views of the beyond, there can be no question that central to them all was the thought of personal fellowship with Christ. And in the Roman prison with its inactivities and its long hours for quiet meditation, that longing grew imperious and dominant. Death had no terrors for him. It was the swift passage to a full communion. It would unveil for him the well-beloved face of the Savior to whom he owed his life. He was not "half in love with an easy death," but he was passionately in love with Him into whose presence death would usher him. This was the deepest longing of his soul—to be with Christ which was far better. His highest ambition was to win that intimacy which would be uninterrupted and complete. He longed for the hour when, through the gate of death, he would pass into the presence of that Lord who had so marvelously rescued and redeemed him.

Paul's Burden for His Converts

But on that great loving heart of his, Paul bore forever the burden of his converts. He was their one spiritual father, and he loved them as a father loves his children. There comes a time in the life of growing children when they emerge from the control of fatherhood. Trained and disciplined, they stand on their own feet now and fight their own battles with the world. But Paul's children were only infants yet in constant need of guidance and advice which nobody but he could ever give them. Thus it was that, through his highest longing, there broke the tender urgings of apostleship. Sweet would it be to see his blessed Lord—but what would all his little children do? Bereft of him and of his loving counsel, in a crooked and perverse generation, would they ever come to maturity of faith? To Paul that consideration was determinative. It laid a masterful hand on his desires. His yearning love for the souls which God had given him must be regulative of his deepest life. And so, in the interests of his own who leaned on him and needed him so utterly, this great heart rose to the lofty heroism of subduing the highest longing of his soul.

Discipleship Involves Renouncing Our Higher Longings

Now very often in the Christian life there comes a difficult issue such as that. The struggle is not waged around our worst; it emerges on the levels of our best. That there are lower longings the Christian must subdue is one of the primary findings of discipleship. This is in no sense self-repression, for sin is not of the essence of the self. Often the hardest moral problem meets us, not when called to subjugate the lower, but when summoned to subjugate the higher. Just as the sorest decisions that may face us are not always between right and wrong but are sometimes, in this intricate life of ours, between the competing claims of right and right; so not infrequently the hardest thing in life is not the conquering of our lower longings, but the quiet and lovely renouncing of our higher. Beautiful things we have set our heart upon, dreams we have long cherished, spiritual ambitions that have been our intimates since first we passed from darkness into light—to let these go, quietly to yield them up when the finger of God points us to another road, that is one of life's most lofty heroism's. So was it with the apostle in his prison. His whole soul longed to be with Christ. That (for the Greek is stronger than the English) was a very great deal better. And then in his fatherly yearning for his converts who leaned so hard on him and loved him so, he subjugated the longing to depart.

Renunciation of Higher Longings Comes in Different Guises

This higher spiritual renunciation may come to men in very different guises. It
is various as the complexity of life. It may present itself to the young woman longing to give herself to Christian work, yet with little motherless children in the home entirely dependent on her care. It may face the young fellow in business whose fondest ambition is to be a minister, but whose business is the one support of a frail mother or an invalid sister. Many a young disciple has longed with all her heart to serve on the foreign mission field, and then the unmistakable pointing of God's finger has indicated another road for her. And perhaps no struggle she ever had with sin was so bitter as the sweet acceptance of a lowlier and more homely lot. It is hard to part sometimes with lower cravings; it is often even harder to part with higher ones—to lay our spiritual ambitions down at the call of simple duty or of love. And it is always a great thing to remember that the saints of God have shared in that experience and been perfectly familiar with its bitterness. Here was Paul, a prisoner in Rome. His great desire was to be with Christ. The deep, passionate longing of his soul was to get home, that he might see his Savior. And nothing is finer in that noble heart of his than the subjugation of that higher longing for the sake of those who loved him and who needed him.

November 5

The Form of a Servant

He took upon him the form of a servant— Phi_2:7

Slaves and Servants

On one occasion our Lord announced "I am among you as one who serveth." That was the summation of His ministry. The word for serveth which St. John gives us is a word of very large and liberal meaning. It includes services of every kind, however high or exalted they may be. But when St. Paul says of that same Lord that He took on Him the form of a servant, that is an entirely different word. It is the common term for slave, or, as we might put it, for a domestic servant. There was nothing of lofty ministry about it; it was colored with contemptuous suggestion. Paul was thinking of his home in Tarsus where, unregarded and unthanked, the slaves were busy in menial occupations. No one knew better than the great apostle that life in its last analysis is service. The Grecian statesman and the Roman general were the servants of commonwealth or empire. But what awed Paul when he thought of Christ was not that He was found in such a category. It was that He humbled Himself to the likeness of a slave. There is a service which is highly honorable. It is compatible with great position. I have a postcard I once got from Mr. Gladstone, and it is signed "Your obedient servant." But the slave's service was of another order, quite apart from honorable ministries, and in that lay the wonder of the Lord. The slave legally had no possessions, and He had not where to lay His head. No freeman acknowledged a slave in public places, and from Him men hid, as it were, their faces. The slave was universally despised, and his master could maltreat him as he pleased. And He was despised of men and, being maltreated, opened not His mouth.

Even in Childhood He Took on the Form of a Servant

This aspect of the Lord's obedience constitutes the wonder of His childhood. It explains as it illuminates the strange silence of the Gospel story. There are apocryphal gospels of the infancy that credit the little Boy with various miracles. He strikes a comrade who instantly falls dead; He makes clay sparrows and they fly away. But the real wonder of the childhood does not lie in miracles like these, but in this, that even in His boyhood He took on Him the form of a servant. Did Mary never ask Him in the morning to go and fetch the water from the well? Did she never say, "Child, I'm very tired today, will you run to the village shop and take a message?" And the beautiful way in which He did such bidding was a far more wonderful thing to seeing eyes than any reported miracles on sparrows. He, the eternal Son of God, running little errands for His mother; He, who might have grasped equality with God, lighting the cottage fire and fetching water—that was the astounding thing to Paul, as it was to all of the evangelists, as is so clear from their majestic silence.

In the Practice of Carpentry Jesus Took on the Form of a Servant

Or, again, we think of these long years when He was the carpenter of Nazareth. And once again legend has been busy seeking to give content to these years. Strange stories soon grew current of amazing things that had happened in that workshop. Beams had been miraculously lengthened, and ploughs, in a moment, miraculously made. But to all this, in the inspired evangelists, there is not even a reference in passing. For them the abiding wonder lay elsewhere. Do any of my readers keep a shop? Don't they know how hard it is to serve their customers ? Aren't some of these customers very hard to please and often irritating and unreasonable? And one may be certain if it is so in Britain where at least the atmosphere is Christian, it would be worse in uneducated Nazareth. The carpenter was at the beck and call of everybody. There was no pleasing some of the folk in Nazareth. It was a thankless and often humiliating service, that of a carpenter in a provincial village. And to Paul the wonder of these years was not the miraculous lengthening of beams. It was the stooping to a drudgery like that. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Christ was the brightness of His Father's glory, and the express image of His person. And then Paul thought of the carpenter's shop at Nazareth with its exacting and uneducated customers and wrote, He took on Him the form of a servant.

In His Public Ministry Jesus Took the Form of a Servant

In the public ministry, again, there is one incident which illuminates our text. It is an hour the world will not willingly let die. In the East it was one of the duties of the slave to wash the feet of the arriving traveler. For men wore only sandals then and the highways (save in rain) were very dusty. And Peter at any rate never could forget how once, and very near the end, the Master had done that office of the slave. Would he not be certain to tell that to Paul when they talked together, as we know from the Acts they did? Would not Peter enact it and draw back his feet to show Paul what had actually happened? Perhaps it was then there flashed into Paul's mind the magnificent daring of our text coupling the Lord of heaven with a menial slave. Jesus, knowing that He was come from God and went to God, girded Himself and washed the disciples' feet. He did it not forgetting His divinity. He did it because He knew He was divine. Brooding on which, Paul took his pen and wrote, "Who being in the form of God, took on him the form of a servant."

November 6

Living Dangerously

Epaphroditus, my brother and companion in labor, and fellow soldier…for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life (Greek gambling with his life)— Phi_2:25-30

Who Was Epaphroditus?

All we know of Epaphroditus is told us in this letter. He is one of those brave souls who leap into the light in connection with the imprisonment of Paul. It has been thought that he might be identified with the Epaphras of the Colossian epistle. But even if the names be one, such identification is improbable. It is scarcely thinkable that the pastor of Colossae should be so associated with a church in Europe as to be made its delegate to Paul. It is as a delegate we hear of him. For that perilous office he had volunteered. He had undertaken to convey to Paul the offerings of the Philippian Church. And of the risks involved in such a journey and in visiting a suspect and a prisoner, we have sundry hints in the apostle's words. No compulsion had driven Epaphroditus. He had taken all the hazards cheerfully. The strain of it all had told on him so terribly that he was brought down to the gates of death. And the point to note is how the great apostle "grappled him to his soul with hoops of steel," and spoke of him in terms of loftiest eulogy.

Risks Immortalized Epaphroditus and Paul

It is a very interesting word which Paul uses when he says that Epaphroditus "did not regard" his life. It is a word from the language of the gambler. In the long hours of his imprisonment, Paul had narrowly watched his Roman guards. He had heard them talking about boxing matches; he had been a spectator when they played at dice. And as he saw them gambling with their money and taking risks in a reckless way, his thoughts went winging to Epaphroditus. That was the kind of thing which he had done. He had deliberately gambled with his life. For Christ's sake and for the Church's sake he had flung caution to the winds of heaven. And that loving and self-forgetting recklessness so stirred the gallant heart of the apostle that Epaphroditus is immortalized. Had he played for safety he would have stayed at home. He would have pled the urgencies of work at Philippi. Probably his health was none too good, and he had doctor's orders against going. But Epaphroditus took the risks—lived dangerously—gambled with his life—and so lives within the Word of God forever.

One understands how the great heart of Paul clave so closely to Epaphroditus. The spirit of that inconspicuous delegate was the spirit which burned in his own breast. Like all great missionaries, Paul did not dwell on dangers. He only spoke of them when he was forced to. In his tremendous eagerness to spread the Gospel, he almost forgot the risks that he was running. But if ever a man gambled with his life, lived dangerously, and took the hazard, it was the great apostle to the Gentiles. He, too, might have played for safety. He might have advanced a score of reasons for it. That lacerating and gnawing thorn, for instance, would not that justify the nicest caution? But Paul forgot his caution and took risks that well might have appalled the strongest heart in the ardor of his love for the Lord Jesus. The love of Christ constrained him. He lived dangerously for the Lord. The motto of Paul was never "Safety first"; from the beginning to the end it was "Christ first." That was why he found a kindred spirit in this obscure delegate from Philippi who would have nothing to do with self-regarding caution, but for love's sake gambled with his life.

The Holy Spirit Gives Courage

This lofty disregard of self is inherent in all Christian service. A certain joy in living dangerously is one of the first-fruits of the Spirit. In the upper chamber, before Pentecost, the disciples were very careful of their lives. The doors were shut for fear of the Jews. They trembled at every step upon the stair. But when the Holy Spirit came on them in power, there was a kind of reckless gaiety about them which made men think that they were filled with wine. The doors were no longer barred now. They did not jump at every mounting footstep. That mighty rushing wind which swept the chamber somehow had swept their caution right away. They were ready to take any risks now, in the spiritual baptism of Pentecost, and like this delegate, they gambled with their lives. Later on we read of two of them that "men took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus." And what was it that carried this conviction? It was the defiant boldness of the two. Heedless of safety, imperiling their liberty, they proclaimed the resurrection of the Lord—and men took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. The strange thing is that one of the two was Peter—and immediately we remember the denial. Peter had played for safety then. To save his skin he had almost lost his soul. Now, in the power of Pentecost, that same Peter was sublimely reckless. He was living dangerously for his Lord. All great servants have had that spiritual mark. St. Francis had it when he had kissed the leper. Luther had it when he would go to Worms though devils were thick as the tiles upon the house-tops. And nobody, however quiet his sphere, is ever thoroughly equipped for service unless, like Epaphroditus and the rest of them, he is prepared to gamble with his life. I have heard of ministers who were afraid to visit where there was fever or diphtheria or smallpox. I have even known of them being dissuaded from it by loving members of their congregations. Doubtless Epaphroditus was besought so by those who prized his ministry at Philippi; but he that saveth his life shall lose it.

Leaps into the Dark Inevitable in the Life of Action

This holds also of the life of intellect as certainly as of the life of action. To live by faith is always to live dangerously. My old professor, Lord Kelvin, once said in class a very striking thing. He said that there came a point in all his great discoveries when he had to take a leap in the dark. And nobody who is afraid of such a leap from the solid ground of what is demonstrated will know the exhilaration of believing. To commit ourselves unreservedly to Christ is just the biggest venture in the world. And the wonderful thing is that when, with a certain daring, we take Lord Kelvin's leap into the dark, we discover it is not dark at ail, but life abundant, and liberty, and peace.

November 8

The Discipline of Thought - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Think on these things— Phi_4:8

Two Unseen Worlds

When we speak of unseen things, we commonly refer to things that are eternal. We associate the unseen with the world beyond the veil where the angels of God, innumerable, are around the throne. Now it is true that that is an unseen world though the time is coming when our eyes shall see it, but we must never forget that far nearer to us than that there is another world which also is unseen. We live in a day of very strange discoveries and look on many things that were once invisible. By means of our telescopes we see very distant stars, and we can watch the beating of our hearts. But the world of thought, of feeling, of passion and of desire—that world still baffles the finest powers of vision; as surely as there is an unseen heaven above us, there is an unseen universe within. What a mysterious and strange thing is life—a burning point, and round it what a shadow! How utterly must a man fail who walks by sight and who will not recognize the all-embracing mystery! Deep calleth unto deep wherever man is—the invisible deep within to the unseen depths beyond. It is one distinguishing feature of the Gospel that it never makes light of these great and awful things.

Let us turn to the world within, our thoughts. For I believe that most of us give far too little heed to what I might call the discipline of thought. "If there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these things." First, I shall speak on the vital need there is of governing our thoughts. Next, on how the Gospel helps men to this government.

The Government of Our Thoughts

First, then, on the government of our thoughts—and at the outset I would recognize the difficulty of it. I question if there is a harder task in all the world than that of bringing our thoughts into subjection to our will. It is very difficult to regulate our actions, yet there is a social pressure on our actions. It is supremely difficult to order our speech aright, yet speech is restrained and checked by countless barriers. Every time we act and every time we speak we come into direct contact with society, and prudence and self-love and reputation and business interests admonish us instantly to walk with caution. But thought is free—at least we think it is. It is transacted in a world where none can observe it. The law cannot reach us for unclean imaginations. Think how we will of a man, he cannot charge us with libel. All the prudential safeguards which God has set on speech, and all the deterrent motives which surround our deeds, are lacking when we enter the silent halls of thought. It is that—perhaps above all other things—which makes the management of thought so difficult. It is the secrecy—the absence of restraint—the imagined freedom of the world within. And yet there are one or two considerations I can bring before you that will show you how, in the whole circle of self-mastery, there is nothing more vital than the mastery of thought.

Much of Our Happiness Depends on Thought

Think, for example, how much of our happiness—our common happiness—depends on thought. We begin by imagining it depends on outward things, but we all grow to be wiser by and by. "There's nothing either good or bad," says Shakespeare, "but thinking makes it so." Now of course that is only half a truth. There are things that in themselves are forever good, and there are other things that eternally and everywhere are bad—never be juggled out of these moral certainties. But in between these everlasting fixities there lies a whole world of life and of experience, and what it shall mean for us—how we shall regard it—depends almost entirely upon thought. Our happiness does not depend on what we view. Our happiness depends on our point of view. There are men who can think themselves any day into a paradise, and others who think themselves into a fever. Have we not known or met or read of men and women who seemed to have everything this world could give, yet only to look at their faces or their portraits was to read the story of frustration and discontent? But St. Francis of Assisi, the sweetest of all saints, sitting down to dine by the roadside on a few crusts of bread, was so exquisitely and radiantly happy that he could not find words enough for thankfulness. That then is an integral part of happiness—the discipline and the government of our thoughts. Basically, it is not things themselves, it is our thoughts about them, that constitute the gentle art of being happy.

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The Discipline of Thought - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Unconscious Influence of Our Thoughts

Again I want you to consider this—how much of our unconscious influence lies in our thoughts. Not only by what we do and what we say, but by the kind of thoughts we are cherishing in secret, do we impress ourselves upon our neighbors and help or hinder the little world we move in. That very suggestive and spiritual writer, Mr. Maeterlinck, puts the matter in his own poetic way. He says, "Though you assume the face of a saint, a hero or a martyr, the eye of the passing child will not greet you with the same unapproachable smile, if there lurk within you an evil thought." Now probably there is a little exaggeration there; one thought, flashing and then expelled, may not reveal itself. The totality of saintly character is too great to be overborne by the intrusion of one shadow of the devil. But it is certain that by the thoughts we harbor and let ourselves dwell upon and cherish in the dark, we touch and turn and influence our world when we never dream that we are doing it. There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed—what a depth there is in that one word of Jesus! He is not merely thinking of God's judgment bar tomorrow. He is thinking of the undetected revelation of today. Christ recognized that the kind of thing we brood on, the kind of thought we allow ourselves to think, though it never utter itself in actual words, or clothe itself in the flesh and blood of deeds, encompasses and affects the life of others like a poisonous vapor or like a breath of spring. Your secret is not such a secret as you think. Why are men drawn to you? Why are men repelled by you? Why is it that sometimes we instinctively shrink from people in the very first hour that we meet them? It is because the heart—more powerful than any x-ray—deciphers for itself the secret story, brushes past speech and deed into the hidden place and apprehends the existence that is there. To think base thoughts is a sin against our neighbor as surely as it is a sin against ourselves. To be unclean even in imagination is to make it harder for others to be good. In the interests of our influence then, no less than of our happiness, you see the need of governing our thoughts.

The Power of Thought in Our Temptations

There is only one other consideration that I would mention, and that is the power of thought in our temptations. In the government of thought—in the power to bring thought to heel—lies one of our greatest moral safeguards against sin. You have all read the words of Thomas A Kempis in that immortal book, "The Imitation of Christ." They occur in his thirteenth chapter, Of Resisting Temptation. How does sin reach us? That is his question—and this is his never-to-be-forgotten answer to it: "For first there cometh to the mind a bare thought of evil, then a strong imagination thereof, afterwards delight and evil motion, then consent." First, a bare thought—that is the beginning, and it is then that the government of thought means heaven or hell. For if a man has disciplined himself to crush that thought—which may come to the purest and holiest mind—still better, if he has acquired the power to change the current and to turn his thought instantly into other and nobler channels, temptation is baffled at its very start and the man stands upon his feet victorious. A man will never regulate his passions who has never learned to regulate his thoughts. If we cannot master our besetting thoughts, we shall never master our besetting sins. I think you see, then, that in the interests of morality no less than in the interests of our happiness and influence, it is supremely necessary that we all give heed to the great subject of thought—discipline.

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The Discipline of Thought - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

How the Gospel Helps in Governing Our Thoughts

So now in the second place, I wish to ask how the Gospel helps us to that. I wish to ask why a Christian above all other men has powers available for governing his thought. To some of you the mastery of thought may seem impossible—it is never viewed as impossible in Scripture, and the secret of that Gospel-power lies in the three great words—light, love, life.

Think first of light as a power for thought-mastery. We all know how light affects our thoughts. In twilight or darkness what sad thoughts come thronging, which the glory of sunlight instantly dispels. I have a dear friend who is a terrible sufferer and who rarely has any quiet sleep after three in the morning, and the worst of wakening then, he tells me, is that that is just the time when everything seems melancholy, cheerless, hopeless. We need the light if we are to see things truly. We need the light if we are to think aright. And the glory of Christ is that by His life and death He has shed a light where before there was only darkness. What had the old and beautiful religion of the Greeks to say when a man was confronted by sorrow or disease? It was dumb, it turned away its head in silence; it had no light to shed upon the mystery—till men, having no light to think by, lost all thought-control and wandered into a labyrinth of evil. But the sufferings of Christ have shed a light on suffering. The death of Christ has shed a light on death. Faced by the worst now and called to bear the cross, we can think bravely and luminously of it all. The light of Christ, for the man who lives in it, is an untold help in the government of thought.

Then think of love—Is it not one mark of love that our thoughts always follow in its train? A love that never thought about the loved one would be the most heartless and hopeless of all mockeries. A man who is deeply in love with a good woman thinks of her every hour of the day, and there is no such certain sign of love's decay as the dying out of gentle and sweet thoughtfulness. That sign a woman instantly detects—it is the unuttered tragedy of countless lives—and the sorrow of it springs from the intuition that thought is under the mastery of love. Do you see then how the Gospel helps us to thought-control? At the very center of its message it puts love. It shows us a Savior who lived and died for us and who stretches out His pierced hands towards us. It speaks of Gethsemane and Calvary and at its burning heart reveals a love that passes the love of women. "Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"—that will determine the current and trend of thought. That master-passion is the power of God for bringing every thought into captivity. If the love of a woman can control and purge our thoughts, how much more the love of Jesus Christ!

Then think of life—are not our thoughts affected by the largeness and abundance of our lives? When life is poor and feeble, base thoughts scent us out as the vultures of the desert scent out the dying traveler. Half of the vile or bitter thoughts we think are the children of our lusterless and unprofitable days. Expand the horizon—get a new breath of life —and they take to themselves wings and fly away. Now what did Christ say about His coming? I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly. Life is expanded and filled with undreamed-of fullness when we live in the glad fellowship of Jesus. And that great tide of life, like the tide of the sea that covers up the mudbanks, is the greatest power in the moral world for submerging every base and bitter thought. Do you know anything of that light—that love—that life? What a great deal we miss in ignoring Jesus Christ! The king's daughter is all beautiful within—just because her king is her Redeemer.

November 9

How to Control Your Thoughts

"Those things…do"— Phi_4:9

The Power of Our Thoughts

We are all familiar with the difference that is made by the thoughts that arise within our hearts. Often they cast a shadow on our universe. A man may waken in the morning singing and address himself cheerfully to duty, and then, suddenly, some unbidden thought may creep or flash into his mind—and in a moment the heavens become cloudy and the music of the morning vanishes and there is fret and bitterness within.

Things have not altered in the least. Everything is as it was an hour ago. The burden of the day has not grown heavier, nor has anybody ceased to love us. Yet all the world seems different, and the brightness has vanished from the sky under the tyranny of intruding thoughts.

No one can achieve serenity who does not practice the control of thought. You cannot build a lovely house out of dirty or discolored bricks. The power of our thoughts is so tremendous over health and happiness and character that to master them is moral victory.

A Moral Task

This mastery of our thoughts is difficult, but then everything beautiful is difficult. The kind of person I have no patience with is the person who wants everything made easy. When an artist paints a lovely picture, he does that by a process of selection. Certain features of the landscape he rejects; other aspects he welcomes and embraces. And if to do that even the man of genius has to scorn delights and live laborious days, how can we hope without the sternest discipline to paint beautiful pictures in the mind?

So is it with the musician when he plays for us some lovely piece of music. Years of training are behind the melody that seems to come rippling from his fingers. And if he has to practice through hard hours to produce such melody without, how can we hope, without an equal effort, to create a like melody within?

There are two moral tasks that seem to me supremely difficult and yet supremely necessary. One is the redemption of our time; the other is the mastery of our thoughts. Probably most of us, right on to the end, are haunted by a sense of failure in these matters. But the great thing is to keep on struggling.

We see, too, how difficult this task is when we compare it with mastery of speech. If it be hard to set a watch upon our lips, it is harder to set a watch upon our thoughts. All speech has social reactions, and social prudence is a great deterrent. If you speak your mind, you may lose your position, possibly you may lose your friend. But thought is hidden—it is shrouded—it moves in dark and impenetrable places; it has no apparent social reactions. A man may be thinking bitter thoughts of you, yet meet you with a smile upon his face. A typist may inwardly despise her boss, yet outwardly be a model of obedience. It is this secrecy, this surrounding darkness, that has led men to say that thought is free, and that makes the mastery of thought so difficult.

Think on These Things

Now, the fine thing in the New Testament is this, that while it never calls that easy which is difficult, it yet proclaims that the mastery of thought is within the power of everybody. Think, for instance, of the Beatitude "Blessed are the pure in heart." Whenever our Lord says that anything is blessed, He wants us to understand that it is possible. Yet no man can have purity of heart, as distinguished from purity of conduct, who is not able to grapple with his thoughts. Again by our thoughts we shall be judged—that is always implied in the New Testament. Christ came and is going to come again, "that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

But I refuse to believe that men are to be judged by anything that lies beyond their power—to credit that would make the judge immoral. Then does not the great apostle say, "If there be any virtue...think on these things?" It would be mockery to command us to think if the controlling of our thoughts were quite beyond us. It may be difficult, as fine things always are, but the clear voice of the Word of God proclaims that it is within the capacity of all.

If, then, someone were to ask me how is a man to practice this great discipline, remembering the experience of the saints, I think I should answer in some such way as this: You must summon up the resources of your will. You must resist beginnings. You must remember the most hideous of sins is to debauch the mind.

You must fill your being so full of higher interests that when the devil comes and clamors for admission, he will find there is not a chair for him to sit on. Above all, you must endeavor daily to walk in a closer fellowship with Christ. It is always easier to have lovely thoughts when walking with the Altogether Lovely One.

November 10

The Virtue of Forbearance - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Forbearing one another— Col_3:13

Three Necessary Virtues

If a man is to live with any joy and fullness and to find what a noble abode this world may prove, there are three virtues which he must steadily pursue. The first is faith in God, for without faith existence will always be a tangled skein; the second is courage, for every life has its hills and we face them poorly if our heart is faint; and the third is forbearance—forbearing one another. It is on forbearance then that I desire to dwell, and I propose to gather up what I wish to say in this way. First, I shall touch on some of the evils of the unforbearing spirit. Second, I shall indicate the character of true forbearance. Then I shall suggest some thoughts to make us more forbearing.

An Unforbearing Spirit Makes Life a Disappointment

First, then, some of the evils of the unforbearing spirit; and one of the first of them to arrest me is that it makes life a constant disappointment. I have often wondered that there is no trace of disappointment in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. You may call Him a despised man if you will, but you could never call Him a disappointed man. He came to His own and His own received Him not; they laughed Him to scorn and then they crucified Him; yet when He entered the glory and saw His Father's face, do you think He said, "Father, it has been a tragic disappointment"? For all its sorrow, life was not that to Christ: it was full and fresh and dew-touched to the close, and one of the sources of that unfailing freshness was our Savior's knowledge of the secret of forbearance. Jesus expected great things from humanity. Jesus never expected the impossible. I like to think that He who made the heavens was ready when the hour came to make allowances. Depend upon it that if we expect the impossible, we are doomed to the disappointment which is worse than death. There is only one highway to the world's true comradeship—it is the road of forbearing one another.

It Hurts Those We Love the Most

Another evil of the unforbearing spirit is this, that it presses hardest on life's tenderest relationships. It becomes powerful for evil in that very region where ties are most delicate and life most sweet. There are some worms that are content to gnaw green leaves and to spend their lives on the branches of the tree. But there are others that are never satisfied with leaves, they must eat their way into the red heart of the rose. That is the curse of the unforbearing spirit—it gnaws at the very heart of the rose of life. It is comparatively easy to be forbearing with those whom we rarely meet and whom we hardly know. We are all tolerant of those who lightly touch us. But it is with those whom we meet and among whom we mingle dally, who share the same home with us, who live with us and love us—it is with those that it is often hardest to forbear, and it is on those that the sorrow of unforbearance falls. There are ministers who can speak well of every congregation except the one which they have been called to serve. There are husbands who are gentle to everybody's faults with the exception of the faults of their own wives. And it is just because unforbearance has a greater scope in proportion as life's ties grow tenderer and dearer, that the Gospel of love insists so urgently on the duty of forbearing one another.

It Reacts with Certainty upon the Man Himself

But there is another evil of the unforbearing temper—it reacts with certainty upon the man himself. For with what judgment we judge we shall be judged, and with what measure we mete it shall be measured unto us. If we are intolerant, we become intolerable. If we never make allowances for anybody, God knows the scant allowance that we get. Just think of the Pharisees a moment. Their crowning vice was that they were unforbearing. There was not a little that was good in many Pharisees, but they were harsh and censorious and exacting—need I remind you of the vials of stern judgment that were poured on the Pharisees by Jesus Christ? Let that suffice for the evils of unforbearance. It makes life one constant disappointment. It presses hardest on life's tenderest ties. It reacts inevitably on the man himself.

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The Virtue of Forbearance - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

True Forbearance Begins in a Man's Thought

In the second place I wish to indicate the character of true forbearance, and it is urgently important that we should pay heed to this. For the devil has got his counterfeit of every grace, and a counterfeit grace is sometimes worse than sin.
The first thing that I would say about it is that tree forbearance begins in a man's thought. It is a good thing to be forbearing in our acts, a great thing to be so in our speech, yet I question if we have begun to practice rightly this preeminently Christian virtue till we are habitually forbearing in our thought. "Master," said the disciples, "shall we call down fire on these villages? They would not receive us: shall we clear them away like Sodom?" And it was not quite for their words that Christ rebuked them—ye know not what spirit ye are of. Ah! if our bitter and unforbearing words flashed into utterance without any thought, they would not wound so nor would they leave these scars that the kindnesses of weeks cannot efface. It is because they so often betray the unforbearing thoughts that have been harbored in secret and cherished in the dark that the bite of them is like a serpent's fang. We talk of a hasty word, but a hasty word might mean little if it were only the out-flash of a hasty thought. What a hasty word often implies is this: that in secret we have been putting the worst construction upon things; then comes the moment of temper when the tongue is loosened, and we never meant to utter what we thought, but it escapes us—-only a hasty word—yet the bitter thoughts of a fortnight may be in it. True forbearance begins in a man's thought.

It Is Independent of Our Moods

Again, true forbearance is independent of our moods. It does not vary with our varying temper. It is a mock forbearance that comes and goes with every variation in the day. There are times when it is very easy to be forbearing. When things have gone well with us, when we are feeling strong, or when some great happiness has touched our hearts—it is not difficult to be forbearing then. When we are in a good humor with ourselves, we can be in a good humor with everybody. But true forbearance is not a passing gleam nor is it the child of a happy mood or temper; it does not depend on the state of man's health or on whether or not he has had a good day at business. It is a virtue to be loyally practiced for Christ's sake whatever our mood or disappointment be. I should not have wondered much if Christ had been forbearing when He rode in triumph into Jerusalem. Amid the cries of Hosanna and the strewing of the palm branches it might have been easy to have congenial views. But when His face was marred more than any man's, when they were looking on Him whom they had pierced, when the nails were torture and when the cross was agony, was it not supremely hard to be forbearing then? Yet it was then that the Redeemer prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Forbearance must not vanish when we suffer.

It Helps to Better Things

There is one other mark on which I would insist and it is this, that true forbearance helps to better things. It is like the sunshine which brings the summer nearer; it is part of that gentleness which makes men great. There is a certain lenient indulgence that is the very antipodes of this great virtue.

There is a soft and easy way of smiling at all sin that may send a man to the devil double-speed. Such leniency is the leniency of Antichrist. Christian forbearance never makes light of sin; it never oils the wheels of Satan's chariot; it can be stem, it whets its glittering sword; if a man is a scoundrel it can tell him so. But it never despairs, never passes final judgments, sees possibilities, touches the chord of brotherhood until a man feels that someone believes in him, and sometimes it is heaven to feel that. One day they dragged a poor woman before Christ, and the Jews would have stoned her, for she was taken in sin. But Jesus said "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more," and I am certain she never so sinned again. Peter was saved by the forbearance of Christ Jesus—"and the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter." Thomas was saved by the forbearance of Christ Jesus—"reach hither thine hand, thou doubter, let Me not scold thee." The forbearance of Christ was a great moral power, and all Christian forbearance must share the same prerogative.

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The Virtue of Forbearance - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Forbear Others because You Know So Little about Them

Then lastly let me suggest some thoughts that may help to make us more forbearing.

First think how little we know of one another. We know far too little to be censorious or harsh. One secret of the perfect gentleness of Christ is His perfect knowledge of everyone He met. I suppose that most of us have known some man whom for years, perhaps, we used to judge unkindly. We never liked him and our thoughts of him were bitter. Then one day we learned the story of his life, and we found that long ago when the heavens were blue above him, there had fallen on his life some crushing blow; and we say "Ah! if we had only known that story, we should never have judged the man as we have done." It is well to remember how ignorant we are when we are tempted to be unforbearing. There may have been something in the upbringing that would explain a score of things if we but knew it. There may have been elements that made the temptation awful, yet how we jested and sneered when someone fell! Forbearing one another—because of life's complexity; because we cannot see, because we do not know; because only God can tell the million threads that are woven into the tapestry of being. Our very dearest are such strangers to us that it is always wisest to forbear.

We Need Others to Forbear Us

Next think how greatly we ourselves need forbearance. Even if we do not give it, we all want it. I suppose we all irritate and alienate other people a thousand times more often than we ever dream of. If other people are doing so to us, it is but reasonable to think we are doing so to them. Never a sun sets but a man feels how easily he might have been misjudged that day. Never a morning breaks but a man knows that he will make demands on the forbearance of the world. If we need forbearance, then let us give forbearance. If we need to be kindly judged, then let us judge so. Let us forbear one another because of our own great need.

How God Is Forbearing Us

Lastly think how God has forborne us. The forbearance of God is a perpetual wonder. He has been willing that men should taunt Him with being idle, and He has been willing that men should say He did not care rather than that He should seem an unforbearing God. Is there no secret passage in your life which being trumpeted abroad would have almost ruined you? God in His mercy has never blown that trumpet blast, and His long-suffering has been your salvation. Then we are such poor scholars in His school; we are so backward and so soon turned aside; we make so little progress in His teaching and are so keen about everything save Him—surely there is no forbearance in the world like the forbearance of our heavenly Father. It is a great example: shall we not copy it? Days will be golden and silenced birds will sing when we revive the grace of forbearing one another.

November 11

The Perfecting Power of Love - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness— Col_3:14

Paul, an Apostle of Love

We are accustomed to think of Paul as a dogmatic writer, never so happy as when immersed in argument, but we must not forget with what affecting tenderness he has written of the grace of love. Great intellectual strength like that of Paul is often intolerant of tender feeling. Moving along the lines of demonstration, it disdains the heart as a true source of knowledge; but from that temptation Paul is entirely free for while he is the very prince of reasoners, he insists with ever increasing emphasis on the power and the primacy of love. It is not John, it is Paul who tells us that love is the fulfilling of the law. It is Paul who writes that wonderful hymn of love which we find in the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. So here it is Paul who, after a noble passage describing our death and life in Jesus Christ, bids us put on the bond of charity.

Love Beautifies and Perfects Every Other Grace

Now a word or two will explain to us the figure which the apostle uses to convey his meaning: "Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness." The picture in the apostle's mind is that of one who is putting on his raiment. He sees a man throwing around his body the loose and flowing garments of antiquity. And then it occurs to him that these loose garments, no matter how fine or beautiful they be, can never be worn with comfort or grace unless they are clasped together with a girdle. Without that girdle drawing all together, they hamper and hinder a man at every turn. It is the perfect bond of robe and tunic, the final touch that makes them serviceable. And so, says Paul, is it with love; it is the girdle of every other grace; it is the final touch that beautifies the whole and makes every garment of the spirit perfect. Under the figure, then, there lies one thought—it is the thought of the perfecting of love. Love is the girdle binding all together and giving to everything its proper beauty. On that, then, I want to dwell a little; on love, not in its inherent qualities but in its singular and incommunicable power of perfecting everything that clothes our being.

Love Is Needed for the Perfecting of Gifts

How true this is of spiritual gifts we learn from the first epistle to the Corinthians. That church at Corinth was very rich in gifts; so rich, that there was trouble over them. One had the gift of prophecy and one of prayer; one had the gift of tongues and one of healing; and every man in the ardor of the spirit was claiming for his own gift a proud preeminence until at last the danger grew so great and the scandal of bickering so soul-destroying that the Corinthian Christians wrote to Paul begging him for his advice and guidance. What was the counsel which the apostle gave? First, he said, covet earnestly the best gifts. Remember, he means, that though all gifts are of God, yet all are not equal in spiritual value. But then immediately he turns from that as though it were too hard for these Corinthians, and he says "and yet I show you a more excellent way"—and that more excellent way is love. It is thus that Paul introduces that great chapter in which he glorifies the powers of love. There will be no more trouble about spiritual gifts if love is the girdle which includes them all. Without love, the graces of the spirit will irritate like flowing garments in the gale. Love is the perfect bond which makes them serviceable, keeping each in its peculiar place.

Not only is this true of spiritual gifts; it is true of artistic and intellectual gifts. Over them all a man must put on love, for love is the final touch that perfects them. Take for example the happy gift of song which God has bestowed so freely on His children. We have all listened, I take it, to some singers who have set us wondering at their perfect art. Artistically there was not a flaw to find; there was consummate mastery and perfect execution, and yet the song somehow failed to move us or to strike a responsive chord within our breast. The gift was there—that no one would deny—and it had been trained with splendid perseverance, but there was one thing lacking to complete it and that was the perfecting impress of the heart. You can arrest and dazzle without love, but without love you cannot charm or win. You cannot open these ivory and golden gates that lead to the secret places of the soul. Hence a poor gift, if there be love behind it, will set the eye glistening with tears while the most brilliant gift, flit be loveless, will leave us wondering and leave us cold. I have heard preachers whose intellectual gifts were such that any man might covet them. Yet they never moved me to abhor the wrong or kindled me to joy in what was fair. But I have heard others whose gifts were not remarkable but who were on fire with love to God and man, and there was a power about their simplest word that made a man ashamed of his poor life. My brother and sister, whatever be your gift, over that gift put on the belt of love. Covet earnestly the best gifts, but covet love to beautify them all. Study is noble, and discipline is good, and perseverance is a heroic virtue; but in all the range of gifts there is not one that does not call for love to perfect it.

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The Perfecting Power of Love - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Love Perfects Service

If one were asked to explain what life is, it might be difficult to give an answer. Perhaps we get nearest to life's deepest meaning when we interpret it in terms of service. All life is service. We all must serve to live. Obedience is the first condition of all progress. Hence Christ, the consummation of humanity, was among men as one who serveth.

Service of Necessity

Now I think that when we look at service, we can distinguish three ascending stages in it. In the first place, and on the lowest stage, we discover the service of necessity. There are many things which we are forced to do and which we would never dream of doing were we free. They meet us in the performance of our work perhaps, and we would gladly shirk them if we could. But we cannot shirk them if we wish to live, they are part of the terms on which we have our being; they are the very condition of existence and not to render them would be suicide. Such service to which we are compelled is the poorest and the lowest form of service. True, it is dignified when it is bravely borne and carried through in an unmurmuring way. But the very fact that it is forced upon us and would be at once rejected were we free, invests it with a certain meanness and robs it of liberty and of delight.

Service of Duly

The next stage is the service of duty—all that we do because it is our duty. It is the service we render not because we must. It is the service we give because we ought. It, too, may be uncongenial service—not at all what we should have chosen for ourselves, and we may think it hard that we should have been summoned to bear such burdens or carry through such tasks. But conscience tells us it is the path for us, and so we pray to God to strengthen us and then, with whatever manhood we possess, we go quietly forward on the path of duty. There is always something noble in that service, yet it is hardly the highest kind of service. There is a lack of joy in it—a lack of music—there is not the gladsomeness as of a happy child. Something is wanting to make the service perfect, to make it a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and what it lacks to crown it with delight is the final touch of love. It is love that makes every service perfect. It is love that turns the task into delight. Love never asks how little can I do. Love always asks how much. And that is why in all the range of service there is no service like that inspired by love, whether the love of a mother for her children or that of Jesus Christ for all mankind.

I might illustrate this ascending scale of service by an imagined case from our old customs. Think, then, of some young man a hundred years ago drafted into the service of the navy. Caught by the draft and torn away from home, how intolerable that service must have seemed! For a time, it would be the bitterest of drudgery performed with many a muttering and curse. There was no escape—it had to be performed—the lash and the irons followed disobedience; that, in the harshest and extremist sense, was the service of necessity. But can we not imagine that young man rousing himself into a worthier mood? At the call of danger he would forget his bondage and think of the peril of his native land. And patriotic feelings would arise and his duty to his country would awake, and now his service would be a nobler thing because it was the service of his duty. But now suppose that a young man like that had sailed in the same vessel with Lord Nelson and had learned to love Nelson with that devoted love which filled the breast of every man who sailed with him. How different would his service now become! How gladly would he toil and fight and die! The thought of duty would be absorbed in love, and love would make his service perfect.

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The Perfecting Power of Love - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Love Perfects Relationships

Once more, I want you to observe that love is needed for the perfecting of relationships.

If you were to ask me what it is that makes life rich, I should answer that chiefly it is life's relationships. It is in the ties which link it to the lives of others that life enlarges to its greatest measure. Just think how poor your life would be today if the cords were cut which bind you to your friends. Son, father, sister, brother, friend and comrade—what would life be without such words as these? For no man liveth to himself—when he attempts it he is no longer living. It is in its wide and various relationships that life is ennobled and enriched.

Now when you come to think of it, you find there are three great enemies of a sweet relationship. The first is selfishness, the second pride, and the third destroyer of life's ties is fear. No man or woman who is selfish can ever know the joy of a deep relationship. If you are selfish you cannot be a friend. If you are selfish you cannot have a friend. For we never tell our secrets to the selfish nor open our hearts to them in confidence nor lean upon them with that confiding hope that calls for, and is always sure of, sympathy. Then in pride is a strange power of isolation. We say of the man who is proud that he is cold. No one is warmed by him in this chill world. No warmth of other lives dispels his iciness. The proud man is the solitary man and so always is the man who is afraid, whether it be the savage in the forest or the fearful sultan upon an Eastern throne. Where there is selfishness, then, or pride or fear, you never can have the fullness of relationship. Something is lacking in every human tie so long as these are mighty in the heart. And it takes a power that can conquer these and whose empire means the killing out of these if the relationships that make our lives are to come slowly to a perfect growth.

The Power That Conquers

It takes a power that can conquer these—you know as well as I do what that power is. Nothing but love, possessing all the heart, is able to dispossess these enemies. Love is the sworn enemy of selfishness, for it sets a crown upon the other. Love is the sworn enemy of pride, for love is ever warm and humble. And as for fear, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, for fear hath torment. It is thus that love is imperatively needed for the perfecting of every human tie. Like a girdle you must clasp it on, if you would wear the garment of relationship. It and it only is the bond of perfectness between one life and every other life. Without it we may eat and drink and sleep. But with it in our daily life, we live.

Love Perfects Religion

So love is needed for the perfecting of gifts, for the perfecting of service and relationship. Now in closing and in a word or two, it is needed for the perfecting of religion.

It is a matter of infinite debate where precisely religion begins. Is it in fear of the darkness, in dread of the unknown; is it in some dim feeling of dependence? Brethren, we may have our own thoughts on that matter as a fascinating question of psychology, but wherever religion begins in the heart of man, it can never be perfect till it reaches love. If no relationship of earth is perfect till love has entered with its benediction, how can a man's relationship to God be perfect, if love is wanting there? For true religion is not a thing of doctrine nor of eager and intellectual speculation: it is the tie that binds the life on earth to the infinite and eternal life beyond the veil. I grant you that the distance is so vast there that you cannot gauge it by any earthly tie. I do not like that form of pious speech that is too familiar and has no place for awe. Yet the fact remains that every earthly tie is but a shadow of our tie with God, and if these cannot be perfect without love, no more, you may be sure of it, can that. Only when a man can lift his eyes and say with a cry of victory, "God loves me"; only when he believes though all be dark that the God who reigneth is a God of love; only then does his religion become a real, a very present help in time of trouble, a well of water in the burning desert, a cooling shadow in a weary land.

It is just that and nothing else which makes ours the perfect religion. For the perfecting of religion love is needed, and that love has been revealed in Christ. God commendeth His own love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish. When we have gazed upon the face of Christ, there are a thousand things we still may doubt; but there is one thing we can never doubt again, and that is the love of God. Love is the perfect bond between man and man. Love is the perfect bond between man and God. How shall we win it where everything is dark and a thousand divine providence's so baffling? Blessed Savior, we turn our hearts to Thee. We gaze upon Thy pierced hands and feet. He that hath seen Thee hath seen the Father. We rest at last upon the love of God.

November 12

The Thankful Spirit - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Be ye thankful— Col_3:15

In the Midst of Adversity

The people to whom this was addressed were mostly people in very humble circumstances. Many of them would have been slaves. Their lot at the best was not a pleasant lot. Their privileges were as few as their enjoyments. And always in a heathen city to be a Christian aggravated everything. Yet the singular thing is that when the apostle wrote them, in such letters as this to the Colossians, he never seems to have offered them his sympathy. When death enters any of our homes, the mourners receive many kind letters. I have often wondered what fashion of a letter the apostle would have written in such circumstances. That it would have been exquisitely gracious we may take for granted from all we know of him, but unquestionably its leading theme would have been praise. The truest sympathy sometimes is not pity. The truest sympathy sometimes is encouragement. The hand that helps is the hand that points the way to new fidelity and service. And so the apostle never hesitates, even when writing to Colossian slaves, to urge them to the grace of thankfulness.

Paul's Thankful Spirit

In doing so he of course was calling them to what he himself practiced so magnificently. Perhaps there never was a more thankful heart than the heart of the Apostle Paul. Would you know, asks William Law the mystic, would you know who is the greatest saint? It is not the man who prays most or who does most. It is the man who is most thankful. And certainly, tried by such a test, you might search the annals of the Christian church and not discover a greater saint than Paul. You have but to think of him in the prison of Philippi singing praises there to God at midnight to see how he had practiced what he preached when he urged the Colossians to thankfulness.

Thankfulness Rarer than We Think

And so I should like to dwell a little upon that most important Christian duty, and I begin by saying that true thankfulness is probably harder and rarer than we think. All of us abhor ingratitude. We speak of it in the severest terms. I have heard people, Christian people, say they could forgive anything except ingratitude. And yet as life goes on, we often find that the sins which are hardest to forgive are the sins which are easiest to commit. On one occasion our Savior healed ten lepers. He healed them all and healed them equally. Yet of the ten, only one came back and showed himself a grateful man. And we might question without any cynicism whether among all of us who name the Name of Christ today, even one in ten is truly grateful. Doubtless all these ten, while cursed as lepers, had thought that it would be heaven to be healed. They had pictured it and dreamed of it, and in their dreams had Worshiped their deliverer. But among all the hours that come to us to test us and to reveal our hearts, there are few hours more penetrative than the hour in which we get all that we want. The thing we coveted was one thing. When we get it is another thing. It was so easily given. It cost so little. And, after all, did we not deserve it? Indeed, when we look around upon our fellows and see how many have got far more than we, is there any cause for gratitude at all? No doubt such thoughts were in the lepers' hearts. No doubt they were in the Colossians' hearts. And he must be strangely ignorant of his own heart who has never been conscious of that quiet revulsion. And that is why, over and over again as if calling us to what is rare and difficult, the Gospel exhorts you and me to be thankful.

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The Thankful Spirit - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Thankfulness in Unique and Routine Circumstances

Of course, in times of special mercy, thankfulness is an instinctive feeling. There are hours when it is natural to weep and hours when it is natural to cry "Thank God." When a child is rescued from a burning house, when a man is rescued from a watery grave, when the crisis is past and the light of life comes back as in a fever or from the surgeon's knife, then in a rush of feeling from the depths pure and fervent gratitude is born. And God, who may have been long ignored, is recognized again in that glad moment as He who woundeth and yet His hands make whole. Christian friend, all such hours are good: but in any life such hours come very seldom. And it is not the rare hours that show the man: it is the common hours of common years. It takes far more than one exciting moment to tell you that anyone is really brave. And it takes far more than any tragic moment to tell you that anyone is really thankful. To be thankful in the sense of Scripture is to be thankful every ordinary day. It is to bear our routine burdens cheerfully, to meet our common sorrows without murmuring. It is so to feel the hand of God in everything, so to acknowledge the ordering of His love that for us there is nothing common or unclean. He who is rarely clean is not a clean man, and he who is rarely thankful is not a thankful man. The very joy and power of this great grace lie in the fact that it is universal. And that was what mightily impressed the world when the Christian Gospel began to spread abroad; it was the wonderful gladness of it all.

Resignation in Contrast to Thankfulness

Thankfulness, when you come to think of it, really depends upon our view of God. As is our God, so is our gratitude. If all that happens to us comes by chance, then of course no man can be grateful. Gratitude is not a duty then, for there is no one to be grateful to. Nor can gratitude ever be a duty if God be only a cold mid distant Spirit who takes no personal interest in men. Given a heaven like that, at his best two duties alone are in the power of man. The one is fortitude to face the worst, and the other is resignation in the worst. And that is why in the old pagan world the noblest gospel that was known was that of fortitude and resignation. Then came the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and resignation was swallowed up in thankfulness. And it was not because their lot was different: it was really because their God was different. They had been awakened through their Lord and Savior to a God whose name and character was Love, Love that stooped from heaven to the cross. Given such love, such individual love, life becomes a different thing at once. There is a loving purpose in its darkest hours; a loving watchfulness in all its ordering. And the moment that anyone awakes to that and with all his heart and soul believes in that, then gratitude is born. That is why Paul says in another passage, "In everything give thanks." Not in some things of quite peculiar gladness, but in everything give thanks. For in everything there is the love of God; love is ordering and arranging everything and willeth not that any man should perish.

The Thankfulness of Jesus

The spirit of universal thankfulness was very conspicuous in Jesus Christ. You do not think of Jesus as resigned: you think of Jesus as rejoicing. There are three occasions in the life of Christ when you find Him giving thanks to God. Three times over, from the depths within, His thankfulness welled over into speech. And one has only to study these thanksgivings and all that is implied in them to realize the thankfulness of Jesus. Once He gave thanks for common things when He broke the loaves upon the mountainside. Once He gave thanks for ordinary people in that God had revealed His secret unto babes. And once in the darkest hour of His life on that night on which He was betrayed, He broke forth into such glorious thanksgiving as none who heard it ever could forget. Think of it: on that night on which He was betrayed when all He had toiled for seemed to be in vain, when the cross was waiting Him and all its agony, and the spitting and the mocking and the grave. Yet on that night we find our Savior thankful and pouring out His gratitude in prayer. My brother and sister, it is that great example that lies at the back of a command like this. We are to walk even as Jesus walked. We are to be thankful as He was. Not for the glad things only but for the shadowed things, not for the great things only but for the common things, and why, just because God is love and in love is ordering all, and all things are working together for our good.

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The Thankful Spirit - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Thankfulness—the Secret of Happiness

This grace of thankfulness diligently cultivated is one of the secrets of true happiness. It is not the happy people who are thankful. It is the thankful people who are happy. Happiness does not depend on what we have, else those who have the most would be the happiest. As a matter of fact, how often do we find that those who have the most are not the happiest? Happiness does not depend on what we have: it rather depends upon our point of view, and he who has won the thankful point of view is always on the highway of gladness. The flower that to the farmer is a weed may to the botanist be treasure trove. The rain that is so vexing to the child is just what the angler has been looking for. And so in life there are a thousand things that have an equal power to vex us or to bless us, according to our different point of view. No one who murmurs is ever really happy, and no one who worries is ever really happy. They have forgotten God and left Him out, and to leave Him out is to leave out the music. And it is only when, through Christ our Savior, we come to see His loving hand in everything that we win the thankful, grateful heart without which nobody ever can be glad. Ungrateful people are never happy people. They are always querulous and discontented. The more we are thankful for our everyday mercies, the more does life become a joyful thing. And that is why Christian life is always joyful, because everything the years may bring to us, Christ makes it possible for all who trust Him to cultivate the thankful spirit. The tiniest gift from somebody we love is of more value than many a costly offering. We take it gratefully just because love is there, and, taking it gratefully, it makes us happy. And so when we learn, as every man can learn, that God is love and that in Him we live, there is a worth in things we never saw before. The way to be glad is to be grateful, and the way to be grateful is to trust in God, to trust in Him as Jesus trusted Him on that night in which He was betrayed. Thus grows the assurance that there is no mistake, that He is watching, guiding, guarding, blessing us, which, when a man has learned, he ceases murmuring and finds that being thankful he is glad.

Thankfulness—the Source of Dedicated Service

But not only is thankfulness the spring of joy, it is also the source of dedicated service. And that is why the service of the Christian is perhaps the freest service in the world. We have all heard of the slave who after years of slavery was purchased by a stranger and set free, and how he fell at his liberator's feet and offered him all his service for the future. And we do not need to read how that new service, offered freely from a grateful heart, was richer than all the service of the past. Once he had toiled because he had to toil, and now he toiled because he loved to toil. Once he had done his work in daily fear, and now he did it all in daily gratitude. And that swift change of motive in his heart, from the haunting terror of the lash to love, made all the difference in what he did. It made all the difference to him, and it makes all the difference to us. Service is changed down to its very depths when we realize that we have been redeemed. And when we realize that we have been redeemed, not with gold but with the blood of Christ, what can we say each morning that we awaken but "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." My brother and sister, be ye thankful. It may be a secret you have never learned. Think of all you owe to God in Christ, you who are less than the least of all His saints. So shall there come new peace into your life, a happiness to which you are a stranger, a passion to do a little ere the night fall for Him who loved you and gave Himself for you.

November 13

In the Name - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

And whatever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him— Col_3:17

Men of Old Put Great Faith in Names

To the original readers of this letter this text would have a deep significance, and it would have that because to them there was so much that was mysterious in a name. With us there is little meaning in a name. It is a handy badge of recognition. What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But with the eastern it was very different. It was no chance that called a rose a rose. There was a deep, a mystical connection between the name and the thing signified. That applied to every name, but was particularly true of names of persons. It was no accident that of two disciples, the one should be called John, the other Peter. Men felt that the hand of God was in the matter moving those concerned to make the choice and in that choice embodying or foreshadowing the glory or the weakness of the character. No name was arbitrary to an oriental. No name was ever given haphazardly. As the years passed and character was formed, it was discovered that the name was prophecy. Something happened which confirmed the choice and showed the infinite wisdom which had guided it and deepened within the hearts of men the reverence for the mystery of names.

The Authority and Life behind the Name

Now it is in the light of that that we must read and understand our text. Whatsoever ye do, says Paul, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. That does not mean that ere we begin to work, we should invoke the name of the Lord Jesus. Many of us, I trust, do that, but that is not what Paul is teaching here. True is it, true beyond all words, that everything is sanctified by prayer, yet that is not the doctrine of our text. When an ambassador at some foreign court utters his message in the name of Britain, that means that behind his message is the authority and power of Britain. He is not speaking as a private person. He is not himself the source of what he says. He is the channel for the will of Britain, and all the power of the empire is behind him. That is the apostle's meaning when he bids us labor in the name of Jesus. He wants us to realize that behind us is the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants us to feel in everything we do, however great it be or however small, that we are but channels for the will of heaven. It is one character of the God of love that He is ever striving to express Himself. In Him is life, and life is never satisfied saving in outflow and in utterance. And so I take it that in every sunset and in every bird that sings upon the tree, you have a partial utterance of God. They cannot tell that they are voicing Him. They do not know the life that is behind them. But you and I, fashioned in His image, have been endowed with faculty to know it. And I would to God I could impress upon you what an enormous difference it makes just to realize that it is so. To feel that I am a channel, not a fountain, to feel that God needs me to express Himself, to feel that through my toil, however lowly, the will of heaven is working to its goal, it is that which ennobles life, sheds a sanctity on all its drudgery, helps it even in its dreariest, to be in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.

A Source or a Channel?

And that I take it is the most important question with which we are ever faced about our work. I feel it more deeply every year I live. Many are busy working with the brain, and many are busy working with the hand. And some are teachers, others doctors or lawyers, and some spend their days in the market. And some are occupied in lowly work and others in the control of vast concerns. Here is a woman whose appointed sphere is in the home among her growing children. There is a man whose business interests extend through half the countries of the world. Well now, the question I want to ask is this—in what light do you regard your work? Under what aspect do you think of it? On the answer to that question far more depends than you might ever dream of and there are only two answers which are possible. The one is that you yourself are the source and origin of all you do. It is your brain that has achieved success. It is your hand that has procured your welfare. The other is that you are not a source, but only the channel of a greater power which from an infinite fountain in the heavens is flowing out through you upon the world. Give the one answer, and you stand alone. You are fighting for your own hand in loneliness. But give the other and believe the other, and behind that toil of yours is God. It is He who is working through that brain of yours. It is He who is toiling through that hand of yours. It is He who is moving out into that expression through every honest task you ever tried. That is the spirit of our text. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Just stop a moment and try to realize that you are the instrument of God in Christ. There is not a thing you do then whether in shop or home or office, but will begin to flash with a new meaning and seem as if it were worthier to be done.

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In the Name - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Being a Channel Does Not Lead to Inactivity

Now there is one objection to this view of service which may be and often has been urged. It is that if we are but channels, then our activity is likely to suffer. If it is Jesus who is working through us, would it not be best to be still and let Him work? If through us the will of God is moving, is it not our duty to be passive? So men have speculated upon this and thought that human activities would slacken if once it were brought home to men and women that they were but channels of the will of Christ.

Well now, there is a passage in the Acts that may help to throw some light on that. It is the memorable passage of the healing of the lame man at the gate Beautiful. Peter and John were going up to pray, and doubtless they were thinking about Christ. And then the cripple cried to them for money, and somehow it brought Jesus very near them. For they remembered how He used to look and how a great compassion would possess Him when such a cry came ringing in His ear. It was then that Peter felt through his own soul the moving of the power of Jesus Christ. And he cried out with a loud voice, "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and walk." And the point to note is that just then when Peter was most a channel for his Lord, so far from being listless or inactive, he was intensely and tremendously alive. It was not his power. It was that of Jesus. It was not he who was working, it was Christ. Yet look at his eyes burning upon the cripple. Look at his hands outstretched to lift him up. The whole impression is of a man alive, quick to the finest fiber of his being, and quick simply because he knew that he was working in the name of Jesus.

As it was with Peter, so is it with everyone who makes this great discovery. When once we feel that God is using us, then every activity is quickened. Is the branch less active in the vine because it is abiding in the vine? Does it begin to say, I need not toil because my life is flowing from the stock? Why, brethren, it is that very fact, that inflow from a source beyond itself, that stirs it into life abundant. Let it be separated from the parent stern and every leaf upon the branch will wither and every tendril will lose its power to twine and every grape will dry and die. But let it live in union with that stock, drawing upon a power beyond itself, and every part of it is energized. Every leaf of the branch is busy now, a little kingdom of organized activities. Every grape, like the old temple, is being built without the sound of tools. And all this, mark you, this unwearied toil as if a thousand unseen hands were occupied, begins and has its being in the fact that the branch is not a fountain but a channel. So is it, I say, with every man when he first thrills to think that God is using him. It does not weaken him. It strengthens him. It makes him not less industrious, but more. Everything that we do is better done, more purely, more intensely, and more patiently, when it is done in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Working in Christ's Name Results in Calmness of Heart

Now, when we grasp that thought and apply it to our duties, two results are almost always found. Of these two the first is this, a certain calmness and peace of the heart.

Readers of the Gospel story have often noted the perfect peace of Christ. It breathes upon us as a breath from heaven in every page of the evangelists. Never was a life so full as Christ's. Never was one so busy or so broken. Well He knew what overpressure meant and all the vexatiousness of interruption. And yet the calmest sea of summer evening when not a ripple is playing on its surface does not convey to us such peace unutterable as does the life of the Lord Jesus. Now, if you want the secret of that peace, I think you have to turn to John to find it. It is in that Gospel that you see most clearly how Jesus looked upon His work. And the great fact that shines upon these pages is just the fact that Jesus was a channel, a channel deep beyond all human fathoming, for the conveyance of the Father's will. No words of mine could exaggerate that thought. It is written large throughout the whole Gospel. Moment by moment, Jesus Christ is doing that which His Father has given Him to do. And the great peace that clothed Him like a garment and kept Him tranquil under intense pressure was just His certainty that this was so. A11 might forsake Him, but He was not alone. All might gainsay Him, but it mattered not. Christ was no fatalist who buoyed Himself with the dark sophism of the inevitable. He walked abroad in perfect filial freedom, grasping constantly His Father's hand, and He was always tranquil in His work because His work was given Him by God.

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In the Name - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Now, brethren, as it was with Christ, so in a measure is it with us all. To feel that God in Christ is working through us is one of the surest secrets of tranquility. Men have often noted the great calm that is one of the most common virtues of the fatalist. He will face death after the manner of heroes; he will suffer in quietness where we would cry aloud; he will display the magnificence of patience just because his heaven is dark with fate. Now no man who believes in Christ can ever seek the refuge of the fatalist. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. He is the Son, and He hath made us free. But what I say is that that quiet heart, touched with a happiness he never knew, is yours and mine more than the fatalist's when once we grasp the doctrine of our text. Think of yourself as the one worker, and ah, how soon the burden overwhelms you. How quickly do things get in disarray, how often are you on the margin of despondency. But think of yourself as God would have you think, as but the channel for the will divine, and into every day there will come peace. You cannot be spoiled by your successes now, for it is not you who are triumphing but God. You cannot be shattered by your failures now, for God has His own purposes in failure. Through you the will of heaven is being done. Through you the infinite is finding utterance. Once let a man or woman wake to that and peace shall flow upon him like a river.

Working in Christ's Name Kills the Bitterness of Competition

It is thus, too, let me say in passing, that the bitterness of competition dies away. I have more faith in this text for that than in all the propaganda of the socialist. Here for example are two ministers whose churches are not far from one another. Or here again there are two Sunday school classes whose teachers' are from the same church. Well now, if these ministers or teachers think of all they are doing as their own, I say there is almost certain to be bitterness. All success that may attend the one will stir a pang of envy in the other. There may be all the semblances of brotherhood, but never the true brotherhood of hearts. There is but one way to make sure of that—to make us comrades while we are still competitors—and that is to feel that at the back of all both bear the name of Jesus Christ. Then shall we strive our hardest for our own, but never shall we begrudge another's striving. The very power that is using him is flowing to its accomplishment in us. So are we summoned from our isolation and called in service to the truest unity, a unity that is a living thing because of the diversity it holds. I have spoken of ministers and Sunday school teachers, but remember these are only examples. Lawyers and doctors, artists, men of trade, remember that the same applies to you. I want you to feel today about your rival of whom so often you have had bitter thoughts that God is moving to express Himself through him as surely as through you. That will not make him any less your rival. God has no purpose to abolish rivalry. When He does that, the rose will cease to charm and the iris to change upon the burnished dove. But now from the breast of rivalry has vanished that gnawing bitterness which made it hell. We are the thousand channels of the one, and of every channel He has need.

Working in Christ's Name Gives Dignity to Human Labor

There are times, I take it, in all callings, when men feel bitterly the sense of pettiness. To some it becomes almost intolerable that they should be living such a petty existence. They know the stirring of a larger life; they hear the whispering of undeveloped powers; they feel that they were meant for greater things and could achieve them if the way were open. Yet every morning they must return to duty, to undistinguished and often sordid duty, and it is very far from easy in that duty to keep alive the nobility of work. We, the ministers of Jesus Christ, through your liberality are set apart. You have said to us, You go apart, my brother, and traffic with heaven while we are in the market. Then come to us upon the Lord's day and give us some of the riches of your argosy, for we are soiled in battling with the world. Would you not think, sir, that a toil like that would be illumined with a constant dignity? Alas, how far is that from being the truth. How much have we to do that seems unworthy. And what I say is that if even on us there steals too often the sense of degradation, how much more constantly must it intrude on you. You feel that you were meant for better things. Sometimes that buying and selling grows contemptible. You feel as Grotius felt, who on his deathbed said, "I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing." What is the use of it all—this daily routine, this buying and selling for a little money, this drudgery that we lay down tonight only to resume tomorrow morning?

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In the Name - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

The Gospel understands that as it understands our complex nature. And the relief it offers against that is found in the thought of our great text. True to the heavenly wisdom which inspires it, it never loses its feeling of proportion. It does not mock you by assuring you that every service is of equal glory. But it relieves you from the sense of pettiness, inevitably, perfectly, immediately, the moment you deeply feel that what you do is done in the name of the Lord Jesus. The smallest token is a lovely thing when there is a heart that loves behind it. A single word may be a cheering thing when behind it is a heart of trust. So when behind our labor there is Christ, when we are the instruments of Christ, then the sorriest drudgery of earth begins to wear a crown upon its head. Once you feel that everything you do is God seeking to express Himself, once realize that you are but a conduit for the out flowing of the will divine, and as the dustiest hedge will flash and sparkle under the glistening dew of the May morning, so will the lowliest labor be ennobled. It is not you who are working now. It is Jesus who is working through you. It is His will that is being done on earth in every labor that you set your hand to. And this, remember, is as true when you are cleaning dishes or selling at a counter as when you are teaching in the Sunday school or preaching the riches of His grace.

God Fulfills Himself in Many Ways

For we must never forget, to put it in the language of the poet, that God fulfills Himself in many ways. Those of us who have sailed upon the Rhine know what a mighty stream it is as it flows proudly through the heart of Europe. It sweeps along in its channel, powerful in its silence and its swiftness. And many a vineyard ripens on it shores and many a castle looks down upon its waters. But when it comes at last into that region which is to join its waters to the sea, there the single channel becomes fifty. And some of them are great and noble streams, and some of them are tiny rivulets. And some of them wash the walls of busy cities, and some go wandering in lonely places. Yet every channel, be it great or little, be it the haunt of commerce or of dream, is carrying the one river to the sea. Say not that the tiny rivulet is different from the flood where steamers ply. Both are flowing because behind them both is the one mighty volume of the Rhine. And so behind your life and mine, however different these lives may be, is the one river of the will of God. It is His will that is finding its fulfillment wherever a mother is working in her home. It is His will that is finding its fulfillment in the honest labor of the shop and office. And the great secret that redeems our toil and robs it of its depressing pettiness is just to realize that that is so.

One of the few men of genius I have known was Professor Lord Kelvin. Well, I shall tell you one thing that always impressed me about Lord Kelvin; it was the number of people he kept busy. Some were busy working out his problems, some in superintending his experiments, many in making his innovative machines, and others I suppose in cleaning them. But what impressed me was how many men, from the apprentice to the finest engineer, were all required to carry out completely the workings of that single brain. Now, brethren, uplift your thoughts from men and fix them upon the genius of God. Think of the infinite life there is in God; think of the infinite thought which that implies. Then tell me how many thousand workers will be required upon this earth of ours if in its height and depth that will of God is to be carried out into expression. I want you to feel that there is room for you. I want you to feel that there is need of you. I want you to feel that through your lowly task, the Infinite is pressing to its utterance. And I say this, that when that breaks upon you with all the thrill of a new discovery, the sorriest drudgery a man is chained to ceases to be sorry from that hour.

November 14

To the Half-Hearted - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord— Col_3:23

A Command to Slaves

I want you to note how our text is introduced; it has a very. suggestive and illuminative context. "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh," that is verse twenty-two; and then, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord," that is verse twenty-three. Now the servants of whom Paul speaks in verse twenty-two are not domestic servants in our sense. They were slaves, bought for a little money; the property and the chattels of their master. Yet even to slaves who got no wages and who had no rights, clear and imperious comes the command of God, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily."

Now I think that is very suggestive for today. I can hardly talk to a master-painter or a master-baker, but I hear complaints about the degeneracy of labor. Men are not faithful, they have to be watched like children; the loyal service of an older day is dead. So say the masters; and on the other hand the men say that had they a more direct interest in their work and a more immediate concern in its prosperity, they would throw themselves into it with doubled zeal. Now all that may be true. But the point is that if the Bible holds and if this text be really the Word of God, nothing on earth, not even the worst relationships of capital and labor, can ever excuse half-hearted work. Your hours are long?—so were those of the Colossian slaves. Your pay is poor?—the Colossian slave had none. Your mistress is tyrannical and mean?—but the Colossian mistress lashed her servants. Yet whatsoever ye do, ye slaves, cries Paul, do it all heartily as to the Lord.

Paul Practiced What He Preached

I want you to note, too, that this text was never better illustrated than in the life of the man who was inspired to pen it. There was an enthusiasm and a concentration about Paul which have won the admiration of men of all time. "One thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, I press towards the mark," says the apostle; and whatsoever he did, he did it heartily as unto the Lord who loved him so. It is so easy to preach and never intend to practice. It is so hard to practice first and then to preach. It gives a wonderful power to our text and charges its mandate with redoubled urgency when we remember who the writer was. Men have brought many charges against Paul, but I do not think his bitterest enemy has ever charged him with half-heartedness. There is a glow and fervor in the man that marks in an instant the divine enthusiast. Others might waver, Paul battled to his goal. Others might yield, Paul was invincible. And had you seen him working at his tent making in the late night when the city was asleep, you would have found him plying the tent maker's needle and singing, I doubt not, as in the prison at Philippi, with the very heartiness and zeal that filled his preaching of Christ crucified.

Faithful Work Is Enthusiastic but Not Necessarily Noisy

It is then of this whole-heartedness, of this fine concentration or enthusiasm, that I want to speak. And I should like to say by way of caution, that true enthusiasm is not a noisy thing. Whenever we think of an enthusiastic crowd, we think of uproar, tumult, wild excitement. And I grant you that in the life of congregated thousands, touched into unity by some great emotion, there seems to be some call for loud expression. But just as there is a sorrow that lies too deep for tears, there is an enthusiasm far too deep for words; and the intense purpose of the whole-hearted man is never noisy. When the children of Israel, defeated by the Philistines, sent for the ark of God into the camp, do you remember how, when the ark appeared they shouted till the earth rang and rent? Yet in spite of the effervescence of emotion, they were defeated and the ark of God was captured. But Jesus, in the enthusiasm of His kingly heart, set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem; and yet He would not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets. The noisiest are generally shallow. There is a certain silence, as of an under current, wherever a man is working heartily.

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To the Half-Hearted - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Prune thou thy words, thy thoughts control

That o'er thee swell and throng;

They shall condense within thy soul

And change to purpose strong.

Whole-Hearted Personal Involvement Is a Condition to Success

Whole-heartedness, then, is never a noisy virtue; and I have thought it right to dwell on that that we may be on our guard against its counterfeits. But if it is not noisy, this at least is true of it: it is the basic condition of the best success. The chairman of the Congregational Union of Scotland, in an address he delivered some time ago at Glasgow, told us that a friend had met him lately and said to him, "I suppose you have heard that Mr. So-and-so has failed?" The chairman had not heard it. "Well he has," said his friend, "and little wonder, for he starved his business. He did not even put himself into it." He did not put himself into the work; he did not do it heartily as to the Lord. And could we trace the history of failure—that long, sad story of the world—I think we should find that for everyone who went to the wall through want of intellect, there were a score who reached that pass through want of heart. To concentrate as all the apostles did, to have the resolute enthusiasm of Jesus, that spirit has something congenial to success in it; and I use success in its best and noblest senses, some of which the world might call defeat.

Whole-Heartedness Is a Condition to True Happiness

But the virtue of whole-heartedness is more than that. It is one of the conditions of the truest happiness. There comes a certain joy as of the morning, a certain zest and buoyancy of spirit, when whatsoever we do is done heartily as to the Lord. When we are half-hearted, the hours have leaden feet. We become fretful, easily provoked; the very grasshopper becomes a burden. But when, subduing feeling, we turn with our whole energy of soul to grapple with our duty or with our cross, it is wonderful how under the long shadows we hear unexpectedly a sound of music. To be half-hearted is to be half-happy. It is to live in a lack-luster kind of way. And so it is to live in an unChristlike way, it is to know little of the joy of Jesus. Do you not think the joy of Jesus Christ was linked, far down, with His whole-hearted service? He never could have spoken of His joy but for His unswerving fidelity to God. And when at last upon the cross there rang out the loud, glad cry, "It is finished," there was joy in it because the stupendous work of saving men had been carried through to its triumph and its crown.

Whole-Heartedness Involves a Feeling of Doing As unto God

And there can be little question that the more heartily we do our humble duty, the more we feel we are doing it for God. It is one of the secrets for bringing heaven near us, for feeling the Infinite with us and within us, to be whole-hearted in the present task. Thinkers have often noted this strange fact: great enthusiasms tend to become religious. Let a man be mastered by any great idea and sooner or later he will find the shadow of God on it. But that is true not of great enthusiasms alone; it holds of whole-heartedness in every sphere. When Luther said, "Laborare est orare"—to labor is to pray—you may be sure that that great soul did not mean that work could ever take the place of prayer. He knew too well the value of devotion and the blessed uplifting of the quiet hour with God ever to think that toil could take its place. But just as in earnest prayer the heavens are opened to us and we are led into the presence and glory of the King, so in our earnest and whole-hearted toil, clouds scatter, the mists of feelings and passions are dispelled, and we are led into a peace and strength and sweet detachment without which no man shall see the Lord. It is in that sense that to labor is to pray. To be whole-hearted is to be facing heavenward. And the great loss of all half-hearted men and women is this, that above the dust and the stress and strain of life, above the fret and weariness of things, they catch no glimpse of the eternal purpose, nor of the love, nor of the joy of God.

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To the Half-Hearted - Page 3
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The Whole-Hearted Worker Is in Harmony with God

Indeed, if that old saying "like to like" be true, the men who are half-hearted must be blind. For if there is one demonstrable fact I think it is this: we are the creatures of a whole-hearted God. When I remember the thoroughness of the Creator's workmanship; when I think of the consummate genius and care that He has lavished on the tiniest weed; when I recall the age-long discipline that was preparing the world for Jesus Christ; I feel that the heart of God is in His work. And I feel, too, that if my heart is not in mine, I must be out of touch with the Creator. The gods of savages are generally lazy because the savages themselves are lazy, and they have spiritual sense enough to know that there cannot be communion without kinship. But our God is the infinite Creator; the master-builder, the thorough and perfect workman. And I don't know how a half-hearted servant can have any kinship with a whole-hearted Lord. O brother, whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, that you may come into line with the eternal. It is the pity of all half-hearted men that they are out of harmony with God.

Whole-Heartedness in Attachment to a Person

One other word on our text and I am finished. I want you to note how the writer lays his hand on the real secret of all great enthusiasm. He centers his appeal upon a person. Had Paul been writing in some quiet academy, the text, I dare say, might have read like this, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, for that is the road to nobility of character"; or "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, for that is the secret of success." But Paul did not write in any quiet academy. Paul wrote for the masses. Paul wrote for the whole world. And he knew that nothing abstract, nothing cold, would ever inspire the enthusiasm of thousands. A cause must be concentrated in some powerful name; it must live in the flesh and blood of personality if the hearts of the multitudes are ever to be stirred and the lives of the many are ever to be won. So Paul, with the true instinct of universal genius, gathered all abstract arguments for zeal into the living argument of Jesus. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as what? as to the Lord.

And so by the roundabout road of this address, you see I have brought you back to the feet of Christ, and wherever we may start from, I trust always to leave you there. I believe that the secret of all worthwhile living lies in the company of Jesus Christ. And for making us earnest, thorough, quietly resolute, no matter what fickleness or cowardice we start with, there is really nothing like fellowship with Him. Do you want to be truer? Get a little closer. Are you ashamed of your half-heartedness? Get nearer. Then back to your work again, alone yet not alone: for the time flies and eternity is near, and you shall pass this way but once.

November 15

Folk Who Are a Comfort to Us

These...have been a comfort unto me— Col_4:11

Others Can Be Our Paregoric

The word comfort in our text is a very interesting word. This is the only place where it occurs in the books of the New Testament. It is quite another word the Lord uses when He speaks of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. When He says, "I will not leave you comfortless," that, too, is an entirely different word. The term which is used here, and here alone in the whole range of the New Testament, is our English word paregoric. Now paregoric, in Greek just as in English, is one of accepted terms of medicine. Paregoric is a doctor's word. And one likes to think that the Apostle Paul in his employment of such a word as this betrays, it may be quite unconsciously, the influence of the beloved physician Luke. I suppose that every real friendship has an influence upon the words we use. When we admire anybody very much, we often find their words upon our lips. And Paul, who like so many other people had an intense admiration for his doctor, would naturally use the words of Luke.

Paregoric Mitigates Pain

And certainly he could not have used a more appropriate or delightful word. Are you aware what paregoric means? I consulted my English dictionary to see how paregoric was defined, and I found that paregoric was a medicine that mitigates or alleviates pain. And what could be more delightful than the thought that there are men and women who are just like that—they mitigate or alleviate our pain. Pain is one of the conditions of our being. Pain is something nobody escapes. All life is rich in pain, as the throat of the bird in the spring is rich in song—the pain of striving, the pain of being baffled, the pain of loneliness and incompleteness, the pain of being misunderstood. There are people who augment that pain, sometimes without meaning it. How often is the pain of life increased by those unfortunate people who mean well. But who has not numbered in his list of friends somebody whose Christlike ministry has been to alleviate the pain of life? Such were the apostle's paregoric. Such are the paregoric of us all; often humble people, not in the least distinguished and not at all conspicuous for intellect; yet somehow, in the wear and tear of life and amid its crosses and its sorrows, mitigating and alleviating pain.

Paregoric in Our Family and Friendly Circles

Often those who alleviate life's pain, who are paregoric in the apostle's sense, are the members of our family circle, the dear ones who dwell with us at home. There was a time in Principal Rainy's life when he was the most hated man in Scotland. Scarcely a week passed in which the newspapers had not some venomous attack upon him. And all the time, neither in face nor temper did Rainy show one trace of irritation, but carried himself with a beautiful serenity. One day Dr. Whyte met him and said, "Rainy, I cannot understand you. How do you manage to keep serene like this, exposed to all these venomous attacks?" And Rainy answered without an instant's pause: "Whyte, I'm very happy at home." The wounds were deep, but there were hands at home that were always pouring balm into the wounds; gentle, kindly ministries at home that mitigated and alleviated pain. And how many there are in every rank of life who find their courage to endure in secret sweet comforting like that. In the perfect trust of little children, in their innocence and blessed ignorance, in the love of someone who is dear, who understands yet is always bright and hopeful, how many men have plucked up heart again, found the bitter pain of life alleviated, been strengthened for their battle with the world.

Again, think of the comfort that we get from any friend who really understands us. Such appreciative and understanding souls—are these not the apostle's paregoric? Our Lord knew that. Never was man misunderstood as He. Misunderstood when He spoke or would not speak—misunderstood in every deed He wrought—misunderstood upon the cross. Think of the exquisite pain of it for that sensitive and sinless heart—fresh from the understanding of high heaven, that constant misunderstanding of mankind. And then there came an hour when Simon Peter inspired by the Holy Ghost cried, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." It thrilled our blessed Master to the depths. Life was different. He was understood. How instantly did it alleviate and mitigate the bitter pain He had to bear. And whenever in this difficult life of ours God sends us somebody who understands, is it not always paregoric to the soul? To have somebody whom we can trust—who, we are sure, will never misinterpret—who never judges us except in love—who appreciates and understands—what earthly comfort in all the range of comfort can for one moment be compared with that?

Comforting Others Without Realizing It

There is one thing more I want to say and that, too, was in the apostle's mind. Remember you can be a comfort to another though you never know anything about it. Just as the finest influence we exercise is often that of which we are unconscious, so the greatest comfort that we bring is often the comfort we know nothing of—not our preaching nor our words of cheer, but the way in which we bear ourselves in life when the burden is heavy and the sky is black. "No man liveth to himself." Let men or women behave gallantly and behave so because they trust in God when life is difficult, when things go wrong, when health is falling, when the grave is opened; and though they may never hear a whisper of it, there are others who are thanking God for them. Every sorrow borne in simple faith is helping other men to bear their sorrows. Every burden victoriously carried is helping men and women to be braver. Every cross, anxiety, foreboding, shining with the serenity of trust, comes like light to those who sit in darkness. People say sometimes, "I would give anything to comfort so and so." Dear friend, if you walk in light and love, you are a comfort when you never know it. And other people, writing their epistle (though it will never be equal to Colossians), will put your name in to your intense surprise and say,"You were a comfort unto me."

November 16

The Ambition of Quietness - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

We beseech you…that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business— 1Th_4:1-11

Dangers of Great News of the Past and the Future

The church at Thessalonica to which Paul wrote the letter was in an unsettled and distracted state. The Gospel had come to it in such reality that it was tempted to be untrue to duty. We have all known how a city is excited when tidings are brought to it of some great victory. The streets are thronged; the schoolboys get a holiday; men find it hard to persist in the day's duty. It was with somewhat of the same intensity of impress, with its consequent unsettlement and stir, that the news of the risen Christ came to this city. Bosomed in that news, too, was the assurance that the Christ who had risen was soon to come again. However Paul's views may have changed in later years, when he wrote this letter that was his firm belief. And you may be sure that what Paul believed he taught so that (as you may see on every page here) the Thessalonians were filled with a great joy that in a little while Christ would come again. It was that which made them so troubled when one died, for they feared he had missed the glory of Christ's coming. It was that which made it very hard to labor, for who could tell but that Christ might come that day. And as with most excitement there is a certain restlessness and an unloosing of the tongue in noisy speech, so among the Christians of this early church there would doubtless be some lack of self-restraint. It was to combat that almost inevitable state of mind that Paul gave the counsels of our verse. He was not speaking to philosophic students. He was speaking to handicraftsmen, many of them weavers. And he said, "Make it your ambition to be quiet, and to do your own work as we commanded you, that you may walk honorably towards them who are without."

Quietness Is Needed for True Work

Now the truth which unites the clauses of our text is that quietness is needed for true work. Study to be quiet and to do your business; you will never do the one without the other. In a measure that is true of outward quiet, at least when we reach the higher kinds of labor. The thinker, the student, the poet, cannot work when they are tortured by perpetual din. Every man who is earnest about the highest work makes it his ambition to be quiet. Is he an artist? he seeks a quiet studio. Is he a thinker? he seeks a quiet study. The best of the Waverley novels were all written in the dewy stillness of the early morning before the locust-bands that swarmed to Abbotsford put quietness out of the question for Sir Walter. Of course there is a certain type of man that is largely impervious to outward tumult. Mr. Gladstone could read and write in Downing Street in total oblivion of the marching of the Horse Guards. But that does not mean that he did not require quietude; it means that he could command an inward quietude and that he was master of such concentration as most of us have only in rare moments. It is the duty of every man who does the higher work to make it his ambition to be quiet. If he is called to his task by the clear will of God, he must strive for the right conditions for his task. And to me it is wonderful how in this age of din when the uproar of life is so all-penetrating—how work that is fine and delicate and beautiful manages to get itself fulfilled at all.

Inward Peace Shows Outwardly

But the words of our text have a far deeper meaning than can ever be exhausted by quietness of circumstances. They tell us that the best work is never possible unless there be a quietness of the heart. When a man is inwardly racked and torn and restless, you can very often tell it on his face. But if it only told on his face it would be little; the pity is that it tells upon his work. No matter how humble a man's task may be, no matter how ordinary and uninteresting, he cannot set himself to do it faithfully without imprinting his very being on it; and if within the man there is no peace but a surging of turmoil or unrest, that inward tumult will tell on all his toil and subtly influence everything he does. It is one of the legends of our Savior's childhood that in Joseph's workshop He was a perfect worker. If He made a plough, it was a faultless plough. If He made a toy, there was not a flaw in it. It is only a legend, and yet like every legend, it leans for its secret of beauty on a truth, and the truth is that here was perfect peace, and perfect peace produced the perfect work. Study to be quiet and to do thy business. Make it thine ambition to have a heart at peace. Without that there is no perfecting of fellowship, and without it no perfecting of toil.

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The Ambition of Quietness - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Disquiet of Despondency

Think for example of the disquiet of despondency; does not that tangle all that we put our hand to? Let a man be plunged into profound despondency and every blow of his hammer is affected. There comes to all of us, in spite of resolve and prayer, hours when the zest and charm of things depart; hours when there is no edge on any feeling and when all the expanse is desolate and parched; hours when a man is unutterably wretched and when a woman will weep for one kind word. It may be that there is sin deep down in that, or it may be that the frame is overtaxed; or that melancholy mood may come, we know not how, in the very season when we looked for gladness; but coming with its profound unsettlement, it steals the joy from everything we do and spreads itself like some benumbing poison through the living tissue of our work. The slightest task weighs heavily upon us and difficulties are magnified a thousandfold; things that yesterday we could have faced with ease seem to be insurmountable today; but it is not things which have changed, it is ourselves; we are grown nervous in a deep disquiet. We cannot throw ourselves upon our task with joy, for we have lost our peace of heart.

Passions Produce Unrest

The same is true of the unrest of the passions; work becomes drudgery in their disquiet. Let a man be secretly tossed by any passion and how irksome grows the routine of ordinary days ! It is hard to bend the head over one's books when the voices of the sweet world begin to call. It is hard to serve in warehouse or shop when the heart is torn and tortured with anxiety. It is hard to take up the tasks of life again and to be courteous and whole-hearted and unselfish when the waves of a recent and overwhelming sorrow are breaking and beating still upon the shore. Luther used to say about his preaching that he never could preach except when he was angry. Perhaps there are some of us who would be better preachers were we a little more angry now and then. But the anger that kindles a man's powers is rare, and the anger that degrades or darkens them is common. The angry man is generally wrong, and when a man is wrong his work is never right. The best school work is never done in the tumultuous days before vacation. The best work of a clerk is never done in the whirling season when he is in love. Why, when a domestic servant grows forgetful and handles things in an absent-minded way, does her kind mistress smile and say, "Mary must be in love"? I protest against exciting books and plays. I protest against exciting games and dances. And I protest against them because their net result is to make life not easier but harder. For nine-tenths of an honest life is toil, and toil demands a certain noble quietude, a settlement of spirit which is hard to keep and perilously easy to destroy. It is no chance that this exciting age should be an age of much disgraceful workmanship. I hear on every hand today bitter complaints of the rarity of true and faithful service. And I say no wonder when the ambition of the day is at every cost to be excited. The day of faithful work will come again, but only when men study to be quiet.

An Uneasy Conscience Cannot Produce Good Work

Again, the need of inward quiet for toil is seen in the working of an uneasy conscience. Are we not tempted to think of a guilty conscience as something a little apart from daily life; something which has to do with a great God and is therefore remote from the business of the hour? I want you to learn there is not a thing you do, not a task or duty you can set your hand to, which is not adversely and evilly affected, if at the back of all there is an unquiet conscience. You may be a student working at your classes or a servant busied in the sunless kitchen; you may have to control a mighty business or in that business you may be the humblest clerk; but whatever your work is, a conscience void of peace will tell upon and influence that work and interpenetrate it all so surely that to its finest fiber it will feel your guilt. We smile a little today at the great text, "Be sure your sin will find you out." We have grown so liberal and so enlightened that we can jest at twilight superstitions. But if one thing is certain, it is that that text is true and that every sin we have cherished finds us out, and finds us out not by the trump of God, but by the resistless evolving of its consequence. Some find us out long after in our bodies. Some find us in the bosom of our pleasant homes. Some lie asleep till we are near our victory, and then they waken and snatch away the laurel. But always, in the temper of our work, in the tone and strength of it and in its joy and quality, there is more than the impact of our brain and hand, there is also the impact of our conscience. Conscience makes cowards of us all, and if a man is a coward his work is sure to show it. There must be peace within, and the joy that comes from peace, if the smallest task is to be well done. And that is why the Gospel of Christ Jesus which through the precious blood brings peace of conscience, has given the world a new ideal of work and enriched the humblest worker with new joy. Study to be quiet, then, and do your business. Make it your ambition to have the rest of Christ. A heart tumultuous and burning and restless is a sorry comrade for the leaden days. But a heart at peace, and passions in subjection, and a conscience void of offence towards God and man, will send a man whole-heartedly to duty and help to make that duty a delight.

November 17

The Moral Conditions of Belief

…a good conscience; which some having put away (thrust from them—R. V.) concerning faith have made shipwreck— 1Ti_1:19

Tampering with Conscience

We must try to understand what the apostle means when he speaks of putting away a good conscience. He means what in the idiom of today we describe as tampering with conscience. The good conscience of our text does not just signify an approving conscience. It signifies a conscience that is working well, just as we might speak of a good clock. And as a man can tamper with his clock, so can he subtly tamper with his conscience until at last it ceases to be good. Let conscience work in liberty, and it registers unalterable certainties. It takes such things as truth and love and purity and stamps them with the signature of God. And whenever anybody begins to doubt and question these abiding and instinctive certainties, he is thrusting from him a good conscience. Men do that often under the stress of passion. They make the worse appear the better reason. They are eager to get the approval of their conscience for actions that are dubious or immoral. And conscience is such a delicate adjustment that for long periods they can achieve this, though I question if they can ever do it permanently. Such action implies a certain violence, and the word Paul uses carries that suggestion. It is the word that is used of the Egyptian when he pushed away the interfering Moses (Act_7:27). A little violent handling of one's conscience like a little violent handling of one's clock, and we silence the chiming of God's hours.

Tampering with Conscience Means the Ruin of Life

Now we know that when anyone does this, he invariably makes shipwreck of his life. But Paul tells us that if anyone does this, he invariably makes shipwreck of his faith. Our Christian faith is a faith that God is love, and that in His love He gave us the Lord Jesus. It is a faith that we all are precious to the Father and are being guided to a perfect life. And this inspiring and sustaining faith, says Paul, does not strike its roots into a brilliant intellect; it strikes them into the soil of a good conscience. Tamper with conscience and God becomes unreal. Circumvent it, and the invisible grows dim. Wrest and manipulate its instant verdicts, and love and honor disappear from heaven. A man may have faith in all the Christian verities though his intellectual processes be childish; but he never can have faith in them once he begins to juggle with his conscience. To put it in more modern language, the conditions of all living faith are moral. They lie not in intellectual apprehension, but in honesty of intention and of heart. All which is fitted to be of infinite comfort to those who grope in intellectual darkness and are troubled because they cannot understand. Nobody makes shipwreck of his faith because he is powerless to understand. No ship that has set sail for heaven ever founders because the brain is dull. Shipwreck comes when the inward voice of conscience, challenging to truth and love and purity, is disowned in the interests of sin.

The Pure in Heart Do Not Tamper with Their Conscience

That this, too, was the teaching of our Lord is seen in His most exquisite beatitude. Blessed are the pure in heart, He said, for they shall see God. Now, to see God is not to set our eyes on Him. It is to have a living faith that He exists. It is to believe, what Christ Himself believed, that He is a loving and redeeming Father. It is to believe that just because He loves us He is guiding us with perfect understanding and carrying out His purpose in the world. A faith like that alters the whole of life and makes the sun shine in the darkest day. A faith like that is better than a fortune. It inspires serenity and courage. And the one condition of that faith, according to the teaching of our Lord, is not intellectual but moral. To be pure of heart is not to be perfect, else were there no hope for any man. It is to be sincere and single-eyed. It is to refuse to juggle with our conscience. It is to hold to it through every temptation that the imperious voice of conscience must be heeded, and that love and truth and purity and loyalty are demanded at whatsoever cost. Live like that, says Jesus, and you will never live long in a godless universe. Do your duty, as conscience tells you to, and God will surely bless in your life. The strange thing is that with Jesus, as with Paul, there is no word of intellectual processes. The conditions of belief are moral.

So are we led to this great truth for all who are really eager to believe. The way to faith is not the way of intellect. It is rather the simple way of duty. Far better than puzzling our brains is to do the next thing that is demanded. It may be hard to know what we should believe: it is seldom hard to know what we should do. And in doing that, at the command of conscience, with a single eye and a pure heart, we find ourselves, perhaps when we never dreamed of it, on the avenue that leads to God. We come to feel that truth is on the throne, or conscience never could demand truth. We come to feel that love is in the heavens, because at every hazard we must love. And as truth and love and purity and honor are but idle words without a person, duty brings us to the feet of God. To be pure-hearted is the way to see. To do His will the way to know. To listen to conscience and never seek to juggle with it is to touch the reality of all its values. He who does that, although the winds be contrary, will never suffer shipwreck in the deeps, but will come at last to his desired haven.

November 18

Christ and the Hope of Immortality - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Our Savior Jesus Christ...hath brought…immortality to light through the gospel— 2Ti_1:10

The Mingling of the New and Old

There are two ways in which Christ has worked in His long task of the regeneration of mankind. He has brought among us from heaven what is new, and He has consecrated what was old. There is a widespread tendency in theological thought to belittle the originality of Jesus just as once there was the opposite tendency to ignore Jesus' relation to the past. But both extremes are not only false to Scripture, but they are also false to Christian experience which always blends the new and old together. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. There are ten thousand times ten thousand lives that can testify to that. There is something original and fresh and new in every truly regenerate experience. And yet the grace that has inwrought the new takes into its bosom all the old, and uses it for the service of the kingdom. Old tenderness begin to live again. Old hopes lift up their faces to the morning. Chords that were broken begin again to vibrate with a music that whispers of the long ago. So in Christian experience as in the Scripture, there is ever the mingling of the new and the old; new power and, through the inflow of that power, old hopes and yearnings and longings realized.

The Yearning for Immortality

And among these yearnings of mankind, one of the deepest is that for immortality. Christ did not bring it here, He found it here, deep in the shadowy places of the soul. We have read of instances in which a great musician has heard a beautiful voice out in the street. It was that of some poor girl singing for bread in the shadow of the London twilight. And recognizing the beauty of the voice, the master has had it trained at his own cost till it became a thing of joy to multitudes. In some such way, out in the crowded thoroughfares, our Master heard the voice of immortality. And He recognized the range and beauty of it, undisciplined and uncultured as it was. And so this Easter, the question which I want to ask is this, How did Christ train that singer of the street? In other words, what difference has Christ made to the yearning of the heart for immortality? What is the contribution of our Lord to the belief in a life beyond the grave? I think, laying aside what is debatable, we may sum it up in these three propositions. First, Christ has confirmed the hope of immortality. Second, Christ has enriched the thought of immortality. Third, Christ has enhanced the power of immortality.

Christ Confirmed the Hope of Immortality

Now I do not think, friends, that I speak unguardedly when I call the hope of immortality a universal hope. We come upon it in the remotest ages and find it among the most barbarous peoples. It was this faith that built the pyramids. It was this that reared the mighty Etrurian tombs. It was this that led men to embalm their dead and to lavish art and treasure on embalming. It was this that placed the food within the coffin and the piece of money in the corpse's hand, which slaughtered the horses of the departed warrior and burned the widow on her husband's pyre. It was this that made Socrates despise his poison as something that could not touch his real self. It was this that drew Plato to his loftiest argument in words that thrill and throb unto this hour. From the lowest depths of damp and sunless forests to the heights of intellectual and spiritual genius, men have cherished the hope of immortality. The strange thing is that that undying hope has never, out of Christ, become a certainty. It is an instinct of all untutored hearts, and yet an instinct that never has been verified. And this is the first great service of the Lord to that universal hope of immortality, that He has turned it, for all who trust in Him, into a full and glorious assurance.

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Christ and the Hope of Immortality - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

If, then, you ask me how He accomplished that, I reply that the answer is twofold. He has done it first by the doctrine He has given us of the relationship of God and man. Christ's proof of immortality is not our instinct; Christ's proof of immortality is God. If we are His children and if He truly loves us, it is incredible to Christ that we should cease to be. Once realize the Fatherhood of God, and Jesus was never weary of proclaiming it, and on the bosom of that Fatherhood there nestles the immortality of man. There is no proof that I am an immortal being merely because God is my creator. He is the creator of these myriad creatures that dance and die upon a summer's evening. But if God be my Father and if He really loves me with the splendor and passion of a father's love, then I am His and He is mine forever. Here, for instance, is an earthly father standing beside the deathbed of his child. And he bows his head over a breaking heart, and he strives to say, "Thy will be done." But ah! had he the power to baffle death and to drive him across the threshold of the home, with what a will would he exercise that power. My brother and sister, God always has that power, and if He loves as an earthly father loves, death will never rob Him of His child. It is thus that Christ has confirmed our human yearning. He has rooted it in the Fatherhood of God. He has taught us that at our worst we are so dear to God that nothing shall ever separate us from Him. Christ's proof of immortality is not an argument built on the disproportion's of humanity. His proof is a love that will not let us go.

But Christ has not only confirmed it by His teaching. He has also confirmed it by His life. The life of Jesus, for the seeing eye, is the crowning argument for immortality. One of my acquaintances in Glasgow is a German gentleman who has been resident in Scotland thirty years. Well, when I spend an evening in his company, his fatherland grows very real to me. One of my old friends who was at college with me is now an honored missionary in Livingstonia, and there is nothing more living for me than Livingstonia after an hour or two with Donald Fraser. Now that was the kind of impression Jesus made. He irresistibly suggested heaven. He lives so near the frontiers of eternity that the glory of it smote Him on the face. And men awoke to feel that all their yearning for a life that was larger than the life of time was answered in the life of Jesus Christ. He satisfied the longing of the heart. He was the confirmation of its surmise. He carried in Himself, for all who knew Him, the overwhelming proof of a beyond. And it is this, sealed in the resurrection, that has touched the flickering hope of all the world and turned it into the certainty of Christendom.

Christ Has Enriched the Thought of Immortality

Now I hesitate to make broad and sweeping statements when I am so conscious of imperfect knowledge, but there is one broad statement I can make, I think, without any fear of contradiction. It is that in the ancient, as in the savage world, immortality has always been a dreary prospect. It has never thrilled with any sense of joy, but rather with a sense of desolation. It has never been thought of as a life enriched, but always as a life impoverished; never as a life to be desired, but rather as a lot to be endured. There are one or two passages in the Old Testament that rise magnificently into a clearer air: "In thy presence is fullness of joy"; "I know that my redeemer liveth." But these are the utterances of glorious souls who saw like Abraham the day of Christ, and the usual outlook is different from that. The future is a shadowy realm of silence. It is a lonely, desolate existence. There is no vision of God in Sheol nor any voice of praise nor any human warmth or cheerfulness. And you cannot wonder, when you remember that, how the saintliest Jews shrunk from it with horror and cried in agony when death approached, "Deliver me from going down to the pit."

My brother, I need hardly say to you how radically Christ has altered that. If He has deepened the shadows for all who are impenitent, He has banished them for all who are His own. Just as God, when He takes some sluggish creature and enriches it with new wealth of being, gives it a new capacity for joy, but also a new capacity for pain; so Christ, taking the thought of immortality, left it no longer dull and rudimentary but capable of all the blessedness of heaven and all the anguish and bitterness of hell. Enrich the great idea of patriotism, and you shall have blood in it as well as triumph. Enrich the great idea of home, and you shall have anguish there as well as love. Enrich the great idea of immortality, and you shall have joy and glory in its compass and also, by a law inevitable, the possibility of awful woe. Now that is exactly what Jesus Christ has done. He has heightened and deepened immortality. He has made it far more glorious than before. He has made it far more dreadful than before. He has filled it for the finally impenitent with an agony of remorse that is appalling, and He has filled it for every childlike heart with a bliss that is beyond compare. Eternity can never be colorless again for anyone who has heard the word of Jesus. Either it is unutterable loss, or else it is unutterable gain. And that is what I mean when I suggest that Christ has enriched the thought of immortality as He has enriched the thought of motherhood and home.

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Christ and the Hope of Immortality - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Christ Has Enhanced the Power of Immortality

Now, of course, all hopes must have a certain power. Men are always molded by their hopes. The kind of thing you long for in the shadow always affects and influences character. But it is unique, and has often been observed, that among all the hopes which men have cherished, few have been so powerless out of Christ as the universal hope of immortality. As if a child at play should find a diamond and look on it merely as a curious pebble and only understand its priceless value when one passed by who had the eye to see, so in the garden of the heart men found eternity and never understood the riches of it till Someone came along whose hands were pierced. The most that the future had ever done for men was to fill them with a vague and haunting fear. It had never inspired them, never come with comfort, never upheld them when the way was weary. And what I say is that Jesus took that yearning, lying unused in every human soul, and turned it into one of the mightiest powers that has ever been brought to bear upon humanity.

Think, for example, of how the Christian faith has brought immortality to bear on work. It has given an impulse to all honest toil that has practically changed the face of Christendom. If all our striving is to cease at death—if every effort is to be ended there, well might we ask, when effort costs so much, whether all our effort were worthwhile. But if all we have striven to do, and all we have failed to do, is to be perfected in the eternal morning, then in the dreariest hour or task we pluck up heart again. Our toil is not a task of three score years. Our toil is a task that has eternal issues. Every capacity that we have fought our way to, we shall carry over into the beyond. So in the thick of it there steals upon our ear the music of the distant triumph-song, and we thank God and take courage by the way. Divorce our duty from our immortality, and duty becomes incredibly hard. It is when a man can say, I am forever, that he can say with a glad heart, I ought. And that is why duty has blossomed like the rose, since Jesus lived, and died, and rose again, because He has touched it with the hand of the forever.

Immortality's Influence on Sorrow

Think, lastly, how our Christian faith has brought immortality to bear on sorrow. It has given beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. You young people, who have not drunk of sorrow yet, will think I am using exaggerated language. To you it is Glasgow which is intensely real and the beyond which is the pageant of a dream. But there is someone sitting beside you here tonight who has laid her treasure in a little grave, and for her it is Glasgow that is the place of shadows, and the one intense reality is heaven. The one thing love refuses to believe is the foolish doctrine of annihilation. Love wants the loved one not for twenty years. Love wants the loved one forever and forever. And now comes Christ to every breaking heart, and says, "Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father's house are many mansions: I go to prepare a place for you." What is all your philosophy to that, splendid though be the triumphs of philosophy? Do you think your philosophy will climb those attic stairs and give its comforts to that lonely widow living there? Yet that is what Christ is doing every day in the lonely attic room and in the crowded Babylon, to Queen Alexandra mourning for her brother and to the father mourning for his child. And we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. We are begotten into a lively hope. "In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you." Death is no journey into the obscure night where the wild beasts are crying in the dark. It is the passing for all who are in Christ into a larger and a brighter room.

November 19

The Tragedy of Renounced Service

Demas…my fellowlabourer— Phm_1:24.
Demas— Col_4:14
Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world— 2Ti_4:10

The Downfall of Demas

The disloyalty of Demas has had a strange grip upon the minds of men. It has appealed to the imagination. The fact that we know nothing of him save in these three texts, his presence in the little company that moves in and out of Paul's imprisonment—these glimpses have arrested men and drawn their thoughts to Demas as to someone mysterious and elusive. Then conjecture has been rife as to the ways in which he loved this present world. Was it lucre that tempted him, as Bunyan thought, or just the pressure of the lower standards? On such things we cannot dogmatize, for the apostle does not give us details; he did not expatiate on things that hurt him. All the same, it seems to me that we do know a little about Demas. These three references, put in their right order, surely betray something of the man—not, of course, of how the world allured him, for that must rest forever hidden, but of the gradual declension of his life. The chronology of the Epistles is not certain, but on many points there is a large agreement. Philemon was written earlier than Colossians and Second Timothy a great deal later. May we not trace, then, in this triple reference something of the soul-history of Demas that ended in such pitable fashion?

An Overcomer as Long as He Served with Paul

In the first reference Demas is described as one of the apostle's fellow-workers. He was one of that company of eager toilers to whom we owe the spreading of the faith. From the fact that he went away to Thessalonica, we might infer that he was a Thessalonian. Backsliders are like dying exiles, they begin craving for the familiar places. Demas, then, would be one of the early fruits of the apostle's visit to that European city, and the fruit, for long, was sweet to the taste. Demas was not content to confess Christ. He must serve and be a fellow-worker. He must do something for the Lord who saved him and for the apostle whom he loved so well. And it seems to me that so long as he was serving he found himself raised above the world: so long as he was serving he was safe. Men talk of the joy and liberty of service, and there are multitudes who have known the truth of that. But there are many who have never realized the spiritual strengthening of service. Christian service is like other work in that it helps to keep our besetting sins at bay, and in drearier hours saves us from ourselves. So was it, I believe, with Demas. He was kept as long as he was serving. He was master of all his timidity's and cravings in the years when he was laboring with Paul. The earliest reference to Demas, full of affection and of gratitude, is "Demas, my fellow-worker."

His Apostasy Began with His Cessation of Service

Then the years pass and he is named again—but this time he is not a fellow-worker. All that we hear in the letter to Colossae is the one word Demas. He is still the companion of the great apostle; but he is not the fellow-laborer now. He seems to have grown weary in the service; perhaps he was disappointed in the fruits of it. He had been dreaming that he would change the world with the magnificent message of the Christ, and Rome was pretty much where he had found it. So far he had not swerved in his personal loyalty to Paul. He loved him. He owed his life to him. There was nothing he enjoyed more than to listen to him. But he did not love to preach now as he used to do nor to go out and brave the ridicule of crowds nor to give himself to the training of the young. Had you told Demas that the day was coming when he would desert his spiritual father, he would have indignantly repudiated the calumny. Yet anyone who knows the human heart knows that he was on the highway to apostasy from the hour that he ceased to be a fellow-laborer. No man can cease to serve without good reason and yet maintain unimpaired the older loyalties. When the spirit of willing service goes, all the enthusiasms begin to die. Prayer is stinted, criticism enters, churchgoing becomes very intermittent, and slowly the whole character is changed. Paul, with his fine delicacy, does not hint at this. He does not exclude Demas from the greetings. But he is perfectly conscious of the change and of the possibilities involved in it. Once (and he wrote it with a grateful heart) it was Demas, my fellow-worker. Now it is simply Demas.

His Return to Thessalonica: No Service, No Prayer, No Fellowship
And then the years go by, the bitter dragging years, and once again we have the name of Demas. And with a great ache in his heart, Paul has to write, "Demas hath forsaken me." It was not in the least a sudden thing. Paul had long foreseen that it was coming. The vessel had been straining at its moorings, and the cable had been gradually fraying. Idle, not serving as he used to do, no longer forgetting everything in labor, Demas was unequal to the strain. It all began when Demas ceased to serve and, ceasing to serve, also ceased to pray. All he had given up began to claim him then. The old life became intensely vivid. And the tragedy is that, going back to it, it never could content his heart again after the glory that had come—and gone. Paul was not only sorry for himself. He was a thousand times sorrier for Demas. He knew the disappointment and unrest that awaited him in the old familiar scenes. I think the tear of an infinite regret would blot the parchment as he wrote, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world."

November 20

The Selective Power of Personality - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Unto the pure all things are pure— Tit_1:15

Misapplications of Scripture

It would be an interesting but a melancholy study to consider the texts of Scripture which have been misapplied. It would not only illuminate many a heresy; it would lead also to the secret springs of conduct. Some misapplications we should group together as arising from the imperfections of our version. Others we should find taking their rise in the sinful bias of the will. Others rather owe their origin to the proverbial character of certain words of Scripture and to the constant tendency of men to use proverbs in a mistaken way. It takes more wit to use a proverb wisely than it took originally to coin that proverb. It is far easier to strike out an apothegm than in some complex moment to apply it. Hence is it that certain words of Scripture, our present text being one of them, are in real danger of misapplication.

The Text Does Not Mean that There Is No Objective Evil

Have we not all heard these words misapplied? The commonest misuse of them is when something offensive has been spoken, something coarse or allusively indecent, and someone with a hot heart has protested against the evil remark. Immediately, sometimes with a smile or more often with the suspicion of a sneer, he is told that unto the pure all things are pure. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose, and such a citation is the devil's handiwork. Our text does not mean that good and evil have their being in our thoughts about them. There are things that are everywhere and always right, and there are things that are everywhere and always wrong, and there is little hope for any man who has learned to tamper with these immutables. A deadly fever is not less infectious because I am fortified against it by some antidote. It is still deadly, in its inherent virulence, though I may be immune against its ravages. Even though every mind were as pure as the unsullied snow upon the Alps, there would still be things that were indecent. In a bare and literal sense, it is not true that unto the pure all things are pure. Unto the pure, till the last trumpet sounds, there will be words and actions that are horrible. It is that conviction which inspires the home and gives stability to nations, and when it is lost in a degenerate charity, the day of moral decadence has come.

What We Are Affects Our Interpretation of What Is Going on Around Us

What then is the true meaning of our text? Well, it is something of this kind. It is the inspired if proverbial expression of the selective power of personality. Everything with which we come in contact carries a large diversity of meaning. There is nothing we meet with in our daily walk but is capable of different interpretations. And how we shall interpret all that wealth and what we shall see in it as it steals by, all that is really determined by what we are. By all the influences that played on us in childhood and all the activities of our maturer years, by every battle we have quietly fought and every burden we have bravely borne, by the unhindered trend of leisure thought, by temptation, friendship, religion, you and I, whether for weal or woe, have forged out our personality. It is the only thing that we possess really yet-it is something more than a possession. It is by that, and that alone, that we interpret everything around us. All the wonder of the sky and sea, all the experience of light and shadow, all the countless activities of life, are accepted and interpreted by that. It is not in the light of the wisdom of the ages that you and I read the drama on life's stage. Far few men have ever learned that wisdom; and those who have, have learned it all too late. It is in the light of all we have made of ourselves in quiet years and immemorial days when we prayed God to give us strength to stand or yielded to the importunity of sin. By that we see—by that we read—by that we interpret God and man and everything. That is the key which unlocks every door opening on to the riches of the universe. And that, I take it, was in the apostle's mind when, brooding deeply upon this life of ours, he said, moved by the Holy Ghost, unto the pure all things are pure.

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The Selective Power of Personality - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Interpretation of Nature

Now let us carry that thought into one or two spheres, and first let us think of nature. One of the noblest odes in literature is the ode of Coleridge written at sunrise at Chamounix. The poet is gazing upwards at the Alps, and he hears a mighty song of praise to God. The torrent praises Him; the eagle praises Him; the forest of pine and the snowy summit praise Him. There is no discord in that mighty chorus—"earth with her thousand voices praises God." But now there comes reeling on to that same scene some poor drunkard with his sodden brain. And the same torrents are sounding in his ears, and the same peaks are white against the heaven. But for ruined him, by his vice and fashioned by his past into a beast, neither in cataract nor snow nor forest is there heard one syllable of heaven. Both look on the same mystic dawn moving on tiptoe where man hath never trod; both hear the rush and swirl of the one river that hurries from the everlasting snow. And to one it is the echo of that song which was sung in the high heaven when Christ was born; to the other it is the echo of despair. In other words, faced by this wondrous world, you and I always get just what we bring. We see its power and glory through the eye, but never do we see them with the eye. We see them with all that we have made ourselves—with every coveting and every conquering—with every virtue that has been wrestled for and every passion that has been brought to heel. That is why places which speak to one of peace, speak to another of sinful opportunity. That is why sky and sea to one are paradise and to another are but air and water. That is why, in apostolic thought, unto the pure all things are pure.

Interpretation of Language

The same thought also applies to language just as truly as it applies to nature. Through all the range of it, language is colored by the abiding mystery of what we are. It might well seem to the casual observer that there were few things more fixed and definite than words. The fact that there are such books as dictionaries argues for the stability of words. And yet those words, which we are always using and which seem fixed and rigid as the hills—there is scarce one of them but is affected subtly by this tremendous fact of personality. In every term we use there is some shade of meaning which has never quite been caught by other men. There is some suggestion that is all our own, whether it be a high suggestion or an evil one. And the point is that all that verbal coloring, which gives to our words an individuality, springs from the kind of life we have experienced and have been forging in the dark. It is in that sense I the character we understand our Lord when He says that by our words we shall be judged. If we are but drawing on a common stock, I can find in our words no principle of judgment. But if on the common language that we use we cast the shadow of our deepest self, then in our words, when all the .books are opened, there will be more of revelation than we dream. It is a truth of widest application that the style is the man. It is true of Shakespeare and of Browning, but it is also true of you and me. We take the words the dictionary gives us, and then we so mold them by our secret self that the day is coming, if Christ is to be credited, when by our words we shall be judged. To put it otherwise, all mastery of language is at the heart of it a moral business. It is not merely an artistic victory; it is a moral and spiritual victory. He who has conquered words and made them serve him so that they throng to him in power and beauty has conquered things more powerful than words in the secret battle-places of the soul. Behind the glory of the words of Ruskin lies the moral enthusiasm of Ruskin. There is the pressure of a dauntless courage in the superb carelessness of Walter Scott. And who does not feel, in reading Stevenson, the presence of these very qualities which made that life of his, with all its suffering, such a quietly heroic thing. Unto the pure all things are pure. It is the inward self that shapes the instrument. It casts its shadow whether for weal or woe on the universal heritage of speech. And that is why, let me it—when the day of reckoning is come, we are told by again repeat one who ought to know that by our words we shall be judged. Now if that be largely true of all speech, it is especially true of the great words we use. It is true, for instance, in a very solemn way of the greatest of all words, God. In the Shorter Catechism, when we were children we learned the answer to the question, "What is God?" Some of us can repeat that answer still, and it would be hard to match in its sublimity. Yet it is not the light of any catechism that has lit up for us the name of God; It is the light of the life we have experienced since we were cradled at our mother's knee, knew a little girl in an orphanage who would never sing a hymn with Father in it. Her father had been a drunken ruffian, and in her wretched home he used to beat her. And she had taken all that childish sorrow and had carried it up into the gates of heaven so that for her there was a cry of terror in the sweetest and tenderest name of God. It is thus that that great name is molded for us. It is colored by the hand of memory. It comes to us impoverished or enriched by all that home has been and all that church has been. That is why God to one means everything; that is why to another it means nothing. That is why to one it is a name of terror and to another of infinite encouragement. No definition of the wisest catechism shall ever tell what God is to the soul. It is the soul itself which answers that.

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The Selective Power of Personality - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Interpretation of Human Life

Passing from language, I would note again that the same thought applies to human life. In the selective power of personality is the secret of our estimate of conduct. It is one of the commands of the New Covenant—"Judge not, that ye be not judged." That is a warning which we all need against censorious or hasty judgments. But you must remember that Christ never meant by these words to disapprove of the faculty of judgment; as a matter of fact we are so constituted that each of us is judging all the time. Every action, whether small or great, is summoned imperiously to our judgment-bar. Swiftly, instinctively, unhesitatingly, we pronounce sentence on it there. We do it every day a hundred times, and do it we must if we are to be men, for it is that faculty of moral judgment which separates us from the beasts that perish. Now there are certain acts so clearly good that the worst of men cannot but admire them; and there are other acts so clearly bad that they are universally condemned. But in between these two extremes lies a whole world of effort and accomplishment, and how we shall judge all that when it confronts us, depends on the deep fact of what we are. There is nothing that reaches us but has its contact with the life which is lying hidden in the soul. It touches secret forms of hope and passion which we thought were dead but which were only sleeping. And it is all that hope and all that passion and all the complex whole that we call self which passes sentence on the acts of men as they rise up for judgment in the gate. In other words, when we are judging others we are passing silent judgment on ourselves. Things will be mean to us if we are mean. Things will be great to us if we be great. By all we have struggled for with many a failure, by every ideal we have lost or won, by hidden lust, by secret sham, do we interpret the drama of mankind. Give me a man who has lived for ten years purely, and he shall find purity on every hand. Give me a man whose life has been a mockery, and all the world shall be a mockery to him. In every sneer, in every commendation, in every word of praise or word of blame, we are but registering what, we have made of life since our feet were on the uplands of the dawn. There came a poor woman once, with hair disheveled, and she anointed the feet of Christ with ointment. Do you remember how diversely that act was viewed by the guests who were reclining at the table? To One of them it was a deed of love that was to be told wherever the Gospel should be preached; to another it was the wild extravagance of an impulsive and abandoned woman. Both looked on the same vase of alabaster; both watched the moving of the same white fingers; but the one who looked upon the deed was Judas, and the other was the Son of God. And in their looks, swift as a swallow's flight—different from each other as night from day—there is a glimpse into that awful gulf which parted the betrayer from his Lord. Unto the pure all things are pure. We see by all that we have become. If we have lived disloyally like Judas, then shall we look upon a sorry spectacle. But if it has been "the utmost for the highest" as it was with Him whom we adore, then may we also catch the gleam of splendor in the ointment lavished on the feet.

What We Are Influences Our Actions in Society

In closing I ask you to observe that we have here the secret of social influence. It is a well-known fact that just to see the best has a strange power of calling out the best. Arnold of Rugby believed so in his boys that they grew ashamed to tell a lie to him. Men have a curious and subtle way of answering to our expectations of them so that oftentimes they will act honorably because they are assured we think they are honorable. To see the finest, in a world like this, is a sure way of evoking what is fine. It was in such a confidence that Jesus worked in His mighty task of bringing in the kingdom. If then we have power by what we see and if what we see depends on what we are, I say that the most urgent of all social duties is the duty of a man to his own soul. I have no faith in any social service that springs from careless and unworthy character. There cannot be any vision in such service, and without vision service is in vain. We need a heart that scorns what is contemptible and clings tenaciously to the highest if men and women are to feel the touch that helps them to be better than themselves. Unto the pure all things are pure. We see the best, and to make it so. Every victory we win alone is aiding our brother to help be a better man. Don't say you can do nothing for your fellows; you can do more for your fellows than many a noisy demagogue by being patient, loyal, true, and pure in the life which no human eye can see.

Christ and the Fear of Death - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Guard Around the Grave

Nor can we be altogether blind to the purposes which God meant this fear to serve. Like everything universal in the heart, it has its duty in the plans of heaven. You remember the cry wrung from the heart of Keats in his exquisite music to the nightingale. "Full many a time," he sings, "I have been half in love with easeful death." And it may be that some who read these pages have been at times so weary of it all that they too have been in love with easy death. It may have been utter tiredness that caused it. It may have been something deeper than all weariness. Who knows but that some may even have dreamt of suicide? Brethren, it is from all such thoughts and from all the passion to be done with life that we are rescued and redeemed and guarded by the terror which God has hung around the grave. Work may be hard, but death is harder still. Duty may be stem, but death is sterner. Dark and gloomy may be the unknown morrow, but it is not so dark and gloomy as the grave. Who might not break through the hedge and make for liberty were the hedge easy to be pushed aside? But God has hedged us about with many a thorn—and we turn to our little pasturage again. When Adam and Eve had been expelled from Eden, they must have longed intensely to return. It was so beautiful and the world so desolate; it was so fertile and the world so hard. But always when they clasped repentant hands and stole in the twilight to the gate of Paradise, there rose the awful form with flaming sword. Sleepless and vigilant he stood at watch. His was a dreadful and terrible presence. No human heart could face that living fire which stood in guardianship of what was lost. And that was why God had placed His angel there, that they might be driven back to the harsh furrow and till the soil and rise into nobility while the sweat was dropping from the brow. So are we driven back to life again by the terror which stands sentinel on death. So are we driven to our daily cross, however unsupportable it seems. And bearing it, at first because we must, it comes to blossom with the passing days until we discover that on this side of the grave there is more of paradise than we had dreamed. Christ then does not deliver us from the deep instinct of self-preservation. That is implanted in the heart by God. It is given for the safeguarding of His gift. It is only when that fear becomes a bondage and when that instinct grows into a tyranny that Christ steps in and breaks the chains that bind us and sets our trembling feet in a large room. The question is, then, how did He do that? How has Christ liberated us from this bondage? I shall answer that by trying to distinguish three elements which are inherent in that fear.

Fear of Dying

In the first place, our fear of death is in a measure but a fear of dying. It is not the fact of death which terrifies; it is all that we associate with the fact. We may have seen a deathbed scene of agony; it is a memory which we shall never lose. We may have read a story of torment in the closing hours. And it is not what death leads to or removes, but rather that dark accompanying prospect which lies hidden within a thousand hearts as an element of the terror of the grave. I think I need hardly stop to prove to you that this is an unreasonable fear. If there are deathbeds which are terrible, are there not others which are quiet as sleep? But blessed be God, Christ does not only comfort us when we are terrified with just alarms: He comforts us when we are foolish children. Clothed with mortality, He says to us, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow." Dreading the pain that one day may arrive, He says, "Sufficient unto the day is its own evil." He never prayed, "Give us a sight of death, and help us to contemplate it every hour we live." He prayed, "Give us this day our daily bread." Christ will not have us stop the song today because of the possible suffering tomorrow. If we have grace to live by when we need it, we shall have grace to die by when we need it. And so He sets His face against that element and says to us, "Let not your heart be troubled." "My grace shall be sufficient for thee, and my strength made perfect in thy weakness."

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November 22

The Temptations of Calvary

In all points tempted like as we are— Heb_4:15

Christ's Temptations Were Real

That our Lord's temptations were intensely real is the accepted faith of Christendom. He was tempted in all points like as we are. Unless He was really and cruelly tempted and knew the full meaning of resistance, He can never, in any helpful way, be the brother of tempted men and women. And if He be not Brother then He is not Savior, for a Savior, whatever else he be, must be vitally identified with man. Our Lord's sinlessness was not endowment. It was rather an unparalleled achievement. It was not a gift bestowed on Him by heaven. It was a moral and spiritual victory. It was wrought out, moment after moment, by a will sustained in perfect poise with God, instantly and unswervingly obedient. Now always, where the heart is, there is the sorest onset of temptation. Temptation has always its eye upon the citadel, though it may seem to be leveled at the outworks. And that is why, right through the Gospel story, the bitterest temptations of our Lord are to be found converging on the cross. How, then, was our Lord tempted in regard to the great experience of Calvary? To what suggestions, winging from the darkness, had He to offer victorious resistance? Let us reverently give our thought to that.

Tempted to Avoid the Cross

We see Him first, and we see Him often, tempted to avoid the cross. That sore temptation never left Him. At the very outset of His ministry, such was the suggestion of the devil. It runs like some dark thread of hell through all the encounters of the wilderness. Let Him with all His brilliant gifts ally Himself with worldly policies and what need would there be of the bloody way of Calvary? It smote Him again after many days and this time through the lips of Simon Peter. Was not our Lord recalling the scene out in the wilderness when He said, "Get thee behind me, Satan" (Mat_16:23)? And near the end when the Greeks came craving an interview with Christ, was that not the old temptation back again? Why, in that thrilling hour, did our Lord say "Now is my soul troubled" (Joh_12:27)? Why did He not rejoice in spirit when the "other sheep" were coming to His feet? Surely it was because these Greeks were envoys offering an open door to the big world without the imminent agonies of Calvary. It is notable that in the Gospel of St. John there is no mention whatever of Gethsemane. To St. John that offer of the Grecian world was the spiritual equivalent of Gethsemane. It was the temptation to achieve the kingship on which His kingly heart was set by some way other than the cross. He was tempted to avoid the cross, to shun it, to take some other road. Have we not all been tempted just like that? And does it not bring the Master very near us in a brotherhood intensely real to remember that He was victorious just there?

Tempted to Hasten on the Cross

Once again our Savior was tempted to hasten on the cross. He was tempted to antedate the hour of God. We read, for instance, that when the sisters sent for Him, He abode two days still in the same place where He was (Joh_11:6). For One who was the Good Physician that was an extraordinary thing to do. If we summoned our doctor to a dear one and if for two days he never came, we should find it very hard to call him good. Was He waiting to augment the miracle? But then Lazarus was already dead (Joh_11:39). Was He waiting to test the sisters' faith? But is that how Jesus deals with loving friends? He was waiting because He saw so clearly that the raising of Lazarus would seal His doom (Joh_11:53), and He dreaded to antedate the hour of God. Human love was calling Him to Bethany. Affection for His friends was calling Him. Going, He signed His death-warrant—but was it His Father's will that He should die yet? And so, though drawn by the cords of love to go, He waited in quiet fellowship with Heaven until the will of God was perfectly revealed. How often had He said "Mine hour is not yet come." With what profound conviction did He know that God had His appointed hour for Calvary. Might not these drawings of love be but the devil's stratagem to interfere with the ordered times of heaven?—and He abode two days still in the same place where He was. Once more does not that bring Him very near us? Have we not ail been tempted to hurry on God's hour? There are few things more difficult in life, sometimes, than just to wait patiently for God. And He was tempted in all points like as we are.

The Temptation to Come Down from the Cross

Lastly our Lord was tempted to come down from the cross. "Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him" (Mat_27:42). When these voices broke upon His ear, were they not fraught with terrible temptation? Think of the agony He was enduring in His so sensitive and sinless frame. Think how the very passion of His heart was that these men and women should believe in Him. And as these cries rang upon His ear did they not carry with them the suggestion that in one instant He might escape His torture, and doing it win the allegiance of His own? Tempted in every prospect of the cross, our Lord was tempted on the cross itself. By one swift action might He not end His agony and win the great ambition of His life? And the wonderful thing is that on the cross as in the desert at the opening of His ministry, He steeled Himself against these tempting voices. They said "Come down, and we will believe in you." We believe, because He did not come down. To us the glory is in His hanging there till He cried in a loud voice "It is finished." And when we are tempted, as we so often are, to release ourselves when "crucified with Christ," what a comfort that we can quietly say, "He was tempted in all points like as we are."

November 23

The Sinlessness of Christ - Page 1
by George H. Morison

In all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin— Heb_4:15

A Truth of Utmost Importance

It might seem at first as if the sinlessness of Jesus were a matter far away from human need. It is as if we discussed the color of the stars or the density of water in the depth of ocean. Why should we trouble ourselves, it may be asked, over an abstract question such as this? Were it not better, in a reverent faith, to leave these mysteries alone? It is enough for me (a man might say) that Jesus of the Gospel story was the friend of publicans and sinners and went about doing good. The one fatal objection to that attitude is that to a thoughtful mind it never can be permanent. Steadily, whatever point we start from, we are forced into the presence of this problem. And especially is that true of all of us who believe in a Gospel of redemption and who cannot conceive of a message of good news which has not redemption at its heart. The keystone of our faith is this, that Jesus the Lord suffered for our sins. But if Christ was sinful, as you and I are sinful, then not for our sins, but for His own, He died. So all the efficacy of that atoning death, with all the preaching of Christ crucified, rests ultimately on the sinlessness of Jesus. It is not, then, an unimportant theme. It is one of the most important of all themes. It lifts the cross out of the realm of tragedy into the clear air of willing sacrifice. Only if Jesus Christ was sinless can we be certain of what is all-important—that in a free action of redeeming love He died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

Entire New Testament Affirms Christ's Sinlessness

Now when you study the New Testament writings—I mean the writings outside the four Gospels—one thing that becomes plain is this, that they all record the sinlessness of Jesus. However the writers differ in their outlook—and each of them has his unique outlook—however they may diverge from one another in their concept of the work of Jesus, yet there is one point on which they all agree, and that is in conceiving Christ as sinless. John had lain upon the Master's bosom, and he writes, "In Him there was no sin." Peter had known Him in the closest intimacy, and he writes, "He died, the righteous for the unrighteous." Paul writes, "He who knew no sin was made sin for us." And the writer of Hebrews in our text says, "He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin." These are but a few texts out of many which indicate a perfect unanimity. Each writer may use the fact in his own way, but all of them insist upon the fact. And what we have to ask is this, How was that profound impression generated so that not one writer of the New Testament doubts for a moment the sinlessness of Christ?

First Heresies Concerned Christ's Divinity

Let me say in passing that it helps us to conceive how powerful this impression really was when we recall the nature of the earliest heresies. When men today have doubts about the Lord, it is the divinity that is the point of difficulty. You and I may doubt if He was God, but we never for an instant doubt that He was man. Yet the singular thing is that in the earliest heresies the point of difficulty was the opposite. Men did not doubt if Jesus was divine then, but they doubted if He was really human. Now it seems to me that no mere moral grandeur will ever quite explain these earliest heresies. One is not less a man, but more a man, if he is morally and spiritually wonderful. That strange belief uttered in early heresies, that Christ was not human as you and I are human, can only rest on the profound impression that He stood apart from all in being sinless. The nearer then to the historic Christ, the more intense the belief that He was sinless. The closer that men stand to Him, the more profound does the impression grow. And so we must go back to the record of the Gospel story and try to discover how that impression was created.

Christ's Sinlessness Not Self-Declared

In the first place I should like to make clear that it was certainly not created by insistence. Christ never insisted on His sinlessness—never took pains to prove that He was sinless. There are some things on which our Lord insisted with a self-assertion that is most magnificent. I am the truth, He said—I am the life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me. Yet though no one who ever taught mankind has made such stupendous claims as Jesus Christ, you never find Him saying, "I am sinless." On the contrary, one might almost say that He deliberately veiled that fact. So did He live in fellowship with outcasts that they called Him the friend of publicans and sinners. And once when a lawyer, with the gloss of a compliment, came to Him and said, "Good Master," Christ checked him instantly—"Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." Clearly then, for reasons we can only guess at, Christ did not passionately insist upon His sinlessness. However the impression was created, He never declared it so.

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The Sinlessness of Christ - Page 2
by George H. Morison

No Deed of Sin Recalled

How then was the impression generated? Well, the first answer is that those men who companied with Jesus did not recollect one deed of sin. When the years of ministry were closed, they would recall it all in tender memory. They would summon to the sessions of sweet thought the days they had spent together in the villages. And as they did so and as they talked together of the time when it was bliss to be alive, silently it would be borne in upon them that they had never seen one trace of sin in Jesus. They had been with Him in His temptations, and they had seen Him in the widest range of circumstances. They had known Him in hunger and in weariness; they had watched Him in rapture and in agony. And yet as they looked back upon it all in the penetrative light of memory, they could not recollect one single incident which suggested to them the thought that Christ had sinned. Thus it was that the deep impression was created. It was a judgment based upon the memory of the wonderful years they had spent with Jesus. Could they have recalled one single instance in which the conduct of Jesus had been flawed, then neither in Peter nor in John would we have found the sinlessness of Christ.

Mere Absence of Observable Sin Not Sufficient

Now all that is absolutely true, yet it is far from being all the truth. It is quite impossible to build a Christian doctrine on any negative basis such as that. Granted that they had never known Christ to sin, is that any adequate proof that He was sinless? Had they been watching Him with unwearied eyes from the moment of His birth to the cross? On the contrary, they had only known Him for three brief years out of the three-and-thirty, and of these three years there was many a day when they were never in His company at all. What of the long years of village childhood? What of the crucial time of ripening manhood? What of the still and happy days in Bethany when Martha and Mary were the only company? There was no Peter to be observant there nor was there any John to watch and to remember; there was only the love of women so adoring that the universal voice has called it blind. Had any of the disciples detected sin in Jesus, we should never have had the faith that He was sinless. But to call Him sinless because they saw no sin is something that no reasonable man can do. For immediately on doing it, there arises before him all the unchronicled and unrecorded years when Christ was hidden from the eyes of watchers in shadows that were as enwrapping as the grave.

In Jesus There was No Consciousness of Sin

The true foundation of the doctrine lies deeper than any absence of the act. It was not thus, at least not thus alone, that the profound impression was created. What impressed men in Jesus Christ was not merely the absence of any act of sin, but rather the absence of any consciousness of sin. It was that never once did he make a confession. It was that never once did He betray penitence. It was that never once upon His lips was there whisper of remorse or of regret. The nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely active is his conscience. He becomes sensitive to shades of guilt that are imperceptible to common men. Yet Christ, who lived in a fellowship with God that is admittedly unique and uncommunicable, never betrays so much as by a word the faintest trace of consciousness of sin. As Simon Peter grew in spirituality, he cried, "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man." As Paul advanced in the deep things of heaven, he came to know he was the chief of sinners. But Jesus, who through all His earthly years was walking in perfect union with His Father, never once whispered, "Father, I have sinned." We see Him in those high and holy seasons when He was looking back upon His past. We overhear Him in His hours of prayer; we see Him in the agonies of death. Yet in such seasons when purest and holiest souls feel above everything their need of mercy, the pure and holy soul of Jesus Christ was absolutely unconscious of that need. We have had very many shining saints in Christendom, and they have differed vastly from each other. But there is one point in which they are all alike, whatever their century or their communion. And it is this, that as they have wrestled heavenward and grown in grace and fellowship with God, out of the depths has come the fervent cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner." It is not your worldly man who utters that. It is not your nominal and easy Christian. As life in God becomes more real and deep, steadily the sense of sin is deepened. And the one thing you will note in the experience of Jesus Christ is that with t life in God unparalleled, He never had any consciousness of sin. And He was always talking about sin, remember. It was a theme which was ever on His lips. He poured the vials of His withering anger upon the man who thought that he was righteous. Looking abroad upon the world of men He saw no hope for them except in penitence—"I will arise and go unto my father, and say unto him, Father, I have sinned." Now it was that fact, as I understand the Gospels, which created the profound impression of Christ's sinlessness. It was that He had eyes to see sin everywhere—yet had no eyes to see it in Himself. It was that other men when they are called to die cry out into the dark, "Father, forgive me"; but that the Master when He came to die said, "Father, forgive them"—not forgive Me. There is not a trace in Christ of any healed scar. There is not a trace of regret or of remorse. In all the history of the Redeemer there is no word of penitence nor any sign of shame. And all this, with a heart so sensitive and with a life so flooded and absorbed with God, can only mean that Jesus Christ was sinless.

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The Sinlessness of Christ - Page 3
by George H. Morison

Jesus Used Praise but Not Penitence of Old Testament

No one can study the prayers of Jesus Christ without discovering what he owes to the Old Testament. Christ fed and nourished His piety on the sublime words of psalmist and of prophet. And though His soul was steeped in prophecy and the language of it rose to His lips in prayer, there is one point at which He stops, saying, as it were, "Thus far and no further." It was with the Scripture that He met the tempter. It was with the Scripture that He assailed His adversaries. It was of the Scripture that His heart was full as He hung in His last hours upon the cross. Yet never once, though claiming as His own that wonderful heritage of faith and prayer—never once does He personally use the cry of prophet or psalmist for forgiveness. Isaiah had cried, "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips." David had cried out of a broken heart, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned." Yet Christ, who was so steeped in these old writings that their language rose to His lips as if by instinct, never uses—never repeats—these penitential and brokenhearted prayers. Now all that we ever find in Holy Scripture is the transcript of our deepest life. We can only use its language with sincerity when it has some link with our experience. All that answers to us as if it were our own comes to our lips when we draw near to God; all else, though it speaks as with the tongue of angels, can never rise to heaven in our prayers. Why is it then that Jesus Christ is silent with such a treasury ever at His hand? Why does He use the psalmist's adoration, yet never in one word the psalmist's penitence? The only answer of which I can think is that in all the experience of Jesus there was nothing which answered to that heavenward cry in which psalmist and prophet prayed for pardon. Had He felt in Himself the slightest need, He would have used the penitential language. For there is nothing like it in the world, it is so poignant and sincere. Yet Christ who used all else never used that—never took up a single word of it though from a child in the sweet home of Nazareth He had been fed on the word of Holy Scripture.

The Reality of Jesus Temptations

There is one other aspect of the matter that I can hardly avoid saying a word upon. It is that if Christ be sinless, then what becomes of His temptations? Now let me say, and say with all my heart, that I hold the temptations of Jesus to have been intensely real. He is no brother to me unless in all reality He was tempted as the Son of man. And the point is, how could He be tempted so—truly intensely and terribly tempted—if He was indeed a sinless Savior? I shall not profess to give a perfect answer for I am not here to give little answers to great questions. But I am here to suggest to you such thoughts as I may have brooded on in quiet hours. And I think that there are two considerations which throw light upon the difficulty, and these two I would put as follows.

The Temptation Between Two Rights

The first is that the bitterest temptations are not always dependent upon sin. They spring from the conflict, not between right and wrong, but from the conflict between right and right. If a man, for instance, is tempted to become drunk, then of course within his heart there must be evil. And if all temptations were of that complexion, then Christ our Savior could never have been tempted. But I submit that in this life of ours there are other temptations more bitter than that which if a man has experienced and resisted, he has sounded all the depths of moral trial. Here, for instance, is a student who has come out of a humble home. And he is brilliant and successful in all he does, and the way is opening for a fine career. And then one day there comes to him the news that his father is smitten with some dread paralysis and that the little family business will be ruined unless the son comes home, and comes at once. On the one hand is his duty to his mother and to the little children still under her care. On the other hand is his duty to himself and to the gifts of intellect which God hath given him. And what I say is that in these rival voices calling each of them as with the voice of heaven, there are all the elements of a moral conflict beside which that of the drunkard is a sham. For you have not exhausted moral conflict when you have told of the conflict between good and evil. Subtler than that, and sometimes far more terrible, is the conflict between good and good—the duty that we owe ourselves faced by the duty that we owe our brother; the duty that we owe our wife and children faced by the duty that we owe to heaven. What I mean is that if all human progress were merely a progress from bad to good, then in Christ who was entirely good, there could have been no progress through antagonism. But if within the circle of the good many of our fiercest battles must be fought, then it is easy to see why a sinless Savior might be tempted as we are. Yes, and if sinless, might it not be the case that He felt temptation more terribly than we? For there are calls that are deadened for everyone of us just because our hearts are dulled through sin. Had we been less dulled, with what intense appeal certain claims might have come home to us, and so would the temptation have been so much more the awful.

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The Sinlessness of Christ - Page 4
by George H. Morison

Christ's Sinlessness an Attainment

And the last thought that I would leave with you is that the sinlessness of Christ was not a gift to Him, but rather I should call it an attainment. "Why callest thou me good?" He said; "there is none good but one, that is, God." Christ never claimed and never had on earth an absolute and unconditioned goodness. His was the goodness that was always perfect because through every condition it was tested and never failed, even in hours of agony, in a perfect and filial response. The God who dwells in heaven cannot be tempted. He lives in absolute and unconditioned goodness. He dwells in heaven where there is no temptation above the smoke and stir of this dim planet. But Christ was human to the very depths and knew all the play of emotion and impulse, and felt every influence that breathed upon Him, crying to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan." From moment to moment He had to choose His course. From moment to moment He had to trust His Father. From moment to moment He had to resist, even though it was a mother who appealed. And we call Him sinless not as God is sinless, who cannot be tempted nor touched in the high heaven, but as one who never failed and never faltered in the fulfillment of His Father's will. To you and me the heavenly Father speaks as He spoke to the well-beloved Son. And you and I hearing Him misinterpret Him, and at the end of the day are sorry and ashamed. Christ caught the faintest syllable of heaven. Christ interpreted it all without a flaw. Christ bowed to it joyfully and without a murmur even when the will of God was Calvary. That is the sinlessness of Jesus Christ—not an unethical gift, but an achievement. It was wrought out from stage to stage in perfect obedience to the heavenly Father. And so I think there falls an added glory on the deep mystery of Jesus' sinlessness when we remember that right to the very end He was tempted in all points like as we are.

November 24

The Interceding Savior

He is able also to save them to the uttermost…seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them— Heb_7:25

The Strengthening Power of Prayer

There are times in life when it is very helpful to know that somebody is praying for us. It strengthens us when we are prone to faint. When some difficult duty lies ahead, when we have to undergo an operation or when death has taken away a loved one and we are overwhelmed with loneliness, the certainty that friends are praying for us is a mighty succor to our trembling hearts and often ministers quietness and confidence. I have often heard missionaries say that what sustained them was their assurance of the prayers at home. During the war many of our boys used to speak of the difference this made. It reinforced their hearts and kept them strong to know that folks at home were praying for them. Indeed, I have found that many who never pray are eager to have the prayers of others when facing a crisis in their lives.

"I Have Prayed for Thee"

Now our text tells us that somebody is praying for us, and the somebody is our risen Savior. That is the only meaning which our text can have, and with all its mystery we thankfully accept it. We light on the same truth again in the song of triumph in the eighth of Romans. John, too, in his old age, dwelt on the consolation of that thought (1Jo_2:1). And if we only let it sink into our hearts, we find it the good news of God. Others may forget us in their prayers; there is One in heaven who never does forget. Others may fail us when their lamp burns low; He ever liveth. We are engirdled by the prayers of One who loves us and has the ear of God and therefore is able to save unto the uttermost.

Nor was this ministry begun in heaven; it was carried over from the days on earth. Our Lord on earth was an interceding Savior. One remembers His words to Simon Peter recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke: "Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." And if our Lord so prayed when He was here, why should it be thought a thing incredible that He would continue that ministry in heaven? Does not Satan desire to have us just as he desired to have Simon? And often when our foot has wellnigh slipped, have we not escaped out of the fowler's snare? And why should we be charged with being mystical because we adoringly ascribe our rescue to the intercession of the risen Lord? Did He not say, "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter"? Have we never experienced with an inward certainty that in the hour of need that Comforter has come? All fresh enduements of the Holy Spirit, whether for service or for suffering, are intimations of a praying Savior.

Again, we remember another intercession, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." And if He prayed that prayer when on the cross, we may be perfectly certain that forgiveness followed. Did not He say beside the grave of Lazarus, "I knew that thou hearest me always"? How little any of us know what we are doing! How often we say, "If I had only known!" Hence springs remorse and agony of conscience and thoughts which reproach us in the silent night. In such seasons, may we not lift our hearts to Him who ever lives to intercede and hear Him praying for our human ignorance as once He prayed upon the cross? So much of our sin is not deliberate. Evil is wrought by want of thought. We are such ignorant and foolish beings that we can rarely follow our actions to their issues. But He is praying for us just as He prayed on Calvary, and He is able to save unto the uttermost because He ever liveth to make intercession for us.

And then one thinks what this implies, for prayer is never an isolated thing. Whenever anybody prays for you, it means that he bears you on his heart. When a mother prays for her boy who is a prodigal, that is a token that she loves him still. When a sister prays for a brother who is careless, that means that he is very dear to her. If our Lord is praying for us in His ascension, that tells us He has not forgotten us but is eager to help us in our need. Prayers that do not lead to action are mockeries. True prayer issues in endeavor. Unless we are willing to help the man we pray for, our prayers are nothing else than empty breath. Thus do we find assurance of His help when the way is dark and the heart is very sore, in the good news with which the Gospel rings, that He ever liveth to make intercession for us.

November 25

Through the Eternal Spirit

Christ,...through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God— Heb_9:14

The Two Worlds

It is not likely, from the turn of the expression, that the writer is thinking of the Holy Spirit, and probably we shall get nearest to his meaning if we recall his outlook upon life. For him there were two worlds, one the visible world that lies around us with its fields and its oceans and its cities, with its splendors of the Jewish Temple; and then beyond that another world, invisible yet not necessarily distant, free from the relativities of space and time. To most of us the world we see is real, and the world we cannot see is but a shadow. To this writer the visible is shadow, and the unseen is the intense reality. Everything here that is bright and good and beautiful, even the ark, the altar and the Temple, are but copies of the realities beyond. John tells us he was in the isle that is called Patmos, and then he adds, "I was in the spirit." There were two environments for him, and there are two environments for everybody. And the worth of life rests on the possibility of piercing through the visible environment into the realities beyond. To the author of Hebrews, that is what Jesus did for the common man and woman in the street. He lifted their lives out of the shadow-world into what this writer calls the world to come. And by the world to come he does not mean a world that is to come when life is over, but is to come, by the saving grace of God, into the midst of our shadow-life today.

Now when the writer thinks of the death of Christ, that eternal world was always in his view. All other sacrifices were in the shadow-world; this in the region of reality. When a lamb was offered upon a Jewish altar, that offered lamb was, as it were, a sacrament. It was a visible sign of something deeper. It was a hint of an invisible reality. But when Christ died, into this shadow-world there broke the great reality at last—the world to come came upon the cross. In this world are many different spirits. There are various spirits of selfishness and hate. In the eternal world one spirit reigns for ever—it is the spirit of self-forgetful love. And in the animating and triumphant spirit of the world that is ignorant of space and time our blessed Savior gave up His life on Calvary. All that inspires reality—all that constitutes its very heart, all that differentiates the world to come from the shadow-world of time and sense leapt into the light and shone into the eyes of lowly men when Christ offered Himself upon the cross.

Only in Christianity Does God Offer the Sacrifice

But even so we scarcely reach the depths of that most beautiful expression. For to the Oriental (however it be with us ) the word spirit was never an abstraction. Shining through the letters he saw God; it brought him into touch with the Divine; it was in God that there lay that innermost reality which we describe as the spirit of eternity. Now think again of the sacrifice of Christ. In every other religion that we know of it is man who gives the sacrifice. He goes to his herd and takes his bulls or goats, and in expiation he offers them to God. But the glory of our Christian faith is this, that there it is not man who gives the sacrifice. The giver of the offering is God. God so loved the world that He gave. Yes, dying upon the cross for us, Christ showed the reigning spirit of reality. But dying, He did even more than that—He showed that spirit in the heart of God. It was not to change that heart but to reveal it; not to gain but to display its love that our Lord died upon the tree. Through the eternal spirit, through that spirit which reigns where things are real, through that spirit which from all eternity has had its source and dwelling in the heart of God, our Lord offered Himself upon the cross.

The Freedom with Which Our Lord Died

Then blended with that, though it seem strange to us, is the thought of the freedom in which our Savior died. That great thought is never far away from the heart of this inspired writer. When we say that ours is a religion of the spirit, we do not only mean that it is spiritual. We mean that it moves in the region of the spirit, free from the chafing fetters of compulsion. And always, to New Testament writers, spirit conveys that atmosphere of liberty as of the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Now once again think of the death of Christ. Was it inevitable and compelled? Was our blessed Lord in the grip of cruel hands? Was He held in the resistless power of Rome? No, says our writer, and he says it passionately, returning again and again to the great thought, our Lord died in real and spiritual freedom. The cross was not repression. It was final, full, deliberate expression. It was not endured in the spirit of a slave—it was welcomed in the spirit of a Son. It was not borne in any grim necessity, but in the perfect freedom of a sonship that found its joy in doing the Father's will. Picture the struggling and resisting beast dragged to the sacrifice of Jewish altars. Through compulsion it was haled to death. The cords of bondage were upon its horns. But Christ offered Himself through the eternal spirit—the free glad spirit of an eternal sonship—and that made all the difference in the world.

November 26

The Anguish of the Light - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions— Heb_10:32

Battle After Illumination

This is a very remarkable conclusion to a verse that suggests the blessings of the light: it is one of those suggestive anticlimaxes that are so familiar to students of the Scriptures. No blessing is nobler than illumination. It tells of the benediction of the light. It speaks of a life that has arisen from darkness and moved into the glorious shining of the sun. And yet, when we expect to hear of summer's gladness and to catch the sound of music in the blue heaven, we hear of battle with its blood and misery and the cry and agony of wounded men. After illumination a great joy? We should have looked for some conclusion such as that. After illumination a great sense of liberty and a peace that the world cannot take away? Scripture does not deny these blessed consequences, but in its splendid fidelity to all experience it says that after illumination may come battle.

Illumination of the Intellect

Think first then of the illumination of the intellect and of all that follows on the light of knowledge. That is not always liberty and power: sometimes a conflict which is very terrible ensues. When Eve in the virgin paradise of God ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, her eyes were opened and she was illuminated with the light that never was on sea or land; and yet that light did not bring peace to Eve, neither gladness nor any rest of heart, but only the sorrow of a weary struggle. The more we know, the more we want to know. The more we know, the more we cannot know. And doubts are born and speculations rise and much that once seemed certain grows unstable until at last, wearied and perplexed, not through the power of darkness but of light, a man begins to realize how grim is the struggle that succeeds illumination.

Nor is that consequence less notable in the lesser field of personal experience. There are those who can recall the struggle that followed the clear shining of the light. Take for instance a young man, a student, who has been trained in a pious home. There he accepted without serious questioning the faith of his father and mother. Their character commended it to him—he saw it lived and therefore felt it true—and in a faith that never had been shaken, he joined in worship and bowed his knee in prayer. There are many who never lose that childhood's faith. They grow as the lily and spread their roots as Lebanon. It is no necessary witness of superiority that a man should have come to his own by way of agony. But often, with ail that light of knowledge which the years bring to most of us today, there falls a different story to be written. Illumination comes by what we read; it flashes upon us in our college lectures. And the world is different and God and man are different from all that we cherished in our childhood's days. And then begins that time of stress and strain, so bitter and yet so infinitely blessed, through which a man must fight his way alone to faith and peace and character and God. There is a strife that is nobler than repose. There is a battle more blessed than quiescence. There is a stress and strain which comes when God arises and cries to a young heart "Let there be light." All which, so modern that it seems but yesterday, is yet so old that Scripture understands it, hinting not vaguely in our text of the struggle that succeeds illumination.

Illumination of the Heart

Think next of the illumination of the heart. The illumination of the heart is love. Just as the light of the intellect is truth, so the light of every heart is love. Without love the heart is always dark, and with love the heart is always light. The commonest dwelling becomes a palace with it, and there is sunshine for the dreariest day. And all the wealth and joy of fame and whirl of fashion can never irradiate this heart of ours like love. He who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and he who dwelleth in God is in the light. The luster of the heart is always there, but it is unlighted until love comes in. And now call to remembrance the former days in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions. Many years ago some of you mothers here gathered your firstborn child into your arms, and there was such gladness in those eyes of yours that every neighbor saw your life illuminated. And now as you look back upon it all and think of all that has come and gone since then, you know the sorrows that have followed love. What sleepless nights—what hours of weary watching—what seasons of agony when death was near! What struggle to do that which was hard to do when wills were rebellious and lips untruthful. All this has followed the illumination that came when the love of motherhood was born, and all this is the anguish of the light. Let a man love his work, and in that light he shall be led to many a weary wrestling. Let a man love his land, and in that light he shall take up burdens that are not easily borne. Let a man love his risen and living Savior, and in that light his life shall be a battlefield as he wrestles daily not with flesh and blood but with the principalities and powers of darkness. Love has its triumphs, but it has its tortures. Love has its paradise and it has its purgatory. Love has its mountains of transfiguration, and its olive gardens where the sweat is blood. Love is the secret of the sweetest song that ever was uttered by human lips, and love is the secret of the keenest suffering that ever pierced the heart.

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The Anguish of the Light - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Illumination of the Will

Then observe how true this is of the illumination of the will. For our will like our intellect has its great hours when in the light of heaven we see light. It may be we had been groping in the darkness not seeing clearly what our duty was. And choice was difficult, so much depended on it: there was so much to win, so much to lose. And then it may be in one radiant hour never to be forgotten through the years, we heard as it were a voice behind us saying, "This is the way: walk ye in it." Very probably we had prayed about it, for it is in such seasons that men learn to pray. We cried, "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps: Lord, lead me, for I know not which way is best." And then, perhaps by some word from friendly lips or by some providence or disappointment, clear as the sun shining in the heavens we saw what for us must be the path of duty. Such hours of high and resolute decision are among the greatest hours of human life. There is not a power or faculty we have that is not illuminated by the glory of them. And yet the struggle and torment that preceded them when we were stumbling and groping towards a decision may not be half so terrible and searching as the struggle and the strain that follow after. Never are things renounced so sweet to man as in the season when they are renounced. Never is the alternative so winning as in the hour when it has been rejected. Never do things given up appeal to us so sweetly and so subtly and so secretly as in the season when we have turned our back upon them and set our faces bravely toward the dawn. The most difficult task in life is not to win; the most difficult task is to keep what we have won: never to falter from the verdict of our high and radiant hours when the shadows deepen, never to go back on our decisions, never to listen again to any voices which in our worthiest and purest moments we knew to be the voices of the enemy. That is the reason why all great decisions ought to be reinforced by prayer. There is no weapon on earth like prayer for helping us to keep what we have won. For prayer unites us to the living Christ, touches the vilest of us with the touch of heaven, and brings to our aid that power of perfect living which was witnessed long ago in Galilee. Tasks in hours of insight willed must be through days of gloom fulfilled, but in the gloomiest day a man may lift his heart up and draw for his need out of the grace of Jesus.

Illumination of Conscience

And in closing I want you to take our text in regard to the illumination of the conscience. Do you remember when conscience was illuminated what a great fight of afflictions you endured? That may have happened many years ago when you were young and ardent and impressionable, and yet so unsearchable are the ways of God that perhaps it is happening to some of you now, after many prayerless, careless, and hardening years. You recall how David after a great sin hardened his heart and justified himself. And then by the word of Nathan the prophet there flashed on his conscience the light of a holy God. Whereupon that mighty soul, after he was illuminated, broke out into that penitential agony which has come ringing down the ages and shall ring on forever: "Create within me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." That is not the crying of despair nor of the soul that has forfeited the everlasting mercy: it is the eternal crying of the human conscience that has been irradiated by the light of God. My brother and sister, if God has so come to you, He will never leave you nor forsake you. He has a purpose of peace towards your soul that has been destined from the bosom of eternity. He has begun His saving work in you which only awaits the fullness of response to result in the blessedness of power and in the rest and liberty of heaven.

November 27

Patience - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Ye have need of patience— Heb_10:36

Virtues of Necessity

There are some virtues which are exclusive virtues and are only demanded in peculiar circumstances. They have at the best a partial application. In certain emergencies they are obligatory or in certain social relationships; but that virtue of which we speak now can never be included among these. The child needs patience when he goes to school, for without it he will never learn. The boy needs patience on the football field, for without it he will never play. The mother needs it among her growing children: the father amid the anxieties of business: he who is in work needs it every day, and he who is out of work needs it even more.

Patience Against Impulsiveness

There are certain natures, it is true, more liable than others to impatience, and sometimes the finest natures are so tempted. There is a note of impulse and of eagerness in certain natures which are full of charm; a nimbleness of apprehension, a sudden flashing as of a swallow's wing; and often it is natures such as these which do so much to beautify society that are most sorely tempted to impatience. It is the fairest of our Highland lakes which are most liable to sudden storm. In a tamer country they would escape the squall; we could depend on them more in duller levels. But the very grandeur of the hills around them tosses them swiftly into wild commotion, and so is it with certain men and women. We think of Moses, meekest of God's servants, shattering the tables of the law. We think of Peter in impulsive loyalty cutting off the ear of the priest's servant. And we seem to see the Highland lake again with its silent hills forever reaching heavenward and its hollows which are the caverns of the wind.

Noble and Ignoble Patience

It is well also to remember constantly that there is a noble and an ignoble patience. Of this, as of all the other virtues, the devil always has his counterfeit. If we seek for the perfect pattern of patience, instinctively we turn to our Redeemer; yet of one thing Christ was utterly impatient, and that one thing was evil. Those fierce denunciations of the Pharisees, that groaning beside the grave of Lazarus, are all in the picture of the patient Christ. It is the duty of no one to be patient when evil can be checked or wrong be righted. All our liberties were won for us by heroic impatience of the wrong. There are times when patience is the badge of weakness and ruthlessly betrays the faithless heart; there are times when impatience is divine. Had Robert the Bruce been patient under tyranny, where would our liberty have been today? Had Knox been patient and borne the yoke in meekness, where would have been the Church of Christ in Scotland? And had we been patient in this present hour when the dearest human rights are being imperiled, when nations are being trampled underfoot, when the bond of honor is a scrap of paper, Christ would have said to us, "I never knew you; depart from me, ye cursed of my Father." So long as evil is avoidable, every follower of Christ must be impatient with it. It may be criminal to be a martyr when it is possible to be a soldier. No man is worthy to be a Christian citizen or to have a place within the Christian commonwealth who cannot be splendidly impatient sometimes with tyranny and cruelty and evil. My Christian friend, that is ignoble patience—shall I tell you what noble patience is? Noble patience is the cheerful bearing of what is inevitable and unavoidable. It is in the chastisements sent to you from God; it is in the sufferings which you have to bear; it is in the trials upon the line of duty, that "ye have need of patience." Ignoble patience is the child of cowardice. It is afraid "to lose with God." It is the fruitful mother of injustice, the perpetuator of social abuses. Noble patience welcomes what is sent, believes that behind everything is Goer, issues in a quiet which is victory. Matthew Arnold in one of his choicest poems calls patience "the neighbor of despair." But the patience of the Lord Jesus Christ is never the neighbor of despair. It is the neighbor of high and quenchless hope, of confidence that the best is yet to be, of trust in the providence which counts the stars and providently caters to the sparrow.

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Patience - Page 2
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Patience Versus Endurance

Always, too, we should remember that patience is something different from endurance. It is possible to endure and not be patient. Endurance is a very noble virtue; nothing great was ever done without it. There is a world of meaning in our Scottish proverb, He that tholes, o'er comes. But patience in the fullness of its import is ethically finer than endurance: it is endurance with sunshine on its brow. Patience is endurance which is willing. It is endurance with gladness in its mien. It is the endurance which recognizes God and the infinite wisdom of His ordering. It is the endurance which is only possible when one is sure that love is at the helm and that all things work together for his good. A man may endure with curses in his heart. But patience has no curses in its heart. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Patience is endurance in Christ's company, and it takes the cross up with a ready mind, for it leans upon the perfect love of God.

No Shortcuts

Patience is needed in peculiar measure for all development of human character. "In your patience possess ye your souls"—your selves. Every man, that is, has a true self hidden amid the ruins of his nature. And as a mother from a burning homestead saves her child, so man must win his life. And the only way to do it is the long way, the long and tedious and patient way—in your patience ye shall win your souls. Just as there are no shortcuts to heaven, so are there no shortcuts to character. If it takes long to grow a mustard seed, it will take longer still to grow a man. And therefore we have need of patience when we are tempted to what is swift and flashy; tempted to forget that of all lengthy ways there are none so lengthy as the ways of God. "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." It was the great temptation of Christ as He looked out upon His opening ministry. And then He chose the long and lowly way by the garden of Gethsemane and Calvary, and so came to His kingdom and His crown.

Once again, do we not need patience in regard to the plans and purposes of God? "The mills of God grind slowly." Beautiful is the patience of a nurse ministering to some restless invalid; beautiful the patience of a mother among her children who are never still; but in a world like this where night is loath to flee and the crimson morning is so slow in coming, it calls for a patience not less real than that if man is to believe in God. Think of the state of things today. Every hospital is full of wounded men; every city thronged with homeless fugitives; every field in Northern France today has been opened for the burial of the slain. And all this after the faith of centuries and the mystic communion of the Holy Supper and the praise unceasing from a million tongues to "Jesus, lover of my soul." My Christian hearer, that is hard to bear, and it is harder still to understand. It is as though He who sitteth in the heavens were making merry with the toil of ages. And what I say is that in this present hour, more than in any hour that we have lived—we have need of patience. Patience to believe that with the Lord a thousand years are as one day; to believe that He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of His wrath He shall restrain; to believe that He is King of kings, that in His hand there is the heart of princes, that He seeth the end from the beginning. It is not enough, remember, to endure. About our endurance there is no debate. As Britons with a lineage of heroes we shall carry through the task we have begun. But we are more than Britons, we are Christians; we have made our peace with God through Jesus Christ, and as Christians we have need of patience. Endurance says, "I will carry this thing through." Patience says, "God reigneth." Endurance says, "Lord, increase my courage." Patience says, "Lord, increase my faith." Endurance says, "Give me the iron will that I may never falter in my calling": but patience, "Open mine eyes that I may see." That is why at such a time as this there is supreme need of spiritual patience. It is not that the issue may be victory; endurance might be adequate for that. It is that through all gathering of storm clouds which hang so dark around the throne in heaven, we may walk quietly as men who have a God.

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Love Begets Patience

In closing may I ask you to observe how the Gospel always has been the friend of patience? It has been so mainly in two ways, and the former is by making love supreme. What is it, tell me, that makes the mother patient amid the worries of her little family? What was it that made Jacob patient when for seven years he served for Rachel? Duty can touch the heart to stern endurance, to scorn delights and live laborious days; but for the finest patience you need love. And now I turn to the old Gospel story, and what do I find in the very center there? I find a love sealed in the cross of Christ, a love victorious which will not let us go. It is that love, in its infinite benediction falling with power on our fretting hearts, which helps us to the patience that we need.

Immortality Begets Patience

And then, the other secret? The other is the hope of immortality. For a thousand worries Christ has given patience by bringing immortality to light. There is a splendid saying of St. Augustine's which everyone of us should take to heart. "God is patient," says St. Augustine, "because He is eternal." With all eternity to work His works in, how could the Almighty worry or chafe; and Christ has brought immortality to light. We are no longer the creatures of a day. We do not cease our service at the grave. All we have striven to do and striven to be shall be carried over into the great forever. There is something very quieting in that; something which sheds a gleam on every failure; something which helps us wonderfully in those seasons when above everything we have need of patience.

November 28

The Tent and the City - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

By faith he [Abraham] sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations— Heb_11:9-10

The Unfaltering Faith of Abraham

In this great chapter, the roll call of the heroes, Abraham occupies a very honorable place. His life was so pre-eminently one of faith in God that in this muster of the faithful that was inevitable. There have been men who in some great hour of life or death have risen to a sublime heroism of trust. There have been others whose faith has been most notable in the quiet tenor of uneventful days. But the faith of Abraham did not fail nor falter when he was commanded to sacrifice his son; it rarely deserted him in the days which had no history as he rose and toiled and slumbered in his tent; and it is this inclusiveness—this reach from the least to the greatest—which makes the faith of Abraham unique. Never forget that the faith which we profess should dominate us as Abraham was dominated. That man is not to be reckoned a religious man whose religion is seen only in a few shining hours. Like the glow of health which spreads through a man's whole being, it must show itself in every deed and every day. The temple may manifest it, but so must the tent.

The Tent and the City

Abraham, then, was a dweller in a tent: that fact had made a deep impression on the writer, and immediately he tells us the secret of that tent-life—he looked for a city whose builder and maker is God. The tent and the city, then: that is my theme. What thought does that sharp antithesis suggest? I shall group what I wish to say under these heads. First, it is the tent which makes the city precious. Second, it is the city which explains the tent.

The Tent Makes the City Precious

First, then, it is the tent which makes the city precious. We see at a glance that it was so with Abraham. It was the very insecurity of that tent-life, the isolation of it and its thousand perils, that made the dream of a city so infinitely sweet. Had Abraham spent ail his days within strong wails he would never have known the power of that ideal. Mingling with other men in crowded thoroughfares and sharing in the security of numbers, life would have been too rich, too full, too safe, to leave any place or power for this vision. But life in the tent left room and verge enough. What could be frailer than that covering of skin which shook and flapped at every wandering breeze? How it strained when the blast from the hills swept down on it! How the lashing rain in the dark night would soak it! It is in such surroundings, perilous, lonely, comfortless, that men begin to dream about a city. That is the meaning of God's treatment of Abraham. That is why God housed him in a tent. It was not to harden him nor yet to crush his pride; it was to waken him to the worth of the ideal. It took the tent so fragile and unstable, so lightly rooted, so easily overswept, to make God's promise and prospect of a city a very precious thing to Abraham.

I cannot help but think that as God dealt with Abraham, so does He deal in providence with us all. There is a flood of light poured on life's darker aspects for me when I remember the city and the tent. After all, the important thing is not what we live in; the supremely important thing is what we look for. It is not my actual achievement which is vital; it is the purpose, the aim, the direction of my life. If life is to be redeemed from sense and time and brought under the powers that are eternal, the eyes must be opened somehow to God's city. And how shall I open them? says the Almighty. How shall I make the unseen city precious? The answer to that lies in the tent of Abraham—so insecure, so perilous and so frail. From which I learn that much of life's harder discipline, and many a dark hour that men are called to, is given to humanity by Abraham's God that hearts may begin to hunger for the city.

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Sickness

For example think of sickness in that light. Is it not often the tent that makes the city precious? A man must be freely endowed and finely strung if perfect health does not dull his vision a little. When morning by morning through unbroken years a man has no pain, no sufferings, no frailty—it is strange if there are not some stars across the sky to which the perpetual sunshine does not blind him. But sooner or later to most men there comes sickness; they are sent out like Abraham into the lonely tent. They waken at night to feel their insecurity: another blast and the tent may be in ruins. And who does not know when such hours have come and gone how the eyes have been opened to a thousand things? Springtime is sweeter and the joys of each day; there is not a bird in the tree that does not sing with richer music. Home is more precious, and the play of children, and the love we leaned on far too little once. There is not a promise of God that does not have new meaning; there is not a prayer that is not somehow more real. We did not want that tent-life of the sickroom: we did not choose it; it seemed an interruption. We thought it hard that in the midst of activity should come "the blind fury with the abhorred shears." But for us as for Abraham, it was purposed after ail; and somehow the tent has made the city precious.

Death

In the same light also we may look on death. For we must never forget that death is more than a tragedy. It is shrouded in unutterable loss, yet in the midst of the loss God has implanted gain. There is nothing in the world so cruel as death, nothing so pitiless or so remorseless. It fills the heart with a loneliness far deeper than that of the solitary tent of Abraham. Yet how many homes have been purified by death! How many hearts that once were utterly worldly have been taught to think of heaven through bereavement! There are some things that are never seen so clearly as when they are seen through the sad veil of tears. Death has made tender every human tie; death has made possible the sweetest memories; like the darkened glass through which we can look at the sun, the shadow of death has given us the power of vision. It is impossible to say how self-centered we had been, how selfish, how blind to the unseen and eternal, had the world never known the mystery of death. It is the tent, then, which has made the city precious. It is the frailty, the insecurity, the loneliness that have turned men's hearts to the abiding things. Like Abraham we are led out to a strange land with only a few frail cords to hold our dwellings until the city of God, deep-founded and eternal, never to be shaken and never overthrown, becomes infinitely attractive to the heart.

Sin

Nor can I leave this subject without pointing out to you how it bears evangelically upon the fact of sin. Many a man is brought to see his need of Christ by the same experience as was vouchsafed to Abraham. God has a hundred ways of making Christ Jesus precious. The avenues to the feet of the Savior are innumerable. There is nothing more dangerous than to teach that in coming to Christ all men must have the same uniform experience. Often it is to all that is best in us that Christ appeals; it is on our highest and best side that Christ approaches: we look for a Savior and we recognize Him because we are hungering and thirsting after righteousness. But often —remember—it is the very opposite; it is not our best but our worst that makes the Savior precious. God leads us to Christ not by our brightest hopes, but by deepening in our hearts the sense of sin. Never did David so feel his need of God as when he cried, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned." Convicted of his guilt and conscious of his wickedness, God in that hour became most precious. And so in us when the old satisfaction goes, when we feel our unworthiness and when we cry "Unclean, unclean "—in that very moment are we ready to see Christ as infinitely fairer than we ever dreamed. We are made lonely that we may need His fellowship. We are shown our helplessness that we may see His power. We are taught by the Spirit of God how worthless is our righteousness that our eyes may be opened to the righteousness of Christ. Like Abraham, we are made to dwell in tents—ragged, unsightly, insecure, and lonely—but it is the tent which makes the city precious.

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The Tent and the City - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The City Explains the Tent

But I pass on now, and in the second place: it is the city which explains the tent. We could never have understood the life of Abraham, never have rightly appreciated his behavior, if the Bible had not told us-the hope that was in his heart—he looked for a city whose builder and maker is God. Abraham was a very wealthy man and there was nothing to prevent him building a home in Canaan. Had he raised a palace for himself there and had he fortified it, it would have seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. He had been bred in the country of Chaldaea where walls were mighty and castles were magnificent; towers, fortresses, buttresses, castellations—on such things had he feasted his boyish eyes. Doubtless he hoped as many a boy has done for the day when he should build a castle for himself. But the day comes when he is free to do it, and yet never one stone is laid upon another. He is rich and powerful, let him build his fortress now. But he doesn't give it a thought; he dwells in tents. And you will never understand that tent, never know why Abraham chose it, until you are told the secret of his heart. Others might dwell in tents because they were lazy. Others might dwell in tents because they were misers. Others might dwell in tents because they were restless and had the spirit of wandering in their blood. But the conduct of Abraham is not to be explained so: it is his vision which interprets it. You learn the secret of the tent when you remember that he looked for a city whose builder and maker is God.

Now doesn't this suggest to us a caution when we are tempted to be rash in judgment? I am amazed at the rash and foolish way in which we pass judgments on each other. Of our brother's hidden life we know so little, of the ideals that are haunting him we are so ignorant—yet we look at the tent he lives in and we judge him by it as if we could read the meaning of the thing. But you may depend upon it that you will never know a man until you know the hopes which animate him. You may think that the tent proclaims the man a sluggard, but in the sight of God it may seal him as a saint. And it is because we are ignorant of the secret of our brother and of all that is stirring and calling in his heart that so often we judge him falsely.

Visions

Here for example is a young man with what we call a strong artistic temperament. And nothing will satisfy him but to be an artist; by night and by day he dreams of little else. Everyone tries to dissuade him from that calling: it is painted to him in the blackest colors; he is warned of the disappointment he will meet with; but it is all useless, he will not give it up. Then come long years of hardship—perhaps starvation—and men smile at him and say, "What a fool he was! If he had only become a partner in his father's business, how very comfortable he might have been!" But the heaven-born artist is looking for a city, he is haunted by the vision of ideal beauty: the world is a palace to him, it is full of joy, he can see all the stars from the door of his poor tent. Men pity him and count up what he has forfeited, but he is a thousand times richer than the men who pity him. They cannot understand why he is radiant, for it takes the city to explain the tent.

Or here is a young woman who instead of living idly, resolves to be of some service while she can. She has been eating her heart out with having nothing to do, but now she has been awakened by the grace of God. Once the puzzle was how to kill time; now the problem is how to expand it. There is so much to do, so many lives to help, so many services of all kinds to render. Deliberately she forsakes much that was sweet, dwelling in tabernacles with the heirs of the same promise. She is often weary visiting the poor for life is a sterner thing than she had dreamed. And her old friends, perhaps her own sisters and brothers, cannot understand this change at all. But her eyes have been opened—that is the reason—she is looking for a city that hath foundations now. She has felt the constraining power of the love of Christ. That has become her secret and her song. It is the Spirit of Jesus, welcomed to her heart, which interprets the lowly service of the life. It takes the city to explain the tent.

Brethren and sisters, it makes all the difference in the world what you and I are looking for. It is by what our hearts are set on and by what our thoughts are given to that the tent we dwell in is glorified or cursed. In the roomiest mansion a man may still be miserable if there is nothing but that dwelling in his heart. In the poorest tent a man may still be happy if he looks for a city where is the love of God. I earnestly entreat of you to look to God, to fix your gaze on the Lord Jesus Christ, to lift up your hearts to Him continually, to say, "O Lamb of God, I come." That was the secret of the peace of Abraham. That will make any tent become a temple. We can do much, bear more, and be amazingly happy when our life is hid with Christ in God.

November 29

Faith Refusing Deliverance - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He hath sent me... to preach deliverance to the captives— Luk_4:18
Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance— Heb_11:35

Faith Leads to Deliverance

Among the blessings which we connect with faith, one of the most conspicuous is deliverance. The Bible is a great record of deliverance effected through the agency of faith. Abraham was delivered from idolatry. Joseph was delivered from his brethren. David was delivered from Goliath, and Peter from the prison at Jerusalem. And most notable of all, there was the Exodus, when Israel was delivered from its bondage—drawn out of Egypt, by the might of God, into the peril and the prize of liberty. All these are instances of deliverance, wrought in the power of a living faith. Men trusted God, and in the joy of trust were freed from darkness and captivity. And so the Bible, as we read its pages, grows into a great argument for this, that God is able and willing, if we trust Him, to set the feet in a large room.

The same issue of faith also arrests us when we come into the company of Jesus. Here, too, as in the rest of Scriptures, faith is a mighty power to deliver. We see the maniac released from legion, and sitting clothed and in his right mind. We see the withered arm restored again; the eye that had been blind regaining sight. We see a woman delivered from infirmity, and a loved brother delivered from the grave, and a great company whose eyes are glad because they have been delivered from their sin. Christ was the great enemy of bonds. He was the lover and the light of liberty. He came to preach deliverance to the captives, and to bestow the gift which was His message. And so again we learn this happy lesson, that faith is a mighty power to redeem; and that in every sphere where faith is active, one of its blessed fruits is liberty.

There Is a Faith That Refuses Deliverance

Yet while that is true, and gloriously true, in a way I trust we all know something of, there is a suggestion in our second text that it is fitting we should not forget. "They were tortured, not accepting deliverance," and the whole chapter is a song of faith. The chapter is a magnificent review of all that faith is powerful to achieve. So this is also a result of faith, not that it brings deliverance to a man, but that sometimes, when deliverance is offered, it gives him a fine courage to refuse it. There are seasons when faith shows itself in taking. There are seasons when it is witnessed in refusing. There is a deliverance that faith embraces. There is a deliverance that faith rejects. They were tortured, not accepting deliverance—that was the sign and seal that they were faithful. There are hours when the strongest proof of faith is the swift rejection of the larger room.

Better to Be Faithful Than Free

Think in the first place of the martyrs, to whom our text immediately applies. When a man was charged with being a Christian, deliverance was always at his hand. He had only to blaspheme the name of Christ—a word or two of cursing—that was all. He had only to spit upon the name of Christ, when the Roman centurion scratched it on the wall. He had only to put his hand into a box, and take a grain or two of incense from the box, and sprinkle it without a single word before the beautiful statue of Diana. On the one hand was life, and life was sweet. On the other hand was death, and death was terrible. On the one hand was liberty and home. On the other hand was torture and the grave. And they were tortured, not accepting deliverance. They might have had it by a single word. It was their faith that led them to the scaffold. It was better to be faithful than be free.

It Takes Faith to Refuse to Be Liberated from the Troubles Entailed in the Performance of Needed Common Tasks

The same issue of faith is seen again amid the troubles of our common life. in precisely the same manner it is witnessed in the pettier martyrdoms of every day. Each of us has got his cross to carry. There is no escaping from the law. Each of us has got his secret bitterness, and his burden, and his travail or his fear. For one the trouble may be in business matters; for another, the cross may be at home; while for a third, perhaps, it is the body that wakes the heart to trembling in the night. Now I believe that whatever be the trouble, Jesus Christ has come to preach deliverance. There is peace in Him, and quietness of soul, and conquest over death and all its terrors. But remember that there are other outlets which sometimes loom upon our gaze invitingly, and promise us the release that we are craving—if only we are untrue to our best selves. I think that all of us are tempted so, though these are temptations of which we seldom speak. Sometimes indeed we hardly understand them, they are so subtly hidden and disguised. But always there is a tampering with conscience in them, and a certain lowering of the flag of youth, and a sinking clown upon a lower level than we know to be worthy in our hearts. it is when a man or woman is so tempted that faith in God is needed to be true. To choose the drudgery and spurn the liberty is the sign-manual of faith in him. "They were tortured, not accepting deliverance." They let the laughter and the sunshine go. And sometimes in the quiet of our obscurity, you and I may be called to be their children.

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Faith Refusing Deliverance - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Don't Miss the Best by Choosing the Easier and More Remunerative in Disregard of Conscience

Now I might illustrate how to beware of choosing the easier in disregard of conscience by many instances. For example, the case of a young man. His work is hard and irksome and ill-paid, and he has a father who is dependent on him. From morning till evening it is a weary grind. There is no encouragement. There are scarce any prospects. And when evening comes he is so fagged that he can hardly follow a good book. And then there comes to him the glittering chance of work that is easier, and pay that is far better, on the condition that he shuts his eyes, and does not trouble about a tender conscience. Many a man accepts that swift deliverance. He offers the grain of incense to Diana. And then he prospers, and is kind at home, and there are comforts for the aged father. But nothing on earth can alter the old fact that such an act was faithless and untrue, and that a man forever from that moment has left the company of saints and martyrs. He has been tortured and accepted deliverance, and the world and the devil are exacting creditors. Somehow, as the years unroll themselves, he will discover he has missed the best. And if my words have any weight on young men who are starting out on life, they will write upon their hearts this text of Hebrews, and avoid that tragic mistake.

Faithfulness Is Better Than Happiness When Happiness Is Brought On by What Is False

Or I might take the case of a young woman who is set amid uncongenial surroundings. She is not happy. Perhaps she has to work, and probably her health is very far from good. I shall not paint the picture at its blackest, though I have seen it at its blackest for myself. I shall not touch on that most awful freedom that lurks on every street of every Babylon. But I shall say that she gets the offer of marriage from someone to whom God has never led her, and to whom in her woman's heart there is no drawing, as of those cords which have been knit in heaven. There is the chance of freedom, if you like. There is deliverance from all the drudgery. But, O my sister, at what an awful cost of all that is most womanly and delicate! A thousand times better to be tortured daily than to accept deliverance like that—and it is there, you see, that faith comes in. Faith that God can uphold you in the darkness, and give you music in the weariest mile. Faith that there are better things than happiness, when happiness is bought by being false. Faith that the best in life is ,ever lost when you are true to what is high and beautiful; and always lost when you have played the traitor to the sweet sincerities of womanhood.

Sometimes Deliverance Can Be Failure or Treachery

The same issue of faith is also seen in public and in Christian service. I suppose there is no one engaged in that who does not feel at times a longing for release. It may be that enthusiasm has vanished. It may be that we are disappointed. It may be that those whom we are called to labor with are irritating and interfering people. So sooner or later comes to us the day when we are tempted to have done with it; to take our armour off, and hang it up, and pass into the oblivion of peace. Now I am far from saying that that is always wrong. Sometimes it may be right and necessary. A man may be forced to it by doctor's orders, and if he be wise he will attend to these. A man may be led to it by the appeal of conscience telling him he should be more at home, and that no service can have heaven's blessing if wife and children are neglected. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. That is a matter for heart and God. All that I want to do here is this: it is to warn you that all release is not like that. There may be times when deliverance is treachery; when to seek for freedom is to fail; when a man's first duty is to continue serving, even though his service may be torture. "They were tortured, not accepting deliverance," and sometimes we are called with that vocation. If we trust God we shall refuse relief, and stick to the service we have put our hand to. God has no pleasure in these sorry workers who are always threatening to send in resignations. No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

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Beware of False Deliverance from Moral and Intellectual Doubt

I am impressed again by the same truth in regard to our spiritual and intellectual difficulties. I may be speaking to some here who have great difficulties about faith and God. They would fain believe, and yet they find it hard. They would fain trust, and yet they cannot trust. They cannot feel their need of a Redeemer. They cannot grasp the power of the cross. Or it may be that, having grasped it once, they have been thrown into darkness by their reading, and cannot reconcile the facts of science with the old message of the love of heaven. My brother, I want to say to you that Christ has got deliverance for you. He has come to preach deliverance to the captive, and there is no captivity so dark as doubt. But there are times of darkness and perplexity when other methods of release will face you, and if you are a man you will reject them, and face the torture which rejection brings. You will not take shallow answers to great questions. You will ,or yield up moral questions in despair. You will not fall back upon a life of sense, as if in sensuality were rest. But you will be true to all the light you have, and you will cling to all the good you know, and you will trust that, when the night is past, the singing of the birds is sure to come. To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. It is sometimes better to be tossed and tortured, than to be sleeping on a couch of ease. This is one mark of every earnest soul that has come at last to liberty and light, it has been too faithful to the Highest to accept deliverance upon unworthy terms. "Not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection."

Christ Refused False Deliverance

In closing, may I just remind you how true this was of our Lord Jesus Christ? He is our Savior not because He refused deliverance. "All these kingdoms will I give thee," said the Tempter, "if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Was not that a road to power and princedom which would have escaped the torture of the cross? But He was tortured, not accepting deliverance. He chose the bitter way that led by Calvary. He scorned deliverance by that compliance, and so He has won deliverance for the captive. Then think again, when He approached the cross, how the women offered Him the opiate. And had He but drunk it, His senses had been numbed, and the agony of crucifixion had been deadened. But having tasted it, He put it from Him. He could not and He would not drink it. And He was tortured, not accepting deliverance, that He might be the Savior of mankind. Now He preaches freedom to the captive. Do you know it? Have you experienced it? Can you this minute bear witness in your heart that you are a freed man in Jesus Christ? if so, to you may come those darksome hours when voices call you to some mean escape, and just because you are a man in Christ, with all the saints and martyrs you will scorn it.

November 30

The Cloud of Witnesses

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus— Heb_12:1-2

The Eyes of the Witnesses upon us

While the word witness in the New Testament generally has the sense of testifier, there can be little question that in this striking figure it bears the common meaning of spectator. The writer is thinking of a Roman racecourse on some day of national festivity. There is the runner straining every nerve. There is the emperor within his purple curtains. And around the course, tier above tier, till the uppermost figures are as a haze of cloud, is the vast multitude who are looking on. Every eye is fixed upon the runners. When the race is in progress every breath is held. There is an intentness we can scarce conceive today, for then the issues might be life or death. Thus though witness in other parts of Scripture generally signifies a testifier, there can be little doubt that here it means spectator. We must beware of forcing Scripture words into one unalterable meaning. Words are plastic things; they are responsive; they alter with the urgencies of thought. Our Lord would take some great and simple word, like bread or life or water, and in the compass or a sentence would pass from one meaning to another.

So I take it that the writer means there are innumerable spectators of our human life. As we toil and struggle a thousand eyes are on us as eager as any at a Roman racecourse. These witnesses are not angelic beings. The writer here is not thinking of the angels. They are not the denizens of earth still with us in the fellowship of home. The key to the interpretation of these witnesses is found in the preceding chapter where we hear the roll call of the faithful. They are great saints, like Abraham and Noah, the spirits of just men made perfect, the child you lost in the first bloom of innocence, the dear boy who laid down his life in the war, the father who feared God, the mother or sister who was a saint, all watching us with the absorbed attention of the spectators on a Roman racecourse. He calls them a cloud because of their vast number. We still speak of a cloud of flying things. He calls them so because a cloud is far above resting on the bosom of the sky. And he says, "Children, when tempted to give up in the great race and to be overcome by some besetting sin, take a quiet moment and remember that you are encompassed by a great cloud of witnesses."

To Know Our Loved Ones Watch Us Is an Encouragement

Now this thought when we let it play its part is rich in very real encouragement. Think how it 0reanimates our hopes. Professor Henry Drummond used to tell us of a student sitting for his examination. Every once in a while out of his pocket he took something and gazed at it a moment. The examiner, naturally suspicious, stole up to see what he was looking at and found it was the portrait of the girl he hoped to marry. It inspired him just to see her face. It heartened him to feel that she was watching. He worked better when he thought that he was working under the loving gaze of those dear eyes. And to know that eyes like that are watching us from the other side, within the veil, is one of the secret encouragement's of life. If you have to undergo an operation, no one so inspires you as the man who has been through it. If you have to make your dwelling in a deadly climate, it is the man who has lived there who makes you hopeful. "Why," he says, "I lived there for years, and look at me"—the picture of good health—and so he reanimates your hopes. Now I remember that our writer's witnesses are not angelic nor celestial beings. They have lived our life and fought our battles and known our suffering and temptation. And if now they rejoice in the light and love of God, liberated from sin and pain forever, what a new hope stirs within the heart! There steals on the ear the distant triumphant song. We are watched by those who have arrived—the saints of old, the children we have lost, the dear ones who have gone before. We are like swimmers battling in an angry sea when suddenly we hear voices on the shore, and, hearing them, we pluck up heart again.

Our Loved Ones May Pray for Us

Nor can we reasonably doubt that we are helped by the prayers of that great cloud of witnesses. Let us return to the figure for a moment. If in the tiers of the old amphitheater there was seated the wife or mother of the runner, would she not pray to all the gods she knew that her beloved might carry off the crown? And if our loved ones lean from the galleries of heaven while we are running the race of life and death, is it not conceivable they are praying also? If the child every night at bedtime here prayed for its father and its mother, if the wife every quiet morning here prayed for her husband and her children, I cannot conceive that in a better world where being is not altered but expanded, these beautiful activities should cease. The souls under the altar cry for vengeance. Is the cry for vengeance the only prayer in heaven? Are there not golden bowls there full of odors which are the prayers of the saints? I think we shall never know how much we owe when we are weary, suffering, tempted, overwhelmed, to the prayers offered within the veil by those we have loved long since and lost awhile. We are encompassed by a cloud of witnesses. They watch us, they love us, and they pray for us. Wherefore let us run with patience the race that is set before us. And when we remember that we owe all this to Him who brought life and immortality to light, let us run looking unto Jesus, who is the author and finisher of faith.

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