Chapter 8

Nor does this in the least detract from our absolute dependence upon Him. The man who crosses the Atlantic in a steamship is no less dependent on the sea because he employs the vessel for his journey. We are no less dependent upon the earth for our sustenance because we only partake of the wheat after it has been ground into flour and made into bread. And so, we are no less dependent upon God because He has been pleased to employ various humble and simple instruments to save, and teach, and guide us. After full allowance has been made for the power and influence of intervening agencies, it is in Him we really live, and move, and have our being.

But I return to my first word. There is one kind of service open to all, irrespective of circumstances and gifts, which can be rendered to God without the intervention of anyone. And this we may truly call self-denial. Much that quite properly comes under that description need never--probably will never--be known to anyone but God. It may be a holy sacrament indeed, kept between the soul and its Lord alone.

I.

_There is the Denial of all that remains of Evil in us._

How many sincere souls, when they look into their own hearts, find, to their horror, evil in them where they least expected it; find them part stone, when they should be all flesh; find them bound to earth and the love of earthly things, when they should be free from the world and the love of the world; find them occupied, alas! so often with idols and heart-lusts, when God alone ought to rule and reign. Here is a sphere for self-denial. Here is a service to be rendered to God, which will be very acceptable to Him, and which you alone can perform.

And if you would thus deny yourself, then examine yourself. Study the evils of your own nature. Recognise sin. Call it by its right name when you speak of it in the solitude of your own heart. If there are the remains of the deadly poison in you, say so to God, and keep on saying so with a holy importunity. "Confess your sins." Attack them as the farmer attacks the poison-plant amongst his crops, or the worms and flies which will blight his harvest, and which, unless he can ruin them, he knows full well will ruin him. That is the "_perfect self-denial_"--to cut off the right hand, and to pluck out and cast away what is dear as the right eye, if it offend against the law of purity and truth and love.

_But you yourself are to do it_. Do not say you cannot, for you alone can. If you would be His disciple--His holy, loving, pure, worthy disciple--you must deny _yourself_. Cry to Him for help as much as you will--you cannot cry too often or too long--but you must do more than that: you must arise, and deny your own selfish nature; pinch, and harass, and refuse your own inward sins, and expose them to the light of God. Confess them without ceasing, mortify them without mercy, and slay them, and give no quarter. Say, and say in earnest:--

Oh, how I hate these lusts of mine That crucified my God!-- These sins that pierced and nailed His flesh Fast to the fatal wood.

Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die-- My soul has so decreed; I will not longer spare the things That made my Saviour bleed.

Whilst with a melting, broken heart, My murdered Lord I view, I'll raise revenge against my sins, And slay the murderers too.

II.

_There are Denials of the Will_.

Human nature is a collection of likes and dislikes. The great mass of men are governed by their preferences. What they like, they strive after; what they do not like, they neglect, or refuse, or resist. Many of these preferences, though not harmful in themselves, lead continually to that subjection of the will to self-interest, and help that self-satisfaction and self-love which are the deadly enemies of the soul. Now, true self-denial is the denial, for Christ's sake and the sake of souls, of these preferences. To say to God: "I sacrifice my way for Thy way--my wish for Thy wish--my will for Thy will--my plan for Thy plan--my life for Thy life"--this is self-denial.

Nothing can be more acceptable to a good father's heart than the knowledge that his son, living and labouring far away from him amid difficulties and opposition, is courageously sacrificing his own preferences, and faithfully seeking to carry out his, the father's, will. In such a son that father sees a reproduction of all that is strongest and best in his own nature. And so it is with the Heavenly Father. No greater joy can be His than to see the resolute surrender of His children's own will to His, and the daily denial of their hopes and plans for themselves and theirs in favour of His plans.

III.

_There are Denials of the Affections_.

The precious things of earth-- The mother's tender care, The father's faith and prayer-- From Thee have birth.

And, just because love is of such high origin, and is the greatest power in human life, it is often captured and held by the Devil as his last stronghold against God. The heart is at once the strongest and the most sensitive part of our nature; and it is here, therefore, that we often find the most blessed and profitable opportunities for self-denial.

That pleasant companionship, so grateful, so fruitful of joy, and yet so likely to tempt me from the path of faithful service, "Lord, I deny myself of it." That mastering affection for wife, or husband, or children--so beautiful in its strength and simplicity, and yet so exacting in its claims--"Lord, I deny myself of the abandonment to which it invites me; I put it in its proper place, second to Thee, and to the work Thou hast given me to do." That love of home, and friends, and circle, which is so powerful a factor in life, and enters so constantly into all the arrangements and details of our conduct, influencing so largely all real plans for doing God's work--"Lord, I will deny it, when it is in danger of lessening my labours for Thee and Thy Kingdom." The pleasant hour, the quiet evening, the restful book, "I will lay them at Thy feet, for Thy sake, when they hinder me doing Thy will. It is between me and Thee alone; it is the sacrifice of love."

How precious it must be to God to see such self-denial! When the true lover sees the woman he has chosen leaving all for his sake, calmly laying down the love of father and family, and even braving the rebuffs and unkindness of those from whom before she has known nothing but affection, in order that she may give him her whole heart and life, how strong become the cords which bind him to her! Every sacrifice she makes for his sake forges another bond which will not easily be broken. And is the Lord a man, that He should be behind us in loving with an everlasting love those who thus give up and deny their own loves for Him? No! a thousand times no! He will repay. Every self-denial is a seedling rich with future joys. For it is indeed true that "He that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will give him the morning star."

IV.

_There are Denials with reference to our Gifts_.

"Look not," says the Apostle, "every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." That is, even in the exercise of his choicest gifts and graces, let a man forget his own in his desire to employ and bring forward the gifts of others. "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." That is, in your own mind take a humble view of yourself, your own powers, and your own worthiness, and hold your comrades in higher esteem than you hold yourself, in honour preferring one another to yourself. _That would be a very real self-denial to some people!_

"Recompense to no man evil for evil," though you know he well deserves it; "Avenge not yourselves." "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink." "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." That is, deny yourself of your own joys, that you may enter into the sorrow of others; and lay aside your own sorrows and tears, and silence your own breaking heart, when you can help others by entering with joy into their joys.

You will see, beloved, that all this is work which _no one can do for you_, and that it is in a very true sense high service to God as well as to man.

How, then, is it with you?

Are you a self-denying disciple? If not, beware, lest it should shortly appear that you are not a disciple at all.

XIII.

In Unexpected Places.

"_And . . . while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know Him_."--Luke xxiv. 15, 16.

I.

_The Knife-grinder_.

The only person in the house, except the man and his wife, was a young domestic servant, a Soldier of The Salvation Army. Her employers were generally drinking when they were not asleep, and the drinking led to the most dreadful quarrelling. Disgusting orgies of one kind or another were of almost daily occurrence, and such, visitors as came to the house only added fuel to the fiery furnace of passion and frenzy through which the girl was called to walk.

Since that happy Sunday afternoon two years ago, when she gave herself to God in the wholesome village from which she came, the meetings and the opportunity, given her by The Army, of doing some work for other souls had been a bright light in her life. Little by little religion had come to have for her something of the same meaning it had for St. Paul: though I fear she knew very little of St. Paul, or of the great and wise things he wrote--domestic service is seldom favourable to the study of the Scriptures. But the same spirit which led the great Apostle to confer not with flesh and blood, and which took him into Arabia before he went to Jerusalem, was leading this quiet, country maiden to see that to be a follower of Christ means something more than to win a fleeting happiness in this life and a kind of pension in the next. She was beginning to understand that to be really Christ's means also to be a Christ; that to be His, one must seek for the lost sheep for whom He died. And so Rhoda--I call her Rhoda, though that was not her name--when she found to what sort of people she had, in her ignorance of the great city, engaged herself, had set to work to seek their salvation.

Many very good people would probably think that she would have been a wiser girl to have gone elsewhere--that the risks of such a position were very great, and so on. No doubt; but the light of a great truth was rising in Rhoda's heart and mind. She perceived in her very danger an opportunity to prove her love for her Saviour by risking something for the souls of those two besotted creatures, for whom she dared to think He really died.

And so, day after day, she toiled for them: night after night she prayed for them. And in her sober moments the wreck of a woman, her mistress, wept aloud in her slobbering way, and talked of the days long, long ago, when she, too, believed in the things that are good.

The first flush of novelty in the sense of doing an unselfish thing for God wore away, and presently Rhoda's real trial began. The drinking and fighting grew worse, and the difficulty of getting out to a meeting grew greater. Gradually the weary body robbed the struggling soul of its time to pray; and, worst of all, by slow degrees Rhoda's faith was shaken, for her prayers, her agonising prayers, on behalf of those dark souls were only too manifestly not answered. Was it worth while, after all, troubling about sinners? Was it her affair? Why should she care? Of what use could it be to become an Officer, in order to seek the many, if God did not hearken to her cry for the few?

One day the Captain of the Corps to which Rhoda belonged called, and seemed grieved with her for neglecting the meetings. This was a heavy blow. She could not or would not explain, and when that night, in the midst of a drunken brawl, her master struck her in the face, heart and flesh both failed, and she determined to say no more about salvation, and to abandon all profession of religion.

That night seemed long and dark, and when at last sleep came, the pillow was wet with tears of anguish, of anger, and of pride.

"Scissors to mend! to mend! to mend!" The monotonous calls of London hawkers are a strange mixture of sounds--at one moment attractive, at another repelling; they are, perhaps, more like the cry of a bird in distress than anything else.

Rhoda looked at her wood-chopper as the knife-grinder came nearer to the house, and as he passed beckoned him, and gave it to him. She made no remark. He was rough and grimy, and his torn coat gave him an appearance of misery, which his face rather belied. She was miserable enough, and made no reply to his cheery "Good morning!"

Presently the axe was sharpened, and the man brought it to the door. She paid him.

"Thank you," he said. And then, with kindly abruptness--"Excuse me, but I see you have been crying. Do you ever pray?" And, after a silence, "God answers prayer, though He may not do it our way. _He did it for me._ I was a drunkard, but my mother's prayers are answered now, and I belong to The Salvation Army. Do you know any of them? Oh, they just live by prayer!"

Rhoda stood in silence listening to the strange man till she ceased to hear him, and looking at him till she ceased to see him! Another Presence and another Voice was there.

_It was the Christ_.

Rhoda was delivered. She is still fighting for souls, and loves most to do it where Satan's seat is. But the knife-grinder never knew.

II.

_A Kiss_.

The heat and smell in the narrow slum were worse than usual. A hot Saturday night in midsummer is a bad time in the slums, and worse in the slum public-houses. It was so on the night I speak of. In and out of the suffocating bar the dirty stream of humanity came and went. Men who had ceased long ago to be anything but beasts; women with tiny, white children in their bony arms; boys and girls sipping the naphtha of perdition, and talking the talk of fools; lewd and foul-mouthed women of the streets, all hustled and jostled one another, and sang, and swore, and bandied horrid words with the barmen--and, all the while, they drank, and drank, and drank! The atmosphere grew thicker and thicker with the dust and tobacco-smoke, and little by little the flaming gas-jets burnt up the oxygen, till by midnight the place was all but unendurable.

Among the last to go was a woman of the town, who betook herself, with a bottle of whisky, to a low lodging-house hard by. There she drank and quarrelled with such vehemence that in the early hours of the morning the "Deputy"--as the guardian of order is called in these houses--picked her up and threw her into the gutter outside. There, amid the garbage from the coster-mongers' barrows and the refuse of the town, this remnant of a ruined woman lay in a half-drunken doze, until the golden sunlight mounted over the city houses and pierced the sultry gloom on the Sabbath morning.

Another woman chanced that way. Young, beautiful alike in form and spirit, and touched with the far-offness of many who walk with Christ, she hastened to the early Sunday morning service, there to join her prayers with others seeking strength to win the souls of men.

"What is that?" she asked her friend as they passed.

"That," replied the other, "is a drunken woman, unclean and outcast."

In a moment the Salvationist knelt upon the stones, and kissed the battered face of the poor wanderer.

"Who is that--what did you do?" said the Magdalene. "Why did you kiss me? _Nobody ever kissed me since my mother died_."

_It was the Christ_.

That kiss won a heart to Him.

III.

_A Promotion_.

Henry James was coming rapidly into his employer's favour. Thoughtful, obliging, attentive to details, anxious to please, and, above all, thoroughly reliable in word and deed, he was a first-class servant and an exemplary Salvationist. In the Corps to which he belonged he stood high in the esteem both of the Local Officers and the Soldiers, and there was no more welcome speaker in the Open-air or more successful "fisher" in the sinners' meetings than "Young James."

The question of his own future was beginning to occupy a good deal of attention. Ought he to offer himself for Officership in The Army? He was very far from decided either one way or the other, when one evening at the close of business his master sent for him. He expressed his pleasure at the progress James was making, and offered him a greatly improved position--the managership of a branch establishment, with certain privileges as to hours, an immediate and considerable advance in salary, and the prospect of a still more profitable position in the future. There was really only one condition required of him--he must live in premises adjoining the new venture, and he must not come to and fro in the uniform of The Army. His employers had a high esteem for The Salvation Army. It was a noble work, and their opinion of it had risen since they had employed one or two of its Soldiers. But business was business, and the uniform going in and out would not help business, and so forbh.

The young man hesitated, and, to the senior partner's surprise, asked for a week to consider.

During the week there were consultations with almost every one he knew. The majority of his own friends said decidedly "Accept." A few Salvationists of the weaker sort said, "Yes, take it; you will, in the end, be able to do more for God, and give The Army more time, more money, more influence." On the other hand, the Captain and the older Local Officers answered, "No; it is a compromise of principle; the uniform is only the symbol of out-and-out testimony for Christ; you put it on in holy covenant with Him; you cannot take it off, especially for your own advantage, without breaking that covenant. Don't!"

James promised himself--quite sincerely, no doubt--that it should not be so with him. And on the appointed day informed the firm that he accepted their proposal.

The new enterprise was a success. Everything turned out better than was expected. At the end of six months the new manager received a cordial letter of thanks from the firm, and a hint of further developments.

But Henry James was an unhappy man. He had gained so much that he was always asking himself how it came about that he seemed to have lost so much more! Position, prospects, opportunity, money--these were all enhanced. And yet he went everywhere with a sense of loss, burdened with a consciousness of having parted with more than he had received in return. As a man of business, the impression at last took the form of a business estimate in his mind. Yes, that was it; he had secured a high--a very high--price that evening in the counting-house, when the partners waited for his answer; he had parted with something; he had, in fact, sold something.

_It was the Christ_.

It proved a ruinous transaction.

XIV.

Ever the Same.

A New Year's Greeting.

_"Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are His: and He changeth the times and the seasons."_--Daniel ii. 20, 21.

_"I am the Lord, I change not."_--Malachi iii. 6.

"He changeth the times and the seasons." What a beautiful thought it is! Instead of the hard compulsion of some inexorable and unchanging law fixing summer where it must, and planting winter in our midst whether it be well or ill, here is the sweet assurance that the seasons change at His command; and that the winds and the waves obey Him. It is not some abstract and unknowable force, taking no account of us and ours, with whom we have to do, but a living and ruling Father: He who maketh small the drops of water that pour down rain; He who shuts up the sea with doors, and says: "Here shall thy proud waves be stayed"; He who maketh the south winds to blow, and by whose breath the frost is given; He who teaches the swallow to know the time of her coming, and has made both summer and winter, and the day and the night His servants--He is our Father. How precious it is to feel that our times are in His hands; and to know that, whether the year be young or old, He will fill it with mercy and crown it with loving-kindness!

Do not be deceived by the modern talk about the laws of Nature into forgetting that they are the laws ordained by your Father for the fulfilment of His will. Every day that dawns is as truly God's day as was the first one. Every night that draws its sable mantle over a silent world sets a seal to the knowledge of God who maketh the darkness. Behind the mighty forces and the ceaseless activities around us stands the Sovereign of them all. The hand of Him who never slumbers is on the levers. The earth is the Lord's, and His chosen portion is His people; and when "He changes the times and the seasons," He fits the one to the other.

It is with some such thoughts as these that I send out a brief New Year's Greeting to my friends. I wish them a Happy New Year, because I feel that God has sent it, that He wills it to be a happy year--a good year: that in all the changes it may bring, He will be planning with highest benevolence for their truest welfare. Whether, therefore, it holds for them sorrow or joy, it will be a year of mercy, a year of grace, a year of love. "Blessed be God for ever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. He revealeth the deep and secret things. He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him."

Let us, then, go forward, and fear not.

I.

_Material Changes._

All things that touch the life of man are marked for change. As knowledge advances, and men come nearer to the secrets of the world in which they live, they find how true indeed it is, that man is but "a shadow dwelling in a world of shadows." Everything is changing--everything but God. The sun, the astronomers tell us, is burning itself away. "The mountains," say the geologists, "are not so high as they once were; their lofty summits are sliding down their sides year by year. The everlasting hills are only everlasting in a figure; for they, too, are crumbling day by day. The hardest rocks are softening into soil every season, and we are actually eating them up in our daily bread."

The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mists, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

The great ocean-currents are changing, and vast regions of the earth's surface are being changed with them, and Time is writing wrinkles on the whole world and all that is therein.

But, above it all, I see One standing--my Unchanging God. "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands; they shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail."

What a contrast there is between the Worker and His work, between the Creator and the creature! We see it in a thousand things; but in none is it so manifest for the wayfaring man, or written so large upon the fading draperies of time, as in this: "_They shall perish, but Thou remainest_."