Chapter 3

And we may profitably consider what this means in its application to our own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us that the mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any such reliance on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart and life, misleading, weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the subtle, poisonous, creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over a weak and depraved will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden visitation from above, for which we make no preparation, to break down or overthrow a power of this kind? On the contrary, the words of this parable stand here to declare to us that it is nothing less than perversity and folly in any man to go on either defiling his nature, or degrading it, or even neglecting to strengthen and support it, under this delusion that some day the breath of Heaven will sweep it clean or give it new vigour. And your own experience is in exact accordance with these parabolic warnings of the Saviour. You know that your moral and spiritual nature is now at this present time undergoing a process of continual and momentous change, that every day, or week, or month leaves its mark upon it; and that your soul's life means not waiting for some angel of God's providential grace to visit you and carry you up into a new air; but it means that you are weaving the web of your unchangeable destiny by your use or abuse of the gifts of God that are in your hands to-day.

Born into the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, as also with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, we have to take care for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by hardening into depraved habits in our manhood. If we let our youth take an unhappy downward course, whether in taste or habit, every day puts salvation farther off from us, because every day any fault which is indulged or nursed tends to grow deeper and more inveterate; and yet, forgetting this, how many, while their early years are running to waste, nurse the vain hope that some day they will receive the sudden baptism of a new birth.

So, then, instead of vaguely trusting, any of us, to the hope of what some future call or help or happy visitation may do for us, let us obey the Divine injunction, which, when rightly understood, is very pressing, urging us, as we hope to see good days, to be very jealous of our present life and its tendencies; let us do this, standing always firm and immovable in the things that are pure and of good report.

However it may be in some other matters, in this matter of our moral and spiritual life, the greatest, the most important, the most serious thing of all, it is almost invariably true that the child is father of the man, and we feel that we have no right to expect it to be otherwise. In our everyday consideration of life, we recognise all this: we speak of growth in character and formation of habit as facts which no one would ignore, and which cannot be overestimated. But to acknowledge these, and at the same time to trust that God will hereafter arrest any stream of sinful tendency in us which we ourselves do not attempt to stop now, is to add presumption to sin.

When we speak of Heaven and Hell, we have in our thoughts the vision of those ultimate points towards which the diverging courses of men's lives are slowly tending day by day. And the question rises: "On which of these lines is my life travelling at the present time, and towards which side of the impassable gulf?"

At present we know that the way of Christ is still open before us, and that He calls us with a voice which never grows weary; but we feel equally that the future is dark, if we waste or misuse the present, and we do not know how long the heavenward path may be as open, or as easy, as it is to-day. For the question is not a question of God's untiring patience or the never-failing love of Christ. It is not how long will His Spirit continue to strive with us, as it has striven hitherto, through the care and love of parent or friend, through the exhortations or efforts of a teacher, or the example of a companion, or in a thousand other ways. The question is rather whether it is not folly to expect that God will send upon us some other more powerful regenerating and strengthening influence, if we are now neglecting all this care and love and patient striving on our behalf. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Consider these things while life is fresh, and good influences are present with you. Whatever our faults may be, they all come under this one rule, that to-day is given us to win our freedom from their power--to- day and not to-morrow. The question which is pressed home through the warning of this parable is thus a very plain one: "What is my future hope or prospect, if I let this or that particular sin lurk and linger in my heart, feeding upon me every day, and growing stronger in consequence? What if I do not resist any fault that has a hold upon me? What if I do not pray to be delivered from it? What if I do not flee from it?"

If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

VI. WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?

"And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?"--1 KINGS xix. 9.

There is a sound of rebuke in these words. They seem to imply that the lonely mountain of Horeb was not the place in which God expected to find such a servant as Elijah, and that there should be no indefinite tarrying, no lingering without an aim in such a solitude.

As you read the familiar history you see how the record of the prophet's retirement and his vision in Horeb is a record, first of all, of reaction after fierce conflict; it exhibits the picture of a strong man in a moment of weakness ready to give up the hopeless struggle, crying to God, "It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life;" and then it shows us how God dealt with him in that solitude; we hear the Divine voice pleading in him again, bearing its Divine witness, putting its searching questions, teaching him the universal lesson that despondency, weakness, solitude, shrinking and retiring, if they have any place in our life, are only for a time, and must not be allowed to rule in it.

That Divine vision which came to Elijah in the recesses of the mountain is, in fact, the voice of God summoning him back to the duties that were waiting for him, and the renewal of his strength for the new work he had to do. And the interest of such a vision never fails, because, like Elijah, all men come to times when they too lie under the juniper tree in the wilderness longing to be set free from the burden which is too heavy for them, be it the burden of some call, or work, or duty, or of resistance to some temptation, or the struggle against sin or vice. It comes to all of us, and not once only, but many times over, this hour of darkness; and it will continue to come so long as the flesh is weak. And it is at such moments that a man is the better for going with the prophet into this Horeb, the mount of God, making Elijah's vision his own vision, and renewing his strength, at the same Divine source. How often it happens to men, to boys, to all alike, that they flee into the desert, away from the post of present duty, away from the face of difficulties which they cannot or will not stand up against, away from the moments of trial and discipline. And, seeing that our life is not and cannot be a solitary thing, seeing that the pulsations of each individual's life are creating other pulsations which answer them back in other lives, we know not where or how many, whenever we thus shrink away from our duty, when we turn our back upon it, or despond about it, when we become deaf to the higher calls, we are, in fact, crying to God to be relieved of our service to Him and to our fellows. And it is a happy thing for our life if He does not answer us according to our cry, and let us go into the wilderness, and leave us alone there.

This voice, following us with the question, "What doest them here?" is the evidence that God has not abandoned us.

"What doest thou here, Elijah?" How often must this voice have followed the monk into his solitude, refusing to be silenced, piercing through all the false notions about a man's relationship to his fellow-men, warning each soul that it cannot separate itself from the great tide of universal life.

And the voice comes to us, the same warning voice of God, whenever we stand aloof and let the tide around us run on anyhow, as if we didn't care how it ran, or whenever in obedience to any impulse, whether of selfishness or of timidity, we try to persuade ourselves that some duty may be left alone.

"What doest thou here, Elijah?" The quality of our life depends on the answer we give to such spiritual questioning day by day; for the Divine voices are never silent.

"What doest thou here?" The voice cries to us when we linger in the neighbourhood of any sin, or when we waste our opportunities in some form of idleness, or when we stand by in cold or timid indifference, refusing help or consolation to any soul which seems to need it.

"What doest thou here?" It is possible that some of us hardly like to shape our answer in plain words lest we might have to say: "I am here lingering in my present way of life, not because I feel it to be the right way, but because it is the easy way, and I cannot bring myself to face the harder and more manly course of duty. I hear the voice; I cannot get away from it; it haunts me with its inquiries, when my heart is hot within me, as it is sometimes, while yet I am burying the light that is in my soul." If it should be so with any of you, consider, I pray you, how by such hanging back you strengthen the force of evil in the world and weaken the good.

As the hour of reaction, weakness, flight, came to Elijah, so we must expect it to come to any of us; but the aim and purpose of our life should be that in such an hour we may be able to answer our Heavenly Father when He questions us, as Elijah was able to answer: "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts." If we live as those who are jealous for God and His law, letting it be known and felt that we are thus jealous for His honour, not one of us could fail to make the life around us in some degree better, brighter, happier.

It is in this way that he who is strong and true makes truth and honour and uprightness stronger in those beside him; it is in this way that he who is industrious, as a duty, makes industry more prevalent; it is in this way that he who shows his hatred of impurity makes the atmosphere pure in his society.

And in so far as any of you are acting in this way you are doing a prophet's work, and you, too, may claim to have been jealous for the Lord God of Hosts. So the youngest boy and the oldest man may become fellow- labourers--[Greek text]--fellow-labourers in the harvest-field of God, and it is a great privilege to claim.

But the blessing of it is greater still. Very often, if you are known to be thus jealous, even your presence will banish sin, silencing the evil tongue, strengthening the weaker brother, and making the sunshine of a new life to shine all round you.

But what if sometimes you feel that you are not equal to all this? if when the voice cries, "What doest thou here?" you have no answer to give? It is good for us in such a case to turn and see how God dealt with His prophet, how He made him come forth and stand on the mount before him. The Lord passed over him, revealing His presence in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, revealing it yet more intimately in the sound of the still small voice. So He sent Him out again with a new commission; and so we, too, may learn our lesson, if we care to learn it. And the lesson is this, that God renews our wavering strength, that He lifts up our drooping spirit, and opens our dull eyes and gives us afresh the hearing ear, by communion with Himself. In the solitude of the mount of God, through the symbols of His power, and in the sound of the inner voices, in meditation, in prayer, we may find those refreshing influences which give us new strength, new thoughts, new notions of God and duty, and send us out afresh to do His work in new service to Him.

We may follow His teaching to Elijah a little further. The new message to him began, "Return on thy way"--do such and such things. The new message is, in fact, just as always, a new call to old duties--"Return on thy way." And so it is for you and me. After the vision of God comes the plain and homely work to do, as we walk in old ways, and have to meet all our old dangers and difficulties. Has any one of us ever shrunk from any post of duty in life, or strayed from any straight course? Then if God has in His mercy visited us with the warning call, "What doest thou here?" or laid the call of a new message upon us, it is almost sure to have been a call to return and take the straight path, or to take our stand at the deserted post. And if it should ever happen to us that the duty which looks too hard is, as indeed it happens very often, some duty of our social life, should we feel as if the world were against us, and we were standing alone, let us not forget God's word of final encouragement to his prophet, "Yet have I left me seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed to Baal."

It is a word for all time. If ever you are fighting for the good, and growing weary in the fight, the thought may rise in you that you seem to be fighting alone, and that everything is against you, just because you cannot see the seven thousand who are in the same ranks, and on your side.

In the darkest hour of Israel's history we are thus told of an indefinite multitude who had stood firm in the faith of their fathers, untouched and untainted by adverse influence, and the recollection of it should serve to strengthen and encourage every individual who is really jealous for that which is good.

Let us, then, take the warning, and nurse it as a gift of God, and go forward where duty calls us, sometimes faint, it may be, and sometimes weary, but still pursuing.

VII. PRIVATE PRAYER, AND PUBLIC WORSHIP.

"And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day."--ST. LUKE iv. 16.

"He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there He prayed."--ST. MARK i. 35.

These two texts set before us our Saviour's habit in regard to public and private spiritual exercise; and they suggest to us the question, What have we, on our part, to say of these two elements in our own life? These texts, we bear in mind, represent not something casual or intermittent in the life of our Lord. They stand in the record of it as a typical, essential, inseparable part of His habitual practice. What we have to remember about them is that, whereas all men recognise in the life of Jesus the one unique example in human history of a life which is morally perfect and immaculate, if we were to take these out of it, the customary share in all common worship, and the private, separate communing with God, it would be an altogether different life--different in its attitude towards the common life of ordinary men, and different in its own quality and influence.

We might still admire--nay, we could not but admire--all the beauty of moral qualities, the purity, the sympathy, the love and self-devotion of it; but it would have lost its spiritual atmosphere. It would no longer be for us the life of the Divine Son, recognising and ready to share in all our attempts at worshipping the Father, however poor they may be, and living through the separate life in daily communion with Him.

Here then is His practice, written for our guidance, given that we may be stirred by it to aim upwards, inviting us to set our own practice side by side with it, and see how it looks in such a juxtaposition. Let us glance for a moment at each of these texts separately.

As regards the one which I have taken from St. Mark--"He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there He prayed"--we have only to turn over the pages of this Gospel and note, as we go, the similar allusions, and we feel that we have here what is in fact an incidental glimpse into the habitual practice of His secret and separate life.

In this passage we read that He departed into a solitary place, and there He prayed; in another by-and-by that He departed into a mountain to pray; and then again that He spent the whole night in prayer; and we see all this not in some crisis of His life, but as a part of that which corresponds to the common daily round in your life or mine.

And the inference to be drawn, the lesson to be learnt from it, is, I think, sufficiently obvious.

This secret separate devotional exercise of the soul was His habitual spiritual food.

It was thus that He recruited His moral and spiritual forces, those forces of the spiritual life which constitute at once the beauty, the attraction, the power of His character, and His divine and awe-inspiring separateness.

And as we read and consider, the thought must surely be pressed upon us that if He needed these exercises, these secret and silent hours, what shall we say of our own lives?

And what do we expect to make of our moral and spiritual character unless we too are careful to cherish under all circumstances some such recurring moments in our round of life and occupation, at which we retire into the sanctuary of separate communion with God the Father?

You may take it as a moral certainty, proved by all experience, that unless you hold to a fixed habit of thus bringing your life into the secret and separate presence of God, in private prayer and thought, you incur the risk of sinking to any levels that happen to be the ordinary levels, and of drifting with any currents that happen to prevail.

If we turn now from this to the other text--that which refers to His customary attendance on public prayer and at the common meeting--"He went, as His custom was, into the synagogue"--the questions suggested are very pertinent and practical.

Just consider the circumstances under which, as we are told here, "He went, as His custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day." The earlier part of the same chapter tells us of His fasting and temptation in the wilderness, of the commencement of His public mission, and his return to Nazareth. And, on His return, this is what we are told of him--"He went, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day."

Thus we see Him, fresh from the great crisis of His early manhood; the long, protracted struggle of His soul in the lonely wilderness; the subtle voices of manifold temptation; the hardly won victory and the ministering angels; all this we must suppose to be still flashing across His vision, as the scenes of any such crisis must always continue to flash through the quivering and responsive organism of the soul.

If ever any man might have claimed to need no longer the customary worship of common men, it was surely Jesus, as we see Him here on this occasion, with the breath of His own heart-searching worship still upon Him, and the light of new revelation burning in His thoughts.

Among all the significant and instructive parts of the Saviour's example this is not the least instructive; that on this occasion, as on all others, he went as a matter of regular custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, thus putting the seal and stamp of His own practice for all of us who believe in His name upon the duty of joining in habitual and stated spiritual exercises.

Had the Lord's example been different in this respect, how easy it would have seemed to set up a string of what we should have called sufficient reasons.

The old-fashioned routine, it might have been said, of synagogue worship, with its mechanical dulness and its mistaken interpretations of God's word, its shallow and superficial and tedious traditional commentaries, its formalism and vain repetitions; all this, whatever might have been its value for the ordinary unenlightened Jew, how could it have been necessary and what profit could there have been in it for the divinely gifted Son of man?

So it might have been argued; so indeed it would seem men who consider themselves enlightened sometimes argue in support of their own neglect of the religious life.

But it may well make us more than doubtful as to the issue of any such neglect, when we see the mind of Christ thus exemplified in His habitual observance.

We all recognise His moral and spiritual superiority. Whether His spirit has taken possession of our spirit or not, He stands out as our undisputed guide to the practice of a good life.

In vision, in insight, in purity, in stainlessness, in all that we reverence in human life and that good men strive to attain, we have no model to set beside His example. All the more, then, this fact deserves our notice, and calls us to follow Him, that we find Him, as His custom was, in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He was there Sabbath after Sabbath listening to the provincial teacher, worshipping with the village labourer, praying with the ignorant and the foolish, there as a matter of life custom and for His soul's benefit.

I have said that it deserves our notice; but more than this--it should be graven on the minds of the young, so that they may never lose the impression of it, so that it go with them through all their years of manhood, to preserve in them the devotional and reverent habit.

It is indeed good for all of us to think of Him there in that primitive and unattractive house of God, listening to the rude Galilean accents, and bowing His head in the habitual worship of that obscure community.

I do not think it is possible for us, unless we are quite indifferent about our moral and spiritual condition--unless, that is, we have low notions about our life, a low aim and a low standard--to be unaffected in our practice by this example of the Lord. We can hardly believe that those exercises of the spirit which were so fruitful in His life will fail to bear their fruit in ours also.

What have we to say as we picture Him with all the great thoughts of His new work swelling up in His soul, the divinely appointed teacher of new wisdom and new faith, the bringer of new light among men, the voice of a new world, and yet, being all this, at the same time, and as a means for working out His mission more completely, a regular and devout worshipper in a village house of prayer?

If it should ever happen to any of us that we come to fancy we do not need such common prayer, or that because of defects in public worship we do not profit by it, does not this example of the Saviour rise up and rebuke us? Yes, you may rest assured, if that day ever comes to you, that you are in danger of drifting away from the great saving tides of the human spirit into some shallow or artificial stream of your own time and generation. But, on the other hand, it is a happy thing for our life if, growing up in the habitual use of time-honoured spiritual exercises, we have truly learnt to know by our own experience, as by the example of the Saviour set before us in the Gospel, that they are the support and safeguard of all that is highest and purest and best in us, if only we are careful to use them with sincerity and reverence.

VIII. AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION.

"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one."--JOB xiv. 4.

This is one of those simple questions which, by their very simplicity and directness, set us thinking about the importance of our personal life.