Another Mile
“And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” — Matthew v. 41.
THE Sermon on the Mount is incomparably great, if indeed you can speak of any message of Jesus in terms of comparison. There never has been anything like it since it was spoken, and I am sure that we are quite safe in saying that there never was anything like it before its utterance. It is great in its preacher. He came to speak to the world the greatest truths of God, and yet they were couched in such familiar language and brightened up with such perfect illustrations that the dullest in his company understood his message. Little children heard him gladly and the wayfaring man, though a fool, had no occasion to err concerning the truth.
We know something of the effect of His words upon the people from the statement made in the 7th chapter of Matthew and the 28th and 29th verses, “And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, and not
as the scribes.”
PRACTICAL
It was great in its practical teaching. All of it may be lived. I am quite familiar with that interpretation of this sermon which makes it the code of the coming
Kingdom of our Lord and am also familiar with the statement that when the Kingdom is ushered in all its power and fulness that the truths here presented will control all those who are the subjects of the Kingdom and of the King; but at the same time I am persuaded that it would be possible for us with the help of Christ to live day by day the great principles which He here lays down, and I am also persuaded that living these principles our lives would be keyed to the music of Heaven and all with whom we came in contact would be impressed with the power of our Christian profession and with the beauty of His character who has become the inspiration of our lives.
powerful;
It is great also in its power to live. The sermons of men grow old. Not so this Sermon on the Mount. I felt quite inclined recently to commit to memory the sermon preached years ago by Edwards entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It seemed to me that the truth which he then presented was to-day a neglected truth, and that we needed to be warned concerning the sinfulness of sin, and I am still of this opinion, but when I began to try to commit to memory the message of this mighty preacher I was soon convinced that the sermon in itself, while its truth was still great, was in its expression and vocabulary not for this generation. Again I say, the sermons of men grow old and pass out of date, not so the sermons of Jesus. It seems as if it had been preached but yesterday, and one can quite imagine as he sits studying, it that he is himself upon the mountain-side at the feet of the great teacher, and is listening to Him spealc the Beatitudes, which as Joseph Parker says are like little wicket gates into the kingdom and so arranged that if you pass through one somehow you have gone through them all. This sermon throbs with life as no other sermon the world has ever heard, but there are some special reasons why I should say it was a great sermon«i iWe wait for conventional places in whicH we may preach, some of us must have a church before we can do our best, and stand behind a pulpit in order that our message may be well delivered. Jesus was not such a preacher. Wherever there was a sky there was a roof, wherever there was an individual in need there was an audience. .Wherever human hearts called for help He was alway near, and the wonderful thing about Him is that He always spoke the right word at the right time and men went on their way rejoicing.
After His spoten words were ended it should not be forgotten that the Sermon on the Mount was followed by words of mercy. In the 8th chapter of Matthew and the first three verses we read, “And when he was come down from the motmtain, great multitudes followed him. And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean, and immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”
You will doubtless remember that in the Old Testament times the garments of glory and beauty worn by the High Priest had a peculiar adornment on the hem of the robe, there was a golden bell and a pomegranate, then a golden bell and a pomegranate, until golden bell and pomegranate met and the adornment was completed; and as the High Priest moved to and fro the golden bells chimed their sweetest music and the people understood that their reconciliation with God was being made complete. It should be noticed, however, that in this adornment there was as much fruit as sound, and this beautifully illustrates the ministry of Jesus. He was a mighty preacher, but he descends from the mountain-side and turns away from those who have listened to him that He may heal a leper. No wonder people heard him gladly. They were weary of the Scribes, they were tired of the formality of the teachers of the day, they had been fed long enough upon the husks, and they were quick to detect in His message the word of life. What Jesus said may be set in every language that has been spoken. Not so the words of other men. It is said that there are tongues into which you cannot drive Milton and that there are languages to which Shakespeare is a stranger, but the words of Jesus go everywhere and fit themselves into all languages with perfect ease. If the Beatitudes are like little wicket gates into the Kingdom, then which is yours? Joseph Parker has said, “Mine is hunger, for I find myself,” he said, ^’ hungering day after day for righteousness.” To my mind, however, the Beatitudes are like rounds in a golden ladder reaching upward. The first is poverty of spirit, and this is as it should be, for one never takes a step up tmtil first of all he takes a step down.
He must come to the end of himself before he appreciates God. The last round of the ladder is persecu* tion, and this is as it should be. There is not much persecution at the bottom of the ladder. It is only as we rise higher and higher in Christ that we are apt to meet with opposition. Jesus told his disciples this, “Marvel not if the world hate you; it hated me before it hated you.” It should not be forgotten that they who are to enjoy the blessing of the Beatitudes are not the mighty nor the rich nor the noble; they may if they will, yet they are not specified, but the enjoyments and privileges are for the poor in spirit, they that mourn, they that hunger and thirst, they that are merciful and the peacemakers, so there is a chance
for us all.
INFLUENCE
This sermon is great in its influence. It touches every part of our lives. Have you noticed that its admonitions are given regarding those who have active influence? The salt and the lights are used as figures, and for those who have a passive influence the city set upon the hill is an illustration. The sacredness of the Word of God is presented. “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” — Matthew v. 19.
Sin is set before us not only as an open violation of the law, but anger without cause is murder and the look of lust is adultery.
There are suggestions here as to giving, “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in Heaven.” — Matthew vi. i.
There are hints as to praying. “But when ye pray use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them; for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him.” — Matthew vi. 7-8.
There are warnings as to criticisms. God pity the Christian who is harsh and severe. “Judge not that ye be not judged.” — Matthew vii. i.
THE HEART OF THE SERMON
It is all superb, but I like best of all those words which are found in the 5th chapter of Matthew and the 38th to the 426. verses inclusive, “Ye have heard that it hath been said. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you. That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man shall sue thee at law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” I believe that this truth may be practised literally. It is said that George Müller lived according to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. We may set it before us as an ideal and with the help of God we may surely attain unto it, but of course this presupposes the new birth. I would not by any means suggest that if one simply lived a kindly, generous, loving life, modelled as closely as possible after the Sermon on the Mount, that he is of necessity acceptable to God. As a matter of fact we cannot live this truth except we be born again.
Riding through the wood of northern Wisconsin some time ago a friend of mine asked me to estimate the height of a great tree. I failed in my estimation miserably, and then he informed me that it was 125 feet high and at the same time said that the woods had been culled, that is the salable and marketable trees had been taken away, and I said, “What is the matter with this one?” He said to me, “Let your eyes run up to the top and you will see a dead limb. Wherever that is to be seen it is a clear indication that the tree is decayed at the heart.”
So if you are constantly doing unkind things, giving way at the same point to petty sins or to greater transgressions, it is one of the clearest indications that your heart is not right in the sight of God; on the other hand if you are constantly doing generous things, day by day growing in grace, it may be an indication that you have already accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour and your life. However, let me say again that in order that we may live lives pleasing to Him we must be born again.
THE SECOND MILE
The text is a striking passage of Scripture and is full of meaning. The proper interpretation of it and the practical living of it would revolutionise every Christian life.
It is said that in the olden days it was the custom if one was travelling through a strange country and did not know his way, if he should meet along the way one who may have been going in the opposite direction, and knew the country, it was possible for the stranger to stop the one he met on his journey and compel him to become his courier. The law made it obligatory for the man who knew the way to lay down his burden, to turn aside from his own journey, however imperative it may have been, and go with the stranger just one mile. At the end of that one mile he could stop and could not be compelled to go one foot farther. Jesus must have had this in mind and so among other things said to his disciples,” Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile go with him the second mile. The first mile was law, the second grace; the first mile you are compelled to go, the second mile you choose of your own accord to travel, and it is this second mile Christianity which the world needs to-day, and second-mile living which would compel weary pilgrims to turtl their faces Christward, who is himself always the inspiration and example of the second mile.
OVERFLOWING LIVES
The fact that you are a Christian may not of necessity prove that you have power. It is only when your life overflows that power is in your possession. The valley of the Nile is a fruitful valley not because the Nile flows through it, but because the Nile overflows in it. The world is sighing for this spirit of the second mile, which is the spirit of love, and this Jesus was constantly presenting to his disciples.
One of my friends, Mr E. O. Excell, has recently written the following poem and set it to music. To my mind it must awaken a responsive chord in many a heart:
‘’Do you know the world is dying
For a little bit of love?
Everywhere we hear their sighing
For a little bit of love.
For the love that rights a wrong.
Fills the heart with hope and song
They have waited, oh so long.
For a little bit of love.
«
“From the poor of every city,
For a little bit of love.
Hands are reaching out in pity.
For a little bit of love.
Some have burdens hard to bear,
Some have sorrows we should shares
Shall they falter and despair
For a little bit of love?
“Down before their idols falling.
For a little bit of love
Many souls in vain are calling,
For a little bit of love.
If they die in sin and shame.
Someone surely is to blame
For not going in His name
With a little bit of love.
“While the souls of men are dying,’
For a little bit of love.
While the children too are crying
For a little bit of love.
Stand no longer idly by,
You can help them if you try;
Go then, saying, Here am I
With a little bit of love.”
iT he second mile is the spirit of Jesus. In Ephesians the 3d chapter and the 20th verse we read, “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,” I know of no better illustration of His spirit. He is able to do, that is the law of His nature and is like the first mile, but He is able to do abundantly, yea more. He is able to do exceeding abundantly, beyond this He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask, and then as if to exhaust language we read, “He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or even think.”
It is the practice oif Jesus. He fed the multitudes. This was the law of His nature. He is always helping those who are in distress and relieving those who are in embarrassment, but the second-mile spirit is seen in the fact that He commanded them to sit down, for He would have them comfortable.
One of my dear friends now in glory who used always to see the fine things in the Bible which a woman’s faith permits her to behold and which sometimes a man’s shortness of vision hidcis from him, said to me one day, “Have you ever noticed that He commanded them to sit down in ranks of fifty?” and she said, “It is as if Jesus had looked over the multitude and said, * Fifty of you must know each other, sit down together and eat,*” and whether this be the correct interpretation of this passage or not it is the correct interpretation of His nature.
He saved Zaccheus. It is His nature to save. He came into the world to seek and to save, and to have saved one man would have been in our judgment quite enough, but Jesus commands Zaccheus to descend from the sycamore tree, goes with him to his own house and gives the second-mile treatment when He says, “This day is salvation come to your household.” He walks with the men to Emmaus and opens up unto them the Scriptures, explaining the things concerning himself. This was like the first mile and the law of His nature, but He will not leave them without the second mile; He sits down to eat with them and blesses them. Whoever came to Jesus for just one blessing and departed with one? Not one of us. It has been true from the very first that when we sought Him we received more than we could ask and even think. We came for pardon and found peace, with peace came justification, with justification came adoption, and with adoption all the blessings of the children of Grod. Jesus’ treatment of us is always in the spirit of the second mile,
“You ask me how I gave my heart to Christ?
I do not know;
For all the work was His, not mine to show.
He came below.
And in His love divine He suffered, died, And shed from out His sacred, wounded side. By blood and water sealed, baptismal grace. In which — by faith — He bade me see His face, I do not know; ’tis He alone can tell you how; I only know He loved me first, I love Him now.”
This is love and this is like the second mile; because of it my own heart is on fire and I can but believe that the world is waiting for the experience of second-mile living. This spirit of which I am speaking and this love I am upholding would solve every problem of the present day. People in all conditions of society recognise the importance of law and the necessity for its enforcement. It is the second mile they long for. Difficulties between capital and labour would soon be settled on this basis.
PRACTICAL LIVING Lord Shaftsbury wanted to help the poor of London. His spirit was right, but his fine raiment and evident marks of refinement were as a barrier between him and the lost. Then he became a costermonger and came nearer to them. One day a man applied for membership in a London church and gave the story of his conversion. “I was standing,” he said, “under the shadow of St Paul’s at midnight a broken-hearted man. I had fallen again and again, when the Earl put his hand upon my shoulder and said,
* Don’t be discouraged. Jack, you will be a man yet,’
* and sir,’ said he, * that nerved me with a new hope and led me to Christ.’ ‘*
Count Leo Tolstoi stood one day upon the comer of a street in a Russian city when a beggar approached him and asked him for aid. The great Russian said, “My brother, I would willingly give it, but I have nothing.” The beggar went on his way rejoicing. When one of his friends said, “You received nothing from him, why rejoice?” “But,” he said, “he called me brother.” That is the second mile, and for it the world waits.
Problems in our home may easily be settled on this basis. Children recognise the necessity for discipline.
They have no regard for the home without it, but their little hearts long for the second mile.
One of my friends tells of two mothers equally busy each with a little girl. One morning the child of one of them came into her presence when she was very much occupied and! said, “Please, mother, give me a needle and thread, a piece of cloth, and your scissors and your thimble.” Impatiently the mother said, “For what?” and she answered, “To make my doll a dress,” and the mother sharply replied, “I have no time, run away; you ought not to bother me. I will not give you these things,” and the child goes out with the seed of bitterness in her heart, which, alas, develops only too rapidly, and when she grows to womanhood people look at her and say, “She is exactly like her mother, just as impatient, just as fault-finding.”
The other child comes into the presence of an equally occupied mother, asks for a needle and thread, cloth, scissors and thimble, and the mother finds it a delight to turn from her work to lay these things in the hands of her child, and when she has done so she has the opportunity to say to her little girl, “If I could only say a word this morning that would turn your attention towards Christ, who is’^^^ secret of the joy of my life, I would be so happy,” and the child goes out with a song and says, “If ever there was an angel it is my mother,” and she grows up and people say, “She is exactly like her mother, the same sweet, gentle disposition.” This is the spirit of the second mile. .The practice of it would revolutionise every home.
It IS what the church needs to-iday. Men are brought to Christ not so much by sermons, certainly not by songs, but by the spirit of love in the preacher and his people and by the evident presence of Christ in the lives of those with whom he may casually worship. Going the first mile counts for almost nothing, going the second will invariably win out. The practice of it is the secret of power in the Sunday School teaching and work.
A New York Sunday School superintendent urged his teachers to bring new scholars with them the next Sunday, and as he walked down Sixth Avenue attempted himself to win a street boy. “Will you go to Sunday School?” he said, and in the vernacular of the street the boy said, “Nop.” The superintendent said, “We have picture papers for every boy,” and he would not come. “We have music, we have everything to make you have a good time,” and the boy steadily refused. Disappointed, the superintendent turned away and when he had gone a short distance he heard the patter of little feet behind him and turning back he saw the boy. He said with an earnest, eager look, “Mister, are you there?” and the superintendent said, “Yes, I am there.” “Well,” he said, “next Sunday I’ll be there.” And he was. Sunday School papers, music, and other attractions of school were simply the first mile, the spirit of the superintendent was the second mile, and was an influence the boy could not shake off.
Some time ago there appeared in a magazine the statement that Christianity was a failure. In the next issue it was said, “This is not true, for it has never been tried.” I wonder if this could be said of any of us. I am persuaded that all we need to do to win the lost is to live in such a way as to reveal the spirit of Jesus. Of course this presupposes a union with Him by faith, and to live in the spirit of Jesus is only another way to say that we must live in the spirit of the second mile.
Some little time ago there came to me in my mail a card which was headed, “Victory.” It is so saturated with the spirit of the “Second Mile,” and has been so helpful to so many people that it is given here in full. Some of my friends have said that these “Victory Cards,” have been put up in prominent places in their homes and have always been most helpful in their influence.
-VICTORY”
—2 Cor. xi. 14. When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you smile inwardly, glorjring in the insult or the oversight That is Victory
John xiii. 26-30; 2 Tim. iv, 16-18.
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your taste offended, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you take it all in patient and loving silence
That is Victory John viii. 48-50; 2 Tim. iv. 16-18; I Peter ii. 20-21
When you can bear with any discord, any irregularity and unpunctuality, any annoyance — and are content with any food, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption
That is Victory Phil iv. xi-13i Heb. xi 3-ix; Acts xxvil 2i*;r5; 2 Cor. iv. 8-10
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or to record your own good works, or to itch after commendation, when you can truly “love to be unknown.”
That is Victory
Gal. ii. 20; vi. 14.
What if we could live as this card indicates! He would have a heart of stone who would turn away from the Saviour who could be such an inspiration. I am confident that should we live as is here suggested everyone would become a soul winner, the churches would be enlarged in their membership and the whole world made better.
When I had spoken along this line at a gathering of Christian students in the East, the Rev. James M. Gray, D. D., slipped into my hand a little card, on which he had written the following:
“If one bid thee go a mile,
Go with him the second mile.
Let not duty set thy pace,
Christian love keeps step with grace.
“It is thus with Jesus’ love.
Love all other loves above,
Jesus fills our cup and more.
Fills it till it runneth o’er.
“Love like this in you and me
Setting us at liberty.
Freeing us from self and sin,
Lost and dying souls would win.
“Ah, my brother will it pay?
At Christ’s judgment seat some day
It will have been worth our while
To have gone the second mile.”