Lift Up Your Hearts

Clouds and darkness are round about Him; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne.

Light is sown for the righteous.

The Book of Psalms
‘Lift up your Hearts’

He pleased God, and was beloved of Him, so that he was translated.

He, being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time.

Wisdom of Solomon

They are not lost whom we love in Him whom we cannot lose.

ST. AUGUSTINE
‘Lift up your Hearts’

HAVE I met at all the questionings of the reader’s heart? Happy am I if it is so. What has been said is only what has brought to myself a genuine help towards patience and hope. For me, it has tended to place the mystery of darkness in a perspective, in a proportion, which lets us see beyond it and around it. The cloud is vast, but it is not the sky. The sky is larger, infinitely, than the cloud. The enemy is strong and subtle. But the Master of the field is almighty, eternal, and entirely good. He supremely dominates the position. Only, He reserves to Himself the ways and methods, and also the times and seasons, which He ’ hath put in His Acts i. 7 own power.’

One gain which we win by our thoughts on the sowing of the tares is that we can look up with all the more freedom and certainty in an appeal to the eternal Goodness against the chaos wrought by the Evil One. We can pray with a new insight and conviction not only for the victory of man over man in the cause of right, but for God’s own victory over the devil and all his works. Such prayer brings at once a solace and a strength. And then again, by lifting our minds beyond the evil of evil men to the dark power behind them, it helps us to think of the human wrong-doer, not with less shame and shock about the wrong, but with less temptation to hatred and revenge. For PS. xcvii. we thus pass behind all other * clouds and 2 darkness ’ to the great central evil, and that

evil we carry to the Throne with an appeal strong and stern enough, but calmed by the dread solemnity of the matter. We call humbly but aloud upon the King Eternal to deal victoriously with His awful Adversary, till He says to him, in the thunder-Ps. ix. 6 voice which all the worlds shall hear, ’ 0 thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end.’

But let us pass on. We have looked at what I may boldly call treasures of the darkness, reasons for re-assurance drawn from the world’s deepest evil. Soon I shall ask my reader to go with me to the treasury of light itself, and to take and handle some of the precious things, some gems out of the ’ unsearchable riches,’ which lie hid in CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR, the living and perfect Consoler. But on the way thither let us pause a little over some thoughts which may quiet the spirit yet further in its hour of grief, and prepare it better for a direct and deliberate meditation upon Him. Let me talk a little with my mourning friend over some noble sides of his, or of her, grief — on our way, as it were, to the central sanctuary of peace.

i. First then I make mention of the solace which lies in the great, the heroic, aspects of your trouble. I read recently, within the same quarter of an hour, two letters. Each dealt with a very real sorrow. In the one, a mother wrote about the death of her great-hearted son, slain in action, leading on the men who rejoiced to follow him. The very page seemed shadowed by the immense loss. The photograph, printed on the memorial card, shewed all the blended strength and sweetness of the perfectly true man; and now — the man was dead and buried. But the letter was not all shadow. It was even more conspicuously bright, bright with a conquering exultation over the splendid victory which that young Christian patriot’s fall had been. No Spartan mother ever was more j6 CHRISTUS CONSOL4TOR

proud of her son borne home upon his shield. Only, this mother was better than Spartan; she saw it all in the light of God, in the peace of Christ.

The other letter discussed a life-long trouble. It spoke of a wife, self-forgetting, unchangeably devoted, born to be happy and to make happiness around her. What was her affliction? It was not of the heroic type, one on which poets might lay wreaths, and sing,

‘How sleep the brave, who sink to rest With all their country’s wishes blest! ’

It was just this, that in her isolated home, in a distant country, her every plan was persistently crossed, her every pleasure and comfort hurt, by the in variably selfish outlook of her husband, a man of blameless repute, in the common meaning of those words, but unable ever to see life through other eyes than his own.

I pitied the subject of the second letter much more than the writer of the first. The first sorrow was glorified by its conditions. The second had no light about it.

Your grief, friend and reader, is of the glorified kind. Do not forget, amidst the worst realities of its pain, to be thankful for the beauty and dignity which courage and sacrifice have shed around it.

ii. Particularly, let me say this in the second place, cherish the thought of the sacrifice. This death, this wounding, this ruthless imprisoning, are things sanctified by an altar. At that altar, red with the blood of loss, sweet with the incense of surrender, two priests minister; one is that dear husband, son, or brother, the other is yourself. He gave himself, you have given him, for the infinitely good cause of a beloved and imperilled country, and for the sake of eternal right and truth, and liberty, and mercy. Is there anything in this world, or the other, more great, more purely noble, than a 6 living sacrifice ‘? Reverence your own call, and your beloved one’s call, to enter personally into its dignity and glory.

Be very sure that it is precious in the sight of God. What is the beating heart of the Christian faith? It is the suffering glory of a self-sacrificing God. The Father spared not His Son. The Son spared not Himself. The eternal heart is unspeakably near to you who have given up your dear treasure, to fall, or to be broken, or to be taken. It is near, with the closeness of a supreme fellow-feeling, to him who gave himself, his all. True, the One Sacrifice offered for our sins stands unique and apart for ever. But let us be sure that our self-sacrificed Lord, while He gives all His mercy, absolutely free, to the humblest, simplest, least articulate, trust in Him, takes note and account, special and tender, of man’s self-sacrifice for others and for right, and crowns it with His own peculiar praise.

Such sufferers are more than sufferers. All unselfish dying has something in it of the quality of martyrdom. An old friend of my own wrote the other day about his much-loved youngest brother’s death. The lad went into the army and to the battle-field with no instinctive military ardour. It was not his way. He heard a clear call to give himself up to the tremendous danger because of a sacred cause. He had a solemn forecast that he would not return. But he took his place quietly and firmly in the fightingline, believing it to be the will of God. His brother rightly says, ‘I reckon him a true martyr.’ So does his Saviour, beyond a doubt. * Well done, good and Matt, faithful ‘; that assuredly is said with an xxv- 2I accent all its own to the servant who not only has faithfully traded with his talent but has willingly suffered in the work.

A striking and affecting picture has lately attracted wide attention. It is a good sign of our time that it was produced by a great daily newspaper. A young English soldier lies dead; the mortal bolt has pierced his forehead. He lies at the foot of a cross. His right hand, before life fled away, has somehow felt for and touched the foot, almost level with the ground, of the Crucified. The holy Face above, full of life, circled with its aureole, looks down upon the boy who has just poured out his soul to death; and the gaze is full of a solemn love, an untold benediction, as our Sacrifice contemplates the sacrifice at His feet.

This picture is a pregnant parable. The youthful countenance, beautiful in its simplicity and in its last sleep, the hand just touching our Salvation with that touch which is life eternal, and then that Other, that Sufferer supreme, nailed for sinners to the Tree, yet alive for evermore, and looking an unspoken and unspeakable fellowship upon the fallen — it all seems eloquent of the whole truth you need, 0 sorrower for your beloved, truth great and radiant enough to ’ quiet you in a death so noble.’

Again and yet again I have looked upon that picture. Its message seems always new, alive with the Gospel of peace and with the hope of glory. It is an inspiring thought that our glorious men, in their always growing numbers, seem to be more and more animated, deep underneath what one may call the cheerful reserve of the British soldier’s spirit, with Rom. the thoughts which mean a sacrifice, xii- l ’ acceptable, well-pleasing to God.’ This was evidently the impression left on the Bishop of London’s mind by his memorable Easter visit to the front.

He who set us the infinite example, as well as offered for us the infinite sacrifice, is surely gathering a glorious harvest of results * out there ’ from the travail of His soul. And you also, my friend, you here at home, as you lay your suffering heart at the foot of His Cross, and say Amen over it, are one of those results.

iii. One sad thought, I well know, sighs and cries in many a stricken heart, the thought that the life, so strong, so gifted, so full of possibilities, so loveable, so loving, is wasted now, cast useless on the ’ scrapheap ’ of the battle. That distress can rise into an agony, blinding the inner eyes even to the glory of heroic sacrifice which we have just thought of. If only your dear one had so died that all could see the splendid importance of his death! You could bear it a little better then. But he fell so soon, so little noticed, so pathetically unrecorded, except in the dreary list of c casualties,’ and on the aching tablet of your heart.

This, like every other phase of these sorrows, is wholly known to that CONSOLATOR of whom we shall say more presently. Tell HIM all this trouble, abating nothing, whatever else you do. But on the way to that interview, will you recall one or two sure facts? First of all, to the Christian soul there is no blind chance. Not fortuitously, but in the plan of God, one life passes away in babyhood, another at ninety. To Him, both lives are ordered and complete. High above all the heart-breaking * second causes, He, Father of mercies, sanctioned that desolating ’ casualty.’ And He will explain why, another day.

Next, be firm enough to recollect that, in some hidden way, taking the whole scheme of things into account, that dear man was wanted to suffer for his country, that death of his was of consequence, as part of the price paid to safeguard helpless lives and homes. Life by life, we might go through our glorious army, looking into the true faces one by one, and praying for each in turn that either he might not die, or might so die that he should make a manifest contribution to victory. But then, where could we stop? Reason and faith alike would be adverse to such a prayer. Not the least heroic of our heroes are those who have quietly given away their inestimable lives, unsung, unknown, grandly content * to die, if England lives.’

Lastly, be as sure as the immortal soul can be sure of anything, that, if you could draw back the curtain and see the continuity of that life with this, you would behold your lost treasure not lost but transferred, lifted to a loftier plane, to a larger field; present — exactly at the appointed and propitious moment in the plan of Heaven — where he was wanted there.

6 Be not afraid; only believe.’ We shall yet * see, face to face.’