The Song of the Lord
OUR story is told: how inadequately told no critic will see more clearly than the writer, who has stopped many times wishing some one else would finish. If we have shown things truly we have shown a battlefield. A hand has been lifted up against the throne of the Lord. We look to you, our comrades, to lift up other hands. “Explain the philosophy of prayer,” write some in answer to our reiterated petition, Pray. How can we? Who can? We only know that “it came to pass when Moses held up his hand that Israel prevailed. And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.” The Gloriosa superba is native to South India. During the autumn rains you find it shooting in the lane bordered thickly by huge cactus and aloe. Here and there you see it in the open field. In the field it will have a chance, you think; but in the lane, crowded down by cactus and aloe, great strong assertive things with most fierce thorn and spike, what can a poor lily do but give in and disappear? A few weeks afterwards you see a patch of colour on the field, you go and gather handfuls of lovely lilies, and you revel in the tangle of colour, a little bewilderment of delight. But the lane, go to the lane. There you see something far more satisfying, not only entangled colour, but all the grace of form, God’s full thought grown to perfection. Eight feet up in the clear air, bright against the luminous blue, unfurling its fire-flowers like banners of triumph, there is the lily victorious. Each little delicate bud and leaf seems as if filled with a separate keen little joy: the joy of just being beautiful and free.
The Gloriosa will exist in the field, as it will exist in the English hothouse, because it must. But it is not happy there. There is no proper development. Give it life, not just existence. Give it something to conquer. Give it the thorn and the spike.
Sometimes it may seem to us that our prayer-life would develop more easily under easier conditions. The open field with no obstacle near — there the lily will surely thrive. Look at the plant again. In itself it is very fragile, but each leaf tapers tendril-wise, and asks for something, however sharp, if only it may curl round it and climb. The cactus and the aloe are not hindrances. The straight smooth stick stuck into the pot in the hothouse will doubtless serve the same purpose. But something is lost. There is not the charm that springs from the sense of fine contrast. The easy and the ordinary carries no exhilaration.
God’s flowers grow best in places where only an angel would have thought of planting them. Not potbound, tidily, properly trained, is the lily at its fairest. It wants to be where wild rough things crowd it round with ruthless feet. It will not shrink back at fear of their trample. It will touch them lightly, and laugh the
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while, and at its touch the cactus and aloe show the purpose hidden within them. Kuthless feet are helping hands, lifting the lily up into the light. Perhaps if we could shut our eyes on the world’s way of looking at things, and go to sleep with our head on a stone, we should see all the obstructing, all the impossible, changed as it were to a ladder beside us, set on the earth, the top reaching heaven.
We need the flower’s brave faith and dauntless resolution when we Bet ourselves to pray. The battle is not mimic war. The evolution, intrigue, impact, are most tremendous realities. And yet, looking not at some little picked regiment, but widely over the army of God, does it not appear that a spirit foreign to the soldier has now infected us, and so dealt with us that what the first soldier-missionary meant by conflict, whether in service or prayer, is something we hardly understand, and the battle-cries of God’s elder warriors sound harshly in our ears. Is there not something lacking in nerve, and sinew, and muscle, and bone? Do we not see some things through a mist and a glamour, knowing not, yea refusing to know it — for that spirit has dulled our soul’s vision and obscured it — that it is but a mist and a glamour? If we give that influence its way we shall find before long that the foe behind the trenches looks like a friend in an interesting disguise. And the sword in our hand will shimmer away, like a sword-blade in a fairy tale, and the soldier-spirit will vanish:
“Braver souls for truth may bleed
Ask us not of noble deed 1
Small our share in Christ’s redemption — From His war we claim exemption.
Not for us the cup was drained;
Not for us the crown of thorn
On His bleeding brow was borne:
Not for us the spear was stained
With the blood from out His side;
Not for us the Crucified
Let His hands and feet be torn!
On the list we come but low:
Not for us the cross was taken,
Us no bugle call can waken
To the combat, soldier fashion.”
We would not say it. We consider it bad taste. But do we never live it? Consider: let us view ourselves in the light of that most awful Sacrifice. Do we believe in Calvary? What difference does it make that we believe? How does this belief affect the spending of our one possession — life? Are we playing it away? Does it strike us as fanatical to do anything more serious? Are we too refined to be in earnest? Too polite to be strenuous? Too loose in our hold upon eternal verities to feel with real intensity? Too cool to burn? God open our eyes, and touch our hearts, and break us down with the thought of the Love that redeemed us, and a sight of souls as He sees them, and of ourselves as we are, and not as people suppose we are, lest we sail in some pleasure boat of our own devising over the gliding waters that glide to the river of death.
Ruskin once made a remark for which he was counted mad:” I cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly.
Therefore I will endure it no longer quietly; but henceforward, with any few or many who will help, do my poor best to abate this misery.” And again came scathing words, almost forgotten now: “You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.”
We have seldom touched on the deeper misery we know of and see signs of, because there are some notes which cannot bear to be struck twice: and because not pity, but obedience, is the staying force. We would not draw one to come by the slight thread of pity, or by the other, still more slender, sentimental love. The refrain of some sweet hymn, the touching description of sorrowful eyes, and a wistfulness inexpressible — these things have voices which call, but the power that holds is not in them. Those of us who have come to Moslem or heathen lands for life, if God will, know that what keeps us here is something stronger than sympathy. And yet, though we would not sound our strongest call through it, misery, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly, looks at us everywhere, and through everything, with its mute appeal. There is ultimately only one sure way to abate it. Are we showing the people this one sure way?
One of our older children lay very ill, unconscious. In the morning, the crisis past, she said to me quietly: “Last night I thought I was going to Heaven, and I was so glad to go. But I was suddenly sorry. I thought all the angels would look at me, and there would be tears in their eyes, because I had loved our Lord Jesus so long, and I had not brought one to Him.” “So long”
meant then a year and nine months, and she had, though she did not know it, brought at least one to Him. Would the angels look at us “with tears” if we went Home to-night?
Would they look at us “with tears” because of our disobedience to our Master’s clear command? I would not for a moment forget the work at home with its immeasurable needs; but writing as I do from the darkness, to those who are in what is, at least by comparison, light, can I help pleading for more light-bearers? What is it that keeps so many from coming? Is it fear that ties the feet? Need there be any fear in a coming unto Jesus? “Lord, if it be Thou” — if this drawing that I feel in my very heart be Thou — “bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He said, Come.... And he walked on the water to go to Jesus.” And afterwards, always afterwards, it is just going on walking with Jesus.
Is the cord made of something far more powerful than fear? Is it human affection that holds us back? Then something is wrong which must be put right, if our Lord is not to miss us from the place where He means us to be. Oh that the cords that bind us, be they strong as the seven green withes that were never dried, may be as a thread of tow when it toucheth the fire, shrivelled in a moment and forever by the pure fire of that other Love that hath a most vehement flame!
Are we in utter earnest? Are we quiet enough to listen to the “sound of gentle stillness” which is the Voice of God? Do we see One coming toward us now, thorn-crowned, pierced, stricken, with a face “so marred, more than any man “? Does He stoop and take the cord in His hand, and look up with a question in His eyes? Do we say, “0 Lord, it cannot be; it would hurt too much to be borne! Not my own hurt, Thou knowest, Lord: it is their hurt that is holding me; I cannot ask them to let me go!” Does He turn His hand a little then, and show the print of the nail?
These words are not written lightly. They are not froth words. They rise slowly, burning their way out. This parting is a bitter thing, bitter as death itself to some. We live again through a long-passed hour, feel again the twilight about us, only the white of the snow outside makes a light in the little room. And the cold of the snow is upon us, and yet we are hot, and the snow flakes are lava flakes falling. And through the dimness and the coldness and the fire comes the Word as it came then: “Go ye ... Go ye.” But not only that one word: promise upon promise comes for those who must be asked to let go; till looking up steadfastly we see the glory of God, and Jesus.
Oh, more than an Overweight of Joy is theirs who give to the Giving One. Mothers and fathers who have given, do you not say so? For 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 well enough to pour out their treasure before Him. We fear to cause our dear ones pain. Should we not rather fear lest we hold them back from joy? It was when the Burnt-offering began that the Song of the Lord began also.
In teaching the converts once, we were struck by the way in which the Song of the Lord is ever uudertoned by pain. The Lamb was slain in the Father’s heart from the foundation of the world, and He looks upon the daughter of Zion, brought out of her captivity redeemed with the precious blood, and sings: “He will rejoice over thee with joy. He will joy over thee with singing.” The Shepherd seeks the wandering sheep, and suffers in the search; and then comes the song: “Rejoice with Me, for I have found My sheep which was lost.” And the only time we read of the Holy Spirit’s joy is when He speaks of the converts won “in much affliction.” Would there ever have been this Joy of God had there been no sacrifice? Can we hold our dear ones back from singing their part in the Song? Can we hold back ourselves? Would it not be joy worth any cost if we could add even a bar, even a note, to the glorious Song of the Lord!
“Joy is not gush: joy is not jolliness.” The words were spoken recently by one shortly afterwards called to live out his own words. “Joy is simply perfect acquiescence in God’s will, because the soul delights itself in God Himself. Christ took God as His God and Father, and that brought Him at last to say, ‘I delight to do Thy will,’ though the cup was the cross, in such agony as no man knew. It cost Him blood. It cost Him blood... Oh, take the Fatherhood of God in the blessed Son the Saviour, and by the Holy Ghost rejoice, rejoice, rejoice in the will of God, and in nothing else. Bow down your heads and your hearts before God, and let the will, the blessed will of God, be done.”
“Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done.” We pray it over every day. God means us to help to answer our own prayers. “He shall bear the glory,” we read, “and shall sit and rule upon His throne. And they that are afar off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord.” The vision closes with the words: “And this shall come to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.” What if Time, as we look back upon it from “the land of far distances,” will seem but a little hollow scooped out on the plain of Eternity, for the building work to be done? And what if somewhere in the temple wall there is something still unfinished which we were meant to do, and would be doing now if we were diligently obeying the voice of the Lord our God?
Some may read this who seem debarred from taking their share in the building work. Their walk is through the “common days and level stretches white with dust.” There seems no outlet possible for the pent-up love and
the longing:
“Lo amid the press,
The whirl and hum arid pressure of my day,
I hear Thy garments sweep: Thy seamless dress;
And close beside my work and weariness
Discern Thy gracious form.”
One so near as to be discernible will speak in words that can be understood, and tell the one who loves Him, how, even so, there is a way to build.
And some may read for whom four walls shut out all the busy world. There was one such who wrote:
“Down the lone pass of pain I found
Christ came, and made it holy ground.”
Down the lone pass of pain he walked, and it led to a room where no door ever opened to the outer world again. But something passed through the walls of that room, and out and away beyond all space, and the coming of the Kingdom is the nearer to-day for what happened in that room.
But others will read who know as they read that the call has come to rise and go to the further part of the hollow. Oh, let us be in earnest! Life is not play. There are playful moments in it, but taken as a whole it is an awful thing — this one brief life. Do not let us play away such an opportunity. Master, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee upon the water... Lord, I come.
And now, not in a clear and open atmosphere, but through the murk and the mist and the darkness “We praise Thee, 0 God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. Thy name shall endure for ever. Thy name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in Thee: all nations shall call Thee blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be His glorious name: and let the whole earth be filled with His glory; Amen and Amen.”