The Power of Prophecy
Proverbs xxix. 18 v. “Where there is no vision the people perish.”
The greatest help to goodness is a bright prospect. The prayer we are all breathing is “Give us this day our bread for to-morrow. “We make the child good by promises of the coming gold; but we are all children. The darkest eclipse to any soul is the eclipse of the approaching sun. I can stand every present cloud, if only there is a rent prophetic of the blue; but, where there is no prophecy, I go down the hill. Often have I thought of these words of the Master, TVhile the bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept.” The danger to us all is commonplaceness — the sense that nothing is coming. The midnight cry is not half so dangerous; it wakes the pulses of life. But, to hear no voice at all is an awful thing. I would rather have the flood without the rainbow than the dry land without the rainbow. The flood has always its ark; it braces me for flight, it teaches me to soar. But the level plain with no height to come, the endless road with no goal to gain, the changeless day with no morn to rise — this is my soul’s despair.
My Father, open to me the windows of that great deep — to-morrow. Lend me a ray of the future to light me through the present. I have been told that Thou hast given earth to prepare for heaven; nay, Thou hast given heaven to prepare fur earth. I have been inverting the order of Thy benefits, oh, my Father. I have been asking the passing hour to make me ripe for eternity; it is the vision of eternity that must ripen me for the passing hour. I cannot live a day without Thy morrow; it is from the hills that my aid cometh. I never move freely on the lower plain till I have seen the higher. I need Thy rainbow for the workshop and for the plough. It is when I dream of Thee that I am most practical; it is when I cease to dream of Thee that my task is badly done. Send Thy dream into my day. Send Thy vision of beauty into the workshop of Nazareth. Send Thy light of Bethlehem into the shepherd’s fold. Send Thy transfigured glory into the building of my human tabernacles. Let me sweep my earthly room by the light of Thy morning star; I have no patience for man without the vision of Thee.