Week-Day Holiness

“In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, -Holiness unto the Lord.”

Zech. xiv. 20.

Not only shall church-bells pour forth their holy intimations, and their divine significance, but the bells upon the horses shall bear the same testimony in the centres of business and trade. These are holy bells ringing in the midst of common circumstances. This is a very large and health-giving sense of consecration; it not only pervades the holy place in the temple, but it includes the outer courts, and it sends forth its purifying energies into the bustling affairs of the street. We are prone to limit the holiness we seek to the floor and circumstances of the sanctuary; but here is a holiness which moves with the swift things of the thoroughfares and distinguishes the couriers of commerce. It is holiness amid the fast life of the ordinary world.

Now holiness is always a very unimpressive weakling if it cannot face and endure the rigours and inclemencies of the street. It has the inevitable paleness of all cloistered virtue. It never gets beyond the wanness of a prison plant. It is an invalid which never goes forth on daring ventures. And it was in reference to this peril of spiritual invalidism that our Lord prayed we might have deliverance: “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world.” That would mean an escape from hardness, and therefore the deprivation of hardihood. But our Lord purposes for His children spiritual lustiness. “Endure hardness as a good soldier!” God’s trees are able to stand in exposed places. They thrive in the blast. They reveal incomparable vigour in the streets of the city, where there are cross-currents, and where rough winds are blowing. All of which means that the holy glory of the divine communion will break into our most commonplace circumstances, and colour and transfigure them. It expresses itself in the great cardinal virtue of justice, integrity, fair-play, magnanimity and wise compassion. It emerges in the pure and noble dignity of faithful words. It is revealed in all the varied forms of a strong and winsome fraternity. The divine holiness is nnveiled in all that is truly human. The bells upon the horses mingle harmoniously with the melody of the church bells.

Now these bells upon the horses are very attractive heralds of the King. Many men and women, who are never arrested by the church bells, listen to the bells that ring through the busy streets of trade. They would not be impressed if they saw us looking very holy in church, but they are impressed when they find us scrupulously holy in our business. That kind of music makes very indifferent people stand, and listen, and talk. When I do a bit of business with a man, and I hear the bell-music of divine honour, sounding through the transaction, the strong music makes me think, and may very soon make me pray. And this great kind of consecrated life is possible because the Lord Jesus Christ is so greatly consecrated to us — we are not limited in the Lord, and all things are possible in the inexhaustible powers of His grace.