The Moral Influence of High Position

“The mountain shall bring peace to the people by righteous* ness.” — Ps, Lxxii. 3.

The mountains have generally brought war to the people. This has been increasingly true the further back we go. The unrighteousness of those in high places has brought great misery to those beneath them. The selfish ambition of kings has in times of arbitrary government dragged their unoffending subjects into their own penalties — famine, pestilence, devastation of land, slaughter of kindred, exposure to danger and privation. I think the greatest calamities which have befallen the people of most countries have come from the mountains or high places. Unrighteousness on the mountains has brought dispeace to the people in other spheres than that of war. Take an age of rampant immorality. Analyse its source, and you will find that it has been drafted from the mountains. It has come down to the people as a fashion prevalent in the upper air. It has come 239 down glorified by its previous height. It has lost its association with sin by its association with rank and power; nay, it has been even painted with radiance by the sunbeams on the hill. But the psalmist looks forward to a time when the mountains will have an opposite influence on the people. He says there is a day coming in which the king shall realise that he is a servant of the people, answerable for their moral welfare and bound to maintain their interests. He predicts the advent of an age when individual advantage shall cease to be the motive of earthly sovereigns. He sees in the air the Kingdom of Messiah, the kingdom where the ruler shall be minister to universal need, where the greatest shall be the least, where the wearer of the crown shall be the crucifier of his own passions. And because in the sweet by-and-by he sees beauty on the mountains, he sees it also on the plains and in the valleys. He feels that the tendency of fashion, be it good or bad fashion, is to flow down. He feels that the course of virtue, like the course of vice, is not from the provinces to the capital, but from the capital to the provinces. He hails the beautiful feet when they appear upon the mountains, for he knows that from the mountains the tidings most swiftly come, and that the speed of purity is 240

accelerated by the impulse from an upper
breeze.

Lord, ever increasingly may the mountains bring peace to the people! The people take their fashion from the mountains; may the fashion on the mountains be good! I thank Thee that Thou hast revealed a new ideal of kinghood. I thank Thee that, in Jesus Christ Thy Son, Thou hast taught the humility of being on the height, the responsibility of being regal, the weightedness of wearing a crown. I thank Thee that the sceptre has become associated with stooping, the headship with healing, the royalty with repair of wrong. Place that ideal on the top of the mountain; make each hill where the king sits a “holy hill of Zion “! Cleanse the mountain air; let there be many lights in the upper chamber! Put a premium on propriety; make vice disrespectable! We often say, “I must do in Rome as Rome does”; teach Rome to do well that we may be pure in following her! I am more afraid of the gilding of sin than of its grossness. If I saw it in itself I should scorn it; but when I see it lighted on the hilltops it assumes a glory. Therefore, O Lord, I beseech Thee to remove it from the hills, to strip it of its false splendour! Make holy the heights where the

241 Q great ones dwell! Purify earth’s palaces; sanctify earth’s sovereigns; stir the conscience of earth’s courtiers! Associate kinghood with kindness, power with peacefulness, strength with sympathy, leading with light, government with godliness, empire with earnestness, rank with righteousness, status with stainlessness, brilliance of position with the bearing of human pain! Then shall we look up to the hills for our aid; then shall the mountains bring peace to the people.