Twenty Sermons

THESE words recall to many of you a most familiar picture, for the story of St. Peter’s vision is one of those passages of the New Testament which have almost become the proverbs of mankind. Peter had been sitting on the top of Simon’s house at Jaffa, and there had been shown to him the sight of the great sheet full of all living beasts, of which he had been bidden to take and eat. And when he hesitated, you remember Jiow a voice had spoken to him, and rebuked the narrow punctiliousness with which he drew distinctions, and thought some of God’s creatures clean and others unclean. He was sitting there, pondering this vision, “doubting in himself what the vision which he had seen should mean.” A new idea had come to him. He saw it very vaguely; and its developments, what it would lead to if he followed it out, he could not see at all. It was all abstract and impalpable. It just bewildered and eluded him. But as he sat there, steps were heard below, and to his mind the Spirit spoke, saying,

Visions and Tu

‘•Three men are asking 1 the

servants of Cornelius, the (icntile, coining to ask him to vi.-it tin ir master. Their visit gave him iinmediately the chance to put in action the idea which had possessed him. Our verse shows him then standing between the vision and its application. On the one side of him was the mysterious sheet full of the multitude of beasts; on the other side were the three men who needed just the principle which the sheet-full of beasts involved. It was a critical moment. The question was whether the vision could pass through Peter to the three men and Cornelius. When on the morrow he “went away with them,” the question was decided, and the idea and its appropriate duty had joined hands.

Man standing between his visions and his tasks — that is the subject of our verse then. That is our subject for this morning. It is the place where certain men are often called upon peculiarly to stand; and in some degree it is the place in -which all men are standing always. For every man has visions, glimpses clearer or duller, now bright and beautiful, now clouded and obscure, of what is absolutely and abstractly true; and every man also has pressing on him the warm, clear lives of fellow-men. I In TO is the world of truths on one side, and there is the world of men upon the other. Betw. -n the tw<> stands man; and these two worlds, if man is what lie ought to be, mset through his nature.

Think of an instance, and you will see what I moan. II« n- an- you. a thoughtful, meditative man.

You have been pondering and studying. Some how it has become clear to you, let us say, that there is a God. The supernatural behind the natural, the will behind all forces, has revealed itself to you. For the moment, it is enough for you just to know that mighty truth. Turning it this way and that, you think in one view and another how mighty it is. But very soon, if you are a true man, your nature begins to hear and feel a stir upon the other side of it. Under the windows which look towards the world, the tumult of the needy life of your fellow-men comes rising up to you. Perhaps it is more definite than that, and certain special fellow-men come, with footsteps which you can hear, up to your hearts’ doors and knock. At first their coming seems to be only an intrusion. Why can they not leave you alone with your great idea? What right have they to claim a share of the sunshine in which you are sitting? But by-and-by you see more wisely. You begin to wonder whether their coming on this side of you is not the true correlative and correspondent of the coming of the vision on the other side of you. You begin to feel that the practical life may be needed to complete the meditative life. If you open the door to your intrusive fellow-men you find that it indeed is so. Your idea of God falling upon the many mirrors of their various needs and natures, gains new interpretations and illuminations. Their human hearts get hold of the reality of God, which they never could have found out for themselves, through

>/is and Tasks.

your l.eli.-t’ in it. And your own lit-, open on l.oth

ndea, on thifl ode to the vision, and <>n that side to

th. men, grows rich and sacred as being the room in which that most deep and interest in — transaction which the world can witness, the meeting of truth with tin- human mind, takes place.

Truth is vague and helpless until men believe it. M< n are weak and frivolous till they believe in truth. To furnish truth to the believing heart, and to furnish believing hearts to truth, certainly there is no nobler office for a human life than that; and the doc trine which I want to preach to you to-day is that the human life or human nature is so made as to fulfil just that office. How can we better tell the story of you who first believe in God yourself and then an; drawn out to make your fellow-men believe in Him. and in making them believe in Him find your own belief grow steadier and clearer — how shall we better depict this human life which never learns anything without hearing other human lives clamoring to share the blessings of its knowledge than by recurring to the story of Peter, to whom,” as he thought on t lievision, the Spirit said, Behold three men seek t i

It is illustrated, this central and critical position in which a man may stand, by the way in which tinartist stands between the whole world of beautiful ideas and the hard world of matter, in which these ideas at last find their expression through him. The artist dreams his dream, and as he thinks upon tinvision, the Spirit says, Behold the marble seeks 1 1 and instantly the chisel is in his hand and the work of carving has begun. Ideas would hover like a great vague cloud over a world all hard and gross and meaningless, if it were not for man who brings the fire down and makes the whole of nature significant and vocal. If civilization has changed the face of nature, and out of rocks and trees built monuments and cities, the whole long history is but the. record of the meeting within the transmitting intelligence of man of the abstract idea with the adaptable material.

But to return from our illustration to our truth. There are some moments in life when this position of man, as standing between the visions which he has seen and his fellow-men on whom he is to bring them into power, is peculiarly manifest. There are perhaps some young men here to-day who stands just at one of those moments now. When any process of education has been finished, when the college doors have just dismissed their graduate, when the professional student stands upon the brink of the troubled waters of his profession with the calm scholar-days behind him, when the young minister is just feeling the hands of ordination on his bowed head, in all these days how real this sense of the two worlds between which he stands is to any truly thoughtful man. Between the silence and the stir, between the calm accumulation and the active employment of his truth, the young man stands with a strange consciousness which is never so vividly repeated at any other moment of his life. The two worlds, one on each side of him, re ceive illumination from each other, and this illumination is sent back and forth through him. Truth r seemed HO sacred as when h«- comes in sight of its true uses; and the world never seemed so well Avortli living for as when lie sees how much it needs his truth. Sad is the lot, sad is tin- nature of any man who can pass through such a moment and not be solemnized and exalted by it. Sad is the man who can graduate from college and go out into the world, and think of his education only as a drudgery from which he has at last escaped, or as an equipment with which he is to earn his daily bread.

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