The Demands of Christ

Ir seems a severe doctrine, that lack of one thing may be practically lack of everything. This is hardly an arithmetical doctrine, it is a doctrine that will be looked upon with suspicion in the market-place. Yet I can go even further and say that lack of one thing may not only be lack of everything, but may bring into disrepute and humiliation even the things which a man may seem to have. The garden is beautifully laid out; the straight lines and the curves are exact; the terraces are arranged with artistic taste. Now the garden says, “What lack I yet?” All these things may be perfectly correct so far as the geometry of the garden is concerned; but if no seeds have been sown, if no flowers have been planted, the summer will say, “One thing thou lackest.” It would not be a garden. In so far as it was the skeleton of one, it would bring contempt upon itself; it would have escaped that contempt if it had been left in a wilderness state; but with the outline and seeming of a garden without the seed or the bulb, it is a ghastly irony. Take another illustration. The machinery is perfect: cylinder, piston, valve, are in excellent order; no flaw in the metal, no obstruction in the flue; finer engine never stood on the iron way; what then is lacking? Not only is the machinery perfect, but every ornament upon it is burnished with the highest polish. What does it lack? In lacking one thing it lacks everything; it lacks steam, and the intending traveller says, looking upon the beautiful piece of mechanism, “One thing thou lackest.” We want the one thing that makes all other things available. We cannot live upon ornament. We cannot live even upon mechanical exactness and precision. We need force, we need inspiration; we need God! The watch may have a golden case, the dial may be exquisitely traced and figured, the hands may be delicate and well fixed. What then does the watch lack? It keeps no time, and yet it is beautiful so far as appearances go.

What is it that is wanting? It is only the main- —

spring; but that “only” is all; that one thing is everything. Are there not many persons who have beautiful cases, beautiful dials, beautiful hands, and everything seemingly in good order; but are they not lacking in the mainspring? in the motive? in the purpose? in the consecration which gives value to all else?

Conduct may be regulated in one of two ways; that is to say, it may be regulated by the hand or — by the heart. When regulated by the hand, it will soon slip back into error; when regulated by the heart, it will be kept in order by the very ordinances of God. When your watch is not keeping good.time, you may say that you will put it right, and for that purpose you open the glass front and put the hands exactly to the hour of the day as indicated by some dial on which you can depend. Have you then in reality put the watch right? By no means. You have put it right for the time being, and that is all that can be done through the medium of the pointers. No watch can be regulated from the outside. No watch can be kept right by any action of the hands. The watch needs attention internally; it must have the best skill brought to bear upon its inner arrangements. So it is with conduct: it cannot be washed, it cannot be reformed, it cannot be relacquered and made to look as new with any real advantage; conduct must express the heart. Herein is that saying true, “Ye must be born again.” Keep the regulator right. Out of the heart all life proceeds. When the heart is wrong the life is wrong. When the heart is clean the hands will not long remain polluted.

Observation is continually noticing instances in which “one thing” seems to be everything: it is so in common life, it is so in all life. Here is a man listening to the most exquisite music: peal of trumpet, clash of cymbals, roll of drum, sweetness of the lute, sharpness of the clarionet, crash of a hundred brazen instruments; to him it is simply tumult; he sees no idea in the tempest, he does not rise and fall with the swelling rhythm of the wave and billow. Why? What is wanting? One thing thou lackest — that one thing is an ear for music. Of what account is it that jewellery sparkles on his fingers, or that perfume is shed by every wave of his hand, or that the finest cloth covers his shoulders? The man is harmonically dead, and the music which rushes like a storm through the appreciative soul ‘is to him “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Two men walk by the same path; the gold of the same sunset is lavished on their way; they look at the same objects, and move towards the same goal. One of them reaches home enriched with many mental pictures; the landscape is impressed upon his memory, the clouds are massed and coloured in his soul. He is not a tenant, but a proprietor. His hand may be poor, but his spirit revels in affluence. ‘The other traveller saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing; his eye was on the road merely, the servant of his feet, not the servant of his soul. One thing he lacked — he lacked an eye for the beautiful. It is only one thing, yet everything turns upon it, for without it garden and wilderness are equal in figure, in beauty, and in charm. All these suggestions and illustrations lead up to the doctrine that it is dangerous to be right in the main. Yet this is often thought to be enough by human judges. On this ground we are apt often to acquit ourselves in our most solemn moments. We think that if human integrity can be represented by ten points, it is a very admirable thing to have nine of them, and that on the ground of the nine we ought to be admitted into any heaven that God may have reserved for good men. But observe what these illustrations indicate. The man who had no ear for music was right in the main: he was well educated, well connected, rich, and generous; yet all this did not interpret one passage of the music to his dormant soul. The man who saw nothing in the landscape was right in the main: he was honest, persevering, modest, and gentle; yet his eye was blind to beauty, and he cared not for hill or dale, or stream or luxuriant wood. So it is with regard to the higher life: we may have much and yet have nothing. A man may walk well without being able to swim at all. Yet all his strength as a pedestrian will not save him in the sea! The lack of one thing may involve

CHRISI’S TESTS. Wy

ruin. A merchant may have a musical voice, but if he has no money he cannot maintain his credit. An orator may have great muscular strength, but if his voice should fail, what then? Place yourself in imagination at the railway terminus: a traveller is there who has no ticket; is that of any consequence? It is only one thing — a very insignificant thing to look at; why should the man be detained for want of it? He has an address card, he has a wedding card, he has a visiting card; he has his

own photograph. Will not any one of these do; they are all cards; will not one of them be accepted as if equal to the one that is missing? No, “One thing thou lackest.” That one thing represents law,

order, equivalent, authority, and in the absence of that one particular thing, a thousand other things

go for nothing.

You will see, therefore, that I am anxious that you;

should not only be right in the main — right in nine points out of ten — but that you should be right altogether; and that in order to be right altogether, you must have Christ in the heart, Christ in the conscience, Christ in the whole man, Christ ruling over all with absolute and unquestioned authority. Jesus Christ adapts His tests to our personality or to our circumstances. We should not ask one another what tests we have had, and then judge ourselves by the tests which other men have undergone. It would be easy for some men to sell all and give to the poor, simply because they have nothing to sell. In the case before us the young man had great possessions. Any other sentence would have been mere poetry to him, and he would have adopted it with a glad heart. We read, however, that “he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.” Christ batters down our strongest boasts and trusts. Christ will not take some little sign from us of fealty to His law and sovereignty; He will take what we value most. God required Isaac from Abraham. Christ required the young man’s property from the millionaire. The case of the millionaire could have been met in no other way; no other test would have met the peculiarity of the case. He might have fasted long and prayed much, he might even have given liberally to the poor; but- to sell all, that was a test which shook his soul. Here, then, is the rule of right self-crucifixion. A man must be prepared to surrender what he values most, or he must subdue, mortify, and annihilate the passion which rules his spirit. If you are a covetous man, and came to me for Christian direction, and I said to you, “Cultivate diligently your musical faculty, and you shall enter heaven,” you would be obliged to me, and you might, in fact, be an admirer of my ministry. But

PERSONAL MINISTRY. t29

what should I be if I knew that you were a covetous man, and gave you directions to cultivate love of music? I should be the murderer of your soul. I must deal out Christian doctrine to you according to the moral circumstances which you bring to me. I must attack you on the point of covetousness. I must have you take out your treasure with both hands, and give it away liberally to those that have need. Suppose you are a man of a proud spirit, and I told you to give away liberally to the poor, you might accept my doctrine and be thankful for it. But what should I be doing? I should be ruining your soul. I know you to be haughty, proud, boastful, vain-minded, self-sufficient; it is along that line, therefore, that I must attack you if I have to do your soul real good. Hence we shall come into collision; hence I shall for a time be regarded as your enemy; hence I shall be regarded as making a personality of my ministry, instead of dealing in those vague generalisations which belong to everybody. Suppose I know you to be of a self-indulgent nature, and should tell you to be very orthodox in your religious views, to study your catechism thoroughly, and commit it to memory, and master the chief problems in theological controversy, you might receive my advice with more or less of gratification. I might for a time be a popular minister

with you, but what should I be with myself? I should be telling lies to my own soul, and openly violating the holiest vows I have pledged to heaven. — No; I must assail your self-indulgence; I must be a severe disciplinarian. The man whose besetment’ is censoriousness must be taught to put a bridle upon his tongue; the man who suffers from vanity of heart must be rebuked and abased to the very dust; the man who is victimised by love of approbation must be mortified in every point. The personal cross must be determined by the personal constitution. To one man it is no cross whatever to address a thousand hearers; yet to that very man it may be a heavy cross to speak a word for Christ to one individual. He is then not taking up a cross in addressing the multitude; his cross lies in another direction, and Christ points him to it. As a young man you may be apt to be impatient with this requirement of self-denial as the condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. Is that impatience reasonable? Is Christ demanding a condition which is out of harmony with the general process of life? Not for a moment. It is one of the strongest pleas of practical Christianity that it connects itself with our own maxims and customs, and requires us to carry these to their highest application. What Christ requires in the particular matter of Christianity He requires as the condition of entrance into all possessions that are worth holding. Has the student not to deny himself? Is it an easy thing to light the lamp when other men are extinguishing theirs? Does it come quite easily to us to sit up long hours, to search into old histories, ‘to acquaint ourselves with minute distinctions, and to engrave upon the memory a thousand things which at first sight have no value in them, but which afterwards bloom and blossom into knowledge and wisdom? Has the apprentice not to deny himself? Has the soldier not to deny himself? Trace practical life through all its variations, and it will be found that all permanent progress and extension of influence demands self-denial as a fundamental condition; yes, and even the man who goes down into hell denies himself in a sense more appalling than can be expressed. Do not imagine that sin is all self-gratification. For a moment there may be a kind of pleasure even in the very act of iniquity, but afterwards how bitter is the fruit which we are compelled to reap and to garner and to swallow! Do not suppose that sin is a flowery road along which men may walk with continual and unbroken delight and gratification. The way of transgressors is hard; the wages of sin is death. He that breaketh through an hedge a serpent shall bite him. There is a great law of retribution already in exercise in the natural world. Looked at in the largest sense, viewed in the clearest light, we may say of wisdom, ‘“‘ Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” She pays at every step of the road; she comes to no turning in the path where she does not enrich us with sunny retrospects and hopeful prospects. There is no escape from self-denial. I leave you to choose whether it shall be self-denial towards heaven or self-denial towards perdition.