Week-Day Sermons
“THE destruction of the poor is their poverty.” Bulwer-Lytton describes poverty in rhetorical terms: “The wicked man’s tempter, the good man’s perdition, the proud man’s curse, the melancholy man’s halter.” This is a very pretty description, drawn by the hand of a rich man. What can a rich man possibly know about poverty? Besides, what is poverty to one man may be comparative wealth to another. A distinguished writer has described poverty as the “stepmother of genius.” Martial says that to have nothing is not poverty. We must here, therefore, as everywhere else, ask ourselves for a true definition of poverty. Wherever such words occur, every man must be his own dictionary. Five pounds a week would be countless wealth to an agricultural labourer; but if the Duke of Northumberland were to be reduced to five pounds a week, he would consider himself the most destitute of men.
Many writers have dealt daintily with the subject of poverty. A French writer-says: ‘The poor
man should have the modesty of young maidens,
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who never speak of their sex or their infirmities unless with restraint, in secret, and of necessity.” In some cases men make their poverty the subject of eloquent lamentation; other men who are bitten through and through with the tooth of want never mention their poverty. Dr. Johnson must have had this class in his mind when he said: “It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest.” It may be that he who speaks most of his poverty in a quiet and modest way really mitigates the pressure of his necessity. A foreign writer says: “One gains courage by showing himself poor; in that manner one robs poverty of its sharpest sting.” It is certainly true in other departments of human discipline that men relieve themselves by frank speech about their own affairs. The poet Burns tenderly says: ‘It soothes poor misery hearkening to her tale.” On the other hand, men ought to discourage themselves in the practice of touting for alms. Some men you cannot meet without being forced to listen to a begging speech. They may not make a direct appeal for assistance, but they make you feel very uncomfortable if you do not show a disposition to assist indigence so highly meritorious.
‘There is a species of begging which is ridiculous,
A LOUD-VOICED MENDICANT. ay,
if not wicked. For example, I have before me an appeal for funds to assist in the matter of maintaining cattle-troughs and drinking-fountains in the Metropolis. The President of the Association is that remarkably poor man, his Grace the Duke of Westminster. The appeal says that funds are urgently needed. The society over which his Grace presides is a loud-yoiced mendicant. I have but scant patience with such appeals, when I know that by one stroke of the pen the Duke of Westminster could replenish the funds without knowing that he had parted with a penny. Archbishop Tillotson has a word which rich men might usefully lay to heart: ‘There is one way whereby we may secure our riches, and make sure friends to ourselves of them — by laying them out in charity.” Here is a fine field for his.Grace the Duke of Westminster. Happy though he may be now, he would be ten — times happier if he gave away ten times what he now bestows. I can promise him gladness on the authority of Plautus: ‘Riches, rightly used, breed delight.” In the event of the Duke of Westminster being torn to pieces by the appeals of clamorous necessity, may I invite a few dockers and laundresses to send his Grace a few postage stamps to mitigate
his sufferings.
If the Duke of Westminster wishes to vary his experience, he may do so under the encouragement of no less a poet than John Dryden, who says: “Sometimes ’tis grateful to the rich to try a short vicissitude and fit of poverty.” Will the Duke kindly hand over his wealth to some poor man, and take in exchange the poor man’s poverty? I think we need not wait for an answer to this inquiry. It must be impossible for a rich man to feel any real sympathy with the poor. This was the opinion of L. E. Landon: ‘Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.” There have been great souls in Christian history who have recognised. in their poverty a species of divine favour and honour. How otherwise.can we account for the prayer of no less a man than Martin Luther: “Lord God, I thank Thee that Thou hast been pleased to make me a poor and indigent man upon earth, I have neither house nor lands nor money to leave behind me. Thou hast given me wife and children, whom I now restore to Thee. Lord, nourish, teach, and preserve them, as Thou hast me.”
Some men never can be rich, simply because they have no idea of the value of money. It is impossible to help such people in any permanent and satisfactory way. They take a sovereign as if it were a shilling.
Dr. Johnson, who knew the pinch of poverty and the exact value of every penny piece, wisely said: “Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.” This is another way of saying what a great writer has laid down in these terms: ‘He is not poor that little hath, but he that much desires.” A distinguished Member of Parliament gave instructions to put upon his tombstone the words: “I am rich, not in the abundance of my wealth, but in the fewness of my necessities.” Our desires should never outrun our resources. Seneca once looked into an auction room filled with goods marked for public sale, and said: “‘ How many things there are here which I do not want.” If you have a pound a week, you will go into the Bankruptcy Court if you spend one pound and sixpence. That odd sixpence means the workhouse. If you have a pound a week, you will be rich if you only spend nineteen shillings.
And what does it matter, when all comes to all, how much or how little we may have? Seneca bids us remember that we cannot take with us one penny into the unknown land. At the best, we are only trustees of those who have less than we have. Money should be a common stock. George Herbert says: “All comes from, and will go to, others.” This does not mean that there is no individual property. Individual property there must always be, and yet individual property is perfectly consistent with those social sympathies which never fail to extend their assistance to deserving necessity. De Foe beautifully says: ‘All the good things of this world are no further good than as they are of use; and whatever we may heap up to give to others, we enjoy only as much of as we can use.” Let us invest our money in the poor. We should, however, take care not to make paupers. It is better to use our property as a challenge to those who are in need, than to give it to them without calling their faculty and industry into play. If you are going to give a man threepence, you had better get him to sweep your front doorstep, or to clean one pane in your window. Never lavish your gifts upon idleness. So long as some men can be paid for doing nothing, they will never attempt to do anything. Never sneer at poverty, or your own want will come as an armed man.
“The night shineth as the day.” It should do so as surely with man as with God. To the honest soul there is no darkness; there is no moral concealment; there is no devil’s secret ground. In the matter of moral judgment man should be to himself as God.
The soul cannot live out of the light. The soul should carry light wherever it goes. To the bad man the good man should be as a strong light, dazzling and tormenting him with exposure and
judgment.
“A father of the fatherless is God.” That is His great claim to reverence. Not that He is infinite, but that He is tender; not that He is omnipotent, but that He is compassionate; this is the secret of His dominion. The sky would frighten me but for the light which warms it. Mere bigness is nothing. It is the ship that turns the sea into a poem. It is the cradle that makes the house a home. Man cannot worship infinity, but he can cling to love. Orphans find in God “the piece that was lost.” Orphanhood can get close to God.
“The Lord healeth the broken in heart ’’ — there is another aspect of the same thought. The Old Testament is full of tenderness. On a summer morning I have seen fields and flowers and shrubs gleaming diamond-like with dewy glory. ven so in this Old Testament. Its dew is tears. It loves all things needing love. Its hands are the willing servants of the helpless. It brings balm to the heart in pain. This is so with the whole Bible.. This is the proof and the power of its inspiration. The Bible is no literary trick testing the intellect, and toying with the imagination; it is the healer of hearts, the consoler of spirits; hence it stands beyond the reach of literary hostility. He who lives in gratitude will outlast him who lives in admiration only.
“JT will praise Him among the multitude” — love is not afraid of large audiences. Thankfulness yearns to tell the whole world how much it owes to God. It overflows all ceremony, and turns strangers into listening friends. Love knows all languages. It soon penetrates to the central words and runs them into music. Tell other people what you know of God, and you will find that men who would revolt from pedantry will surrender to experience.
To-day the religious thought is uppermost. Even whilst dogma is being abused and discarded, it is passing into new and richer forms. The age insists upon Faith. True, the Faith must be expressed in a free and ample service of Love; it must be social, generous, sympathetic, yet it is still Faith, the very Faith of the Present Son of Man, and whilst it penetrates and rules our common life we may safely leave formal creeds to beg for their mean lives upon any terms which an earnest age may condescend to suggest. A creed is to Faith as a conservatory is to summer.
All things hasten to the setting sun. Already the crimson of evening is tinting our lives. I want to do more work and better work, because of the slow but inevitable westering. The past is as a vain show. It is “as a dream when one awaketh.” I desire a baptism from on high — a baptism as of fire, a great outpouring of the Eternal Spirit. Tongues and prophecies are nothingness and vanity unless their speech and their foresight be supported and vindicated by Divine and Almighty Love.
Mr. Spurgeon says: “Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.” My experience has been that it is much easier to make money than to keep it. Was he far wrong who said that he had nothing except what he had given away? He is a rich man who lives within his income; he is a poor man who lives beyond it. Here you should learn well the meaning of Benjamin Franklin’s maxim: “Hre fancy you consult, consult
your purse.”
Robert Burns wanted to work a financial miracle when he wanted “to make three guineas do the work of five.” No man can do this who drinks and smokes, and largely helps a fashionable tailor to retire from business. Macaulay well says: “Sense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteenpence a day; but for fantasy, planets, and solar systems will not suffice.” It is astonishing how good a schoolmaster experience is in this matter of economy. Carlyle says: “There are but two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it out.” A distinguished man once told me that he had expensive tastes. It would have added infinitely to his comfort if he could have remembered that he had a small income. He must have been at least a poetical economist who wrote the line: “Let heaveneyed Prudence battle with Desire.”
No one will question that Lord Bacon was one of the greatest men who ever lived. I hold that in no respect was he inferior to Aristotle. He wrote upon nearly everything under the sun. On this matter of economy he lays down the following sentiment: “Certainly, if a man will but keep of an even hand, his ordinary expenses ought to be but the half of his receipts; and if he thinks to wax rich, but to the third part.” It ought not to be the object of any man to become rich, and certainly it should be no object with any man to become poor. When a man so orders his affairs, either by recklessness or through over-generosity, as to make himself’ eventually dependent upon the bounty of his friends, he is to be avoided as a warning rather than copied as an example. Addison says: “The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living, in a little, much beneath them.”
Dr. Johnson was not the man to agree with any sentiment in whose expression he could detect a flaw. How far he agreed with Lord Bacon will appear from this quotation: ‘‘The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of .Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.” It would appear as if the subject of economy had exercised every class of mind, and brought every degree of genius to bear upon its elucidation. Cicero and Shakespeare, Confucius and Carlyle, George Herbert and Edmund Burke sing the praises of well-calculated expenditure. Perhaps no one has more happily expressed himself than Bishop Hall: “It is no small commendation to manage a little well. He is a good waggoner that can turn in a little room. I will study more how to give a good account of my little than how to make
it more.”
It is wonderful how often we come upon practical ironies in daily life. I do not remember to have seen a more grotesque instance of this than in the case of Oliver Goldsmith, who says, with the wisdom of a philosopher: “It would be well had we more misers amongst us.” Certainly Oliver himself was no miser. It would appear as if some persons regarded miserliness and economy as one and the same thing. Nothing can be more contrary to fact. Economy may be generous — miserliness never can. It is the function of true economy to look ahead and make wise provision for holiday and festival. An American writer has said that “economy is a savingsbank into which men drop pennies and get dollars in return.” A French writer says the same thing in other and nobler words: ‘“Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.” Depend upon it, most of us are wasteful in’ so-called little things. Even men who take great care of pounds may bring themselves into difficulties by a wasteful treatment of pence. George Herbert must have been thinking some such thought when he said: ‘The back door robs the house.” Economy is not a single virtue; it is the sum total of many excellences. Dr, Johnson does not put it one whit too poetically when he says: “Hconomy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness, and health.” In the practice of economy never forget the duty of generosity, Nathaniel Hawthorne says: “Generosity is the flower of justice.” I quote again from Mr. Spurgeon: ‘A friend to everybody is often a friend to nobody, or else in his simplicity he robs his family to help strangers, and becomes brother to a beggar. There is wisdom in generosity as in everything else.” Well spoken and well practised!
“‘ As a dream when one awaketh.” Opportunities often vanish before we are fully aware of their presence. Then we are filled with wonder, and we afflict ourselves with untimely rebukes. The man who could have told us so much has been within reach, and has gone — gone for ever — and we did not seize our chance, because we were busy here and there, and profoundly occupied in doing less than nothing. The realisation of our loss is “as a dream when one awaketh;” we cannot believe
that heaven has been so near; we say it cannot R have come down so low; we disbelieve, yet we mourn; we doubt, yet we cannot shake off the trouble which follows a sense of possible loss.
It was so with the friends of our youth, the old folks at home, the tender pastor, the companion to whom God had given the keys of many kingdoms, the life which gleamed with the light of immortality. They are all gone. Gone before we quite knew they were here! They are away yonder in the quiet churchyard, beyond speech, or touch, or look of love. Oh, for one long summer day with the sweet old mother! We would buy her many dainties, and comfort her with overflowing consolation, and tell her of all our treasured love. But she cometh not! She is with God. We should have shown her kindness whilst she was here, and made her feel that she made God possible — her love so like His own! But she is gone. She passed away as in the night-time, and went to those who knew her better, and loved her more; and when we were told in the quiet dawn of the night journey beyond the stars, we could hardly follow the weird tale, it was “as a dream when one awaketh.”
It was the same with that little child we lost.
We might have seen more of Heaven through it than we did. Its very simplicity should have made us wise. We should have set it in the midst of us, where Christ meant it to be, and have seen in it God’s thought of greatness. Its very questions were revelations. Its inquiries were Christ’s way of teaching us how to pray. But earth must provide children for Heaven, as Heaven has provided children for earth. Heaven gives the root, earth grows the flower; Heaven plucks it and sets it in the upper light. Yet we made but a plaything of the child. We might have seen in it the aéry outline of the image of God. The clutch of those little fingers might have shown us how to lay hold of Christ. The cry in the night-time was meant to teach the heart a prayer for the day of trouble. We see it and feel it more now than we did then. Tender thoughts come back upon us; visions beckon us beyond the tomb; voices find their way into the heart; it is all strange, intermixed, incoherent, yet not without unity; a robe of many colours capable of being blended into pictured music; yet it is, most of all, “as a dream when one awaketh.”
And shall we never be fully awake? Is it worthy of us always to be rubbing our eyes, as if half reluctant to leave a dim and mocking consciousness of shapeless shapes and wordless words? Shall we not rouse our dormant powers, and seize our duty after the manner of earnest men? Are there not family neglects to be repaired? Are there not helpless lives to be helped? Are there not blind men to be led past points of danger? Hvery man must find out his own calling as to duty and define it, as in God’s sight. Look at the mission field, home and foreign, white already unto the harvest! Look at the social inequalities and perils which make life a tumult, and, to many, an intolerable bitterness. Is it not high time to awake and consecrate every power to the divinest service? We may do this, and yet retain all that is best in the dream-action of life. We need all its processes of subtle refinement. It binds us softly but firmly to all uppermost thought, desire, and opportunity. What if, when we pass beyond the veil, and recall all that happened here, all the outlook shall be “as a dream when one awaketh?”
Dreams have never yet been fully explained. Said Milton’s Eve: ‘Oh, how glad I wake to find tis but a dream.” Yet it was no dream, as history knows too well. Dreams may be ways into heaven. Dreams may be the filmy ladders down which the angels come to preach their mystic gospel to sleeping innocence. We cannot tell. We may, at least, be reverent. It is possible that the elaborate philosophy may be all wrong, and that the despised and incoherent dream may foreshadow Eternal Realities.
“Thou knowest not which shall prosper,” so work with both hands. Mirabeau says: ‘“Nothing is impossible to the man that can will. Is that necessary ? — that shall be.” This is the only law of success. The Bible has been saying that very same thing from beginning to end, yet there are some men who would believe Mirabeau rather than believe Moses. Lord Beaconsfield had a poor way of commending this matter of success. He said: “Whenever you see a man who is successful in society, try to discover what makes him pleasing, and, if possible, adopt his system.” This may be a useful rule concerning that many-coloured field called “society,” but it is a rule that does not touch all the deeper necessities of life.
Charles Buxton makes a remark that must be taken with many a grain of salt. He says: “A successful career has been full of blunders.” The mischief is that many a man has committed all the blunders without realising any of the success. It is perfectly true that there is a little self-worshipping prudence which always ends in failure. No doubt a strong swimmer can do wonders in deep waters, but before a man ventures into very deep waters he should be quite sure that he is a strong swimmer, With his aphoristic conciseness, Lord Beaconsfield says: ‘Success is the child of audacity.” But audacity is not always the parent of success. There is an audacity which is mere recklessness. If a man were to try to jump across the Atlantic, he would probably be drowned within about five feet of the starting-place. Aphorisms, like proverbs, require a good many foot-notes. Books that abound in -aphorisms should have supplements in which the aphorisms are expounded and illustrated.
The great German author Grimm says: “It is incredible what may be done by dint of importunity alone.” Some men will probably believe that now that Grimm has said it. Jesus Christ said it many a century before Grimm was born. Importunity is a law of the Divine discipline. The kingdom of Heaven is taken by violence. Jesus Christ spoke a parable on this very subject of importunity as a condition of success, but probably that parable is regarded by some as a very small affair compared with the maxim of Grimm. It is always pitiable, in my estimation, to see how many men believe Biblical things when they happen to discover them outside the Bible. Were I counselling young men on the subject of success I need not go beyond the Bible for a solitary maxim. Even on commercial matters the Bible is the best business book in the world.
Some wise things have been said regarding the conditions of success. For example, Fielding says: “Success is a fruit of slow growth.” Time is an element in success. If Mr. Spurgeon had died in the second year of his London ministry, he would have been accounted by many, as he was then accounted, as a buffoon and a mountebank in the pulpit. He lived nearly forty years after that, and the very men who laughed at him as a buffoon professed to worship him as an oracle. It was Mr. Spurgeon who was right, not the impetuous and short-sighted critic. We should be careful how we judge of character or of action whilst they are in process. The worker has to wait, therefore the critic ought not to be impatient. A wise French writer has said: ‘To know how to wait is the great secret of success.’ With regard to the matter of success being built on blunders, another French writer has said: “Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.”
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I am more and more assured that it is better not to work for success as a selfish object. Do your duty, and leave success to take care of itself. No wise man will work for failure, but he will show his wisdom, not in fearing the failure, but in guarding against it. Never care for success that is easily won. It is really not worth having. Hmerson says: ‘<A strenuous soul hates cheap success. -Go in for hard work, useful work, beneficent work, weary not in well-doing, for in due season you shall reap if you
faint not.’
Talleyrand says: ‘‘ Nothing succeeds so well as success.” This is true in all departments of life. Congregations avoid churches that are empty and hasten to churches that are crowded. To him that hath shall be given. The destruction of the poor is their poverty. What may be success to one man may be failure to another. The stone which may be a huge rock to a dwarf may be only a pebble
to a giant.
“Tn all labour there is profit.” The farmer is the better for breathing the fresh air in which he works. The student is enriched, not by his acquisitions only, but by his patient inquiries. There may be no money profit in the act of using the dumb-bells, but the muscular strength acquired by such exercise may be useful even in earning daily bread. We forget the process when we attain the result. We think no more of the drudgery of grammar and lexicon when we have perfectly mastered the language. Keble says: “When the shore is won at last, who will count the billows past?” Do not be too anxious about mere success. Such anxiety may simply be the result of self-conceit or sensitive vanity. ‘‘In success be moderate” — this is the wise word of Benjamin Franklin, a teacher sent from heaven, with few scholastic certificates, but with innumerable proofs of inspiration and capability.
“Be ye kind one towards another.” This will smooth the whole action of life. If we would be like God, we must be kind; we must be akin to one another; we must learn to help men, to forgive men, to raise their lives, and brighten their hopes. Never let us think that this is commonplace, and thus deprive ourselves of the joy which comes of service. Commonplace is the only opportunity of some men. To them no grand and dazzling occasions arise. Shakespeare says that ‘“Beauty lives with kindness.” Certainly kindness beautifies the face and refines the manners. There is a beauty of expression as well as of form, and that beauty always accompanies kindness of heart.
Kindness not only gives beauty, it increases wealth. Madame de Stael said: “Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.” ‘That is the joy of harvest! Sow kindness and reap gratitude! Sow kindness and fill the memory with gladness! That is the purest, deepest, divinest life! Byron truly and wisely assures us that ‘the drying up of a single tear has more of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.” It is more than mere fame; it is a very wealth of joy.
Here, then, is a field for all. What kindness have we done to-day? What loads have we lightened, what tears have we dried? Have we been kind in ‘ our own house? Kind in our own business? Kind in thought and in deed? Cervantes tells us of one who “had a face like a benediction.” That is the kind of beauty we have just spoken of. And Emerson expands the same thought: ‘There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behaviour like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.” Are we beautiful with this beauty? Are we fruitful in this service?
If you cannot preach a sermon you may do a kind deed, and is not that the very preaching that the broken-hearted world requires? Let us believe F. W. Faber when he says: “Kind words are the music of the world;” and remember the true words of Land or: ‘‘There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words.” Where logic fails, try kindness; where penalty is useless, try love. Whom thunder affrights may be won by tears. Shakespeare has taught this deep lesson: “When a world of men could not prevail with all their oratory, yet hath a woman’s kindness overruled.” It is Shakespeare who speaks of ‘the milk of human kindness;” and Tennyson has not feared to say: ‘‘ Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.” Yes; here is possible wealth; here is an opportunity to serve and bless the world. Kindness is not indolence. Kindness puts itself to trouble.
Kindness is love in action. A great man has said that ‘‘kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning.” ‘The kindness and love of God hath appeared unto all men.” “He is kind to the unthankful and to the evil.” ‘‘God
is love.”
Are we, then, going to be really kind? And are we going to begin this very day? ‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” What if love be an aspect of discipline? What if love be the sternest tyrant and ruler of men? George Eliot says: “It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult.” This is certainly so in religion, This is the secret of missions; this is the secret of martyrdom. Paul said: “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Nothing else can account for Christian service. Nothing else can sustain it. Mazzini says: “The religion of humanity is love.” Yes. But what is love? Its motive? Its support? Love takes us back to God. Love comes up from Eternity. God is love.
‘Three Score Years and Ten. These are said to be “the days of our years.” Even this estimate may be an exaggeration. Take off one-third of it for sleep, or, say twenty years, and the seventy is at once lowered to fifty. Take off sixteen for schooling, and fifty is brought down to thirty-four. Let us put the full period of working life at fifty years, and how short is the doubtful span! Yet within its hardly separated points man makes heaven or hell! There can surely be no greater miracle than the tragi-comedy which is unrayelled and consummated on that mean stage of time. And how man clings to the creaking boards on which he acts, and how eagerly he hopes that in the next scene of the weird play he will come upon the joy which has mocked him in many a dream! Thus we are lured — on and on we go — at the next turn which lies but yonder, just one little mile away, we shall see the lights and catch the odours of heaven. So the heart cheats itself. So fancy misleads judgment, and lulls the conscience with scented opiates.
Yet in some way all this is right. There is poor nutriment in logic. Even facts themselves are but so many trees standing in cold winter beauty, waiting for the warmth that weaves the bud, the leaf, the blossom, and makes resting-places for the birds. That warmth is to the tree what fancy is to life. Fancy pluralises whatever it touches. Perhaps Hope is a better word, deeper and richer in its suggestions. Hope is the divinity of life. It sees the light in the clouds, and reads the starry parable of night into all the breadth and glow and fulness of hospitable summer. We are saved by Hope — saved from storm and wreck, and darkness, and catastrophe.
Hope is no dream web, delicate to brittleness, but a great light beyond all wind and vapour and chilling cloud — a veritable smile in the skies as of an approving and welcoming face. Thus our fifty years live not in themselves, but in their possibilities. It is as if the seed could see its own harvest. We grow heavenwards. We “seek a country.” We forget the fifty in the hundreds, the thousands, the countless eons! “’Tis the divinity that stirs within us.” Let us, then, look no more downwards into nothingness, but upwards towards the harvest plains of heaven.
What are we to make of this dream ministry? It may carry us in either of two directions. It may lull us into unprofitable slumber, and such delicious reverie as is born of opium, so that we babble of airy things, and clutch for ever at intangible prizes. Then would the dream torment our life, as the mirage mocks the thirst it cannot satisfy. But, happily, there is another side. The dream can act as a tonic.
Hope should be no sedative. There is a hope that cannot tolerate anything opposed to its own quality. ‘He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself”’ — hope and holiness belong to one another; hope and heaven take sweet counsel together.
Working in the spirit of hope we double our strength. Hope is force. Hope makes work easy. We all know how delightful it is to work under the sunny conditions of success. Then even difficulties themselves introduce but undulations into the daily landscape, and disappointments only show the height of our achievements.
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Let there, then, be no more moaning over our “three score years and ten.” Moaning never helped the world. It is irrational, enfeebling, selfish, absolutely and unchangeably anti-Christian. ‘ Despairing of no man” is the motto of Jesus Christ. To secure that change in the reading of one verse was worth all the labour connected with the Revised Version of the New Testament. It gives a new banner to the Christian army. It sends a thrill of delight through all the hosts of Christian workers. It makes the wilderness blossom as the rose. It does all this, and infinitely more, because it reveals the eternal hopefulness of God; He would never exhort His Church to despair of no man if He Himself despaired of any; nor would He bid His Church hold the light high if His own lamp had gone out. The years may be but seventy, but they bring us step by step to the life whose years can never be counted,
«The candle of the hypocrite shall be blown out.” Is it possible to conduct life without some measure of hypocrisy? If people are so constituted that they naturally look upon the best aspects of others and even magnify their excellences, are their comments and criticisms necessarily hypocritical? As a matter of fact, there are people who do not see the defects of their neighbours. Probably they are few in number, still they must be recognised, and their virtues need not be cynically turned into vices. Besides, there are people who take very humble views of themselves, and do so with perfect honesty, and by so much as they make little of themselves they are not - unlikely to make much of others. The consequence may be the expression of compliments in a way that may appear to be exaggerated to minds priding them-. selves. upon more critical discernment. Fontenelle says: “‘ Hypocrisy is a sort of social treason;” but is not that a one-sided judgment? We must be sure in the first instance that it is hypocrisy. Some people are destitute of the gift of appreciation. A kindly word of recognition is never heard from their lips. Such people may escape the charge of hypocrisy in a social way, yet is it not possible that they be playing the hypocrite to themselves?
The hypocrite has no easy part to play. The hypocrite is a liar, and according to the old proverb, “liars should have good memories.” Some men are surprised into the utterance of truth. They had no intention of speaking it, but circumstances were too strong for their reserve. Bulwer-Lytton says: “‘No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy.” Perhaps the word consistent would be better than systematic. How hard is his life who sets himself always to represent falsehood! The practice of it lowers his own nature and by so much detracts from his healthy enjoyment. Frederick IV. boldly said that ‘‘every man is a hypocrite;” and did not the Psalmist say that “all men are liars”? Perhaps these generalisations require to be carefully modified. In these judgments hypocrisy is not so much regarded as a moral outrage as a social method. There is an undoubted distinction between the two, though it is extremely hazardous to build your life upon distinctions that are wire-drawn and shadowy. Our life
should be built upon broad strong lines of truthfulness, and we should be quite as much afraid of understating the truth as of over-stating it. At the risk of being paradoxical, I suggest that there is an exaggeration of defect as well as an exaggeration of excess. Besides, in the use of words I insist that we are more than grammarians. flattery is an affair of words. It is possible even in the case of
apparent flattery to reject all the literal terms and s yet to find at the heart of it a clumsily expressed effort of honest appreciation. When compliments are paid, you do not parse the words, but accept their best meaning as an encouragement to further service.
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