SERMONS.
"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me."—Rev.iii. 20.
GOD is close to us. Every moment of our life He is doing countless things in us and around us. If a man were to do these things we should see him with our eyes, we could touch him with our hands; we should not fail to observe his presence. Because we cannot see God with our bodily eye, or grasp Him with our hand, we forget His working, we lose sight of His nearness.
When you were children, some time or other, I suppose, in your young lives, you got hold of a flower-seed, and planted it in a pot of moist earth, and set it in the sunniest corner of your room. Morning after morning, when you awoke, you ran to see if the flower had begun to grow. At last your eagerness was rewarded by the sight of some tiny leaves which had sprung up during one night. Then the stalk appeared, frail and tender, and then more leaves, and buds, and branchlets, till at length there stood, blooming before you, a fair and fragrant flower.
Who made it? Somebody worked to produce that flower. It could not make itself. The dead earth could not shape that lovely leaf; the bright sunshinecould not paint those tendrils. A deep-thinking man, when he sees these wonderful things, must ask himself, Who fashioned them? Not the sunshine nor the air, but God, if there is a God, willed that that plant should grow. God toiled to make the plant—in your room, at your side.
At this moment, in your breast, your heart is beating. All your life it has gone on beating. It is not you who sustain its motion. Even when you forget it, when you are asleep, its pulsations do not cease. Somebody works to keep your heart beating. God, who is the foundation of all life, out of whose loving heart it streams, and back to whom it must return, has to remember your heart.
But God comes still nearer to you. Do you remember a time in your life when, in your inmost heart, that hidden, secret chamber where you dream your dreams, and love your loves, and pour out your sorrows all alone, you felt a strange influence? It was a vague unrest, a great self-weariness. It was as if all brightness, hope, and satisfaction had gone from your life, and had left behind them, in departing, a sick, wistful longing to find something new, something brighter, better, and more noble than you yet had known. It was as if you could hear voices calling, and your heart moved within you, as if some new friend might be there. Do you know what that was? It was God. It was the great Heart that made your heart, longing and pleading to have it for His own. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." Do you believe that? You, men and women, who love your Bible, and are angry if any man seems to speak against it, or throw doubt uponone jot or tittle of its letter, have you ever thought what that means if it is true? Ay! it stands written there, and you have read it a hundred times, and think you believe it; but do you indeed know what it means? It means that God, the Eternal, Infinite, Almighty God, who wields these worlds of shining stars, and keeps them in their mighty courses; that God, the Spotless, the Holy, the Stainless, cares with a great longing to have the heart and love ofyou; you, who are no saint; you, the most commonplace and lowly, the most insignificant and sinful of men. Is that easy to believe? Is it easy to believe that God would miss something if your heart never went out in tender affection and adoration towards Him; that He should take pains and trouble to get Himself into your poor, battered heart—that heart which is so filled with sordid cares as to how you may make a living, and the envyings and strivings which accompany; in which such sinful, base, and vicious thoughts too often dwell? Is it possible that the great, holy God wishes to get in there?
It is not easy to believe it. One of the greatest religious thinkers who ever lived, by the confession of believers and unbelievers alike; a man who laboured so much under the effort to find out God, and became so absorbed in the quest, that the name of "God-intoxicated" was applied to him; a man who conceived more than any one else of the grandeur and transcendency of God, till he found this poor world of ours and the whole universe fade into insignificance before the thought of Him; this man, this great philosopher, Spinoza, said, "A man should love God with his whole being, but he must not expect God to love him in return." And the bible says, "We love Him, because He first loved us." Which is true?
There are two things, I think, which make it hard to believe that we can be of consequence to God—that God holds each one of us in a separate thought of knowledge, sympathy, and Fatherly affection. One of them is this: How is it possible for God to do it? Think of the myriads of men and women on this world of ours, and the possibility of this universe teeming with countless creatures of God's creative power and Fatherly love. How is it possible that God should know each one of us, and love us each one? God, so omnipotent, so transcendent, so almighty! But the very thing that makes the difficulty to our reason seems to me the very thing that should undo it. If God were not so great, then I could not have the hope that I was something to Himby myself.
Is it not a fact that it is precisely a weak, uncultured, low, and undeveloped intellect that finds it difficult to give attention to a great mass of details, holding each apart, and doing justice to each? Precisely as you rise in the scale of intellect and mental power, that capacity increases quite incalculably. It is the great genius of a general who not merely directs his army as a mass, but holds it at every point, knows the value of every unit of force at his command, follows the movement of each squadron, troop, and even of each single individual, and precisely by this faculty is able to overthrow the enemy and lead the army to victory.
You have listened to a beautiful oratorio, where scores of instruments and hundreds of voices were all blended together in one tide of magnificent harmony. How is it possible for a small intellect to keep them thus in unison? It requires a master-mind in music to do this—one that is fully conscious of the value of each string and voice, and who can therefore combinethem all in glorious harmony. And God is almighty; it is nothing to Him that He is far away from you; you, a speck of dust upon this world. It is precisely because I believe in God's omnipotence that I can believe that He cares for each separate creature He has made.
But then there is another question. Even if God can love each one of us, apart from all the rest, with an individual, personal, watchful kindness, what right have we to think that He should care to do it? Once again, that difficulty need but be faced, and you discover that it is a delusive spectre and empty of reality.
Is it likely that God should miss the love of me, His creature?
Turn to the early chapters of Genesis, and read the story they have to tell you. They tell you how through measureless periods of time, in the fields of infinite space, the great God built up our world; first the stone foundations, layer upon layer; above that, the strata of mineral wealth, to be used hereafter, clothing the surface of it with a verdant soil. Out of the mineral world he evolved the nutritive, vegetable world, out of vegetable life the higher creation of animal life, and out of that emerges man, standing on the summit of God's great toil and building, with eyes that see, ears that hear, and mind that can understand, answering to the call of God, interpreting all the wisdom, patience, beauty, and love in that mighty labour of creation, and saying, "Father, I adore Thee." Do you think that man, then, His last crowning work of creation, is nothing to God? What should you say of one who spent years and years, and sank uncounted capital, upon a great mass of wonderfully contrived machinery, to produce some beautiful fabric of beneficence to mankind, and when itwas produced turned away and left it all? You would call such a one a fool, and mad.
God made this world, and spent toil and industry in making the heart of man, and keeping it conscious of Him, capable of loving Him. And do you mean to tell me that God does not care for human love? It is impossible. There is no God at all, or the Gospel is true. He does miss it when your heart does not bend to Him. The supreme gladness we can give our Maker is the simple, sincere adoration of our poor human hearts.
There is a picture that paints the idea of my text. It says, to those who look at it, what I could not say in many paragraphs. A cottage neglected, falling into ruin, is shown in the picture. In front of the window tall thistles spring up, and long grass waves on the pathway, leading to the door overgrown with moss. In front of that fast-closed door a tall and stately figure stands, with a face that tells of toil and long, weary waiting, and with a hand uplifted to knock. It is Christ, the Son of God, seeking to get into our sinful hearts. Is it true that there can be a man or woman who refuses to admit so fair a guest, so great and good a friend? It must be true. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me."
But you think you can justify yourself. You say to me, "I feel it were a mad, foolish thing to refuse to admit to my own, if it be true, the loving heart of God, and a thing altogether unjustifiable. You say He comes and knocks at our hearts—that He calls and asks us to let Him in. No; many have called at the door of my heart, but I never knew Christ to call or knock.If ever He had, I think I should have let Him in." I believe you speak the truth, but I am certain that Christ has been to your heart.
Let me speak plainly to you. There may be various reasons why you have failed to detect His presence. Perchance your life has not been so good as even common morality would have made it, and now your heart is a very dreary place, filled with painful memories. Perhaps you are always outside, gadding about, and do not like to dwell alone in your heart and think; and so when Christ knocks and calls He finds empty rooms; or if even you are there you are not there alone, but you have filled its chambers with a noisy, revelling company and din. The call has reached you as a dim, half-heard, strange sound, which moved you half pleasantly and half with pain. You turned in your heart and listened for an instant, but there was something in the sound too painful, and you plunged back again into revelry and mirth. You did not know that it was God, the very heart of God, that had knocked and called.
Again, your life may have been very respectable, but very light and frivolous, engrossed in earthly affairs; and Christ has come, and you did not know it. For He comes in such simple, human guise. You remember when He came on earth the poor Jews did not know Him for more than the carpenter's son. He comes like that to you and me. He takes a human hand, and with its fingers knocks, but all you see and recognise is the human touch. You do not see the heart Divine that touches you through it with an appealing thrill.
Thank God, there are so many good mothers in this world. Thank God for the little children, and the lads and maidens here, whom a mother's memory follows like a very angel, often after she herself has gone.You remember that Sabbath evening custom when you and the little ones knelt at your mother's knee, and she told you the stories of the Bible; and the last one was always about the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who came to the world with such a great heart of love, who knew no sin at all, who was so good to women and children and the very worst of broken-hearted sinners, and whom men with hard hearts and cruel hands took and crucified; oh, such a death of pain foryou! till you could almost see His face on the cross. And your mother's voice had got so low and reverent that it felt as if some one else was in the room, and your young child's heart grew so soft and loving to that Christ that died for you. Yes, He was there. Did you take Him quite inside? Or if you took Him in for a little while did you let Him go again, when your heart grew colder? Oh, young men and maidens who had a mother like that, remember her, and take that Christ into your hearts!
Some of you can remember a time when you had grown many years older, and perhaps had memories you would not like your mother to know of. And God struck you down with a great illness, and for a long time you were at the point of death. But at last the crisis was past, and you woke out of unconsciousness, brought back to life again, weak as a little child. All the din and turmoil of your manhood's life seemed to have faded in the distance, and once again you became as a little child. Do you remember how you felt when you turned that corner between life and death? Somehow, old memories came back to you—perhaps because your body was so weak—the memory of old days, of the father and mother, and the church in the country, and of all the things that were said and done. Andthen there came a wish that many things in your later life had never been done by you; a strange, solemn sense that there is a God; and into your heart a feeling of repentance for the past, and a wish to do better in the future. And you were so tired, and wished for a friend to speak to you in these words: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Afterwards you got stronger and said, "Perhaps it was only weakness." But I tell you it was the living, loving Christ, seeking to get into your heart.
I cannot stop to enumerate the countless knocks and calls that come to all of us, in those strange aspirations that come with the secret, tender affections, the dreams of love and truth. For God's sake, never be ashamed of them, and be true to the dreams of your youth. Do not think that Christ is part of a creed only, or belongs only to church and Sunday. No, Christ is in everything holy, everything pure, everything loving, and everything that draws your heart. I would have you understand that Christ works to get into your heart, and not into your head. There is plenty of time for the latter after He has once secured possession of your heart and life. Into the homeliest chamber of your heart, too, not into a state apartment, opened only on occasions of ceremony, He seeks to come, that He may stay with you and sup with you, and be with you in your home. There are some people who think this would be treating Him with very scanty respect, and so they think they must take a nook of their heart, like a piece of consecrated ground, and keep Him there, and only visit it on Sunday. No; Christ wants to come into your life and mind. Take Him to your office, and consult Him about your business; youraffairs will not be managed with less skill and wisdom, but perhaps more honourably. Take Him to the fireside, where you plan your plans and dream your dreams, and make out a future for your little boys. He loved little ones on earth, and do you think He has lost that love in heaven?
Take Him into your heart to overcome the evil passions and habits, the things you would be ashamed to own to the most loving earthly friend, which you are fighting in God's name and cannot conquer by yourself. You say, "Tell us how we can do it. He is so very good, we fain would have Christ in our heart, but it seems so difficult when our heart is so unworthy." No, it is so easy—and yet so difficult to describe in words. The moment you have done it you wonder that you ever asked how it must be done.
I can tell you some things like it. You know what it is for a great grief to come into your heart, the first great disappointment in love, in friendship or ambition. You did not see it enter with your eyes, but you knew it had got in, for it changed everything, throwing a dark, cold shadow over all your life. Some of you know what it is for a real, true joy to get into your heart. Some of you, fathers and mothers, know what it is for a very true friend to get there. You hardly know how it happened, but one came right in to the inmost being of your life, and ere you knew it, you would be nothing without him—without him loving you. Love was all joy and happiness, and has stayed there ever since. It has made you different; you have learned to love the things he loves, and the love and knowledge have brought peace.
It is just like that when you take Christ into your heart. Go to the Gospels, you who feel the want of afriend like that, and read what He said to poor weeping men and women, till you feel the breath of His love encircle you, till your heart goes out to Him, and you will be vexed to grieve Him, and want to please Him; and you will think as He thinks, and love men as He loves.
There are many, many things about the mysteries of our religion which I do not understand. But this I say to you, before God: Beyond all this world holds of pride, splendour, pleasure, and joy, to have taken that real, living, holy Jesus Christ into your heart, to be your Saviour, Counsellor, and Friend, your Divine Lord and Master, means blessedness both here and hereafter.
St. Johnxi.
This morning I ask your attention to the story that has been read in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St. John.
The rulers of the Jews at Jerusalem had resolved on Christ's death, and the mass of the people sympathised with them. The Master's life had been threatened by a popular outburst. His work on earth was not yet done, and so He withdrew into the country, to escape from the violence and danger of Jerusalem. He went away to the Jordan, to the point, not very far from Jerusalem, where John first began baptizing, and there He remained in comparative seclusion. But people knew where He was. Probably people in the surrounding districts gathered together to hear Him teach; and possibly, as a very ingenious commentator has suggested, Christ, reaping the harvest of John's prolonged teaching in this district, succeeded in winning the faith of a great many of his hearers; and so He was busy doing good and happy work, building up His kingdom on the banks of the Jordan.
Meanwhile, sickness came to the home at Bethany, where most He felt Himself at home during His wanderings in this world of ours. Lazarus was stricken with a very dangerous illness, grew worse and worse, and at last all hope was gone. Now, I shouldfancy that from the very first day that it became evident that their brother was seriously ill, the hearts of Mary and Martha longed to have Jesus come to them, if it was only to be with them in their anxiety, and suspense, and watching. And the heart of the sick man must have longed for that great Divine Friend of his to be by his sick bed. Why did they not send for Him at once? I think there is a very simple reason. They were not selfish, as we sometimes tend to be in our sickness or in our sorrow. They thought about others as well as about themselves. They remembered that for Jesus to come back to the vicinity of Jerusalem was to risk His own life, and not even for the safety of their brother could they bring themselves for a long time to ask the beloved Master to run such a risk as that, and so they delayed really till too late. In the extremity of their grief and despair they sent a messenger to Jesus—not to ask Him to come: there, again, I read that that was their meaning—they would not take it on themselves to ask Him to imperil His life, but they could not resist just letting Him know that their brother, whom Jesus so loved, was very sick. It is exceedingly touching, that simple message, "Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick." And they knew that it would say to Jesus, "Thou knowest how much we would like Thee to come and recover him, and Thou knowest, too, the last thing we would ask of Thee would be, out of favour and kindness to us, to risk that life on which so much hangs—the kingdom of God upon earth."
There was real danger in Christ's return to Jerusalem. He was conscious of it, for you find that when He did make His way to Bethany He seems to have taken care, as far as possible, to conceal the fact fromthe inhabitants of Jerusalem. He came very quietly. He did not at first enter into Bethany. He remained outside the precincts of the village. He sent word secretly to Martha, so that not even Mary or the other persons that were with them in the house knew of the fact. And then, again, He sent Martha back, or Martha went back, to Mary, and, with somewhat studied concealment, warned her of the Master's vicinity, so that when she went out those who were with her fancied she was going to the grave. I point all that out to you in order that you may see that it is not a mere imagination or fancy, but that one of the great elements in determining the conduct of the family at Bethany, and the action of Christ, was that real hazard of His life, which He dared not needlessly risk in perils at this time, since His time of toil on earth, His daylight of labour, was not yet over and done.
When Jesus received the message He behaved in a seemingly strange fashion. Apparently He just did nothing, but went on with His teaching and preaching for two long days. Did He think how often anxious faces would be at the door of that house in Bethany, peering along the road that led to the home, looking for the figure that had so often trodden that way, because His heart drew Him to that happy family circle? Did Jesus know that Lazarus was dying? Did Jesus think that the hearts of Mary and Martha were breaking? Oh, He had the most loving heart that ever man had on earth, and yet He delayed two days before He set out for that home of distress. Now, that fact is often presented in a somewhat revolting fashion, and I think it is worth while just to diverge from my main theme to remove the effect of such presentation if it weighs with any of you. It is said that Jesus deliberatelyhung back for two days in order to let Lazarus die. That is a mistake—a total mistake. Lazarus had been already buried four days before Christ arrived. Now, suppose He had lost no time; suppose He had set out at once, He would only have reached Bethany two days earlier, and so, you see, Lazarus would have then already been buried two days. The real fact is just this, that the message was sent too late, and the sick man had died; and even if Christ had gone at once, all the same He would have found him in the grave. But none the less the story is so told as to shut us up to this conviction, that it was planned, and purposed, and accepted in the will of God, and in the will of Jesus, that Lazarus should be sick, and grow worse and worse, and should sink and fail, and die and be buried. Indubitably Jesus, with His knowledge, could, of His own action, have returned earlier to have intervened and prevented the sickness ending fatally. He was absent that Lazarus might die. When He spoke of the thing He told His disciples, first of all, the perfect, complete truth. "This," said Jesus, "is not to end in death's darkness. Its real goal and termination is to be the glory of God, revealed in the glory of his Son, the Christ on earth." That is the end of it; nevertheless, Lazarus must die. God's glory is to find its consummation, not in rescuing Lazarus from the grave, but in restoring him from death, and bringing him back into life. It was part of the material Christ used in building up His kingdom—the sickness and the death of Lazarus. He did delay, not in that seeming revolting, cold-blooded fashion in which it is often portrayed. He did deliberately hold His hand and delay; ay, and He held His loving human heart too, and He let his friend sicken, and suffer pain, and die,and He let the hearts of those two women that loved Him well-nigh break. He did it.
Can we justify Him? Did the sisters divine truly when they sent that message, "He whom Thou lovest is sick"? If He loved him, why did He prolong the agony? Why did He not intervene? Why did He not at once cancel death? Why those terrible four days of mourning, and gloom, and darkness, and doubt? Now that is precisely the painful position of all of us in this world of sin, and pain, and sickness, and parting, and death. We think a good God made our world; we think a loving Father holds our lives in His hands; and then we turn and look at this world, we look at the terrible strifes and struggles, we look at the great entail of sin that lies on our race, we see the ravages of disease, and disaster, and violence, and cruelty, and see everywhere the last black enigma of death and the grave, and this in spite of all our Christian faith, learnt from the Bible; ay, learnt from God's Spirit speaking often in the instincts of our heart and nature—we, too, are forced to ask the question, "Lord, why art Thou not here? Why does our brother die? If Thou wert here Thou couldest save him. Dost Thou love him? and if Thou lovest, why are we sick? Why do we die?"
The inmates of that house at Bethany had received Jesus with a rare degree of sympathetic feeling and heartfelt welcome. They entered into the meaning of His teaching and preaching with a degree of fellowship and quick response that moved His heart and soul even beyond the best of His disciples. One of them at least—Mary, and almost certainly Lazarus too—had come very near to that Divine Lord, in full understanding of all His grandeur, His sinlessness, His mighty loveThough yet all ignorant of a great deal about His person, and about the fashion in which He was to make His kingdom, with a genuine purity and ardour of attachment and affection, they worshipped Him, they recognised the Divine within Him, they hailed Him as the world's Christ and Saviour. Listen to Martha's cry in her perplexity: "I cannot understand it all, but I know Thou art the Christ come from God, the world's King, the world's Saviour. That I know, that I hold to." It was that understanding, that sympathy in that home, that made it so sweet a place of rest to Jesus. More than that—manifestly the two sisters and brother lived a life of sweet human affection. There was an atmosphere of tender love in their home, broken by little storms of misunderstanding, as may be in the very best of our imperfect human homes, but in reality a great depth of tenderness, and clinging attachment, and loyal love to one another, bound the household together. Oh, thank God for every such home on earth! That is the real bulwark against all pessimism, the charter of our eternal birthrights. Given the grandeur, the reality of human love, as, thank God, most of us know it in our homes, that is the absolute guarantee that it came from the creating hands of grander Love Divine.
Jesus was not merely loved by the family where He came to spend the nights when He was working in Jerusalem, but He got to love them with a very wonderful tenderness. You remember that chivalrous, impassioned defence of Mary, when she was assailed by the coarse attacks of the disciples. You catch it, too, in that message sent to Him—"He whom Thou lovest." Ah, many an act of affection, many a look that was a caress, many an appeal for sympathy thatbespoke brotherhood, had passed between Jesus of Nazareth and that Lazarus, else the sisters would not have thought of saying, "He whom Thou lovest is sick."
And yet into that home so dear to the heart of Jesus, the Son of God, into that home that had for its Friend the Man that was master of life and of death, of calamity and prosperity, of all earthly powers and forces, into that home there penetrated cruel, painful, deadly sickness. The man Jesus loved lay there on his bed dying.
Now, I emphasize that, because there used to be a great deal of thinking about God's relation to those that love Him and whom He loves—a great deal of teaching in the Christian Church that counted itself most orthodox, and which was, indeed, deadly heresy, coarse, materialistic, despicable, misunderstanding the ideal grandeur of the Bible promises. Some of you know the sort of teaching that used to prevail—the idea that God's saints should be exceptionally favoured; the sun would shine on their plot of corn, and it would not shine on the plot of corn of the bad man; their ships would not sink at sea, their children would not catch infectious diseases; God would pamper them, exempt them from bearing their part in the world's great battle, with hardness and toil of labour, with struggle, and attainment, and achievement. It came of a very despicable conception of what a father can do for a child, as if the best thing for a father to do for his son was to pet and indulge him, and save him all bodily struggle and all difficulties, instead of giving him a life of discipline. As if a general in the army would, because of his faltering heart, refuse to let his son take the post of danger; as if he would not rather wish for that son—ay,with a great pang in his own soul—that he should be the bravest, the most daring, the one most exposed to the deadliest hazard.
Ah, we have got to recognise that we whom God loves may be sick and dying, and yet God does love us. Lazarus was loved by Jesus, yet he whom Jesus loved was sick and dying. Ah, and there is a still more poisonous difficulty in that materialistic, that worldly way of looking at God's love; that horrible, revolting misjudgment that Christ condemned, crushed with indignation when it confronted Him. "The men on whom the tower of Siloam fell must have been sinners worse than us on whom it did not fall." Never, never! The great government of the world is not made up of patches and strokes of anger and outbursts of weak indulgence. The world is God's great workshop, God's great battle-field. These have their places. Here a storm of bullets falls, and brave and good men as well as cowards fall before it. You mistake if you try to forestall God's judgments, God's verdicts on the last great day of reckoning.
Still we have got the fact that Christ does not interpose to prevent death, that Christ does not hinder those dearest to Him from bearing their share of life's sicknesses and sufferings, that God Himself suffers death to go on, apparently wielding an undisputed sway over human existence.
What is the consequence of it? Well, the first consequences seem to be all evil. You might look on the surface of life, and when you read superficially the narrative of this chapter in St. John, it looks as if mischief and evil came of the strange delay of God and of His Christ. Look at the effect upon the disciples. Now here there is not enough told to justify me inputting more positively to you the picture of their inner hearts, but I am going to present—I dread that I may be guilty of a want of charity, at all events of disproportion—but as I read this chapter, and try to think myself into it, this is the conception I have: Had these men known that Lazarus was very sick, they would not have wished their Master to go back to try and save him. They were selfish enough to have been rather glad that He was at a distance, to wish that He should not know. When the message did come I think they were puzzled and perplexed. Selfishly, they were rather pleased that He did not set off to go. But, on the other hand—for, mind you, a selfish man understands the dictates of love—they said to themselves, "It is not quite like Him. Well, it is wise, it is prudent not to go, but it is a little cowardly. Does He love Lazarus so much as we used to think?" Oh, if I am right, what a painful thing, all these bad, poor, selfish thoughts of the Divine heart in Jesus! all created, mark you, because Jesus suffered the man whom He loved to be sick, and at last to die, and did not go and check death, and drive the dark King of Terrors back.
Then Jesus says to them that He has resolved to go and visit Lazarus. It is here I get the ground on which I stand in forecasting that selfishness in them. Then they thought He was wrong. They did venture to blurt out what was a censure: "He will go; He ought not to do it. What are we to do who see with clearer eyes the pathway of prudence? To let Him go and die? It was a total blunder, a mistake, but all the same we cannot let Him go and die alone. Let us go and die with Him."
Oh, what a dearth of understanding of their Master,His love, His power, His real character, created by the enigma of Christ's conduct, that He had held His hand, that He had suffered His friend to be sick, that He had permitted him to die!
Then come to the two sisters. Ah, what a struggle must have gone on in their hearts, as hour after hour passed after the point had come when Jesus should have been with them if He had listened to their message, if He pitied their brother, His own beloved friend. What could the Master mean? Did something hinder Him and prevent His coming? or was it the danger to His life? Was there a little selfishness? or had they any right to expect it? Either He is lacking in love, or else He is lacking in power. What could it mean? And then, when at last the poor sick eyes shut and their brother lay there dead, their hearts were like stones within them. And the burial, following swiftly after in the East, because decay begins so quickly there; and then the mourning and the hired mourners, professional mourners, all around them, and these poor women there saying in their hearts, "Surely, surely it need not have been; certainly if the Master, who healed so many sick, had been here, if He had come, if He knew, if He had been here all this horror, this agony, this pain, might have been escaped."
So when Jesus did come, look at them, how they met Him. Martha goes away out, and the first thing she says is just what they had said so often to one another and to their own hearts: "O Master, if Thou hadst only been here our brother had not died." And then the spirit of the woman told her that perhaps she had hurt Jesus' feelings, that perhaps He was not to blame, that perhaps there was some explanation, though she could not see it, and so, in her blundering way—forshe had not the fine tact that was in Mary—she tried to mend it, and only made it worse by volunteering that she did believe in Him after all.
The soul of Christ felt the intended love, and shuddered at that tremendous distance of sympathy and understanding. "You believe in Me." He could not hold it in. "Thy brother shall rise again." And poor Martha was unable to rise to the height of Christ's meaning. "Oh, yes, Lord, I know, at the great resurrection. Yes, he will rise again." Then comes Jesus' declaration, "I am the Resurrection and the Life. The man that lives in Me, in whom I live, has in Me a deathless life. I am here to-day to prove that." That was what He meant, but He was far away above her. The poor heart in her had lost Him. She was dazed, and so she just fell back upon the one thing that she was quite sure of, even if He had not been quite kind to her, or even if His power was limited. "Yes, yes, Master, I know Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, come into this world to be its Saviour and its King." And then, perhaps, with a sort of sense that Mary could understand the Master better, could read His meaning and tell it to her, she slipped away, and she found her sister, and whispered in her ear, "The Master is come, and asks for thee." Then Mary went away to meet Him too.
It is much harder to read what was in that sweet heart of Mary. I have no doubt that she, too, had fought a battle with doubt. The story seems to show that she had attained to greater faith than Martha. She had been pained, but still there was a divining instinct in her, like the divining instinct that warned her, when all the disciples were blind to it, that He was going to die, and she went and anointed Him toHis burial; a divining instinct in her that somehow the cloud was going to be rolled away. And she went out and said simply, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here our brother had not died." And then she was too wise to say one word more. With her finer tact, with her deeper understanding, she knew that was all she should say. But it was like saying, "There is perplexity in this visitation, in Thy delay, in my brother's death; Thou couldst have made it different if Thou hadst seen it well to be here. I cannot understand the right and the love of it." It was a question. It did say, "Master, what art Thou going to do?" And Christ felt it was. As she broke out and burst into tears, He lost control and wept with her.
But there were others—the Jews, the enemies of Christ; men who hated Him, men who disbelieved in Him, men who grudged Him all His glory and the love He had won on the earth. They had hurried out—some of them with a degree of human compassion—to that home of bereavement. It was known as the home of Christ, and I think some of them had come with greater pleasure that Lazarus had died. What they said when they saw Him weep betrays their mood. "This is He who professed to be able to open the eyes of the blind and heal all sicknesses. How, then, is it that He allows His dearest friend on earth to be sick, and die, and be buried? He has lost His power, if He ever had it." They were rejoicing over His seeming defeat. They had no love for Him, and so had no faith in Him.
Is not that true of our world to-day? The best of you, Christians, when death comes to your own homes, do you manage to sing the songs of triumph right away? Well, you are very wonderful saints if you do.If you do not, perhaps you say, "If God is in this world, how comes that dark enigma of death?"
And others of you grip hold of your faith, but yet your heart cries out against it. You believe that God is good, but has He been quite good to you? Like Martha, you feel as if you had some doubt; you feel bound in your prayers; you say, "O God, I do not mean to reproach Thee;" weak, sinful if you will, yet the sign of a true follower of the Christ.
And then the enemies of Christ, the worldlings all about in this earth of ours, as they look upon death's ravages, they are saying, "If there were a God, if there were a Father, if there were a great heart that could love, why does not He show it?" Now, I said to you that at first it looks as if nothing but evil came of God's delay to interpose against death; but when you look a little deeper I think you begin to discover an infinitely greater good and benefit come out of that evil.
I must very briefly, very rapidly, trace to you in the story, and you can parallel it in the life of yourselves, that discipline of goodness there is in God's refraining from checking sickness and death. Christ said, the end of it is first of all death, but that is not the termination. Through death this sickness, this struggle of doubt and faith, should end in the glory of God. He meant this: In the preparation of His life and His death the death and resurrection of Lazarus held a central position. It was the turning-point, the thing that determined His crucifixion on Calvary. That tremendous miracle compelled the rulers of Jerusalem to resolve on and carry out His death. That miracle of Lazarus' resurrection gave to the faith of the disciples and of Christ's followers a strength of clinging attachment that carried themthrough the eclipse of their belief when they saw Him die on Calvary.
Now, what would you say? Was it cruel of Christ to allow His friend Lazarus, His dear friends Mary and Martha, to go through that period of suspense, of anxiety, of sickness, of death, and of the grave, that they might do one of the great deeds in bringing in the world's Redeemer? Oh, men and women, if God be wise, and if God be great, then must it not be that somehow or other the structure of this world is the best for God's end, and our tears, and partings, and calamities but incidents in the grand campaign that shall end in the resplendent glory of heaven? Yes, for the glory of God, and for the sake of others, for the sake of the disciples, for the sake of the world, says Christ, I have suffered My friend Lazarus to die.
"Ah," you say, "you have still got to show God's goodness and kindness to me individually. My death may be for God's glory, it may be for the good of others; but how about me and those who mourn?" Well, now, look at it. You must get to the end of the story before you venture to judge the measure, the worth, of God's goodness. After all, was that period of sickness and death unmitigated gloom, and horror, and agony? Oh, I put it to you, men and women, who have passed through it, watching by the death of dear father or mother that loved the Lord and loved you, and whom you loved—dark, and sore, and painful enough at the time; but oh, if I called you to speak out, would you not say it was one of the most sacred periods of your life—the unspeakable tenderness, the sweet clinging love, the untiring service, the grateful responses, the sacredness that came into life? Ay, and when the tie was snapped, the new tenderness thatyou gave to the friends that are left, the new pledge binding you to heaven, and to hope for it, and long for it—death is not all an evil to our eyes. Death cannot ultimately be an evil, since it is universal—the consummation, climax, crown of every human life. Ah, if we had the grander majesty of soul to look at it from God's altitude, we should call death, not a defeat, but a victory, a triumph. I think sometimes that if death did not end these lives of ours, how weary they would get. Think of it—to live on for ever in the sordidness, in the littleness, in the struggle, the pain, the sin of this life of ours. Oh, we need that angel of death to come in, and now and then stir the pool of our family life, that there may be healing in it, that there may be blessing in it! Death, holding the hand of God through it, to those that stand by and see the sweetness of human love, the triumph of faith celestial, has a grandeur in it, like Christ's death on the cross; it hides out of sight of the people the ghastly, the doubt-creating features and elements of its external impediment—death becomes God's minister. It is going home to one's Father.
Yes, but you want the guarantee that death is not the end, and that day it was right and lawful for Christ to give it, to anticipate the last great day, when in one unbroken army, radiant and resplendent, shining like jewels in a crown, He shall bring from the dark grave all that loved Him, fought for Him, and were loyal to Him on the road, and went down into the dark waters singly, one by one, in circumstances of ignominy often, and yet dying with Christ within them, the Resurrection and the Life.
Ah, that great, grand vindication of God, and interpretation of this world's enigma was made clear thatday when Christ called Lazarus back, and gave him alive to his sisters in the sight of His doubting disciples, in the sight of those sneering enemies. And what I like to think as best of all and most comforting of all is this, that Christ did that deed of love and goodness to hearts that so misunderstood Him, were so ignorant of His glory, denied and disbelieved so much of His claims, were then and there so despairing, so hopeless, that perhaps it was only in one heart, the heart of Mary, there was hope or faith like a grain of mustard-seed. Yet He did it. Why? He whom He loved died, and they whom He loved mourned. It was not that they loved Him; it was that He loved them.
Ah, when I read sneers at the simple Evangelical Gospel that says, "Put away all thoughts of earning heaven; your good works are rags"—true enough, true enough—the sneers are mistaken. It is a very grand Gospel that, for what it says is this, "There is hope, salvation from sin, life eternal, for you and for me, not for anything in us, nor for anything we can do, even if we did the best we could. We hold the hope and confidence of redemption, resurrection, in our hearts, because the God that made us loves us;" and so—as I read lately in a recently published book, amid much that I think is foolish, what yet struck me as singularly tender and true—"When in the hour of death we cry, 'Good Lord, deliver us,' we might stop and leave out the 'deliver us.' It is quite enough if we are dying in the arms of a God that is good."
Actsix. 36-43.
TO a man who believes in a living, personal God the world's history is the record of God's actions. The Bible story is an account of an exceptional period in the Divine activity, during which God's dealings with men are peculiarly significant; as it were more immediate, frank, and expressive, more true to His inmost character. Then, traits found utterance that in general are mute. Repression gave way to expression. The incidents in this expression are out of the common, look marvellous; we call them miracles. Such things do not happen to us, but we hold they happened for us. They are, so to say, a personal explanation on God's part, at once a disclaimer and a declaration. He is not altogether to be judged by the normal course of events. His feelings do not quite answer to appearances. His heart does not correspond entirely to His hand. He is more than His deeds. Measure Him by these, and you mistake Him, because for the most part He acts under restraint. His love may be much greater than His language, His kindness warmer than His conduct. Reticence is often imposed on affection. You do not always tell your child all the praise you might express, and admiration you feel. When he has entered thestruggle of school-life you look on while he battles with a hard task, till his weariness pains you, but you hold back and do not help him. It may be my lot to know of a friend contending against unjust accusation, well-nigh crushed, and I may not stand by him, knowing my aid would harm, not help, though at the risk of his misunderstanding me. God would have us know, as we with perplexity look to His silent heaven out of our sin and sorrow, that spite of strange seeming, His heart is love. We do not fare as our Father fain would have us fare. Things are not as He would wish them. There is a discrepancy between the desires of His heart and the doings of His hand. He cannot quite trust us as He would. There is an obstacle; we should be better off but for that. We do right to say, with Martha, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died." And that we may be sure it is so, once He broke through His reticence; Hewashere; He gave His heart full play, and treated men as He always feels towards them. Their sicknesses were healed, their sins forgiven; the Infinite Love laid soft hands on their pain; the Eternal Pity whispered peace in their souls. Now we can look on Christ and say we know what God is. But for hindrances, we can say, He would always act so. Spite of our fortunes, that is how He feels. At length the barrier will be overthrown, and He will treat me so likewise.
This is the practical use we are to make of such stories of Scripture as Dorcas's restoration from death. It is a marvel—what, precisely, we know not. But, for this woman God did a splendid and wonderful act of love, that dispelled the eclipse of death in a sunshine of endless security. What happened to her happens not to us. But God's heart is unchanged. If you belike her, such another, the Divine regard round you in life and in death is as tender and strong as it was about her.
In the important seaport town of Joppa there were gathered together some believers in Jesus. Among them was a woman named Tabitha (Heb.), or Dorcas (Gr.). The name signifies Gazelle, or Fawn. It was one of those pet names given to woman, a name of beauty, though the bearer of it may have been plain enough. Not much is told about her, but what is told is of such a kind that we may conjecture more. Little things have a significance in combination. Thus we can fill in the meagre outline that is given us, till the picture grows into completeness.
Dorcas was a lone woman. Of husband or of children we hear nothing. Unlike those others with whom she is linked in Bible story as fellow-sharers in the miracle of restoration to life—unlike Lazarus, unlike the daughter of Jairus or the widow's son at Nain—we read in her case of no loving relatives who soothed her dying bed and wept when she was gone. She stands alone in the world—one of those women of whom we speak as of persons to be pitied, unhappy; with a woman's natural hopes and occupations, in which she finds rest for her instincts, denied or blighted.
Dorcas is a forlorn figure, stricken by grief and woe. We feel inclined to turn away from such. The bleak, cold winds that blow across the lonely spaces where they find their planting seem to chill our joy. We forget that it is not thorns alone which grow in spots that we deem waste; not seldom God's fairest flowers and fruits spring up on what we count barren and forsaken ground. In Dorcas, we may well believe, there was nothing woe-begone or repellent; it is aspleasant, amiable, and beloved that we think of her. The tree of her life had been stricken by the lightning; its own leaves and branches stripped; but it did not remain a bare and unsightly stump, naked and alone. Lichens and clinging plants had gathered at its roots, and twined about its stem, and clothed it with a new verdure and beauty.
All this might have been so different. Dorcas might have succumbed to sorrow, and amid the ruins of her shattered home she might have flung herself on the ground in despair. She might have been moping and repining, selfishly nursing her grief, embittered, envious, and grudging to others their joy. God pity those who are; it is often that the milk of human kindness has turned sour: the fault is of misfortune. She might have made herself a burden to all around, held the world a debtor, and herself a wronged creditor. She might have insisted on being miserable—as if a long face made a lighter heart. Some in her position act so. They resent the smiles of others, and hold that if weeping is their portion, then all should weep. Others hide under a smiling face a sad heart, and laugh with you. Dorcas did none of these things. She set herself to be of use, to give aid and help to others. Ah! I think it sometimes happens that God removes the home of a woman's love, breaks down its walls, and unroofs it before the storm, in order that the love may go out to embrace a larger family. The hearts of some women are made to shelter and console all homeless ones. Their love takes wings, and flies through the earth in search for the desolate and afflicted. It does not need the ties of home, of husband and children, to form a loving, useful, warm-hearted woman.
How long had Dorcas been such a woman as thestory tells of? We cannot say. Perhaps she was humbly good and sensible, and had borne her sorrows bravely from the first, an unconscious follower of Jesus. Perhaps she was once soured, bitter, and woe-begone, till she heard of the great Sorrow-bearer, and learnt from Him to make her sorrow an offering, and to use her knowledge of sadness to lighten others' woe. For she was "a disciple." That means just one who looks how Christ went about the world, and sets to to go likewise.
Having made up her mind to do good, what could she do? Nothing much. She could not preach; she could not be an apostle, and do great deeds of healing. She was too poor, too stupid, too uninfluential to start a mission or build a hospital. But she could darn, and stitch, and plan garments for widows—and how many such does not the life of a seafaring town create! She could speak kind words and do good turns, go to meeting, and be a quiet, gentle, sweet, helpful woman. That she could be, nothing more; and that she was. Why should she be more? That is what God means a good woman to be.
A homely, unromantic, dull, unattractive life, you say; good, but uninteresting. So, perhaps, the neighbours said. So we all go on thinking and saying, while the angels laugh at our folly. As if God did not often conceal under the hardest, coarsest shells and husks the silkiest of downy lining and the very sweetest of fruit-kernels. Yes, outside it looked a stripped, bare, monotonous life. But within there was a whole world of beauty and pathos. God knew the tender thoughts of the dead; the rising of old cravings that woke and called once more for buried loves; the silent, speechless prayers in lonely eventides. He knew of memoriesthat were tears to her, but turned to warmth and cheer for others; of very kindly thoughts and gentle love woven and sown into those garments. No, the neighbours did not see all this. But God's eyes looked, and saw a very garden of the Lord for beauty and fragrance. I know it must have been so, from the love her way of doing kindness won. Merely to do good is not enough to get love; one must be good. It is wonderful how some people do endless good, and yet none cares for them. Dorcas was not a machine, actively good because actively wound up. People do not weep such tears as fell when she died for the loss of a sewing-machine, useful though such might be, and working for nothing. Nor was she a woman with a mission, bustling, important, loud-voiced; useful and needed such may be, respected, but not quite loved. Nor was she a lady patroness, looking down on those upon whom she showered her benefits. Those who work like Dorcas do not work of mechanical duty, nor for fuss of fame, nor for thanks. It is but little likely that thanks were given her. People would say, "She has nothing else to do;" "She has no family to look after;" "She has plenty of time on her hands;" "It's almost a kindness to take her sewing;" "She had sooner work than not." Exactly, that was it. She was nothing more than a kindly, humble-hearted, womanly soul, that feared God and loved men, and did good in solid ways; one whose life made other women glad that she was born. What more would you have her be? Are you sure you understand what that was?
She became ill. She did not tell how ill she felt, but lay lone and sick. She would not burden others with her pain, and to die she did not fear. Her neighbours found it out and nursed her tenderly, but shedied. Then there was nothing to do but reverently to lay her out, to put flowers on her breast and in her hands; it was all the kindness they could do now; how they wished they had done more when she was alive! Then they thought what to do next. When one is dead there is so little you can do, and yet you want to do so much. Then some one thought of Peter. The Apostle was only twelve miles off. He will surely come to see poor Dorcas once again, and show honour to her memory. And so the little groups of busy, tearful talkers united in one resolve to send for Peter. They would like him to be with them, to tell him all their trouble and sorrow, and pour into his sympathetic ears an eager chronicle of Dorcas's holy deeds. It is wonderful how much good your neighbours know to tell of you when you are dead, and how much evil while you are still alive.
This was the reason why they sent for Peter; not that they expected him to restore the dead to life. Had they not laid the dead body of their benefactress out, and washed and prepared it for burial? Why should they expect a miracle on her behalf? Stephen and James had trodden their martyr path, and no voice from heaven had called them back to leadership and witness-bearing in the Church. What should they expect for Dorcas from the Apostle beyond his sorrowful compassion?
Peter came. He found the room full of weeping women, telling of her goodness, of her clever fingers; showing himon them(middle voice) the dresses and petticoats she had made. How many they seemed when gathered together in that little room! All the results of the toil of her busy hands, scattered through the town, now gathered in the chamber of death to tellof her goodness after she was gone. Herself, she did not know the whole. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; for their works do follow them."
We die and are not much missed. The world rolls on. Yet none is quite unwept, unnoticed. There are two sets of people who will mourn. There are those who loved you and found their joy in ministering to you; a mother, a lover: good or bad you may have been, but they will weep over your grave. Or, in heaven, they smile; in smiles or tears they love. And there are those you loved, on whose souls are the marks of your kindness, warmth, help, and cheer; they will miss you.
How came Peter to conceive the hope of recovering Dorcas to life? It was not through the message of an angel, or the narrative would tell us of it; nor was it through a special communication of the Spirit, or the sacred history would record it, as the habit of the Bible is. It seems to have been in an ordinary way, though under the Spirit's guidance. A little thing in Peter's doings suggests that he followed the train of an old memory, that he was dominated and inspired by a bygone incident. Amid those weeping women his heart was moved: he recalled an unforgotten scene. He remembered an old man coming to the Master with a white, anxious face and quivering lips, to plead for his sick child. He remembered their hurrying steps, and the eager impatience of the stricken father as they turned their faces to his house; the messenger bringing the sad tidings "dead;" the Master's face lighting up with a quiet, strange resolution as He said, "She is not dead;" and then how He put them all out and restored the maiden to her parents. Why should he not ask the Master now? He put them all out. Heprayed. Confidence filled his heart. He summoned the dead woman from the shadow-land. She opened her eyes. To the weeping, mourning, loving women he gave her again—alive from the dead!
It was a tremendous deed of wonder and glory. It was done on a lonely, simple, humble woman. Why on her? Why not on James or Stephen? I cannot tell, for certain. God knows. His reasons are other than our thoughts. But I see this as possibly a cause: You observe that two narratives are conjoined. Dorcas, for her alms-deeds, receives this miracle of resurrection; while, for alms-deeds, Cornelius is acknowledged in a miracle also. Nowhere else in the Acts of the Apostles are alms-deeds made so prominent. In each story, and in the conjunction, I see design. God meant to set a mark of honour on the love that was displayed. I think He would guard the Church against undue estimation of preaching, apostles, miracle-working, deeds of show, gifts; and teach us that beyond all is love. So He singles out not an apostle, not a martyr, but this gentle, kind, womanly life, and crowns it with grandeur and glory, makes it conqueror of death, encircles it with a halo of most wonderful, Divine, loving care. Not preaching, not angel speech, not mountain-removing faith, but love is the centre. God judges differently from us. We worship the great leaders, orators, reformers, creed-makers; our statistics are of Churches, prayers, and preachers. God reckons all love for Himself and man as vaster, wider, and grander. Ah! while we think not of it, in unseen corners, in hidden nooks, He sees and garners a harvest of love and lowly service that shall be the beauty and glory of heaven. Let us think as God thinks. Let us learn to worship not gifts, but graces, not greatness, but goodness only. Bend yourknee to such a woman with a reverence you will yield to no king, to no genius, however Godlike; and bend it, for you bend it to Christ. Humble, lonely, simple Christian souls, God cares for you as for her, if you are like her. Patiently toil on; God feels towards you as towards her. Go forward to death, sure that He will gather your life with equal care, not back into earth's struggle, but up into heaven's glory.