* B. L. Stevenson, TU Dynamiter. • Jalaluddin Eumi.
296 FORWARD !
not built upon ? What will it avail to eay or think that we are of the root if we show none of the fruit ? So the command runs : Go forward, build up yourselves on your most holy faith. Stone after stone, row after row, of gracious character has to be built up with care and diligence. Add to your faith courage, and to courage knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temper- ance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
IF No one reaches at once the full measure of the stature of manhood in Jesus Christ. In Him there is placed before us an ideal, infinitely perfect and beautiful, to which we may be ever drawing nearer, and still find it shining above us, like a star that dwells apart. His riches we shall never exhaust, freely as we may draw upon Him. As God has made the soul of man capable of indefinite expansion, so He has set before it in Christ a career of infinite growth and progress.^
^ Schiller says it is a scientific fact that the animal nature of man, if let have its way, becomes dominant over the spiritual toward middle life ; and John Henry Newman says that unless they are subdued by high religious and moral principle, material interests inevitably submerge man's whole nature into selfish indifference towards all with which self is not concerned. And Dante places man's encounter with the three animals — the fierce lion of wrath and pride; luxury, the spotted panther; and the gaunt, hungry wolf of avarice — in the middle period of man's life. There can be no doubt that men and women nearing middle age need to be roused to the necessity of keeping close to God as the only source of fresh impulse to righteousness.^
3. To fuller service. There is among us sometimes a notion that religion consists rather in passive emotions than in active deeds. As if in religion man had simply to bare his heart that it might be played on as a stringed instrument by the hand of God. As if spiritual thought and emotion were the whole of religion. That is but half the truth. Out of this inward experience must grow a life devoted to good works. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." " Not every one that saith to me Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of my Father, shall enter the kingdom."
* J. Legge. ' L. A. Bank*.
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IF After all, we shall be known by what we have done, more than by what we have said. I hope that, like the Apostles, our memorial will be our acts. There are good brethren in the world who are unpractical. The grand doctrine of the Second Advent makes them stand with open mouths, peering into the -skies, so that I am ready to say, " Ye men of Plymouth, why stand ye here gazing up into Heaven ? " The fact that Jesus Christ is to come again is not a reason for star-gazing, but for working in the power of the Holy Ghost. Be not so taken up with speculations as to prefer a Bible-reading over an obscure passage in Kevelation to teaching in a ragged-school or discoursing to the poor concern- ing Jesus. We must have done with day-dreams, and get to work. I believe in eggs, but we must get chickens out of them. I do not mind how big your egg is, it may be an ostrich's egg if you like ; but if there is nothing in it, pray clear away the shell. If something comes of your speculations, God bless them ; and even if you should go a little further than I think it wise to venture in that direction, still, if you are thereby made more useful, God be praised for it ! ^
II Some seven centuries ago there was a young Italian keeping a feast with his friends one night ; and he wearied of the feast and of the jests. There was nothing wrong, only a friendly feast. He quietly withdrew and went out and stood thoughtfully beneath the blue Italian sky. By and by his friends came out, and they walked home together, and they said to him, " You are in love." He said nothing, but he had a far-away look upon his face, like a man who is looking into another world. " You are in love. Who is it ? " the friends said. " I am," he replied, " and my bride is called Poverty. No one has been anxious to woo her since Jesus lived, and I am going to serve her all my days." That young Italian became immortal as one of the greatest Christians who ever lived, under the name of St. Francis. He felt the burden of responsibility to serve the world. He lifted up his rod in God's strength and went forward.*
III.
The Hindrances.
What are the hindrances to progress? The history of the children of Israel suggests these three —
1. We shall not go forward if we look hack. Jeremiah describes the people asking the way to Zion with their faces thitherward. ' C. H. Spurgeon. ' L. A. Banks.