^ A greater than Moses spake, to no multitude of hearers, but to a mere handful of disciples, and said to them, " This do in remembrance of me." For did He not know that all things were possible to be endured and achieved, suffered and accomplished, to those who brooded over His life and death and love, until they read the very soul and substance of His work and person — to those who kept ever before them the glad, yet awful, memory of the Cross ? ^
^ There was once, so the story says, a poor musician in Germany who loved a maiden of high degree, and in order to win her went away to distant lands and strove to obtain money and fame. When at last he had obtained both he came back and claimed his bride. They were walking out one evening by the side of the river, and he sought to reach a tuft of little blue flowers for her. In doing so his foot slipped and he fell into the river Ehine ; and the story says that, as he was being carried away by the strong current, he flung the bunch of blue flowers to land, crying as he did so, " Forget me not." From that time, and from this story, the little blue flower, known before as the " Mouse's Ear," has been known in Europe everywhere as the "Forget-me-not." It is a much prettier name than the other, and no man has a sweeter memorial raised to him than that poor drowning musician has in the sweet little flowers that make the face of the earth so beautiful for us year by year.^
2. Let us emphasize the "all." "Eemember all the way." Eemember only one part of the way, and then not only the 1 C. S. Home. ^ j. m. Gibbon.
12 REMEMBER ALL THE WAY
whole, but even that particular portion, will inevitably be mis- understood. Take it all together. The very principle of it implies a wholeness, a continuity of purpose, which can only be fully comprehended in the result. No way explains itself at every step. It bends hither and thither, now on the right hand, now on the left ; now it ascends, now it descends, obedient to necessities which only he who stands on a lofty vantage-ground can under- stand. The man who made it took that wide masterly survey. He saw the starting-point and the end, and their best possible junction ; and we travel in faith daily, hourly, along the highways of this world, believing that wise men made them ; that difficulties were patent to their eye that are hidden from ours ; and that on the whole they have chosen for us the best way to the end. And we believe that a Being of unerring wisdom laid the plan of our life-course ; that He led it not through weary wastes without a clear insight into the nature and conditions of our journey, and the certainty that that v/as the best way to our home. We believe that a Father's wise and loving eye has surveyed the whole of it ; and that not a quagmire, not a perilous passage, not a torrent, not a mountain gorge, not a steep, rocky path, not a bare, sandy plain, has been ordained that could have been spared. Thou shalt consider all the way.
The Alpine peasant in his lonely glen.
Who sees the sudden lake formed at its head
Burst all at once its icy barrier.
And sweep his village from its perilous ledge;
Or hears the avalanche roar down the heights,
A cataract of snow, whose very breath
The stoutest pine-tree snaps like brittle reed.
Scattering destruction in its awful path.
And burying home and field in one white grave;
His vision bounded by his narrow hills —
His sense impressed by his own loss alone —
Imagines that these evils are the work
Of some dread Power, that loves but to destroy.
But we who live beneath more spacious skies,
And take a wider survey of the world.
See in these evils but the needful links
In a vast scheme, by which the parched earth
Is watered and the treasures of the snow,
For ever melted and renewed, are borne,
DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 13
With most beneficent economy,
Down from their storehouse on the lofty peaks,
To give prosperity and wealth to realms
That otherwise would have been barren wastes.
And so the sorrows that o'erwhelm our lot
And chill our hearts, which, in the narrow space
Of their own dark horizon, we are apt
To view with terror, as the wanton sport
Of some malicious fate that seeks our hurt ;
Viewed from a loftier vantage-ground of faith,
With wider outlook of experience,
Are seen to be but transient incidents
In a great plan of loving-kindness, meant
To make our whole life richer and more blest,
And spread the fruitage of a heavenly love
O'er deserts useless both to God and man.
Beyond those hills that our horizon bound,
And hem us in and darken all our sky,
Stretch the fair lands which these white realms make green, —
The watered gardens, whose serener heavens
Through distant storms have gained a purer blue.
Why should a living man complain, whose life
Transcends the limit of all mortal woe,