God leads me !
Through all the old unquiet years,
Shadowed by failure and by sin,
When selfish grief and selfish fears
Made all the way I stumbled in
A mystery of darkness — still
I think He led me. Looking back
It seems to me His Blessed Will
Fashioned my life, and any lack
Of presence or of riches or of power
Were angels in disguise.
However much I hungered for
A present earthly paradise,
God held me ! ^
3. Do we recognize the Providence of God as we journey, or is it only in the memory and at a distance that we can see the
» J. W. Taylor, The Doorhccjjer, a.
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20 REMEMBER ALL THE WAY
love that has led us ? It is a fact that in the spiritual sense we are, almost all of us, long-sighted ; we see the things at a distance more clearly and truly than the things that are right upon us. There is little or nothing Divine to us in this poor, mean, common- place existence of ours as we are passing through it. It is as one has seen the waters round a steamer in mid-ocean dull and drab ; but away in the wake the waves, flecked with foam, have taken the colouring of the sunset, and put on an ethereal radiance. Memory is the eye through which we see our past life in the light of God's love. We need distance for the perspective ; we do not see things true till we have moved a little stage away. Then we observe, of our halting-places, as the patriarch of his, " Verily God was in this place and I knew it not." God was in this sorrow, this success, this separation, this reunion, this failure, this conquest. While my spirit slept and I knew nothing but that my pillow was a stone, and the way of life was hard and sore to travel, the Lord was in this place, and the impulses and forces of my pilgrimage were verily the hand of God. There is no discovery like that to put soul into the hesitating or misgiving or despairing.
There is a death of memory that is brought
Not by oblivion, but by coming light. It fades as childhood fades in manhood's thought,
It dies as starlight dies at morning's sight, Not needing things behind.
May this forgetfulness, my heart, be thine;
Not the great deadness of an outgrown sorrow, But the deep trust that ceases to repine,
Since yesterday shall come again to-morrow, Bearing the things behind.
Fields of the past to thee shall be no more The burial-ground of friendships once in bloom,
But seed-plots of a harvest on before. And prophecies of life with larger room For things that are behind.
Live thou in God, and thy dead past shall be
Alive for ever with eternal day; And planted on His bosom thou shalt sec
The flowers revived that withered on the way Amid the things behind.
DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 21
4. Do we observe that God keeps moving obstacles out of our way as we go ? " Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward" — that is our duty: the rest is God's. And as we go, the threatening waters divide.
IT In Switzerland you see sometimes an immense mass of ice and snow detached from the top of a mountain, and as it comes thundering down it seems as if it would overwhelm the whole valley. But it strikes first on one point, then on another. It is shattered into a million pieces, and instead of crushing the traveller, the dust of it simply cools his forehead. It is ofttimes like that in life. Many a time do we look and think that some- thing is going to crush us and overwhelm us; but the Master, with His wonderful skill, turns the disaster away, and we suffer no evil. The thing that we feared is to us an inspiration and a refreshment.
IF A gentleman told me some time ago that he was driving into Lincoln. He had a farm a few miles out, and those of you who know Lincoln will know how the Cathedral from that par- ticular point of view seems to block up the high road. The gentleman was driving with his little boy, and the little fellow looked piteously at this obstacle, and at last he burst into tears, and said, " Oh ! father, how are we going to get over that ? " But it was all right ; the father drove on, and they had the sight of the lovely Minster — that was all.^
5. And do we observe how often He turns apparent evil into good ? Have no significant dates, no critical junctures, no days of darkness lifted themselves along our track through life ? Have we come across no oasis and spot of verdure where we thought we should like to abide awhile, but which we had to leave ? Can we recall no day of astonishment and of trembling, of paleness and fear, when the knees were weak, and the heart melted like wax ? Has nothing happened in our life which has put forth a controlling influence, shaped our course, and made us largely what we are ? Do we see the way by which we have come ? Do we see where we made a profound, irremediable mistake ? Do we see, too, how that something else in us which erred was overruled and compounded for the best, so that we did not suffer so much damage as should naturally have occurred ? Do we recall our happy hits, right choices, successful moves, and also the slough of despond in which we have been mired and the