^ IT. W. Robertson, in Life and Letters, 368. * Emerson.
148 THE CHOICE OF A MASTER
.y Gentlemen, if I become your representative, it must be because your opinions coincide with mine, and not because I have pared mine down into similarity with yours ; I must obey the dictates of my conscience ; for obedience to its voice I am responsible to God, and I must not, I dare not, muffle its teachings, bury my beliefs, or cover my convictions" — you will have no hesitation in saying which side he had chosen. There is little difficulty in deciding as to whom you serve.^
/ 3. With the people to whom these words were addressed the issue was very simple — Will you follow the gods of the nations, or will you follow Jehovah your God ? The problem is slightly different to-day, but it is the same old problem, and to us, as to those people, rings out the message, " Choose you this day whom ye will serve " ! Shall it be a life spent in the service of self or in
nhe service of humanity ? It is not possible to serve God without serving man ; it is not possible to worship God without serving man. There never was a prayer offered to God when the heart was at enmity with man. There is no knowledge of God which does not come through man. That is the principle of the incarna- tion, and, therefore, when we are to choose the service of God, we
'mean by that the service of man, because God cannot be served and man neglected. If we love not our brother whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen ? Shall our lives be given to Christ and to humanity, or shall they be given to self and to sin ?
(/ If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.*
IV.
The Choice is Uegent.
«/ 1. It is urgent because it has to he made now. — " Choose you this day!' All our decisions are instant ; the processes leading up
' G. H. Morgan. " Emily Dickinson.
JOSHUA XXIV. 15 149
to decision may be very slow, but the decisions are all instant. A boat changes its course in an instant. It may have been a long time getting ready to make the change, but the change in the course is always instantaneously made. A man is seen to have made a change ; it has been growing through long years, but the real change has been instantaneous.
^ You cannot run away from a weakness ; you must some time fight it out or perish ; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand ? ^
^ It was at the beginning of these somewhat reckless years that I came to the great decision of my life. I remember it well. Our Sunday-School class had been held in the vestry as usual. The lesson was finished, and we had marched back into the chapel to sing, answer questions, and to listen to a short address. I was sitting at the head of the seat, and can even now see Mr. Meikle taking from his breast-pocket a copy of the United Pres- lyterian Record, and hear him say that he was going to read an interesting letter to us from a missionary in Fiji. The letter was read. It spoke of cannibalism, and of the power of the Gospel, and at the close of the reading, looking over his spectacles, and with wet eyes, he said, " I wonder if there is a boy here this after- noon who will yet become a missionary, and by and by bring the Gospel to cannibals ? " And the response of my heart was, " Yes, God helping me, I will." So impressed was I that I spoke to no one, but went right away towards home. The impression became greater the farther I went, until I got to the bridge over the Aray above the mill, and near to the Black Bull. There I went over the wall attached to the bridge, and kneeling down prayed God to accept me, and to make me a missionary to the heathen. ^
Ere another step I take
In my wilful wandering way, Still I have a choice to make —
Shall I alter while I may?
Patient love is waiting still
In my Saviour's heart for me: Love to bend my froward will,
Love to make me really free.
Far from Him, what can I gain ? Want and shame and bondage vile —
* R. L. Stevenson, The Amateur Emigrant.
* James Chalmers, Autobiography and Letters, 23.
I50 THE CHOICE OF A MASTER
Better far to bear the pain Of His yoke a little while.^
•^ 2, It is urgent because it is for eternity. — Every choice, says the ffreat German philosopher poet, is for eternity. Yet men often Realize that only when it is too late. They have let everything /go by default. They are in theory Christians ; they imagine that they have taken sides ; but when the moment of choice comes, when the temptation is at hand, they shrink from the effort of decision for God, and they give way to evil. Then the momentum of that false choice carries them further. It is not merely that, by the law of habit, acts tend to reproduce themselves. That is true, and it is true of good as well as of evil acts. But every choice has a twofold consequence. It reacts upon the conscience and it reacts upon the will. To choose the higher is to give definiteness and precision and a diviner insight to the conscience, even while it gives to the will new power to be free. But the conscience, once silenced, speaks in a lower tone, judges less certainly and less truly; and the will, in that its wilfulness opposed itself and chose the lower line, is weaker by the act, and has so far lost its freedom. For the freedom of the will, which we vaguely talk about, is a freedom to be won ; the Divine light of conscience is at first a spark that may be quenched or kindled. The perfect freedom that can choose God, the perfect light that reveals Him, — these belong only to the Perfect Man " who knew no sin."