* W. Scott Palmer.
2o8 UNCONSCIOUS LOSS
But the gift may be different from these. We put these from us. They do not concern us. But the gifts are very varied. Let us take one as an example which we do not generally regard in that light — the gift of prayer.
If we steadily make use of this capacity, small as it may be ; if we make a rule of keeping sacred a portion of our time, and endeavour with all our might to press upward to God, He will bless the efforts we are making ; the door will open as we knock, and we shall experience day by day a greater aptitude for thinking of heavenly things; we shall become more and more conscious of the Spirit of God helping our infirmities. On the other hand, if we despise the one talent which God has given us ; if, because we find it difiicult to pray, because we are con- scious how poor and worthless our prayers are, therefore we give up the habit of prayer, or content ourselves with simply repeating the words of prayer, without any effort to rise to its meaning ; if we despair of ever being able to pray in spirit and in truth, then the end will be that we shall lose that capacity which we had refused to make use of.
^ Darwin has been criticized for allowing his taste for music and letters to be starved away in his devotion to science; but it is a question whether he would have made the discovery of evolution without it. Sir James Paget has been blamed for his indifference to social reform, indeed to all politics; but he was probably right when he said that a man did more good if he kept to his own business, doing that with all his soul, and not dissipating his energies in directions outside his own particular range ; that every cobbler should stick to his last ; and that, by obedience to that rule, the affairs of the world at large would come straight. And doubtless Sir E. Burne-Jones was chided for keeping so much to himself; but he rightly looked upon an artist as a dedicated man, with as real a respon- sibility to discharge as any other. "What do we want to be wrenched from our work for ? " he would say in reply to those who would tempt him away ; " I should like to stop in this room for 439 years, and never be taken out of it." Everyone, indeed, if he is to develop as God intended him, must stick to ' the narrow path, whether it lead to a Nazareth or a London. Even the Son of Man confessed to being narrowed till His baptism was accomplished.^
^ G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 75.
JUDGES XVI. 20 209
" 0 World-God, give me wealth ! " the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold. Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet, World-circling traffic roared through mart and street, His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep. Seek Pharaoh's race to-day, and ye shall find
Eust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
" 0 World-God, give me beauty ! " cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became Plastic and vocal to his sense ; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame, Peopled the world with imaged grace and light. The lyre was his, and his the breathing might Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue. Go seek the sunshine-race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
" 0 World-God, give me power ! " the Eoman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart; Invulnerably bulwarked every part With serried legions, and with close-meshed Code;
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home. A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
" 0 Godhead, give me Truth ! " the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save. The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld, His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld. Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.^
^ Emma Lazarus. DEUT.-ESTH. — 1 4
2IO UNCONSCIOUS LOSS
2. This brings us to our second point — the loss of the gift. — Samson lost his God-given power. But is it for that that we generally pity him ? No. We give our sympathy to Samson because in the midst of his days he fell overcome by treachery, because the cruelty of enemies afflicted him.
(1) The loss may be unconscious. Samson "wist not." It is so in the physical world. The man who has been accustomed to active and even strenuous exertion settles down to a life in which there is slight opportunity for the practice of his favourite pursuits, but in which there is constant tension exercised on muscle, nerve, and brain. He is unconscious of the extent to which the process is affecting him. But some day a necessity arises for putting forth unwonted exertion, and he finds to his astonishment that he is unequal to the task. Silently, like the wearing away of the rock by rain and storm, like the rounding of the sea pebble by the ripple of the water, his strength has been worn away; and, until the moment arises for putting it forth, he wist not that it had departed from him.