^ We do not like the hymns in which the whirlwind sweeps and drives. We prefer the hymns that are just filled with honey. And so the " sweet " hymns are the favourites, and the sweeter they are the more welcome they are to our palates. We have partially dropped the hymns which harrow and alarm, and which minister to our fear. Some of us have what we sometimes call a " sweet Jesus." We know Him only as the Speaker of gentle and condescending speech, and of tender, winsome invitation. We have not a Jesus before whom we frequently " stand in awe." We glide on in the religious life heedlessly, and at no moment do we stand appalled.^
^ Men do not feel the power of the Gospel when in Christ they discern nothing to fear. Many men are lost because they do not see the great white Throne. Thomas Boston said that the net of the Gospel needed to be weighted with the leads of the terrors of the law, 6r it would lightly float on the surface and no fish be caught. We must steadily keep in view the sterner patches of the New Testament teaching. We must contemplate the white- ness of the Eternal, and stand in awe.^
2. " Stand in awe, and sin not." If we do not stand in awe, we are likely to sin, and to think lightly of it. There are various interpretations that we can put upon sin. We can treat a sin as being merely a moral mistake. We can regard it as being only an irresponsible legacy from a sinful parentage. We can think of it as being nothing more than the legitimate outcropping from our animal nature, the warranted self-assertion of the material side of our complex being and therefore not exactly sinful, but rather the natural tone sounded by one of the lower vibrating strings of our ^ J. H. Jowett, Thirsting for the Springs, 131. * Ibid., 133.
PSALM IV. 4, 5 191
humanity. Or we can, without committing ourselves to any doctrine bearing upon us with uncomfortable pressure, contemplate our sin as being a violation of the conventional ideas of the more respectable element of society ; or go so far even as to think of it as being a transgression of the moral law — attaching to the phrase "moral law," however, no signification over-earnest in its ex- actions ; for a mere " law," if carelessly thought of, becomes that impersonal and visionary thing that touches no sensitive spot in our deeper nature.
^ Christ's teaching concerning sin has been before the Church and the world for many centuries, but neither the world nor the Church has fully accepted it. The old practice of straining out gnats and swallowing camels still prevails ; and, if the sins which the Jews considered great have been recognized in their extreme littleness, still, those which they regarded as too small to deserve notice are looked upon very much as the Jews looked upon them in our Saviour's day ; and, on the whole, sin, according to the world and according to the Church too, is more what the Scribes and Pharisees pronounced it to be than what Jesus Christ said it was.^
^ There is a pathetical story of Origen, — that when he had fallen into a foul apostasy, and, after some recovery from it, came into a congregation, and was desired to preach ; he took the Bible, and opened it accidentally at the Fiftieth Psalm, and his eye fell first to read these words in the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of it : — " But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth ? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee." Upon reading the words, he remembered his own fall ; and, instead of preaching, he fell a weeping, and wept so bitterly, that he caused all the congregation to weep with him.^
II.
Self-Communion.
"Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still."
When we have gazed upon tlie undefiled heights, upon the holiness of God, we are then to hold a soliloquy with ourselves. . ^ Life of Hugh Stowell Brown, 390. ^ J. Lightfoot, Works, vi. 111.
192 THE FOUR ACTS OF RELIGION
In his Saints' Everlasting Rest, Eichard Baxter says that every good Christian is a good preacher in his own soul. The very same methods that a minister uses in his preaching to others every Christian should endeavour after in speaking to himself. Having seen the Throne, let us hold converse with our own hearts.
^ Central Africa was to Stewart what Arabia was to Paul — a retreat in which he examined his own heart, revised his life, developed the self-reliance which is based upon the reliance of faith, and sought complete consecration to Christ and His service. In these great solitudes he had his musing times and sessions of sweet thought, and heard the voice of God more distinctly than elsewhere. " His faith in God, always strong," Dr. Wallace writes, " though not effusive, was strengthened by his experiences of the solitary life in the heart of Africa, entirely cut off from Christian fellowship. In a letter written to me, when his only companion was a native boy, he said that he had never felt so near heaven, and added that now to him, ' God, holiness and heaven are the only things worth living for.' " ^