O'er a new joy this day we bend, Soft power from heaven our souls to lift; A wondering wonder Thou dost lend With loan outpassing gift —
A little child. She sees the sun- Once more incarnates thy old law : One born of two, two born in one, Shall into one three draw.
But is there no day creeping on Which I should tremble to renew ? I thank Thee, Lord, for what is gone— Thine is the future too !
And are we not at home in Thee, And all this world a visioned show, That, knowing what Abroad is, we What Home is too may know ? ^
^ Mr. Moody could never speak of those early days of want and adversity without the most tender references to that brave mother whose self-sacrifice and devotion had sacredly guarded the home entrusted to her care. When, at the age of ninety, her life- voyage ended, she entered the Haven of Eest, her children, her children's children, and an entire community rose up to call her blessed. And well she deserved the praise they gave her, for she had wisely and discreetly discharged the duties God had placed upon her, and, entering the presence of her Master, could render a faithful account of the stewardship of motherhood. To rule a household of seven sturdy boys and two girls, the eldest twelve years old, required no ordinary tact and sound judgment, but so discreet was this loyal mother that to the very end she made "home" the most loved place on earth to her family, and so trained her children as to make them a blessing to society.
" For nearly fifty years I have been coming back to North- field," said Mr. Moody, long after that little circle had been broken up, "and I have always been glad to get back. When I get within fifty miles of home I grow restless and walk up and down
1 G. H. Morrison, The. Return of the Angels, 146. * George MacDonald, Organ Songs,
368 THE MINISTRY OF SURPRISE
the cai\ It seems as if the tram will never get to ISTorthfield. When I come back after dark I always look to see the light in mother's window." ^
*j| The purest-minded of all pagans and all Emperors devotes the whole of the first book of his Meditations to a grateful con- sideration of all that he owed to others in his youth. Such humble gratitude is the mark of a great soul. He goes over the list of all who helped him by counsel or example. " The example of my grandfather, Verus, gave me a good disposition, not prone to auger. By the recollection of my father's character, I learned to be both modest and manly. My mother taught me to have regard for religion, to be generous and open-haucled. The philo- sopher Sextus recommended good-humour to me. Alexander the Grammarian taught me not to be tinically critical about words. I learned from Catulus not to slight a friend for making a remon- strance." And so on through a long list of benefits vv^hich his sweet humble mind acknowledged, finishing up with : " I have to thank the gods that my grandfathers, parents, sister, preceptors, rela- tions, friends, and domestics were almost all of them persons of probity." ^
2. We are ushered also into a society that was prepared. A child's education is a great deal more than a matter of lesson books and a few years' schooling. The use he is able to make of books and schooling depends on the nature he brings to them and on the surroundings among which he is born; and these again depend largely on what manner of persons those were who went before him. Education is the development of manhood, and this is determined always, on the one hand, by the stock the man springs from, and, on the other, by the intellectual and moral atmosphere he grows up in. So that in literal truth it may be said about each of us that Providence began our education not one but many hundreds of years since. All down the generations the lot we should in due time stand in has been growing more goodly and favourable, until at this particular stage in the history of the race and in our own greatly privileged land, what ameliora- tion of manners, what elevation of morals, what enrichment of social relationships, what increase of knowledge, in a word, what multiplied spiritual wealth, opportunity, and stimulus, do we not
1 W. R. Moody, Life of Dwight L. 3Ioody, 26.
2 H. Black, Christ's Service of Love, 213.
PSALM XXI. 3 369
inherit ! We are the heirs of the ages, and are born rich indeed. We reap where we had not strawed. Why, the very language in which we speak to one another — the medium of communion between man and man — is a legacy of the past to us, and in our earliest broken syllables we unconsciously acknowledge our in- debtedness to it.
^ The holy Andrewes before he conies to give thanks for salvation begins with what is more fundamental still. "I thank Thee," he writes, " that I was born a living soul, and not sense- less matter ; a man and not a brute ; civilized not savage ; free not a slave ; liberally educated, and endowed with gifts of nature and worldly good." ^