^ As Washington Irving was passing a print window in Broadway, New York, one day, his eye rested on the beautiful engraving of Christus Gonsolaior. He stopped and looked at it intently for some minutes, evidently much affected by the genuine inspiration of the artist in this remarkable representation of the Saviour as the consoler of sorrow-stricken humanity. His tears fell freely. " Pray get me that print," said he ; "I must have it framed for my sitting-room." When he examined it more closely and found the artist's name, " It's by my old friend Ary Scheffer ! " said he, remarking, further, that he had known Scheffer intimately, and knew him to be a true artist, but had not expected from him anything so excellent as this. I afterwards sent him the companion, Christus Remunerator \ and the pair remained his daily companions till the day of his death. To me, the picture of Irving, amid the noise and bustle of noon in Broadway, shedding tears as he studied that little print, so feelingly picturing human sorrow and the Source of its alleviation, has always remained associated with the artist and his works. If Irving could enjoy wit and humour, and give that enjoyment to others, no other writer of books had a heart more tenderly sensitive than his to the sufferings and ills to which flesh is heir.^
2. God may be trusted to prepare our everlasting portion. " I go to prepare a place for you," said Christ. Whatever hell be, it is not man's environment. It was prepared for the devil and his angels. Whatever heaven be, it is man's native place, pre- pared for him from the foundation of the world. And then within that kingdom, all made ready, there is to be the individual touch — " I go to prepare a -place for you." Of what kind that ^ George Palmer Putnam, 268.
PSALM XXI. 3 379
preparation is, eye hath not seen and ear hath never heard. All we know is that we shall be at home, and shall be welcomed by familiar hands. And if here the preparation is so wonderful that waits for the little child when it is born, how much more wonder- ful shall it all be when dying we are born into the glory. If love has been busy making ready here, shall love not also be making ready there ? It is all our Father's house of many rooms, and we but pass from one into the other.
II Kobertson took an active part in the work of the revival movement of 1859, sometimes holding services in the open air, in the neighbouring mining village of Dreghorn, and in the opposite direction, near the Eglinton furnaces. Mr. Andrew James Symington describes one of these outdoor services. " When we arrived at the manse," he says, " we found that Eobertson had gone to address a meeting of miners in the open air at their works, about a mile off. We followed, and got among the crowd of listeners. The sermon was a remarkable one, as simple in its telling illustrations as it was powerful in the enforcement of truth. Earely have I heard such an earnest flow of impassioned eloquence — one could have heard a pin fall — and the begrimed audience, spellbound, hung on his every word. The theme was ' mansions prepared,' and the subject was approached and opened up by an allusion to the coming November 'term' time — to those who were going to ' flit ' — and he asked them if they had yet looked out other houses to which they would go. Then, as to our abode on earth, he said, we were all tenants-at-will. But our heavenly Father had prepared, not cabins or houses, but mansions for us. These were freely offered, and why should we anxiously look before us to the habitations of a few short years, and yet think so little of the heavenly mansions, prepared from before the foundation of the world for all who love Him, for Christ's sake, by Him who made these glorious stars, twinkling overhead in the blue ? Then he pressed home the gospel offer, and, as an ambassador for heaven, invited all to come and receive their inheritance." ^
Can the bonds that make us here
Know ourselves immortal. Drop away, like foliage sear,
At life's inner portal? What is holiest below Must for ever live and grow. * A. Guthrie, Rohertson of Irvine, 156.
38o THE MINISTRY OF SURPRISE
I shall love the angels well,
After I have found them In the mansions where they dwell,
With the glory round them: But at first, without surprise, Let me look in human eyes.
Step by step our feet must go
Up the holy mountain ; Drop by drop within us flow
Life's unfailing fountain. Angels sing with crowns that burn: We shall have our song to learn.
He who on our earthly path
Bids us help each other — Who His Well-beloved hath
Made our Elder Brother — Will but clasp the chain of love Closer, when we meet above.
Therefore dread I not to go
O'er the Silent Eiver. Death, thy hastening oar I know;
Bear me, Thou Life-giver, Through the waters, to the shore, Where mine own have gone before ! ^
"[| As you ascend the Stelvio Pass from the Italian side, you travel through wild, majestic scenery. One moment you are lost in admiration of the engineering skill that carried the zigzag road along the mountain-side; another, lingering by a waterfall, or caught by the vista of some retreating valley, the ruin of an avalanche, or the dazzling sheen of the encircling snow. But the road is nothing to the top of the pass; it hides the secret that awaits you. It is impossible to forget the thrill of emotion when we touched the summit of the pass, and the glorious secret stood disclosed. It had taken hours to ascend, and then, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, a marvellous panorama of mountain and glacier burst on the eye, and Austria lay in the abyss at our feet.