^ When the ancient Jew approached his sanctuary, he found an outer court of the Temple full of activity with the coming and going of those who touched the whole natural life and the daily sacrifice on the altar. But behind lay the still silent room where the golden lamp burned and the bread of life was resting on the golden table. And behind again the silence of the Holy of Holies where man and God merge in union. Even so it is not the great activity, touching national issues — it is not even the sacrificial life of Dr. Paton that has most attracted me and, I believe, others. But here was a priest of the Most High God, in the sanctuary of whose heart the light burned and the bread of life was broken. And with reverent awe we knew that behind lay communion with the Inspirer and Hearer of Prayer. So that out of him from the Divine source flow " rivers of living water." Thus heaven touched earth through our intercourse, and the passion for service of his soul entered ours.*
The secret of the Lord, as the Psalmist conceives it, may be held to include (1) Knowledge; (2) Character; (3) Happiness. Knowledge is the secret of the Teacher, Character is the secret of the Friend, Happiness is the secret of the Lover.
» E. Meynell, Tht Life of Francis Thompsoji (1913), 223. » W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 247. » J. Marcliaut, J. B. Palm, 311.
PSALM XXV. 14 5
I.
Knowledge.
1. Every teacher has his secret. He scans his scholars, eager to find a receptive mind to whom he can reveal it. When the responsive glance, the significant word, or the searching question reveals the student's promise, the teacher has an exquisite joy in revealing his secret.
^ The great painters of the Middle Ages took pupils into their studios. To every aspirant they gave honest attention. When one came who was swift to understand his master's conceptions, eager to imitate his strength of line and purity of colour, humbly and patiently reverent in his zeal, the secret was disclosed. In our own day Edward Burne Jones became a disciple of Dante Gabriel Kossetti. He spent still and strenuous hours in copying his master's works, studying their distinction, and aspiring after their spirit. With a trembling heart young Burne Jones took his drawings to Kossetti to receive his judgment upon them. The honest painter looked at them in silence, and with a word of emotion he said, " You have nothing more to learn from me." He had entered into the master's secret. But mark the law. It is not to the carping critic, the scorning and cynical scholar, the contemptuous idler, that the secret is revealed. The secret is "with them that f ear." 1
God keeps His holy mysteries
Just on the outside of man's dream. . . ,
Yet, touching so, they draw above
Our common thoughts to Heaven's unknown ;
Our daily joy and pain advance
To a divine significance.*
2. There is a mystery in every Christian life. When the words are said in our hearing, " The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," they seem to give a momentary glimpse of the truth. There is a secret in such lives, and that secret is God's. He has to do with them. There is a communication between then- souls and Him. He has told them a secret, and they keep it.
» W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 4. » E. B. Browning.
6 THE SECRET OF THE LORD
Others may see that they have a secret ; but intermeddle with it they cannot. There is only one way to attain it — by going through the same process as these have gone through. We may not at present think it worth our while to do so, or we may have an undefined dread of the supposed difficulty and irksomeness of that process : but at least let us lay it up well in our hearts that there is such a process, and such an end ; that the Christian's life is a reality, whether we ever attain that life or not ; a mystery, whether we be ever initiated into that mystery or not ; let us accept and reverence the inspired declaration that " the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him."
^ The more of a man a man is, the more secret is the secret of his life, and the more plain and frank are its external workings. A small and shallow man tries to throw a mystery about the mere methods of his life, he tries to make his ways of living seem obscure. Where he goes, how he makes his fortune, whom he talks with, what his words mean, who his friends are — he is very mysterious about all these, and all because the secret of his life is really weak, because he is conscious that there is no really strong purpose of living which he himself understands. It is a shallow pool which muddies its surface to make itself look deep. But a greater man will be perfectly frank and unmysterious about these little things. Anybody may know what he does and where he goes. His acts will be transparent, his words will be in- telligible. Yet all the while every one who looks at him will see that there is something behind all, which escapes the closest observation. The very clearness of the surface will show how deep the water is, how far away the bottom lies. There is hardly a better way to tell a great man from a little one.^