^ From physical weakness, mental distress, or it may be from the faults of others, some lives remain weak and feel it, and, with lessening resources, find increasing pain. To such the following incident will appeal : " I was strongly touched one day," says Dr. Gregory, "by the bedside of an energetic and elastic man of business, sanguine and successful and with a splendid flow of spirits, who was suddenly struck down by illness. With trembling finger and with moistened eyes he pointed to an illuminated text hung in front of him at the foot of his bed, ' Have mercy upon me, 0 Lord ; for I am weak ' — a new and strange experience for one in the flower of manhood, who had hitherto known only high-toned health. He said, ' Do you see that ? ' I answered, ' Yes, and God sees it and hears it too.' ' Ah,' said he, ' I got them to put it there that I might look at it and then from it to God.' " 2
3. The monotony of our tasks has a narrowing effect on life. The young just entering life find it full of novelty and aglow with romance. AH things are possible to them. The world is open before them. They are conscious of latent powers. They see great opportunities. They will go far. They will climb
1 W. Biaiuwell Booth. 2 J. Ellis.
56 ROOM TO LIVE
high, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room," they are well able to say. But as they grow older, and find their place in the world, and settle down to their work, the glamour vanishes. They find that their sphere is small, their abilities limited, and their opportunities few. The wide horizon of youth contracts. Work loses its novelty. It becomes wearisome and monotonous, and they are ready to cry, *' Thou hast set my feet in a small room ! "
•[j The girl who goes to the marriage altar, her head full of romance, wakes up from love's young dream to discover that her life is a ceaseless round of cooking, sweeping, dusting, and tidying. Her husband perhaps works in a factory, where he feeds a machine, the same machine, or stokes a fire, the same fire, all day long, and six days a week. I have seen a girl in a factory lining a box with paper, and then lining another box with paper, and continuing to line boxes with paper the livelong day. Oh, for an outdoor life ! ^
The close and subtle clasping of a chain. Formed not of gold, but of corroded brass. Whose links are furnished from the common mine Of everyday's event, and want, and wish; From work-times, diet-times, and sleeping- times : And thence constructed, mean and heavy links Within the pandemouic walls of sense Enchain our deathless part, constrain our strength, And waste the goodly stature of our soul.
Howbeit, we love this bondage; we do cleave
Unto the sordid and unholy thing.
Fearing the sudden wrench required to break
Those claspM links. Behold ! all sights and sounds
In air, and sea, and earth, and under earth.
All flesh, all life, all ends, are mysteries;
And all that is mysterious dreadful seems,
And all we cannot understand we fear.
Ourselves do scare ourselves; we hide our sight
In artificial nature from the true,
And throw sensation's veil associative
On God's creation, mans intelligence;
Bowing our high imaginings to eat
Dust, like the serpent, once erect as they;
> B. J. Gibbon.
PSALM XXXI. 8 57
Binding conspicuous on our reason's brow Phylacteries of shame ; learning to feel By rote, and act by rule (man's rule, not God's !), Until our words grow echoes, and our thoughts A mechanism of spirit.^
II.
Large Eoom.
There are two ways in which the smallest room can be en- larged indefinitely — one by lifting the roof, the other by pushing back the walls. And in those two ways, by taking off the roof of life until we see God, and knocking away the walls of time until we see eternity, each of us may occupy — and should occupy, as many do — the largest room on earth.
i. Add God to Life.
1. Let us add the thought of God to life, God alone can deal effectively with our sin. He alone can give deliverance. And what happens to the man who resolutely takes his place in the battle against sin — his own sin, the world's sin ? Day by day the soul within him, which has its birthplace and its goal beyond the stars, asserts itself, as it discovers larger rights and possibilities, and an ever surer hope of victory gives vision not bounded by life's most pressing and persistent circumstance. Day by day it becomes more apparent that the life of the soul is circled by a horizon that its most daring dreams have never scanned, and that for the pure-hearted the dusty, choking, hand-to-hand en- counter with sin holds promise wider than the world. Let us remember that, if in this day of much striving we are growing sick and weary, we are not fighting for the little patch of trampled earth beneath our feet, where the grass and the flowers have been beaten into common dust. We are fighting for the right and fitness to enter the land that is very far off, where, by the river of nameless peace, men have life because they see God, Surely the life that finds room for a fight like that is a wide life !