2. We must bring our hearts into harmony with the law. At South Kensington there is a clock made above 500 years ago under the hammer of a Glastonbury monk. It has measured out the moments of fifteen generations of men. That piece of mechanism has done and is still doing its maker's will. It has served its maker's purpose. It fulfils his praiseworthy intention and so praises him. Every stroke of its pendulum is to the glory of the Glastonbury smith. The thing has done good and done right. It keeps (so to say) its maker's commandment. What he meant it to do it has done well and truly. Perhaps it may seem a little strained to apply such phraseology to a piece of inanimate mechanism, but it will surely aid us in seeing what the moralist means by telling men to live as they were meant to live. Think of this clockwork of the brain, this delicate mechanism of thought and feeling. Year in, year out, the restless wheels of desire and feeling, of thought and passion, play into one another and mark results on the solemn dial of life. Matters may be so mismanaged as to put the machinery into a whirl of wild confusion. It is, on the other hand, possible to secure » Lne and Life . The Story of J. Denholm Bradi, 163.
PSALM cxix. i8 443
such inward adjustment, such balance, such regulative control, such true impulse, as to make the soul a splendid harmony and the life a utility which men acknowledge with reverence and benediction. With God's works as with man's the essential thing is to be true to the Maker's purpose. There is a command- ment, a Divine intention, to which every one must be true. " Thy hands have made me, and fashioned me ; give me understanding that I may learn thy commandment."
^ The Lord will draw us and securely lead us to Himself, in a way contrary to all our natural will, until He have divested us thereof, and consumed it and made it thoroughly subject unto the Divine will. For this is His will : that we should cease to regard our own wishes or dislikes ; that it should become a light matter to us whether He give or take away, whether we have abundance or suffer want, and let all things go, if only we may receive and apprehend God Himself ; that, whether things please or displease us, we may leave all things to take their course and cleave to Him alone. Then first do we attain to the fulness of God's love as His children, when it is no longer happiness or misery, prosperity or adversity, that draws us to Him, or keeps us back from Him. What we should then experience none can utter ; but it would be something far better than when we were burning with the first flame of love, and had great emotion but less true submission ; for here, though there may be less show of zeal, and less vehemence of feeling, there is more true faithfulness to God. That we may attain thereunto, may God help us with His grace. Amen ! ^
3. In proportion as we love and obey the law, its wonders unfold themselves to our cleansed vision. Emerson says in his essay on Nature, " The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired so long as we can see far enough." It is quite true that wide vision is refreshing. We have all been more depressingly tired in our own houses than on the broad upland and under the open sky. The mountaineer in his loftiest adventure knows no such oppressive weariness as the woman who sits "in unwomanly rags plying her needle and thread." The man with the widest and furthest vision is the man with the most exuberant energy. Jesus, even with Gethsemane and Calvary before Him, is not so weary of life as Judas. St. Paul in 1 Tauler's Li/'e amd Sermons (trans, by Susanna Winkworth), 297.
444 THE WONDROUS LAW
labours more abundant is never so jaded as Nero. The early Christian martyrs, with their vision of the Name, amid all the unspeakable horror of their torture, were not so weary of their sufferings as their persecutors were weary of their persecution. They might still sing, as Chesterton splendidly puts it in the " Ballad of the White Horse,"
That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name; That though we scatter and though we fly And you hang over us like the sky, You are more tired of victory
Than we are tired of shame.
That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill side. The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride. That though all lances split on you.
All swords be heaved in vain, We have more lust again to lose
Thau you to win again.
Liberty in God's Law,
445
Literature.
Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 125. 1
Campbell (L.), The Christian Ideal, 109.
Farrar (F. W.), The Voice from Sinai, 85.
Ferguson (F.), in Sermons on the Psalms, 115.
King (E.), The Love and Wisdom of God, 294.
Knight (W.), Things Neiv and Old, 172.
Roberts (A.), Miscellaneous Sermons, 295.
Selby (T. G.), The Strenuous Gospel, 380.