^ Henry Haigh.
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Believe, he says, that life is worth living, and your belief will half create the fact. The "scientific proof" that you are right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or some stage of Being which that expression may serve to symbolise) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may then turn to the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry rv. greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory had been gained : " Hang yourself, Crillon ! we fought at Arques, and you were not there." ^
3. The acceptance of the call is necessary to salvation. For no mistake can be made that is more mischievous than to suppose that salvation is the rescue of one's own soul from the wrath to come. There is no such thing. All rescue is from sin to holiness. This is the wrath to come — that we should be left in our selfishness. There is a Talmudic legend to this effect —
Side by side In the low sunshine by the turban stone They knelt ; each made his brother's woe his own, Forgetting, in the agony and stress Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness ; Peace, for his friend besought, his own became ; His prayers were answered in another's name ; And, when at last they rose up to embrace, Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face !
Long after, when his headstone gathered moss, Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos In Eabbi Nathan's hand these words were read : " Hope not the cure of sin till self is dead ; Forget it in love's service, and the debt Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget ; Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone; Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own ! " ^
ii. Our Response.
" Then I said, Here am I ; send me." Why is it not always made so heartily ?
1 See J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethict, p. 450.
2 Whittier, The Two Rabbis.
ISAIAH 123
I. We doubt if we have received the call.
1. Are we in the place where we are likely to receive it ? Preaching in Oxford, the Bishop of London said that the atmo- sphere of a university is unfavourable to the hearing of the call of need, whether from below or from above. It even makes men unfit to be trustworthy judges of moral and religious truth. " It is scarcely too much of a paradox to say, ' We most of us were in doubt, when we were undergraduates at Oxford.' " " I being in the way," said Abraham's servant, according to the Authorized translation, " I being in the way, the Lord led me."
IF At the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, Lord Clyde, better known as Sir Colin Campbell, when asked how long it would take him to get ready to start for India, is said to have replied : " I am ready now." Such is the spirit which breathes in the language of the text. The French motto, "Toujours pr§t," and the Scotch, " Ready, aye ready," are excellent ones for the Christian soldier.^
2. Have we made it the subject of prayer ?
IT Lord Wolseley says in his Soldier's Pocket Book that if a young officer wishes to get on, he must volunteer for the most hazardous duties and take every possible chance of risking his life. It was a spirit and courage like that which was shown in the service of God by a good soldier of Jesus Christ named John Mackenzie, who died a few years ago. One evening, when he was a lad and eager for work in the Foreign Mission field, he knelt down at the foot of a tree in the Ladies' Walk, on the banks of the Lossie at Elgin, and offered up this prayer : " 0 Lord, send me to the darkest spot on earth." And God heard him, and sent him to South Africa, where he laboured for many years, first under the London Missionary Society, and then under the British Government, as the first Eesident Commissioner among the natives of Bechuanaland.2
2. But we are unfit. What makes us unfit ?
1. Is it sin ? Isaiah was unfit until he was pardoned. That objection would be a real objection, and final, if there were no possibility of repentance and no probability of pardon. There is no doubt that it is sin, sin in some of its innumerable forms of selfishness — indolence, pride, worldliness, lust — that keeps most of us from accepting God's call. But the moment we
' C. Neil, in The Clergyman's Magazine, i. p. 96. ' J. O. Struthers, in The Morning Watch.
124 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
repent — " Lo ! this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."
2. Is it poverty of gift ? So Moses : " Oh Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant ; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." So Jeremiah : " Ah, Lord God ! behold : I cannot speak for I am a child." The excuse is often insincere. In these instances it was sincere enough, but more than a mistake. As the man who had but the one talent hid it and lost it, so it cost both Moses and Jeremiah something that they did not in fulness of faith rise at once to their opportunity.