II.
Its Modern Use.
i. The Heart's Cry to God.
It is the cry of the human heart to God. How often do the heavens seem pitiless, and send no answer to our impassioned
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appeal, but " Morning cometh, and also night." However sad we are, however racked with suspense, though we have lost the friends we most loved, or apprehend the ill we most fear, the sun shines on, the birds sing, our friends eat and drink and are merry, we have to do our work, to take our food, to talk and smile, to listen to condolences, to endure remonstrance, to go through the whole daily round as though nothing had happened to us. And when the day is over, the night comes, and we have to lie down on a couch which has no rest for us, to drag through the slow weary hours, and long for the morning. At such times, in such moods, our life grows very dark to us. Nature seems to have no sympathy with us ; friends and neighbours cannot even under- stand what our grief is like; our duties are burdensome to us, pleasure even more burdensome than duty. The strain is heavier than we can endure ; it seems impossible that we should struggle on long under a burden so heavy. And yet the future holds out no hope to us but death. A few faint, watery gleams of bright- ness, and then the great darkness will rush down upon us, the night that has no end.
If Apart from such special eclipses, times when the darkness thickens, there is the universal and permanent shadow that broods over all, the shadow of this enigmatic and mysterious life. I mean the shadow to which the poet refers when he writes —
So runs my dream : but what am I ?
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light ; And with no language but a cry.
I mean the shadow of which a great Christian thinker spoke when, after a conversation with a friend on the deepest problems of life and death, he wound up the interview with the words: "Ah ! think now of the great God looking down on our babblino-g in the dark!" We are compassed with mystery. The sky is heavy with it, the heart is oppressed with it. Life has its mysteries. Truth has its mysteries.^
ii. The World's Cry to the Church.
It is the cry of the world to the Church. The voice comes from Seir. It comes from the men and women of the world. It is addressed to God's watchman on Mount Zion. It
1 W. A. Gray. 11
i62 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
is the cry of the world to the Church of God. Notice first the great variety there is in the manner of the cry, and then the fact of it.
1. The manner of it.
(1) Sometimes it is no more than a question of utter care- lessness. There are those who haunt our churches from the indolence of habit, who smilingly confess themselves " sinners " without once remembering the tremendous import of the words they employ ; who echo the thrilling penitence of our liturgy in the same tone that inquires the news of the day ; who are Christians because their fathers were, and would, without a murmur, be heathens for the same reason.
(2) Sometimes it is the question of the merely curious. Most Christian teachers are familiar with a class of inquirers who, without much sympathy with evangelical verities, sometimes without much attention to moral demands, are greatly taken up with speculative difficulties. They want the mist cleared away from this point, they want the uncertainty banished from that. The consistency of God's sovereignty with man's responsibility, the nature and occupation of the unseen world, the destiny of the heathen, the fulfilment of prophecy, the order of the last things — that whole class of interesting but not always practical subjects on which a veil of uncertainty hangs, attracts them much. And they turn in curiosity to the Church, with their appeals to the Church's wisdom, their demands for the Church's opinion.
(3) Sometimes the question is ironical, or even contemptuous. " How goes the task with you ? " says the world. " With all your money and with all your machinery, what have you to show ? How many converted heathens ? How many converted Jews ? What reduction is there in the statistics of immorality ? What increase in church attendance among the working classes ? Watchman, what of the night ? "
(4) But sometimes it is earnest. Not in any light or trifling spirit, but with a deep sense of perplexity, and an honest desire for help, men turn inquiringly to the Church — at times even in anguish of heart. The agonies of remorse have seized their spirit. The night has come down upon them in exceeding great darkness. Conscience suggests retribution ; they ask if revelation confirms it.
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(5) And sometimes it is undefined and inarticulate, and then it is the saddest cry of all. This is the cry from Seir. The true translation is " one calleth unto me out of Seir." It is the utterance of a poor heartbroken weary community ; one voice attempting to utter the need, the yearning, the longing of many hearts.