248 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
Ah, but what then when all this enthusiasm, this first novelty, has passed away, what must they do then ? Then they must begin the march of a long history, on, on, on, as the days go by, with each rising sun setting forward on the great national march again, bearing the heat and the burden of the day without fainting, from year to year, generation to generation, age to age, on and on they must walk in the power of the Lord.
'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said :
" 111 and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene ? " —
" Bravely ! " said he ; " for I of late have been
Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread."
O huma^ soul ! as long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light, Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam — Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night ! Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.^
3. This might be illustrated, if one had imagination, oy taking the three forms of geniiLS, temperament, and cliaraG-r. There are some men who naturally have, as it were, the imagina- tive faculty, the poetic faculty, and their tendency is to soar ; they cannot help it, it is the impulse of the genius within them — that is the particular form that the gift of God in them takes — aspiration, a rising and soaring. Well, if that man with his genius waits upon God, and that genius becomes sanctified, he will mount up on wings as eagles towards heaven ; there will be sanctified genius, imaginative, embodying itself in sacred song; that which will lift other souls to heaven and give them wings. Then there are other people that are distinguished by perpetual 8.ctivity; they must be doing something, warring, running, fighting, taking hold of something by perpetual activity; and
^ Matthew Arnold.
ISAIAH 249
if sanctified, they will run in the way of God's commandments ; if God energises their heart with Divine strength they will be able to achieve anything. And there are others of a soberer sort who can neither run nor fly, but they can walk ; and, like Enoch, they can walk with God. They quietly walk, drawing no observation to themselves ; without great genius, and without the faculty for great achievement, but just walking humbly in that quiet vale of life, they walk, and while the man of the wing does not weary, and the man running does not faint, neither do they — they keep on and on in the way of God and in the way everlasting.
^ Amiel was a professor in a Swiss university. In his younger days his friends prophesied great things concerning him; he was a brilliant and talented youth, and naturally looked forward himself to a life of large activity and great usefulness. In the end he proved what the world calls a failure. It was not only his friends who thought so, for he thought so too. He falsified all the predictions of those who loved him. In life he never did anything very bad, and he never seemed to do anything very good. Few students attended his lectures in the Swiss university where he did his life's work, and Amiel could not help feeling that he was indeed a failure, and he was in great bitterness of spirit many a time. He wrote down his thoughts about himself and the experiences of his everyday life — the humdrum, the drudgery, the untoward, and the unwelcome. 7Ie kept his journal for his own eye alone, and every night he entered therein his thoughts and feelings, and the totality of the iperiences he had gained during the day. It is sad reading ; we have it now Amiel is gone. He had not discovered what the whole world has now discovered — that he was really doing his life's work in the very midst and by means of that which seemed to be a sorry failure. By his experience, gained in mediocre service, gained even through his disappointment, gained by the labours of the every day, in the midst of the comments of those who were sorry that he had not developed something better, he was learning, and for generations to come everybody will see that his life-work was done by means of that which he would have regarded as a failure of that life-work.^
4. The marginal reading of the text throws yet another light on its meaning. " They that wait upon the Lord shall change
1 B. J, Campbell.
250 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
their strength." The truth suggested is the important one that they who are calmly and constantly depending upon God will get renewal of strength according to their time and their need. They may seem even to exchange one form of strength for another. The strength of a young tree is of one kind — in putting forth shoots, leaves, and blossoms. The strength of the same tree, mature, is of another kind in firmness and fruitful- ness. The graces which were active and vigorous in a believer at his first conversion to God, such as were carried upon a stream of warm, natural affections, ought to be renewed or exchanged for more wise, practical, patient fruit-bearing in riper years ; and may be exchanged again for deeper spirituality, heavenliness of mind, readiness for the cross, and death as life advances. Now, in these renewals or exchanges of strength he shall be not less useful or pleasing to his Lord. Christ foretold to His Apostle Peter that in his last days he would serve his Master in a very different fashion from that of his youth. " When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedest whither thou wouldest : but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." When Peter fell at last a martyr, was bound by his foes, and borne away to be crucified — they say with his head downwards, at his own request, that in one thing at least he might be lower than his Lord — was Peter less strong in faith, was he less loving, than when he girded his fisher's coat about him to swim ; or flashed out his sword in the garden, or preached the word of his risen Lord amid howling mobs in the streets of Jerusalem ? No ! He was stronger, more loving, more lovable, for all those years of waiting had " renewed his. strength." And so perhaps we have a key to the anticlimax which closes this verse. " They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."