IT In the little schooling that fell to my lot, I was fortunate for a few months to come under the influence of a thoroughly high type of a man who recognised his obligations as a teacher to all sides of our nature. Hardly a lesson passed which he did not use as an opportunity to rub in some phase of our duty to God and ourselves. His unwearied insistence was that self- effort and utter truthfulness, or the absence of these, always explain men and their circumstances. About two years ago this good man got together all his old scholars who were above ground and within reach, and it was remarkable how few gaps thirty years had made in the ranks of those who gladly, and with every demonstration of genuine affection, met to do honour to their old schoolmaster. I could not be present, but one of the company writing me after said : " You would have been pleased to see what a prosperous lot we looked, almost without exception. Not one of us has failed to give some account of himself; while many have attained positions of considerable importance ; others have achieved comparative wealth." ^
In the long run fame finds deserving man, The lucky wight may prosper for a day
And in good time true merit leads the van, And vain pretence, unnoticed goes its way.
There is no Chance, no Destiny, no Fate,
But fortune smiles on those who work and wait In the long run.^
1 Ambrose Shepherd, The Gospel and Social Questions, p. 51. =* E. W. Wilcox, Love Never Lost.
ISAIAH 333
3. We have an evidence which the prophet lacked, an evidence which is outspread over nineteen hundred years, for, with reason or without it, men have everywhere been drawn to righteousness and to settled peace by the contemplation of the Cross on which Jesus died. "When they come to that place the burden which has been pressing them hard falls away. The sin itself may remain, the evil bias and the evil habit, but the hopelessness of it has gone, and the dread of God's anger. Jesus, who sought in all things to be one with His brethren, emboldens us to seek in faith for oneness with Himself ; and in virtue of that mystical union our pardon is secured. As He associated Himself with us, so we associate ourselves with Him both in His doing and in His suffering. We make His confession ours, the homage due to the righteous will of God, which we cannot render of ourselves, we find in Him. We have no desire to stand apart, living our lives out in ways of our own ; we wish to be found in Him, and judged only in relation to Him. Abundantly conscious of weakness and failure, we yet receive through this fellowship of life all the tokens of God's favour : light and peace, and power to make progress. And thus we have assurance through Christ of the forgiveness of our sins. It is not for human effort to restore the fallen dignities of life, as if man were the doer, and God, at best, the observer and rewarder. God is the doer, and you and I receive. He takes it as His business to make life simple, glad, and clean once more, and to attain that end He is willing to go all lengths. " He so loved the world," said John, " that He gave His only begotten Son."
1 A little girl of six years old was singing, " I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God." Her uncle was upstairs, sick. Little Annie crept up to his bedside, and whispered, "Uncle, have you laid your sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God ? " She went back to her play. But all that evening he was praying to God to forgive him for Jesus' sake. Next day Annie went up to the sickroom and whispered with winning tenderness, " Uncle William, did you do as I told you ? " " Yes, I did, I did, and He has taken all my sins away." ^
As the fond sheep that idly strays. With wanton play, through winding ways, ^ W. Armstrong, Five-iUnute Sermons to Ohildren, p. 87.
334 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
Which never hits the road of home, O'er wilds of danger learns to roam, Till, wearied out with idle fear, And, passing there, and turning here, He will, for rest, to covert run, And meet the wolf he wish'd to shun; Thus wretched I, through wanton will. Run blind and headlong on in ill: 'Twas thus from sin to sin I flew, And thus I might have perish'd too : But Mercy dropp d the likeness here, And show'd, and sav'd me from my fear.*
II.
The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
The evil that we do, going forth from us as deed, comes back upon us as guilt. Flung up, as it were, into the heavens, it falls back again on the head of the man that cast it. And so the text speaks of a recoil of the evil, " The Lord hath made to fall upon " some one " the iniquity " that had been audaciously cast up in the face of the heavens, as in scorn, " If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly," but seeing that it only begins when " 'tis done" it is an awful thing to commit the smallest evil. The recoil of the gun bruises blue the shoulder of the man that fires it ; and all our evil deeds, according to the old proverb about curses, " come home to roost." There is guilt, and there is habit, and there is the uneasy, or worse, the silent and seared conscience ; and there is the disturbance of the relation to God, and there is the flight of peace from the heart, and there is the onward look that says, " If there is a future it is a future of retribution, and every transgression and dis- obedience shall have its j'ti^t recompense of reward." Is not that a burden for us to carry ? — the weight of evil pressing upon us, in its consequences, of guilt, disturbance, irritated or paralysed conscience, and the foreboding that if we get what we deserve we shall get but a bitter weird, " Bread eaten in secret is pleasant," but it turns to gravel that breaks the^ teeth of the eater,