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to the post of duty again. You cannot fight the atmosphere ; no, but you can rise above it.
Then thro' the mid complaint of my confession, Then thro' the pang and passion of my prayer,
Leaps with a start the shock of his possession, Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there.
Scarcely I catch the words of his revealing, Hardly I hear him, dimly understand.
Only the Power that is within me pealing Lives on my lips and beckons to my hand.
Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest Cannot confound nor doubt him nor deny:
Yea with one voice, 0 world, tho' thou deniest, Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.^
V.
MAKING THE CHURCH A PRAISE. And till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
The promise that Jerusalem will be made a praise in the earth, prophet after prophet repeats, sometimes calling to his aid every kind of beautiful imagery, and sometimes pointing to the cause of the praise in the presence of the Holy One of Israel. Zephaniah, for instance, a prophet of royal descent, the traditions of whose house were full alike of suffering and of privilege, closes his short prophecy with a vivid bit of dramatisation. First of all, he addresses his fellow-citizens : " In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not : and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. The Lord thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save : he will rejoice over thee with joy." And then his own voice ceases, in order that the One whose every tone is authority may be heard : " At that time will I bring you in, and at that time will I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all the peoples of the earth." It is much the same with Isaiah himself. "As the earth bringeth forth her bud " (he says), " and as the garden
1 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul, p. 49.
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causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." The earth in all the glories of her luxuriant herbage, every plant and every tree breaking forth into the promise of fruitfulness, all nature putting on her garments of beauty and power — that, he says, is a symbol of what God will make the Church in the world to be.
1. Christ. — That promise holds good still; and its growing fulfilment may be traced in the ever-growing disposition to exhaust all praise upon Him who is the Church's Head and Lord, the source of its strength and the centre of its worship. In every age since He died, He has been praised in proportion as He has been known ; and in the records of no race that has heard of Him, with one certain and another doubtful exception, is any other name more highly honoured. Even that exceptional race is moderating at present the expression of its hatred, and beginning to confess with hesitation the human ascendancy of the Nazarene. By all the world beside He has been singled out for unexampled praise. To the best men of old He was the mirror of every grace and virtue. One of the most lauded philosophies has " abstracted His qualities from His personality," and now bids the world worship their impersonal generalisation. And whatever other direction is being taken by human thought within the Church or in its immediate borders, it is, at least, taxing all its resources in order to pour increased praise upon the Saviour.
2. The Church. — It is true that the Church itself is not equally praised, but that is as a rule because its practice does not follow the example or come up to the standard of its Lord. As the days pass, the Spirit of Christ will ever more completely sway it, and determine its relations with the world ; and thus its vitality and religious force will vindicate themselves, its critics will join the swelling ranks of worshippers, and it will become " a praise in the earth."
3. The Christian. — If all this is to be done for the Church, it must be that it will be done for each of the Christians who compose it. Accordingly, every follower of Christ has a right to regard this passage as a promise of God to establish him, to make him strong in discipleship, faith, power against sin — to
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make him " a praise in the earth." At the present time there is probably no Christian worthy the name, who is not constantly discovering, and often groaning in secret almost hopelessly over the discovery, how weak and unestablished he is. Temptation, however small, has but to assail us subtly or suddenly, and we become an easy prey. When we begin to search our own spirits, and try to find out what we really are, a conclusion that is not satisfactory or pleasant is forced upon us. Self, not crucified and slain, but even exacting in its demands for indulg- ence ; ill-tempered, irritable, resentful, vindictive ; able some- times to turn out poor work without compunction ; conscious of sinfulness, which we treat with alternating indifference and remorse, but to be rid of which we make few serious and pro- longed efforts ; sometimes not caring much even to keep the surface of our lives correct, still less to sweep out of our hearts the rout of foul passions, or to silence the strife of low motives — that, or something like that, is the account we are disposed to give of ourselves in some of our moods ; and anything like the final mastery of sin, or unwavering firmness in our allegiance to Christ, is apt to seem for ever impossible. Yet that it is impossible, the whole Bible and all godly experience testify.