Just to recollect His love,
Always true, Always shining from above,
Always new ;
1 J. H. Jowctt, Meditations for Quiet Moments, 99.
ST. MATTHEW xxv. 21 403
Just to recognize its light
All -en folding, Just to claim its present might,
All-upholding ; Just to know it as thine own,
That no power can take away — Is not this enough alone
For the gladness of the day ?
(3) The joy of the Lord is reserved in its fulness for the other life. Here His people fight the battle within themselves. With the great simplicity of revelation, St. James tells us the source of all disquiet, from the meanest brawl to world-shaking war: " From whence come wars and fightings among you ? Come they not hence, even of the lusts that war in your members ? " The soul is without peace until the will rules every other power, and until that will is Christ within. The true kings unto God have known this so well that they have hardly asked for any other dominion.
^| I cannot describe that joy. It is something to be experi- enced rather than described. As the rose defines the bush, as the music interprets the musician, as the pure face explains the pure heart behind it, so, in some such way, doth God's joy in the soul sing of the God who created the soul in His own image. I some- times think that we have a hint of that joy when God and the soul understand each other in Christ. This picture from life may help us just here. There are in the parsonage two boys between five and six years of age. They are cousins ; they are healthy ; they are selfish ; they are strenuous. You know the rest. The other night, after returning from a preaching engagement in a distant part of the city, I walked up to the bed on which the two lads lay, sound asleep. And the picture that met my eyes was so lovely that I walked away and back again for the third time. There they lay, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, hand in hand, even breathing in perfect unison, folded in the calm and sweet embrace of slumber. Long hours before, they had forgotten their scratched faces. Long hours before, they had forgotten the toys that caused so much misunderstanding. Long hours before, they had forgotten the unkind words they did not mean. Long hours before, they had forgotten their little heartaches and dried their childish tears. Long hours before, they had climbed the white, dreamful hills of sleep, where tearful eyes become tearless, where stormy words melt into peace, where broken toys and broken hearts are' mended, where God's angels brood above restful pillows !
404 THE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT
And bo there is one place — more tranquil than childhood's sleep, more wonderful than childhood's dreams ! — where our souls may find whiteness, where our minds may find unity and poise, where our hearts may find forgiveness, where our hot brows may find coolness. And that place is the bosom of Jesus Christ. In Him, through whom Jehovah is reconciling the world unto Himself, the soul and its God come to a perfect understanding. Then are set in motion those deepening currents of joy which will Hood us at last into that infinite ocean named "the joy of thy Lord"!1
1 F. E. Shannon, The Soul's Atlas, 101.
Unto Me.
40s
Literature.
Burrell (D. J.), Tlie Verilies of Jesus, 82. Buller (W. A.), Sermons, ii. 347. Carroll (B. H.), in The Southern Baptist Pulpit, 54. Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 217. Dykes (J. O.), Plain Words on Great Themes, 159. Eames (J.), The Shattered Temple, 79. Ford (Q. E.), in Religion in Common Life, 72. French (E. A.), God's Messages through Modern Doubt, 75. Ilepher (C), The Self- Revelation of Jesus, 54. Hold en (J. S.), Redeeming Vision, 86. Jenkinson (A.), A Modem Disciple, 205. Leach ((J.), Sermons to Working Men, 24. Lucas (H.), At tlie Parting of the Wags, 277. Miller (J. R.), A Help for the Common Days, 31. Barker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, ii. 22. Barkhurst (C. 11.), Three Gates on a Side, 157. Bearson (A.), The Claims of the Faith, 53. Service (J.), Sermons, 216. Tyng (S. H.), The People's Pulpit, iii. 61. Watts-Ditchiield (J. E.), Fishers of Men, 91.
Christian World Pulpit, xviii. 89 (J. H. Hollowell) ; xxiv. 337 (T. R. Evans); xxix. 259 (R. Veitch); lxxxi. 310 (L. Q. Broughton).
Unto Me.
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.— Matt. xxv. 40.
1. Our Lord is here lifting the curtain of the Unseen. He is describing a great symbolic act of final judgment. The Throne of God is pictured, set upon the clouds ; the nations are gathered before Him. The King is seated to judge in person. The issues of eternity depend upon His word. He will give sentence, witli discernment that cannot err, of reward or punishment to every man according to his works. He calls no witnesses, for none are needed. The books that are opened, spoken of elsewhere, are but the universal memory of the Divine omniscience which this Judge brings to His work. Without hesitation, without the possibility of other than perfect justice, He divides, sepa- rating one from another to the right hand or to the left, and they that have done evil go, in that timeless existence which we call eternity, into punishment, but they that have done good into life.