TJ Charles Lamb said that he sat at his desk in the East India House till the wood had entered his soul, so wooden were his duties. When I think of this I think there is nothing that cannot become monotonous, and again I think of one of the greatest souls that God ever made, pacing the fringe of the Sinaitic desert for forty years, the companion of sheep, a solitary soul ; and for forty years more leading about and about, a march without a goal, a people more stupid than the sheep, and I read " he endured.1' How ? Through Divine companionship. " The Lord spoke with Moses face to face." Then all monotony went. " He endured as seeing him who is invisible." And I think of a greater than Moses — the greatest of all — living for thirty years in the monotonous routine of an Oriental village, a peasant's cottage, and a carpenter's shop, and I say, He knows monotony, and He is with me on the dull bit of road. He may be the companion, and blessed be drudgery if He be near and I may feel the warmth of His love.1
Tf Look into any life which has been shaped and fashioned by living faith in Jesus, and you will see this promise fulfilled.
1 C. Brown, The Message of Ood, 54. ST. MATT. — 29
450 CHRIST'S PARTING CHARGE
Where the many toil and suffer,
There am I among Mine own; Where the tired workman sleepeth,
There am I with him alone.
Never more thou needest seek Me,
I am with thee everywhere: Raise the stone, and thou shalt find Me ;
Cleave the wood, and I am there.
3. It is a victorious presence. The phrase " the end of the world " may be better rendered " the consummation of the age." The ultimate victory of the King is implied. There was no fear of failure in the heart of the King. The age initiated by His first advent will be consummated at His second ; and through all the toil He abides with His people, leading them in perpetual triumph as they abide in fellowship with Him.
^[ One of the most frequently quoted of the promises of Christ he held to be largely a conditional promise. As he interpreted it, " Lo, I am with you alway," following as it did the great com- mission, " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," left the impression that, failing the fulfilment of the commission, the promise was largely invalidated. On the other hand, he found a deep and perennial conviction, born of his experiences in the dangers and difficulties of his missionary career, that all men and women (and all Churches) that obediently carry out the command have still the Promise of Omnipotence — the Everlasting Word — of the Abiding Presence of the Son of God.1
^f When John Wesley had done his work and was even now passing within the veil, we are told that, gathering up what strength remained to him, he cried out, " The best of all is, God is with us." He had put Christ's promise to the test, as few have done ; and he had found it true. Christ's presence is for all the days of the Church's history, for each hour of the day of every Christian man's life — the light of life's solemn evening, but no less surely the strength of life's strenuous noon, and the joy of life's bright morning. " The best of all is, God, God in Christ, is with us." 2
% I was reading the other day that glorious book of Charles Kingsley's, entitled, Yeast. You remember how Nevarga, dirty, habit-stained, morally and spiritually broken, feeling utterly
1 John 0. Paton : Later Years, 35.
* Bishop Chase, in The Cambridge Review, xx. p. xciii.
ST. MATTHEW xxvm. 18-20 451
defiled, kneels away in the desert by a furze bush, and lifts up his heart to God and cries, " Then I rose up like a man and I spoke right out into the dumb, black air, and I said, ' If Thou wilt be my God, if Thou wilt be on my side, good Lord who died for me, I will be Thine, villain as I am, if Thou canst make anything of me.' " And Charles Kingsley says the furze bush began to glow with sacred flame, and there in the desert the Lord Jesus found a new companion and made a new friend.1
1 J. H. Jowett.
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