^ The injunction which insults me every time I travel by the Underground is " Please hurry on for the lift." The " please " is in diamond type, and you need a microscope to see it. The " hurry " you can read a mile away. Hurry, then, by all means, for we could not live if we did not kill ourselves to get some- where else ! *
3. It is an opportunity of making life complete. — There is a theory that to work is to live. But work is not life. The common adage that " to work is to pray " is useful enough if it comes as a corrective to idleness. But life is not fulfilled when the attention is fastened upon the moving activities of
^ J. H. Jowett. ' Bishop Wilkinson.
» D. Davies. * 0. F. Aked.
176 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
the world's great laws. We must also see their purpose. There is in the great order of things not only a length and a breadth but also a depth. The man who is leading the life of prayer is not merely the man who says his prayers morning and evening, who gathers the members of his household for family worship, and who is regular in his attendance upon the public ordinances of religion. The man of prayer is he whose work in the world is the stronger because it manifests the sense of God's nearness ; about whom the casual stranger feels that there is a background, a hidden life, a fountain of living water from wells of salvation that our father Jacob gave us not. The man of God lives among his own people, sharing their life, knowing the same joys and the same tears. But he is a presence that makes them strong. For all he is, as they said of Elisha, " the holy man of God that passeth by us continually." ^
^ Botanists tell us that plant-life is built up chiefly from elements found in the atmosphere. The oak-plants which you grow in glasses containing nothing but a little water furnish a familiar illustration of this fact. In like manner human character is built up, to no small extent, out of surrounding social influences. Like an atmosphere, unseen and scarcely felt, society contributes largely to make us what we are. "It is not good," therefore, "that man should be alone." Now one great function of society is to afford relaxation from the strain of stern individual work — a relaxation that shall not be un- fruitful of advantage, a rest in which we shall be quietly taking in the sunshine of cheerfulness, the moist breath of sympathy, and the vigorous breezes of a bracing public opinion. In intercourse with our fellows, thought, feeling, and imagina- tion are drawn out without exertion on our part, new ideas are gained, while old impressions are modified through being reviewed in new lights.^
^ You talk about the companionship of towns. Do not forget the loneliness of towns. There is far more fellowship in little places than in the jostle and the crowd of Babylon. We hardly see each other in the city, we have so little time for social intercourse. And nothing is easier in the city than for friendships to become little else than names. It is in view of that we get our holidays. A holiday is not selfish, it is social. It is the golden opportunity of God to put our tattered friendships in repair. It gives us leisure to approach each
» J. G. Simpson. » E. W. Shalderi.
St. MARK 1^)
other, and mingle with a freedom that is sweet, and feel, what here we are so apt to lose, the warmth and the reality of brotherhood. How little time some of you business men have to give to your wives and to your children ! Some of you hardly know your children, and some of your children hardly know you. Now use your holiday to put that right. Give them your leisure, and be happy with them Begin to play the father for a little, which is a different thing from playing the fool.^
IV.
How TO Find Eest in Eetirement.
1. In Variety of Scene or Change of Work. You cannot but observe how varied the Bible is as you read it ; how, with the same truth all through, history succeeds poetry, and practical precepts follow up the most moving appeals ; you cannot but see how Christ leads His disciples from the excitement of Jerusalem to the quiet of Bethany, takes them from the midst of the multitude to the fields and hillsides ; and one purpose no doubt was that spiritual religion might not be lost through sensationalism. We have times of depression when we blame the temptations of Satan and the coldness of our own hearts, and no doubt we should jealously guard against the insidious chill that comes from these ; but when we have earnestly struggled all in vain, it may be time to inquire whether we have not been losing our proper religious feeling through over-excitement, or the tension of too constant activity. This is the hazard that ministers, missionaries, and Christians devotedly given to sacred work have to avoid — not to go on in even the best of works till they become barren external exercises, but to pause or turn to some other side of Christian occupation. This may be one of the ways of not becoming " weary in well-doing."