ST. LUKE II. 7 II
Lord is seeking. He seeks not my credal statements but my personal faith. He solicits not my creed but my person, not my words but my heart. And so do we offer Him all these sub- stitutes in the place of the dwelling He seeks. And if these are all we have to offer, " the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." We offer Him the hospitality of a big outer creed, but " there is no room in the inn." ^
T[ Creed is the railway carriage ; it won't take you on your journey unless you have the engine, which is active religion.^
^ Some people seem to think that if they can pack the gospel away into a sound and orthodox creed it is perfectly safe. It is a sort of canned fruit of Christianity, hermetically sealed and correctly labelled which will keep for years without decay. An extravagant reliance has been placed, therefore, on confessions of faith as the preservatives of a pure gospel. But the heart is greater than the creed; and if the heart is wrong it will very soon corrupt the creed and interline it with its own heresies. Hence the wise injunction of the Apostle, " Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience." ^
3. How may the world find room for Him ?
(1) By finding room for His truth and the love of it. The world's attitude towards the birth of every great truth is focused in a single phrase in the simple story of the first Christmas, the greatest birthday since time began. Mary laid the infant Christ in a manger — " because there was no room for them in the inn." Eight must ever fight its way against the world. Truth must ever walk alone in its Gethsemane. Justice must bravely face its Calvary if it would still live in triumph after all efforts to slay it. Love must ever, in the end, burst forth in its splendour from the dark clouds of hate and discord that seek to obscure it. These great truths must be born in the manger of poverty, or pain, or trial, or suffering, finding no room in the inn until at last by entering it in triumph they honour the inn that never honoured them in their hours of need, of struggle or of darkness. It requires sterling courage to live on the uplands of truth, battling bravely for the right, undismayed by coldness, undaunted by contempt, unmoved by criticism, serenely confident even in the
* J. H. Jowett. 2 George Frederic Watts, iii. 326.
' A. J. Gordon : A Biography, 289.
12 NO ROOM
darkest hours, that right, justice and truth must win in the end.
^ Every great truth in all the ages has had to battle for recognition. If it be real it is worth the struggle. Out of the struggle comes new strength for the victor. Trampled grass grows the greenest. Hardship and trial and restriction and opposition mean new vitality to character. In potting plants, it is well not to have the pot too large, for the more crowded the roots the more the plant will bloom. It is true, in a larger sense, of life. The world has ever misunderstood and battled against its thinkers, its leaders, its reformers, its heroes.^
If A happy man seems to be a solecism ; it is a man's business to suffer, to battle, and to work.^
^ Even the spectacle of man's repeated and pathetic failure to live up to his own ideal is " inspiring and consoling " to this on- looker, since, in spite of long ages of ill-success, the race is not discouraged, but continues to strive as if for assured victory, rendering obedience, however imperfect, to the inner voice that speaks of duty owed to ourselves, to our neighbour, to our God , and it is " inspiring and consoling " that traces of the same struggle can be discerned in the poor sentient beings, our inferiors. " Let it be enough for faith that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy : Surely not all in vain." 3
(2) We find room for Him when we find room for His little ones.
^ A few days ago there was performed in the hall of Lincoln's Inn, London, a mystery play called " Eager Heart." The story is briefly this. Eager Heart is a poor maiden living in a wayside cottage, who has heard that the king is going to pass that way, and that he will take up his quarters for a night somewhere in the neighbourhood. With all diligence she prepares the best room in her cottage for his reception, hoping that she may be the favoured one whom he will honour with a visit. Her two sisters, Eager Fame and Eager Sense, deride her expectations, and assure her that the king would never condescend to enter so humble an abode, and that he will, as a matter of course, seek hospitality with some of the great folk in that part of the country. She, however, lias a strong premonition that her hopes are not ill-
^W. G. Jordan, The Croion of Individuality, 33. 2 Carlyle, in Life of Lord Houghton, ii. 478. ^ J, A. Hammerton, Stevcnsoniana, 215.