(3) Let us pass into another room in the inn — the room of the imagination. It is the radiant chamber of ideals and fancies and visions and dreams. In this room we may find Prospect Window , / and the Window of Hope. It is here that we look out upon the "^ morrow. And it is here that life's wishes and plans may be found. The Lord delights to abide in that bright chamber of purpose and dream. Is there any room ?
If It is a popular impression of Bushnell that he was the subject of his imagination, and that it ran away with him in the treatment of themes which required only severe thouoht. The impression is a double mistake ; theology does not call for severe thought alone, but for the imagination also and the seeing and interpreting eye that usually goes with it. It is not a vagrant and irresponsible faculty, but an inner eye, whose vision is to be trusted like that of the outer; it has in itself the quality of thought, and is not a mere picture-making gift. Bushnell trained his imagination to work on certain definite lines, and for a definite end; namely, to bring out the spiritual meaning hidden within the external form.^
(4) Not far from this room there is another — the chamber of mirth. It is here that the genius of merriment dwells, and here you may find the sunny presences of wit and humour. Here are y quip and jest and jollity. Here is where bridal joy is found, and ^ where the song of the vineyard is born. Will the Master turn into this room or will He avoid it ? No ; He even longs for a place in the happy crowd ! Is there any room for Him in this hall of mirth, or is He crowded out ?
^ I remember that Charles Kingsley used to say, " I wonder if there is a family in all England where there is more laughter ^ than there is in mine." And the Lord was an abiding guest at Charles Kingsley's table. Take Him into your conversation. He will come in like sunshine. There are some things that will just
' Ellon Thorneycroft Fowler, Verses, Wise or Otherwise, 196. 2 T. T. Munger, Horace Bushnell, 383. ST. LUKE — 2
i8 NO ROOM
disappear at His coming as owls and bats vanish at the dawn. Our conversation will lose its meanness, and its suspicions, and its jealousies, and all uncharitableness. Our Christmas speech will itself be a home of light.^
2. Why is it that we keep Him out of our lives ?
(1) We are too much occupied with our ordinary affairs. There are men upon whom work has grown by little and little, so slowly that they hardly realize how; perhaps it has not all been of their own seeking ; certainly it has not all been the result of selfish ambition; sometimes it seems to be the result of a tendency which they could hardly resist. Anyhow, there can be no question as to the result of it all; little by little devotion, meditation and prayer seem not so much to have been given up as to have dried up of themselves out of the life. And the worst of it is that the occupations do not seem to have gained in the process. Like Pharaoh's lean kine, they have swallowed up everything else, but instead of being better, they are worse ; the work is done more mechanically, and less freshly ; more severely, but less wholeheartedly.
^ One feels how natural it was that the small, weary company which crept in footsore by the north gate should have been ignored. They were quite humble people; they did not even belong to the village ; they were among the last comers, for they have travelled from the distant north, and Mary in these days is not the swiftest of travellers. The village is crowded, for all have come to be enrolled. The interest is keen, for the matter involves questions of taxation, questions of national independence, questions of a world empire. It is not to be wondered at that none notices the group which creeps in when the sun is nigh setting, and, because the inn is full, finds what poor shelter it can. The world lost the honour of providing a place where its Redeemer might be born, because it was very busy over important things.^
^ An inn — what an appropriate figure of the soul of man as it is by nature ! What a multiplicity and what a prodigious variety of thoughts are always coming and going in the soul — the passengers these which throng the inn, and some of whom are so fugitive that they do not even take up their abode there for the night ! And what distraction, discomposure, and noise do these outgoing and incoming thoughts produce, so that perhaps scarcely ever in the day is our mind collected and calm, except just for the 1 J. H. Jowett ^ A. C. Welch.
ST. LUKE II. 7 19
few moments spent in private prayer before we lie down and when we rise — the hurry and confusion this, produced by the constant arrivals at, and departures from, an inn.^
(2) Our life is sometimes already filled with the thronging / multitude of our cares. We can be so full of care as to be quite ^ careless about Him. We can have so much to worry about that