* J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons, 150.
134 ALWAYS AT WORK
The law of His childhood was the law of His manhood. Just as one of your little ones floating a walnut-shell upon a bowl of water calls into operation all, or nearly all, the laws that operate when an ocean-liner is launched, so within the utterance of this child-spirit of Jesus there are contained those majestic spiritual revelations which go far to compose the gospel. He called men to love God more perfectly, that they might be subdued more completely to the obedience of God. He knew that when He taught them to say " Our Father," He taught them to say " We must obey God rather than man." Surrender was latent in sonship.
^1 Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity ; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do ; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.^
III.
Service.
"My Father's business."
1. When only twelve Jesus had grasped the great idea that life must be lived for a purpose. There is business to do and the busi- ness belongs to God. In the Temple Jesus forgot all about Him- self. Some boys study because they are compelled to, or because they want to make a show, or because they expect to use their education in making money later on ; but Jesus listened to His teachers and pondered the lessons which they set Him in order to advance the glory of His .Father. All kinds of v7ork take on new lustre when we think of it as being given to us by our Father. Men sometimes say, " my business," " my studies," " my plans," forgetting that God has anything to do with them. Everything we do, if we do it rightly, is our Father's business. It is ours and it is also His. Our life is ours and His, so also is our work. We are interested in our tasks, and so is He. We bend over our studies, and so does He. Everything that touches us also touches Him ; and that boys and girls should obey their parents and pay * Carlyle, * * Essay on Burns " {Miscellanies, ii. 3).
ST. LUKE II. 49 135
attention to their teachers is not only their business, it is also the business of the Heavenly Father.
^ Many Christians tell me that they have no vocation to service ; that they do not know what to do ; that they would be glad to serve God, if only they knew how and where ! These are they who were not on the alert, when first they knew the Lord, to set themselves at once about their Father's business ; or who have fallen from their first love and zeal ; or have separated service from the consciousness of salvation ; and I fear, in many cases, with the abandonment or the neglect of service, have lost the blessed consciousness of sonship. I am more and more satisfied, as I come to know myself and my surroundings better, and those of other Christians as well, that we do not so much need to make opportunities as to embrace them when they are presented to us. The majority of life's failures, especially in Christian life, grow out of not promptly embracing opportunities for service. Shakespeare tells us that " There is a tide which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." It is equally true that there are spiritual instincts and promptings which, if yielded to, lead on to most blessed and useful Christian life ; but which, if neglected, leave the Christian to comparative shipwreck.^
^ In matters of business take this as a maxim, that it is not enough to give things their beginning, direction, or impulse ; we must also follow them up and never slacken our efforts until they are brought to a conclusion.^
I thought of life, the outer and the inner,
As I was walking by the sea, How vague, unshapen this, and that, though thinner,
Yet hard and clear in its rigidity. Then took I up the fragment of a shell,
And saw its accurate loveliness. And searched its filmy lines, its pearly cell,
And all that keen contention to express A finite thought. And then I recognized
God's working in the shell from root to rim, And said — " He works till He has realized —
Oh Heaven ! if I could only work like Him ! " ^
2. " My Father's business." What is this business ? In one word, it is redemption, to bring lost humanity into a salvable
^ G. F. Pentecost, Sermons, 103.
2 Counsels and Reflections of F. Guicciardini.
8 T. E. Brown, Old John and other Poems, 128.
136 ALWAYS AT WORK
condition; to provide for the restoration of purity, blessedness and immortality, to men who have forfeited all by transgression ; to save from sin, its power, pollution, and penalties, all who apply to God for mercy. Or, in other words, to establish in this fallen world a kingdom of grace and salvation, whose gates shall be thrown wide open, and into which all the alienated race of man may enter, on condition of renouncing for ever their allegiance to the Evil One, and consecrating themselves loyally to their Eedeeming King.