^ There is more cause for joy than for complaint in the hard / and disagreeable circumstances of life. Browning said, " I count . / life just a stuff to try the soul's strength on." Spell the word V "discipline" with a final g, — " disci pling." We are here to learn Time's lesson for Eternity's business. What does it signify if the circumstances about us are not of our choice, if by them we can be trained, learning the lessons of patience, fortitude, per- severance, self-denying service, acquiescence with God's will, and the hearty doing of it ? Circumstances do not make character. The noblest character can emerge-from the worst surroufldings, and moral failures come out of the best. Just where you are, take the things of life as tools, and use them for God's glory ; so you will help the kingdom come, and the Master will use the
^ Marcus Aurelius.
ST. JOHN VI. 68 279
things of life in cutting and polishing yon so tliat theve shall some day be seen in you a soul conformed to His likeness.^
(2) A second want of our nature is some personal help to lift us above Sin. Of all the wants of the world, none is deeper than this. No misery is greater than the consciousness that having had a tendency to love and justice, to purity and pity, to wisdom and temperance, we have become unjust, envious, full of hatred, dissolute, fond of the baseness of all the flesh, cruel, living in folly and shame, intemperate in selfish desire, tyrannized over by self ; and, living with these companions, restless and unsatisfied, in- wardly ashamed. > Men keep their unhappy hearts to themselves, but that silent, bitter cry of unquiet shame and fear, of longing for release, for peace and goodness, rises like a vast cloud of sorrow towards heaven from the universal heart of man. Ethics do not cure that, nor science, nor philosophy, nor humanitarianism ; it is an inward matter of misery. Eeligious discussions do not help it. It is no remedy for that to be able to balance doctrine against doctrine and to analyse by logic the schemes of the Churches. It does not cure that to be a master-critic, to apply science to the miracles, and the laws of history to the Bible. The real matter is deep within, beyond these transitory things. Knowledge, the mind of man, can do nothing to help this sorrow
> to a final cure.
I looked at the sky, I looked at the sea,
I thought of the stars and moon, —
And my soul went forth on the desolate slopes,
Of the wastes of endless doom:
And I knew myself for that filthy thing,
That loves the death of its soul;
For myself and my soul agreed to cling
To the things we hate and loathe:
And we seek the way and we hunt the path.
To death, and hell, and shame.
And we lightly do with a gloating laugh.
Foul deeds-without-a-name.^
(3) There is another universal, primal want of man's nature —
and that is, some One who shall raise us above Death itself. The
writer to the Hebrews does not say one word too much upon
^ M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 72. ' Desmond Mountjoy, The Hills of Hell. 20..
28o TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
this subject, when he declares that through fear of death all men through all their lifetime are subject to bondage. How else can we describe it? And our experience is of Christian times — of days, and of thoughts too, upon which Gospel light has shined, making it not only a figure of speech, but also something of a traditional feeling, that of course, now, death has lost its sting. Yet is not death, is not the shadow of death cast before in sickness, a terror and a tyranny still ? We may forget him in health — we can lock and bar him out while we are in work and in society — but there he stands, just outside our door, now and then threatening, sometimes striking within, always in prospect, always an apprehension. May not this too be spoken of as a want, a natural want, an original want ?
^ Sir James Affleck, speaking about his visits to Dr. Alexander McLaren as his doctor, says: "As the burden of weakness and infirmity bore down upon him, he became more silent, while touches of sombreness were now and then discernible. On one of these occasions, in speaking of death, he remarked, ' I cannot say I am more reconciled to death now than I was twenty years ago/ I replied in the words of Watts —
' But timorous mortals start and shrink, To cross this narrow sea/
'Ah!' he said, 'it's not only the sea, it's what is beyond the sea'; and then after a pause, 'I cannot perhaps always but sometimes I can say —
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him.'
"It is interesting to recall that Eichard Baxter, who wrote these lines, himself said as he drew near to the end of life, ' To get satisfying apprehensions of the other world is the great and grievous difficulty.'
" Dr. M'^Laren's crossing of the narrow sea proved somewhat tedious, but eminently peaceful, and he is now safe with Him who ' knows all/ " ^