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taught about Jesus, and felt quite safe with Him, and so went about his play on the floor. And the boy's question proved only too prophetic. Quick work was done by the dread disease. And soon she was being laid away by strange hands.
It is not difficult to understand that in the sore distress of the time the boy was forgotten. When night came, he crept into bed, but could not sleep. Late in the night he got up, found his way out along the street, down the road, into where he had seen the men put her. And throwing himself down on the freshly shovelled earth, sobbed and sobbed until nature kindly stole consciousness away for a time.
Very early the next morning a gentleman, coming down the road from some errand of mercy, looked over the fence, and saw the little fellow there. Quickly suspecting some sad story, he called him, " My boy, what are you doing there ? My boy, wake up, what are you doing there all alone ? " The boy waked up, rubbed his baby eyes, and said, " Father's dead, and brothers and sister's dead, and now — mother's — dead — too. And she said, if she did die, Jesus would come for me. And He hasn't come. And I'm so tired waiting." The man swallowed something in his throat, and in a voice not very clear, said, " Well, my boy, I've come for you." And the little fellow waking up, with his baby eyes so big, said, " I think you've been a long time coming." 1
II.
The Appeal. "Come over into Macedonia, and help us."
1. It is the cry of Greece to Judea — the appeal of the secular to the sacred. Greece had every secular possession the heart can name — beauty, philosophy, art, culture, gaiety. Judea had at this moment no secular possession at all ; she had only Christ. Yet rich Greece called for the help of poor Judea ! It is no passing picture, no evanescent experience; it is an eternal truth. The secular world cannot live without the help of Christ. No man can fulfil the duties of the hour by the light of the hour ; it is always by a coming light. The schoolboy works for his prize, the clerk for his promotion. Nothing of value is stimulated by the mere sense of the moment. Not even charity is so stimulated.
1 S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service^ 61.
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My benevolence for anything is proportionate to my idea of its longevity. Eonie had no hospitals for incurables, no infirmaries for lives useless to the State. Why have we such institutions ? It is because we think of these people as possible members of a future state. Our charity has been born of our faith and our hope. Why do we not follow the Eoman in eliminating deformed infants ? Because we have more pity ? Nay, the Eoman was prompted by pity. We refuse to follow, not because we feel more deeply, but because we see more clearly. We have caught sight of another chance for the deformed infant — a chance which his misfortune will not impair. We have seen that he too is worth training, worth educating, worth moulding — that there is a place waiting for him in a republic even larger than that of Eome.
Through midnight gloom from Macedon,
The cry of myriads as of one,
The voiceful silence of despair,
Is eloquent in awful prayer :
The soul's exceeding bitter cry,
" Come o'er and help us or we die ! "
How mournfully it echoes on, For half the world is Macedon ! These brethren to their brethren call, And by the Love which loved them all, And by the whole world's Life they cry, " 0 ye that live, behold we die ! "
By other sounds our ears are won Than that which wails from Macedon; The roar of gain is round us rolled, Or we unto ourselves are sold, And cannot list the alien cry " 0 hear and help us lest we die ! "
Yet with that cry from Macedon The very car of Christ rolls on ! " I come ; who would abide My day In yonder wilds prepare My way; My voice is crying in their cry, Help ye the dying lest ye die ! " x
1 S, J. Stone, rooms and Hymns, 248.
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2. It is a cry from the ivcak to the strong. Examine the spirit of the prayer in the words of the text as to the nature of the help invoked. It is a strong word (poqdr.gov) that is translated "help" — strong as "succour" or "rescue." When the partners of Simon were beckoned — to come and help (iXdovrag av'k'kaSiodai) — the beckoners were doing their best to " bear a hand." But it is the " help of the helpless " that is implied in the text ; so helpless — at least in some cases, and those the worst — as not even to know that they needed deliverance. The man of Macedonia was an ideal, whether or not he was an actual, man. He is the impersonation of a need — felt, or so much the worse when it is not felt. From this the Apostle rightly concluded that not man, but the Lord, had called them to preach the Gospel in Europe.