I go down from the hills half in gladness, and half with a
pain I depart, Where the Mother with gentlest breathing made music on lip
and in heart; For I know that my childhood is over: a call comes out of
the vast, And the love that I had in the old time like beauty in
twilight is past.
I am fired by a Danaan whisper of battles afar in the world, And my thought is no longer of peace, for the banners in
dream are unfurled, And I pass from the council of stars and of hills to a life
that is new: And I bid to you stars and you mountains a tremulous long
adieu.
I will come once again as a master, who played here as child
in my dawn, I will enter the heart of the hills where the gods of the old
world are gone.
1 A. W. Hutton.
ACTS xxvi. 19 219
And will war like the bright Hound of Ulla with princes of earth and of sky.
For my dream is to conquer the heavens and battle for king- ship on high.1
ii. The Source of our Visions.
1. Great ideals are the glory of man. No other creatures here can have them ; only men may receive an inspiration that shall raise them above themselves. This being so, whence comes the ideal? It is not of man himself, obviously, but of God. So Moses could have no inspiring ideal of what Israel might be, and should be one day, an ideal that should possess his imagination, and fill his soul with a holy gleam of hope, abiding with him day and night, and making him strong to endure and to do, unless the 'pattern had been shown to him in the mount. But there God had unveiled to him all the possibilities of that people of Israel, and thenceforth Moses set himself, by God's help, to make the vision real. In like manner, Paul could not have portrayed for himself the glowing picture of a regenerate Eoman world, all bowing in adoration to the Crucified, had not the glory, beyond the brightness of the sun, shone from the heavens, blinding, for a while, the natural vision, but photographing itself indelibly on the soul ; so that thenceforth only " one thing " could he do — traverse city and country, land and sea, toil-tired but untiringly, and endure infamy and death, if only he might reduce vision to fact, and make his high imaginations actual realities. So all man's true ideals, of personal life and of service for man's sake, are of God.
2. Our ideals may come to us mediately. They shine before us in the lives of noble men, they burn with quenchless fire in the poems of the ages, they lift their fair beauty before our view in the manifold Scriptures of God, and they show themselves as at once ideal and real in the glory of the Only Begotten, " full of grace and truth " (John i. 14). But, mediately as these ideals may thus be presented to us, they must take immediate hold of our imagination, and kindle the fervours of our own soul — even as though we ourselves were in the mount alone with God, or were
1 "A. E." The Divine Vision, 24.
220 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE
struck by the sudden glory from the skies. Otherwise, their Divine purpose will be unfulfilled, and our life largely unblessed.
1 The heavenly vision to which St. Paul was obedient was the vision of the Divine Son of God, who in human form appeared to him on the road to Damascus. And the heavenly vision to which we are called upon to be obedient is ever the vision of Christ manifesting to us Divine excellences which He would have abiding in our hearts and shown forth in our lives. All through life this vision presents itself to us in varying ways, and in aspects varying according to our changing needs. All through life we as Chris- tians are ready to acknowledge that our aim should be to become Christlike, to live a Christlike life. The word Christlike cannot with any efficacy present itself to our thoughts unless to our inner sight there presents itself at the same time the image of Christ, bearing just that aspect of divineness which we at the time have the greatest need of attaining to the possession of. That which we gaze upon with our inward eyes is a heavenly vision, to which we are called upon to render obedience — to which like the Apostle Paul we must not be disobedient.
II.
Obedience.
What was the secret of St. Paul's great and strenuous life, to which more than to any other our Western world owes the fact that it is Christian ? Whence did this comparatively independent labourer in the Master's vineyard obtain the force that enabled him to accomplish such things ? How was it that he " laboured more abundantly " than the rest ? They had been privileged, in a way that he was not, to hold three years' close companionship with their Lord. To St. Paul the Master appeared, more than once, it would seem, but as a kind of afterthought, " as to one born out of due time " ; but then he " was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." Obedience to the heavenly vision — that was the secret of it all. And so, if we wish to express in one simple phrase the secret of this great man, whose courage and genius as well as his faith and love raise him so high above the level even of the greatest of men, we cannot do better than recall the words spoken humbly but firmly in the presence of an unbelieving king: "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." That is the explanation of it all.