ACTS xxvi. 19 221
1. There must be both the vision and the obedience, and they must be in that order. St. Paul had no magic secret that kept labour sweet to him ; he had only vision and obedience. But he had them in that order — vision first, and obedience following from it. It is not mere action that is the secret of a healthy life, but action performed in loyalty to something we have seen. All the effective activities of men around us are just processes for turning thought into action — one's own thought, or the thought of others. In every art and craft and enthusiasm the supreme secret of mastery is to know what you are doing. Architecture is simply thought which has expressed itself in stone, or else it is sheer abomination. True healing comes not from routine prescription, but finds its sources deep among the springs of the physician's heart and imagination and experience. Social reform is either the most useless dilettantism, or it is the creation of a new earth upon the lines of a pattern already clearly seen. So it is with all good work. It may be of many various kinds and there may be very many different ways of doing it, but this is characteristic of them all, that a man is carrying out into deed what he has seen in his mind. Vision ever goes before action, and true action is loyalty to vision.
Tl How full the Bible is of visions that lead to tasks ! Abraham must see the vision of the great nation which was to spring from him, " numerous as the sand upon the sea-shore," ere he can leave his native land and become a pilgrim and a sojourner on earth. Moses must see the burning bush on the slopes of Midian before he has the strength to attack Pharaoh's hard heart and re-awaken the passion for freedom in his fellow-countrymen's drooping souls ; and he must be taken to see the " pattern in the mount " ere he can formulate the practical code of government for them after- wards. Isaiah must see the Lord " high and lifted up " in the temple before his lips are touched with fire, and the message of grace and judgment can be uttered by him to the world. All the galaxy of heroes whose story is told us in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews were men who were sustained all through their trials and sufferings by a vision, a promise, a dream, that ever fled before them, but which sufficed to keep up their faith and courage under unimaginable hardship and suffering. And we are told of Jesus Himself that He, too, was upheld and strengthened for His tasks by a dream — "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame." *
1 E. Griffith-Jones.
222 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE
(1) The Vision comes first. There goes out from every life upon those around it, a constant and subtle influence which is determined almost wholly by the inner life of vision — the life of imagination and thought. Thoreau has wisely said: "If ever I did a man good ... it was something exceptional and insignifi- cant compared with the good or evil I am constantly doing by being what I am." A man's atmosphere and spirit are always more powerful influences than his deeds and words. Thus it is not surprising that the matter on which Christianity lays most stress is vision. The thoughts and imaginations of the heart ; a taste for fine and clean things, and an instinctive shrinking from their opposites ; above all, a clear conception of Jesus Christ and a definitely accepted relation between the soul and Him — these are the Christian fundamentals. Christianity has vindicated the rights of the imagination on its own account, apart from its outward expression ; and insisted that a man may lose his honour and respectability there, without going farther afield. Christ amazed His contemporaries by the value He set upon the life of vision : He shifted the centre of attention from outward respect- ability to inward seeing and light.
■R The most impracticable man is he who ignores the soul and its knowledges as the eventual basis of power. The prophets, the inventors, the great painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, philosophers, statesmen, philanthropists — all are interpreters of the power and reality of the idea. Columbus, Leverrier, Harvey, Newton, Hamilton thought it and then showed it. Vision is the vital thing in Plato, Dante, Bunyan, Goethe, Tennyson. This it is that " pries far into distant worlds." High patriotism is this — prophecy. The men of greatest vision are the seers. The false men are those whose vision is unheavenly. Saul might have been such a one ; was until he saw reality. They are many. One of them was Kobespierre, of whom there is a picture ; he squeezing over a wine-cup a human heart. All treason to mankind lies in a false view of God.1
(2) Obedience follows. Many who have a fine vision and who dream great dreams do nothing else. When in the mood, they are filled with splendid conceptions and ideals, in which they revel with large emotion and passionate enthusiasm ; but when they turn from the airy fabric of their vision, and touch hard fact, and