* M. W. Stryker.
ACTS xxvi. 19 223
Bee the task awaiting them as the legacy of the dream, their heart fails and they are helpless. These are the idealists of the world, who can plan great things for others or for themselves, but who cannot execute. Their lives are almost always barren of results and full of disappointments. Those who create great expecta- tions, but who fail to realize them, are rightly banned with the name of visionaries ; men who can see much, but who do nothing.
Tf There is no such grand failure in all the history of that mankind which genius has created for the world, as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. And the abysmal depth into which he falls, the wide roads of agony which his very powers place in front of others, the whole sad missing of life's great end, come from his weakness at a single point — the point where Paul made connexion, vital and faithful, between his every vision of truth and his duty which waited to be done — the point where he was obedient to the heavenly vision. Every man of fine powers of thought is tempted by his powers, at that very point. It is so easy for a bright thinker to think so interestingly and so interestedly that thought becomes life and destiny to him. Our age, which has the two dangers of over-consciousness in the midst of tasks which it has set itself to do, an age whose best man has a temper which either meditates exclusively or acts exclusively, has for its finer souls, for its Hamlet or its Paul, no more subtle temptation than the attractions of a purely ideal life.1
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
2. What is that which makes a man obedient or disobedient ? It is the man's own will. For there are two mysteries in life, the one that men can, and the other that men do, resist Christ's pleading voice. As to the former, we cannot fathom it. But do not let any difficulty deaden the clear voice of our own conscious- ness. If I cannot trust my sense that I can do this thing or not do it, as I choose, there is nothing that I can trust. Will is the power of determining which of two roads I shall go, and, strange to say, it is incapable of statement in any more general terms than
1 F. W. Guusaulus.
224 VISIONS AND OBEDIENCE
the reiteration of the fact; yet here stands the fact, that God, the infinite Will, has given to men, whom He made in His own image, this inexplicable and awful power of coinciding with or opposing His purposes and His voice.
Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
For the other mystery is, that men do consciously set them- selves against the will of God, and refuse the gifts which they know all the while are for their good. It is no use to say that sin is ignorance. No; that is only a surface explanation. We know too well that many a time when we have been as sure of what God wanted us to do as if we had seen it written in flaming letters on the sky, we have gone and done the exact opposite. There are men and women who are convinced in their inmost souls that they ought to be Christians, and that Jesus Christ is pleading with them at the present hour, and yet in whose hearts there is no yielding to what, they are certain, is the will and voice of Jesus Christ.
Tj You will say, perhaps, " I have not been obedient because I could not ; I was not in a position to be so." If the Vision bade you do what you are not in a position to do, it was not a heavenly Vision at all ; it was a product of your own fancy. Do you suppose the Lord Jesus does not know your circumstances, does not allow for your difficulties, does not consider your duties ? If you want to follow the heavenly Vision, you can. If you want to love your neighbour, you can; God helping you. If you want to do him good, you can ; if you are willing to take the trouble. If you want to make sacrifices, you can ; if you are willing to pay the price. If you want to lay down all your life, little by little, bit by bit, at the Master's feet, in the service of humanity, you can ; if you find grace to help in time of need.1
But, above all, the victory is most sure
For him, who, seeking faith by virtue, strives
To yield entire submission to the law
Of conscience — conscience reverenced and obeyed,
As God's most intimate presence in the soul,
And His most perfect image in the world.2
1 R. Winterbotham. a "Wordsworth, The Excursion.
ACTS xxvi. 19 225
3. How does obedience to our visions affect us ?
(1) It affects our thinking. From the writings of St. Paul we gather that two ideas had come prominently before his mind, and were borne in upon his soul, since his conversion, with astonishing sharpness and force, (a) The one was the idea of sin. Always the great Apostle had been a man of keen moral perception. He had studied, indeed, to much effect the moral Law. But until he realized " the heavenly vision," and entered into the mystery of the Cross of Christ, there was little of that sensitive consciousness of sin which is one measure of spiritual attainment in a serious Christian soul. Sin in its intrinsic dreadfulness ; sin in its subtle approaches ; sin in its essential contradiction to the Divine nature ; sin in its mysterious power, to slacken which in human souls required nothing less than the sacrifice of the Son of God; sin in its awful chemical force for corrupting character ; sin in the horror of its possible triumph, in the glory of its possible defeat ; sin in its power to beget its train of weird and hideous children — pain and sorrow, moral misery and the wretchedness of death ; sin in itself and in its consequences ; sin in the mysterious secrecy of its beginning, in the awful vision of doom revealed as its close ; — these things, from the vision on the Damascus wayside, bit deep into the heart of Paul, (b) And along with these a glorious hope, a glorious revelation — the revelation of the love of God. "We who have heard the phrase so often can hardly imagine the joyful vividness with which that revelation broke upon the mind of Paul. The love of God, in its depth, its unmeasured greatness, its tender- ness, its minute considerate sympathy, its personal application, its unfailing loyalty, its unflagging patience, its abounding resources, its wide-sweeping comprehensiveness, and above all in this fact, that it was made known, possible to realize, possible to embrace tenderly human although so exaltedly Divine, in the life, the, character, the death, the sacrifice, the intercession, and the reign in glory, of Jesus Christ. To be loved, tenderly loved, suffered for and delivered, — this brought home to Paul the awfulness of the enemy from whom deliverance had been necessary even at such a price, and the dearness, and goodness, and kindness, and mercy of Him who " spared not his own Son," when that sacrifice was necessary, but " freely gave him for us all."