I held the golden vessel of my soul And prayed that God would fill it from on high. Day after day the importuning cry Grew stronger — grew, a heaven-accusing dole Because no sacred waters laved my bowl. " So full the fountain, Lord, wouldst Thou deny The little needed for a soul's supply ? I ask but this small portion of Thy whole." 1 R. E. Speer, The Master of the Heart, 198.
4i6 THE OWNER'S MARK
Then from the vast invisible Somewhere, A voice, as one love-authorised by Him, Spake, and the tumult of my heart was stilled. " Who wants the waters must the bowl prepare ; Pour out the self that chokes it to the brim, But emptied vessels from the source are filled."1
^| In a very entertaining work, over which we have roared in childhood, it is stated that a point has no parts and no magnitude. Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are — of immeasurable stature.2
^ The lesson of Christ's humility is that we should be willing to take the humblest place to serve others. We need the John the Baptist spirit, not envious of the success of another, saying with our eye on the Lord, " He must increase, but I must decrease." A Christian minister said, " I was never of any use until I found out that God did not make me for a great man." High trees are commonly fruitless, and what grows on them hangs high above our reach. So we have more good of the humble servant of God who is willing to communicate what he has. The proud servant looks so high that even if he bore fruit it could not be reached by God's poor people.
Give me the lowest place ; not that I dare Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died
That I might live and share Thy glory by Thy side.
Give me the lowest place: or if for me
That lowest place too high, make one more low
Where I may sit and see My God and love Thee so.3
5. Zeal. Christ's was a spirit of holy zeal. "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." What a power Christians would be in the world if each one could honestly say with Brainerd, " Oh, that I were a naming fire in the hands of my God ! " We need at this time what the Chinese convert told the missionary
1 E. Wheeler Wilcox. a G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant.
1 Christina G. Rossetti.
ROMANS viii. 9 417
his people wanted, " Men with hot hearts to tell us of the love of Christ."
^| So far as my recollection of the 1875 Session goes, I can hardly tell what was its main feature. But perhaps the most memorable incident was the Plimsoll one. Mr. Plimsoll had devoted himself to an attack on rotten ships, which he alleged were numerous, and were sent out by money-seeking owners, totally regardless of the lives of the sailors. Some of these alleged malefactors he unmistakeably pointed to, and this led to angry denials on their part. He brought in a Bill dealing with this evil, but the Government pooh-poohed it, and gave him no real assistance. So, one afternoon when the matter was under discussion, he sprang from his seat on to the floor of the House, gesticulating, shaking his fist at the Treasury Bench, shouting out something about murdering villains, and generally deporting himself like one possessed. This, of course, caused great excite- ment and confusion, and as he declined to retract the words about villains, he had to retire from the House, while Disraeli proposed that he be reprimanded. On this, Fawcett got up, who was always a little pompous in his style of speaking, and, alluding to the scene just enacted and kindly doing what he could for Plimsoll, said that he had " advised him to take a walk." So the reprimanding business was adjourned for a week, at the end of which time Plimsoll made an apology, which satisfied the House. But mark the result of all this. The " scene " attracted the attention of the country to the shipping scandal which Plimsoll attacked, and the Government thought it prudent at once to bring in a Bill of their own, which they carried before the end of the Session, and took great credit for, Disraeli making so much of it in a speech at the Mansion House that it was written that he had explained then —
How the whole of his life one long effort had been To provide for the lives of the Merchant Marine.1
^[ In southern China, some years ago, in a city on the borders of the province of Hunan, I talked with a young Chinese Christian. He was a graduate of a college in the far north. He had come a thousand miles away from home to preach Christ among his own countrymen. He was one of the most intelligent Chinese Christians whom I had met. And I was asking him many questions regarding his nation, and especially regarding the life and spirit of the Chinese Christians. And when I was 1 G. W. E. Russell's Memoir of Sir Wilfrid Laivson, 110. ACTS & ROM. — 27