They said, "The carpenter's son." To me, No dearer thing in the Book I see, For He must have risen with the light, And patiently toiled until the night. He too was weary when evening came. For well He knoweth our mortal frame, And He remembers the weight of dust, So His frail children may sing and trust.
We often toil till our eyes grow dim, Yet our hearts faint not because of Him, The workers are striving everywhere. Some with a pitiful load of care; Many in peril upon the sea, Or deep in the mine's dark mystery, While mothers nor day nor night can rest; I fancy the Master loves them best.
For many a little head has lain
On the heart pierced by redemption's pain.
He was so tender with fragile things.
He saw the sparrow with broken wings.
His mother, loveliest woman born,
Had humble tasks in her home each morn,
And He thought of her the cross above.
So burdened woman must have His love.
For labour, the common lot of man.
Is part of a kind Creator's plan.
And he is a king whose brow is wet
With the pearl-gemmed crown of honest sweat.
* Carlyle, Past and Present, ch. xii.
ROMANS XIV. 7-9 405
Some glorious day, this understood, All toilers will be a brotherhood. With brain or hand the purpose is one, And the master workman, God's own Son.
4. Then there is another consequence of the thought that we are living " unto the Lord," an instantaneous and most important consequence. If we can bring the thought of God as a factor into our relations with the world, it will prevent us, as nothing else will, from making, more or less consciously, our own happiness our aim. Now if we aim at happiness, a thousand things occur to disappoint us ; either we do not get what we want, or, quite as often, we get what we want and then do not enjoy it; it is different from what we expected, or there comes with it a little bitter sting of conscience which destroys all the pleasure. But if in our life and work we think of God, if we do our work " unto the Lord," we escape the personal element in disappointment; our failures will chasten us without making us sullen or morose. For such a thought leaves no room for vanity, from which most of our disappointments spring. Such a thought transplants us into a region above vanity.
Though now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because
of defeat. Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be
thy feet, For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful
years, And lovely the dews for thy chilling, and ruby thy heart-drip
of tears.
The eyes that had gazed from afar on a beauty that blinded
the eyes. Shall call forth its image for ever, its shadow in alien skies. The heart that had striven to beat in the heart of the Mighty
too soon Shall still of that beating remember some errant and faltering
tune.
For thou hast but fallen to gather the last of the secrets of
power ; The beauty that breathes in thy spirit shall shape of thy
sorrow a flower,
4o6 ETERNALLY THE LORD'S
The pale bud of pity shall open the bloom of its tenderest rays, The heart of whose shining is bright with the light of the Ancient of Days.^
5. And thus we come back to the first part of the text : " None of us liveth unto himself." For a man cannot live unto the Lord, and live to himself. There will be no room for selfishness in a life that is really devoted to the Lord. " None of us liveth to himself" — this alone is a sublime text for the socialist. But it was not the text of St. Paul, and we only need to turn over the pages of experience to find out where it breaks down. If we make the right beginning and remember that we live unto the Lord, an unselfish attitude to our fellow-men will follow as a natural consequence. " To love is the perfect of the verb to live."
^ Few men in his generation sought to live so much for Christ and his people as did Thomas Guthrie, the Scottish pulpit orator and philanthropist, and the secret of all was that he had learned at the foot of the cross to sacrifice self and to love all for whom the Master died. I have heard him often, and always with delight, but never, I think, with such quivering emotion tingling through my frame, as when, at the close of a glowing appeal for his ragged children, he repeated with the deepest fervour, these lines, which were peciiliarly appropriate on lips like his —
I live for those who love me.
For those who know me true; For the heaven that smiles above me.
And awaits my spirit, too; For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance.
For the good that I can do.
That was his motto, because he had learned the meaning of the love of Christ to his own soul.^
II.
In Death.
" And none dieth to himself ... we die unto the Lord."