Not for a fuller knowledge of the end Whereto we travel, bruised yet unafraid, Nor that the little healing that we lend Shall be repaid.
Not these, 0 Lord. We would not break the bars Thy wisdom sets about us ; we shall climb Unfettered to the secrets of the stars In Thy good time.
» T. ti. Selby.
ROMANS XV. I 463
We do not crave the high perception swift When to refrain were well, and when fulfil, Nor yet the understanding strong to sift The good from ill.
Not these, 0 Lord. For these Thou hast revealed, We know the golden season when to reap The heavy-fruited treasure of the field, The hour to sleep.
Not these. We know the hemlock from the rose, The pure from stained, the noble from the base, The tranquil holy light of truth that glows On Pity's face.
We know the paths wherein our feet should press. Across our hearts are written Thy decrees, Yet now, 0 Lord, be merciful to bless With more than these.
Grant us the will to fashion as we feel. Grant us the strength to labour as we know. Grant ua the purpose ribbed and edged with steel, To strike the blow.
Knowledge we ask not — ^knowledge Thou has lent. But, Lord, the will — there lies our bitter need, Give us to build above the deep intent The deed, the deed.^
(3) Some of the laggards who vex and burden the Church have an impaired religious experience because, at the beginning, their surrender to the call of the Gospel was defective. They failed to count the cost of discipleship, and have not hitherto thought it necessary to repair the early omission. Buoyed up with the promises of the evangel, which, like the early disciples, they construed in a somewhat worldly sense, they came in with the others. Perhaps they allowed themselves to be dragged into religion by the pressure of friends, and made no firm, deliberate choice of their own. Upon the promise of the world they are inclined to lean — much at some times, and not quite so much at other times. The spiritual has never come to them with
^ John Drinkwater, Poems of Men and Hours, 1,
464 THE PRIVILEGE OF THE STRONG
such convincing demonstration that they can stake all their interests on it. In the comforts, promises, associations of religion, they feel some measure of satisfaction, but would not like to be quite shut up to these things. A strain of respectable selfishness enters into their religion.
Fain would I climb the heights that lead to God, But my feet stumble and my steps are weak — Warm are the valleys, and the hills are bleak:
Here, where I linger, flowers make soft the sod,
But those far heights that martyr feet have trod Are sharp with flints, and from the farthest peak The still, small voice but faintly seems to speak.
While here the drowsy lilies dream and nod.
I have dreamed with them, till the night draws nigh In which I cannot climb: still high above,
In the blue vastness of the awful sky,
Those unsealed peaks my fatal weakness prove—
Those shining heights that I must reach, or die Afar from God, unquickened by His love.^
II.
The Strong.
St. Paul advises those who sympathize with him to subdue their impatience with the scrupulosity of the feeble-minded and to put a tax on their own Christian liberty if by such harmless concessions the peace and liberty of the Church could be pro- moted. To do this is difficult enough, and it is good, but after all it is a low level. Does the Apostle Paul, glowing with zeal and love, mean no more by his exhortation " Bear the infirmities of the weak " ? His words lift us into the high level of suffering. " Bear with " is not enough. We must " bear " — carry with difficulty, perhaps bleed under — the burdens of those others who are weaker than ourselves.
We must not only tolerate the blind man who tramples down our flowers. The loss of his sight must be felt by us as a personal loss.
^ Louise Chandler Moulton.
ROMANS XV. I 465
1. The law that the strong are to care for, support, and cherish the weak is not a natural law. We are confronted every day with the spectacle of a life in which, so far from the strong bearing the infirmities of the weak, it is the condition of their very existence that they should crush and destroy the weak. Interesting analogies have often been drawn between the natural and the spiritual life, and attempts have even been made to show that the same laws hold good in both. But here at least we have a case in which the law of the spiritual world is the very reverse of that which obtains in the natural. The law of nature, we are told, in regard to all the lower forms of life, is success to the strong, failure and extermination to the weak. Everywiiere around us, it is said, on the surface of the earth, there is going on a struggle for existence, in which, as there is not room for all, the weak must inevitably succumb, while the strong survive and multiply. The order of physical nature consti- tutes a stern and unchangeable environment which favours, at the expense of all others, those natures which have any special fitness to combat with its hostile, or avail themselves of its favourable, conditions. To all others nature is absolutely merci- less. If we can trace advancement or progress in this sphere, it is an advancement every step of which is marked by the crushing out of the feeble, and the survival only of the strongest and fittest.