This mood hath known all beauty, for it sees
O'erwhelmed majesties
In these pale forms, and kingly crowns of gold
On brows no longer bold,
And through the shadowy terrors of their hell
The love for which they fell.
And how desire which cast them in the deep
Called God too from His sleep.
Oh, pity, only seer, who looking through
A heart melted like dew,
Seest the long perished in the present thus,
For ever dwell in us.
Whatever time thy golden eyelids ope
They travel to a hope ;
» J. H. Jowett
468 THE PRIVILEGE OF THE STRONG
Not only backward from these low degrees
To starry dynasties,
But, looking far where now the silence owns
And rules from empty thrones,
Thou seest the enchanted hills of heaven burn
For joy at our return.
Thy tender kiss hath memory we are kings
For all our wanderings.
Thy shining eyes already see the after
In hidden light and laughter. ^
III.
The Wat of the Strong with the Weak.
If the strong neglect the weak they go back to the doctrine of a limited redemption. Did Jesus Christ die only for the strong, the steadfast, the sound-minded ? Are morbid, irresolute, wavering souls reprobate from their birth ? If we believe in the redemption of the halt, the maimed, the half-palsied in will and religious capacity, let us come back to first principles and act upon them. Strength and perfection are often reached through temporary inconsistency and failure. The Bible is not afraid to lift up its voice for those men and women of an infirm religion who so often vex us to scorn.
^ Christ stooped to the little children. He took them up in His arms and called them by their names, and breathed over them His blessing. So let me carry the young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.
He sufi'ered long with backward disciples. He gave them line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little of the Word of Life. He never lost patience with them — never once, however they might provoke Him. So let me bear and forbear.
He welcomed timid and doubting souls. When one came to Him by night, He did not rebuke his fearfulness, but took him and expounded to him the salvation of God. So let me encourage the feeblest seeker after truth ; I once groped in the dim twilight myself.
He had hope for the worst. The woman of the city, and the grasping tax-gatherer, and the robber on the tree — He hated
^ A. £., The Divine Vision.
ROMANS XV. I 469
their sin, but He redeemed and saved themselves. The jewel had fallen into the mire, and was all encrusted with foulness ; but to His eyes it was a jewel still. So let me despair of none.
He loved His enemies. Father, forgive them, He prayed almost with His latest breath. Nothing could kill or destroy His exceeding grace. Nothing could vanquish His blessed optimism. So let me overcome evil with good, and out of ruins help to raise temples to the glory of God.^
1. We may help the weak hy personal encouragement. — When men are poor, meagre-souled, shabby in their standards, wind and wave tossed, without certain anchorage, with loose, shallow, un- substantial foundations of character beneath them, it is because they have forgotten God and have been living in a universe bereft of its Almighty King. We are babes no longer when we acquire the true sense of God. To the timid, vacillating soul, unstrung by morbid moods, lacking spiritual soundness, we must address the message, " God is near. He comes to save you." The foreign sailor or soldier of poor physique, cringing with superstition, prone to panic, afraid of the darkness, puts on the qualities of his European or American leader when there is a sense of comrade- ship. He is steadied by the strength of the man who shows the way. And so with weak disciples. A rapid change begins when they realize that God is at hand.
^ Having abandoned the notion of classical honours — which indeed are not very easily obtainable at Cambridge, even by those who have a bent in their direction — the ordinary B.A. degree presented no difficulty to the always robust intelligence of Lockwood. He seems, however, to have called in the aid of the famous coach for the pollmen of those and many other cheerful days, Mr. Hamlin Smith, ajffectionately known as " Big Smith," whose encouraging countenance was often seen during periods of examination outside the Senate House, where he was accustomed to receive the touching confidences of his pupils, who would run up to him and tell him, as best they could, and in their simple way, how they had fared at the hands of the common enemy. " If you have really done three propositions," I once overheard him, with a somewhat painful emphasis, say to a pupil, "you are undoubtedly through." 2
^ A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence, 192. * A. BirrcU, Sir Frank Lockvjood, 29.
470 THE PRIVILEGE OF THE STRONG
O Chiistian man deal gently with the sinner — Think what an utter wintry waste is his
Whose heart of love has never been the winner, To know how sweet it is —
Be pitiful, 0 Christian, to the sinner, Think what a world is his !