He never heard the lisping and the trembling Of Eden's gracious leaves about his head —
His mirth is nothing but the poor dissembling Of a great soul unfed —
Oh, bring him where the Eden-leaves are trembling, And give him heavenly bread.
As Winter doth her shrivelled branches cover With greenness, knowing spring-time's soft desire,
Even so the soul, knowing Jesus for a lover, Puts on a new attire —
A garment fair as snow, to meet the Lover Who bids her come up higher.^
2. We may help the weak hy making their ways smooth. — Many name their righteousness in negative terms — they are not thieves, libertines, liars, or drunkards, and therefore they are right with God. But Christianity is positive. When man is enjoined to keep himself unspotted from the world, he is commanded to defend his brother. He is judged by what he leaves undone, and not only by what he does. Though he never placed a stone of stumbling on the highway, he yet is keeper of the road on which his fellows travel. Our task of helping those who are ready to perish must be worked at from two sides. If we neglect the duty of personal succour, encouragement, admonition, some may perish because of our selfish slackness ; and the same result may also follow if we forget to consummate our work for the weak by improving the conditions in which they have to move, and making our part of the world an easier sphere for the practice of virtue and godliness.
^ Here is a poor suicide, who, in a frantic moment in some wretched room to-day, does that most cowardly and miserable sin, and with the pistol or the poison flees from the post where God had put him. You never saw the man. He never heard of you. Have you anything to do with his miserable
* Alico Gary, Flea for Charity.
ROMANS XV. I 471
dying ? If you have cheapened life ; if you by sordidness and frivolity have made it seem a poor instead of a noble thing to live ; if you have consistently given to life the look of a luxury to be kept as long as it is pleasant, and to be flung away the minute it becomes a bui'den, instead of a duty to be done at any cost, with any pains, till it is finished ; if this has been the meaning of your life in the community and in the world, then you most certainly have something to do with that poor wretch's death. You helped to kill that suicide.^
^ What a gain when the path by which the sick, the maimed, the fainting must travel to their goal of rest is free from rough- ness, and has no unnecessary windings I The straight, smooth road from the battle-field may make all the difference between life and death to some who have been smitten down in the fight. If cliffs have to be scaled and mountain ranges crossed, the hale and strong may be able to bear it, but it is torment to their less vigorous comrades, and may be fatal. The straight path for the wasting flock of the shepherd means escape from the jackals and vultures. The straight path for an army moving through a strange land, means victory, whilst the crooked and the devious path may mean decimation and overthrow. And the straight path in the Kingdom of God means this and more. But for the weariness of the way the pilgrim soul would not be tempted into scenes of jeopardy .^
^ Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling amidst the serious, sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight moored in the quiet bay !
" Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings." But that will not save the vessel — the pretty thing that might have been a lasting joy.^
^ To-day there is one danger in the road which causes more to stumble than all other dangers. That danger is drink. It does more than anything else to fill the gaol, and to bring men to the workhouse, and to send men to lunatic asylums, to deprive little children of their food, of their education and even of their clothing ; it brings cruelty more often than anything else within the sacred circle of domestic life. What are we, the keepers of the road, doing to clear the highway of that danger, so that the weak may walk in safety ? ^
1 PhiUips Brooks. » T. G. Selby.
•George Eliot, Adam Bede, * Archbishop Temple.
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