^ What is a true musician ? Surely one who in that depart- ment is obedient to the thought of God. He is simply an interpreter of God's laws of harmony. No man created those laws which hold in music ; no man can alter them by one hair's breadth. All he can do is to discover, interpret, and obey. Some of the great musicians have not been noted as religious men — i.e. they have not been noted as obedient to God's moral and spiritual law. So much the worse for them ; but inasmuch as they were great in music, it was so by the strictness of their obedience to God's mind in that one department of it. They excelled their fellow-men herein because they were quicker to discern God's thought there, and quicker to obey it.^
Just as I shape the purport of my thought, Lord of the Universe, shape Thou my lot. Let each ill thought that in my heart may be, Mould circumstance and bring ill luck to me.
Until I weed the garden of my mind From all that is unworthy and unkind, Am I not master of my mind, dear Lord? Then as I think, so must be my reward. ^ W. J. Dawson, The Comrade-Christ, 215. 2 j^ Brieriey.
286 THE CAPTIVITY OF THOUGHT
Who sows in weakness, cannot reap in strength, That which we plant, we gather in at length. Great God of Justice, be Thou just to me, And as my thoughts, so let my future be.^ * Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Experience, 4.
Power in Weakness.
a87
LlTERATURfi.
Andrews (G. A.), Efficient Religion, 111.
Baring-Gould (S.), Our Parish Church, 40.
Barton (G. A.), The Boots of Christian Teaching as Found in the Old
Testament, 200. Boyd (A. K. H.), The Cramer Thoughts of a Country Parson, 1st Ser., 34. Brooks (P.), Sermons in English Churches, 112. Byrum (E. E.), The Secret of Prayer, 185. Collyer (R.), The Life That Noio Is, 12. Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 64. Forbes (A. P.), Sermons on the Grace of God, 1. Fiirst (A), Christ the Way, 21. Hall (N.), Gethsemane, 264.
Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, 141. Lawlor (H. J.), Thoughts on Belief and Life, 42. Lilley (A. L.), The Soul of St. Paul, 65. Lockyer (T. F.), Inspirations of the Christian Life, 90. Maclaren (A.), The Unchanging Christ, 159. Mayor (J. B.), The World's Desire, 66. Moule (H. C. G.), Temptation and Escape, 97. Murray (A.), Abide in Christ, 195. Newman (J. H.), Sermons on Various Occasions, 91. Raleigli (A.), Quiet Besting Places, 201. Romanes (E.), Thoughts on the Collects, 5. Salmon (G.), The Beign of Law, 69, 85. Shephard (J. W.), Light and Life, 180. Speer (R. E.), The Value of Hardness, 9. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xviii. (1872), No. 1084 ;
xxii. (1876), No. 1287. Strong (A. H.), Miscellanies, ii. 190. Stuart (A. M.), The Path of the Bedeemed, 142.
Trench (R. C), Sermons Preached for the Most Part in Ireland, 154. ^ Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), x. (1873), No. 800. Christian World Pulpit, xlvii. 97 (N. Smyth) ; Ixxvi. 185 (H. H. Henson) ;
Ixxvii. 390 (G. H. Morrison) ; Ixxviii. 365 (H. E. Thomas). Clergyman's Magazine, 2nd Ser., v. 65 (R. P. Smith).
Power in Weakness.
And he hath said unto me, My g^race is sufficient for thee ; for my power (A.V. strength) is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Cor. xii. 9.
1. St. Paul has just told the Corinthians of favours strange, rare, wonderful, which had been granted him, of "a man in Christ," by all acknowledged to be himself, who was " caught up to the third heaven," " into Paradise," who had there heard words more wonderful than could find utterance again in any dialect of earth, as indeed must be the case with any words of heaven ; who had there glimpses of glory vouchsafed him such as have seldom been permitted to any child of man while yet abiding in this tenement of clay. But, he goes on to say, " Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest," as he repeats it, " I should be exalted above measure," and that which was meant to be his wealth should turn out not wealth, but poverty, not a lifting up, but the most terrible casting down of all.
2. What was St. Paul's thorn in the flesh ? The resources of imagination have been exhausted ; people are returning to the obvious. The thorn in the flesh was something painful, which affected the Apostle's body; it was something in its nature purely physical, not a solicitation to any kind of sin, such as sensuality or pride, else he would not have ceased to pray for its removal ; it was something terribly humbling, if not humiliating — an affection which might well have excited the contempt and loathing of those who beheld it (Gal. iv. 14, which probably refers to this subject); it had begun after, if not in consequence of, the rapture just described, and stood in a spiritual, if not in a physical, relation to it ; it was, if not chronic or periodic, at least recurrent ; the Apostle knew it would never leave him. What known malady, 2 COR. & GAL. — 19