^ We shall have known by anticipation some of the phantoms that haunt the dark valley of the shadow of death, and perhaps seen also in the experience of others that He is always there ; seen, perhaps, what Archbishop Benson saw when he sat by the bedside of his dying son. "That he saw Christ," is the Archbishop's witness, " we who watched him are as certain as of anything we know at all." The dark paths and deep valleys are not wholly strange, and as we enter them it is with the sense of wonder that accompanied Charles Kingsley's descent : " I wonder what it will be like ! " i.e., what will it be like at the other end, when, having left our friends here. He takes us by the hand, round that bend of the path hidden from the living, which none but those He guides have ever seen, that turn where He reveals Himself in His full glory, and we at last know what it is " to know the Lord"? 1
^ The grave is only the moat around the inner castle of the King, across which they who have long been His loving and loyal retainers on the farther side enter it, sure of a welcome to the heart of His hospitality. Far above any morbid or affected, unnatural, unhuman pretence of a wish for death there towers this calm Christian confidence, ready to die, yet glad to stay here until the time comes ; knowing that death will be release, and yet finding life happy and rich with the power of the resurrection already present in it ; counting both worlds God's worlds, and so neither despising this nor dreading the other. That is the Christian light on the dark river and the fields beyond, that streams forth only from the opened door of Jesus' tomb.^
1 G. H. S. "Walpole, Vital Religion, 100.
' Phillips Brooks, Sermons for the Principal Festivals, 279.
356 THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION
"What think you, father — is death very sore?" "My boy," the father answered, "we will try To make it easy with the present God. But, as I judge, though more by hope than sight, It seems much harder to the lookers on Than to the man who dies. Each panting breath We call a gasp, may be in him the cry Of infant eagerness; or, at worst, the sob With which the unclothed spirit, step by step, Wades forth into the cool eternal sea. I think, my boy, death has two sides to it — One sunny, and one dark — as this round earth Is every day half sunny and half dark. ,,
We on the dark side call the mystery death) They on the other, looking down in light, Wait the glad hirth, with other tears than ours."^ * George MacDonald, " A Hidden Life."
Pressing On.
3sr
Literature.
Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 55.
Dawson (W. J.), The Evangelistic Note, 115, j
Henson (H. H.), Ad Bern, 54. «
Liddon (H. P.), University Sermons, 25. ;
„ ,, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, 2iQ.
Little (J.), Glorying in the Lord, 199, 242. Mackennal (A.), The Life of Christian Consecration, 164 Macmillan (H.), The Ministry of Nature, 211. Macnutt (F. B.), The Riches of Christ, 20. Magee (W. C), Growth in Grace, 259. Morgan (G. H.), Modern Knights-Errant, 144. Morrison (G. H.), Flood-Tide, 177. Percival (J.), Some Helps for School Life, 92. Smith (W. C), Sermons, 265. Thomas (J.), Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 193. Trench (R. C), Sermons, 310. Tulloch (J.), Sundays at Balmoral, 112. Vaughan (C. J.), The Wholesome Words of Jesus Christ, 77. Wilkinson (G. H.), The Invisible Glory, 119. Wilson (J. M.), Sermons, 1.
Woolsey (T. D.), The Religion of the Present and the Future, 197. Christian World Pulpit, xxii. 237 (Hood) ; Ix. 52 (Morgan) ; Ixxv. 86
(Champion) ; Ixxviii. 118 (Howell). The Literary Churchman, 1877, p. 301.
358
Pressing On.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended : but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. — Phil. iii. 13, 14.
1. The Apostle here speaks of his past and his present life under the well-known figure of a race. Before his conversion he was like a man runmng a race, a race of his own, with his eyes set on a lower goal. And then Christ apprehended him, caught hold of him, turned him round, and set him running towards another goal ; and he is pursuing that goal yet, and it is still a long way ojQP. " Not as though I had already attained." In the days when he was a young, proud Pharisee, the rising hope of his party, petted, praised, and flattered for his zeal and cleverness, he had regarded himself as well-nigh faultless. The ideal of Pharisaism was not very exalted or sublime, and if you are content to aim low you soon get abundantly satisfied with yourself. But Christ had come and given him a model which was not so easy to follow. Christ had shown him an ideal which soared mountain- high above him. He had been pursuing that for years, and it was still out of his reach. ^