^ Man feels capacities within him that ask an eternity for bloom and fruitage. There is in nature something that sends him in yearning search beyond and above nature.
That type of perfect in his mind In nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself on every wind.
In the entire universe, as revealed to man by his senses, there is nothing perfect ; and the central impulse in all man's noblest striving is derived from the aspiration of his spirit towards a perfect truth, a perfect beauty, a perfect happiness, which are exemplified nowhere in the world. Art, religion, and the im- petuous career of the race towards a higher grade of civilization, depend ahke upon the universal imperfection of the material world and the impossibility that a God-related spirit, which man is, should be contented therewith.^
The half moon shows a face of plaintive sweetness
Eeady and poised to wax or wane; A fire of pale desire in incompleteness.
Tending to pleasure or to pain: — Lo, while we gaze, she rolleth on in fieetness
To perfect loss or perfect gain.
Half bitterness we know, we know half sweetness;
This world is all on wax, on wane : When shall completeness round time's incompleteness,
Fulfilling joy, fulfilling pain ? Lo, while we ask, life rolleth on in fieetness
To finished loss or finished gain.^
^ A. C. Pigou, Brovming as a Religious Teacher, 56.
* P. Bayne, Lessons from my Masters, 284.
* Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 198.
COLOSSIANS II. 9, lo 469
2. Chrisfs fulness is stificient for us. — " In him ye are made full." He is our reservoir ; He is our well-spring ; He is our infinite resource. It is a gracious, beautiful, heartening word, this word "fulness." It is as though our Hfe were all gaps, defects, deficiencies, and the gaps in the shore of human need were as many as human kind, and of multiplex variety, and our Lord were an ocean of tidal fulness flowing up in all His fulness to the shore of human need, till every bay and cove and cranny and crevice is filled. Every man's gap is filled in Jesus. Wherever there is a crevice or a chink, or a bay in human need, the Lord fills it. Everybody finds his peace in Jesus.
He enters the soul to fill out every lack, and every secret fault, knowing it all through with a most subtle and perfect knowledge. He communicates, inbreathes, sheds abroad Himself, configuring it inwardly to all that is most perfect in Himself. He does it by a working in the nature of inspiration, not putting the will on forming this or that particular trait for itself, but by flooding and floating it on towards this or that, by His own Divine motion, turning its very liberty towards all it wants and needs to receive. These inspirations are to be currents running exactly where it requires to be carried, and it is just as if every ship in the sea were to have a Gulf Stream given specially to it, running the exact course of its voyage, and drifting it on to its port. The inspira- tions are all perfect, they are adequate, exact and steady, so that no completest issue may be missed.
^ For fifteen years it has been my glory to proclaim it with increasing conviction and with a deepening and growing experience. I have never yet in all my life found a single spiritual need that I could not find redressed and filled in Christ. I don't wonder that Hugh Price Hughes said to his wife, " Put on my grave-stone, ' Thou, 0 Christ, art all I want.' " 1
^ On New Year's Day 1905 came the sudden death of Henry Thompson, vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, and sometime Warden of Eadley. He and the Bishop had been brothers-in-law since 1877. To his sister, the Bishop thus wrote from Mortehoe, on January 2 : " He is spared suffering, and weariness, and old age ; and you, in your great love for him, will think much of this, that he is spared the trial of loneHness ; and though it falls on you, you will bear it as for him, since one or other must have borne it. And through 1 J. H. Jowett, in The British Weekly, April 6, 1911, p. 4.
470 COMPLETE IN CHRIST
it all you will thank God, not only for those hidden purposes of mercy of which our knowledge of His love may make us sure in all things : — but also for those clear fruits of His bounty which cannot ever be missed or forgotten : for the character, the heart, the goodness that His grace wrought in Henry: — for the wonderful happiness of so many years : — for the helpfulness and dutifulness and promise of all your sons. And as you thank God for all these blessings, — and even when your heart fails, — He will help you in your trial and sorrow and weariness — I am very unworthy to speak at all of His help — but indeed I am very sure of its sufficiency : there is nothing lacking, on His side.^
^ What mortal mind can apprehend the sufficiency of the outgoings of the eternal? Who understands the sufficiency of the sea ? Who knows its multitudinous life ? How vast and wonderful it is ! Who knows the richness of the earth, the mother and nurse of all the seeds, the parent and cradle of all growths ? Have you never been astonished at the wonderful richness of the earth ? How, year after year, without failure, she yields through her bosom the wonderful growths that delight the world and that feed the world. Who knows the sufficiency of the orbs that make the day and that braid their glory into the robes of night ? Who knows the overflowing of the clouds, the springs that never fail, the streams that never run dry, the rivers that flow on in their majestic current century after century, millennium after millennium, carrying forward without cessation or break their mighty tide ? Yet these are only a few among the creatures of God, and the creatures that we can apprehend with our capacity. If this, then, be true of these creatures of God, what must we say of the Maker of them all ? 2