^ The under side of every leaf is furnished with thousands of tiny mouths, through which the leaf breathes back upon the world the air it has purified and sweetened for human uses. And so the foliage of a mighty forest is like a cluster of fountains from which health and quickening alchemies are ever pouring, which supply the needs of all those kingdoms of life gathered under its shadow. And in the same way the Holy Spirit of God breathes upon us from every point of our environment. Through countless mouths His soul-quickening influences flow silently into us, neutralizing the doubt, sloth, and sin exhaled from the lower nature, so that we can breathe back our souls to God in faith and desire continuous as the river from God's throne.^
III.
The Inspiration of Self-Keeping.
" Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."
1. On what is it that our eye is to be set as the focus and fountain of all our encouragement in the grand task of our life ? Is it the abundance of our labours ? Is it certain rightful wages that those labours are earning ? Is it even the satisfaction that the memory of them may bring us ? No, it is nothing so poor as this. "Looking for — mercy." Still mercy — after all our hard work, our God-given work, in building, praying, keeping ? Let us thank God that it is. Our work — it is blundering and inconstant ; the worker — he is weak and unworthy ; here, smiling around us out of the heaven which it makes so bright, is the Divine yet brotherly compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, no other encouragement could be at all so complete as this. It overflowa
^ T. G. Selby, The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege, 176.
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upon every other. It is the sum of all tenderest things ; it is the pledge of all that is most unimaginable in its gloriousness. Is our heart burdened about our passing fatigues or troubles or perils ? It may be, till we look onward to that towards which mercy is ripening ; then, present ills shall feel lighter, and past ones shall appear more utterly past. We must cultivate a busy- handed expectingness ; if we do, it will almost become an expectant seeing — a looking upon the actual dawn of the hastening day.
•jl Heard of a poor woman in Windsor Forest who was asked if she did not feel lonely in that exceeding isolation. " Oh no ; for Faith closes the door at night and Mercy opens it in the morning." ^
Now wilt me take for Jesus' sake.
Nor cast me out at all; I shall not fear the foe awake,
Saved by Thy City wall; But in the night with no affright
Shall hear him steal without, Who may not scale Thy wall of might, Thy Bastion, nor redoubt.
Full well I know that to the foe
Wilt yield me not for aye, Unless mine own hand should undo
The gates that are my stay ; My folly and pride should open wide
Thy doors and set me free 'Mid tigers striped and panthers pied
Far from Thy liberty.
Unless by debt myself I set
Outside Thy loving ken. And yield myself by weight of debt
Unto my fellow-men. Deal with my guilt Thou as Thou wilt.
And " hold " I shall not cry, So I be Thine in storm and shine,
Thine only till I die.2
2. Mercy is kindness to the undeserving, and in that point it rises higher than even grace. Grace is kindness to the non- * Journals of Caroline Fox, ii. 141, ^ Katharine Tynan.
JUDE 20. 21 433
deserving, to those who have no claim upon it, but yet who may be in themselves no unworthy recipients. But mercy implies demerit ; it is kindness to the sinful, it is kindness to the lost. Now, this is what Christians have to look for even to the end. Never will they be claimants of right; always will they be suppliants of want. They would have it so. It would be no comfort to them to hear that ten years or a thousand years hence they will have earned their title to stand in an erect posture or with head covered before the great King. They know better. They are making new discoveries day by day, as of grace so of sin, as of good so of vice. Mercy they ask and mercy they look for, only with a growing sureness and certainty that that mercy bought with blood is theirs. Eternal life iBlls the far horizon of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ — is its security and its safeguard,
•[[ I was one day working hard in my study and a message came to me to say that a certain person was ill. The first feeling in my heart was one of vexation. 1 crushed that, and rose up and put on my hat and coat, and went away as fast as I could. I was going down one of the Edinburgh streets, and all of a sudden this thought came to me : " Death will come like that. You will be in the midst of your work, and the message of the Master will come all of a sudden, and you will have to rise and go." Even that one saw as simply an incident in the progress that is to be eternal. Death does not matter. The Master may come and call us right away into the glory, or it may be His will that we should die; but that is just simply an incident, a forward step, as we keep resting daily on mercy unto eternal life.^