* W, Hay, God's Looking-Glass, 91.
M^ THE WAITING GUEST
of care. I said, ' Betty, what are you crying for ? ' * Oh,' she said, * Mr. Arnot, I am so afraid of the landlord. He came yesterday, and I hadna the rent, and I didila open the door, and now I am afraid of him coming ; for he is a hard man/ * Betty,' I asked, ' what time did he come yesterday V * He came between eleven and twelve o'clock,' she said. 'It was twenty-five minutes to twelve.' * Well,* I said, * it was not the landlord ; it was I, and I brought to you this money to pay your rent.' She looked at me, and said, ' Oh, was it you ? Did you bring me that money to pay my rent, and I kept the door shut against you, and I would- na let you in? And I heard you knocking, and I heard you ringing, and I said, That is the landlord; I wish he would go away. And it was my ain meenister. It was my ain Lord who had sent ye as His messenger, and I wouldna let ye in.' " ^
2. Although it must be for Christ a sad thing — a thing which cuts Him to the heart — that we should trust Him so little as not to care to admit Him, yet it is less for His own sake than for ours that He is vexed. Ours is the loss. He comes with blessings in both hands. This Prince of Love has help and healing for every part of us. It is our unwillingness to open up to Him, and nothing else, that checks the current of His benefactions, and re- duces Him to stand, with hands still " laden " and half His kindly purpose unfulfilled, a suppliant Saviour. Yet He will do no more than knock and call. Though the urgency is on His side. He will not open. Though as crowned King He stands, with title to command and power to compel, yet He will not open. God will do no violence to man's reluctance; nor does it beseem One who draws near in grace ungraciously to force a passage. Nor in truth can the door to our heart's affections be broken through from without, only opened consentingly from within. Permission He must crave ; He cannot, and He will not, enter undesired. A man is the only being that can open the door of his own heart for Christ to come in. The whole responsibility of accepting or rejecting God's gracious Word, which comes to him all in good faith, lies with the man himself. He knows that at each time when his heart and conscience have been brought in contact with the offer of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, if he had liked he could have opened the door and welcomed the entrance of the Saviour. And he knows that nobody and nothing kept it fast ^ J. L. Brandt, Soul Saving, 185.
REVELATION iii. 20 143
except only himself. "Ye will not come to me," said Christ, " that ye might have life." Men, indeed, do pile up such moun- tains of rubbish against the door that it cannot be opened, but it was they that put the rubbish there ; and they are responsible if the hinges are so rusty that they will not move, or the doorway is clogged that there is no room for it to open.
^ When Holman Hunt painted that wonderful picture of the thorn-crowned King outside the door knocking, he showed his picture to his dearest friend, in the studio before it was publicly exhibited. His friend looked at it, at the kingly figure of Christ, at the rough and rugged door, and at the clinging tendrils which had spread themselves over the door. Suddenly he said : " Hunt, you have made a terrible mistake here." " What mistake have I made ? " said the artist. " Why, you have painted a door without a handle." " That is not a mistake," replied Hunt. " That door has no handle on the outside. It is inside." ^
But all night long that voice spake urgently,
" Open to Me."
Still harping in mine ears:
"Kise, let Me in."
Pleading with tears:
" Open to Me, that I may come to thee."
While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold:
"My Feet bleed, see My Face,
See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace,
My Heart doth bleed for thee, —
Open to Me."
So till the break of day :
Then died away
That voice, in silence as of sorrow;
Then footsteps echoing like a sigh
Passed me by,
Lingering footsteps slow to pass.
On the morrow
I saw upon the grass
Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door
The mark of blood for evermore.^
3. It is one of the commonplaces of our experience that we do not like people to force themselves on our acquaintance, to
^ G. Campbell Morgan. ' Christina G, Rossetti, Poetical Works, 241.
144 THE WAITING GUEST
force their friendship on us ; and any attempt to do that gener- ally results in creating dislike to those who try to come into our hearts without knocking, who do not respect the privacy of our choice of friends, but walk straight in without announcing them- selves or waiting till they are asked to come in. Now it makes the great truth of God's search for us, God's wonderful insistence in meeting us at every point of life, all the more solemn that it is part of the Divine humility, part of God's respect for our freedom, a proof that He wants love and trust that are freely given, that He does not force Himself on our acquaintance, as it were. So we come to this, that to do nothing is to keep our Saviour out- side ; and that is the way in which most men that miss Him do miss Him. There are many who have sat in the inner chamber, and heard the gracious hand on the outer panel, and have kept their hands folded and their feet still, and done nothing. To do nothing is to do the most dreadful of things, for it is to keep the door shut in the face of Christ. No passionate antagonism is needed, no vehement rejection, no intellectual denial of His truth and His promises. If we want to ruin ourselveSj we have simply to do nothing !