Verses 1-38
Christ's Example
The incident recorded in this chapter is made the more beautiful by certain features of surpassing grandeur which are found in immediate connection with it. There seems, indeed, at first an inequality between the majesty of the mountain and the value of the frail flower which blooms on its sunny height. We are startled by the difference between the introduction and the progress of the narrative. It is as if God had called attention by great thunderings, and when he had excited the expectation of the universe, introduced, not a burning seraph who might have maintained the high tone of the introduction but a quiet little child, a miniature of his own gentleness and purity. This is the introduction, hear it, and say whether the representation now given be correct. "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God " At this point wonder is excited. We inquire what will he do now, at this critical and trying juncture of his life? Jesus knows the fulness of the mystery set forth in his incarnation; he sees the beginning in the light of the end; he knows all; he sees God behind him sending him into the world, sees God before him welcoming him after the completion of his earthly ministry. What will he do now? Jesus has come within sight of the end; all the fragments of his life are gathering themselves together and taking wondrous shape, as he beholds them coming into union and forming themselves into their hidden meanings, what will he do now? We wait almost breathlessly for the next sentence. Let us read it as our imagination might dictate it. Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God and went to God, unfolded secret wings and went up into the light; unveiled splendours which had been concealed under the guise of his flesh; called angels host upon host, a dazzling throng to bring the crown he had left in heaven. This is our notion of greatness, of pomp, of circumstance. But, just as when the disciples asked who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus set a little child in the midst of them, so when we ask, What will he do when the great mystery is revealing itself to him? he does not any one of the supposed wonderful things which he might have done, but, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, he began to wash the disciples' feet! Who but himself could have afforded such an apparent anti-climax? Where is there any creation of your romance that can play so with the public? What man can afford in one moment to affect sublimity and grandeur and majesty, and in the next ask to wash your feet? It seems as if Jesus Christ might have washed the disciples' feet in the midst of his most obvious humiliation. He need not have reserved that display of his humility for the supreme moment of consciousness, when God's eternity was round about him, beating in waves of immortal blessedness upon the earthliest and poorest aspects of his mission. Yet it was then, when the whole thing, in all the brightness of its glory, showed itself to his inmost heart, that he stooped to wash the feet of the men who had followed him!
Consider this attentively. We ourselves, creatures redeemed and sanctified, sometimes have moments of special spiritual vividness. Now and then we see our grandeur as sons of God. In such moments we get views of ourselves as seen in Christ Jesus which bless us with divine elevation and peace. Now, what is the social expression which we give to such sublime consciousness? How is that consciousness made to tell upon the people who are round about us? The consciousness will surely perish, leaving no heart-blessing behind it, unless under its inspiration we do deeds of nobleness, compassion, charity, which shows how even the commonest and poorest side of life may be lifted up and made beautiful. This was how Jesus Christ turned to practical account his highest consciousness of Sonship: knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God, he began to wash the disciples' feet! Sublime consciousness was thus turned into condescending service; high spiritual dominion and joy found expression in a deed of humility without which even the greatest revelation of majesty, the revelation of the Son of God, would have been incomplete. The deed was simultaneous with the consciousness. Jesus did not wait until the keenness of his joy had abated a little. In the very fulness and glory of his power he laid aside his garments, took a towel, girded himself, and began to wash the disciples' feet. Do not let that picture pass away from your minds as if it were nothing. He laid aside his garments, took a towel, girded himself, and began to wash the disciples' feet. If that picture will not melt men and make them solemn, it can do them no good. It was in the highest moment of his consciousness that he did this. We are to do even little things when we are at the highest stretch of our strength. All the work of life should be done under inspiration. Not only the greatest things; not only the fine carving, but the mortar-mixing; not only the fighting of splendid battles, but the taking home of straying lambs and the gathering up of fallen fragments. So, if we catch aright the meaning of Christ, the elevation of our consciousness is to express itself in the beauty of social charity and service. It is not to consume itself in beatific quietism and sentimental contemplation; it is to prove itself divine by embodiment in visible and useful labour. The apostle says, "We know that we have passed from death unto life." Pause a moment, then, and let us try to find out the reason. Because we feel very comfortable in our hearts, because we like to sit very closely to the fire and read a favourite author, because we have occasional gushings of very tender feeling, is that how we know we have passed from death unto life? The apostle says, No. His argument is this: We know the same word that we have in the text, Jesus knowing that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. Alas! there is this danger about our religious life today: We think, when we get hold of a favourite book, and repeat certain familiar hymns, and look upon ourselves, in relation to the social blessings with which God has gifted us, that we are doing everything that is needful to show our relationship, to prove our redemption by Christ. The Saviour, knowing the full mystery of God's purpose concerning his ministry in this world, seeing his hands filled with the gifts of God, opened those hands that he might wash the feet of the disciples. There is a contemplation of which I am afraid. There is a species of spiritual luxury which amounts to the most terrible temptation and snare. Do you say there are times when you feel as if you could wash the feet of the poorest disciple of Christ? Then why do you not do it? You wear away your feeling, and incapacitate yourself for its recurrence in all its finest sensibility, by allowing it to reach the highest point without turning it into the most condescending service.
In the course of his attention to the disciples Jesus came to Simon Peter. We are entitled, are we not, from the structure of the sentence, to infer that Simon Peter was not taken first? We do not stop to debate the question. The point is of little importance except as bearing upon those who draw mischievous lessons from the supposed supremacy of Peter. The principal point is found in the conversation which passed between the wondering disciple and his condescending Lord When Jesus Christ came to Peter that disciple spoke to him. "Dost thou wash my feet?" "Yes." "Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet." Peter reasoned from a much lower consciousness than Christ's. Peter saw nothing beyond the mere fact of washing the disciples' feet. To him it was only a fact; it was not an emblem. It lost its meaning because he did not look at it in a spiritual light. It was only something done; it was not a parable full of secret meaning, palpitating with divine mystery. How true it is that to the wise man, whose eyes are in his head and whose heart has any sympathy with God, "things are not what they seem." Now, in Jesus Christ's answer to Peter we find the other half of the gracious truth on which we have been insisting. It has been said that consciousness is to express itself in service. We now see that, as consciousness sometimes precedes service and dictates it, so occasionally facts prepare the way for consciousness. There is a kind of reciprocal action. Some men can work from consciousness best; can "work from the intuitive, the subjective, the internal, the spiritual. Other men can only work from the point of information, from the point of mere fact; they must see something, handle something, and work their way from the visible to the unseen. It was so in the case of Peter: hence Jesus Christ said, "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." We are not always to work from the point of knowledge, observe. We are not always to work from the point of understanding. There are occasions in life when our highest powers of reasoning are to be set aside, and we are to become little children, creatures of yesterday, receivers only. Those who are blind are invited to put their little hands into the great hand of God. It is as if Christ had said to Peter: "Let the thing be done. Do what I wish, Do the will, and afterwards thou shalt know the doctrine, that external thing which occasions nothing but wonder now, which seems a mere waste of power on my part, shall in due time be seen to have deep meaning, shall become a precious emblem and an inspiring example."
Illustrations of this are not wanting in daily life. You may find one in the ordinance of infant baptism. To each infant it may be said, "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." This baptism is a fact of which the spiritual meaning and spiritual blessedness will come by-and-by. Let it stand at the very beginning of thy life, and God will tell thee all the intent of it when thou shalt be able to hear him in thy heart. Ordinances are not to wait for reason. There are persons who affect to find amusement in observing the ordinance of infant baptism. They talk about the crying little children, and they quite shake themselves with a species of inexplicable fun as they look upon half a dozen poor trembling little things brought up to a basin of water. They say, "What do they know about it, and what can they understand about it?" as if we understood anything, for-getful that the old man is a young being! When shall we give over looking at our ages according to the returns of registrars and the calculations of actuaries? The oldest man amongst us is old and venerable as a man within the limits of this earthly discipline and pilgrimage; but manhood is only a fraction of being, and ten thousand ages are nothing when set against the eternity of God. We know nothing. We understand in its fulness and perfectness nothing. What if we should be pushed aside, and Jesus should take up one of those sweet little infants, and say, This is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? It would be very humiliating to us, because we know and we understand, and we snatch a moment's vulgar sniffling from seeing little children baptised in God's house.
Sometimes things are to be done, and the explanation is to come after the fact. Our first question must always be, Is this the will of God? If so, we shall find the explanation of the mystery in God's way and God's time. I planted a little seed, and, as I was hiding it away in the dark ground, it asked me why I did not let it lie in the sunshine, where it could see the bright blue day and hear the singing birds. I answered, "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." The sun came and the dew and the living air, and for awhile they tarried at the prison-door of the seed. By-and-by the prisoner came forth, beautiful in form and exquisite in colour; day by day it grew in strength and increased in loveliness; and in the fulness of the summer time it knew, without asking me, why I had hidden it in the earth. It is even so with children whose minds and memories are stored with the truths of God's Word. At first they know but the letter. The knowledge of the letter may come through strife and pain. For long years it may lie dead in the heart; but in some season of special sorrow, in the day of trouble and sore distress, when heart and flesh do fail, it may arise and bring deliverance, and lead away the soul into the very presence of God. Believe, then, in the mysteries of life; believe in facts, ordinances, means. The intent and purpose of each do not lie upon the surface. Wheresoever God may bid us go let us hasten to the place, for there we shall find his blessing.
I have said that the explanation of a fact may come by-and-by. In the case before us the explanation came immediately after the event. After he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, "Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet." Suppose that Jesus Christ had laid down the abstract doctrine, Christians, ye ought to wash one another's feet. What would have been the result? Who would have believed him? We should have found in that an instance of mistranslation; there would have been great hunting up of grammars and lexicons upon that point, because it stands to reason that the thing is utterly absurd. There is a missing letter; there is a wrong punctuation; there is a great difference of opinion between critics, we should have said, as to the meaning of this. But what does Jesus Christ do? Instead of merely laying down the doctrine, he gave the example. This shows how teaching may start from either of two points, from philosophy or from life. It may be based upon a course of reasoning; it may express itself in example, in service, in deed. Some teaching must, from the necessity of the case, be purely intellectual; it does not admit of incarnation. Other teaching may at once be practical; it may rise out of the life, and prove by positive demonstration the practicability and beneficence of its philosophy. Christ's method did not admit of debate. It was not a theory, it was a fact. There it was, a stoop that could never be forgotten, an argument which no ingenuity could ever impair. It was practicable; the Lord and Master had done it. It was worth doing, or he who never trifled with life would not have set the example. This shows in a wonderful manner the vocation of men to whom God has assigned positions of lordship and mastery in life. What is our business in proportion as God has set us in eminent places, given us great talent or great wealth, or great position of any kind? Our duty is to set examples of lowliness and charity, the lowliness which comes out of righteousness, the charity which stands upon law. We require all the stimulus of illustrious precedent in order to do some things which are unwelcome in life. We have not courage to do some things solely on their own merits. Even if we could see them to be duties we could never bring ourselves to discharge them. We want somebody else to do it first. We want to hide ourselves under a great name. Christ provides for this peculiarity of our nature. He allows us to use his name and example. "You may say that I did it. If ever you are caught in the humiliating act of washing your brother's feet, and there should come into your cheek a tingling of shame, you may say that I did it." You will in life such are the combinations of society occasionally want precedent. You cannot always work upon the abstract and the right. Sometimes you will want the defence of a name; you will occasionally want to be able to point to somebody behind you and say, "He did it first." "Now take my name, I have given you an example." So we get out of a splendid precedent what we never could have got out of an abstract command. We all know well what this is in life. The young man who wants to try some new plan of doing his work, trembles a little before doing so, and then he says, "I will do it." And when he has been brought to book about it, it has been an encouragement to him when he could point to some older man and say, "He does it." We thus live in one another, and the Past becomes the inspiration of the Present; and precedents and examples are vitalised into the living influential forces of today. This is how our greatest work has been done.
[ See another treatment of this subject in the discourse which follows. ]
Prayer
Almighty God, we draw near to thy throne without fear or trembling, because thou hast exhorted us to come boldly unto the throne of grace. We come that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help us in time of need. Our life is one crying want. We have nothing that we have not received; thou art the Giver of every good gift and every perfect gift. We humbly desire, therefore, to thank thee for all the mercies we enjoy, and all the grace which has strengthened and soothed our life; for all the hope which has inspired us in the dark and cloudy day; and for the manifold comforts which hath healed our diseases and consoled us when the help of man was vain. We have come up from our households that we may bless God in his own house. We have come to speak the praises of the Most High God, for thy mercy, O King of saints, endureth for ever! We have not forsaken the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but with one accord are found in one place, and we lift up our hearts with one consent. Each worshipper brings his own tribute, each heart has its own song, each hand its own gift. Yet have we common mercies, for which we can find common praises. We can all unite in praising thee for the light of the heavens, the air on which we live. Thou hast spread our table in the wilderness; when we had no bread thou didst multiply the crumbs that were left; when the cruse of oil did fail, thou didst cause it to flow on; when the staff broke in our hands, thou didst give unto us thy rod and thy staff, and they comforted us; when the road was hilly and stony and difficult, thou didst uphold us with strength unfailing, thou didst bring us to the mountain top; when the wind was cold, thou didst shield us from its blast; when the dark night came suddenly down upon us, thou didst set thine eye in the darkness, and behold, it was bright as day beneath our feet! What shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards us? Some have come from the toils of business, the anxieties of earthly life, and are hardly able to emancipate themselves from recollections and apprehensions, from fears and suggestions, which are unfavourable to worship, and which mar the continuity of their contemplation and interfere with the stream of their devotional love. Do thou grant them release from all worldly torments, from all earthly cares, and give thy people to feel the liberty of heaven,:he joy of the presence of God! Some have returned to thy house after long absence; thou hast seen fit to lay them aside from the busy crowd, to give them hours of pain, days of restlessness, and nights of weariness. Now that they have returned to public worship, they desire to speak of the goodness of God, his peace, his healing power, and to be thankful for his sustaining grace. Lord, hear the grateful psalm of such, and abundantly sustain and comfort them, now that they have formed resolutions of intenser devotion and more constant love. Most of us have brought sorrow with us; some little shadow or dark cloud, some wearing grief, some tormenting, oppressive burden, sorrows we cannot tell, we dare not sigh, lest listeners should suspect the hidden grief. We can only bow down ourselves before God, praying that the sorrows of our life may be sources of joy; that out of our very grief we may be able to extract honey which shall refresh the strength of our souls. Do thou sanctify the discipline of life to us; give us control over events and circumstances, so far as to enable us to feel that thy shaping hand is moving amid all the chaos of life, and that thou art working out thine own wondrous order and beauty. It will be enough for us if we know thou art near, and that thy throne absorbs all other powers. The stranger is here, far away from home; the young man is here, far from early association and restraint of home love; the wanderer is here, not knowing why he was born, surrounded by difficulties, depressed, almost despairing; the unsuccessful man, who has knocked at a thousand doors, and no kindly hand has opened one to him that he might have hospitality; the hypocrite, with well-set visor, with double-painted mask, well fitted to his face, the man who can say words with his lips which were never dictated by his heart; the inquirer is here, tossed about by doubt and difficulty and perplexity, sincere in his heart, yet there is a heavy mist upon all his thinking, and he is groping his way towards God, towards life; the little child is here the summer bud, the June flower and even the parent's eye cannot foresee altogether the development and destiny. Look upon us as we are before thee! Lift up those that be bowed down. Strike the visor from the false face. Soothe the sorrowing; dry the tears of grief. Give stimulus and strength to every man in whom there is high aspiration, to every heart in which there is a noble purpose. Enable us all, whether tottering on the brink of the grave, or looking out from earliest life upon all the wonders of existence, to know that thou art our Father, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier, and in God may we have our being! Have mercy upon us, thou loving One! Thou delightest to forgive; we all need thy forgiveness. Help us from our heart of hearts to confess our sins. May we show how truly we confess it by the intensity of our hatred of it. When we own our guilt, may we tremble and be in despair until we see the Cross, the light of the advancing Saviour, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Wash us, and we shall be clean. Let thy blessing now go from congregation to congregation, from minister to minister, until all who are engaged in worship feel the fire of devotion glowing in their hearts. May souls today be reclaimed, be re-established, be edified, be comforted. Thus at eventide we shall be a Sabbath day's journey nearer home! Amen.
Washing Disciples' Feet
To know the full force and value of those words we should connect them with the third verse of the same chapter, which reads thus: "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God." That is the introduction. It excites expectation that amounts almost to intolerable rapture. What will he do now, in this supreme consciousness, in this hour of the resurrection before the time, the Cross behind, the resurrection past the whole meaning of the divine sovereignty in the incarnation of Jesus Christ revealed in cloudless, dazzling light? Now he will take wing and flee away! He knows now who he is, what he is, what God's meaning in his incarnation and whole ministry is; he sees, from the human standpoint, the beginning and the end; he lays his hands, so to say, on both ends of the chain. What will he do in the moment of supreme consciousness? He will show his diadem now; with his right hand he will take away the cloud which veiled it, and the shining of that diadem shall put out the sun. What will he do in this summer time? We have analogous times in our own consciousness, when we feel what we are, when the divinity stirs within us, when we feel the blood of a hundred kings burning in our veins. What is our wish under the pressure of such heroic and tempting consciousness? Surely to do some great thing; surely to vindicate our right to be called by brilliant names. What did Jesus Christ do? Mark the time: the whole pith of this part of; the discourse is in the point of time "Jesus knowing" in modern words, the consciousness of Jesus urged to its highest point, realising its utmost sensitiveness, receiving into itself the full revelation of the divine meaning. "Jesus knowing" that Ms right hand was full, and his left hand yea, "that the Father had given all things into his hands" what did he do? He arose from supper, he laid aside his garments, he took a towel and girded himself, he poured water into a basin, "and began to wash the disciples' feet." Surely this is madness; surely the sentence frays out here into feebleness. That is our way of looking at all things. We do not know the meaning of what is taking place around us; we do not see that the circle is always bending, and that things made of God are in circles. That is the simple geometry. We cannot tell the meaning of condescension in the divine economy; we do not see that God is always stooping; we do not see that the Infinite is always doing this very selfsame thing, and that suspension of such service would mean the ruin of all finite things. This is what God is doing: he is always washing the feet of angels and men, and the whole universe. God is love; love lives to serve; love does not want to sit down in stately ease sweet angel! she is only happy when she is busy and cumbered about many things.
Let us look at the matter from the human standpoint first of all. Says Jesus: "I have given you an example." Bold how dare he speak so? "Is not this the carpenter's Son?" Do we not know his father and his mother and his sisters? Are they not all with us common folks, like ourselves? But he was both. Compared with his audacity, the boldness of Isaiah was blushing modesty. When did Jesus Christ ever copy an example? Never. These circumstances constitute, to my mind, the most connected and cogent argument in proof of Jesus Christ's deity. Never did Jesus Christ ask for time that he might put his thoughts together; never did Jesus Christ withdraw a speech and ask to be allowed to substitute another in its place; never did the Saviour amend a solitary sentence that he once delivered; in no instance did Jesus Christ say, "This is an example which I myself must copy." Trace him from beginning to end, and he owes no man anything. He gives; if he receives it is to return in ampler love. He never learned letters, yet he was never second in conversation. He was always in himself above his age. He said: "I have given you an example." Many can give advice, many can administer rebukes many can offer all these, but few can set examples towards which they challenge the criticism of all time; yes that is the point all time. It were not difficult to set an example that might live through one cloudy day a day so. cloudy as to make it almost impossible to distinguish between one colour and another; but to set an example that should hold its own against all the coming and going of time brighten and shine over all the days of tumultuous life surely the good of such an example, if it stand the test of time, is the quietest and completest miracle ever wrought by the Son of God. We must find the universal element in the teaching of Jesus Christ, or it was only a lesson for a day a transient speech to an assembly which dissolved in the very act of listening to it. We must have nothing local in Jesus Christ's teaching. Whatever he says must spread itself over all time, all space; must be equally at home at the north pole and the south pole, in the tropics and in the coldest regions of the earth; must have the faculty of entering into all languages, tabernacling in all symbols, and looking out with bright, angel-like hospitality from every tribe, and kindred, and people. In the moment of supreme consciousness Jesus Christ did something that can be done seven days a week on every habitable line of latitude and longitude through all the ages of time; and in this universality and adaptation I find a subtle but invincible testimony to the completeness of the mind, the dignity of the character, the deity of the personality of Jesus Christ.
Being about to leave the world, as we call leaving, what will Jesus Christ do? Look at the disciples as they had never been looked at before, with a countenance whose revelation would mark the critical point in their personal consciousness and history? No. Order them off to some mountain solitude, where, as hermits, they might wait for death? That is not the course which Jesus Christ pursued; he simply we should say he profoundly adopted the course of washing the disciples' feet. That is the unfathomable simplicity of Christ the thing which appears to be so intelligible, and yet that carries with it all philosophies, theologies, and possibilities of thinking worthy of reference. Where is there a man who does not suppose that he instantly sees the whole meaning of an incident of this kind? Yet the angels desire to look into it. We lose so much by dismissing so many things as merely simple. The simplicity of Christ was the profundity of God. There is nothing simple in Jesus Christ. The cry the fool's cry "the simple gospel " it is an affront to heaven! There is no "simple" gospel, except in the sense that simplicity is the last result of omniscience and omnipotence not a simplicity at the beginning, but at the end: the outflow and last miracle of the divine mind and power. I wonder not that believers in the simple gospel vulgarly and mistakenly so-called reel, and totter, and abolish themselves.
The eternal meaning of the text is: that humility is to be a social advantage. There are many humble speakers who ought never to open their mouths in the cause of humility. There are many speakers whose hearts are humble, but whose mouths were not made for mincing. We must leave the inner and complete judgment to him who made us. Criticism of others is not humility; inverted pride is not humility; the confession of some barren sentiment is not humility. Humility is dumb; humility keeps no looking-glass; humility is unconscious of its own blushing; humility wists not that its face, having been turned towards God in long fellowship, burns with the reflected glory of the Image it has gazed upon. Humility has to be an active power in life. The greater we know ourselves to be, the humbler will be the service we shall render, without knowing that it is a service of humiliation not self-display. There is a way of washing feet which says in the doing of it, "Your feet do very much need to be washed, therefore I am washing them." No; the feet will be the viler for the touch. Do not say how servile is the work you are doing, how menial the service you are discharging, and, therefore, how humble you are in endeavouring to carry out the word and wish of the Son of God. Service of this particular kind can only be done in Christ's spirit. It can be done otherwise in the letter; but done in the letter it is not done at all; going to church because you must go you do not go. Washing feet, or doing any service symbolised by that phrase, cannot be done let me repeat except in the spirit of Christ; but being done in that spirit, it is no longer the service of humiliation, because it is balanced by the consciousness out of which it came. In Christ's own instance: "Jesus knowing Jesus washed." If we do the washing without the spiritual consciousness, it is menial service, it is a slave's reluctant oblation on the altar of obedience; but coming out of great prayer, out of something like complete vision of God, it is done as if it were not done, and in the doing of it we do but add to the consciousness which was its first inspiration; and thus whilst we are on earth we are in heaven, and being in heaven we stoop to take dear little earth up and cleanse it, and lift it back into its Maker's smile.
This is Christianity not letter worship, not eye service, but the unconscious doing of works of humiliation through the higher consciousness that there is nothing mean that is done for Christ's sake. When this spirit is in us we shall have no dainty dislike for certain kinds of service in the Church. We do now sometimes pick and choose. We have no objection to high office, but we are not going to do certain things which other people of smaller income might very properly do. We are not going to keep the church door, or light the church lamp, but let us pay a man a few pence to do it a man we can order about, a handy man, who can be here and there and everywhere, and dare not answer us again. O wounded One, Man of the five mortal wounds! Thou washer of the disciples' feet! this is what we have done. Wilt thou look on us? We dare not look at thee. In thine eye is not anger that we might for a moment bear but pity, weeping pity, divine pity, that we dare not look at; it hurts us by its pathos. We cannot do service in the Church, men and brethren, except in the Spirit of Christ by that I mean service that shall have in it the true quality of Christian sacrifice and oblation on the one altar of the Cross. We cannot preach except in that spirit. To preach without great hot tears is not to preach; if there be not times when the heart says, "I cannot bear it any longer! O this pity for human souls!" there is no preaching. We may preach sentences we have made, phrases we have measured off mechanically; but preaching that shall be a washing of men, a cleansing of their lives, a going down to them and lifting them up, is the very gift of God; there is nothing like it, though men do not acknowledge that the painter first, or the poet, or the politician, or the entertainer, or the man of musical genius; but if we knew it, there is but one great man in all creation he who does not know he is great, but who is swallowed up in the love of God and the consequent desire to cleanse the lives of men. In what spirit are we working? Are we willing to be anything or nothing? Is our Christianity: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Are we willing to be London ministers, but not African missionaries? Do we covet the honours, but leave other people to do the drudgery? Or is the drudgery the honour, the deeper the higher, the meaner the diviner? Dost thou so reckon? No man then shall take thy crown.
Prayer
Almighty God our Father, made known to us in Jesus Christ thy Son, we will open the day in thy name and in thy love. We would begin it in thy fear, and in confident hope in thy mercy because thy mercy endureth for ever. We can have no fear if we fear God; we are rich if we live in him; we shall be filled with a sacred contentment if we tarry alway at the foot of the Cross. Help us to bring forth abundant fruit to the honour of thy name; may we now be mindful of ourselves more than ever: may we hear the apostle saying unto us, "Look unto yourselves," that in education and discipline and refinement we may make great advance in the things pertaining to the life that is in God. Thou canst do great things for us, yea, thou canst do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. We bless thee that thine answers are not limited by our prayers. Thou knowest what we need, thou knowest what is best for us; keep back what would please us and yet harm us, and give us that which we dread if in its use we shall find ourselves nearer God. We bless thee for all the past. It has been wondrous music; thou hast done great things for us whereof we are glad. We hare changed our way of life, we have gone from house to house, we have seen all the varieties of business life; we have known what it is to be at school, to be suffering from bodily disease, to be rejoicing in abundant health; we have walked in the summer garden, and we have seen the winter snow: and through all the varied way thy hand has led us and thy right hand has upheld us. We will therefore not be silent in thine house, we will make a joyful noise unto the Rock of our salvation, yea with loud songs and psalms will we praise the right hand of the Most High. We thank thee above all other thanks for the gift of thy Son by whom alone we know or can know the Father. He has spoken gently to our listening souls, he has fed us with the bread of life, he has not kept back from us any visions that our eyes could endure; he has saved us from our sin, he has led us to higher character and to more wondrous destiny. Blessed be the Son of God who is to us God the Son, who loved us and gave himself for us. We leave ourselves under thy care, thou loving One, Father and Mother of us all, the great Creator, the tender Redeemer, the wondrous Sanctifier: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost We rest in thy hands, thou mighty One, eternal in majesty and eternal in love. Thou knowest what our purposes are; help us to realise them in so far as they are good. Thou hast made us after a wonderful fashion: we do not know ourselves, we are surprised at our own littleness and at our own greatness; we are amazed by sudden visions that lighten the whole heaven as by a flash from thy throne, and we are amazed that we are so soon overthrown and made to fear and tremble as if we were in the hands of chance and not in the hands of God. Enable us, at home, in business, in the Church, on the highway, at school, in the sick-chamber, everywhere, to know that things are meted, we are in the hands of a watchful gracious Father, and that not a sparrow can fall to the ground without his knowledge. May we live and move and have our being in these great principles; then we shall be calm, restful, contented, and our life shall be as the outgoing of solemn yet tender music. Amen.
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