Acts 27:23-31

Chapter 99

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art the Giver of all gifts that are good and perfect. Thou art always giving; thou dost love to give. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Thou hast set up in him the centre of hope and truth and faith. He is All in All. He is the Beginning without beginning; the End without end; the Mystery; Immanuel. If we may but touch the hem of his garment, we shall be made whole. Surely thou wilt not forbid us to touch that healing hem. Nay, more, thou dost call upon us to touch his very heart and feel the tender efficacy of his blood. Thou dost not exclude, but include, the sons of men. Thy love is a great height; thy love is a great depth. No line is to be laid upon it. It is like thyself, beginning with thy beginning and continuing with thy duration. The Lord's mercy abideth for ever. It is a light that cannot be blown out, a glory that no cloud can conceal. We live and move and have our being, not in thy power only, but in thy mercy and thy love. Thou dost fill us with great wonder. Surely sometimes thou dost almost mock us by condescensions that seem to be revelations, and then gather themselves up into great mysteries. But thou art training us so that we may at last see the light and face it with all the steadiness of such qualification as thou alone canst give. We believe in the end of thy processes, though we cannot understand the manner; nor can we explain the daily detail. All things work together, and they work together for good. Thou art building a temple amid all the wind and dust and cloud of tumultuous time; and thou wilt not leave it until the top-stone is brought on with great shoutings of "Grace! Grace unto it!" inasmuch as thy purpose is completed. Here we stand in the righteousness of God, in the judgment and decree of Heaven. We are not tossed about with every wind of doctrine: we believe God; we rest in the Lord, we wait patiently for him. He will come; his tarrying is only according to our impatience; his word is not forgotten. May we rest in thee, though the night be long and the lights all gone, and the wind quite high, and the sea white with wrath. May our vessel be a sanctuary; may the darkness be the Divine cover, and after the storm may we hear the still small voice. We want to make the most and best of our little life. It is but a breath after all; we waste it in using it; we die whilst we live. May we make the most of the hours, counting them with scrupulous care, using each as if it were a solitary gem, and writing down the story of each as for the perusal of the Divine eye. Call us every morning from our slumber. Give us peace every night after our labor. As the years grow and multiply, may they but bring immortality nearer and hasten us to our eternal youth. Remember those for whom we ought to pray the prayerless, the dumb that never spoke at thy altar; the heart speechless because faithless. We pray for the wanderer that he may see in what a maze he is laboring returning always upon himself; making no progress, only wasting strength. For the sick we pray the solitary, the lonely, the sad. The earth is thine, and every living thing is a pulse of thine eternity. Let thy pity go out after it like a gospel, and speak comfortably to it, and refresh every heart with a new blessing. Speak to those who are in utter dejection, and whose despair has left faith far behind. Thou canst recover the shattered life; thou canst build again the mind that has been thrown down. All things are possible with God. Hear us in our daily prayer. Enrich it with daily inspiration of thought and desire, and may we feel so assured that our prayers are Divine creations that in their very utterance we may find Divine replies.

We say our prayer at the Cross: otherwhere it would be but an empty wind; but uttered at the Cross, in the sight of the Holy One, in the presence of the Atoning Blood, the feeblest word becomes a mighty plea, and the sighing of the heart is heard in heaven as a prevailing voice. Hear us and astonish us with a great answer. Amen.

Act 27:23-31

23. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve,

24. Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Cæsar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.

25. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me.

26. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island.

27. But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country;

28. And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms.

29. Then fearing lest they should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day.

30. And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under color as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship,

31. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.

Paul Professes a Creed

This is a remarkable saying: "God hath given thee all them that sail with thee" ( Act 27:24 ). That is the philosophy of society. The whole ship was saved for Paul's sake. Your house is saved because of some one life that is in it. Any ship that carries you and me might be broken up by the storm thrown away as an evil thing because we are so bad and unworthy. But for the child's sake the praying soul's sake the old mother's sake the pastor's sake the timbers are kept together, and we shall yet touch land. How little is this vicarious principle understood! We speak much about vicarious suffering; that is only half a truth. We speak of others suffering for us; how little we speak of being saved because of the goodness of others! This is the way in which prayer is often answered, that unworthy lives are enriched with new chances of repentance and return and adoption. God would wither the barren tree away, or cut it down, but for the husbandman's prayer. It is part of the mystery of his grace that he should say to the gardener, "If you wish it, you may keep it another year." Omnipotence allows itself to be moulded by prayer; Almightiness is willing to be softened by human tears. This is not to be explained in words. If it were less than Almightiness, it would consume itself by its own fury; but being Almightiness, we find in its repose the bloom of its power. It is hard sometimes to hear the bad man's mockery of things, and to hear the wicked man boast that he can get along very well without religion, or Bible, or church. The poor fool is so insane as to be beyond the reach of immediate reason. He sees only points, not lines; he does not understand the philosophy, or grasp the totality, of the case; he does not know that he owes the extension of his privileges to the very religion which he despises. Who, on that ship, thought that he was indebted for his life to the prisoner Paul? Not a soul on board was aware that he owed his existence, his salvation from danger, to the prisoner who was in chains. We do not know our creditors; we cannot tell where our obligation begins or ends. This is a mystery in which there is infinite joy. It sets my life in new relations, and enriches it with new hopes. For what I know, a thousand ministries may be operating upon it that I cannot name or measure. Why should I attempt to estimate all things by my sight or by any sense I have? It is more joyous to throw myself into the astronomic sweep and roll of things and be rocked in an infinite strength. That is faith. Every flower that grows in my garden is an answered prayer; every beam of morning light that plays on the paper on which I set down my thought is the result of a ministry long since passed away from the earth. If you like, you can receive flowers and lights and dawns, mornings and middays as accidents without root or meaning, or far away explanation; but if you so receive them, they will be as guests that call upon you when you are not at home. Better take your life as an answer to prayer a thing spared because some one prayed for it than receive it as an accident, or treat it as a mechanical course. If this were an isolated incident, we might seem to be making too much of it; but it is a golden thread that runs through the whole Biblical story, and that continues its gracious extension through our own consciousness and experience. In Genesis we read that God blessed the house of Potiphar "for Joseph's sake." Trace that same thought through every page of Biblical history, and you will find that it is God's method of working namely: to bless one man for the sake of another. That historical fact reaches the fulness of its significance in the gift and priesthood of the Son of God; and so our prayers are taken up from the region of weary helpless words into prevalent eloquence by the expression, "for the sake of thy dear Son." He is the Joseph for whose sake the whole world is kept together, even in its present patched and dangerous condition; he is the Paul for whose sake the storm-smitten ship is kept upon the water and not under it; it is for his sake that time is lengthened and that opportunities are multiplied. This is the Christian faith; this is the Christian life.

Let us hear Paul in this great darkness. There may be light in his words: some men speak light. Maybe, Paul's words will light up the black heavens, and make the unquiet sea peaceful. What did Paul say? "I exhort you to be of good cheer.... For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve." There is personal character, religious qualification, a right set and attitude of the soul in relation to things unseen and forces Divine. The expression is not "whose I am" only that would but indicate the fatal and the inevitable. All things are God's. The young lions roar and seek their bread and their meat from God. Paul adds, "and whom I serve." Thus his own consent was secured. He was one with God one in sympathy, one in purpose. He had no will but God's. He never did anything for himself: he toiled in the field of Another for the glory of its great Proprietor. That was a bold word to say. It drove the darkness off like a frightened thing. It was the very word we wanted the great solar word, that plunged into the infinite gloom and scattered it. How nobly it sounds under certain circumstances! If we speak it pithlessly, it takes rank with any words short and empty; but if we pronounce the word God with the energy of conviction, with the graciousness of gratitude, with the pathos of helplessness, it soon disbands the hosts of darkness and sets a great light in the centre of things. Men can never pronounce aright the word God until they feel aright the doctrine of God.

The angel said, "Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Cæsar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer." That is the effect of a glad soul. One life set in the right key makes a whole house merry. Do not wait for the unanimous consent of all parties in order to make the house ring again with song and vibrate with sacred and rapturous dance. One cheerful soul, one glad spirit, one mind that sees things aright and grasps them in their unity, will find the music; and when a tune is once begun, how comparatively easy it is to take it up! We are waiting for the leader in the Church; we are waiting for the soul that dare advance within the family circle; and when the master-spirit gives the key-note, a thousand voices will take up and continue the expression of its exultation.

Only the religious man can be truly glad. Believe me, there is no joy out of rectitude with God; there is laughter, there is noise, there is uproar, there is tumult, there is an ecstasy that will not bear tomorrow's reflection; but as for gladness, health of soul, real, true, rational abiding, as much awake at midnight as at midday and at midday as at midnight, this gladness is the child of righteousness. There may be the deepest joy in what is apparently the deepest melancholy. A man is not necessarily unhappy because he is silent; he is the more likely to be happy when his tongue is quiet and his tears express his rapture. The religious man has his enjoyments in the very midst of his distresses. I know hardly any sentence of the Apostle Paul's which has filled me with so much true ecstasy and rapture as a sentence he wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians. In the seventh chapter of that letter he says, "I am filled with comfort; I am exceeding joyful," or literally, "I rejoice exceedingly in all our tribulation." What a marvellous force was that which could turn distress into joy, which could transform tribulation into delight! What a miracle to take in all the black messengers of evil, set them down in the house, and see them gradually whiten into radiant angels of God! No other religion than the religion of Christ can produce such miracles not the miracles of an ancient time, but the marvellous surprises of our own life.

In the midst of all this darkness, Paul professed a creed. We talk about "the Apostles' Creed," and the words are not ill-chosen. What is this but the Apostles' creed? Paul said, "Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God." A short creed, but a pregnant one. He risks everything upon it. There is not room in it for qualification, reserve, or for all subtle suppressions which destroy the energy and the pith and the mystery of faith. This is a dewdrop holding within its comparative smallness of form all the mystery and all the meaning of the sea. When did Paul say this? Paul said it in extremity, when there appeared to be no God. Paul said it in an empty house, nothing left but the bare walls, and the walls reeling, trembling, quaking under an infinite shock of uncontrollable strength. That is the time to profess your creed. We cannot speak our true creeds at the library window, up to which there rolls the velvet lawn upon which blossom the vernal trees, within which repose all the masters of knowledge and the wizards of genius. Under such circumstances, what creed can a man have? Under such circumstances, a man does not hold himself: he is a doll on the lap of luxury. It is when he is torn limb from limb, mocked, spat upon, cursed, held over hell's fire, that he knows what he really believes. Here it is that Christianity has lost power: it has become a fine threadlet of argument, a subtle conundrum, a department of transcendental metaphysics, a thing which only cunning minds can comprehend and trained tongues can adequately express. It is no longer a heroic faith, a great utterance of conviction, a heart so full that it cannot speak, a mind so mad that it cannot settle itself down to the prison of logical and pedantic forms. We will begin to discuss what was never meant for discussion. If the wolf were nearer, we should have a good deal less argument and a great deal more prayer. What would be thought of your children if they made it their business to write essays upon their father every week, and if they were to justify their essay-writing by the protestation that it was needful to have "intelligent conceptions of fatherhood"? Would not the grey-haired old father smile to see his little child commencing an essay on "the psychology of my father"; on "the marvellous methods adopted by my father in the government of his family"; on "the various faculties of my father, and the mystery of their exercise"? His old, wrinkled face would smooth itself out to a great smile when he saw the poor little toiler dipping his pen to round off into rhetorical completeness a sentence that would precisely describe "the method of father's government." He would rather have one big hug than all the essays the infant scribe could write, one great all-round hug than the finest metaphysical analysis which the infantile psychologist could perpetrate. But this is how we do with our great Father; and when we do it, we call it "obtaining an intelligent" that's a word that will ruin some men "conception of God." The "intelligent conception" is faith, love, the great morning kiss on heaven's face, the great nightly hug round heaven's neck. Argument what is argument? A confession of dissonance and want of unanimity, a battle of words. When shall we learn that no one man can contain all the truth that no one mind is roomy enough to hold the entire revelation of God? We see God as we see the universe: one man sees the geology of the earth, another its geography; a third searches with eager quest the chambers of the lights above. It is the same universe, and we need all the views of all the men in order to combine into one massive totality the complete meaning of things. Beware of those teachers who pin you down to definitions in words. For example, a pedantic mind will say to you, "What do you mean by God?" Say you mean what you cannot tell. A God that can be explained is a God that can be abandoned, or patronised, or kept in the house for occasional purposes. Others will say, "What do you mean by belief?" You mean all the actions of the soul in one sublime and inexplicable effort. You have not to account to the pedants for your creed, but to account to God, by loving service, for your faith. We have words on the road, but the end will be song, just as in the training of the young mind. Consider the imbecility of teaching a child to pronounce words of two letters! But is that the end of your instruction? If it were, it would not be worth doing. It is part of a process: first the letter, then the two letters, then the three; the syllable, the two syllables, and the whole word; and then the rhythm of words, so that they are not pronounced singly, as if they had no relation to one another, but with the fluency which is rhythm, the intermingling and gliding which is true eloquence; and then the music that says to speech: "We are much obliged to you for what you have done, but your mission is over: now let us praise God." So we go in earthly training from letter to syllable, from syllable to word, from word to eloquence, from eloquence to music; and that is but an analogue by which we may see the larger process, the grander culture, which shall end in the song of the hundred and forty and four thousand, and thousands of thousands, and a number which no man can number the anthem that fills the universe and satisfies its infinite Creator. So Paul did not descend to analysis, nor did he vex the minds of his fellow-passengers by definitions: he uttered a short, terse phrase as his sublime faith, and founded upon it a gospel for all the world that was with him. Paul did not say that he had invented this hope; he said rather that it was granted to him by a revelation an angel stood by him and gave him a message. That is the only ground on which we can stand in religious matters. Consciousness has its value, so has impression, so has reasoning; but the Word is the only rock on which we can. securely build. We are saved by the outward, not by the inward that is, by something beyond ourselves, not by something in ourselves. We are instructed by others, we are trained by others, we are corrected by others; why this infinite mystery about being Saved by others? It is the culmination of processes with which we are familiar, and which ought not to be turned into a theological riddle. In all the great crises of life, when vital questions are uppermost, when great results are impending we want an authoritative voice. We are then impatient with any man who says, "I have an impression," or "It occurs to me," or "I venture to suggest." We want a voice from heaven, an assurance from God. As Christians, we believe that such a word is in the Bible. "What is written in the law? how readest thou?" "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee."

Let us rest here awhile. Let us think of this in our own dark nights. Let us call it to mind in our own little ship when strained and creaking sorely as if in pain. God's sea is great; our boat is small. It is never God's way to thrust his great power against our weakness to batter down with his thunder the reed that is bruised.