Pluck

offering praise unto the living one, and that the Cross of Christ, bare, bleak tree, blighted by all the cold and bitterness of winter, shall bloom into a tree, the leaves of which shall be for the healing of the nations, and all nations shall gather themselves under its grateful shade. thou the prey from the hand of the enemy, reclaim the heritage of the heathen and make it as the garden of heaven. Clothe thy ministers with power, touch their tongues anew with tuneful eloquence and make their hearts burn with all the love of Christ.

We come to thee through the dear Cross of one Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Mary, Son of Man, Son of God, the Man with the great heart, the Christ of Heaven, the Anointed of Eternity, the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. O, take it away soon, take it away altogether, shut it up in its appropriate hell, and burn it with unquenchable fire. Reign in us, thou Holy Spirit, rule us continually, give us new thoughts, new emotions, clothe our will as with the garment of obedience, bring us evermore into the attitude of worship and homage before the throne of light.

Comfort those who are bowed down, with the solaces of heaven. Touch the heart that is wounded and give a portion of sweetness to the life that has long been accustomed to the bitter cup. Lighten the burden of the heavy-laden, re-light the lamp of those whose hope is dying. Bless our friends who are in the sick-chamber, waiting for health, or tarrying till their immortality in heaven begins. Behold our loved ones

on the sea, and give them safe out-going or in-coming. Remember all those whom we love-on foreign shores, in colonial lands, and in distant countries-unite us all by the subtle and inviolable fellowship of Christian love, and may we, when all earthly separations are closed for ever, meet in the brotherhood of heaven! Amen.

Matthew ix. 27-31.

27. And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on us.

28. And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord.

29. Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.

30. And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it.

31. But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country.

102 CHRIST DEVElops a new world.

THE WORLD THROUGH WHICH CHRIST

WH

PASSED.

'HAT a world our Lord Jesus Christ passed through! He was always surrounded by the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the poor, the broken-hearted, the weary, the hungry, and those that had no helper. Herein was the realization, and most vivid and happy fulfilment of prophecy: it was foretold of him that he was to be the Apostle to the meek, the captive, the broken-hearted, and the mourning. Every man creates his own world. You can find a tolerably comfortable world if you please. Shut yourself up in your own parlour, enjoy your own honey, warm yourself by your own fire, shut out safely all the cries of distress that are ringing in the world, and you will come to the conclusion that life after all is tolerably happy and ccmfortable. There are men who do this. When they hear complaints, they say they are exaggerated; when their eye reluctantly alights upon the newspapers containing reports of human distress and poverty, they call such reports romances, or they blame the poor for their poverty, the sorrowing for their distress, and the lonely for their helplessness. Every man, let me repeat, creates the world through which he passes. There are some of us near whom no poor man would ever come, if he could help it; he would give us room enough on the broad highway. There are others who are always surrounded by crying, distressful, sad-hearted, grief-stricken folks, so that life is spent in a kind of multitudinous hospital. You can go through life comfortably if you like, or you can acquaint yourself with the world's woe and the world's bitter grief.

What a wonderful world Jesus Christ developed! You would not have known that there were so many sick folks in the town if he had not come. The oldest inhabitant was surprised by the distress, helplessness, and sadness of life hidden in the town in which he had lived full seventy years and more. When Jesus Christ entered into the town, all its distress was in a flutter of expectancy. When the Saviour came into any city, the blind heard his footfall, the deaf saw signs in the air that indicated the presence of the Beneficent One--all the sadness of the town moved itself in a new

prayer, and tried with feeble trembling hand to relight its little lamp of hope.

How is it when you go into any circle, neighbourhood, or town? All its fashion dresses itself, every looking-glass in the neighbourhood is made to do hard duty; or all the letters or all the music of the town may be moved to expectation--but no cripple cares for your coming, no deaf man says, "To-day I shall hear," no blind man gets his sight through your coming. create, I would say again and again, our own society. The priest goes to the other side when he sees the half-murdered man, the Levite follows his chief; the Samaritan lingers in that unroofed church that he may redeem à life from destruction, and in this way sing his morning psalm and breathe his daily prayer.

You think the world is not a bad place to live in, after all. You say you have found life tolerably comfortable; you think that a great deal too much is made of the shady side of life. Who are you-what right have you to speak upon this subject? I could put my fingers in my ears and run through a crowd of people crying with pain, and say at the end of my running, "I heard nothing of it; everything was quiet when I passed through." We do not diminish the world's distress by shutting our window, brightening our fire, and drawing around us all the comforts of our own luxurious abode. The distress is still there, it is crying in the night wind, shuddering in the snow, praying to the black night. Every preacher creates his own congregation. "Like priest, like people," is a proverb not without its application even in this The congregation and the minister are one-in height, in the very shape of their head, in the breadth of their shoulders, in the tone of their mind, in their look, in their fire-they are one. There are men we could not hear; they are not our shepherds. There are other men whom we could hear always, because they are our kith and kin from before the foundation of the world. As truly as a man calls around him his own companions, acquaintance and friends, as truly as a minister makes his own congregation in due time, so true is it in the deeper and more tragical sense that every heart makes the world in which it lives. If we were more sympathetic, our doorstep would be crowded with those who need sympathy, but in proportion as we are severe, misanthropic, unsympathetic, unrighteous in judgment, shall we drive away the

sense.

104

THE BLIND MEN'S PRAYER.

world's distress from our neighbourhood and sight, and shall come to believe in the long run that the distress we do not see therefore does not exist.

We sicken at the sight of all this sorrow which is narrated in the holy gospels. Nearly every verse has in it something about the dumb possessed with devils, a man sick of the palsy, a little child dead, a poor woman stealing a blessing from the Physician as he goes down to raise the little one from her fatal slumber, a blind man crying and saying, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!" a leper with his hand upon his lip, saying, “Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean.” O, it is heart-rending! Who would not rather read a stirring novel about something that never did occur? When the multitude became hungry, the disciples said, "Send them away." That is our short and easy cure for human malady-send it away. Jesus said, "No, never send anybody away that really needs your help." Instead of sending them away, Jesus said, "Cause them to sit down on the green grass, and bring out of your little store all that you have, and do not let a single person go away until the last crumb is eaten," and the last crumb is never eaten in the house of Christ; so long as he is at the table there is bread enough and to spare; so long as he spends your pound a week, working man, you will find in it no end of shillings; so long as he keeps your house, poor widow woman, there will be coal in the grate, there will be bread in the cupboard, and there will be oil in the cruse. "I have been young," said the Psalmist," and now am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." We want a change, we are tired of seeing sad and tragical sights. I, for one, am often tired of the vision; I am weary, I long to plunge my eyes into the snows of the Alps, or into the deep greens of the rich valley pastures. It would do the eyes good. Jesus Christ never tired; he went about doing good. He tired every helper; He never exhausted his own sympathy.

Let us now hear the blind men. We have considered the leper's brief prayer, "Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean." The blind men are quite as terse and as direct in their supplications. They cried and said, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on us!" How the right prayer rises from the heart when it is in its own proper mood. Let the heart grapple with the

great problems of life and destiny. Snub your impertinent intellect when it undertakes to deal with the universe; let the heart have full swing. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." With the intellect he may believe unto temporary conviction; but with the heart he believes unto righteousness, completeness of sympathy, and reality and joyousness of religious obedi

ence.

Wonderful is this way of putting the case on the part of the blind men. They said, "Have mercy on us!" The heart never said, "Be just to us;" the heart has no weights, and scales, and standards, and tapes of measurement. No broken-hearted sufferer ever came to Christ and said, Be just to me." That is a most remarkable circumstance in the development of human necessity and in the utterance of human want. The blind men might have said, "We have heard that you have cured a leper; now be impartial in your administration of the affairs of the universe; deal with an equal hand; if you have cured one man, you ought to cure another we will charge you with partiality if you do not cure us as you have cured the leper, and raised the ruler's dead child, and healed the woman who touched the hem of your garment. Be just to us." The cry is still for mercy. We must come to

Christ not with claims but with prayers.

This reference to mercy is a religious reference. It goes back to the roots and causes of things. Blindness is a symptom-the disease is in the heart. Lameness, deafness, paralysis-these are accidents, attendant phenomena, mere symptoms of something within, and you may as well repair your roof in order to heal your sick child as you may attend to some outward symptom to heal the life. There is but one cure; the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin. You must be born again. The work is inward, vital, complete. Do not fret your energy and waste your time by attempting to deal with symptoms, but get to the root and cause of the fatal malady. Blindness is the symp

tom, sin is the disease; there is only one disease, and its bad name is-sin. When sin is destroyed, health will be re-established and sadness will vanish like the last night, taking with it all its blackness, and dampness, and misery.

Those men were not as blind as they looked. They were blind in the body, but their eyes within were bright as lamps, keen, pierc