46.

not

HOW TO COME TO CHRIST.

Help us," not "Join us in a common endeavour to save the ship;" not the address made to Jonah, "Arise and take thy share, and call upon thy God as we have been calling upon our gods;" not, "Let there be a common appeal to the distant heavens ;" but "Save us take the whole case into thine hand; we fall back and are nothing-go, thou mighty One, almighty One, to the front to save us." We cannot do without that word save. It gets around the whole compass of our necessity; it touches with a marvellous pathos all the pain of our moral distress. Jesus Christ, the Son of man, came to seek and to save that which was lost. His name was called Jesus, because he should save his people from their sins. He is mighty to save: he is called the Saviour, the Man with the long arms, the Man with the infinite strength, whose touch is emancipation, whose look is benediction. He saved others-himself he cannot save. Thank God! If he could come down from that cross, morally, he would ruin the world.

With what prayers have we come to Christ? Have we asked him to enter into co-partnery with us in the doing some business in life? Have we said to him that we should be pleased if he would make out what is lacking in our own strength, that we might with twofold power address ourselves to some difficult engagement? I wonder not that the prayer lies in the air somewhere, a wasted thing, a bird with wings too weak to get beyond the cloud line. We must go to him with our emptiness, we must have nothing in our hands, we must have nothing but a great distress to hurl upon his ear, and we must use words that will show him that our self-renunciation is complete and hopeless. If you had uttered big prayers, you would have had big answers. If you have nibbled at the heavens-I wonder not that their dignity has been offended. Let us go to Christ with nothing to recommend us, with our blindness, deafness, dumbness, our complete necessity, then we shall see how he will answer the mute appeal of our helpless condition.

What answer does Christ make to those perishing disciples? "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" The quiet soul always brings quietness. You say of certain persons in your own house, when they come into the chamber of affliction, they seem to centralize and to quiet everything; their composure is so

serene, their self-possession is so complete, that they bring with them half a deliverance from the distress that was overwhelming you. See the physician in excitement, and everybody in the sickchamber goes down; see his face quiet, hear his voice untroubled, feel his grip firm, and at once everybody in the sickchamber takes heart again. The doctor does not know how his face is being searched by eager eyes, and if there be a flush in it or a wave of suppressed feeling, it is interpreted to mean disaster of the most appalling kind. The quiet soul brings quietness, the Son of Peace brings peace-he creates peace.

"Simon,

you as I may

There is only one storm to be feared, and that is the storm of unbelief. Why are ye so fearful, O ye of little faith? There is only one loss to be deprecated, the loss of faith. Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." lose health, money, friends, power, but if I have not lost my faith, I have lost nothing. I shall come up again. Destroy this body and in three days I will raise it again. Blessed are those whose faith is greater than the power of destruction that lies around them.

Lord, increase our faith. Faith is power, faith is peace. Pray only for faith, for that wondrous ability to trust which he exercised and manifested who said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." My last look shall be a prayer, my last heartthrob shall be towards the heavens if he has torn me, he will heal me; if he has wounded me with all his instruments, on the third day he will revive me, and in my greater joy I shall forget my lesser woe. Lord, increase our faith-our heart's faith; we do not mind so much about our intellectual faith it is here and there, and any fool can twist it--but see thou to our heart's faith, that deep inner trust that lays hold of thee with pertinacity that cannot be shaken off. Lord, increase our faith.

I cannot give up the miracles, because I should be giving up the great doctrine that mind is greater than matter, and without that doctrine we should be poor indeed. I hold to the supremacy of mind; my belief is that the spirit is the mightiest force in creation. GOD is a spirit. If we had less body and more spirit we should be quieter, mightier, wholly grander. I will not have it that the sea is mightier than mind: I would cling to the belief that there

48

THE SUPREMACY OF MIND.

sion.

is a fire in man that can astound the sea and awe it into submisThe time will surely come when mind shall be acknowledged to be supreme, when the Book that speaks what are now romances because of our coldness will be proved to be speaking words of truth and soberness. If ye had faith as a grain of mus

tard seed ye would say to this mountain, "Out of the way," and it would be cast into the depths of the sea. I am not content to dwell in the lowlands of the merely material and measurable, in a kind of conscious imprisonment. I would say with the great Pascal, to the sun, "I am greater than thou: thou couldst fall and crush me, but I should be conscious of defeat, whilst thou wouldst be unconscious of victory."

Be careful how you allow mind to be displaced from its regal position. It is a reflection fraught not only with supreme intellectual grandeur, but with the most exquisite moral pathos, that the word shall be mightier than the difficulty external, that the "I will" shall abolish death and fill up the grave and plant its face with the flowers of victory. Do not too readily yield to those persons who would snub your mind and magnify the mountain outside of you. The mountain is but huge mud, the sea but infinite water, the body but an invention for the moment, but mind-God is mind God is a spirit. There are difficulties from the other side of the case, but they are nothing compared with the difficulties that would immediately be created by the displacement of mind from its royal elevation.

Jesus gave commandment to depart unto the other side, and a storm arose. Learn that storms may arise even whilst we are in discharge of plain and divinely commanded duty. If these men had taken the ship at their own suggestion, and attempted to cross the sea for their own convenience, we should speedily have visited. upon them the penalty that they were worthy of the storm which overtook them. Let us learn the brighter lesson and encourage the grander faith. Storms may arise even in discharge of duty. Do not create your own difficulties. You are a child of God, and you have a great sorrow to bear. Do not reason that if you were a child of God you would not have any sorrow-that would be sophism, not high and correct reasoning. You have a great difficulty in your business: do not reason that you have missed your providential way because you are encountering this terrible obsta

cle. The disciples were actually obeying Christ at the very moment the storm seized their vessel so it may be with you. These things come not for the deepening of your fear, but for the quickening, the enlargement and the completion of your health.

Danger will always move men to prayer-I will not guarantee that their prayers will be answered: the prayers of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord. There are some of us who never pray but in danger-I dare not pledge that God will be present to hear. He may be his mercy endureth for ever, but if he were less than God, he would not be. Your own mother would not be; you have worn out the last filament of her love.

Your own

father would not be his eyes have been cried out with tears that boiled. If God were less than God, you would not lay hold of him even in the bitterness of your agony. You may do so-it will be because he is God and Father.

The upshot of the whole was that the men marvelled. A poor outcome, a miserable dénouement, they marvelled. We are like them, we are great at wonder, we are geniuses in the matter of being open to surprise and amazement. We can do any amount

of wondering. There is a wonder that is legitimate, there is a wonder that is akin to worship, there is a surprise that may lead to faith. With such surprise may we be well acquainted, but beware of the round eye and the open mouth of vulgar wonder which stares at a miracle as at a show, and encourage that holy amazement which looks, then shuts its eyes, and then falls down in prayer.

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, hear thou the petition of every heart offered in the sweet name of Jesus Christ, the name that is above every name, associated with the cross and with the crown. Every heart has its own cry, every life knoweth its own bitterness, and we are all here before thee now to tell thee the tale of our sorrow, and sing our hymn of joy in thine house, and to ask thee for such mercies as our wasting life may yet require. Thou hast done great things for us whereof we are glad; thou hast done everything for us-we have done nothing for ourselves; of thine own have we given thee; we have lived at thy table; the water we have drunk has flown from fountains of thy making; and behold there is not a hair upon our head that is not numbered, nor is there a step taken by our feet which thou dost not notice. Thou hast beset us behind and before, and laid thine hand upon us; and the air is full of thy presence, and musical with thy voice. We desire to see thee, and to feel thee everywhere-leave no vacant place, chill us not by thine absence, thou loving One, whose heart is the sun of all worlds, warming them and making them beautiful, and clothing them with all the beauty of joy.

Come to us in thine house, and make it a pleasant place to us—yea, make it the chosen place where thou wilt reveal thyself to our vision, to our expectant love, to our broken and contrite hearts. We bless thee that though we may not know thee by our understanding, we may know thee by our love; though thou dost shut thyself out from our ability, thou dost reveal thyself to our sin, and pain, and want. We see thee through our tears; we know thee by the subtle processes of the heart; we feel thy nearness, though we have no words to explain thy presence.

We have hastened to thine house that we might be caught in the plentiful rain which thou dost pour down upon the inheritance of thy possession. Spare none from the gracious baptism; let the reviving shower fall upon every heart, the meanest, the obscurest, the least before thee; and may we return to our abodes as men who have felt the presence of God and been lifted up by all that makes his presence what it is.

Thou hast shown unto us sore affliction; thou hast dug the grave too deeply sometimes for our poor faith; we have not been able to follow thee as thou hast dug thy way down to the very rocks, that in the pit thou mightest hide all the beauty that made our eyes glad. Thou hast shown us great and sore trouble; that which we have straightened out thou hast