The Project Gutenberg eBook of Before the Most Holy
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Before the Most Holy
(Coram Sanctissimo)
Author: Mother Mary Loyola
Editor: Herbert Thurston
Release date: September 16, 2025 [eBook #76888]
Language: English
Original publication: St. Louis, MO: B. Herber, 1904
Credits: Ed Foster, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEFORE THE MOST HOLY ***
CORAM SANCTISSIMO
BEFORE THE MOST HOLY
(CORAM SANCTISSIMO)
BY
MOTHER MARY LOYOLA
OF THE BAR CONVENT, YORK
EDITED BY
FATHER THURSTON, S.J.
ST. LOUIS, MO.
B. HERDER
17 SOUTH BROADWAY
LONDON: SANDS & CO.
1904
Nihil obstat.
HERBERT THURSTON, S.J.,
_Censor Deputatus_.
Imprimatur.
HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN,
_Archiep. Westmonast._
_15th September, 1900._
TO
JESUS CHRIST
YESTERDAY
TO-DAY
AND THE SAME
FOR EVER
PREFACE.
The custom of honouring the Eucharistic presence of Christ our Lord by
paying “Visits” to the Blessed Sacrament may be quoted as one of the
most conspicuous examples of development in the devotional practice
of the Catholic Church. Down to the latter part of the Middle Ages
such an usage seems to have been entirely unknown. As far as regards
England, the late Father Bridgett, if I mistake not, says that in
all the researches made by him while compiling his _History of the
Holy Eucharist in Great Britain_ he had not come across one clear
example of a visit to the Blessed Sacrament in pre-Reformation times.
Even on the Continent the idea of any extra-liturgical _cultus_
of the Blessed Eucharist seems to have grown up very tardily. There
were many saints as late as the fifteenth century, say, for example,
St. Frances of Rome, whose lives show no trace of such a conception,
though nothing could be more strongly emphasised than their devotion
to the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion.[1] It is remarkable to
notice that even St. Ignatius Loyola, in the book of the _Spiritual
Exercises_, when directing attention to the abiding presence of God
with His creatures as a motive for awakening love, says not a word of
the Blessed Sacrament. One must not, of course, press the negative
argument too far. No prudent man would infer in this latter case that
the practice of visiting churches to commune with our Lord in the
Tabernacle was unknown in the sixteenth century, but it is reasonable
to conclude that the uninterrupted Eucharistic presence of God with His
people did not then play the same conspicuous part in the devotional
life of the faithful that it does in our day.
This late and gradual development of a devotion, which seems to us
now so natural and so unmistakably involved in premises that all men
accepted, is certainly a remarkable fact. Even to the present day
the Greek Church, though its belief in transubstantiation is no less
explicit than our own, has never drawn the inference that our Lord has
come in the Blessed Sacrament to be our companion and refuge as well
as our food. It seems to have been part of the Divine dispensation,
in this as in some other matters, to hold men’s eyes that they should
not know Him. Throughout the long centuries our forefathers seem to
have regarded the Eucharistic presence as if Christ had wished to
preserve His _incognito_ while He dwelt amongst them, or as if
He were sleeping as of old in the bark of Peter and would rebuke the
want of faith of those who too importunately disturbed His repose.
But surely we are right in thinking that if they so apprehended God’s
purpose in remaining on our altars, their appreciation of His boon
was but inchoative and imperfect. To us now it seems so obvious that
the work of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was not meant to be
intermittent, limited to the time of Mass and Holy Communion, that it
is hard to believe that Christians who truly recognised this presence
in their midst can ever have conceived otherwise. Perhaps we may draw
the lesson that if the fulness of understanding were long delayed in so
plain a matter, it is not surprising that in other dogmas and practices
which justify themselves less obviously there may be developments
in the Church’s teaching not suspected or at least not clearly
apprehended by our forefathers in the faith.
As things are, no devout Catholic would wish to be deprived of the
privilege of drawing near to our Saviour in the Tabernacle and making
Him the daily confidant of hopes and fears, of joys and troubles. But
what distresses many pious souls is that having Him ready and willing
to listen they should so often find themselves tongue-tied in His
presence. The set forms of prayer which they know by heart are worn
threadbare by routine, and books too often prove stiff and artificial.
The heart has many wants and longings, but hardly knows how to put them
into words. In such a case real help, I think, is likely to be found
in this very miscellaneous collection of musings, self-arraignments,
out-pourings of spirit, to which the authoress has given the apt name
of _Coram Sanctissimo_, “in the presence of the Most Holy”. They
are not intended to be taken in rotation, or to be used every day, but
there are times when a troubled worshipper, turning over the leaves,
may light upon something here which will chime in with his mood and
will make the task of prayer more easy to him. And if for one or
another the thoughts of this little book may serve to break the ice and
to render the soul for the nonce more at home in that holy presence, I
feel sure that the authoress will consider the labour spent in writing
it to have been abundantly repaid.
It will be noticed that in the pages which follow verse finds a place
as well as prose. It would not be fair to let this go forth to the
world without stating that it has been written, so to speak, under
protest, and that without strong encouragement Mother Mary Loyola would
hardly have suffered it to see the light. Although the verses are
perhaps unequal, I do not in any way repent the share I have had in
urging the writer to let them stand. It would have been worth a greater
risk of failure and a longer expenditure of time to have secured even a
few such happy lines as may be read for instance in the chapter headed
“In Silence and in Hope,” describing St. Mary Magdalen:--
She came with her crushing memories,
She came with her secret fears,
She brought Him her hidden misery
And her bitter, burning tears.
Or again:--
Absorbed in her loving ministries
She knelt at His feet apart,
The scandal of every eye save one
That soundeth the secret heart.
The verses at best are only an experiment. They were written in each
case for the sake of the thought, not of the metrical form, and if the
authoress could have found, as she long endeavoured to do, any suitable
religious poetry which expressed kindred ideas, and which would have
afforded that variety which is meant to be characteristic of this
little booklet, she would have been glad, I know, to escape the seeming
presumption of appearing as a writer of verse. But I do not think that
the many friends who use and appreciate Mother Loyola’s _Confession
and Communion_ and her other devotional books will be disappointed
in anything which may meet their eye in this new effort of her pen.
HERBERT THURSTON, S.J.
_11th September, 1900._
[1] The earliest satisfactory example of visits to the Blessed
Sacrament which I have so far come across occurs in the life of Blessed
Maria de Malliaco (A.D. 1331-1414), who, it is stated, “in
festis solemnibus vigilabat in ecclesia coram corpore Christi”. The
story of St. Louis of France, who in a grievous storm placed himself on
his knees before the Blessed Sacrament on ship-board, does not appear
to me to belong to quite the same category. I should be grateful to
any readers of this note who may be able to supply me with earlier
instances.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. VISITS 1
II. PRAISE 9
III. “POSSUMUS” 14
IV. THE SON OF MAN 18
V. WHAT THINGS? 21
VI. VENITE AD ME OMNES 30
VII. THE HIDDEN GOD 33
VIII. LOOKING THROUGH THE LATTICES 37
IX. LORD, COME AND SEE! 41
X. NEGLECT 43
XI. FAITH 47
XII. AFTER A DEFEAT 52
XIII. AFTER A VICTORY 55
XIV. A DIVINE FRIEND 57
XV. AN EVENING VISIT 59
XVI. PRIVILEGED 63
XVII. THE IMPROVIDENCE OF LOVE 67
XVIII. CHANGES 70
XIX. I HAVE SOMEWHAT TO SAY TO THEE 73
XX. A DIVINE PLAINT 77
XXI. THANKSGIVING 80
XXII. DARKNESS 85
XXIII. “WHAT IS TRUTH?” 91
XXIV. HIS SECOND COMING 95
XXV. OUR EARTH 99
XXVI. CHRIST OUR STUDY 104
XXVII. OUR FATHER 109
XXVIII. HEREAFTER 111
XXIX. MY VINEYARD 115
XXX. WHERE WE ARE TRUE 118
XXXI. IN SILENCE AND IN HOPE 121
XXXII. GOD’S WORK 124
XXXIII. A STRONG CRY 129
XXXIV. “BE READY” 133
XXXV. “DOMINE, ECCE QUEM AMAS INFIRMATUR” 137
XXXVI. AFTER A DEATH 142
XXXVII. GOD’S WAYS 145
XXXVIII. TWILIGHT AND NOON 153
XXXIX. RESPONSIBILITY 159
XL. LIFE 166
I.
VISITS.
Go to Him early in the morning, and let thy foot wear the steps of His
doors.--_Ecclus._ vi. 36.
How careful we are to observe the courtesies of life! How uneasy till
such social duties are discharged! In the making and returning of
calls, how fidgety if hindered, how sensible that delay demands apology!
And this where mere acquaintances are concerned. But what when there
is question of a friend, a benefactor, one devoted to us and to our
interests? If formal visits are here uncalled for, it is only because
our heart needs no prompting. Uninvited, inconsiderately often, we come
and go, “wearing the steps of his doors”.
And our best of friends--do we treat Him thus?--as affectionately, as
familiarly? If not, why not? Is He not among the benefactors whose
gifts deserve thanks, the friends whose feelings have to be considered,
the acquaintances, at least, whose attentions must be acknowledged?
Is it because He puts Himself so completely at our disposal that He
is to be neglected? Or because He is King of kings that He is to be
considered outside the circle where courtesy is exacted?
Ah, Lord, how unmindful we are of what is due to You! How unmindful I
am of Your unfailing devotedness to me! Sent into this world as into
a strange neighbourhood, I found You waiting to receive me, to make
me welcome, to offer Your services, to show me all manner of graceful
kindness. You have thrown open Your house to me. You invite me to Your
table. You press upon me Your gifts: “_All ye that thirst, come to
the waters.... Come, buy wine and milk without money and without any
price_”.[2] “_Come to Me and I will refresh you._”[3] “_Him
that cometh to Me, I will not cast out_.”[4] You make use of every
motive to draw me to Yourself; yet have to complain after all: “_You
will not come to Me that you may have life_.”[5]
“They began all at once to make excuse. I have bought a farm ... I pray
thee, hold me excused. I have bought five yoke of oxen ... I pray thee,
hold me excused. I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”[6]
Thus it was long ago; thus it is now. We have time for other
duties--for our correspondence, our shopping, our afternoon calls on
other more favoured friends. But no time for a visit to Him. Is it so
far then to the nearest church? So far that He may well accept the
distance as sufficient reason for our absence, except at times when
attendance is of obligation? Can I urge home duties and necessary
occupations, when I see who those are that can and do find time to
visit Him?
O my Lord, why these wretched subterfuges with You “the God of
truth”?[7] Why not fall at Your feet and own that it is not distance,
nor lack of leisure, nor any reasonable plea that keeps me from You,
but simply and solely _the want of love_? It is a reason I
could not give to any other friend. I should have to find some other
pretext with which to colour my neglect. But with You there need be
no dissembling. Your friendship stands alone in the perfect frankness
and confidence permissible on both sides. We may own to being cold
and half-unwilling visitors, yet we are not for that unwelcome. The
petulance, the selfishness, the waywardness of our moods that in the
very interest of other friendships call for self-restraint, may show
themselves in all their ugliness before the All-pitying, the Friend
“more friendly than a brother,”[8] whom nothing can shock, disgust,
estrange.
He wants our intercourse with Him to be perfectly free; nothing
studied, nothing strained. He desires to have us as we are, no less
than as we would be. He wants to be taken into our confidence, to be
let into the secret chambers of our souls, into which we only peep
ourselves at stated times and with half-averted glance. He would
share in the interests and troubles of the moment; be called upon for
sympathy in every event great or small that interrupts the even flow
of our home life or of our inner life; take part in every experience
whether of sorrow or of joy. The soldier off to the front, the baby
with its broken toy, the girl with her first secret, no less than the
wife, the mother, the priest, with their burdened hearts--He wants
them all. He sees us going off here and there for help, and comfort,
and counsel. He hears our feet as they hurry past His door to wear the
doorsteps of other friends, and He calls to us in those tones divine in
their tenderness of reproach: “_You will not come to Me. My people
have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living water, and have digged to
themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water._”[9]
* * * * *
How long, O Lord, how long? When shall we wake up to the reality of
Your Presence in our midst, and to the purpose of that Presence? We
would die for it if need be, and yet we heed it not. Shall I wait
till it is brought home to me by the remorse of my last hour, or by
the long, long hours of purgatory? Oh, why did I not make use of my
Emmanuel, my God with me, whilst I had time, “whilst He was in the way
with me”?[10] Why during my dream-life down there did I not realise the
need of Him that is the one need in this real life of eternity?
A child at catechism said: “Won’t it be dreadful for those who don’t
believe in the Real Presence to find at Judgment that it _was_
real, that our Lord was there after all! Even if they didn’t know any
better, and so it was not their fault, and our Lord is not angry with
them--I think they will be so dreadfully sorry all the same.”
But if these will be sorry, what will be the case of those who did know
and neglected Him? Those to whom He will say, “_So long a time have I
been with you, and you have not known Me!_”[11] “_I was daily with
you in the temple._”[12]
Lord Jesus, let not that be my bitterest thought in purgatory, that
land of bitter thoughts. It is time that Your love should be returned,
that I should make amends for the past, that I should hasten to You
with my sorrow and my love.
* * * * *
_Go to Him early in the morning._ Is daily Mass an impossibility
in my case? He waits for me there, to offer, for me and with me, His
sacrifice and mine for the interests we share together.
_And let thy feet wear the steps of His doors._ More especially
in the afternoon or evening, when the church is quiet and He is left
all alone. With a little goodwill and ingenuity could I not include a
visit to Him in my weekly, if not in my daily programme? Could I not
so arrange my calls to other friends as to leave a few moments for my
dearest and my best? How blessed a remembrance when He is brought to my
doors at the last, to be my viaticum, that in life I was faithful to
the duties of friendship and wore the steps of His doors!
O blessed, self-sufficing God
Athirst for me,
Coming a beggar to my door
All suppliantly,
Craving with meek persistence alms
Of my poor heart,
A thought, a word of sympathy--how sweet,
How sweet Thou art!
And must Thou knock and ever knock
Till life is flown,
Seeking vain entrance to a heart
That is Thine own?
Or wilt Thou rather work this hour
Such change in me
That hither I may come “wearing Thy steps”
Athirst for Thee!
[2] Isa. lv.
[3] Matt. xi.
[4] John vi.
[5] _Ibid._ v.
[6] Luke xiv.
[7] Psa. xxx.
[8] Prov. xviii.
[9] Jer. ii.
[10] Matt. v.
[11] John xiv.
[12] Luke xxii.
II.
PRAISE.
Give praise to our God, all ye His servants, and you that fear Him,
little and great.--_Apoc._ xix. 5.
When heaven is opened for an instant it is to let out a burst of
praise. “_Glory to God in the highest!_”[13] “_Thou art worthy,
O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour, and power!_”[14]
“_The Lamb that was slain, is worthy to receive power, and divinity,
and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction.... To
Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction and honour
and glory and power for ever and ever._”[15]
We lift up our heads; we are rapt. It is an unexpected strain from
fatherland that catches the exile’s ear and thrills through every
fibre of his being. It finds an affinity, that burst of praise, in
every human soul on which the sense of exile weighs. For it is the
strain to which every soul is attuned by the very fact of its creation.
The language of praise is our mother-tongue. _Gementes et flentes
in hac lacrymarum valle_ was no part of God’s original design for
us. We took the golden harps out of His hand and strained and broke
the strings, and now the notes are plaintive when not discordant. But
Christ has restored all things. He has brought back our joy by taking
our sorrow on Himself. Because here on earth He prayed “with a strong
cry and tears”[16] the song of praise is to be put again upon our lips.
Yet a little while and “God shall wipe away all tears ... and death
shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any
more”.[17] He is here upon the altar, waiting to catch up the faint
accents of my praise, and bear them with His own before the throne of
God.
Do this for me, O dearest Lord. Praise does not come easily to these
lips of mine. The cares of life, and its failures, and its pains;
heaviness of soul, and the weight of the corruptible body, with all
the engrossingness of self, wring my heart dry of praise. A sudden
revelation of Your goodness in the removal of a trial, or the advent
of an unlooked-for joy, will lighten it for a moment and lift it up to
You in benediction. Yet even this impulse of thankful love is weak and
cannot long sustain itself, and I fall again humbled at Your feet, to
feel how little I can do and say even at my best. As to the pure praise
of heaven--free of all thought of self, where self is drowned in the
glad, triumphant, all-absorbing sense of Your greatness, and grandeur,
and all-sufficingness--of this I know nothing. Yet it is the language
of my country, the tongue I shall speak for ever--should I not be
learning it here in time? A language may be learned in a foreign land
though the accent we only catch on its own soil.
Often and often, dear Master, I say to You with the Twelve, “Teach
me to pray”. I say to You now, “Teach me to praise”. Teach me that
highest, purest prayer which will be the incense rising for ever from
my heart when other prayer has ceased.
* * * * *
Fuller and richer every hour grows the heavenly harmony, as part after
part is taken up by the blessed choristers arriving from earth and
purgatory. But for whom are reserved the richest notes in the anthem
entoned with human voice by Christ Himself? Surely for those who have
practised that praise even here _in hac lacrymarum valle_. Whose
hearts have never been allowed even in exile to forget the tongue
of fatherland. Which have leaped up day by day in the _Gloria in
excelsis_ and the _Magnificat_, in the _Benedictus_ and
the _Te Deum_. Which have persisted in praise when the heart was
weighted heaviest, when doubt, repining, rebellion even, sought to
stifle its voice. They heard the call: “_Arise, give praise in the
night_”.[18] And answered: “_The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away, as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the
name of the Lord_”.[19] It is this praise in the night that sounds
sweetest in the ear of God. It is of these His faithful servants that
He says: “_They shall praise Me in the land of their captivity, and
shall be mindful of My name_”.[20]
What wonder that their song shall be sweetest in the City of Peace;
that their voices shall mingle more intimately than the rest with hers
whose heart was singing _Ecce ancilla_, even in its agony, with
His Who having sung a hymn went forth to Calvary!
[13] Luke ii.
[14] Apoc. iv.
[15] _Ibid._ v.
[16] Heb. v.
[17] Apoc. xxi.
[18] Lament. ii.
[19] Job i.
[20] Baruch ii.
III.
“POSSUMUS.”
“Can you drink of the chalice that I drink of?”--“We
can.”--_Mark_ x. 38, 39.
Far back in the ages before the world was, “in the beginning,” I hear
the Eternal Father treating with His co-equal Son about my redemption:--
“Canst Thou for that soul and for its salvation go down from heaven and
be made man?”
And the Divine Word answered: “_I can_”.
“Canst Thou live a life of thirty-three years, toiling and teaching
and instituting Divine means for its salvation, and end that life of
hardship and suffering by a death of pain and shame?”
“_I can._”
“Canst Thou perpetuate that Incarnation and annihilation even to the
end of time; hiding Thyself under the form of bread in order to meet it
on its entrance into life, to be its companion, its refuge, its food
all the days of its pilgrimage?”
“_I can._”
“And when, O Lover of that soul, it shall meet Thy love, Thy advances,
Thy sacrifices as Thou knowest it _will_ meet them, canst Thou
bear with it still, supporting its coldness, its waywardness, its
indifference, its ingratitude?”
And Jesus said, “_I can_”.
* * * * *
And now my Redeemer turns to question me in my turn:--
“Can you for the sake of your salvation co-operate with Me and turn
to your own profit all I have done and am ready to do for you,
resolving to avoid everything that would imperil the great work we have
undertaken--all grievous sin and all venial sin that leads to mortal?”
What can I answer but, “O Lord, _I can_”?
“Can you, as some return for My love, find it in your heart to avoid
not only sin, but the infidelities which impede My work in your soul,
obstruct My grace and hinder union between us?”
What is my answer now?
“Can you with the eye of faith see Me in My suffering members, the
poor, the sick, the outcast, the unprotected, the little helpless
children, and for My sake sacrifice leisure, or ease, or worldly means
to succour and serve them?”
“Give me the faith, Lord, to recognise You in all these, and in the
strength of that faith, _I can_.”
“Can you come after Me by taking up your cross daily, the cross I have
laid upon you to liken you to Myself?”
“Yes, Lord, for beneath will be the everlasting arms. You will not
leave me alone, and with Your help, _I can_.”
“Can you uphold My cause in the face of ridicule and disgrace, ready,
if not glad, to suffer reproach for My name?”
“In Him Who strengtheneth me, Lord, _I can_.”
“Can you bear to be overlooked, set at naught, despised by the world as
one at variance with its principles, as following another leader? Can
you bear the taunt: ‘And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth’?”
“Look on me, Lord, in hours of trial as You looked on Peter, and
sustained by that glance, _I can_.”
“Can you drink still deeper of My chalice--the chalice I drained for
you--bearing with constancy desolation of spirit and the hiding of the
Father’s Face, content to serve Him for Himself rather than for His
gifts?”
“In union, O my Lord, with Your desolate soul on Calvary, _I
can_.”
IV.
THE SON OF MAN.
“I also have a heart as well as you.”--_Job_ xii. 3.
Our Lord does quite simply what some of us are too proud to do. He owns
to the yearning felt by every human heart for the sympathy of its kind.
He speaks plainly of His desire to share His joy and sorrows with His
friends, and is at no pains to conceal His need of their support, His
gratitude for their devotedness, His distress at their unfaithfulness
and desertion. “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou
hast given Me may be with Me: that they may see My glory.”[21] “You are
they who have continued with Me in My temptations.”[22] “My soul is
sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with Me.... Could
you not watch one hour with Me?”[23] “The hour cometh ... that you
shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone.”[24]
He comes to a weak woman for her compassion and her help. He asks her
to spread abroad among His friends the words in which He unburdened His
heart to her, and beg them to come and bear Him company in His life of
solitude and neglect. To each one of us He says from the tabernacle:
“Stay you here, and watch with Me.... Could you not watch one hour with
Me?” Or if not one hour, one quarter?
_Stay with Me_ because I am going to offer My morning sacrifice,
and men are too busy to assist at the oblation of Myself for them.
_Stay with Me_ for a few moments at midday, when the glare of
the world and its rush and its din are fiercest. Turn off the crowded
pavement into the quiet church. “Come apart ... and rest a little.”[25]
_Stay with Me_ because it is towards evening and the day is now
far spent. There will be no more visitors for Me to-day, none through
the long hours of the night. Stay with Me because it is towards evening.
O Lover of men, so lonely, so forsaken, if Your object in staying with
us day and night was to win our love, have You not failed? Has it
been worth Your while to work miracle after miracle to produce Your
Real Presence upon the altar? Have I made it worth Your while to be
there _for me_? Jesus, dear Jesus, I bury my face in my hands;
I know of no heart more ungrateful, more callous than my own. I have
been miserably unmindful of Your Presence here _for me_. I have
let self, pleasure, troubles even--anything and everything furnish an
excuse for keeping away from You and neglecting You in that sacramental
life which is lived here _for me_.
[21] John xvii.
[22] Luke xxii.
[23] Matt. xxvi.
[24] John xvi.
[25] Mark vi.
V.
WHAT THINGS?
“Art Thou a stranger and hast not known the things that have been done
in these days?” To whom He said: “What things?”--_Luke_ xxiv. 18,
19.
Some of us, maybe, are deterred from visiting our Lord in the Blessed
Sacrament by a false conception of what a visit should be. We suppose
that the occupations which fill our heads and our hands from morning
till night must all be laid aside at the church door and sternly
forbidden entrance, much in the same way as we bid our dog lie down in
the porch and wait for us. We read that St. Bernard thus dismissed all
secular thoughts, and we conclude--though his biographer does not say
so--that they returned at the end of his prayer, _and not before_.
Self-mastery such as this demands an effort to which few of us feel
equal. Do what they will, the mind of the doctor and the lawyer will
run more or less upon their anxious cases, the student’s head will be
full of his examination, the mother’s of her household cares. These
thoughts if indeliberate will be at least persistent, and if quite
deliberate will become sinful. In either case they render prayer an
impossibility--hence we stay away.
Now do we find this view of prayer borne out by the practice of
God’s servants? Of David in perplexity and trouble we read: “And the
Philistines coming spread themselves in the valley of Raphaim. And
David consulted the Lord, saying: Shall I go up to the Philistines? and
wilt Thou deliver them into my hand? And the Lord said to David: Go up,
for I will surely deliver the Philistines into thy hand.... And the
Philistines came up again.... And David consulted the Lord: Shall I go
up against the Philistines?... He answered: Go not up against them.”[26]
Of David in a mood of joy and thankfulness we are told: “And King David
came and sat before the Lord, and said: Who am I, O Lord God, that Thou
shouldst give such things to me?”[27]
See, too, the simplicity and confidence of Ezechias on receiving the
threatening message of Sennacherib: “And Ezechias took the letter from
the hand of the messengers, and read it, and went up to the house of
the Lord, and spread it before the Lord”.[28]
A common complaint is that daily worries and anxieties so invade our
minds that our prayer has no chance. But is this our feeling about a
talk with a trusty friend--a man of sound judgment, wide experience and
influence, on whose interest in all that concerns us we can count with
certainty? Should we say: “I had half an hour with him this morning,
but my mind was so full of that affair I could find nothing to say”;
or: “I had it all out with him this morning, and am ever so much better
already”?
Why not deal thus familiarly with our best Friend? If Ezechias could
spread out his letter before the Lord in that old Temple, which was but
a shadow of the better things to come, why may not we carry our good
news and our bad before the pitying human Heart of Christ, with us all
days on purpose to hear every day, and, if we will, every hour of the
day, all we have to tell Him, and hearing all, to help in all?
Had our Lord said to us: “I will prosper any spiritual concerns that
you commend to Me, but really you must look after your own temporal
affairs, and I shall count it an irreverence if you bring such things
into My presence”--had He said this, there might be some excuse for the
pains we take to shut Him out of the cares and business of everyday
life.
But has He said this, or does all we know of Him go to prove the exact
contrary? Did He count it an irreverence when the sick were thrust upon
Him at every step; when a paralytic let down from the roof and laid at
His feet stopped His teaching; when messengers came one upon another
to draw Him here and there for some temporal need: “Lord, he whom Thou
lovest is sick”;[29] “Lord, come down before that my son die”?[30]
Did He refuse the invitation at Cana? And if for a brief space He
delayed the miracle designed from all eternity to manifest His tender
interest in the joys as well as in the sorrows of home life, was it
not obviously to show how Mary’s heart beat in unison with His, and to
honour His Mother’s prayer?
“Lord, come and see,” said the weeping sisters as they led the way to
the grave. Look at Him between them, listening now to one, now to the
other, as they tell the history of the past three days--how they had
watched and waited for Him, and counted on His coming, and He came not.
See their tearful eyes. See the eager Heart, longing for the moment
when He may reward their trust and turn their mourning into gladness.
What should we have felt and said that day at Bethany if, after raising
Lazarus, He had turned to us and made Himself our listener, placing
Himself, as was His wont, at the complete disposal of the one who
wanted Him? Should we have felt shy of trying to interest Him in the
details of our life, in our little joys and troubles? Or would our
hearts have opened out to Him, and simply emptied themselves in His
presence?
Do we want an ideal visit to Christ? Let us seek it in Nicodemus’
talks by night; in the centurion’s urgent pleading for his servant; in
the unburdening of soul that we see in Zaccheus and in the sisters at
Bethany. And let us frame our own visits on such models. If a big worry
threatens to invade prayer, why not take it straight away into prayer,
giving it the place and time it wants, making it the subject-matter of
our intercourse with God, and so turning a hindrance into a help!
Of course we must do all this with reverence and a certain amount of
watchfulness, or our prayer will be no prayer at all, but distraction
pure and simple. But if we put our case before our Lord and talk
it over with Him, representing our difficulty, asking His advice,
listening to His whispered word in answer, our time of prayer will be
what He wants it to be--a time of rest, and light, and strength.
Some may say that this so-called prayer is very unsupernatural, and
that the results of such a compromise between prayer and distraction
will not be very satisfactory. It may be so; we can only reply that
there are times without number when this is the only method of getting
results at all, and that our Lord’s method of dealing with His own and
theirs with Him was _eminently natural_.
No, surely, our difficulty is not due to want of sympathy on the part
of Christ our Lord. It can only come from our failing to recognise the
full purpose of the Incarnation and its bearing on every detail of
human life. Had His act of Redemption been His one motive in coming
amongst us, He might have come straight from His throne at the right
hand of the Father to the cross on Calvary. But the proof of love
greater than which no man can give did not satisfy Him. He wanted as
“First-born amongst many brethren,”[31] as Head of the human family,
to place Himself in intimate communication with it on every side, to
touch as far as might be every point, every experience of human life,
entering personally into its mysteries of joy, and fear, and love, and
sorrow. And so we have the years of infancy and childhood and youth,
and--precious above all--the blessed years of the public life, when
“the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us,”[32] proving by every
word and act His desire to be associated with us His brethren, His
right to His name of predilection--_the Son of Man_.
He it is Whom we find waiting for us when our turn comes to pass across
the short stage of life on earth. He calls us to Him, calls us by our
name, one by one. He bids us take Him to our hearts as the nearest and
dearest of our friends, Who alone can stand by us when all others fail.
He bids us cultivate His friendship, and try it and prove it. And He
promises that we shall find Him what all have found Him who have put
their trust in Him--what Martha and Mary, and Paul and Bernard, and
Teresa and Margaret Mary have found Him--the “Faithful and True,”[33]
“Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day: and the same for ever.”[34]
[26] 2 Kings v.
[27] 1 Par. xvii.
[28] Isa. xxxvii.
[29] John xi.
[30] _Ibid._ iv.
[31] Rom. viii.
[32] Acts i.
[33] Apoc. xix.
[34] Heb. xiii.
VI.
VENITE AD ME OMNES.
--_Matt._ xi. 28.
“Come to Me, heavy-laden ones, come all!”
I hear, I rise, I hasten at His call;
’Neath burden bent, across the threshold steal,
The curtain lift, and in His Presence kneel:
There loose my load--and wide,
With none to check nor chide,
Scattering, a sorry sight, on every side,
They fall--pains, troubles, cares--lying, how meet,
About the weary, way-worn, wounded Feet;
Under the Eye of yore bedimmed with tears,
The Heart Gethsemane oppressed with fears,
The Heart that sore afraid
Strong supplication made,
And with a sweat of blood the Father prayed.
Beneath His glance, as snow ’neath sunny ray,
Some of my cares dissolve and melt away,
And some He takes and smoothes a little space
The less to chafe, and lays again in place.
’Tis mystery to me
How some He smiles to see,
And how on some His tears fall tenderly.
One I hold up to Him, and pleading pray,
“This, Lord, just this, in pity take away!”
And ever comes His word with cheering smile:
“A little longer, trust Me yet awhile;
Each pang of keen distress,
Each prayer, I mark and bless,
Each in its hour shall show forth fruitfulness”.
_That_, my life’s woe, against a bleeding Side
Is pressed, and lo! transfigured, glorified,
It glows as crystal flushed with rosy ray.
“O gem unprized! Restore it, Lord, I pray;
As costly gift from Thee
Dear shall it be to me”;
And in my heart I hide it lovingly.
A lightened load He lays on me, all sweet
With words of love--and thus I leave His Feet,
With steadier step to plod on day by day,
With stouter heart to climb the upward way;
And when anew life’s strain
Frets me with weary pain,
I take my load and go to Him again.
VII.
THE HIDDEN GOD.
Vere Tu es Deus absconditus!--_Isaias_ xlv. 15.
There is no use denying that with the exception of rare intervals,
our intercourse with God in this life is more or less laborious and
difficult. This is only saying that Heaven is not yet come. Faith was
meant to be a trial, and a trial it certainly is. The evidence of sense
is against us; the levity of imagination is against us; the inconstancy
of our desires and of our will is against us when we kneel down to pray.
“Behold He standeth behind our wall.”[35] We know He is there, close
as the priest in the confessional, with attention to every word we
say. Yet, for all that, the words and the confidences come slowly. It
is hard to prolong a conversation that is all on one side, and this,
so it seems to us, is the case in prayer. Useless to tell us that our
faith is at fault. That in the presence of the Pope, or the King, we
should be all attention. Where the conditions are so different, there
can be no parallel. The voice, the look, the question and answer, the
surroundings--all these are wanting. Such admonitions irritate us by
their injustice, and we look away wearily for help elsewhere. But
where to look? We cannot alter the present state of things or fix our
wandering thoughts and unstable heart. No, but we can accept all things
as they are in truth, and in the truth find a remedy.
“Behold He standeth behind our wall.” But the barrier between us is
not a drawback, an obstacle to union with Him--inseparable indeed
from the present condition of things--yet an obstacle for all that.
It is distinctly willed by Him as a necessary part of our trial, a
wholesome discipline, a purification of love. It has in it all the
privileges, advantages, blessings, that in this life belong to pain,
and can be won by pain alone. It is a present blessing as well as a
pledge of blessing to come. “Blessed _are_ they that have not
seen and have believed.”[36] It is a pledge of that full clear vision,
“reserved in heaven for you, who, by the power of God, are kept by
faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein
you shall greatly rejoice, if now for a little time you must be made
sorrowful.... That the trial of your faith (much more precious than
gold tried by the fire) may be found unto praise and glory and honour
at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen you love; in
Whom also now, though you see Him not, you believe, and believing shall
rejoice with joy unspeakable.”[37]
“We see now in a dark manner: but then face to face.”[38] “I shall
see Him, but not now.”[39] How will that face to face vision be the
brighter and the sweeter for the dimness now! How will the joy of that
moment when we part for ever with faith be intensified by what faith
has cost us in the past!
O days and hours, your work is this,
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from His embrace,
For fuller gain of after bliss.
That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet,
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue.
--_In Memoriam_
[35] Cant. ii.
[36] John xx.
[37] 1 Peter i.
[38] 1 Cor. xiii.
[39] Numbers xxiv.
VIII.
LOOKING THROUGH THE LATTICES.
--_Cant._ ii. 9.
But meanwhile the Beloved _is_ behind the wall. And He is there
with all the sympathy for our difficulty which His perfect knowledge
of it enables Him to have. “Jesus ... needed not that any man should
tell Him ... for He knew what was in man.”[40] He knows the weariness
of praying on against apparently unanswered prayer; against the pain
of physical restlessness, the labour of thought, the irksomeness of
concentration, the perpetual gathering together of the forces that are
playing truant in a thousand fields, recalled for a brief space only
to be off again more wayward for their capture. All this He knows.
And our remedy is to remember that He knows it. He Who has appointed
prayer to be the channel of grace, means such prayer as we can bring
Him. He does not ask impossibilities. He does not place us amid
distracting work all day long and expect us to shut it out by an effort
of will the moment we kneel down to pray. Nor even to shut it out by
repeated efforts. He would have us turn our distractions and weariness
not so much into matter for self-reproach, or humiliation even, as into
a loving, trustful plea for His pity and His help. This is prayer. Lay
the tired brain, the strained muscles, the aching head--lay them all
down at His feet without a word, just for His eye to rest on and His
Heart to help and heal.
There are times when physical lassitude, cold or heat, an importunate
thought, a trial with its sting still fresh, baffles every effort to
fix the mind on the subject of prayer, and concentrates the whole
attention on what for the moment is all-absorbing. Times harder still
to manage, when mind and heart are so absolutely vacant and callous
that there is no rousing them to action. This reflection will sometimes
be helpful then--What should I have to say were I in the presence of
the one I love best in the world; with whom I am quite at my ease;
my friend _par excellence_; to whom my trials, difficulties,
character, the secrets of my soul are known; that one in whose concerns
and welfare I take the deepest interest; whose plans and views are
mine, discussed again and again together; in whose company time flies
and the hour for parting comes too soon--what should I find to say?
Say it, make an effort to say it to Him Who is in the tabernacle yonder.
O Jesus, hidden God, more friendly than a brother,[41] I believe most
firmly that You are present, a few feet only from where I kneel. You
are behind that little wall, listening for every word of confidence,
and love, and thanksgiving, and praise. Listening when my heart is
free to pour itself out to You as the brook to the river in the days
of spring. Listening more tenderly when the stream is ice-bound; when
I kneel before You troubled, wearied, anxious about many things, about
many souls perhaps, yet dry and hard, without a word to say. Make my
heart so perfectly at ease with You, O Lord, that it may be able to
turn to You even in its coldness and inertness; to confide to You
naturally all that most intimately concerns it; to be content with
this, when discontented with all else, with self most of all--that You
know all men and need not that any should give testimony of man, for
You know what is in man.[42]
[40] John ii.
[41] Prov. xviii.
[42] John ii.
IX.
LORD, COME AND SEE!
--_John_ xi. 34.
Come to my heart as unto Bethl’hem’s grot,
A hovel-home that love despises not:
Can love transform it to a pleasant spot?
Lord, come and see!
Come to my heart as once to Bethany:
A brother’s grave is there, and piteously
Are tears and supplication calling Thee:
Lord, come and see!
How flocked of yore unto Thy blessed feet
The sick, the sad, Thy mercy to entreat!
I too have needs Thy pitying eye to meet:
Lord, come and see!
Come, lay Thy hand upon each leprous stain;
Come with Thy word of might the fiend to chain;
The open festering sore, the hidden pain,
Lord, come and see!
Come to my heart, this dull cold heart of mine,
All irresponsive to a love divine;
What lacks it to become Thy hallowed shrine?
Lord, come and see!
Happier by far than in the olden days
Judea’s glorious Temple--what delays
Its song and sacrifice, its prayer and praise?
Lord, come and see!
Perchance, like Temple Courts, doth sinful stain,
The world’s loud trafficking, the greed of gain
Thy Father’s house, the house of prayer profane:
Lord, come and see!
Come, Holy One, I yield myself to Thee;
E’en scourge in hand, come, Lord and Love, to me.
What change shall make me Thine, Thine utterly?
Lord, come and see!
X.
NEGLECT.
He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.--_John_ i. 11.
How strange it seems, O Lord! For You had been promised so long. You
had been so ardently desired by the best and noblest of our race; so
gloriously prefigured, so set forth in prophecy, as to awaken the
keenest expectation and enkindle the most glowing love. How was it,
then, that Your own received You not? How is it that even now You come
unto Your own and are not welcomed, are not wanted, are left alone, not
through the night only--that perhaps were to be expected--but through
the long day hours, with Your so-called friends, and the weary and the
heavy-laden within a stone’s throw of Your door? Ah, Lord, the outrage
and the sacrilege that mark the hatred of Your enemies are less to be
wondered at, less to be deplored, than the coldness of those You call
Your own. You are not given to complain. But when along the ages a meek
remonstrance does break upon the silence, it is always the same--the
protest wrung from You by the desertion of those You love. “_Behold
... my familiar friends also are departed from me.... My brethren have
passed by me._”[43] “_Do you now believe? Behold ... you shall
be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone._”[44]
How Your Heart felt the desolation of abandonment; how, to speak human
language, You feel it still, You made known in that cry of unrequited
love, “Behold this Heart which has so loved men and is so little loved
by them”.
* * * * *
Who would have thought that God could upbraid so tenderly, or that men
could hear such reproach without being touched and won! If not to make
great sacrifices for Him, if not to give up all, at least to go a few
steps in order to keep Him company in His loneliness, and sympathise
with Him in His sorrows--surely He might have looked for this!
Dearest Lord, one would have expected You to be in such request upon
the altar, expected that there would be crowding and crushing in Your
presence as in the days of Your earthly life; that we should be seen
flocking to You early and late, to show our appreciation of Your love,
and to pour out our troubles into Your willing ear. Where is our faith
to leave You thus deserted? “Do you believe? Behold you shall be
scattered every one to his own, and shall leave Me alone.”
* * * * *
_He came unto His own_--that is, He comes as far as He can--from
heaven to the Host, and down to the altar rails. Further He cannot
come. The rest of the way must be ours. We must meet Him there in
Holy Communion, or His loving journey to us will have been in vain.
He will not force our free will. But He does so want to come. Shall we
disappoint Him? Oh, if our own love will not draw us to Him, at least
let us have compassion on His! If we think ourselves at liberty to
deprive ourselves of our communions, surely we are not free to deprive
Him of His.
You long, O Lover of my soul, to come to me. Your delights are to be
with me, cold, inhospitable as I am. Come, then; come, Lord Jesus, and
in satisfying Your own desire, enkindle mine.
[43] Job vi.
[44] John xvi.
XI.
FAITH.
Sola fides sufficit!
What mainly hinders the freedom and happiness of our intercourse with
Christ our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is the account we make _of
feelings_. In spite of all that can be said to us, we persist in
applying this untrustworthy test to our relations with God, the result
being discouragement and all its evil consequences.
Feelings are wayward children, all the more refractory often for
blandishments and coaxing. Our wisest plan is not to notice them
overmuch; to be glad certainly when they show themselves friendly, and
when they are unpropitious to let them alone.
Feelings we may dispense with, but faith never. Faith we must follow,
lean upon, cling to, with all the more tenacity as the days draw on
of which our Lord said: “The Son of man when He cometh, shall He find,
think you, faith on earth?”[45] With the vehemence that will take no
refusal we must constrain her, saying: “Stay with us, because it is
towards evening”.[46] Where faith enters and takes full possession, all
good things enter with her. We need not go about to seek anxiously for
anything else: _Sola fides sufficit!_
* * * * *
Give me, my God, a deep and lively faith in all Your Holy Spirit has
revealed and Your Church teaches. Give me this one thing necessary, and
it is enough for me. _Sola fides sufficit!_ The faith I ask is a
living faith that must needs prove its vitality by good works. Give
me the faith that lit up the lives of Your saints. Strengthen my hold
on all revealed truth. But give me above all an intense, ever-growing
realisation of the mystery of the altar, the central Mystery of our
faith.
Realised by me as it was by Your saints, what a change that Presence
would make in my life! Mind, heart, imagination, will, views, aims,
desires directed to it, absorbed by it--O Jesus, what a transformation
this would be! _Sola fides sufficit!_ Lord, increase my faith!
Thou Who of old didst love Thy hand to lay
On the dull, vacant eyes that craved for light,
Behold, I come to Thee, and crying, pray:
O Christ, O Son of David, give me sight!
A faith scarce clouded by the mists of earth,
A faith that pierceth heaven I ask of Thee,
Faith to prize all things by their lasting worth:
Thou canst, Thou wilt--O Lord, that I may see!
If we would think more about arousing our faith than exciting our
feelings, would not our visits and our communions be the gainers? And
would not the affections of the heart often follow the lead of faith? A
few minutes spent in trying to bring home to ourselves that He Who is
really present a few yards from where we sit or kneel is the world’s
long-promised Messiah, Whose advent kings and prophets desired to see;
Whom in His own time all men desired to see and hear; He at Whose feet
Mary sat at Bethany, unmindful of all but that Face and that Voice; He
Whose words--“Peace be still,” “Thy brother shall rise again,” “Go,
and now sin no more”--brought hope and joy to the troubled heart; He
Who fell on His Face under the olive trees, crushed to the earth by my
sins; Who died with the thought and the love of me in His Heart that
Good Friday long ago; Who is to come again in the eastern sky where
every eye shall see Him--a few minutes of earnest dwelling on thoughts
such as these will rouse in our souls faith and hope and charity, will
kindle humility, sorrow, gratitude, desire--for fuel is furnished for
the fire.
“Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” I believe that beneath Your
humble veils You are here truly present, O hidden God! I believe the
day draws near when You will be the hidden God no more; when I shall
see You coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and majesty,
all nature trembling at Your approach; whilst the elect lift up their
heads because their redemption is at hand.
O Judge of the living and the dead, in that awful day remember me!
Remember me when You come to gather Your own into Your kingdom!
Remember, I beseech You, in that second coming, how often I have
welcomed You at Your hidden coming, and let my heart welcome and leap
up to meet You then.
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
Oro, fiat illud, quod tam sitio,
Ut, Te revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim beatus Tuae gloriae.
O Jesu, Whom by faith I now descry
Shrouded from mortal eye;
When wilt Thou slake the thirsting of my heart
To see Thee as Thou art,
Face unto face in all Thy glad array,
’Tranced with the glory of that everlasting day.
--G. T.
[45] Luke xviii.
[46] _Ibid._ xxiv.
XII.
AFTER A DEFEAT.
Let not this thing discourage thee, for various is the event of
war.--2 _Kings_ xi. 25.
The cheery words You have for me, O Lord and Leader, when downcast and
troubled I come to tell You of another reverse to our arms! Truly Your
ways are not our ways. With us results are everything. A general may do
his best, take every precaution, be skilful in preparation, and brave
in action. Yet repeated mishaps will beget mistrust, and he will find
himself superseded in command. It must be so. But it is not Your way
with us.
I have not done my best. I have been careless in preparation, and weak
and cowardly in action. Yet You have nothing but encouragement for
me after a rout. No reproach, no withdrawal of confidence: “Fight
like a good soldier; and if sometimes thou fall through frailty, rise
up again with greater strength than before, confiding in My more
abundant grace”.[47] At my first call for help reinforcements are sent
to the front, not _less_, by reason of my unfaithfulness, but
_more_, because of my need. And if I am superseded in command, it
is only by Your coming Yourself on to the field, and so strengthening
my hands, that all must give way before us.
I am sorry, O my Chief, for the dishonour to Your name and the loss
to Your cause through my fault. But I do not despond. I may fail in
everything else, but in trust I will never fail. If I am overthrown
seventy-seven times in the day, I will return to the charge as often,
my resolution the same, my confidence the same as at first. These
perpetual beginnings are painful, weary work, but Your patience, Lord,
will never fail: neither shall my goodwill. I know that the struggle
itself brings You glory. I know that if I keep up the struggle to the
end, You will meet me when the time of trial is over with the welcome
word: “_Well done!_”
Fearful of self, with sore temptation pressing,
I hasten, God of armies, unto Thee,
My every power, my every sense confessing
Its insufficiency.
Taught by the past there is no help in me,
I cast myself on Thee.
This is not hard. But false in face of Heaven,
To turn with trusting heart again to Thee,
Not once, not twice, but seventy times seven,
In brave humility:
When smarting self would hide its misery,
To cast myself on Thee--
Lord, _this is hard_. Thine eye alone can measure
The weary pain of each relapse to me:
Yet fraught with grace, all stored with hidden treasure,
Is my infirmity;
Strongest of pleas, the creature’s frailty,
That casts it upon Thee.
[47] Imit. of Christ, iii. 6.
XIII.
AFTER A VICTORY.
Thanks be to God, Who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.--1 _Cor._ xv. 57.
So often, dear Lord, so very often I come to You with my defeats, that
it is a refreshment to have something more cheering to offer to Your
Sacred Heart.
* * * * *
_Thanks be to God_--It was Your grace, my God, throughout--before,
accompanying, crowning--my share just the co-operation that did not
reject the help You gave.
_Who hath given us_--given _me_, so weak, so cowardly, so
little to be depended on in moments of trouble and conflict; _me_,
such a disgrace to the colours often, such a sorry soldier at best--
_The victory_--nothing much for anyone else, but something of a
triumph, dear Lord, for me. Our small successes are not accounted small
by You, O generous Leader. You welcome all, are proud of all, lay up
reward and praise for all against the day of reward.
_Through our Lord Jesus Christ_, by Whom, with Whom, in Whom we
overcome. We can do all things in Him Who strengthens us. _Jesu, Tibi
sit gloria!_ Thanks be to God, Who has given us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ.
XIV.
A DIVINE FRIEND.
The woman ... came and fell down before Him, and told Him all the
truth.--_Mark_ v. 33.
_The whole truth._ Only to one Friend can we tell that. Only
one friendship could bear the strain of that revelation. The very
exigencies of other friendships call for restraint. Can we own to want
of confidence, to utter coldness and callousness, to a want of sympathy
in joys and sorrows that move to its depths the heart of our friend?
Could the most self-forgetting of human friendships bear up against
avowals such as these?
No; we must draw the line here unless we want the free flowing waters
gradually to freeze into a glacier. Owning to mistrust will hardly be
accepted as a mark of trust, nor will the acknowledgment of coldness
beget love. Poor affection of these human hearts of ours!--jealous
and suspicious at the least show of reticence, yet unable to bear the
disclosures of unreserve. We cannot be hard upon a weakness common
to us all, but we long for a heart human like our own, yet strong
enough to support the weight of all we would put upon it. Nor are
we disappointed. Here in the tabernacle is what we seek. Here is a
Heart waiting for all, ready for all. Here we may unbosom ourselves
completely. Here we may tell _the whole truth_. Narrowness and
fickleness, heartlessness, mistrust, selfishness--ingratitude even, we
may tell. We may trust all to this Beloved without fear. For He knows
what is in man. No revelation will surprise Him, no misery disgust
Him. He will welcome each painful avowal with the tenderest sympathy,
and take all we tell Him as tokens of trust for which He is infinitely
obliged to us.
XV.
AN EVENING VISIT.
Stay with us, because it is towards evening.--_Luke_ xxiv. 29.
It is at night especially that the shepherd looks well to his sheep.
Good Shepherd, I gather round You to-night the sheep of Your world-wide
flock and commit them to Your keeping. Wherever they are to be found,
there are You in the midst of them. In crowded cities--the guardian
of the multitudes sleeping around You on every side. In the one spot
of the quiet village where a light will burn to-night--the Keeper
of the simple souls around You there. In many a hut the wide world
over--content among savage tribes to share the poor shelter of Your
priest. Everywhere warding off the prowling wolf and the evil that
walketh in the dark.[48] With us not only all days, but all nights
unto the end of time.
_Stay with us_, Lord, to-night. Stay to adore, and praise, and
give thanks for us whilst we sleep; to draw down mercy and grace upon
the world; to succour from earth’s tabernacles the holy suffering souls
in purgatory in their long night of weary pain.
_Stay with us_, to ward off the anger of God from our crowded
cities with their dens of vice, their crimes that call to Heaven for
vengeance.
_Stay with us_, to guard the innocent, to sustain the tempted, to
raise the fallen, to curb the power of the evil one, to prevent sin.
_Stay with us_, to comfort the sorrowing, to bless the death-beds,
to grant contrition to the dying, to receive into the arms of Your
mercy the thousands that this night must come before You for judgment.
O Good Shepherd, stay with Your sheep! Secure them against the perils
that beset them. Stay, above all, with the suffering and the dying.
“Grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.” Be our merciful Shepherd to
the last, that without fear we may appear before You as our Judge.
_Stay with us, Lord, to-night._ More favoured than the camp of
Israel slumbering under the guardianship of the pillar of fire, we
sleep with the Presence of God Incarnate shielding us on every side.
Well may we say: “In peace, in the self same, I will sleep and I will
rest”.
* * * * *
“Vouchsafe, O Lord, this night to keep us without sin.”
I map out the whole world into districts, and place each under the
jurisdiction of the nearest tabernacle. From that centre let the
radiance of the Divine protection go forth to every soul within its
circuit, enlightening, guarding--above all, strengthening against sin.
O Lord, from every tabernacle send forth to-night a strong efficacious
grace, to stop not one but a thousand sins. Because we have made the
Most High our refuge,[49] let no evil come near to hurt us. “Save us, O
Lord, waking, and keep us while we sleep, that we may watch with Christ
and rest in peace.”
[48] Psa. xc.
[49] Psa. xc.
XVI.
PRIVILEGED.
My lots are in Thy hands.--_Psa._ xxx. 15.
Suppose, my God, You had told us that as we know the worth of our soul,
You were going to trust us with the choice of the means by which its
salvation is to be worked out; You were going to put before us riches
and poverty, sickness and health, success and failure, a long life and
a short one, and we might take which seemed best for us. Should we be
content? Should we not say, if we were wise: “My God, do not trust this
to me. I shall choose, I know I shall, what I like, not what is best
for me.”
And suppose You were to tell us there were souls to whom You would
not entrust such a decision. Either they were too weak, or You were
so anxious to save them that You had left the choice of means, not
to themselves, but to those who love them better than they love
themselves, and who would choose for them more wisely--to their
guardian angel, to their patron saint, even to the Seat of Wisdom
herself--and if we wished You would let us be one of those favoured
souls. Should we be content then? Or should we say: “My God, forgive
me for being mistrustful still. I know my guardian angel and my holy
patrons, and most of all my Mother Mary, love me dearly and would
do their best for me.” But their wisdom after all is not infinite.
They might make a mistake, and that mistake might mean the loss of
_everything_ to me. I cannot afford any risk here. My soul is my
only one; I must save it whatever happens. I dare not keep it in my
own hands, and I dare not trust it even to the highest and holiest and
wisest of those around Your throne.
And suppose once again You were to say to us: “There are a few, a
very few, whose salvation is so dear to Me that I will trust the
choice of means to no one. I will plan and arrange all Myself. Nothing
shall happen to them but what has been foreseen and prepared from all
eternity by My Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. No one shall touch them;
no joy nor sorrow shall come in their way--no, nor a hair of their head
fall to the ground without My knowledge and permission.” Should we not
cry out: “My God--I hardly dare to ask it; but, oh, that I might be one
of that happy chosen few, for surely they are safe!”
You check me by a warning: “These souls will not have all their own way
in life. Their road will sometimes be hard and rugged. They will see
things prosper in the hands of others and fail in theirs. They will
be hardly used by those around them--misjudged, set aside, unjustly
treated; life to many of them will be uphill work.” Do I draw back now,
or do I cry out again: “No matter that, oh, no matter that at all!
What will they care when they know Your arm is round them as they go
uphill; Your hand sends the cross and the failure and the pain! No, my
God, that does not frighten me. Let me only be one of those whose lot
is altogether in Your hands, and I will fear nothing; I will complain
of nothing; nay, I will be grateful for all that comes to me. I will
kiss Your hand even when You strike me. I shall feel peaceful and happy
always in the thought that it is the wisdom of my God that orders all
for me, and the love of my heavenly Father that provides everything to
help me. Let me be one of those chosen ones, and You will see how I
value my privilege, how I prize whatever You send.”
* * * * *
_Suppose_--I have been saying. But this is no supposition. I am
that privileged one whose life in its minutest details is Your ordering
and Your care. How can I complain, my God! How can I be mistrustful or
even anxious--“My lots are in Thy hands”.
XVII.
THE IMPROVIDENCE OF LOVE.
My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways My ways, saith the
Lord.--_Isa._ lv. 8.
How often I kneel here before the tabernacle and make my genuflection
and my act of faith without realising in the very least what I believe,
what I adore. How little I heed that where I stand is holy ground. That
a few paces from me lies the most mysterious of all mysteries, “the
mystery of faith,” the mystery of love--love that with infinite wisdom
and infinite power at its service has here reached its limits, has
found bounds which God Himself cannot overpass.
And yet _is_ the Eucharist after all the greatest of mysteries?
Has it not its source in a deeper mystery still? Is anything wonderful
after the Incarnation? Does not the marvel of God made Man outstrip all
other marvels? If the Creator out of love for man must needs annihilate
Himself so far as to assume a created nature, where will such love
stop? Into what further extravagances of love will it not be betrayed?
But how was it, my God, that Your infinite wisdom did not fear the
consequences of such prodigality; did not remember who those are with
whom You have to deal; did not consider that too great lavishness
blunts the edge of our appreciation and our gratitude? Had You taken
counsel of us, O loving Lord, we should have bid You in the very
interests of love not to overdo its manifestation, not to make Yourself
too easy of access, lest familiarity should endanger reverence. Daily
Communion; the easy, easy conditions on which You come to us; the
tarrying day and night in every church throughout the world--this we
should have said would bring about a contempt of these sacred mysteries
and deprive You of the love which is the end of their institution.
You would have had to own to the justice of our remonstrance, to
acknowledge that such fears were well grounded. It was not safe to ask
counsel--except of Your own Heart. “Who hath known the mind of the
Lord? and who hath been His counsellor?”[50] Only His Heart. O Sacred
Heart, how sadly You have laid Him open to every sort of indignity--to
indifference, coldness, outrage, sacrilege. Yet, in spite of all, this
Gift of God is without repentance,[51] “for My thoughts are not your
thoughts, nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord”.
[50] Isa. xl.
[51] Rom. xi.
XVIII.
CHANGES.
Behold, I make all things new!--_Apoc._ xxi. 5.
How easily changes come about under Your hand, O Lord! Noiselessly,
almost unnoticed, every hour of the day and night, all the world over,
the most stupendous change is taking place--the change of the lowly
substance of bread into Your Sacred Body, of wine into Your Precious
Blood.
So is it in the world of souls. The most marvellous transformations
cost You but a word. _Follow Me!_ And instantly apostle after
apostle leaves all and follows You--mind, heart, views, ambitions,
the whole aspect of life changed. _Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou Me?_ And he who had “beyond measure persecuted the Church of
God”[52] rises to his feet ready to carry the name of Jesus “before
the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel”.[53]
With a word You can change _me_. The apathy for spiritual things
would go--the dulness of sight, the slowness of heart, the low aims,
the weak desires, the feebleness in the conflict with self, the
niggardliness in Your service--all these would go. You could draw
me within Your attraction; You could make me follow You, not simply
through duty or interest, but with the quick step of one to whom Your
service is the absorbing interest of life. You could make Yourself so
much the need of my soul that it would turn to You as the flowers to
the sun for warmth and colour, for growth, for beauty, for its very
life. With a word You could work a change such as this. And what is
there to hinder it? You are there in the tabernacle, O Sun of Justice,
near enough to warm me through and through with Your heat; and oh, how
often, did I only desire it, You would come still nearer, entering my
very heart to make it live by You!
Say the word that You desire to say more than I to hear. Speak, Lord,
for Thy servant heareth. Say the transforming word each morning over my
heart when You stand at the altar and say it over the bread and wine.
Say the word that will change the lowliest, the vilest thing of earth
_into Yourself_. See my heart, see the hearts of all I love upon
the paten, awaiting there Your creative word. Change them from what
they are to what You would have them be.
[52] Gal. i.
[53] Acts ix.
XIX.
I HAVE SOMEWHAT TO SAY TO THEE.
--_Luke_ vii. 40.
A word to me? a word for me apart
No other ear to hearken--heart to heart?
A word Thy hidden pleasure to impart?
O Master, say it!
Is it a word of love, entreating mine--
Poor recompense indeed for love divine,
Yet precious to that human Heart of Thine?
Dear Master, say it!
A word of blame? Lord, I deserve it--nay,
No word of Thine can I deserve--yet may
I know what chiding love would have Thee say?
O Master, say it!
A word to cast aside my craven fears,
And bravely bear the cross these many years
Dragged after Thee with protest and with tears?
O Master, say it!
Perchance a dreaded word, not once or twice,
But often suing for a gift of price;
Can I invite that call to sacrifice?
Yes, Master, say it!
A word from Thee the rightful course will trace,
A word from Thee the shrinking spirit brace,
A word from Thee bestow all needful grace,
O Master, say it!
No word of Thine but gives before it takes,
And taking, generous compensation makes,
And effort asking, energy awakes,
O Master, say it!
A warning maybe--frighted love’s disguise,
How stern soe’er in seeming, kindly wise,
Unveiling danger to unwary eyes?
O Master, say it!
Thy voice is ever music to mine ear,
Silence alone o’erwhelms my soul with fear
Say all, say freely what I crave to hear,
O Master, say it!
One tender word to Thomas brought belief,
One pitying word, a kingdom to a thief,
One only word would bring my soul relief,
O Master, say it!
New shape would aims, desires, affections take,
New power of sacrifice within me wake,
New need of toil and suffering for Thy sake,
O Master, say it!
One word, I know, Thou hast for me--a word
In the still hours of prayer how often heard,
Not long, perchance, its welcome sound deferred,
O Master, say it!
Word life’s incessant prayer must wrest from Thee;
Word holding my eternal destiny,
Word I must hear or perish utterly,
O Master, say it!
When past my little day of time and grace,
Lone in another world I seek my place,
And trembling fall before Thy unveiled Face,
Dear Master, say it!
_Come!_--blest recall from exile’s weary years,
Rest from the awful strife ’twixt hopes and fears,
Sweet word of welcome after toil and tears,
O Master, say it!
Though silent now, keep Thou that word in store,
The word to make me Thine for evermore;
By all Thy loving-kindness, I implore,
Dear Master, say it!
XX.
A DIVINE PLAINT.
My people have done two evils. They have forsaken Me, the fountain of
living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns,
that can hold no water.--_Jer._ ii. 13.
What heart so hard but could find a motive for contrition in this
tender reproach! No question here of the Divine majesty outraged, the
Divine rights infringed. The harm _to ourselves_--this is the evil
we have done by forsaking God. And He stands sadly by, watching our
futile efforts to fill with earth’s sorry pleasures the hearts created
for Himself.
The plaint is echoed by the Incarnate Son. “_You will not come to
Me that you may have life._”[54] And echoed not once, nor from
Jerusalem only, but through all time and from the countless tabernacles
where the Eucharistic Life is being lived for us. How is it that
that cry does not arrest us as we go heedlessly on our way? What a
difference it would make to our round of daily toil and worries and
anxieties if we carried away oftener from the altar the Life Who is
waiting there to give Himself to us. He would not encroach upon our
time. He is the most considerate of guests, and knows we are no more
able to lay aside our domestic cares than was His own blessed Mother
in her little cave-home at Nazareth. He would not interfere with our
projects, our occupations, our amusements even. But He would act the
part of a helpmate throughout, guiding our plans, sanctifying our work,
ennobling our pleasures--above all, sharing and soothing our sorrows.
Is an ally such as this so easily found that we can afford to turn a
deaf ear to the invitation from the tabernacle: “Whom seekest thou--a
friend? I am He.”
* * * * *
O Loving One, who are we that You should so earnestly entreat our
friendship? Have You not thronging about You legions upon legions of
angels? What need can You have of us? Yet You not only tolerate our
society but beg for it. The little troublesome children whom strangers
find a nuisance are a solace to the father, who feels something to
be missing unless he has them pressing and chattering all about him.
So is it with You. To satisfy Your Heart You must have us, needy and
clamorous, all about You, besetting You on every side.
Lord, had we always treated You as You deserve, could You be more in
love with our company? Surely Your eagerness should drive away fear
that our uncouthness and coldness will disgust You. Love “is patient,
is kind, ... beareth all things, ... hopeth all things, endureth all
things.”[55] O Lord and Lover, we will not disappoint You. Since You
are content to have us as we are, we will draw near to You without
fear: “Behold we come to Thee; for Thou art the Lord our God”.[56]
[54] John v.
[55] 1 Cor. xiii.
[56] Jer. iii.
XXI.
THANKSGIVING.
And he fell on his face before His feet, giving thanks.--_Luke_
xvii. 16.
Just as I do to-day, dear Lord, in the fulness of my heart, in the
first transport of joy and praise and gratitude that comes with the
sense of answered prayer. My happiness is all from You. In all that has
happened I trace the workings of Your hand, and see how it has moved
all secondary causes, and ordered all things sweetly.
“Thou, O my God, hast made me joyful with great joy.”[57]
“Blessed be the Lord God this day.”[58]
“We bless Thee, O Lord God, because it hath not happened as we
suspected. For Thou hast shewn Thy mercy to us, and Thou hast taken
pity.”[59]
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me bless His
holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and never forget all He hath done
for thee.... Who satisfieth thy desire with good things.... The Lord is
compassionate and merciful.... He hath not dealt with us according to
our sins.... The mercy of the Lord is from eternity and unto eternity
upon them that fear Him.”[60]
“Give glory to the Lord, for He is good: for His mercy endureth for
ever. Let them say so that have been redeemed by the Lord, whom He hath
redeemed from the hand of the enemy.... They cried to the Lord in their
tribulation, and He delivered them out of their distresses.... Let the
mercies of the Lord give glory to Him and His wonderful works to the
children of men. For He hath satisfied the empty soul, and hath filled
the hungry soul with good things.”[61]
“Praise ye the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing ye to His name, for it
is sweet.”[62]
“Who healeth the broken of heart, and bindeth up their bruises.”[63]
“The Lord hath granted me my petition which I asked of Him.”[64]
“Blessed be God, Who hath not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from
me.”[65]
“O Lord our God, all this store ... is from Thy hand.”[66]
“O Lord, there is none like Thee.”[67]
* * * * *
_He fell on his face before His feet giving thanks._ The right
place, the right posture for thanksgiving. My whole self, body and
soul, seeks to pour itself out in praise. And yet, my God, when do we
feel ourselves more helpless, more bound in by our narrowness than
when we come to thanksgiving! Our heart is freer on the path of sorrow
than on that of joy. It knows its way better. It can go further. There
are novenas of Ten Fridays, Masses and Communions, year after year of
persistent prayer. But when the answer comes at last; when suddenly
the burden is lifted; when the thrill of gladness and the stillness of
peace succeed one another in sweet alternations within the soul--how
poor, how soon ended is our _Te Deum_! A rush to Your feet--a few
tears perhaps--a few broken words of gratitude, and--our heart fails
us. In vain do we lift it up in David’s heart, that censor of glorious
praise. There weighs upon it still the stifling sense of oppression. We
can but sink back in our helplessness and long for the full freedom of
all our powers that is to come.
Oh yes, the soul never feels so powerless, so imprisoned as when the
call upon it is for thanksgiving. It is a caged bird always, but it
never beats more hopelessly against the bars than when it would soar
upward in the free flight of praise.
It is then we turn to our God with us on the altar, to the Victim of
infinite worth placed at our disposal to be offered to God as a full,
worthy, adequate return for all His goodness to us.
“What shall I render to the Lord for all He hath rendered unto me?”
I will come to the altar of God to unite my thanksgiving and my praise
with the divine gratitude of the God-Man.
I will offer with Him His sacrifice and mine, a gift of infinite value
from my grateful heart.
I will receive into my poor heart, whose powers, stretched to their
utmost, fall infinitely short of what is due to Him, the Heart of the
Man-God.
* * * * *
My God, I rejoice beyond measure that in Mass and Holy Communion I
can offer You a thanksgiving that is adequate because infinite, a
thanksgiving worthy of Your acceptance. Look not on the poverty of my
praise, but “look upon the Face of Thy Christ”.[68] _Per Ipsum, et
cum Ipso, et in Ipso ... omnis honor et gloria. Amen._
[57] _Cf._ 2 Esdras xii.
[58] 1 Kings v.
[59] Tobias viii.
[60] Psa. cii.
[61] _Ibid._ cvi.
[62] Psa. cxxxiv.
[63] _Ibid._ cxlvi.
[64] 1 Kings i.
[65] Psa. lxv.
[66] 1 Par. xxix.
[67] _Ibid._ xvii.
[68] Psa. lxxxiii.
XXII.
DARKNESS.
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?--_Matt._ xxvii. 46.
_My God!_ as if You belonged to no one else in the wide world.
As if You and I were alone in creation. As if neither in heaven above
nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth, You had a
single other creature!
_My God!_ as if for me alone you had done all in the orders of
nature, grace, and glory; working for me from the beginning, through
all causes, by all creatures, in all events. As if for me alone were
the earth and the sea and all within them. For me all the ordering
of Your Providence in the affairs of time. For me the heaven of
heavens and all the concourse there. For me the Saints and Mary; the
Incarnation, the Life, and death, and teaching of Christ; the Church
and Sacraments; the Eucharist, and Mass, and Communion. For me life
everlasting and the Blessed Vision of Yourself.
_My God!_ for Whom I am made. Without Whom happiness for me were
the wildest of impossibilities. The Supreme Good able to satisfy to the
full every want of my complex nature. Infinite Goodness providing for
all and for each with an exquisite discrimination of my need.
_My God!_ in a sense known to myself and You alone--father,
mother, sister, brother, lover, friend--all in all to me.
_My God!_ as if You belonged to me rather than to Yourself;
belonged to me rather than I to You. As if You were for my sake rather
than I for Yours. Or at least as if we so belonged to one another as of
necessity to imply and supplement each other--as hill and valley, light
and shade, the ocean and the void it fills.
* * * * *
_My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?_ Why this darkness in
which I grope for You in vain, in which I seek in vain to find Your
Face? Why these nameless fears, this dread of You, this shrinking from
You?
Or, harder still to bear, this heaviness of soul, this hardness of
heart, this weariness of You, my God, this restlessness in Your
presence, this impatience of Your ways--why all this inconsistency and
perversity?
Why, O Supreme Good, do You show Yourself to me as infinitely
desirable, only to elude my grasp when I stretch out my hands to
feel for You and draw You to myself? Why do You brush past me in the
darkness to leave me all the more desolate and disconsolate because
You were so near? Why are You deaf when I cry? Why, here in this
tabernacle, are You so near and yet so far away? Why do You make it
more and more impossible for me to find rest out of You, and then deny
Yourself to my soul? Why have You sought for me so persistently when I
fled from You, to hide from me now that I seek You? _My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me?_
Is Your answer to me this--that I have forsaken You first? Is the
hiding of Your Face the just punishment of wilful deafness to Your
voice and resistance to Your leading? Are You waiting for some act
of mine as the price of Your turning to me? Is it pride or any other
passion that interposes as a cloud between us? What is it, my God? Take
it away at any cost. I am sorry for my insincerity; for all meanness in
my dealings with You; for all wilful blindness and deafness; for the
cowardice that fears to see what will call for effort and for sacrifice.
If conscience does not reproach me, I am not hereby justified, because
Your all-seeing eye may note, does note what escapes mine. I own to
whatever You see that is amiss. I am perfectly conscious that there is
more--oh, a thousand times more than enough to make You turn away Your
Face and forsake me utterly. Show me what You will have me see, that I
may amend it, and bear with what You dare not show me, lest I should be
utterly cast down and despair.
_My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!_ You have taught me
by Your own meek complaint that I too may complain lovingly. I look up
through the darkness of Calvary. I hear above me that cry from Your own
lips, and I am instructed and comforted. If the well-beloved Son for
bearing the appearance of sin was thus shut out from the Father’s Face,
how shall a sinner complain? If this was done in the green wood, what
shall be done in the dry?
And if all through the blackness of that desolation He remained still
the well-beloved Son, so may the weakest of His brethren, so may I
remain--dear to the Father’s Heart through all the discipline of
chastisement, through all the needful purification of my imperfect love.
In the very midnight of His dereliction He called on the Father, clung
to the Father, threw Himself on the Father with absolute trust. So may
I, so _must_ I, in the darkness that is but the faintest shadow of
His.
_Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit_--for this trial, for
every trial, for the last trial, when the shadow of death will close
round me, and it will be hard to find Your Face. Into the hands that
created me, that redeemed me, into which I shall pass at the moment of
death, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.
“My God, My God!”--into the night went forth
That lonely cry,
Piteous as never plaint from burdened breast
Its misery.
Went forth _for me_ into the night, that wail
Of woe divine;
His bitter dereliction bared, to draw
The sting from mine.
And yet another cry ere shades of death
Around Him stole,
Revealed the sanctuary dark and lone
Of Jesu’s soul:
“Father, into Thy hands”--a Son’s bequest,
That we might know
The filial, all unshaken trust, beneath
That depth of woe.
“Father, into Thy hands”--that we might learn
Since Jesus died
Theirs first the right to claim the Father’s love,
His crucified.
XXIII.
“WHAT IS TRUTH?”
--_John_ xviii. 38.
“Pilate saith to Him: What is truth? And when he said this he went out.”
Too often, O Lord, in my dealings with You I am like Pilate. Moved by
Your grace to desire the things that are for my peace, I come to You to
know my way: “_What shall I do to possess everlasting life?_”[69]
“_Make the way known to me, wherein I should walk._”[70] “_Teach
me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God._”[71] And when I have said
this I go out. I do not wait to hear an answer which may exact more of
me than I am prepared to give. I am afraid to remain in Your Presence,
lest You should beckon whither I am not willing to follow. And so I
ask lightly: “What is truth?” without waiting to hear what the Lord my
God will speak in me.[72]
How much more readily I pray for light than for strength. “_Lord,
that I may see!_” And when the scales begin to fall from my eyes, I
turn away lest I should find what I am seeking.
It is not Your way, O Lord, to constrain our free will. You meet us
half-way, more than half-way by a great deal. But You have decreed
that further and more abundant grace, the grace that is efficacious,
shall be the reward of correspondence. If we withhold this, we enter
upon a terrible contest between Your invitation on the one hand and the
shrinking of nature on the other.
“Pilate saith to Him: What is truth? And when he had said this he went
out again to the Jews and said to them: I find no cause in Him.... Then
Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him.... And went forth again and saith
to the Jews: Behold I bring Him forth unto you that you may know that
I find no cause in Him.... Take Him you and crucify Him for I find no
cause in Him.... The Jews answered: He ought to die because He made
Himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore had heard this saying
he feared the more. And he entered into the hall again and said to
Jesus: Whence art Thou? But Jesus gave him no answer. From thenceforth
Pilate sought to release Him.... And he saith to the Jews: Behold your
King.... Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified.”
* * * * *
Oh, the agony of mind, the risk, the misery we bring upon ourselves by
our vacillations and trifling with grace! Surely the remedy is to gain
by prayer strength proportioned to the light God gives. It is as easy
for Him to give the one as the other, for “there is none strong like
our God”.[73] But I must ask, for “strength cometh from Heaven”.[74]
“Ask and it shall be given to you.” “God is my strong One, in Him will
I trust ... my rock, and my strength, and my Saviour.”[75] He will
not leave me in my weakness. If He shows me His ways, He will give me
strength to walk in them. “My God is made my strength.”[76]
[69] Luke xviii.
[70] Psa. cxlii.
[71] _Ibid._
[72] Psa. lxxxiv.
[73] 1 Kings ii.
[74] 1 Mach. iii.
[75] 2 Kings xxii.
[76] Isa. xlix.
XXIV.
HIS SECOND COMING.
They shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven ... and
then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn.--_Matt._ xxiv. 30.
Dearest Lord, is there a sadder word than this in the whole of the
written Word? Did a sadder ever fall from Your sacred lips? That when
You come again to finish the work of redemption by the destruction of
the last enemy, death; to gather to Yourself those for whose salvation
You came down from heaven, and were incarnate, and suffered, and died,
and founded Your Church, and gave Your sacraments; those whom You bade
to watch and wait for You and lift up their heads at Your coming; that
when at last You come, this shall be Your reception--“_then shall all
the tribes of the earth mourn_”!
What an awful testimony to the decay of truth among the children of
men, to the unchristianising of the world! “_All the tribes of the
earth_,” as if the elect would be but as the ears of corn left
on the field after the harvesting. O Messiah, so long promised, so
earnestly expected--is this the return of those to whom You were sent,
among whom You have lived as one of themselves, for whom You have
sacrificed everything You took from our nature?
“They shall see the Son of Man coming”--not now in the midnight silence
as once to Mary, not hidden under lowly accidents as through long
centuries upon the altar, but “in great power and majesty,” “the King
in His beauty,” revealed to every eye. “_And then shall all the
tribes of the earth mourn._”
* * * * *
The awfulness of these words must have struck the Twelve as they sat
about Your feet that day on Olivet looking down upon Josaphat, for John
re-echoed them from Patmos half a century later: “Behold, He cometh
with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him.... And all the tribes of
the earth shall bewail themselves because of Him.”[77]
How our hearts would sink within us were it not for those other words
equally with these the words of truth: “He shall send His angels to
gather together His elect from the four winds, from the uttermost
part of the earth, to the uttermost part of heaven.”[78] From every
corner of the earth will those blessed ones come trooping in--“a great
multitude, which no man can number, of all nations, and tribes, and
peoples, and tongues”.[79]
Lord Jesus! Who would not desire with desire to be one of that great
multitude, were it only to console Your Heart for the losses of that
day! Let this happiness be mine, and that of as many as can be reached
by the utmost stretching of Your mercy, the fullest and farthest
flowing of Your precious Blood!
Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus.
Have mercy, O Lord, on all the tribes of earth, that they may not
perish, nor bewail themselves because of You when You come to judgment.
Have mercy, that when the day of the Lord, that dreadful day shall
come, the number of the elect may be multiplied, and the thirst of Your
Heart appeased.
[77] Apoc. i.
[78] Mark xiii.
[79] Apoc. vii.
XXV.
OUR EARTH.
_Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei._--_Psa._ xviii. 1.
_The heavens declare the glory of God._ There are hours when the
grandeur of the midnight skies draws from our hearts: “Coeli enarrant,”
and conversely: “Quam sordet tellus!” “How vile earth appears when
I look up to heaven!”[80] When we would wish to be so far away from
earth, so near to God, that we could cover it with our two hands and
shut it out with all its sinfulness from His sight.
And there are hours when we re-echo David’s other cry: “_The earth
is the Lord’s._”[81] Studded with millions of stars--its sanctuary
lamps--here in grand constellations, there in solitary beauty amid the
darkness, it lies outstretched before its Creator, a very heaven. Yes,
speck as it is in creation, our world has a beauty all its own in the
eyes of Him Who made it. “There is not found the like to it in glory.”
Marred and sin-stained, it is still the dear world of the Incarnation,
the world God so loved as to give to it His Son. Its highways, its
fields, its waters have felt the tread of His feet; to the end of
time He has made it His home. “I have chosen and have sanctified this
place, and My eyes and My heart shall be there always.”[82] Always.
His interest in it is as keen, as human, as when, a wayfarer here, He
shared its joys and sorrows. Its every man, woman, and child to-day has
a distinct place in His heart.
His sacramental Presence sanctifies it from pole to pole. On each of
its altars a divine sacrifice is offered day by day. In each of its
tabernacles is gathered up the worship of all creation. From each an
unceasing praise goes up to the Throne of God, infinitely transcending
the paltry outrages of man. From each radiates a divine life,
communicating itself to all the members of the Body of Christ. From
each as from a well-spring go forth all graces of light and strength;
all holy impulses and high resolves; all courage, steadfastness,
perseverance in well-doing; all works of love to the members, born
of love to the Head. All spiritual energy, from the robust virtue of
the saint to the weakest supernatural act of the repentant sinner, is
flowing this hour from earth’s countless tabernacles, giving to God a
glory before which the material glory of the starry heavens pales into
insignificance.
O hidden God, I adore You as the source of all this glorious life. Who
would not love the world, which You have so loved as to make it Your
home all days even to the end of time? Who would not strive with You
and for Your sake to light up its dark places, to cleanse its foul
places, to spread far and near the saving knowledge of its Redeemer,
that so the love poured out upon it, the Blood shed for it, may not
have been in vain?
What can I do, O Lord, within my narrow sphere to help on the coming of
Your Kingdom in the world? What have You given me to give away again in
Your service? As to what do You say to me: “Freely have you received,
freely give”?[83] Is it health, wealth, talent, influence, leisure for
good works in any of the various fields calling for my aid and open
to me? Is it devotedness and self-sacrifice in the apostolate of home
life? Or is it the noblest and most far-reaching of works for God, the
training of young souls in His love and service? Am I doing good work
for You in my allotted sphere? What account am I preparing to give You
of the talents entrusted to me? How could I bear it, O my Lord, should
You ever have to reproach me, as “an evil and slothful servant,” with
hiding the talent given me for Your service? What am I doing with my
life, with its energies, its opportunities, its responsibilities, its
graces? Where are the souls I am helping to save? Where is the lot I
am brightening, the cross I am lightening for Your dear sake? In what
direction am I furthering Your interests and sacrificing self to Your
glory? Unless I can lay my hands in Yours, and look up trustfully into
Your Face with “Lord, Thou knowest” my daily prayer, “Thy Kingdom come”
is a mockery, a self-delusion, a sham.
[80] St. Ignatius.
[81] Psa. xxiv.
[82] 2 Par. vii.
[83] Matt. x.
XXVI.
CHRIST OUR STUDY.
You have not so learned Christ.--_Ephes._ iv. 20.
It behoves us to have right conceptions of the great spiritual
realities which affect our life here and our destiny hereafter. Above
all must we learn aright Him Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Gradually, from our earliest childhood, the idea of Christ has been
forming, developing, taking definite shape in our minds. May-be it
is stereotyped by this time. It is all-imperative for us that the
Christ we have so conceived should be the true Christ--“the Christ,
the Son of the Living God”. _Tout sort des idées._ Our idea of
Him will not affect Himself or alter our fundamental relations with
Him, but it will affect the whole moulding of our spiritual life, our
whole character, our every thought, word and deed here, and our whole
eternity hereafter. Surely, then, we must examine our impression of
Christ, and should we find that the influence of early education, of
a false creed, of unwholesome reading or association, or the trend of
our character has distorted in our minds the true Christ as reflected
in the Gospels, we must at all costs correct that impression. If it has
become stereotyped we must break up our mould and start our work afresh.
Meditation upon the Gospels; the quiet, steady gaze of the inward eye
on Christ; the study of Him day after day under all circumstances and
amid ever shifting scenes, and not of His outward bearing, His words
and actions only, but of the Heart from which these spring--thus it was
that the saints built up His image in their souls, a true living image
which transformed them into the likeness of itself, and became a power
within them, drawing all things to Him Who was to them all in all.
_You have not so learned Christ._ If Christ our Lord has not as
yet drawn _me_ wholly to Himself, it is because my conception
of Him is faulty. Whether this is the result of simple carelessness
which has allowed His image in my mind to take shape anyhow, or of
Jansenistic habits of thought that have fashioned for me a Lord
stern, exacting, repellent, a very caricature of the Christ of the
Gospels, Christ our Lord; or whether it is my own character, timorous,
suspicious, selfish, unsympathising, that has inspired my present idea
of Him--from whatever source the misconception has come, it must be
set right, or its results will be simply fatal--fatal to the growth of
anything like personal love and familiar friendship with Him; fatal to
His influence on my life, my actions, my work for Him in the souls of
others.
Not any Christ, the creature of my own distorted fancy, but Him Whom
the Father has sent, I am to fall down and worship. He alone has power
as He alone has right to occupy and absorb my whole interest, my whole
affection, my whole self. He alone can be a living influence radiating
from my own life to the lives of others.
* * * * *
O Christ my Lord, give me so to know You that my knowledge may be
glory to You, and life to my own soul and the souls of others. “This
is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, Whom Thou hast sent.”[84] Be Yourself my Master in this one
thing necessary. And let me go to the source to draw--learning You
from the scenes of Your life. Let me stand by the well of Samaria, and
the pool of Bethsaida, and the bier at Nain--and watch and listen. Let
the charm of Your divine Person subdue and win me, and the sound of
Your voice be familiar to me. Let the knowledge of Your ways with the
sinner, the sufferer, the little children, grave such a picture of You
in my heart that not even its perversity can bring before me when I
say “Jesus” any other form than that of the most beautiful, the most
tender, the most compassionate of men.
Veronica wiped Your sacred suffering Face, and received as the greatest
of rewards, stamped on her veil, and still more upon her heart, that
_vera icon_--that true image of Christ which was thenceforth to be
inseparable from her memory, the very name by which all ages were to
know her.
Stamp on my heart, dear Lord, _the true likeness_ of Yourself. And
as this likeness must be ever growing, let me come often to the altar
rails to learn You more and more. The tabernacle is the Gospel history
continued. Time has not dimmed Your fairness, O beautiful One, nor
dulled the sympathy of Your human Heart. All that You were to Your own
in this world, all that You are to them this hour in heaven, is here
within the tabernacle, is here _for me_. Here then let me come to
study You--patient, tender, obedient still, meek and humble of heart,
Jesus, yesterday, to-day and for ever!
[84] John xvii.
XXVII.
OUR FATHER.
O clap your hands, all ye nations; shout unto God with the voice of
joy.--_Psa._ xlvi. 1.
My God, what would have become of us had You shown Yourself to us as
the All-just instead of the All-loving One You are? Had You been more
mindful of Your Majesty than of our need? We know so little how to
comport ourselves in Your presence, that it might have seemed more
fitting You should remain in the recesses of Your Godhead, manifest
Yourself but dimly and rarely, and restrict our worship of You to
the most distant homage. It would have been but the manifestation of
another attribute in place of that sweet mercy which has shaped the
whole course, not of redemption’s plan only, but of the inner life of
each one of us.
My God, it might have been so--and what then would have become of us?
Where would praise have been, and trust, and loving return to Your arms
after a fall? Blessed be Your name that You willed to show Yourself our
Father, willed that with the younger race, Your human family, mercy
should ever be in the ascendant.
“Blessed be You for ever, my God, my Mercy,”[85] for having shown
Yourself to our weak sight in this softened light, the light that
begets love--as One easily appeased, as One constraining trust, as
One with arms widespread to Your timid children--the All-forgiving,
All-tender, All-compassionate--_our Father Who art in heaven_.
[85] _Cf._ Psa. lviii.
XXVIII.
HEREAFTER.
Thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.--_John_
xiii. 7.
I look forward into the eternal years and see myself at last in my
rest on the bosom of God. All over! Life, and uncertainty, and death,
and judgment, and purgatory. And with my head on the Heart of Him Who
has loved me to the end, I look back. How clear everything is from
this height, in this unclouded light and this untroubled peace! All
mists swept away; all doubts dispelled; all questions set at rest; all
cravings satisfied.
_Thou shalt know hereafter._ Why that persistent prayer remained
unanswered; why evil prospered and good was overcome; why in spite
of every effort those difficulties remained difficulties to the
last--how plain it all is now! I see now the everlasting results of
the thoughts, and words, and acts that sped so quickly by. I see the
distinct work of each in shaping my eternity. I see the relation of
grace to glory; why I enjoy the blessed vision of God thus far and no
farther. Where I guided my steps by the light of faith, clung to God in
the darkness, “joined myself to Him and endured”--what fruit of joy for
eternity! Where there was cowardice, self-seeking, above all, mistrust
of God--what loss that can never, never be repaired! Oh, why did I
not realise that I was meant to live by faith during my little life
down there, in order to enjoy the fruits of faith in this real life of
eternity!
_Thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter._ But I
_may_ know now if I pray for light and strength. I may know now
the things that are for my peace. I may have now the spiritual insight,
the _lumen cordium_ which the Holy Spirit gives to all who ask.
Lord Jesus, here really present, make me see now by the light of faith
what I shall see almost directly in the light of eternity; when I look
back on life, and grace, and sacraments, and opportunities, on worldly
aims and worldly honours--from my place in heaven. By the tears You
shed over Jerusalem that knew not the day of her visitation, grant that
I, that all I love, that all men may know in this our day the things
that are for our peace.
Dawn now--the hours of earth’s expectancy,
From the grey heaven enough of light to guide
The wary feet--no more; enough to trace
Against the sky in outline faint and blurred
Fair forms, their fairness shrouded for the nonce:
In every line of grace and symmetry
And tender hue to be revealed, when day
This hazy scene shall flood with living light,
Bathing all things in beauty. Now we know
In part, the noontide comes and _we shall see_.
O restless heart! resenting mystery,
Angry with night, that by Divine decree
Divides with day the task of perfecting
God’s world of souls--fret not against the gloom
That, baffling, humbles thee. Why this reverse,
This wrong defeating right, brave effort crowned
By failure, good with itself at variance,
Thou know’st not now; _now_ the strong trial of faith,
The clinging, blind with tears, unto thy God
In patient trust--_hereafter thou shalt see_.
XXIX.
MY VINEYARD.
Let us see if the vineyard flourish.--_Cant._ vii. 12.
The vivid lightnings of the East that reveal in all the brightness of
day what lay hidden in darkness, have their parallel in the flood of
light flashed at times upon the soul. Without warning, without apparent
cause, it comes--a momentary brightness, but lasting in its effects.
Imagination, mind, heart, all have been steeped in it; henceforth the
truth it has lit up becomes a force to influence our life here and our
eternity hereafter.
Has our responsibility to others been ever thrust upon us in one of
these bursts of light? Have we realised, as it were for the first time,
the influence which in God’s inscrutable designs we have over the
destiny of others; the dread power which wittingly or unwittingly,
for good or for evil, we are ever exercising over those around us; the
account which will be demanded of such a trust?
O God, You have given “to every one of us commandment concerning our
neighbour”.[86] What kind of influence has mine been thus far? At the
sixth, the ninth, the eleventh hour it was said to me: “Go you into
My vineyard”.[87] What has been the result of that call and of that
mission? There has been a corner of that vineyard marked out for me
to tend. Am I labouring in it with earnestness, with self-sacrifice,
with the purity of intention that overcomes difficulties, and survives
disappointment, and is undisturbed by failure, because it looks to You
alone, works not for self but for Your glory? Or am I slumbering at my
post? With what feelings do I hear You say to me: “Let us see if the
vineyard flourish, if the flowers be ready to bring forth fruits”![88]
Is it of me You say: “I passed by the field of the slothful man, and
by the vineyard of the foolish man. And behold it was all filled with
nettles, and thorns had covered the face thereof, and the stone-wall
was broken down”?[89] Must I own in my shame, “My vineyard I have not
kept”?[90]
O Lord of the vineyard, Whose love and trust are shown in this, that
You have called me to labour for what is dearer to You than Your very
life--how have I justified Your trust? Do not punish my slothfulness
by making over to another’s more earnest toil what has been given into
my care. But rather stand by and help me to work according to Your
will, that nothing may perish or suffer loss through fault of mine.
Help me to watch vigilantly the little plot committed to me; to cast
out carefully all noxious weeds; to dig, to prune, to bind up and
strengthen what is weak; “in solicitude not slothful, in spirit fervent
serving the Lord”.[91] Then shall my vineyard flourish and bring forth
fruit to Your glory in due season.
[86] Ecclus. xvii.
[87] Matt. xx.
[88] Cant. vii.
[89] Prov. xxiv.
[90] Cant. i.
[91] Rom. xii.
XXX.
WHERE WE ARE TRUE.
Thou sayest, I am rich, and made wealthy, and have need of nothing:
and knowest not, that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and
blind, and naked.--_Apoc._ iii. 17.
It seems to me, dear Lord, that You can hardly reproach me with this. I
know but too well how deficient I am in humility; how I fire up at even
a hint implying blame, suspicion, mistrust; how reluctantly I own to
those about me that I am in the wrong.
But alone with You, my inward witness, it is otherwise. There is no
difficulty, no reluctance here. Once in the Presence Chamber, the
curtain dropped behind me, the gaze of creatures turned aside, I am
myself, _and true_, without disguise, feint, tricking out of any
sort. I do not trim my speech, or tone down my “Peccavi,” “to make
excuses in sins”.[92] I conceal neither my failings nor my needs. With
the privilege of the creature in presence of the Creator, I lie on my
face before You just as I am, for Your eye to see, Your ear to hearken
to, Your Heart to pity and to bless.
How could there be pretence with You or affectation? I know and feel
that “Thy eyes are upon me,”[93] “beholding the good and the evil”;[94]
that “God Who seeth all”[95] “is the weigher of spirits”.[96] Before
that all-seeing Eye self-delusion, conceit, untruthfulness in every
shape must melt away.
I cannot indeed know my nothingness and sinfulness as they are known
to You. I do not fathom one of the thousand motives I have for
self-abasement in Your sight. But I think my self-knowledge as far
as it goes is true. I am ready to see with You that I am wretched
and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I know and feel with the
most intimate conviction that in my soul are the seeds of every evil
passion; that they will choke the good seed and ruin me unless Your
power represses them; that unless Your Almighty hand checks the weight
of temptation, my enemy must prevail over me; that it is owing to Your
goodness I have not been tempted as others; that of myself I am nothing
but weakness and misery and sin.
How it comes to pass that my self-knowledge does not bear better
fruit; that when occasion requires I am not more ready to own to what
I am thus conscious of, am not more indulgent and compassionate in
my judgment of others--I know not. But I thank You for what You have
given; and ask earnestly for more and stronger light to bring about
conformity between my interior conviction and my exterior words and
actions.
Veni, Pater pauperum,
Veni, Dator munerum,
Veni, Lumen cordium.
[92] Psa. cxl.
[93] Job vii.
[94] Prov. xv.
[95] Ecclus. vii.
[96] Prov. xvi.
XXXI.
IN SILENCE AND IN HOPE.
--_Isa._ xxx. 15.
She came with her crushing memories,
She came with her secret fears,
She brought Him her hidden misery
And her bitter burning tears.
And all alone at that cheerless board
Prepared Him her own sweet feast,
Offering her heart with her spikenard
And the kiss that “never ceased”.
She marvelled when He upbraided
The cruel thoughts of men,
And tears fell fast as He lauded her--
Her, Mary Magdalen.
As she marked how His Heart no token
Of her contrite love had missed,
The love that had given of its best,
Anointed, and washed, and kissed;
And tendered a heart with penitence
Filled to the very brim,
And braved the scorn of a carping crowd
To stake its all on Him.
Absorbed in her loving ministries
She knelt at His Feet apart,
The scandal of every eye save one
That soundeth the secret heart.
She knew that her unforgiven past
Lay open to His ken,
Yet no word of supplication
Spake Mary Magdalen.
Love taught a sublimer pleading,
Elected a better part--
Calm trust in Him Who spurneth not
The humble contrite heart.
From out the fulness of His own
Came plenary release:
“Her many sins are pardoned her:
Arise and go in peace”.
O Christ, Who that poor sinner’s love
So gloriously hast crowned,
That through all time her name with Thine
Shall through the world resound;
Who waitest here the penitent,
All-pitying now as then,
Give me the brave, unfaltering trust
Of Thy dear Magdalen.
XXXII.
GOD’S WORK.
To the Lord was His own work known from the beginning of the
world.--_Acts_ xv. 18.
Were Your work known to us, my God, as it is to You, how well ordered
our minds and hearts, our views, affections, lives would be! How all
things would fall into their proper places--events public and private,
every detail of Your Providence affecting ourselves and others! Our
desires especially, how tranquil, how subordinated they would be! Or,
rather, would there be any desire save for the furtherance of Your work
by the fulfilment of Your will?
But may not this be our disposition now by means of faith? May we not
see in all that happens the action or the permission of God, to Whom
His own work is known?
A child in the midst of a crowd is conscious of nothing but its
immediate surroundings. Crushed and stifled, it can see and feel only
the objects actually touching it. But let the father take it up in his
arms and hold it aloft--what a difference the elevation will make!
I am in a crowd; in the dark, with the narrowest views and interests;
knowing but dimly for what we are come together; finding no meaning
often in what is stirring around me. But should God deign to raise me
to His point of view, what a change would come over me! How differently
I should look on all things! In all that happens I should see the good
pleasure or the permission of His Providence: “reaching from end to end
mightily, and ordering all things sweetly”.[97] This would not dull my
susceptibilities, nor cramp my desires. Far from it! With the widened
prospect interests would multiply on every side. But all things would
be seen in their true light. In all I should recognise the Divine
will unfolding itself in the course of events, and guiding all things,
undeterred by the action of man’s free will, to its own predetermined
ends. In a deadly contest involving my country’s honour and welfare,
my patriotism would run high. But too violent regrets at the reverses
of our arms, too vehement anxiety as to the issue, would be held in
check by my ignorance of God’s designs. Once known by the issue, His
will would be accepted loyally, simply because it was His will. “Thanks
be to God, Who hath given us the victory.”[98] Or--in spite of human
feeling and repugnance--“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away:
blessed be the name of the Lord”.[99]
So in family trials, the hidden sorrows of the heart, the vicissitudes
of the spiritual life--there would be the habit of looking up into my
Father’s Face to see His meaning in it all; and where I could not see,
learning to bow my head and kiss His hand. “Yea, Father; for so hath
it seemed good in Thy sight.”[100]
Does the Creator ask too much of His little creature when He bids
it submit itself thus to Him? Or is it not rather a marvellous
condescension on His part to invite the fusion of our will with the
Divine, thus associating us with Himself in the work known to Him from
the beginning?
* * * * *
What You want, my God, You shall have, and as cheerfully as I can
give it. To give without cost or pain is not always in my power. You
do not ask this: nay, You accept the cost and pain as proving greater
love. You value above all things the faith that gives in the dark, not
seeing Your open hand, nor the smile which would be its instant reward;
not understanding as yet the joy our fidelity is to Him Who deigns to
realise His eternal designs through the instrumentality of our free
will.
O God, let not mine be wanting! Take all I have, take it at any cost.
I make You welcome to all. My reward shall be to kneel at Your feet one
day, and follow Your finger, showing how, here in brightness, here in
shade, Your work was entrusted to me, and--my God, what joy! I have not
disappointed You.
[97] Wisd. viii.
[98] 1 Cor. xv.
[99] Job i.
[100] Matt. xi.
XXXIII.
A STRONG CRY.
They rebuked him, that he should hold his peace. But he cried out much
more: “Son of David, have mercy on me”.--_Luke_ xviii. 39.
There are moments when we fling ourselves before the Tabernacle with a
desire too vehement for words. These translate our thoughts and needs
up to a certain point. Beyond that, we must betake ourselves to the cry
of the heart.
What a relief to know that that cry passes instantly into the presence
of Him Who made us, and is welcomed there. Nay, it has not even a
presence-chamber to seek, for “He is not far from any one of us”.[101]
“His ear lies ever on our lips.” And this is yet too far. As the sponge
in mid-ocean so are we borne up, environed, penetrated, saturated with
Him. “In Him we live and move and have our being.”[102] This is He to
Whom we cry. Nor need we even cry. For “all things are naked and open
to the eyes of Him to Whom our speech is”.[103] Our God is nigh unto
us; He is within us; more present to us than we are to ourselves. He
knows the need that casts us on our face before Him. He saw our trouble
before it took shape in our soul. He knows each thrill of pain, and the
agony of helplessness, and the fear that holds us as in a vice. All
this He knows. And He is not displeased with the passionate earnestness
of our cry for help. Job was blameless before God when his misery
forced from him bold words of expostulation. Jacob was blessed for
being strong against God. Our Almighty Father loves to be overcome by
His children. He is willing to have His gifts wrested from Him by the
intensity of prayer. Nor will He have such prayer to be disconcerted or
turned aside by the evidence of its untimeliness. No, not even when He
ignores or denies it. He loves the trust that catches up the rebuff and
flings it back, a passionate plea for mercy:--
“It is not good to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the
dogs.”[104]
“Yea, Lord; for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the
table of their masters.”
Oh, that I had this strength of purpose, this trust that sweeps all
before it! Here on the altar I have my model in prayer--Him “Who
in the days of His flesh with a strong cry offered up prayers and
supplications[105]: Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee,
remove this chalice from me, but not what I will, but what Thou
wilt.”[106] “And being in an agony, He prayed the longer.”[107] “And He
prayed the third time, saying the self same word.”[108]
* * * * *
Our prayer can never be too urgent, too persistent, if only we
kneel by Your side and follow Your lead, O Lord. We may return again
and again upon the same plea: _Abba, Pater, omnia Tibi possibilia
sunt._ All things, all things are possible to Thee; take this
chalice from me. Yet--for Thou knowest best, and I am shortsighted and
self-seeking, and know not the things that are for my peace--_not my
will, but Thine be done_. Let that will be done which in a little
while, when I look down upon this trial from the unclouded brightness
of my place in heaven, I shall joyfully own to have been for the best,
better a thousand times than anything I could have devised. “Father,
if Thou wilt, remove this chalice from me. But if this chalice may not
pass away, but I must drink it, Thy will be done.”
[101] Acts xvii.
[102] Acts xvii.
[103] Heb. iv.
[104] Mark vii.
[105] Heb. v.
[106] Mark xiv.
[107] Luke xxii.
[108] Matt. xxvi.
XXXIV.
“BE READY!”
(_A visit for the First Friday of the month._)
“_Be ready!_” Your word of warning, Lord, and my one desire. And
so I come to You to get ready.
I shall be too weak and suffering on my bed of death, too appalled by
the sight of my past life to be able to do much by way of preparation
for the Last Sacraments. Yet I shall need all their grace, and I must
bring to them at least the necessary dispositions. Take the care of
all upon Yourself. See Yourself to my dispositions. Look upon all as a
trust committed to You long ago, committed to You again and again with
the more self-abandonment as the time and circumstances of my last hour
are absolutely unknown to me. Let me find out in that hour how well it
is to have hoped in the Lord. Let me find You, my Lord, in death equal
to Yourself--to all I have found You in life.
And when the hour for Sacraments has passed; when the Church has
stretched her hand to the utmost to hold me to the last, up to the very
confines of that world where her jurisdiction stops; when my soul is
passing beyond the reach of that hand which has stayed me up till then,
and been help and healing all my life through--then, O my Saviour, do
for me immediately, by Yourself, what You have done for me through
Your Church. Hear Yourself my last confession made straight to Your
Heart. Hear my last avowal “of my so many sins”; of those for which I
have sorrowed most bitterly, which have been brought oftenest under
the absolving hand of Your priest. When my last words in this world
are said; when my eyes are closed to the crucifix, and my hands can
grasp the rosary no longer; when my ears are shut to all the sounds
of earth, and all things are sinking round me--then let me feel You
near. Inspire Yourself my last cry for mercy. Sweep away the clouds
that will gather thick and fast before the eyes of my soul, seeking to
hide that mercy from me. Let Your hand hold me. Let Your arm be round
me when all else is falling away. You have passed, O Lord, through
the agony of death: be with me in my agony. All the nameless terrors
of that hour are known to You. All the dangers that await me then are
clear to You here in the tabernacle--the weakness, the weariness, the
pains of spirit, and of sense, the temptations kept for the last, the
loneliness, the unsuspected snares, the lack of human help. O human
Heart, be my secure refuge in that awful hour. I call upon You now to
fulfil in my favour then the promise to those devoted to Your sacred
Heart: “I will be their assured refuge in life and more especially at
death.”
Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa Tuae viae
Ne me perdas illa die.
Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus.
Recollect, O love divine,
’Twas for this lost sheep of Thine
Thou Thy glory didst resign.
Sattest weary seeking me,
Suff’redst upon the tree:
Let not vain Thy labour be.
XXXV.
“DOMINE, ECCE QUEM AMAS INFIRMATUR.”
--_John_ xi. 3.
How many Bethanies, Lord Jesus, have there been in the world since the
day You stood with Martha and Mary by the grave of Lazarus! How many
there are at this hour! And each with all its pain is known to Your
pitying Heart. Every detail known--the fear, the anxiety, the weary yet
unwearied prayer, the long, long waiting for Your coming; the hope that
rises and falls and clings the faster for its less foothold to Your
promises, Your mercy, Your dear human Heart. You know it all. You have
seen all, heard all for years. And still You wait, just as You waited
beyond the Jordan whilst the sisters wept beside their brother’s bed,
beside his grave.
“Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister Mary, and Lazarus. When He had
heard therefore that he was sick, He still remained in the same place
two days.”[109] Why, Lord, why--with Your heart so tender and Your
arm so strong, and danger near, and time short, and those You love so
fearful and so sad? Why did you still remain, O Lord?
Truly Your thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor Your ways as ours. Our
love stands sentry round its dear ones, to ward off pain or sorrow:
“Far be it from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee”.[110] Your
love, seeking rather to sanctify than to spare, assigns to sorrow a
definite work in behalf of Your beloved. “Whom the Lord loveth, He
chastiseth, and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”[111] “Now
Jesus loved Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore
that he was sick, He still remained in the same place two days.”
“Our Lord Himself was perfected by His passion.”[112] And in that
passion it was not the nails which tore the flesh, but the anguish
which rent the spirit, that drew forth His bitter cry. It was the
passion of His Heart that was the hardest. It is by the crucifixion of
the heart that Christ is perfected in us. Therefore He stays away and
leaves us to suffering harder far to bear than physical pain. We cry
out. We send our messages to Him. And He does not come. “My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken me!” He hears and does not come. The echo
of His own cry of desolation moves His Heart. And still He does not
come. It is because Jesus loves that He does violence to His heart and
lets the cross do for His friends what it alone can do. This is His way
of showing love. He expects us to understand it.
In the cross, as in the sacred mystery of the altar, His love puts on
strange disguises. But puts them on so regularly, so frankly, that
losing by this time their power of disguise, they ought to reveal
instead of hiding Him.
We must be patient and wait. The time of His coming, with its ways and
means, we can leave to His wisdom and His love. Our work is to send
urgently and perseveringly the message whose trust vanquished His Heart
at last and made Him say, “_Let us go to him_”.
* * * * *
“_Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick._” Before a thousand
tabernacles that cry is rising. No prayer, but pleading more potent
than any prayer. Its perseverance is its power. Can it but hold out,
ignore neglect, support delay, it is sure to hear in God’s own time:
“Thy brother shall rise again.... Lazarus, come forth.”
Listen, Lord Jesus, to that cry. By the pity it woke in Your sacred
Heart--listen! By the tears You shed with the weeping sisters--listen!
Not for one Lazarus only, but for each and every one throughout the
world, do we entreat You: _Domine, ecce quem amas infirmatur!_
If a miracle is needed, we ask it with confidence. Is there one
You would work more gladly? O Lord, make haste to help us. To-day,
to-day--to-morrow, perhaps, it will be too late. _Ecce quem amas
infirmatur!_
[109] John xi.
[110] Matt. xvi.
[111] Heb. xii.
[112] Heb. ii.
XXXVI.
AFTER A DEATH.
And his disciples came and took the body, and buried it, and came and
told Jesus.--_Matt._ xiv. 12.
Poor disciples! They had lost their master. Life lay a blank before
them; all its meaning gone, all its purpose changed. The support on
which they had leaned was taken away--what was to become of them?
Poor disciples indeed--yet happy too. For the hand that dealt the blow
held the remedy. It led them to Jesus. What does that mean but that all
they had lost was made up to them a thousandfold?
They took the body, and buried it, _and came and told Jesus_. We
can see Him receiving the forlorn little band. We can hear His words
of tender pity and comfort as He drew them out and got from them
all their troubled tale. We can feel the relief it was to tell Him
all; feel the peace that stole into their hearts as He spoke to them
of their master, and gently won them from their grief, and drew them
to Himself. They yielded to the divine attraction of that Eye and
that Voice, to the irresistible sympathy of that Heart, to the grace
that spoke to their own hearts. And thus that bitter loss proved the
crowning grace of their lives, the cause of their eternal joy--because
they let it lead them to the feet of Christ--because _they came and
told Jesus_.
O Master! I too come to Your feet to tell You all. I have buried my
dead. I have lost what can never be restored to me in this world. I
have come from the grave with half myself buried there. I have come
back to a life with all its meaning gone from it--a life without joy,
interest, anything to which my soul responds--a dreary waste stretching
before me that I must cross alone. Where shall I turn for courage and
for strength? Where but to You to Whom the disciples of John turned in
their desolation? Open to me Your arms and Your Heart. Listen tenderly
to me whilst I tell You all my trouble. Speak to my soul and calm it
and strengthen it. Make up to me for what You have taken away. And if
You ask what compensation I desire, I answer: “None other than Thyself,
O Lord”.
Let us both be gainers by this bitter loss--You by the fuller surrender
into Your hands of all that I have and am; I by the fuller gift of
Yourself to my soul--a fulness satisfying its every craving with the
love of Him, from Whom neither life nor death, nor things present nor
things to come, have power to part me.
XXXVII.
GOD’S WAYS.
Wherein hast Thou loved us?--_Malach._ i. 2.
My God, I may tell You anything and everything. All I have to tell
interests You, more especially the difficulties and troubles which
do not easily come out to others, and are not for the most part very
helpfully met when they do come out. “For what man knoweth the things
of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?”[113]
But “the Spirit (of God) searcheth all things.”[114] You know me
through and through, and I am only owning to what You see and
understand perfectly when I tell You of repinings aroused by gifts
and opportunities bestowed on others, but denied to me. I find myself
questioning, if not Your wisdom, at least Your love, in that I am less
richly dowered than others with the happy temperament, the talents, the
moral and social qualities that we reckon among the better gifts of
life, that render life not a duty merely, nor a source of merit, but
a continual joy. I do not see that “the lines are fallen unto me in
goodly places”; rather I ask petulantly, “_Wherein hast Thou loved
me?_”
The source of such disquiet is selfishness. This is the dismal
consolation I should get were I to confide my trouble to the most
indulgent of friends. But have You no better comfort for me, my
Creator and my Father? To whom shall I go in my pains if not to Him
Whose “hands have made me and formed me”;[115] to my Father “that hath
possessed me, and made me, and created me”;[116] Who says to me, “I
will have mercy on thee more than a mother”?[117] There is no humbling
avowal I may not trust to You, and trusting it be sure of sympathy.
“Why hast Thou done so to us?” was the meek remonstrance of the most
submissive of handmaids. “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” was said by the
most cross-grained and thankless of peoples. And to both questioners
You vouchsafed a reply. I too, then, may ask: Why, Father, hast Thou
done so to me? In withholding what is good in itself, what would have
made me happier, _Wherein hast Thou loved me?_
Your answer might be: “Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed
it, why hast Thou made me thus?”[118] But in place of rebuke You
silence my trouble by an invitation: “_Come up hither_”.[119] I
am to take my stand by Your side, and from that height look around on
the design framed from eternity. Parts of a plan can be viewed aright
only in connection with the whole. To consider them independently is to
miss not only the meaning and grandeur of the scheme in its entirety,
but particular excellence also. This I know. Yet the tendency of
selfishness is to contract the vision, and let the tiny portion
assigned to itself in the universal design absorb the interest and
warp the judgment. I am too near to earth, too involved in its passing
interests to preserve the relative proportion necessary for viewing
things aright. I must move further off--look forward a few years--plant
my feet, not on this transitory world, but on the eternal shore, and
from that standpoint look out upon creation.
“_He hath begotten us ... that we might be some beginning of His
creature._”[120]
What an unsealing of eyes awaits me the moment after death! What a
vista all but infinite will open out before me as the divine plan
unfolds! All this human race, which because it encloses my lot is
apt to engross my whole interest--if indeed my interest extends to
the race and is not absorbed by the little miserable me--all this
vast assemblage of human souls to be--but _some beginning of His
creature_!
In eternity I shall see the part assigned to this beginning in the
universal scheme. I shall see the part assigned to each unit. I
shall grasp without effort, without reasoning, the self-evident fact
that the dignity of every human being lies in its having a place in
God’s eternal design; that independent or solitary greatness is an
impossibility; that our happiness no less than our grandeur consists
in filling that place in the vast mosaic which divine wisdom and love
has appointed us; that the significance of the creature, its beauty and
well-being are to be found only in its conformity with the ideal in
the Creator’s mind. Those who on earth have worked out that ideal and
thereby reached their appointed place are happy. Those who, absorbed
by selfish aims, have failed to fit themselves for the place assigned
them, are necessarily cast aside as failures--and this whatever the
gifts, station, influence that distinguished them in the momentary
interval between two eternities that we call Time. Nothing indeed will
astound me more than the reversal of lots in the world beyond the
grave. I shall see how in innumerable instances paths of glory have
led to everlasting confusion and oblivion. How, on the other hand, the
unnoticed, the meagrely gifted, have made their way up to the highest
honour, and are placed “with the princes of His people”. The beggar of
the Roman streets, shunned by every passerby, the shepherdess of an
obscure village, the simple, illiterate Curé d’Ars, as “the friends of
God are made exceedingly honourable”. Whilst high above all, King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, is a village Carpenter of heretofore.
Truly God’s ways are not our ways! When I see as He sees, there will
be no heartburnings, no pining for anything however good in itself
that has not found place in His designs for me. Narrow views will melt
away so completely as to be deemed wholly inexplicable in the past;
egotism disappear in the burst of admiration at the design revealed
in creation. What will be my delight to have a place, my particular
place, in that glorious scheme! What my regret, as I turn away to
purgatory, that I have failed to co-operate in the perfecting of the
whole in the measure determined for me!
And this I shall see soon! Soon I shall be viewing all things from
God’s standpoint, the only one possible in the land of Truth.
Recognising at last in my outfit a marvellous adaptation of means
to the end, I shall see wherein He has loved me. I shall bless His
will that has ordered all things sweetly. I shall trace His love in
withholding as well as in giving, in ordaining my limitations and
deficiencies no less than my aptitudes as means for attaining to my
place in His kingdom. The greater or less glory and happiness of that
place will be a matter of indifference to me. To reach the degree
in which _He_ would place me, to satisfy _Him_, to give
Him throughout eternity the praise and reverence and service He asks
of me--this will be the only ambition possible to my enlightened
understanding and will. “In Thy light we shall see light.”[121]
* * * * *
O Father, that it might be thus even now! That now, whilst my place
in heaven is to be sought and reached, I might have the light and
strength to accept, not with resignation only--this were too poor
a gratitude--but with deepest, tenderest thankfulness, the means
fashioned to my hand, designed by Your wisdom _for me_!
[113] 1 Cor. ii.
[114] _Ibid._
[115] Psa. cxviii.
[116] Deut. xxxii.
[117] Ecclus. iv.
[118] Rom. ix.
[119] Apoc. iv.
[120] St. James i.
[121] Psa. xxxv.
XXXVIII.
TWILIGHT AND NOON.
My eyes are ever towards the Lord.--_Psa._ xxiv. 15.
How marvellous is the vehemence of David’s utterances when we consider
the dimness with which God revealed Himself in the time of twilight
before the coming of Christ! He was not altogether the hidden God.
Throughout His dealings with His people we are struck by the mingling
of light and darkness, distance and nearness, terrific chastisement and
the tenderest blandishments of love. There was wonderful condescension
and approach in the tabernacle of the wilderness, in the revelations
to the prophets, in the interventions of mercy that times without
number succoured the stiff-necked people. There are words of love in
the Old Testament unsurpassed perhaps in tenderness by any in the
New. Yet when His presence is nearest, when His reproaches are most
touching, His words most endearing, we are conscious of the measureless
difference between God’s manifestation in the past and the intimacy and
familiarity brought into our relations with Him by the Incarnation. We
who live in the full illumination of that day which kings and prophets
desired to see, cannot but feel how little earth’s most enlightened men
knew the God Who made them, before “the Word was made flesh and dwelt
amongst us”.
Yet so powerfully were they drawn to Him, that their words are the
fittest exponents of every human heart when by desire, praise,
affection, thanksgiving, it leaps up to God. They give expression
to our every need. But, alas! they give too much matter also for
self-reproach.
“_My eyes are always towards the Lord_,” said David. God revealed
Himself with special intimacy to the man according to His own Heart,
that spoke in his own person of the sufferings and the glories of Him
Who was to delight in the name of the Son of David. Yet after all what
did David know of the Lord compared with the knowledge vouchsafed to
the least enlightened of the Church’s children! He had the memory of
past mercies to the “seed of Abraham His servant, the sons of Jacob
His chosen”.[122] He had the shadowy presence of God in the Ark of the
Covenant. And he had the dim foreknowledge of One to come, of the root
of Jesse, “beautiful above the sons of men,”[123] yet “a worm, and no
man, the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people,”[124] of “a
Holy One Who should not see corruption,”[125] but “sit on the right
hand of God till all His enemies be made His footstool”.[126] This was
all. But it was enough to keep the eyes of David fixed on God: “_My
eyes are always towards the Lord_.”
I think of myself. I think of the careful teaching from my childhood
onwards: of the Gospel stories so familiar to me that I may follow
the life of the God-man from His crib to His cross; living in His
company; listening to His teaching; noting His look and gesture and
act; studying His ways and dealings with men, His likes and dislikes,
the human character which individualised Him and endeared Him to His
friends. I may watch Him at His work, I may mark the effect upon Him
of kindness and appreciation, and, on the other hand, of ingratitude,
scorn, cruelty and hate. I may see him thirsty, wayworn, footsore, and
feast the eyes of my soul on the absolute perfection with which all the
eventualities of life were met by Him Who, very God of very God, was
yet the Son of Man and one of us.
Again, I may contemplate Him abiding ever with His Church, the source
of every supernatural act throughout its length and breadth. I may see
the Divine sap flowing through the vine to its furthest extremities,
the principle of life and growth, of beauty and of fruitfulness in
every soul His grace has sanctified. I know that all His merits are
placed at my disposal; that He desires to make the meanest actions of
my life meritorious of an eternal reward by uniting them with His. I
have his invitation in the early morning to offer with Him His daily
sacrifice that is offered for me. I hear Him asking of me, if not a
daily, at least a frequent invitation to my heart. I hear him calling
“Come aside and rest a little” when in afternoon hours the day’s tasks
are lightening; calling me to Him for an evening blessing when the
day’s work is done. Through the long hours of day and night His eye is
following me--how often are my eyes towards the Lord?
O eager heart of David, that has met, if not with adequate response,
at least with all your strength, the advances of our God, become to
ours the stimulus they so sadly need! In our noontide splendour,
in the fulness of fruition, we turn back to catch the glowing heat
of your desires: “_O God my God, to Thee do I watch at break of
day. For Thee my soul hath thirsted; for Thee my flesh, oh, how many
ways!_”[127]
Your envying of our happier days and higher privileges shall make us
appreciate them better: “They have seen Thy goings, O God, the goings
of my God, of my King Who is in His sanctuary”.[128]
We will prize His sanctuary in our midst; the sanctuary nearest to us,
where most of all our homage and our love are due. Morning, afternoon,
and evening we will seek Him there to bless Him and be blessed. “In
the churches bless ye God the Lord.”[129] “Seek ye the Lord, and be
strengthened, seek His face evermore.”[130]
[122] Psa. civ.
[123] _Ibid._ xliv.
[124] _Ibid._ xxi.
[125] _Ibid._ xv.
[126] _Ibid._ cix.
[127] Psa. lxii.
[128] _Ibid._ lxvii.
[129] _Ibid._ lxvii.
[130] _Ibid._ civ.
XXXIX.
RESPONSIBILITY.
Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me.--_Heb._ ii.
No sympathy is so genuine and so ready, none so acceptable and helpful
as that created by similarity of experience. “What doth he know that
hath not been tried?”[131] “Who can rejoice with them that rejoice, and
weep with them that weep”[132] like one whose heart has thrilled with
the same gladness, and found relief in the same tears?
Nothing more endears our Lord to us than the proofs of fellow-feeling
that come out in every act of His human life. The Incarnation was the
supreme gift of His sympathy. Every weary journey to and fro, every
cure of soul or body, every word of warning and of comfort spoke of His
sympathy. The Eucharist is His sympathy incarnate to the end of time.
No burden of ours is unshared by the Son of man. He has devised
expedients that bewilder us by their condescension, in order to bring
home to us the truth: “I also have a heart as well as you.”[133] He
will weep with his friends beside a grave. He will cower before pain
and ignominy. He will be “tempted in all things like as we are”.[134]
Nay, He will even clothe Himself with the appearance of sin, be “made
sin for us”;[135] feel its burden and its shame; bear the penalty
of its guilt, to prove His devotedness to us in His most winning of
ways--the sharing of our miseries out of love.
All the heavy-laden He invites to Him, but none, perhaps, are more
tenderly welcomed than those who come bowed beneath the weight
of responsibility. Whether this devolves upon them through their
relations with others as superiors, or is the consequence of kinship
or friendship, it surely wins for them the sympathy of Him Who knows
by His own experience the nature of all such responsibilities and the
solicitude they entail.
“You call Me Master, and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.”[136]
“Is not He thy Father that hath possessed thee, and made thee and
created thee?”[137] “As one whom the mother caresseth, so will I
comfort you.”[138] He is our Elder Brother, “first-born amongst
many brethren;”[139] “the Physician of Whom we all have need;”[140]
“the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls”.[141] He knows, therefore,
experimentally the peculiar trials of the charge with which we are
laden, and we may pour out our hearts to Him with the freedom that
comes of perfect trust in One “sorrowful,” “heavy,” “troubled”--“in all
things like as we are”.[142]
My cares, dear Lord, are known to You, and not known only, but laid
upon me by Your own hand. They weigh heavily at times. The interests at
stake are so tremendous, and my ignorance and helplessness so great.
Often enough I do not see what to do for the best; oftener still I
cannot take the course that seems to me best. I am afraid of a false
step; I am afraid of missing opportunities. Where to make a stand, and
where to yield; when to command, and when to entreat; when to offer
a word of remonstrance or of counsel, and when to say nothing and
trust to prayer--all these are perplexities in which I need and pray
for the guidance of Your holy Spirit. There is a time to speak and a
time to keep silence, but this is Your secret, O Lord! Give me the
opportunities won by long prayer. Put upon my lips the well-timed word.
Send me the success that comes of casting out the nets at Your word,
under Your eye, with Your blessing.
And solve for me other problems--how to teach my children to take
their place befittingly in the world without being of the world;
how to train them for the battle of life; to provide them with an
equipment for mind and heart that will suffice for the needs of these
perilous times; to strengthen them by self-knowledge, self-reverence,
self-control against the intellectual and moral dangers they will
have to face, and prepare them for the burning questions of the day
before they are flung into their midst. I tremble at the sight of these
dangers beginning so early now when life is lived so fast. And the
mother’s words, the mother’s arms do not reach as far as heretofore.
She can only pray and trust. How earnestly You bid us trust, O Lord!
“Fear not: for the battle is not yours, but God’s.”[143] “Cast thy care
upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.”[144] “Be quiet, fear not,
and let not thy heart be afraid.”[145]
“I shall fear but I will trust in Thee.”[146] “My God is my helper,
and in Him will I put my trust.”[147] “In my affliction I called upon
the Lord, and I cried to my God.”[148] “How long, O Lord, wilt Thou
forget me, how long dost Thou turn away Thy face from me? Consider, and
hear me, O Lord my God.”[149]
* * * * *
“_Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me!_” I gather
them round me here at Your feet. I trust them to Your care. Keep them
in Your faith and in Your love, and bring them safely through the dark
perils of this life to the haven of salvation.
“_Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me._” Let me say
this one day as we stand in the brightness of Your Presence. Let me say
in the fulness of my joy: “Of them whom Thou hast given me, I have not
lost one.”[150]
* * * * *
“Fear not! stand and see the great wonders of the Lord, which He will
do.”[151] “I will seek that which was lost, and that which was driven
away, I will bring again; and I will bind up that which was broken, and
I will strengthen that which was weak.”[152] “I will give them life
everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck
them out of My hand.”[153]
[131] Ecclus. xxxiv.
[132] Rom. xii.
[133] Job xii.
[134] Heb. iv.
[135] 2 Cor. v.
[136] John xiii.
[137] Deut. xxxii.
[138] Isa. lxvi.
[139] Rom. viii.
[140] Luke v.
[141] 1 Peter ii.
[142] Heb. iv.
[143] 2 Par. xx.
[144] Psa. liv.
[145] Isa. vii.
[146] Psa. lv.
[147] Psa. xvii.
[148] _Ibid._
[149] _Ibid._ xii.
[150] John xvii.
[151] Exod. xiv.
[152] Ezech. xxxiv.
[153] John x.
XL.
LIFE.
As long as the heir is a child, he is under tutors and governors until
the time appointed by the father.--_Galat._ iv. 1, 2.
Life is a school--neither more nor less. _Not more._ Therefore we
must not expect to find it satisfying. We must not look here for the
freedom, the gladness, the warmth, the indefinable happiness of home.
But surely the eternal Home is worth waiting for! “It hath not yet
appeared what we shall be.”[154] “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath
prepared for them that love Him.”[155] Yet we may infer something of
the grandeur and blessedness of the life to come from the study of
our own souls, from the vastness of their capacity, their insatiable
thirst for knowledge, the depth and tenderness of their affections.
Capacity supposes complement. The aspirations God has given He will
surely satisfy. And therefore all that the noblest, the most highly
gifted, the most loving of our race have desired for their perfect
happiness, will be given to them in a fulness of which they can form
no conception--“good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running
over”.[156] The most far-reaching penetration of the secrets of nature
and of grace; the perfect realisation and more a thousand times than
realisation of home; the satisfaction of all the cravings of kindred
and of friendship, to say nothing of the essential joy of which these
are but the redundance--this is what awaits us hereafter. Not here, nor
yet. We must not look now for anything but the faintest anticipation of
what is in store for us--_we are at school_.
How is it that this elementary truth has so little hold upon us? Life
would be much less of a disappointment if we remembered its true
character and purport, if we had more of the wisdom of the schoolboy
who lives with his heart in the future, and for the rough discipline of
the present is for ever promising himself the compensations of home.
Life is a school. _Nothing less._ Therefore we must beware of
squandering the time given us to prepare for our final state. We are
here for our training, not for our enjoyment, and must go in for the
experiences and the work our education demands. We have to drill
ourselves in regard to our pleasures and our pains. Pleasure must not
be suffered to monopolize our interest. It is but the half holiday
thrown into school life to make its pressure bearable. Pain must not
cast us down utterly, but detach us from our surroundings here, and
foster in us the homesickness of the saints. And we have to work, work
seriously at the formation of mind and heart--the task allotted us in
this world. Both have to be conformed to the likeness of Him Who is the
pattern of all the elect. Both have to be brought into harmony with the
surroundings in which they will find themselves directly. “Let this
mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”[157] “Our conversation
must be in heaven.”[158]
Meantime we have with us, not only as Master, but as Father and Elder
Brother, Him Who has passed through the experience of human life; Who,
“because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, hath also
Himself in like manner been partaker of the same,”[159] “like to us in
all things excepting sin”;[160] Whose word of comfort as we take to Him
our weary tasks is a reminder at once of their necessity and of their
recompense: “Work your work before the time, and He will give you your
reward in His time.”[161]
My God, I thank You for the immortal spirit You have given me. I
thank You for its vast capacity, which I recognise in a craving that
nothing here can sate. Its very neediness appeals to Your beneficence,
“abyss calleth upon abyss.”[162] Keep up the keenness of its desire,
the hunger and thirst which You have declared blessed, till the time
comes for satisfying it fully. Let me not seek to assuage it by
anything transitory. Let me “so pass through the things of time as not
to forfeit those of eternity”.[163] Let me be schooled by the tasks
and trials, the little joys and sorrows and passing brightnesses of
this life for the great future, the true life that lies beyond. May my
happiness no less than my duty be found in preparing now for what I am
to do and to be hereafter.
And when my school days are over and my lessons here are learned--dear
Father, take me Home!
[154] 1 John iii.
[155] 1 Cor. ii.
[156] Luke vi.
[157] Philip. ii.
[158] _Cf._ _Ibid._ iii.
[159] Heb. ii.
[160] _Ibid._ iv.
[161] Ecclus. li.
[162] Psa. xli.
[163] Collect for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost.
THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
In the footnotes, 1 Par. and 2 Par. refer to the first and second Books
of Paralipomenon, which are also known as the Books of Chronicles.
Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the ends of their chapters.
Missing italics markings in chapter subheads have been
silently corrected.
Itemized changes from the original text:
On page 37, changed “may-be” to “maybe”,
near “are deterred from visiting”
On page 59, changed “heavy laden” to “heavy-laden”,
near “within a stone’s throw”
On page 69, changed “fault ” to “fault.”,
in “through my fault”
On page 69, changed “fail ” to “fail.”,
in “will never fail”
On page 96, changed “3 Kings” to “1 Kings”,
in “Footnote 58”
On page 115, changed “Ps. xxiii.” to “Psa. xxiv”,
in “Footnote 81”
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEFORE THE MOST HOLY ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
