Thomas H. Huxley - "On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals"

Raphael Sabatini - "The Sea Hawk"

Robert Hichens - "A Spirit in Prison"

John Tyler - "State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler"

Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




Nor does He do so now. We live by faith, and our dependence on Him can
never be too absolute. Only laziness sometimes dresses itself in the
garb and speaks with the tongue of faith, and pretends to be truthful
when it is only slothful. 'Why criest thou unto Me?' said God to
Moses, 'speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.' True
faith sets us to work. It is not to be perverted into idle and false
depending upon Him to work for us, when by the use of our own ten
fingers and our own brains, guided and strengthened by His working in
us, we can do the work that is set before us.

III. Still further, there is another lesson here. Not only does the
injunction show us Christ's thrift in the employment of the
supernatural, but it teaches us our duty of thrift and care in the use
of the spiritual grace bestowed upon us.

These men had given to them this miraculously made bread; but they had
to exercise ordinary thrift in the preservation of the supernatural
gift. Christ has been given to you by the most stupendous miracle that
ever was or can be wrought, and if you are Christian people, you have
the Spirit of Christ given to you, to dwell in your hearts, to make
you wise and fair, gentle and strong, and altogether Christlike. But
you have to take care of these gifts. You have to exercise the common
virtues of economy and thrift in your use of the divine gifts as in
your use of the common things of daily life. You have to use wisely
and not waste the Bread of God that came down from heaven, or that
Bread of God will not feed you. You have to provide the basket in
which to carry the unexhausted residue of the divine gift, or you may
stand hungry in the very midst of plenty, and whilst within arm's
length of you there is bread enough and to spare to feed the whole
world.

The lesson of my text, which is most eminently brought out if we adopt
the translation which I have referred to at the beginning of these
remarks, is, then, just this: Christian men, be watchful stewards of
that great gift of a living Christ, the food of your souls, that has
been by miracle bestowed upon you. Such gathering together for future
need of the unused residue of grace may be accomplished by three ways.
First, there must be a diligent use of the grace given. See that you
use to the very full, in the measure of your present power of
absorbing and your present need, the gift bestowed upon you. Be sure
that you take in as much of Christ as you can contain before you begin
to think of what to do with the overplus. If we are not careful to
take what we can, and to use what we need, of Christ, there is little
chance of our being faithful stewards of the surplus. The water in a
mill-stream runs over the trough in great abundance when the wheel is
not working, and one reason why so many Christians seem to have so
much more given to them in Christ than they need is because they are
doing no work to use up the gift.

A second essential to such stewardship is the careful guarding of the
grace given from whatever would injure it. Let not worldliness,
business, cares of the world, the sorrows of life, its joys, duties,
anxieties or pleasures--let not these so come into your hearts that
they will elbow Christ out of your hearts, and dull your appetite for
the true Bread that came down from heaven.

And lastly, not only by use and by careful guarding, but also by
earnest desire for larger gifts of the Christ who is large beyond all
measure, shall we receive more and more of His sweetness and His
preciousness into our hearts, and of His beauty and glory into our
transfigured characters. The basket that we carry, this recipient
heart of ours, is elastic. It can stretch to hold any amount that you
like to put into it. The desire for more of Christ's grace will
stretch its capacity, and as its capacity increases the inflowing gift
greatens, and a larger Christ fills the larger room of my poor heart.

So the lesson is taught us of our prudence in the care and use of the
grace bestowed on us, and we are bidden to cherish a happy confidence
in the inexhaustible resources of Christ, and the continual gift in
the future of even larger measures of grace, which are all ours
already, given to us at the first reception of Him into our hearts,
and only needing our faithfulness to be growingly ours in experience
as they are ours from the first in germ.

IV. Finally, a solemn warning is implied in this command, and its
reason 'that nothing be lost.'

Then there is a possibility of losing the gift that is freely given to
us. We may waste the bread, and so, sometime or other when we are
hungry, awake to the consciousness that it has dropped out of our
slack hands. The abundance of Christ's grace may, so far as you are
profited or enriched by it, be like the unclaimed millions of money
which nobody asks for and that is of use to no living soul. You may be
paupers while all God's riches in glory are at your disposal, and
starving while baskets full of bread broken for us by Christ lie
unused at our sides. Some of us have never tasted the sweetness or
been fed by the nutritiousness of that Bread of God which came down
from heaven. And more marvellous still, there may be some of us, who
having come to Christ hungry and been fed by Him, have ceased to care
for the pure nourishment and taste for the manna, and are turning
again with gross appetite to the husks in the swine's trough.
Negligent Christians! worldly Christians! you who care more for money
and other dainties and delights which perish with the using--
backsliding Christians, who once hungered and thirsted for more of
Christ, and now have no longing for Him--awake to the danger in which
you stand of letting all your spiritual wealth slip through your
fingers; behold the treasures, yet unreached, within your grasp, and
seek to garner and realise them. Gather up the broken pieces which
remain over, lest everything be lost.




THE FIFTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL

'So when they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs, they
see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they
were afraid. 20. But He said unto them, It is I; be not afraid.'--JOHN
vi. 19,20.

There are none of our Lord's parables recorded in this Gospel, but all
the miracles which it narrates are parables. Moral and religious truth
is communicated by the outward event, as in the parable it is
communicated by the story. The mere visible fact becomes more than
semi-transparent. The analogy between the spiritual and the natural
world which men instinctively apprehend, of which the poet and the
orator and the religious teacher have always made abundant use, and
which it has sometimes been attempted, unsuccessfully as I think, to
elevate to the rank of a scientific truth, underlies the whole series
of these miracles. It is the principal if not the only key to the
meaning of this one before us.

The symbolism which regards life under the guise of a voyage, and its
troubles and difficulties under the metaphor of storm and tempest, is
especially natural to nations that take kindly to the water, like us
Englishmen. I do not know that there is any instance, either in the
Old or in the New Testament, of the use of that to us very familiar
metaphor; but the emblem of the sea as the symbol of trouble, unrest,
rebellious power, is very familiar to the writers of the Old
Testament. And the picture of the divine path as in the waters, and of
the divine prerogative as being to 'tread upon the heights of the
sea,' as Job has it, is by no means unknown. So the natural symbolism,
and the Old Testament use of the expressions, blend together, as I
think, in suggesting the one point of view from which this miracle is
to be regarded.

It is found in two of the other Evangelists, and the condensed account
of it which we have in this Gospel, by its omission of Peter's walking
on the water, and of some other smaller but graphic details that the
other Evangelists give us, serves to sharpen the symbolical meaning of
the whole story, and to bring that as its great purpose and
signification into prominence.

We shall, I think, then, best gain the lessons intended to be drawn if
we simply follow the points of the narrative in their order as they
stand here.

I. We have here, first of all, then, the struggling toilers.

The other Evangelists tell us that after the feeding of the five
thousand our Lord 'constrained' His disciples to get into the ship,
and to pass over to the other side. The language implies
unwillingness, to some extent, on their part, and the exercise of
authority upon His. Our Evangelist, who does not mention the
constraint, supplies us with the reason for it. The preceding miracle
had worked up the excitement of the mob to a very dangerous point.
Crowds are always the same, and this crowd thought, as any other crowd
anywhere and in any age would have done, that the prophet that could
make bread at will was the kind of prophet whom they wanted. So they
determined to take Him by force, and make Him a king; and Christ,
seeing the danger, and not desiring that His Kingdom should be
furthered by such unclean hands and gross motives, determined to
withdraw Himself into the loneliness of the bordering hills. It was
wise to divide the little group; it would distract attention; it might
lead some of the people, as we know it did lead them, to follow the
boat when they found it was gone. It would save the Apostles from
being affected by the coarse, smoky enthusiasm of the crowd. It would
save them from revealing the place of His retirement. It might enable
Him to steal away more securely unobserved; so they are sent across to
the other side of the lake, some five or six miles. An hour or two
might have done it, but for some unknown reason they seem to have
lingered. Perhaps they had no special call for haste. The Paschal
moon, nearly full, would be shining down upon the waters; their hearts
and minds would be busy with the miracle which they had just seen. And
so they may have drifted along, not caring much when they reached
their destination. But suddenly one of the gusts of wind which are
frequently found upon mountain lakes, especially towards nightfall,
rose and soon became a gale with which they could not battle. Our
Evangelist does not tell us how long it lasted, but we get a note of
time from St. Mark, who says it was 'about the fourth watch of the
night'; that is between the hours of three and six in the morning of
the subsequent day. So that for some seven or eight hours at least
they had been tugging at the useless oars, or sitting shivering, wet
and weary, in the boat.

Is it not the history of the Church in a nutshell? Is it not the
symbol of life for us all? The solemn law under which we live demands
persistent effort, and imposes continual antagonism upon us; there is
no reason why we should regard that as evil, or think ourselves hardly
used, because we are not fair-weather sailors. The end of life is to
make men; the meaning of all events is to mould character. Anything
that makes me stronger is a blessing, anything that develops my
_morale_ is the highest good that can come to me. If therefore
antagonism mould in me

'The wrestling thews that throw the world,'

and give me good, strong muscles, and put tan and colour into my
cheek, I need not mind the cold and the wet, nor care for the
whistling of the wind in my face, nor the dash of the spray over the
bows. Summer sailing in fair weather, amidst land-locked bays, in blue
seas, and under calm skies, may be all very well for triflers, but

'Blown seas and storming showers'

are better if the purpose of the voyage be to brace us and call out
our powers.

And so be thankful if, when the boat is crossing the mouth of some
glen that opens upon the lake, a sudden gust smites the sheets and
sends you to the helm, and takes all your effort to keep you from
sinking. Do not murmur, or think that God's Providence is strange,
because many and many a time when 'it is dark, and Jesus is not yet
come to us,' the storm of wind comes down upon the lake and threatens
to drive us from our course. Let us rather recognise Him as the Lord
who, in love and kindness, sends all the different kinds of weather
which, according to the old proverb, make up the full-summed year.

And then notice how, in this first picture of our text, the symbolism
so naturally lends itself to spiritual meanings, not only in regard to
the tempest that caught the unthinking voyagers, but also in regard to
other points; such as the darkness amidst which they had to fight the
tempest, and the absence of the Master. Once before, they had been
caught in a similar storm on the lake, but it was daylight then, and
Jesus was with them, and that made all the difference. This time it
was night, and they looked up in vain to the green Eastern hills, and
wondered where in their folds He was lurking, so far from their help.
Mark gives us one sweet touch when he tells us that Christ on the
hillside there _saw_ them toiling in rowing, but they did not see Him.
No doubt they felt themselves deserted, and sent many a wistful glance
of longing towards the shore where He was. Hard thoughts of Him may
have been in some of their minds. 'Master, carest Thou not?' would be
springing to some of their lips with more apparent reason than in the
other storm on the lake. But His calm and loving gaze looked down
pitying on all their fear and toil. The darkness did not hide from
Him, nor His own security on the steadfast land make Him forget, nor
his communion with the Father so absorb Him as to exclude thoughts of
them.

It is a parable and a prophecy of the perpetual relation between the
absent Lord and the toiling Church. He is on the mountain while we are
on the sea. The stable eternity of the Heavens holds Him; we are
tossed on the restless mutability of time, over which we toil at His
command. He is there interceding for us. Whilst He prays He beholds,
and He beholds that He may help us by His prayer. The solitary crew
were not so solitary as they thought. That little dancing speck on the
waters, which held so much blind love and so much fear and trouble,
was in His sight, as on the calm mountain-top He communed with God. No
wonder that weary hearts and lonely ones, groping amidst the darkness,
and fighting with the tempests and the sorrows of lift, have ever
found in our story a symbol that comes to them with a prophecy of hope
and an assurance of help, and have rejoiced to know that they on the
sea are beheld of the Christ in the sky, and that 'the darkness hideth
not from' His loving eye.

II. And now turn to the next stage of the story before us. We have the
approaching Christ.

'When they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs,' and so
were just about the middle of the lake, 'they see Jesus walking on the
sea and drawing nigh unto the ship.' They were about half-way across
the lake. We do not know at what hour in the fourth watch the Master
came. But probably it was towards daybreak. Toiling had endured for a
night. It would be in accordance with the symbolism that joy and help
should come with the morning.

If we look for a moment at the miraculous fact, apart from the
symbolism, we have a revelation here of Christ as the Lord of the
material universe, a kingdom wider in its range and profounder in its
authority than that which that shouting crowd had sought to force upon
Him. His will consolidated the yielding wave, or sustained His
material body on the tossing surges. Whether we suppose the miracle as
wrought on the one or the other, makes no difference to its value as a
manifestation of the glory of Christ, and of His power over the
physical order of things. In the latter case there would, perhaps, be
a hint of a power residing in His material frame, of which we possibly
have other phases, as in the Transfiguration, which may be a prophecy
of what lordship over nature is possible to a sinless manhood. However
that may be, we have here a wonderful picture which is true for all
ages of the mighty Christ, to whose gentle footfall the unquiet surges
are as a marble pavement; and who draws near in the purposes of His
love, unhindered by antagonism, and using even opposing forces as the
path for His triumphant progress. Two lessons may be drawn from this.
One is that in His marvellous providence Christ uses all the tumults
and unrest, the opposition and tempests which surround the ship that
bears His followers, as the means of achieving His purposes. We stand
before a mystery to which we have no key when we think of these two
certain facts; first, the Omnipotent redeeming will of God in Christ;
and, second, the human antagonism which is able to rear itself against
that. And we stand in the presence of another mystery, most blessed,
and yet which we cannot unthread, when we think, as we most assuredly
may, that in some mysterious fashion He works His purposes by the very
antagonism to His purposes, making even head-winds fill the sails, and
planting His foot on the white crests of the angry and changeful
billows. How often in the world's history has this scene repeated
itself, and by a divine irony the enemies have become the helpers of
Christ's cause, and what they plotted for destruction has turned out
rather to the furtherance of the Gospel! 'He maketh the wrath of man
to praise Him, and with the residue thereof He girdeth Himself.'

Another lesson for our individual lives is this, that Christ, in His
sweetness and His gentle sustaining help, comes near to us all across
the sea of sorrow and trouble. A more tender, a more gracious sense of
His nearness to us is ever granted to us in the time of our darkness
and our grief than is possible to us in the sunny hours of joy. It is
always the stormy sea that Christ comes across, to draw near to us;
and they who have never experienced the tempest have yet to learn the
inmost sweetness of His presence. When it is night, and it is dark, at
the hour which is the keystone of night's black arch, Christ comes to
us, striding across the stormy waters. Sorrow brings _Him_ near to
_us_. Do you see that sorrow does not drive _you_ away from Him!

III. Then, still further, we note in the story before us the terror
and the recognition.

St. John does not tell us why they were afraid. There is no need to
tell us. They see, possibly in the chill uncertain light of the grey
dawn breaking over the Eastern hills, a Thing coming to them across
the water there. They had fought gallantly with the storm, but this
questionable shape freezes their heart's blood, and a cry, that is
audible above even the howling of the wind and the dash of the waves,
gives sign of the superstitious terror that crept round the hearts of
those commonplace, rude men.

I do not dwell upon the fact that the average man, if he fancies that
anything from out of the Unseen is near him, shrinks in fear. I do not
ask you whether that is not a sign and indication of the deep
conviction that lies in men's souls, of a discord between themselves
and the unseen world; but I ask you if we do not often mistake the
coming Master, and tremble before Him when we ought to be glad?

We are often so absorbed with our work, so busy tugging at the oar, so
anxiously watching the set of current, so engaged in keeping the helm
right, that we have no time and no eyes to look across the ocean and
see who it is that is coming to us through all the hurly-burly. Our
tears fill our eyes, and weave a veil between us and the Master. And
when we do see that there is Something there, we are often afraid of
it, and shrink from it. And sometimes when a gentle whisper of
consolation, or some light air, as it were, of consciousness of His
presence, breathes through our souls, we think that it is only a
phantasm of our own making, and that the coming Christ is nothing more
than the play of our thoughts and imaginations.

Oh, brethren, let no absorption in cares and duties, let no
unchildlike murmurings, let no selfish abandonment to sorrow, blind
you to the Lord who always comes near troubled hearts, if they will
only look and see! Let no reluctance to entertain religious ideas, no
fear of contact with the Unseen, no shrinking from the thought of
Christ as a _Kill-joy_ keep you from seeing Him as He draws near to
you in your troubles. And let no sly, mocking Mephistopheles of doubt,
nor any poisonous air, blowing off the foul and stagnant marshes of
present materialism, make you fancy that the living Reality, treading
on the flood there, is a dream or a fancy or the projection of your
own imagination on to the void of space. He is real, whatever may be
phenomenal and surface. The storm is not so real as the Christ, the
waves not so substantial as He who stands upon them. They will pass
and quieten, He will abide for ever. Lift up your hearts and be glad,
because the Lord comes to you across the waters, and hearken to His
voice: 'It is I! Be not afraid.'

The encouragement not to fear follows the proclamation, 'It is I!'
What a thrill of glad confidence must have poured itself into their
hearts, when once they rose to the height of that wondrous fact!

'Well roars the storm to those who hear
A deeper voice across the storm.'

There is no fear in the consciousness of His presence. It is His old
word: 'Be not afraid!' And He breathes it whithersoever He comes; for
His coming is the banishment of danger and the exorcism of dread. So
that if only you and I, in the midst of all storm and terror, can say
'It is the Lord,' then we may catch up the grand triumphant chorus of
the old psalm, and say: 'Though the waters thereof roar and be
troubled, and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, yet
I will not fear.' The Lord is with us; the everlasting Christ is our
Helper, our Refuge, and our Strength.

IV. So, lastly, we have here in this story the end of the tempest and
of the voyage.

Our Evangelist does not record, as the others do, that the storm
ceased upon Christ's being welcomed into the little boat. The other
Evangelists do not record, as he does, the completion of the voyage.
'Immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.' The two
things are cause and effect. I do not suppose, as many do, that a
subordinate miracle is to be seen in that last clause of our text, or
that the 'immediately' is to be taken as if it meant that without one
moment's delay, or interval, the voyage was completed; but only, which
I think is all that is needful, that the falling of the tempest and
the calming of the waters which followed upon the Master's entrance
into the vessel made the remainder of the voyage comparatively brief
and swift.

It is not always true, it is very seldom true, that when Christ comes
on board opposition ends, and the haven is reached. But it is always
true that when Christ comes on board a new spirit enters into the men
who have Him for their companion, and are conscious that they have. It
makes their work easy, and makes them 'more than conquerors' over what
yet remains. With what a different spirit the weary men would bend
their backs to the oars once more when they had the Master on board,
and with what a different spirit you and I will set ourselves to our
work if we are sure of His presence. The worst of trouble is gone when
Christ shares it with us. There is a wonderful charm to stay His rough
wind in the assurance that in all our affliction He is afflicted. If
we feel that we are following in His footsteps, we feel that He stands
between us and the blast, a refuge from the storm and a covert from
the tempest. And if still, as no doubt will be the case, we have our
share of trouble and storm and sorrow and difficulty, yet the worst of
the gale will be passed, and though a long swell may still heave, the
terror and the danger will have gone with the night, and hope and
courage and gladness revive as the morning's sun breaks over the still
unquiet waves, and shows us our Master with us and the white walls of
the port glinting in the level beams.

Friends, life is a voyage, anyhow, with plenty of storm and danger and
difficulty and weariness and exposure and anxiety and dread and
sorrow, for every soul of man. But if you will take Christ on board,
it will be a very different thing from what it will be if you cross
the wan waters alone. Without Him you will make shipwreck of
yourselves; with Him your voyage may seem perilous and be tempestuous,
but He will 'make the storm a calm,' and will bring you to the haven
of your desire.




HOW TO WORK THE WORK OF GOD

'Then said they unto Him, What shall we do, that we might work the
works of God? 29. Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work
of God, that ye, believe on Him whom He hath sent.'--JOHN vi. 28, 29.

The feeding of the five thousand was the most 'popular' of Christ's
miracles. The Evangelist tells us, with something between a smile and
a sigh, that 'when the people saw it, they said, This is of a truth
that Prophet that should come into the world,' and they were so
delighted with Him and with it, that they wanted to get up an
insurrection on the spot, and make a King of Him. I wonder if there
are any of that sort of people left. If two men were to come into
Manchester to-morrow morning, and one of them were to offer material
good, and the other wisdom and peace of heart, which of them, do you
think, would have the larger following? We need not cast a stone at
the unblushing, frank admiration that these men had for a Prophet who
could feed them, for that is exactly the sort of prophet that a great
number of us would like best if they spoke out.

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