William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "The Young Step Mother"

Raphael Sabatini - "The Suitors of Yvonne"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "The Tempting of Tavernake"

Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




Mark, to begin with, that there is implied the ultimate universality
of His dominion and sole supremacy of His throne. There is to be but
one Shepherd, and over all the earth a great unity of obedience to
Him. Here is the knell of all authority that does not own Him, and the
subordination of all that does. The hirelings, the blind guides, that
have misled and afflicted humanity for so many weary ages, shall be
all sunk in oblivion. The false gods shall be discrowned, and lie
shattered on their temple-sill, and there shall be no worshippers to
care for or to try to repair their discomfiture. Bow your heads before
Him, thinkers who have led men on devious paths and spoken but a
partial truth and a wisdom all confused with foolishness! Lower your
swords before Him, warriors who have builded your cities on blood and
led men like sheep to the slaughter! He is more glorious and excellent
than the mountains of prey. Cast your crowns before Him, princes and
all judges of the earth, for He is King by right of the crown of
thorns! This is the Lord of all--Teacher, Leader, Ruler of all men.
All other names shall be forgotten but His shall abide. If they have
been shepherds who would not come in by the door, a ransomed world
shall rejoice over their fall with the ancient hymn, 'Other gods
beside Thee have had dominion over us; they are dead, they shall not
live, Thou hast destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.'
If they have been subject to the chief Shepherd and ensamples to the
flock, they will rejoice to decrease before His increase, and having
helped to bring the Bride to the Bridegroom, will gladly stand aside
and be forgotten in the perfect love that enters into full fruition at
the last. Then when none contest nor intercept the reverential
obedience that the whole world brings to Him, shall be fulfilled the
firm promise which declared long ago: 'I will set up one Shepherd over
them, and He will feed them and be their Shepherd.'

Mark again the blessed nature of the relation between Christ and all
men which is here foretold. From of old, the shepherd has been in all
nations the emblem of kingly power, of leadership of every sort. How
often the fact has contradicted the symbol let history tell. But with
Jesus the reality does not only contradict, but even transcends, the
tender old comparison. He rules with a gentle sway. His sceptre is no
rod of iron, but the shepherd's crook, and the inmost meaning of its
use is that it may 'comfort' us, as David learned to feel. There
gather round the metaphor all thoughts of merciful guidance, of tender
care, of a helping arm when we are weak, of a loving bosom where we
are carried when we are weary. It speaks of a seeking love that roams
over every high hill till it finds, and of a strong shoulder that
bears us back when He has found. It tells of sweet hours of rest in
the hot noontide by still waters, of ample provision for all the
soul's longings in green pastures. It speaks of footsteps that go
before, in which men may follow and find them ways of pleasantness. It
speaks of gentle callings by name which draw the heart. It speaks of
defence when lion and bear come ravening down, and of safe couching by
night when the silent stars behold the sleeping sheep and the wakeful
shepherd. He Himself gives its highest significance to the emblem, in
the words of this great discourse, when He fixes on His knowledge, His
calling of His sheep, His going before them, His giving His life for
them. Such are the gracious blessings which here He teaches us to
think of as possessed in the happy days that shall be, by all the
world.

And, on the other hand, the symbol speaks of confiding love in the
hearts of men, of a great peacefulness of meek obedience stilling and
gladdening their wills, of the consciousness of His perfect love, and
the knowledge of all His gracious character, of sweet answering
communion with Him, of safety from all enemies, of freedom, of
familiar passage in and out to God. Thus knit together shall be the
one fold and the one Shepherd. 'They shall feed in the ways, and their
pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor
thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them, for He that hath
mercy on them shall feed them, even by the springs of water shall He
guide them.'

Mark again what a vision is here given of the relations of men with
one another.

They are to be all gathered into a peaceful unity. They are to be one
because they all hearken to one voice. It is to be observed that our
Lord does not say, as our English Bible makes Him say, that there is
to be one fold. He drops that word of set purpose in the latter clause
of our text, and substitutes for it another, which may perhaps be best
rendered flock. Why this change in the expression? Because, as it
would seem, he would have us learn that the unity of that blessed
future time is not to be like the unity of the Jewish Church, a formal
and external one. That ancient polity was a fold. It held its members
together by outward bonds of uniformity. But the universal Church of
the future is to be a flock. It is to be really and visibly one. But
it is to be so, not because it is hemmed in by one enclosure, but
because it is to be gathered round one Shepherd. The more closely they
are drawn to Him, the more near will they be to each other. The centre
in which all the radii meet keeps them all in their places. 'We being
many are one bread, for we are all partakers of that one bread.' In
the ritual of the Old Covenant, the great golden candlestick with its
seven branches stood in the court of the Temple, emblem of the formal
oneness of the people, which was meant to be the light of the Lord to
a dark world. In the vision of the New Covenant, the seer in Patmos
beheld not the one lamp with its branches, but the seven golden
candlesticks, which were made into a holier and a freer unity because
the Son of Man walked in their midst--emblem of the oneness in
diversity of the peoples, who were sometimes darkness, but shall one
day be light in the Lord. There may continue to be national
distinctions. There may or there may not be any external unity. But at
all events our Lord turns away our thoughts from the outward to the
inward, and bids us be sure that though the folds be many the flock
shall be one, because they shall all hear and follow Him.

The words, however, suggest for us the blessed thought of the peaceful
relations that shall then subsist among men. The tribes of the earth
shall couch beside each other like the quiet sheep in the fold, and
having learned of His great meekness, they shall no more bite nor
devour one another. Alas! alas! the words seem too good to be true.
They seem long, long of coming to pass. Ever since they were spoken
the old bloody work has been going on, and the old lusts of the human
heart have been busy sowing the dragon's teeth that shall spring up in
wars and fightings. In savage lands warfare rages on, ceaseless,
ignoble, unrecorded, and seemingly purposeless as that of animalcules
in a drop of water. On civilised soil, men, who love the same Christ
and worship Him in the same tongue, are fronting each other at this
hour. The war of actual swords, and the war of conflicting creeds, and
the jostling of human selfishness in the rough road of life, are all
around us, and their seeds are within ourselves. The race of men do
not live like folded sheep, rather like a flock of wolves, who first
run over and then devour their weaker fellows.

But here is a fairer hope, and it will be fulfilled when all evil
thoughts, and all selfish desires, and all jealous grudgings shall
vanish from men's hearts, as unclean spirits at cockcrow, and shall
leave them, self-forgetful, yielding of their own prerogatives,
desirous of no other man's, abhorrent of inflicting, and patient of
receiving wrong. There will be no fuel then to blow into sulphurous
flame, though all the blasts from hell were to fan the embers. But
peace and concord shall be in all men, for Christ shall be in all.
National distinctions may abide, but national enmities--the oldest and
deepest, shall disappear. There shall still be Assyria, and Egypt, and
Israel, but their former relation will be replaced by a bond of amity
in their common possession of Him who is our peace. 'In that day shall
Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria, even a blessing in
the midst of the land, whom the Lord shall bless, saying, Blessed be
Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine
inheritance.' God be thanked! that though we see, and our fathers have
seen, so much that seems to contradict our hopes of a peaceful world,
and though to-day the hell-hounds of war are baying over the earth,
and though nowhere can we see signs even of the approach of the
halcyon time, yet we can wait for the vision, knowing that it will come
at the appointed time, when

'No war or battle's sound
Is heard the world around,
The idle spear and shield are high uphung;
The trumpet speaks not to the armed throng,
And Kings sit still, with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.'

Such are the thoughts which our Lord would teach us as to the present
and as to the future of our missionary work. For the one, moderate
expectations of success, not unchequered by disappointment, and a
brave patience in long toil. For the other, hopes which cannot be too
glowing, and a faith which cannot be too obstinate. The one is being
fulfilled in our own and our brethren's experience even now; we may be
therefore all the more sure that the other will be so in due time. If
we look with Christ's eyes, we shall not be depressed by the apparent
unbroken surface of heathenism but see, as He did, everywhere souls
that belong to Him, who may and must be won; we shall joyfully embrace
the work which He has given us to do; we shall arm ourselves against
the discouragements of the present, by living much in the past at the
foot of the Cross, till we catch the true image of the Saviour's love,
and much in the future in the midst of the ransomed flock, till we too
behold the roses blossoming in the wilderness, the bright waters
covering all the dry places in the desert, and the families of men
sitting, clothed and in their right mind, at the feet of Jesus.

Our missionary work is the pure and inevitable result of a belief in
these words of my text. Can a man believe that Christ has other sheep
for whom He died because He must bring them in, whom He will bring in
because He died, and _not_ work according to his power in the line of
the divine purposes? The missionary spirit is but the Christian spirit
working in one particular direction. Missionary societies are but one
of the authentic outcomes of Christian principles, as natural as
holiness of life, or the act of prayer.

To secure, then, a more vigorous energy in such work, we need chiefly
what we need for all Christian growth--namely, more and deeper
communion with Christ, a more vivid realisation of His grace and love
for ourselves. And then we need that, under the double stimulus of His
love and of His commandment--which at bottom are one--our minds should
be more frequently occupied with this subject of Christian missions.
Most of us know too little about the matter to feel very much. And
then we need that we should more seriously reflect upon the facts in
relation to our own personal responsibility and duty. You complain of
the triteness of such appeals as this sermon. Brethren, have you ever
tried that recipe for freshening up well-worn truths, namely, thinking
about them in connection with the simplest, most important of all
questions--what, then, ought I to do in view of these truths? Am I
exaggerating when I say, that not one-half of the professing
Christians of our day give an hour in the year to pondering that
question, with reference to missionary work? Oh! dear friends, see to
it that you live in Christ for yourselves, and then see to it that you
think His thoughts about the heathen world, till your pity is stirred
and your mind braced to the firm resolve that you too will work the
works of Christ and bring in the wanderers.

We have had as large results as Christ has led us to expect, and far
larger than we deserved. Christian missions are yet in their
infancy--alas! that it should be so. But in these seventy years since
they may be said to have begun, what wonderful successes have been
achieved. We are often told that we have done nothing. Is it so? The
plant has been got together, methods of working have been
systematised, mistakes in some measure corrected. We have spent much
of our time in learning how to work, and that process is by no means
over yet. But with all these deductions, which ought fairly to be
made, how much has been accomplished? The Bible has been put into the
languages of seven hundred millions of men. The beginnings of a
Christian literature have been supplied for five-sixths of the world.
Half a million of professed converts have been gathered in, or as many
as there were at the end of the first century, after about the same
number of years of labour, and with apostles for missionaries and
miracles for proof. And if these still bear on their ankles the marks
of the fetters, and limp as they walk, or cannot see very clearly at
first, it is no more than might be expected from their long darkness
in the prison-house, and it is no more than Paul had to contend with
at Ephesus and Corinth.

Every church that has engaged in the toil has shared in the blessing,
and has its own instances of special prosperity. We have had Jamaica;
the London Missionary Society, Madagascar, and the South Seas; the
Wesleyans, Fiji; the Episcopal Societies, Tinnevelly; the American
brethren, Burmah, and the Karens. Some of the ruder mythologies have
been so utterly extirpated that the children of idolaters have seen
the gods whom their fathers worshipped for the first time in the
British Museum. While over those more compact and scientific systems
which lie like an incubus on mighty peoples, there has crept a
sickening consciousness of a coming doom, and they already half own
their conqueror in the Stronger One than they.

'They feel from Judah's land
The dreaded Infant's hand.'

'Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, the idols are upon the beasts.'
Surely God has granted us success enough for our thankful confidence,
more than enough for our deserts. I repeat it, it is as much as He
promised, as much as we had any right to expect, and it is a vast deal
more than any other system of belief or of no belief, any of your
spiritualised Christianities, or still more intangible creeds has ever
managed, or ever thought of trying. To those who taunt us with no
success, and who perhaps would not dislike Christian missions so much
if they disliked Christian truth a little less, we may very fairly and
calmly answer--This rod has budded at all events; do you the same with
your enchantments.

But the past is no measure of the future. From the very nature of the
undertaking the ratio of progress increases at a rapid rate. The first
ten years of labour in India showed twenty-seven converts, the seventh
ten showed more than twenty-seven thousand. The preparation may be as
slow as the solemn gathering of the thunder-clouds, as they
noiselessly steal into their places, and slowly upheave their grey
billowing crests; the final success may be as swift as the lightning
which flashes in an instant from one side of the heavens to the other.
It takes long years to hew the tunnel, to 'make the crooked straight,
and the rough places plain,' and then smooth and fleet the great power
rushes along the rails. To us the cry comes, 'Prepare ye in the desert
an highway for our God.' The toil is sore and long, but 'the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.' The
Alpine summits lie white and ghastly in the spring sunshine, and it
seems to pour ineffectual beams on their piled cold; but by slow
degrees it is silently loosening the bands of the snow, and after a
while a goat's step, as it passes along a rocky ledge, or a breath of
wind will move a tiny particle, and in an instant its motion spreads
over a mile of mountain side, and the avalanche is rushing swifter and
mightier at every foot down to the valley below, where it will all
turn into sweet water, and ripple glancing in the sunshine. Such is
our work. It may seem very hopeless, and be mostly unobservable in
surface results, but it is very real for all that. The conquering
impulse, for which our task may have been to prepare the way, will be
given, and then we shall wonder to see how surely the kingdom was
coming, even when we observed it not.

Ye have need of patience, and to feed your patience, ye have need of
fellowship with Christ, of faith in His promises, of sympathy with His
mind. God has given us, dear brethren, special reason for renewed
consecration to this service in the blessings which have during the
year terminated our anxieties and crowned our work for our own
Society. But let us not dwell upon what has been done. These successes
are brooks by the way at which we may drink--nothing more. We ought to
be like shepherds in the lonely mountain glens, who see in the
fast-falling snow and the bitter blast a summons to the hillside, and
there all the night long wherever the drift lies deepest and the wind
bites the most sharply, search the most eagerly for the poor half-dead
creatures, and as they find each, bear it back to the safe shelter,
nor stay behind to count the rescued, nor to rest their weariness, for
all the bright light in the cottage and the blackness without, but
forth again on the same quest, till all the Master's sheep have been
rescued from the white death that lay treacherous around, and are
sleeping at peace in His folds. A mighty Voice ought ever to be
sounding in our ears, 'Other sheep I have,' and the answer of our
hearts and of our lives should be, 'Them also, O Lord! will I try to
bring.' Not till the far-off issue is accomplished shall we have a
right to rest, and then we, with all those He has helped us to gather
to His side, shall be among that flock, whom He who is at once Lamb
and Shepherd, our Brother and our Lord, our Sacrifice and King, 'shall
feed and lead by living fountains of waters,' in the sweet pastures of
the upper world, where there are no ravening wolves, nor false guides
to terrify and bewilder His flock any more at all for ever.




THE DELAYS OF LOVE

'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had
heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same
place where He was.'--JOHN xi. 5, 6.

We learn from a later verse of this chapter that Lazarus had been dead
four days when Christ reached Bethany. The distance from that village
to the probable place of Christ's abode, when He received the message,
was about a day's journey. If, therefore, to the two days on which He
abode still after the receipt of the news, we add the day which the
messengers took to reach Him and the day which He occupied in
travelling, we get the four days since which Lazarus had been laid in
his grave. Consequently the probability is that, when our Lord had the
message, the man was dead. Christ did not remain still, therefore, in
order to work a greater miracle by raising Lazarus from the dead than
He would have done by healing, but He stayed--strange as it would
appear--for reasons closely connected with the highest well-being of
all the beloved three, and _because_ He loved them.

John is always very particular in his use of that word 'therefore,'
and he points out many a subtle and beautiful connection of cause and
effect by his employment of it. I do not know that any of them are
more significant and more full of illumination with regard to the ways
of divine providence than the instance before us. How these two
sisters must have looked down the rocky road that led up from Jericho
during those four weary days, to see if there were any signs of His
coming. How strange it must have appeared to the disciples themselves
that He made no sign of movement, notwithstanding the message. Perhaps
John's scrupulous carefulness in pointing out that His love was
Christ's reason for His quiescence may reflect a remembrance of the
doubts that had crept over the minds of himself and his brethren
during these two days of strange inaction. The Evangelist will have us
learn a lesson, which reaches far beyond the instance in hand, and
casts light on many dark places.

I. Christ's delays are the delays of love.

We have all of us, I suppose, had experience of desires for the
removal of bitterness or sorrows, or for the fulfilment of
expectations and wishes, which we believed, on the best evidence that
we could find, to be in accordance with His will, and which we have
been able to make prayers out of, in true faith and submission, which
prayers have had to be offered over and over and over again, and no
answer has come, It is part of the method of Providence that the
lifting away of the burden and the coming of the desires should be a
hope deferred. And instead of stumbling at the mystery, or feeling as
if it made a great demand upon our faith, would it not be wiser for us
to lay hold of that little word of the Apostle's here, and to see in
it a small window that opens out on to a boundless prospect, and a
glimpse into the very heart of the divine motives in His dealings with
us?

If we could once get that conviction into our hearts, how quietly we
should go about our work! What a beautiful and brave patience there
would be in us, if we habitually felt that the only reason which
actuates God's providence in its choice of times of fulfilling our
desires and lifting away our bitterness is our own good! Nothing but
the purest and simplest love, transparent and without a fold in it,
sways Him in all that He does. Why should it be so difficult for us to
believe this? If we were more in the way of looking at life, with all
its often unwelcome duty, and its arrows of pain and sorrow, and all
the disappointments and other ills that it is heir to, as a
discipline, and were to think less about the unpleasantness, and more
about the purpose, of what befalls us, we should find far less
difficulty in understanding that His delay is born of love, and is a
token of His tender care.

Sorrow is prolonged for the same reason as it was sent. It is of
little use to send it for a little while. In the majority of cases,
time is an element in its working its right effect upon us. If the
weight is lifted, the elastic substance beneath springs up again. As
soon as the wind passes over the cornfield, the bowing ears raise
themselves. You have to steep foul things in water for a good while
before the pure liquid washes out the stains. And so time is an
element in all the good that we get out of the discipline of life.
Therefore, the same love which sends must necessarily protract, beyond
our desires, the discipline under which we are put. If we thought of
it, as I have said, more frequently as discipline and schooling, and
less frequently as pain and a burden, we should understand the meaning
of things a great deal better than we do, and should be able to face
them with braver hearts, and with a patient, almost joyous, endurance.

If we think of some of the purposes of our sorrows and burdens, we
shall discern still more clearly that time is needed for accomplishing
them, and that, therefore, love must delay its coming to take them
away. For example, the object of them all, and the highest blessing
that any of us can obtain, is that our wills should be bent until they
coincide with God's, and that takes time. The shipwright, when he gets
a bit of timber that he wants to make a 'knee' out of, knows that to
mould it into the right form is not the work of a day. A will may be
_broken_ at a blow, but it will take a while to _bend_ it. And just
because swiftly passing disasters have little permanent effect in
moulding our wills, it is a blessing, and not an evil, to have some
standing fact in our lives, which will make a continual demand upon us
for continually repeated acts of bowing ourselves beneath His sweet,
though it may seem severe, will. God's love in Jesus Christ can give
us nothing better than the opportunity of bowing our wills to His, and
saying, 'Not mine, but Thine be done.' If that is why He stops on the
other side of Jordan, and does not come even to the loving messages of
beloved hearts, then He shows His love in the sweetest and the
loftiest form. So, dear friends, if you carry a lifelong sorrow, do
not think that it is a mystery why it should lie upon your shoulders
when there are omnipotence and an infinite heart in the heavens. If it
has the effect of bending you to His purpose, it is the truest token
of His loving care that He can send. In like manner, is it not worth
carrying a weight of unfulfilled wishes, and a weariness of
unalleviated sorrows, if these do teach us three things, which are one
thing--faith, endurance, prayerfulness, and so knit us by a threefold
cord that cannot be broken, to the very heart of God Himself?

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