its genius to be helpful. The soul is not self-propulsive. All sailing boats need winds for their sails. There is no locomotive that does not depend upon some exterior power named steam and coal. The human soul is dependent upon motives for its forward movement. What hurled Paul along the highway of his life? What drove him toward mobbings, scourgings, prisons, and unto death itself? That chariot of the Greek god was hurled forward by the fiery steeds of the sun, but as for Paul, in his eager, passionate desire to serve gladiators, slaves, fugitives, prisoners, was the word, "The love of Christ constraineth me." What led that Roman boy who had just heard the story of the Carpenter upon the Cross, that Roman boy who was a slave, and came in from the field to find that his young master had drowned, who asked for the place where his young master had gone down, and when they held him back, leaped into the black flood, and he felt around on the bottom of the lake and brought up the body, and died himself? Surely there was a motive back of this Roman boy's deed. He had heard that "he that loseth his life shall save it." Recall also that little cripple in Switzerland, when the army of the Austrians was crossing the mountain pass. A great love of country welled up in the heart of the little hunchback. So when the sentinels felt that all was safe, because the heavy snowfall had come, and they flung them selves down to sleep, the cripple, at midnight, when all was still, kept his window up, drew the blankets a little closer, and with his head out in the snow listened, straining to hear the slightest sound. It was his vigilance that detected the approach of the enemy. The cripple wakened the sentinels, and the sentinels roused the soldiers, and the top of the pass was held and the valley saved. What miracles the love of country hath wrought! Ah, what a transformer love is! What impossible feats it accomplished! Ten thousand beautiful philanthropies were born when Jesus said, "Their angels do always behold the face of my "InasFather." much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my little ones, ye have done it unto me." There is on a certain tropic tree a purple blossom, at the end of the bough. Travellers say that if you touch that crimson heart you slay the glorious shrub. Not otherwise touch at your peril Christ, with His love of the poor and the weak, for when the Master with His motive of love and brotherhood goes, then all the reforms, the beautiful philanthropies perish also. But if there were no Christ, then the immortal hope perishes with Him. One December day, Harriet Martineau wrote her friend, saying: "For England the summer has gone, and for me the everlasting winter has set in." And when James Mill gave up the Christ he said, "That the clouds had slowly closed in and choked all hope, and that death had become only a leap into the dark, over a chasm, whose sharp rocks held an unknown power for mangling." The philosophers argued. The poets have hoped for a meeting place of the dead. The lovers have cried out for the beloved one. The parents have sobbed, "Is death a door into another room? Or a fall into a black hole in the ground?" Then Jesus stood at the gate of the sepulchre, and His Message concerned the life immortal. What others talked about, He saw. His forehead grazed the stars, He looked over the top of the hill, named man's horizon, and saw afar off the sweet fields of living green in the land of pure delight. He plucked the fear out of men's souls as the husbandman plucks the tare out of the wheat, as the physician plucks the foul growth out of the fair body, and restores it to full health. He taught men that dying was home-going; that heaven was the Father's house, and that nothing could ever injure God's children, either here or there, either before death or after death. The sweetest music that ever fell over heaven's battlements are the words, "In my Father's house are many mansions." "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." And not until men prefer fog banks to wheat harvests, the will-o'-thewisp light to the guiding star; not until they prefer candles flickering into the socket, to the summermaking sun, will they prefer these tawdry little superstitions before that Divine Teacher, whose music is sphere-music, and whose voice is the melody of the world. 10 John Alexander Hutton was born at Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, April 21, 1868. He was educated at Glasgow University; ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1892; called to Bristo Church, Edinburgh, 1898; to Jesmond, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1900; and to Belhaven Church, Glasgow, in 1906, where he is still pastor. Dr. Hutton is a searching preacher, presenting a perfect blending of keen intellectuality and spiritual insight. Among his written works, all of which are very popular, must be mentioned: Guidance from Robert Browning, In Matters of Faith, The Winds of God, The Weapons of Our Warfare, Discerning the Times, and Victory Over Victory. |