CHAPTER LVIII.
THE WARM HEART OF CHRIST.
The first night that old Dominie Scattergood sat at our tea-table, we asked him whether he could make his religion work in the insignificant affairs of life, or whether he was accustomed to apply his religion on a larger scale.
The Dominie turned upon us like a day-dawn, and addressed us as follows:
There is no warmer Bible phrase than this: "Touched with the feeling of our infirmities." The Divine nature is so vast, and the human so small, that we are apt to think that they do not touch each other at any point. We might have ever so many mishaps, the government at Washington would not hear of them, and there are mult.i.tudes in Britain whose troubles Victoria never knows; but there is a throne against which strike our most insignificant perplexities. What touches us, touches Christ. What annoys us, annoys Christ. What robs us, robs Christ. He is the great nerve-centre to which thrill all sensations which touch us who are his members.
He is touched with our physical infirmities. I do not mean that he merely sympathizes with a patient in collapse of cholera, or in the delirium of a yellow fever, or in the anguish of a broken back, or in all those annoyances that come from a disordered nervous condition. In our excited American life sound nerves are a rarity. Human sympathy in the case I mention amounts to nothing. Your friends laugh at you and say you have "the blues," or "the high strikes," or "the dumps," or "the fidgets." But Christ never laughs at the whims, the notions, the conceits, the weaknesses, of the nervously disordered. Christ probably suffered in something like this way, for He had lack of sleep, lack of rest, lack of right food, lack of shelter, and His temperament was finely strung.
Chronic complaints, the rheumatism, the neuralgia, the dyspepsia, after a while cease to excite human sympathy, but with Christ they never become an old story. He is as sympathetic as when you felt the first twinge of inflamed muscle or the first pang of indigestion. When you cannot sleep, Christ keeps awake with you. All the pains you ever had in your head are not equal to the pains Christ had in His head. All the acute suffering you ever had in your feet is not equal to the acute suffering Christ had in His feet. By His own hand He fashioned your every bone, strung every nerve, grew every eyelash, set every tooth in its socket, and your every physical disorder is patent to Him, and touches His sympathies.
He is also touched with the infirmities of our prayers. Nothing bothers the Christian more than the imperfections of his prayers. His getting down on his knees seems to be the signal for his thoughts to fly every whither.
While praying about one thing he is thinking about another. Could you ever keep your mind ten minutes on one supplication? I never could. While you are praying, your store comes in, your kitchen comes in, your losses and gains come in. The minister spreads his hands for prayer, and you put your head on the back of the pew in front, and travel round the world in five minutes.
A brother rises in prayer-meeting to lead in supplication. After he has begun, the door slams, and you peep through your fingers to see who is coming in. You say to yourself, "What a finely expressed prayer, or what a blundering specimen! But how long he keeps on! Wish he would stop! He prays for the world"s conversion. I wonder how much he gives toward it? There! I don"t think I turned the gas down in the parlor! Wonder if Bridget has got home yet? Wonder if they have thought to take that cake out of the oven? Oh what a fool I was to put my name on the back of that note! Ought to have sold those goods for cash and not on credit!" And so you go on tumbling over one thing after another until the gentleman closes his prayer with Amen! and you lift up your head, saying, "There! I haven"t prayed one bit.
I am not a Christian!" Yes, you are, if you have resisted the tendency.
Christ knows how much you have resisted, and how thoroughly we are disordered of sin, and He will pick out the one earnest pet.i.tion from the rubbish and answer it. To the very depth of His nature He sympathizes with the infirmity of our prayers.
He is touched with the infirmity of our temper.
There are some who, notwithstanding all that is said or done to them can smile back. But many of you are so constructed that if a man insults you, you either knock him down or wish you could. While with all resolution and prayer you resist this, remember that Christ knows how much you have been lied about, and misrepresented, and trod on. He knows that though you said something that was hot, you kept back something that was ten times hotter.
He takes into account your explosive temperament. He knows that it requires more skill to drive a fiery span than a tame roadster. He knows how hard you have put down the "brakes" and is touched with the feeling of your infirmity.
Christ also sympathizes with our poor efforts at doing good.
Our work does not seem to amount to much. We teach a cla.s.s, or distribute a bundle of tracts, or preach a sermon, and we say, "Oh, if I had done it some other way!" Christ will make no record of our bungling way, if we did the best we could. He will make record of our intention and the earnestness of our attempt. We cannot get the attention of our cla.s.s, or we break down in our exhortation, or our sermon falls dead, and we go home disgusted, and sorry we tried to speak, and feel Christ is afar off. Why, He is nearer than if we had succeeded, for He knows that we need sympathy, and is touched with our infirmity.
It is comforting to know that it is not the learned and the great and the eloquent that Christ seems to stand closest by. The "Swamp-angel" was a big gun, and made a stunning noise, but it burst before it accomplished anything, while many an humble rifle helped decide the contest. Christ made salve out of spittle to cure a blind man, and the humblest instrumentality may, under G.o.d, cure the blindness of the soul. Blessed be G.o.d for the comfort of His gospel!
CHAPTER LIX.
SACRIFICING EVERYTHING.
Ourselves.--Dominie Scattergood, why did Christ tell the man inquiring about his soul to sell all he had and give everything to the poor? Is it necessary for one to impoverish himself in order to be a Christian?
The Dominie.--You mistake the purport of Christ"s remark. He was not here teaching the importance of benevolence, but the duty of self-conquest. That young man had an all absorbing love of wealth. Money was his G.o.d, and Christ is not willing to occupy the throne conjointly with any other deity.
This was a case for what the doctors call heroic treatment. If a physician meet a case of unimportant sickness, he prescribes a mild curative, but sometimes he comes to a room where the case is almost desperate; ordinary medicine would not touch it. It is "kill or cure," and he treats accordingly. This young man that Christ was medicating was such a case.
There did not seem much prospect, and He gives him this powerful dose, "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor!"
It does not follow that we must all do the same, any more than because belladonna or a.r.s.enic is administered in one case of illness we should therefore all go to taking belladonna or a.r.s.enic. Because one man in the hospital must have his arm amputated all the patients need not expect amputation. The silliest thing that business-men could do would be to give all their property away and turn their families into the street. The most Christian thing for you to do is to invest your money in the best way possible, and out of your business, industriously carried on, to contribute the largest possible percentage to the kingdom of G.o.d.
Still, we must admire the manner in which the Great Physician took the diagnosis of this man"s case and grappled it. We all need heroic spiritual treatment. We do not get well of sin because we do not realize what a dire disease it is, and that we cannot cure it with a spiritual panacea, a gentle antidote, a few grains of spiritual morphine, a mild moral corrective or a few drops of peppermint on white sugar.
We want our pride killed, and we read an essay on that sweet grace of humility, and we go on as proud as ever. The pleasant lozenge does not do the work. Rather let us set ourselves to do that for Christ which is most oppugnant to our natural feelings. You do not take part in prayer-meeting because you cannot pray like Edward Payson, or exhort like John Summerfield. If you want to crush your pride, get up anyhow, though your knees knock together, and your tongue catches fast, and you see some G.o.dless hearer in prayer-meeting laughing as though she would burst.
Deal with your avarice in the same heroic style. Having heard the charitable cause presented, at the first right impulse thrust your hand in your pocket where the money is, and pull it out though it half kills you.
Pull till it comes. Put it on the plate with an emphasis, and turn your face away before you are tempted to take it back again. All your sweet contemplation about benevolence will not touch your case. Heroic treatment or nothing!
In the same way destroy the vindictiveness of your nature. Treatises on Christian brotherhood are not what you need. Select the man most disagreeable to you, and the one who has said the hardest things about you. Go up and shake hands with him, and ask him how his family is, and how his soul prospers. All your enmities will fly like a flock of quails at the bang of a rifle.
We treat our sins too politely. We ought to call them by their right names.
Hatred to our neighbor should not be called hard thoughts, but murder: "whoso hateth his brother is a murderer!" Sin is abominable. It has tusks and claws, and venom in its bite, and death in its stroke. Mild treatment will not do. It is loathsome, filthy and disgusting. If we bid a dog in gentle words to go out of the house, he will lie down under the table. It wants a sharp voice and a determined manner to make him clear out, and so sin is a vile cur that cannot be ejected by any conservative policy. It must be kicked out!
Alas for the young man of the text! He refused Christ"s word and went away to die, and there are now those who cannot submit to Christ"s command, and after fooling their time away with moral elixirs suddenly relapse and perish. They might have been cured, but would not take the medicine.
CHAPTER LX.
THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT.
The children after quitting the tea-table were too noisy for Sabbath night, and some things were said at the table critical of their behavior, when old Dominie Scattergood dawned upon the subject and said:
We expect too much of our children when they become Christians. Do not let us measure their qualifications by our own bushel. We ought not to look for a gravity and deep appreciation of eternal things such as we find in grown persons. We have seen old sheep in the pasture-field look anxious and troubled because the lambs would frisk.
No doubt the children that were lifted by their mothers in Christ"s arms, and got His blessing, five minutes after He set them down were as full of romp as before they came to Him. The boy that because he has become a Christian is disgusted with ball-playing, the little girl who because she has given her heart to G.o.d has lost her interest in her waxen-doll, are morbid and unhealthy. You ought not to set the life of a vivacious child to the tune of Old Hundred.
When the little ones come before you and apply for church membership, do not puzzle them with big words, and expect large "experiences." It is now in the church as when the disciples of old told the mothers not to bother Christ with their babes. As in some households the grown people eat first, and the children have to wait till the second table, so there are persons who talk as though G.o.d would have the grown people first sit down at His banquet; and if there is anything over the little ones may come in for a share.
No, no! If the supply at the Lord"s table were limited, He would let the children come in first and the older ones go without, as a punishment for not having come in while they themselves were children. If the wind is from the northeast, and the air is full of frost and snow, and part of the flock must be left out on the mountains, let it be the old sheep, for they can stand it better than the lambs. O Shepherd of Israel, crowd them all in before the coming of the tempest!
Myself.--Dominie Scattergood, what do yow think of this discussion in the papers on the subject of liturgies?
Scattergood.--I know there has been much talk of late about liturgies in the churches, and whether or not audiences should take audible part in religious service. While others are discussing that point, let me say that all the service of the Church ought to be responsive if not with audible "Amen," and unanimous "Good Lord, deliver us," then with hearty outburst of soul.
Let not the prayer of him that conducts public service go up solitary and alone, but accompanied by the heartfelt e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of all the auditory. We sit down on a soft cushion, in a pew by architectural skill arranged to fit the shape of our back, and are tempted to fall into unprofitable reveries.
Let the effort be on the part of every minister to make the prayer and the Scripture-reading and the giving out of the hymn so emphatic that the audience cannot help but respond with all the soul.
Let the minister, before going into the pulpit, look over the whole field and recall what are the styles of bereavement in the congregation--whether they be widowhood, orphanage or childlessness; what are the kinds of temporal loss his people may recently have suffered--whether in health, in reputation or estate; and then get both his shoulders under these troubles, and in his prayer give one earnest and tremendous lift, and there will be no dullness, no indifference, no lack of mult.i.tudinous response.
The reason that congregations have their heads bobbing about in prayer-time is because the officiating clergyman is apt to pet.i.tion in the abstract. He who calls the troubles of his people by their right names, and tenderly lays hold of the cancers of the souls before him, will not lack in getting immediate heartfelt, if not audible, response.
While we have not as much interest in the agitated question of liturgies as would make us say ten words about it, we are interested more than we can tell in the question, How shall the officiating ministers, in all the churches, give so much point, and adaptedness, and vigor and blood-red earnestness of soul to their public devotions as shall make all the people in church feel that it is the struggle for their immortal life in which the pastor is engaged? Whether it be in tones that strike the ear, or with a spiritual emphasis heard only in the silent corridor of the heart, let all the people say Amen!
Myself.--What do you think, Dominie, about all this talk about sensationalism in the pulpit?
Scattergood.--As far as I can understand, it seems to be a war between stagnation and sensationalism, and I dislike both.