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Title: Quiet Talks on John's Gospel

Author: S. D. Gordon

Release Date: February 26, 2005 [EBook #15185]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Quiet Talks on _John's Gospel_

By

S. D. Gordon




1915




Preface



_Everything depends on getting Jesus placed._ That lies at the root of
all--living, serving, preaching, teaching. John had Jesus placed. He had
Him up in His own place. This settles everything else. Then one gets
himself placed, too, up on a level where the air is clear and bracing,
the sun warm, and the outlook both steadying and stimulating. Get the
centre fixed and things quickly adjust themselves about it to your eyes.

It will be seen very quickly that this little book makes no pretension
to being a commentary on, or an exposition of, John's Gospel. That is
left to the scholarly folk who eat their meals in the sacred classical
languages of the past. It is simply a homely attempt to let out a little
of what has been sifting in these years past of this wondrous miniature
Bible from John's pen.

The proportions of this homely little messenger of paper and type may
seem a little odd at first. The longest chapter is devoted to only the
opening eighteen verses of John, the prologue. While the whole of the
first twelve chapters of John, excepting that prologue, is brought into
one smaller chapter. It wasn't planned so, though I felt it coming as
the wondrous mood of this book came down over me. I think it mast be
the effect of the atmosphere of John's book.

Sometimes John packs so much in so little space, and again he goes so
particularly into the details of some one incident. The prologue is a
miniature Bible. The whole Bible story is there in its cream. And on the
other hand John spends five chapters (xiii.-xvii.), almost a fifth of
the whole, on a single evening. He devotes seven chapters (xiii.-xix.),
almost a third of all, on the events of twenty-four hours. John is
controlled not by mere proportion of space or quantity, but by the finer
proportions of thought and quality.

It has been difficult to hold these homely talks down to the limit of
space they take here. So many veins of gold in this mine, showing
clearly large nuggets of pure ore, lie just at hand untouched in this
little mining venture. But it seemed clearly best to get the one clear
grasp of the whole. That helps so much. But there'll be strong
temptation to get one's pick and spade and go at this gold mine again.

But now these things are written that we common folk may understand a
bit better, and in a warm way, that Jesus was God on a wooing errand to
the earth; and that we may join the blest company of the won ones, and
become co-wooers with God of the others.

S. D. G.




Contents



I. John's Story

II. The Wooing Lover

     Who it was that came.

III. The Lover Wooing

     A group of pictures illustrating how the wooing was done and how
     the Lover was received.

IV. Closer Wooing

     An evening with opening hearts: the story of a supper and a walk in
     the moonlight and the shadows.

V. The Greatest Wooing

     A night and a day with hardening hearts: the story of tender
     passion and of a terrible tragedy.

VI. An Appointed Tryst Unexpectedly Kept

     A day of startling joyous surprises.

VII. Another Tryst

     A story of fishing, of guests at breakfast, and of a walk and talk
     by the edge of blue Galilee.




I

John's Story




    "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
      I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
    I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
      Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
    I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
          Up vistaed hopes, I sped;
          And shot, precipitated,
    Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
      From those strong Feet that followed, followed after."

    --_Francis Thompson, in "The Hound of Heaven_."

"These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name."--_John xx.
31_.




I

John's Story



The Heart-strings of God.


There's a tense tugging at the heart of God. The heart-strings of God
are tight, as tight as tight can be. For there's a tender heart that's
easily tugged at one end, and an insistent tugging at the other. The
tugging never ceases. The strings never slack. They give no signs of
easing or getting loose.

It's the tug of man's sore need at the down-end, the man-end, of the
strings. And it's the sore tug of grief over the way things are going on
down here with men, at the other end, the up-end, the heart-end, of the
strings. It's the tense pull-up of a love that grows stronger with the
growth of man's misunderstanding.

But the heart-strings never snap. The heart itself breaks under the
tension of love and grief, grieved and grieving love. But the strings
only strengthen and tighten under the strain of use.

Those heart-strings are a bit of the heart they're tied to, an inner
bit, aye the innermost bit, the inner heart of the heart. They are the
bit pulled, and pulled more, and pulled harder, till the strings grew.
Man was born in the warm heart of God. Was there ever such a womb! Was
there ever such another borning, homing place!

It was man's going away that stretched the heart out till the strings
grew. The tragedy of sin revealed the toughness and tenderness of love.
For that heart never let go of the man whom it borned. Man tried to pull
away, poor thing. In his foolish misunderstanding and heady wilfulness
he tried to cut loose. If he had known God better he would never have
tried that. He'd never have _started_ away; and he'd never have tried to
_get_ away.

For love never faileth. A heart--the real thing of a heart, that is,
God's heart--never lets go. It breaks; but let go? not once: never yet.
The breaking only loosens the red that glues fast with a tighter hold
than ever. The fibre of the heart--God's heart--is made of too strong
stuff to loosen or wear out or snap. Love never faileth. It can't;
because it's love.

Now all this explains Jesus. It was man's pull on these heart-strings
that brought Him down. The pull was so strong and steady. It grew tenser
and more insistent. And straight down He came by the shortest way, the
way of those same heart-strings. For the heart-strings of God are the
shortest distance between two given points, the point of God's giving,
going love, and the point of man's sore need, given a sharper-pointed
end by its very soreness.

It is a sort of blind pull, this pull of man on the heart of God; a
confused, unconscious, half-conscious, dust-blinded, slippery-road sort
of pulling, but one whose tight grip never slacks. Man needs God, but
does not know it. He knows he needs _some_thing. He feels that keenly.
But he does not know that it's God whom he needs, with a very few rare
exceptions. It doesn't seem to have entered his head that he'll never
get out of his tight corner till God gets him out.

Down the street of life he goes, eyes blinded by the thick dust, ears
deafened by the cries of the crowd, by the noise of the street without,
and the noise of passions and fevered ambitions within, heart a-wearied
by the confusion of it all, groping, stumbling, jostled and jostling,
hitting this way and that, with the fever high in his blood, and his
feet aching and bleeding; sometimes the polish of culture on the
surface; _some_times rags and dirt; but underneath the same thing.

Yet under all there's a vague but very real feeling of that unceasing
pull upward upon His heart-strings. But though blind and vague and
confused that tugging is never the less tense, but ever more, and then
yet more.

Jesus was God answering the tug of man's need on His heart-strings. And
so naturally there was an answering feel in man's heart. Man felt the
answer a-coming. There was a great stir in the spirit-currents of earth
when Jesus came. A thrill of expectancy ran through the world, Roman,
Greek, Barbarian, far and wide, as Jesus drew near. The book-makers of
that time all speak of it. It was the vibration of those same
heart-strings connecting man and God.

The move at God's end was felt at man's. The coming down along the
highway of the strings thrilled and stirred and awed the hearts into
which those strings led, and where they were so tightly knotted. The
earth-currents spread the news. Man heard; he felt; he knew: vaguely,
blindly, wearily, yet very really he heard and felt and recognized that
help, a Friend, some One, was nearing.

And then when Jesus walked among men how He did pull upon their hearts!
So quietly He went about. So sympathetically He looked and listened. So
warm was the human touch of His hand. So strong was the lift of His arm
to ease their load. So potent was the spell of His unfailing power to
give relief. How He did pull! And how men did answer to that pull!
Unresistingly, eagerly, as weary child in mother's arms at close of day,
they came crowding to Him.



The Fourfold Message.


It is fascinating to find one book in this old Book of God given up
wholly to telling of this, John's Gospel. Of course the whole of the
Book is really given up to it, when one gets the whole simple view of it
at one glance. But so many of us don't get that whole simple glance.

So to make it easier for us simple common folk, and to make sure of our
getting it, there is one little book, hardly big enough to call a book,
just a few pages devoted wholly to letting us see this one thing. You
can see the whole of the sun in a single drop of water. You can see the
whole of the Book of God in this one little book that John wrote.

John's Gospel is like the small tracing of the artist's pen on the
lower corner of an etching, the remarque, put there as a signature, the
artist's personal mark that the picture is genuine, the real thing. The
whole consummate skill of the artist is revealed at a glance in the
simple outline-tracing on the margin. The whole of the God-story in the
larger picture of the whole Book is given in few simple clear lines in
this exquisite little thing commonly called John's Gospel.

It is striking to make the discovery that John's little book has _a
distinctive message as a book_. It is full of messages, of course. But I
mean that there is a distinct story told by the book as a whole, by the
very way it is put together. It is told by the very sort of language
used, the words chosen as the leading words of the book. It is told by
the picture that clearly fills John's eye as he writes, and by the very
spirit that floods the pages as a soft light, and that breaks out of
them as the subtle fragrance of locust blossoms in the spring.

The fragrance of flowers cannot be analyzed: it must be smelled and
felt. That's the only way you'll ever know it. The fine scholarly
analyses of John are helpful. But there's the subtler something that
cannot be diagramed or analyzed or synthesized. It eludes the
razor-edged knife, and the keenly critical survey. It is recognized only
by one's spirit, and then only when the spirit is warm, and in tune with
John's.

Of course each of the Gospel stories has a message of its own, quite
apart from the group of facts common to them all. And these four
messages together give us the fuller distinctive message of these four
little books. And a very winsome message it is, too, that takes hold of
one's heart, and takes a warm strong hold at that.

_Matthew_ tells us that Jesus is a _King_. For a great purpose He chose
to live as a peasant, as one of the common folks. But He was of the
blood royal. He has the long unbroken kingly lineage. He showed kingly
power in His actions, kingly wisdom in His teachings, and the fine
kingly spirit in His gracious kindliness of touch. He was gladly
accepted and served as King by those who understood Him best. He was
acknowledged as King by the Roman Governor; and He died as a King, and
as a King was laid in a newly hewn tomb.

_Mark_ adds a fine touch to this picture, a warm touch with colour in
it,--this King of ours is _a serving King_. This comes not only with a
warm feel, but it comes as a distinct surprise. Men's kings are _served_
kings. There have been kings, and are, who rendered their people a fine
high service, and do. But the overpowering impression given the common
crowd watching on the street is that kings are superior beings, to be
waited upon, humbly bowed to, and implicitly obeyed. They are to be
served.

Bat Mark's picture shows us a King whose passion is to serve. The
service which He draws out of His followers is drawn out by His warm
serving spirit towards us. The words on the royal coat-of-arms are, "Not
to be ministered unto, but to minister." And in the first meaning of the
words He Himself used that means "not to be _served_ but to _serve_." In
Mark the air is tense with rapid action. The quick executive movement of
a capable servant is felt in the terse words short sentences and swift
action of the story.

There's yet warmer colouring in _Luke's_ picture. This serving King is
_nearest of kin to us!_ He is not only of the blood royal, but of the
blood human. He is bone of our bone, blood of our blood, and life of our
common life. He came to us through a rare union of God's power with
human consent and human function, never known before nor repeated since.
This is the bit that Luke adds to the composite message of these four
little God-story books.

Here Jesus has a tenderness of human sympathy with us men, for He and we
are brothers. There's an outlook as broad as the race. No national
boundaries limit its reach. No sectional prejudices warp or shut Him off
from sympathetic touch with any. He shares our common life. He knows our
human temptations, and knows them with a reality that is painful, and
with an intensity that wets His brow and shuts His jaw hard.

This king who serves is _a man_. He _can_ be a king of men for He is a
_man_. He has the first qualification. I might use an old-fashioned word
in the first old-time meaning,--He is _a fellow_, one who shares the
bed and bread of our common experience. And so He is _kin to us_, both
in lineage and in experience, in blood and in spirit.

And John's share in this partnership message adds a simple bold touch of
colouring that makes the picture a masterpiece, _the_ masterpiece. This
King who serves, and is nearest of kin to us, is also _nearest of kin to
God_. He is not only of the blood royal, and the blood human, but of the
blood divine. He was with God before calendars came into use. He was the
God of that creative Genesis week. He came on an errand down to the
earth, and when the errand was done, and well done, He went back home,
bearing on His person the marks of His fidelity to the Father's errand.
This is John's bit of rich high colouring.

And so _we are nearest of kin to God_ through Jesus. Kinship is always a
matter of blood. There is a double kinship, through the blood of
inheritance, and the blood of sacrifice. Our _inherited_ kinship of
blood has been lost. But His blood of sacrifice has made a new kinship.
We had broken the entail of our inheritance clean beyond mending. We
were _outcasts_ by our own act. But He _cast in_. His lot with us, and
so drew us back and up and in. He made a new entail through His blood.
And that new entail is as unbreakable as the old broken one is
unmendable. And so we come into the family of a King. And we are
kingliest in character when we are Christliest in spirit and action. We
are most like the King when we are helping others.

Our true motto, in our relation to our fellows, is: "I am among you as
he that serveth." Towel and basin, bended knee and comforted
pilgrim-feet and refreshed spirit,--this is our family crest. We're kin
to all the race through Jesus. Black skin and white, yellow and brown;
round heads and long, slanting eyes and oval, in slum alley and palatial
home, below the equator and above it,--all are our kinsmen.

We are reaching highest when we are stooping lowest to help some one up.
We're nearest like God in character when we're getting nearest in touch
to those needing help. We are kingliest and Godliest and Christliest
when we're controlled by men's needs, but always under the higher
control of the Holy Spirit.

This is the composite message of the four Gospels; and this is its
practical human outworking.



God on a Wooing Errand.


But it's the other John message we are especially after just now.
There's another message of John's book quite distinct from this, though
naturally allied with it. And this other is the crowding message of his
book. Its thought crowds in upon you till every other is crowded into
second place. And as it gets hold of you it crowds your mind and heart
and life till every other is either crowded out, or crowded to a lower
place; _out_, if it jars; _lower place_, if it agrees, for every
agreeing bit yields to the lead of this tremendous message.

But one must get hold of John before John's message gets hold of him.
John was swayed by a passion. It was a fiery passion flaming through all
his life. It burned through him as the fierce forest fire burns through
the underbrush. Every base thing was eaten up by its flame. Every less
worthy thing came under its heat. It melted and mellowed and moulded his
whole being.

It was _the Jesus-passion_. It was kindled that memorable afternoon
early in his life down in the Jordan bottoms.[1] John's namesake, the
Herald, applied the kindling match. From then on the flames never
flickered nor burned low. They increased steadily, and they increased in
purity, until his whole life was under their holy heat.

John didn't always understand his Master. Sometimes he misunderstood.
But he never failed in his trust of Him, nor in his fidelity to Him. Of
the chosen inner circle John was the one who remained true through the
sorest test, that betrayal-night test. Judas betrayed; Peter denied; the
nine fled in terror down the road to save their cowardly lives; John
went in "_with_ Jesus." That fiery nature of his, that early won for him
the stormy name "son of thunder," came completely under the sway of this
holier tenderer stronger flame, and burned itself out in a passion of
love for Jesus.

The Jesus-passion swayed John completely. This explains the man, and his
career. It explains this little book of his ripe old age. And only this
can. One must read the book through John's own heart, then he begins to
understand it. This Jesus-passioned man is the key to the book, the
human key.

And the distinctive message of the book is simply this: _Jesus was God
on a wooing errand to the earth_. That simple sentence covers fully all
that is found in John's twenty-one chapters. Every line in these
fourteen or fifteen pages can be traced back into that brief statement.

Indeed this becomes an outline of the book. See: in the opening
paragraphs the wooing Lover is coming down to earth.[2] In the first
twelve chapters the Lover is pleading winsomely and earnestly for
acceptance.[3] Then He is seen in closest touch with the inner group of
those who have accepted, opening His heart yet more, wooing still
closer.[4] Then comes the last tragic pleading, pleading in intensest
action, with those who persist in rejecting.[5] And then the last close
heart-touches with the inner circle.[6]



The Water-Mark of John's Gospel.


The very words John so thoughtfully chooses as his leading words bear
the distinct impress of this, like the sharply indented stamp of the
mint on the new coin. Two such words stand out above all others,
"believe" and "witness." The first actually occurs oftenest, sounding
out like the dominant chord of music running throughout a symphony. The
second is like the chief warp-thread into which the fabric is being
woven.

The two words are really twins, born at the same time, of the same
mother. They grow up together and work in perfect accord. The witnessing
is that men may understand and believe. It's the servant leading up to
the belief that shall become the mastering thing. The belief is servant,
too, in turn, leading up to the witnessing that becomes the mastering
passion in those who believe.

These words are worth digging into for the fine gold that lies hidden
within waiting the miner's pick. The word "believe" is a nugget of pure
gold, whether you take our English word or John's word lying underneath.
The underneath word, that John uses in his own mother tongue, runs a
sliding scale of meaning.

It's a ladder rising from bottom round to topmost. It means to be
persuaded that a thing is true; then to place confidence in it, to
trust. And _trust_ always contains the idea of _risk_. The heart-meaning
always is that you _risk_ something very precious to you, risk it to the
point of heart-breaking disaster if your trust proves wrong.

Our English word is of very close kin. It runs the same sort of sliding
scale, from something valuable and precious in itself, on to something
that _satisfies you_ regarding the matter in hand. You are not only
satisfied but pleased, content. And so there is the same trusting and
risking, the same leaning your whole weight upon the thing. Deep down
at its root, _believe_ is a close kinsman to _love_. They both spring
out of the same warm creative womb.

When we dig a bit into that word _believe_ in the usage of common life
it means three distinct things, each leading straight into the
other,--knowledge, belief, trust. That is, _facts_, facts _accepted_,
facts _trusted_ in regard to something that takes hold of your life. You
hear something. You believe it's true. But there must be the third
thing, risking something valuable. There's no belief in the
heart-meaning without this thing of _risking_. The trust that risks is
the life blood of faith. The rest is only the bony skeleton with tendons
and sinews and flesh. There's no life without the blood. There's no
belief without trust.

And the word _witness_ is the same pure-gold sort of nugget, assaying
full weight. John's native word and our own are just the same in
meaning. Their meaning is _to tell what you know_. We shall be running
across this word again, and digging a bit deeper into it. But this is
the thing that stands out in it. You tell something that you yourself
know. There's personal knowledge. There's a telling some one else this
thing you know. And yet more, there's the purpose in the telling, that
others may know what you know, and get all the good that comes with
knowing it.

The _witnessing_ is that others may _believe_. It is a striking thing in
John that the _thought_ of witness is more common than the _word_. The
word occurs several times, and always in a leading way. But the thought
of witnessing is the colouring of every page, and the chief colouring.

I said that these two words were twins, born at the same time, of the
same mother. That warm-hearted brooding mother is the word _wooing_.
Originally _wooing_ means bending towards, inclining forward or reaching
out towards another. And the purpose of the reaching out is to get the
other to reach forward towards you. And that purpose puts the warm feel
into the reaching out.

All words were pictures first. Here in this word _wooing_ is a picture,
by one of the old masters, waiting to be restored, with all the dusty
accumulations of the years carefully removed. And here's the picture: a
man standing, with the light of the morning shining in His eyes, body
bending forward, hands reaching out, with an eagerness, an expectancy in
every line of His body, and tender love glowing out of His face, and
sounding in the very tones with which the voice is calling.

This picture is really the water-mark on the paper of John's Gospel.
Hold up the paper of John's Gospel to the light. The best light for the
purpose is found on Mount Calvary. High altitudes have clearer light.
You see more distinctly. Now look. Hold still that you may see all the
outlines more distinctly. There's the form of a Man standing in pleading
attitude, with outstretched hands. His face combines all the fineness of
the finest woman's face, with all the strength of the strongest man's,
and more, immensely more, all the purity and tenderness and power of
_God's_ face. It _is_ God Himself in human form coming a-wooing to
earth, and we call His name Jesus. This conception is the very
atmosphere of John's Gospel.

Jesus is the witness of the Father to men. He knew the Father. He knew
Him by closest intimacy. He lived with Him. He came down to _tell_ what
He knew. He wanted others to know too. He wanted them to know _even as_
He knew. _Telling_ is the whole of Jesus; telling men of the Father.

His mere presence, His character, His warm sympathy, His practical
helpfulness, His words, His actions, most of all His dying and His
rising, all these were a _telling_, a witnessing, a wooing; telling the
Father's love, telling the damnableness of our sin by giving His very
life blood to get it out of us; so telling us how we might really know
the mother-heart of the Father.



Jesus the Dividing Line.


There are several contrasts between the first three Gospels and John's.
It is very striking to notice one in particular in this connection. One
reading the first three Gospels for the first time is impressed with the
fact of Jesus' _rejection_. This stands out peculiarly and dominantly.
It was the great fact, told most terribly in the death of Jesus. It was
the thing that stood out sharpest in the generation to which Jesus
belonged, the generation for whom these three Gospels were written at
the first.

But John wrote his story for an after-generation, a generation that had
not known the man Jesus by personal touch and observation. And so it was
for all after-generations. And John makes it very clear that Jesus was
rejected, _and_ accepted.

He was indeed _rejected_; that fact stands out as painfully here as in
the others. He was rejected by the little inner clique that held the
national reins, and held them with fevered tenacity, and drove hard. And
the reason for it is made to stand out as plainly as the fact. The envy
and jealousy, the intense bitterness and viciousness and devilish
obstinacy back of the rejection stand as boldly out to all eyes as to
Pilate's.

But the other side stands out sharply too. Jesus was _accepted_. He was
accepted by all classes, by the cultured, and the scholarly, by
thoughtful studious leaders and officials of the nation. He was accepted
by the great middle classes and by those in lowest scale socially, and
by the moral outcasts. Intense Hebrews, Roman officials of high rank,
half-breed Samaritans, and men of outside nations group themselves
together by their full acceptance of Jesus.

He was listened to, doubted, questioned, discussed, thought over, _and
then accepted._ And He was accepted with a faith and with a love that
counted not suffering nor sacrifice for the sake of Him whom they
believed and trusted and loved. John makes this clear, rejected _and_
accepted.

Jesus divided the crowds. Down the road He comes, with quiet strength,
witnessing to the great simple truth of the Father's pure strong wooing
love. And the crowd looks and listens and--_divides_. Some reject;
clearly they are a minority, but entrenched in a position of power that
proves quite sufficient for their purpose. Though it took all the power
at their command to carry out their purpose.

Others accept. These are the crowds, the majority. Some don't
understand. Their motives are selfish or mixed, like some other folks'
motives. Some are played upon by the cunning of the leaders and swung
away. But there remain the thoughtful ones whose faith goes from
weakness to strength; it grows from more to yet more. It mellows from a
true simple faith to a deepened, seasoned, sorely-tested,
surely-toughened faith that loves, loves clear down to the roots, and
endures gladly. This is the simple warp-thread into which John's very
simple story of Jesus is woven.



Spelling God.


_I_ want to give you _a bunch of keys_, as we start into these homely
talks in John's Gospel. They are simple keys. Any one can use them. They
fit easily and smoothly into every lock, the lock of your life, the lock
of any circumstance, any sore problem that may come up to baffle all
your efforts. They bring treasures within easy reach. They open up the
way into all you need. There is a key to God, a key to the Book of God,
and then there are three keys to this little John book.

_The key to God_ is in one little word. It has two spellings, sometimes
with four letters, sometimes with five, and both correct spellings. The
four-lettered spelling is for all the world. The five-lettered spelling
is chiefly used in the western half of the earth, and along certain
lines and in certain spots here and there in the eastern half where the
word is known.

That first spelling is l-o-v-e. God is love. Love is of God. _God is
always controlled by a purpose_ in all His dealings with the race, and
with you and me. There is no chance-happening with Him, no caprice, no
shadow in His path that tells of His being swerved aside, by anything we
do, from a steady purpose.

And that controlling purpose is _always a purpose of love._ It's a
purpose of strong steady pure clinging brooding love. The bother is we
don't know what that word _love_ means; none of us. We know words but
not the real things they stand for. We don't know the real thing of love
because we don't know the real thing of God. If we knew, oh! if we but
knew it--Him--how that simple statement would melt us down, and mellow
us through, and mould us all over anew!

That's the shorter spelling. It is the universal spelling. That love is
being spelled out to all the race by every twinkling star in the upper
blue, every shade of green in the lower brown, by every cooling shading
night, and every fragrantly dewy morning. Every breath of air and bite
of food and draught of water is repeating God's spelling lesson. These
are the pages in God's primer. So we all may learn to spell out God. And
so we get the right spelling of our own lives.

Then there's the other spelling, the five-lettered, J-e-s-u-s. It's the
same thing, only spelled differently; spelled in a yet better way. The
spelling grows bigger to us when Jesus comes. When we know Him it takes
more to spell out and to tell out God's love. God grows larger to our
eyes as He comes walking among us as Jesus. No, He doesn't grow larger.
We simply begin to find out how large He is.

This is the closer, more human spelling. The letters are nearer and seem
bigger as they come walking down the street where we live, and knock at
our own door. They're easier spelled out. We can get hold of them
better. Love is a thing, we _think_. Jesus is _a person_. It's so
different to touch a person. But when we know, we know that both
spellings tell the same thing. So far, only about a third of us have
heard anything about this second, this closer spelling. Two out of three
haven't heard about it yet. But those who really know this spelling are
eager for the others to get it, too.

God is always controlled by a great simple purpose in thinking of you
and me. And it is an unfailing purpose of strong tender love. This is
the first key. Any one may take it and use it. It is unfailing. It will
fit every lock. It unlock every problem. It will open up the riches to
any life. They're brought within easy reach of any hand by the steady
use of this key.

This is the key to God. It unlocks the doors and lets Him freely into
our lives. Then we find out how much truer it is than we can understand.

Then there's _the key to the Book of God._ There are many keys here, of
course. Daily time alone with the Book, thoughtful reading, prayer, some
simple plan, putting into your life what has been put in its
pages,--these are all good keys. But there's a master-key, _the_
master-key. It is simply this: glad surrender of will to the God of the
Book. I mean a strong intelligent yielding to His mastery in all of
one's plans and life. The highest act of the strongest will is yielding
to a higher will when you find it. And you find the higher, the highest,
will here.

This is the master-key. Bending the will affects eyes and ears and mind.
The hinges of eye and ear are in the will. As the will bends those
hinges move of themselves. Eye and ear and mind open. The lower the will
bends, the more fully and habitually, the more will eyes and ears open,
the keener and more alert will be the mental processes, the more
intelligent the understanding. And there comes to be a continual mutual
shifting. With better understanding can come stronger more intelligent
yielding of will, and so again clearer light.

And it is striking to discover that there's a practical connection
between the joints of the knees and the joint of the will. The bending
of knees to a sharp right angle affects the will. It is easier to bend
it. It bends better and more. And this grows. The habitual bending of
the knees helps make habitual and stronger and more intelligent the
bending of the will.

This is the master-key to the Book of God. It opens every lock and page.
It opens us to the Book, and opens the Book to us. It frees out to us
the wondrous Spirit who is in these pages. And so through the opened
Book there come to be the direct touch with the God of the Book. We
don't come to the Book merely; we come _through_ it to Him who comes
through it to us. This is the second key in this bunch.



Three Keys.


Now, I want to give you _the three keys to John's Gospel._ There's a
back-door key, a side-door key, and a front-door key. These keys hang
outside the doors, low down, that so any one who wants to can easily
reach up, and get them. And if used faithfully and simply they will be
found to unlock every page and line and difficult question.

_The back-door key_ hangs right at the back door. It is the very last
verse of chapter twenty. That really was the last chapter at first. The
thought of the book comes to a close there. The story is complete. Then
the Holy Spirit led John to add a little, a second last-chapter, an
added touch for good measure. Love is never content. It is always adding
more.

Here is the key: "_these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life through
His name_." This was John's whole thought in telling the Jesus-story.
The practical gripped him wholly and hard. This is the thing that guides
his selection of incidents. This purpose shapes the shape of the book.
It explains everything told, and just why it is told in just the way it
is told.

John lets Jesus walk before our eyes fresh from His Father's presence.
The mere fact of His presence, the winsomeness of His personality, the
clearness of His teaching, the power of His actions, the uncompromising
purity of His character amidst sin-stained crowds and sin-dirtied
surroundings, the unflinching rigidity of His ideals, the persuasiveness
of His very manner and tone of speech, the patience and gentleness, the
rugged granite strength, the mother tenderness, above all the
willingness to suffer so terribly,--all this is a plea, a tremendous
overpowering plea, all the stronger because presented so simply and
briefly. Jesus is a Lover and this is His wooing.

And John's one thought in writing is the same as the one thought in the
Lover's heart. John has become simply an echo of Jesus. It is this, that
_you_, whoever you are, wherever, whatever, that you may _believe_. You
look and listen, question, puzzle a bit maybe, but keep on listening and
looking, thinking, weighing, till you are clear these things are just so
as John tells them. Yon accept them as trustworthy. Then you accept
_Him_, Jesus, as He comes to you, your wooing Lover, your Lover-God,
your Saviour and Lord.

You _believe_: that is you _love_. The grammar of the word works itself
out inside you thus,--believe, trust, love. The truth comes in through
eyes and ears and feeling, into brain and will; through emotion clear
down into your heart. You love. You cannot help yourself. You love
_Him_, Jesus, the One so lovable.

John says that you _may_ believe. It is possible. It is the reasonable
intelligent thing to do after such a presentation. John makes it easy
for us to believe. His telling of the story is so strong and convincing,
though so simple and short, that believing is the natural thing. Jesus
Himself, as He conies to us through John's eyes and speech, is so
believable, so trustworthy, so lovable.

Now we _may_ believe. It's the thing to do after a thoughtful kneeful
study of the case as put by John. We _may believe_ clear into and
through intellect and emotions and will, right down into the depths of
heart and love, clear out into every action of the life.

And John sweeps in the whole crowd of the world in the way he puts it
here. Listen: "that you may believe that Jesus is _the Christ_." That
was for the Jew peculiarly in the first instance. The Jew had been
taught through generations that there was One coming who was God's
chosen One for the Hebrew nation. He was the _Anointed One_. The Hebrew
said _Messiah_. The Greek said _Christ_. Both mean the same, the One
chosen of God, anointed by Him as the King and Leader of His chosen
people, and through them of all the race.

Listen further: "that Jesus is _the Son of God." That_ is for all of us,
Jew and foreigner, insider and outsider. This Jesus is in a distinctive
sense _the_ Son of God, the only begotten Son. This pure loving pleading
wooing suffering dying rising-again Jesus, this is the only begotten Son
of the Father. All there is in a Father comes to, and is in, an only
begotten son. This is God Himself coming to us in His Son.

Once let this sift into thought and heart, then who would _not_ believe,
_and_ trust, _and_ love, _and_ fall on his face in the utter devotion of
a voluntary slave before such a God!

And so believing, trusting, loving, touching, His life flows in and
fills up and floods out. We have it _now_. That word _eternal_, used so
often by John with the word _life_, is not a mere _length_ word. It is
not a calendar word. It tells the sort of life, the quality of life,
that comes in through the opening door of our believing. This is John's
back-door key, but it lets you clear in through the whole house.

Then there is _the side-door key_. It hangs at the side, a bit towards
the back. It is in the Thursday night talk, as we commonly call it, that
last heart-talk with the inner group on the betrayal night. It is in
chapter sixteen, verse twenty-eight: "_I came out from the Father, and
am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go unto the
Father_."

Run through this Gospel with that fresh in your mind, and it is
perfectly fascinating to find how much like a magnet it is, picking out
to itself so many bits from the Master's lips that fit exactly into it.
Jesus' constant thought was that He used to be with the Father; He came
down on an errand to the earth. By and by when the errand was done He
would go back home again.

This sentence becomes a simple, exact, comprehensive outline of the
entire Gospel. Notice: "_I came out from the Father_": that is chapter
one, verses one to eighteen. There Jesus is seen coming down from His
Father's own presence. Then chapter one, verse nineteen through to the
close of the twelfth chapter is fully described and covered by the next
clause, "_and am come into the world_." Here He is seen in the world, in
the midst of its crowds and contentions and oppositions.

"_Again, I leave the world_,"--chapters thirteen to nineteen. In chapters
thirteen to seventeen He is tenderly leaving the inner circle. In
chapters eighteen and nineteen He is going out of the world by the
terrible doorway of the cross it had carpentered for Him. How quietly He
says the words, though the terrible going is yet to come, and is now so
near that He can already feel the shame and the thorns and the nails.

And as quietly He looks beyond and adds, "_and go unto the Father_." In
chapters twenty and twenty-one He lingers a little for the sake of these
being left behind, but His face is already turned homeward. They would
hold Him in their midst. He quietly tells them that He is going back
home to the Father to get things ready for them, as He had said.



He Comes to His Own.


_The front-door key_ hangs right at the very front, outside, low down,
where even a child's hand can reach it. It is in chapter one, verses
eleven and twelve: "_He came unto His own, and they that were His own
received Him not. But as many as received Him to them gave He the right
to become children of God, even to them who believe on His name_." This
is the great key, the chief key to this whole house. It flings the front
door wide open and you are inside at once, and take in the whole of the
house at a glance, one glance, one wonderful glance.

The first twelve chapters tell of Jesus coming to His own, His own
nation, humanly, racially, His own chosen people. He is coming steadily
and persistently, in spite of rebuffs; coming patiently, tenderly,
earnestly; coming ever closer in the ever increasing measure of divine
power seen in His actions.

And continually, persistently, He is being rejected and accepted. He is
rejected silently and contemptuously, then aggressively and bitterly,
viciously and murderously. "His own received Him not." But many received
Him, eagerly and warmly and thoughtfully. They received Him with a
growing depth of conviction and deepening tenderness of love. And as
they come, He is ever receiving them, giving them that touch of new
life that marks only the children of God.

In chapters thirteen to seventeen He is receiving into closer fellowship
those who have received Him, and at the same time wooing them into yet
closer touch. The story of the trial and crucifixion in chapters
eighteen and nineteen, puts the most terrific emphasis on the words,
"_received Him not_." They not only keep Him out of His own possessions,
but do their worst in putting Him out of life. And the little book
closes in its last two chapters with His receivers being received into
the sweetest intimacies of tested triumphant love and into the inner
secrets of rarest resurrection power.

This is the most heart-breaking of all of John's heart-breaking
sentences. John had a hard time writing this Gospel of his. He was not
simply writing a book; that might have been fairly easy. But he was
telling about a friend of his, _the_ friend of his life, his one dearest
Friend. And when he remembers how they treated Him his eyes fill up, and
his heart beats till it thumps, and his quill sticks into the paper in
sheer reluctance to tell the story.

I think likely in the original manuscript, John's own first copy, the
writing was a bit shaky and uneven here. The dew of his wet eyes drops
and blurs the words a bit as he puts down, "He came to His own, and . .
they who were His own . . _received . . Him . . not_."

One day a young student was crossing the quadrangles of one of the old
Scottish Universities towards his quarters in the dormitory. He was not
feeling well. His eyes had troubled him and made his work very
difficult. On the advice of a friend he sought the judgment of an expert
in the treatment of the eyes. The specialist made a very thorough
examination and then informed the young student tactfully but plainly
that he would lose his eyesight, surely and not slowly.

Lose his eyesight? A sudden terrific actual blow between his eyes could
not have stunned his body more than this stunned brain and heart. Lose
his eyesight! All his plans and coveted ambitions seemed slipping clean
out from his grasp. With the loss of eyes would go the loss of
university training, and so of all his dreams. Dazed, blinded, he groped
his way rather than walked out of the physician's office.

His life was to be joined with another's. And now he turned his
distracted steps towards her home, hungry doubtless for some word or
touch of comfort for his sore heart. And he was thinking, too, that with
this utter break-up of the future she must be told. And as he talked he
said in quiet manly words that under these unexpected circumstances, and
the radical change in his prospects, she must be free to do as she
thought best.

And she took her freedom! Yet she was a woman. And a woman's mission is
to teach man love by the real thing of love, by being it herself, and
drawing it out into full flower in him. That was the second staggering
blow. A second time he groped his dazed way out of the house, down the
street, into his lone student quarters.

But another One was near, brooding over him, and tenderly holding his
breaking heart, and speaking words of warm comfort, and breathing in the
freshing breath of true love. And as he yielded to this it overcame all
else. A new mood came and dominated. And it became the fixed thing
mastering all his life. Now he sits down, and out of his torn bleeding
but newly-touched heart writes the words we have all learned to sing:

    "O Love that will _not_ let me go,
      I rest my weary soul in Thee,
    I give Thee back the life I owe,
      That in thine ocean depths its flow
        May richer, fuller be.

    "O Light that followest all my way,
      I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
    My heart restores its borrowed ray
      That in Thy sunshine's glow its day
        May brighter, fairer be.

    "O Joy that seekest me through pain,
      I cannot close my heart to Thee;
    I trace the rainbow through the rain,
      And feel the promise is not vain
        That morn shall tearless be.

    "O Cross that liftest up my head,
      I dare not ask to hide from Thee;
    I lay in dust life's glory dead,
      And from the ground there blossoms red
        Life that shall endless be."

And with but a single change, the change of a word or two in one line,
they stand as at first written. I suppose his biographer omitted the
incident for the same reason that the first three Gospels may have
omitted the incident of Lazarus while he was still living. So there was
a sheltering from personal embarrassment.

He came to his own and his own received him not. _He_--Jesus came to
_His_ own and they that were His own received Him not. Aye, there's more
to add: He _comes_ to His own--you and me--to-day. And His own--

You and I must finish that sentence, each in his own way. And we will;
and we do. We may copy out in our lives just what these men of old did
as told by John. Some of us do. We _may_ do some fine revision work on
the text of John's version as we translate it now into the experience of
our own hearts, and into the life of our own lives. That's the only way
to understand the next sentence about being taken into the family of God
and sharing the fullness of life that is common there.

And this bit that is put down here is only a bit of copy work. _These
things_ are talked and written only that we may be given a lift into
closer touch of heart and life with the Christ, the Son of God, and the
Brother and Saviour of men.




II

The Wooing Lover

     _Who it Was that Came_




       "But with unhurrying chase,
        And unperturbed pace,
    Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
        They beat--and a Voice beat
        More instant than the Feet--
    _'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'_"

                    --"_The Hound of Heaven._"


    "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any
    man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in
    to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."

    --_Rev. iii. 20._




II

The Wooing Lover

(John i. 1-18.)



In His Own Image.


Love gives. It gives freely and without stint, yet always thoughtfully.
It gives itself out, its very life. This is its life, to give its life.
It lives most by giving most. So it comes into fullness of life.

So it _gets_. A thing of life, in its own image, comes walking eagerly
with outstretched arms to its embrace. It gives that it may get. Yet the
giving is the greater. It brings most joy.

This is the very essence of life, this giving creating spirit. It is
everywhere, in lower life and higher and highest, wherever the touch of
God has come. The sun gives itself out in life and light and warmth. And
out to greet it comes a bit of itself--the fine form and sweet fragrance
of the rose, the tender blade of grass, the unfolding green of the leaf,
the wealth of the soil, the song of the bird and the grateful answer of
all nature.

The hen sits long patient days on her nest. And forth comes cheeping
life in her own image, answering the call of her mothering spirit. The
mother-bird in the nest in the crotch of the tree gives her life day by
day in brooding love. And her wee nestling offspring, in her own image,
answers with glad increase of strength and growth.

Father and mother of our human kind give of their very life that new
life may come. And under the overshadowing touch of an unseen Presence
comes a new life made in their image, and in His who broods unseen over
all three. And over the life wrecked by sin broods the Spirit of God.
And out through the doorway of an opening will, comes a new creature of
winsome life in the very image of that brooding Spirit of God.

This is the holy commonplace of all life. It is the touch of God. It is
everywhere about us, and beneath and above. The father-mother Spirit of
God broods over all our common life. And when things go wrong, He broods
a bit closer and tenderer. He meets every need of the life He has
created. And He meets it in the same way, by giving Himself.

And there's always the response. The fragrance of the rose answers the
sun. The pipped shell brings the longed-for answer to the gladdened
mother-bird. The ever wondrous babe-eyes give unspeakable answer to the
yearning of father and mother heart. The heart of man leaps at the call
of his God.

This makes quite clear the wondrous response men gave Jesus when He
walked among us. Jesus was God coming a bit closer in His brooding love
to mend a break and restore a blurred image. And men answered Him. They
couldn't help it. How they came! They didn't understand Him, but they
felt Him. They couldn't resist the tender, tremendous pull upon their
hearts of His mere presence.

And Jesus drew man into the closest touch of intimate friendship. The
long-range way of doing things never suited Him. And it doesn't. He
didn't keep man at arm's length. And He doesn't. And then because they
were friends, He and they, they were eager to serve, and willing even to
suffer, to walk a red-marked roadway for Him they loved.



The Gospel According to--You.


Among all those who felt and answered the call of Jesus was one called
John, John the disciple. Jesus drew John close. John came close. John
lived close. John came early and he stayed late. He stayed to the very
end, into the evening glow of life. And all his long life he was under
the tender holy spell of Jesus' presence. He was swayed by the
Jesus-passion. Always burning, he was yet never consumed; only the alloy
burned up and burned out, himself refined to the quality of life called
eternal.

Then John came to the end of his long life. And he knew he would be
slipping the tether of life and going out and up and in to the real
thing of life. And I think John was a bit troubled. Not because he was
going to die. This never troubles the man who knows Jesus. The
Jesus-touch overcomes the natural twinges of death. But he was troubled
a bit in spirit for a little by the thought that he would not be on
earth any longer to talk to people about Jesus. And to John this was the
one thing worth while. This was the life-passion.

And so I think John prayed about it a bit. For this is what he did. He
said to himself, "I will write a book. I'll make it a little book, so
busy people can quickly read it. I'll pick out the simplest words I know
so common folks everywhere that don't have dictionaries can easily
understand. And I'll make them into the shortest simplest sentences I
can so they can quickly get my story of Jesus." And so John wrote his
little book. And we call it the story of Jesus according to John, or, as
we commonly say the Gospel--the God-story--according to John.

And all this is a simple bit of a parable. It is a parable in action.
Jesus is brooding over us, giving Himself, warmly wooing us. He woos us
into personal friendship with Himself. And then He asks that each of us
shall write a gospel. This is the Gospel according to John; and these
others according to Luke and Mark and Matthew. He means that there shall
be the gospel according to--_you_. What is your name? put it in there.
Then you get the Master's plan. There is to be the gospel according to
Charles and Robert and George, and Mary and Elizabeth and Margaret.

And you say, "Write a gospel? I couldn't do that. You don't mean that.
That's just a bit of preaching." No, it isn't preaching. It's so. I do
not mean to write with a common pen of steel or gold; nor on just common
paper of rags or wood-pulp. But I do mean--_He_ means--that you shall
write with the pen of your daily life. And that you shall write on the
paper of the lives of those you're touching and living with every day.

Clearly, He meant, and He means, that you and I shall live such simple
unselfish lovable Jesus-touched lives, in just the daily commonplace
round of life, that those we live with shall know the whole story of
Jesus' love and life; His love burned out for us till there were no
ashes, and His life poured out for us till not a red drop was left
unspilled.

Are _you_ writing _your_ gospel? Is your life spelling out this simple
wondrous God-story? I can find out, though, of course, I shall not. What
I mean is this,--_the crowd knows._ The folks that touch you every day,
they know. This old Bible was never printed so much as to-day, nor
issued more numerously. And--thoughtfully--it was never read _less_ by
the common crowd on the common street of life than to-day.

That doesn't mean that the crowd doesn't read what it supposes to be
religious literature. It does. I wish we church folk read our religious
literature as faithfully as this crowd I speak of reads its. It is
reading _the gospel according to you,_ and reading it daily, and
closely, and faithfully, and remembering what it reads, and being shaped
by it.

This Bible I have here is bound in--I think it is called sealskin. I
tried to get the best wearing binding I could. But I've discovered that
there's a better binding than this. The best binding for the Gospel is
shoe-leather. The old Gospel of the Son of God is at its best as it is
being tramped out on the common street of life. Its truths stand out
clearest as they're walked out. Its love comes warmest, its power is
most resistless as it comes to you in the common give-and-take of daily
touch in home and shop and street. Are you writing your copy of the
Gospel?

You know that sometimes scholars have found some precious manuscripts in
old monasteries. They have gone into some old, grey, stone monkery in
the Near East, and they have run across old manuscripts hidden away in
some dark cell, covered with dust and with rubbish, perhaps. With much
tact and diplomacy they have at length managed to get possession of the
coveted manuscript. And they have been fairly delighted to find that
they have gotten hold of a remnant, a very precious remnant, of one of
these Gospels. In just this way much invaluable light has been gotten
that made possible these precious revised versions.

I wonder if _your_ gospel--the one you're writing with your life--is
_just a remnant,_ a ragged remnant. And perhaps there's a good bit of
dusting necessary, and removing of rubbish, to get even at what there is
there. And some of the shy hungry hearts that touch you and me need to
use quite a bit of unconscious diplomacy perhaps to get even as much as
they do. I wonder. The crowd knows. It could throw a good bit of light
here. How much of this old Jesus-story _are_ you really _living!_

Of course, there's a special touch of inspiration in these four Gospels.
The Holy Spirit brooded over these men in a special way as they wrote.
That is true. These are the standard Gospels. We would never know the
blessed story but for these four Spirit-breathed little books. But it is
also true that that same Holy Spirit will guide you in the writing of
your version of the Gospel.

These four Gospels are different from each other. The colouring of
Luke's warm personality, and of his physician habit of thought is in his
Gospel very plainly. And so it is with each one of these Gospels. And,
even so, there will be the colouring of your personality, your habit of
thought, the distinct tinge of the experience you have been through, in
the gospel you write with the pen of your life, and bind up in the
shoe-leather of your daily round.

But through all of this there will be the simple, subtle, but very real,
atmosphere of the Holy Spirit, helping you make the story plain and
full, and helping people to understand that story as it is _lived_, as
they never can simply by hearing it told with tongues or read through
eyes.

Are you writing your gospel? Is your daily life spelling out the life
and love of Jesus, that life that was poured out till none was left,
that love that was burned out till even the ashes were burned up, too?
This is the Master's plan. And practically it is the crowd's only
chance.



God in Human Garb.


Now I want to have you turn with me to the opening lines of John's
Gospel. There are not many of these opening lines. The whole story is a
short one. These lines at the beginning are like an etching, there are
the fewest touches of pen on paper, of black ink on white surface. But
the few lines are put in so simply and skilfully that they make an
exquisite picture. It's the picture of _God coming in human garb as a
wooing Lover._

I think it might be best perhaps if I might simply give you _a sort of
free reading_ of these opening lines, with a word of comment or
illustration to try to make the meaning simpler. It will be a putting of
John's words into the simple every-day colloquial speech that we
English-speaking people use. John used very simple language in his own
telling of the story in his mother-tongue. And it may help if we try to
do the same.

You will quickly see how very simple this free translation will be. Yet,
let me say, that though homely and simple it will be strictly accurate
to what John is thinking and saying in his own native speech. I mean of
course, so far as I can find out just what he is thinking and saying.

Let us turn then to John's Gospel, at its beginning. And it will help
very much if we keep our Bibles open as we talk and read together.

Listen: _in the beginning there was a wondrous One_. He was the mind of
God thinking out to man. He was the heart of God throbbing love out to
man's heart. He was the face of God looking into man's face. He was the
voice of God, soft and low, clear and distinct, speaking into man's
ears. He was the hand of God, strong and tender, reaching down to take
man by the hand and lead him back to the old trysting-place under the
tree of life, down by the river of water of life.

He was the person of God wearing a human coat and human shoes,
hand-pegged, walking in freely amongst us that we might get our tangled
up ideas about God and ourselves and about life untangled, straightened
out. He was God Himself wrapped up in human form coming close that we
might get acquainted with Him all over again.

This is part of the meaning of the little five-lettered word in his own
tongue that John chooses and uses, at the first here, as a new name for
Him who was commonly called Jesus. It was because of our ears that he
used the new word. If he had said "Jesus" at once, they would have said
"Oh! yes, we know about Him." And at once their ears would have gone
shut to the thing that John is saying.

For they didn't know. And we don't. We know _words_. The thing, the real
thing, we know so little. So John uses a new word at the first, and so
floods in new light. And then we come to see whom he is talking about.
It's a bit of the diplomacy of God so as to get in through dulled ears
and truth-hardened minds down in to the heart.

Nature always seems eager to meet a defect. It seems to hurry eagerly
forward to overcome defects and difficulties. The blind man has more
acute hearing and a more delicate sense of feel. The deaf man's eyes
grow quicker to watch faces and movements and so learn what his ears
fail to tell him. The lame man leans more on other muscles, and they
answer with greater strength to meet the defect of the weaker muscles.

The bat has shunned the light so long through so many bat-generations
that it has become blind, but it has remarkable ears, and nature has
grown for it an abnormal sense of touch, and a peculiar sensitiveness
even where there is no contact, so that it avoids obstacles in flying
with a skill that seems uncanny, incredulous.

I remember in Cincinnati one night, sitting on the platform of a public
meeting by the side of a widely known Christian worker and speaker who
was blind. As various men spoke he quietly made brief comments to me,--"
_He_ doesn't strike fire." And then, "_He_ doesn't touch them." And
then, "Ah! _he's_ got them; that's it; now they're burning." And it was
exactly so as he said. I sat fascinated as I watched the crowd and heard
his comments. The sense of discerning what was going on in another way
than by sight had been grown in him by the very necessity of his
blindness. Defect in one sense was overcome by nature, by increase in
another sense.

When Queen Victoria was in residence in Scotland at Balmoral it was her
kindly custom to present the various clergymen who preached in the
Castle chapel with a photograph marked with her autograph. When George
Matheson, the famous blind preacher, came she showed the fine thoughtful
tact for which she was famous. Clearly an autographed photograph would
not mean much in itself to a blind man. So the Queen had a miniature
bust-statue made and presented to him as her acknowledgment of his
service. And so where his eyes failed to let him see, his sense of touch
would carry to his mind and heart the fine features of the gracious
sovereign he was so glad to serve.

Jesus was God coming in such a way that we could know Him _by the feel_.
We had gone blind to His face. We couldn't read His signature plainly
autographed by His own hand on the blue above and the brown below. But
when Jesus came _men knew God by the feel_. They didn't understand
Jesus. But the sore hungry crowds reached out groping trembling fingers,
and they knew Him. They began to get acquainted with their gracious
Sovereign.

All this gives the simple clue to this word "_Word_" which John uses as
a new name for Jesus. Man had grown deaf to the music of God's voice,
blind to the beauty of His face, slow-hearted to the pleading of His
presence. His hand was touching us but we didn't feel it. So He came in
a new way, in a very homely close-up way and walked down our street into
our own doors that we might be caught by the beauty of His face, and
thrilled by the music of His voice, and thralled by the spell of His
presence.



God at His Best.


John goes on: _and this wondrous One was with God_. There were two of
them. And the two were together. They were companions, they were
friends, fellows together. _And this One was God_. Each was the same as
the other. _This is the same One who was in the later creative beginning
with God. It was through this One that all things were made. And, of all
things that have been made, not any thing was made without Him_.

You remember that John's Gospel and Genesis begin in the same way,--"in
the beginning." But John's "in the beginning," the first one, is not the
same as the Genesis "in the beginning." John's is the beginning before
there was any beginning. It is the beginning before they had begun
making calendars on the earth, because there wasn't any earth yet to
make calendars on. Then this second time the phrase is used John comes
to the later creative beginning with which Genesis opens. This is what
John is saying here.

"_In Him was life_." Out of Him came life. Out of Him comes life. There
was no life, there is none, except what was in this One, and what came,
and comes out from Him all the time. How patient God is! There walks a
man down the street. He leaves God out of his life. He may remember Him
so far as to use His name blasphemously to punctuate and emphasize what
he is saying. Yonder walks a woman in the shadow of the street at night.
And her whole life is spent walking in the dark shadow of the street of
life. And her whole life is a blasphemy against her personality, and
against the God who gave her that precious sacred personality.

Take these two as extreme illustrations. There is life there; life of
the body, of the mind, life of the human spirit. Listen softly, all the
life there is there, is coming out all the time from this One of whom
John is talking. It is not given once as a thing to be taken and stored.
It is _being_ given. It is coming constantly with each breath, from this
wondrous One. This is what John is saying here.

How _patient_ God is! Only we don't know what patience is. We know the
word, the label put on the outside. We don't know the thing, except
sometimes in very smallest part. For patience is love at its best.
Patience is God at His strongest and tenderest and best.

I think likely when we get up yonder, we'll stop one another on the
golden streets. There'll be a hand put out, gripping the other hard. And
we'll look into each other's eyes with our eyes big. And we'll say with
breaking voices, "How _patient_ God was with us down there on the earth,
down there in London and New York."

In Him was life. Out of His hand and heart is coming to us all the time
all we are and all we have. We may leave God practically out. So many of
us do. But He never leaves us out. The creating, sustaining touch of His
Hand is ever upon each of us, upon all the world.

Though He cannot do all for us He would except as we gladly come and let
Him. What He is giving us is so _much_. It's our _all_. Yet it is the
smaller part. There's the fuller part. This is the whole drive of John's
story, this fuller part. Out of Him Jesus, into us will come the newer,
the better, the abundant quality of life, if He may have His way.

And John adds,--"_and the life was the light of men."_ He was what we
_have_. He gives Himself; not things, but a person. With God everything
is _personal_. We men go to the impersonal so much, or we try to. We do
our best at it. We have a great genius for organization, especially in
this western half of the earth.

As I came back from a four years' absence from my own country, I was
instantly conscious of a change. Either my ears were changed or things
about me were. I think likely both. But the wheels were going faster
than ever. There were more wheels, and their whir seemed never out of
ear-shot. Commercial wheels, and educational, philanthropic and
religious, political and humanitarian, thicker and faster than ever,
driving all day, and with almost no night there.

And the whole attempt is to make the machine do the thing with as little
dependence as possible on the human element, even though the human
element was never emphasized more. Contradictory? Yet there it is. We
men go to the _im_personal. Yet deep down in our hearts we hunger for
the human touch, the warm personal touch. This after all is _the_ thing.
We all feel that. Yet the whole crowding of life's action is to crowd it
out.

But with God everything is personal. The life is the light of men. What
He is in Himself--that is what He gives. And this is all the light and
life we ever have. Men make botany. God makes flowers breathing their
freshening fragrance noiselessly up into your face. Man makes astronomy.
God makes the stars, shaking their firelight out of the blue down into
your wondering eyes on a clear moonless night. Man makes theology. And
theology has its place, when it's kept in its place. _God gives us
Jesus_.

I don't know much about botany. My knowledge of astronomy is very
limited. And the more I read of theology, whether Western or Eastern,
Latin Church or Greek, the first Seven Councils or the later ones, the
more I stand perplexed. It's a thing fearsomely and wonderfully
manufactured, this theology. But I frankly confess to a great fondness
for flowers, and for stars, and a love for Jesus that deepens ever more
in reverential awe and in tenderness and grateful devotion. The life was
the light of men. He Himself is all that we have. We go to _things_. We
reckon worth and wealth by things. He gives _Himself_. And He asks, not
_things_, but one's self.



Packing Most in Least.


And John goes quietly on with his great simple story: "_and the light
shineth in the darkness_," John has a way of packing much in little.
Here he packs four thousand years into three English letters. For he has
been back in that creative Genesis week. And now with one long stride he
puts his foot down in the days when Jesus walks among us as a man. Forty
centuries, by the common reckoning, packed into three letters e-t-h.
Rather a skilful bit of packing that. Yet it is not unusual. It is
characteristic both of John and of the One that guides John's pen. When
He is allowed to have free sway the Holy Spirit packs much in little.

That rugged old Hebrew prophet of fire and storm, Elijah, standing in
the grey dawn, in the mouth of an Arabian cave, had the whole of a new
God--a God of tender gentle love--packed into an exquisite sound of
gentle stillness, that smote so subtly on his ear, and completely melted
and changed this man of rock and thunder. It's a new man that turns his
face north again. The new God that had compacted Himself anew inside the
ruggedly faithful old man is revealed in the prophet's successor. This
is the new spirit, so unlike the old Elijah, that comes as a birth-right
heritage upon young Elisha. Great packing work that.

That fine-grained young university fellow on the Damascus road, driving
hard in pursuit of his earnest purpose, had the whole of a God, a new
God to him, packed into a single flash of blinding light out of the
upper blue. He had the whole of a new plan, an utterly changed plan for
his life, packed into a single sentence spoken into his amazed ears as
he lies in the dust.

And if this Holy Spirit may have His way--a big if? Yes: yet not too big
to be gotten rid of at once: God puts in the if's, that we may get the
strength of choosing. We put them out, _if_ we do. _If_ He may have His
way He'll pack--listen quietly, with your heart--He'll pack _the whole
of a Jesus_ inside you and me. Much in little! Most in least! And the
more we let Him in, the bigger that "most" prints itself to our eyes,
and the more that "least" dwindles down to the disappearing point.

God gives us His own self in Jesus. Jesus comes to live inside of us. He
doesn't give us things, but Himself. We talk about salvation. There's
something better--_a Saviour_. We talk about help in trouble. There's
something immensely more--_a Friend_, alongside, close up. We talk about
healing--sometimes, not so much these days; the subject is so much
confused. There's something much better--a _Healer_, living within,
whose presence means healing and health for body and spirit.

Then John says, "the light shineth _in the darkness_." This is God's way
of treating darkness. There are two ways of treating darkness, man's and
God's. Man's way is to attack the darkness. Suppose this hall where we
are were quite dark, all shuttered up, and suppose we were new on the
earth, and not familiar with darkness. We want to hold a meeting. But
how shall we get rid of this strange darkness that has come down over
everything? Let's each of us get a bucket or pail or basin, and take
some of the darkness out. So we'll get rid of it, and its inconvenience.

And if the suggestion were made seriously there might be talk of putting
the suggestor in a certain sort of institution for the safety of the
community. Yet this is the way we go at the other darkness, the worse
moral darkness.

_God's way_ is quite different; indeed just the exact reverse _let the
light shine._ The darkness can't stand the light. If the hall _were_
quite dark, and I scratched only a parlour-match, instantly as the
little flame broke out of the end of the stick some of the darkness
would go. It's surprising how much would go, and how quickly. The
darkness can't stand the light. It flees like a hunted hare before a
pack of hounds.

There may be times when action must betaken by a community against
certain forms of evil, so damnable, and so strongly entrenched, and so
threatening to the purity of home and young and of all. But note keenly
that this is _incidental_. It is immensely important at times, but it is
distinctly _secondary._ The great simple plan of God is this: _let the
light shine_. The darkness flees like a whipped cur, tail tightly curled
down and in, before the real thing of light.

Let me ask you a question. Come up a bit closer and listen quietly, for
this is tremendously serious. And it's the quietest spoken word that
reaches the inner cockles of the heart. Listen: is it a bit dark down
where you live? Morally dark? Spiritually? How about that? in commercial
circles and social and fraternal, in church and home and city and
neighbourhood. Is it a bit dark? Or, have I found the Garden of Eden at
last before the serpent entered?

Because if it be a bit dark, softly, please, let me say it very quietly,
for it may sound critical, and I would not have that for anything. We
are talking only to help. Though sometimes the truth itself does have a
merciless edge. If it be a bit dark does it not suggest that _the light
has not been shining as it was meant to_? For where the light shines the
darkness goes.

For, you see, this is still God's plan for treating darkness. It is
meant to be true to-day of each of us,--"_the light shineth in the
darkness_." Of course, _we_ are not the light. He is the Light. But we
are the light-holders. I carry the Light of the world around inside of
me. And so do you, _if you do_. It is not because of the "me," of
course, but because of the great patience and faithfulness of Him who is
the Light. A very rickety cheap lantern may carry a clear light, and the
man in the ditch find good footing in the road again.

You and I are meant to be the human lanterns carrying the Light, and
letting it shine clearly fully out. And you know when some one else is
providing the light the chief thing about the lantern is that the glass
of the lantern be kept dean and clear so the light within can get freely
out. The great thing is that _we shall live clean transparent lives_ so
the Light within may shine clearly out. We may live unselfish clean
Christly lives, by His great grace. And through that kind of lives, the
Light itself shines out, and shines out most, and most clearly.

Over at the mouth of the Hudson, where I call it home, there are some
strange things seen. Sometimes the glass of this human lantern gets
smoky, badly smoked. And sometimes it even gets cobwebby, rather thickly
covered up. And even this has been known to happen up there,--it'll seem
very strange to you people doubtless--_this_; they write finely phrased
essays on the delicate shading of grey in the smoke on the glass of the
human lantern.

They meet together and listen to essays, in rarely polished English, on
the exquisite lace-like tracery of the cobwebs on the glass of the human
lantern. But look! Hold your heart still and look! There's the crowd in
the road in the dark, struggling, jostling, stumbling, and falling into
the ditch at the side of the road, ditched and badly mired, because the
light hasn't gotten to them. The Light's there. It's burning itself out
in passionate eagerness to help. But the human lanterns are in bad
shape.

"Rhetoric!" do you say? I wish it were. I wish with my heart it were.
Look at the crowds for yourself. There they go down the street,
pell-mell, bewildered, blinded, some of them by will-o'-the-wisp lights,
ditched and mired many of them. The thing is only too terribly true.

Our Lord's great plan, bearing the stamp of its divinity in its sheer
human simplicity, is this: we who know Jesus are to _live Him_. We're to
let _the whole of a Jesus_, crucified, risen, living, shine out of _the
whole of our lives_.

Is it a bit dark down where you are? _Let the Light shine_. Let the
clear sweet steady Jesus-light shine out through your true clean quiet
Jesus-swayed and Jesus-controlled life. Then the darkness must go. It
can't stand the Light. It can't withstand the purity and insistence of
its clear steady shining. And the darkness _will_ go: slowly,
reluctantly, angrily, doggedly, making hideous growling noises
sometimes, raising the dust sometimes, but it will go. It must go before
the Light. The Light's resistless. This is our Lord's wondrous plan
_through_ His own, and His irresistible plan _for_ the crowd, and His
plan against the prince of darkness.



The Heart-road to the Head.


Then John goes on to say, "_the darkness apprehended it not_." The old
common version says "comprehended"; the revisions, both English and
American, say "apprehended." Both are rather large words, larger in
English than John would use. John loved to use simple talk. Yet there's
help even in these English words. Comprehend is a mental word. It means
to take hold of with your mind; to understand. Apprehend is a physical
word. It means to take hold of with your hand.

You can't _comprehend_ Jesus. That is just the simple plain fact. You
may have a fine mind. It may be well schooled and trained. You may have
dug into all the books on the subject, English and German and the few
French. You may have spent a lifetime at it. But at the end there is
immensely more of Jesus that you don't understand than the part that you
do understand. You've touched the smaller part only, just the edges. You
cannot take Jesus in with your mind simply. The one is too big and the
other too limited for that particular process.

But, listen with your heart, you can _apprehend_ Him. You can _take
hold_ of Him. There isn't one of us here, however poorly equipped
mentally and in training, and too busy with life's common duties to get
much time for reading, not one of us, who may not reach out your hand,
the hand of your heart, the hand of your life, the hand of your simple
childlike trust--if you're great enough in simplicity to be childlike,
to be natural, not one of us, but may reach out the hand and _take in
all there is of Jesus_.

And the striking thing to mark is this, that we don't really begin to
comprehend until we apprehend. Only as we take Him into heart and life
_can_ we really understand. It's as if the heat in the heart made by His
presence there loosens up the grey juices of your brain, and it begins
to work freely and clearly.

Of course, this is a commonplace in the educational world. It is well
understood there that no student does his best work, no matter what
that work may be, in science or philosophy or in mathematics or in
laboratorial research, his mind cannot do its best, or be at its best,
until his heart has been kindled by some noble passion. The key to the
life is in the heart, that is the emotions and purposes tied together.
The approach to the mind is through the heart. The fire of pure emotion
and of noble purpose burning together, works out _through_ the mind
_into_ the life. This is nature's order.

But what John is saying here, put into as simple language as he would
use, is this: "_the darkness wouldn't let the light in, and couldn't
shut it out, and couldn't dull the brightness of its shining_." It
tried. It tried first at Bethlehem. The first spilling of blood came
there. There was the shedding of blood at both ends of Jesus' career,
and innocent blood each time. It tried at the Nazareth precipice, and in
the spirit-racking wilderness. It tried by stones, then in Gethsemane,
then at Calvary.

And there it seemed to have succeeded. At last the light was shut in and
down; the door was shut and barred and bolted. And I suppose there was
great glee in the headquarters of darkness. But the Third Morning came.
And the bars of darkness were broken, as a woman breaks the
sewing-cotton at the end of the seam. The Light could not be held down
by darkness. It broke out more brightly than ever. The darkness couldn't
shut the light out. And it can't.

_Let the light shine._ Let it shine out through the clear clean glass
of an unselfish, Jesus-cleansed Jesus-fired life lived for Him in the
commonplace round, and the shut-away corner. _And the darkness will go_.
The darkness cannot shut out the light, nor keep it down, nor resist the
gentle resistless power of its soft clear flooding. Let the Light shine
down in that corner where you are. And the darkness, darkness that can
be felt, and _is_ felt so sorely deep down in your spirit, in its
uncanny Egyptian blackness, that darkness will break, and more, clear,
and go, go, go, till it's clear gone.

And so ends John's first great paragraph. It is so tremendous in its
simplicity that, Greek-like, men stumble over its simple tremendousness.
Away back in the beginning God revealed Himself in making a home for
man, and in bringing the man, made in His own image, to his home. And
then when the damp unwholesome darkness came stealing in swamping the
home and man He came Himself, flooding in the soft clear pure light of
His presence, to free man from the darkness and woo him out into the
light.



Tarshish or Nineveh?


Then John goes on into his second paragraph. "_There came a man, sent
from God, whose name was John_." Why? Because man was in the dark. He
sent a man to help a man. He used a man to reach a man. He always does.
Run clear through this old Book of God, and then clear through that
other Book of God--the book of life, and note that this is God's habit.
He, Himself, uses the path He had made for human feet. With greatest
reverence let it be said that God _must_ use a human pathway for His
feet.

Even when He would redeem a world He came, He must needs come, as a Man,
one of ourselves. He touches men through men. The pathway of His helping
feet is always a common human pathway. And, will you mark keenly that
_the highest level any life ever reaches_, or _can_ reach, is this: _to
be a pathway for the feet of a wooing winning God_.

And this is still true. It is meant to be true to-day that there came a
man, sent from God, whose name is--_your name_. You put in your own name
in that sentence, then you get God's plan for you. For as surely as this
particular John of the desert and of the plain living, and the burning
speech, was sent by God, so surely is every man of us a man sent by God
on some particular errand. And the greatest achievement of life is to
find and fit into the plan of God for one's life. This is the only great
thing one can do. Anything else is merely _labelled_ "great." And that
label washes off. This is the one thing worth while.

The bother is we don't always get the verbs, the action words, of that
sentence straight. John was a man _sent_ from God. And he _came_. All
men are sent But they don't all come, some _go_; go their own way. There
was a man sent from God whose name was Jonah. But he didn't come. He
went. He was sent to Nineveh on the extreme east. He went towards
Tarshish on the extreme west; just the opposite direction. Every man is
headed either for Nineveh or Tarshish, God's way or his own. Which way
are you headed?

Some of us go to Tarshish _religiously_. We go our own way, and sing
hymns and pray, to make it seem right and keep from hearing the inner
voice. We hold meetings at the boat-wharf, while waiting for the
Tarshish ship to lift anchor. We have services in the steerage and
second-class and distribute tracts and New Testaments; but all the time
we're headed for Tarshish; our way, not God's. It won't do simply to do
good. We must do God's will. Find that and fit into it.

The meetings and tracts are only good but they ought to be on the train
to Nineveh, and in Nineveh where God's sent you. Are you berthed on the
boat for Tarshish? or have you a seat engaged on the train for Nineveh?
going your own way? or God's? John was _sent_ and he _came_. You and I
are sent. Are we coming or going? coming God's way? or, going our own?



Living Martyrs.


This true-hearted burning man of the deserts _came for a witness_. Here
we strike one of John's great words. You remember the three things that
_witness_ means? that you know something; that you tell what you know;
and that you tell it most with your life. And telling it _with your
life_ means, not only by the way you live, but, too, even though the
telling of it _may cost you your life_. It came to mean all of that with
this witness.

It came to mean that with a new fullness of meaning, a peculiar
significance, to _the great Witness_, of whom John told. This was the
very throbbing heart of the wooing errand. This explains the tenderness
and tenacity of the Lover in His wooing in the midst of intensest
opposition, and in spite of it.

The opposition brought about the terrific grouping of circumstances
which the great Lover-witness used as the tremendous climax of both
wooing and witnessing. No one doubts the reality of Jesus' witness to
the Father's love before men. And no one, who has had any touch at all
with Him, doubts the tremendous pull upon one's heart of such a wooing
appeal as that Calvary climax of witnessing made, and makes.

And this, mark it keenly, is still the plan. "The-same-came-for-witness"
is meant to be true of each follower of the Christ. This is to be the
dominant underchording of all our lives. This is to be the never-absent
motive gripping us, and our possessions and our plans. The rest is
incidental in a true life.

It may be a "rest" that takes most of the waking hours with most of us,
most of our strength and thought. But there's an undercurrent in every
life. And the undercurrent is the controlling current. It makes us what
we really are. It may be quite different from the upper current
controlled by the outer necessities of circumstances. And with the true
Jesus-man _this_ is the undercurrent, this thing of witnessing.

Do you know something of Jesus? Do you know the cleansing of His blood?
Do you know the music of His peace in your heart? Do you know a bit of
the subtle fragrance of His presence? Do you know the power of His Name
when temptations come, when the road gets slippery, and your feet go out
from under you--almost. Then His Name, its power, and you hold steady.
Do you know something about such things?

Then _tell_ it. This is the plan--_telling_. It's a Gospel of _telling_.
Tell it with your lips tactfully, gently, boldly, earnestly. But tell it
far more, and most with your life. Let what you are, when you're not
thinking about this sort of thing, let that tell it. That's the greatest
telling, the best.

And, softly, now, when you get to the end of telling what you know,
listen quietly, don't go to digging into books for something to tell
your class or the meeting or the crowd. Don't do that. Books have their
place, good books, but it's always a sharply secondary place, or third,
or lower down yet. Poor crowd that must be fed on retailed books worked
over! Don't do that. _Know more._ Know Jesus better. Trust Him more
fully. Risk more on following where He clearly leads. Then you can tell
more and better.

Sometimes I'm asked, "How can I have more faith?" Well, not by thinking
about your faith. Not by books or definitions chiefly, however they may
help some. I can tell you how: _Follow where the Master's quiet voice is
clearly calling._ Go where it is plain to you that that pierced hand is
leading.

"Ah! but the way is a bit narrow," you think. "And it's steep. There are
sharp-edged stones under foot. And those bushes are growing rank on both
sides narrowing the path. And thorns scratch and hurt and sting. This
other road where I am now--this is a good Christian road. My Christian
brothers are here. I'd rather stay here."

And so you _stay_. You don't _say_ "no" to the calling voice. You simply
_act_ "no." No wonder you get confused and tangled. It's only in the
path of following clear leading that there comes sweetest peace, with no
nagging doubts and mental confusion. There only will you have more
faith, know more of Him, touch with whom is the realest faith. And so
only will the witness be told out to the crowd on the street of your
life, of the power and satisfying peace of this Jesus.

This is the witnessing we're sent to do. And the crowds crowd to listen,
when it's given. This is the way _the_ Witness did. He followed the
clear Father-voice, though the road led straight across the regular
roads through thorn hedges and thick underbrush. Should not the servant
tread it still?

The word that John uses here underneath our English word _witness_ is
the word from which our English word _martyr_ comes. And martyr has
come to mean one who gives his life clear out in a violent way for the
truth he believes. But, do you know, that is easy. "Easy?" You say,
"Surely not, you're certainly wrong there." No, you are right. It is not
easy. To face a storm of lead, or feel the sharp-edged blade, or yield
to the eating flame,--that is never easy.

But this is what I mean. There's the heroic in it, and that helps. You
brace yourself for it. The terrible crisis comes. You pull together and
pray and resolutely, desperately, face it. A little while, and it's
over. You've been true in the sharp crisis. You have taken a place with
the noble army of martyrs. And we who hear of it have a martyr's halo
about your head.

But there's something immensely harder to do. Without making a whit less
than it is the splendid courage of martyrdom, there's something that
takes immensely more courage, and a deeper longer-seasoned heroism, and
that is to be a _living_ martyr, to bear the simple true witness
tactfully but clearly, when it takes the very life of your life to do
it, though it doesn't take your bodily life in a violent way.

You know they don't martyr people these days for their Christian faith.
At least not in the western half of the earth, the Christian hemisphere.
No, that's quite behind the calendar. That's rather crude, quite behind
the cultured advanced Christian progress of _our_ day. Our Christian
civilization has gone long strides beyond that. We have grown much more
refined. Now we kill them _socially_. Many a one who would live true to
the Jesus-ideals in daily life in a simple sane way finds certain social
doors shut and carefully barred.

We kill them _commercially_ now. The man who will quietly hew to the
Jesus-line in business is quite apt to find his income reduced. The bulk
of business shrinks. The thermometer is run down below the living point.
We kill men by _frost_ now. The blockade system is skilfully used;
isolation and insulation from certain circles. We are much more refined.

The great need to-day is of _living_ witnesses to the Christ in home,
and social circle, in the street, and in the market-place.

    "So he died for his faith; that is fine,
      More than the most of us do.
    But stay, can yon add to that line
      That he _lived_ for it, too?

    "It's easy to die. Men have died
      For a wish or a whim--
    From bravado or passion or pride.
      Was it hard for him?

    "But to live: every day to live out
      All the truth that he dreamt,
    While his friends met his conduct with doubt,
      And the world with contempt.

    "Was it thus that he plodded ahead,
      Never turning aside?
    Then we'll talk of the life that he led"
      Even more than the death that he died.



The Forgotten Preacher.


With a simplicity in sticking to his main point, John goes quietly on:
"_that he might be a witness of the light_." That's rather interesting.
It was of the _light_ he was to bear witness; not of himself. It was not
the technical accuracy of his work, not its scholarliness and skill that
absorbed him, but that the _crowd got the light_. Rather striking that,
when you break away from the atmosphere round about, and think into it a
bit.

Here's a man walking down a country road. It's a hot day. The road's
dusty. He gets a bit weary and thirsty. He comes across a bit of a
spring by the side of the road. Clear cool water it is. And some one has
thoughtfully left a tin-cup on a ledge of rock near by. And the man
gratefully drinks and goes on his way refreshed. He quite forgets the
tin-cup.

Sometimes the tin-cup seems to require much attention, up in the corner
of the world where my tent is pitched. It has to be handled very
carefully and considerately if one is to get what possible drops of
water it may contain. The human tin-cup seems to bulk very big in the
drinking process, sometimes, in my corner of the planet. It is
silver-plated sometimes; just common tin under the plating. There's some
fine engraving on the silver-plating, noble sentiment, deftly expressed,
and done in the engraver's best style. But the water is apt to be
scanty, the drops rather few, in this sort of tin-cup. It's a bit
droughty.

And sometimes even this has been known to occur: they have associations
of these human tin-cups for self-admiration and other cultural purposes.
And they have highly satisfactory meetings. But meanwhile, ah! look!
hold still your heart, and look here. There's the crowd on the street,
hot dusty street, exhausted, actually fainting for want of water, just
good plain water of life. But there's none to be had; only tin-cups!
John was eager to have men get a good drink. He was content as he
watched them drink, and their eyes lighten. He was discontent and
restless with anything else or less.

Do you remember the greatest compliment ever paid John, John the Herald?
John was a great preacher. He had great drawing power. To-day we
commonly go where people are hoping they'll stay while we talk to them.
But John did otherwise. He went down to the Jordan bottoms, where the
spirit ventilation was better, and called the people to him. And they
came. They came from all over the nation, of every class. Literally
thousands gathered to hear John. He had great drawing power.

And then something happened. Here is John to-day talking earnestly to
great crowds down by the river-road. And here he is again to-morrow; but
where are the crowds? John has lost his crowd. Same pulpit out in the
open air, same preacher, same simple intense message burning in his
heart, but--no congregation! The crowd's gone. Poor John! You must feel
pretty bad. It's hard enough to fail, but how much harder after
succeeding. Poor John, I'm so sorry for you.

But if you get close enough to John to see into his eye you quit talking
like that. And if you get near enough to hear you find your sympathy is
not needed. For John's eye is ablaze with a tender light, and the sound
of an inner heart music reaches your ear as you get near him. And if you
follow, as you instinctively do, the line of the light in his eye you
quickly look down the road.

Oh! There's John's crowd. _They're listening to Jesus._John's crowd has
left him for his Master. And the forgotten preacher is the finest
evidence of the faithfulness of the preacher. The crowd's getting the
water, sweet cool refreshing water of life, direct from the fountain.
They've clean forgotten the faithful common tin-cup. And John's so glad.
John came that he might bear witness of _the light_. And he did. And the
crowd heard. And they flocked to the light.

Here's a man preaching. And the people are listening. The benediction is
pronounced. And they go out. And as they move slowly out they're
talking, always talking. We don't seem yet to have demitted our
privilege of talking after service. Here are two. Listen to them. "Isn't
he a great preacher? so scholarly, so eloquent, so polished; and all
those classical allusions. I didn't understand half he said; he
certainly is a great preacher. We're very fortunate in such a man."

And the preacher, whoever he be, may know this for a bit of the
certainty that occasionally _will_ sift in. He may be a scholar. I
wouldn't question it. And a polished orator. I wouldn't question that.
But in the main thing, the one thing he's for, as a _Jesus-witness_, he
is a splendid scholarly polished failure. Men are talking about _him_.

They've forgotten his Master, if indeed--ah, yes, if indeed he _have_ a
Master! He has a _Saviour_, let us earnestly hope, and willingly
believe. But a _Master_! One that sweeps and sways his mind and culture
and life like the strong wind sweeps the thin young saplings in the
storm--clearly he knows nothing of that. Men are talking of _him_.

And here's another talking a bit It may be just a simple homely talk. Or
he may likewise be scholarly and eloquent. A man should bring his best.
The old classic is beaten oil for the lamps of the sanctuary. But
there's the soft burning fire of the real thing in his message. And the
people feel it. The air seems a-thrill with its quiet tensity. And the
last amen is said. And again they go out.

And here are two walking down the road together, and as they come to the
cross-street, one says to his companion, "Excuse me, please, I have to
go down _this_ way." And the "have-to" is the have-to of an intense
desire to get off alone. And as he goes down the side street he's
talking, but--to himself. Listen to him: "I'm not the man I ought to be,
I wonder if Jesus is really like he said. I wonder if the thing's really
so. I believe--yes, I really think I'll risk it. My life isn't like it
should be. I'll risk trying this Jesus-way. I'll do it."

The man's clean forgotten the speaker. Oh, yes, he remembers the tone of
the voice, and the look of the face, but indistinctly, far away. He's
face-to-face with Jesus! And the forgotten speaker is the finest
evidence of the faithfulness of his speaking. He is holding up the
light. And men run into the light. They've clean forgot the little tin
candlestick, they are so taken up with the light it holds.



The One Thing to Aim At.


And John keeps driving in on the point in his mind: "_that all might
believe through Him_"; that they might listen, stop to think, agree as
to the thing being believable, then trust it; then trust _Him_, the
Light, risk something, risk, _themselves_ to _Him_, then love, love with
a passionate devotion. This was John's objective. It was the bull's-eye
of his target never out of his keen Spirit-opened eye. Nothing else
figured in.

This is _the_ thing in all our living and serving and doing and giving,
_that men may know Jesus_ to the trusting, risking, loving point, the
glad point. Everything that we can bring of gold and learning and labour
and skill is precious, it is as purest gold, _if_ it lead men into
heart-touch with Jesus. And it clean misses the mark if it does less.

Who would be content to give a Belgian or Polish starveling a bare bit
of bread, and a lonely stick of wood, and a rag of cloth. Bite and stick
and cloth are good, but it's a _meal_ and a _fire_, and some _clothing_,
the man wants. And you have both ready at hand. _Things_ are good,
provided by money and skill and research and painstaking efforts. They
_do_ good. But it's Jesus men need. It's the warm touch that lets _Him_
fully in with all of His human sympathy and all of His God-power, that's
what they need.

Given the sun and quickly come warmth and food and shelter, health and
vigour and increase of life. Given Jesus, and the warm touch with Him,
in His simple fullness, just as He is, and surely and not slowly, there
come flooding in all the rest of an abundant life, physical and mental
and of the spirit.

John "_was not the light_." He was only the candlestick. And he was
content to be that. He was a good candlestick. The light was held up. It
could shine out. How grateful the crowd was. The road had been so dark.
It is a bad thing when light and candlestick change places. The crowd
seems to get the two confused sometimes. We get to thinking that the
candlestick is the light, and the light is--lost sight of. We gather
about the candlestick. It'll surely lead the way out through the dark
night into day. It's such a good candlestick, so highly polished. And
sometimes the human candlestick itself gets things a bit mixed. It
thinks, then it feels, then it knows, with a peculiar quality of
self-assertive certainty, that after all _it_ is the light that
lighteth every one that is so blessed as to come within the radius of
its shining. And brass does take a high polish, and makes an attractive
appearance. It does send out a sparkle and radiance _if_ only it is
somewhere within range of some real light, patient enough to keep on
shining in the dark, regardless of non-appreciation or misrepresentation
or misunderstanding.

Is it any wonder the road is so full of people wandering in the night
gathered about candlesticks? Is it surprising that the ditches are so
full of men and candlesticks mixed up and mired up together? Yet it is
always heart-breaking. There may be talent and training of the highest
and best, and scholarship and culture, eloquence and skill, institutions
and philanthropies. And there is so much of these. And these are good in
themselves, and of priceless practical worth when seen and held in their
right relation to _the_ thing.

But it needs to be said often and earnestly: _these are not the light_.
They are given to point men better to the Light. They're road-signs,
index-fingers. And they are seen at their best when they point to the
Light so clearly that the crowd quite forgets them in hastening to the
Light they point out. They serve their true purpose in being so
forgotten. They are still serving and serving best even while forgotten.



The Real Thing of Light.


And John goes on to intensify yet more what he is thinking and saying:
_there was the true light_, _the real thing of light_. They were
bothered, in John's old age when he is writing, with false lights,
make-pretend lights, that led people astray. Every generation seems to
have been so bothered and confused. And even our own doesn't seem to
have entirely escaped the subtle contagion. The ground is a bit swampy
in places, boggy.

Low-lying land runs to bog and swamp. And the air gets thick with heavy
vapours. And strange will-of-the-wisp lights form out of the foul damp
gasses, and they flit about in the gloom this way and that. And people
are led astray by them deeper into swamp and bog. It's surprising to
find how many, that grow up in well-lit neighbourhoods, wander off after
the swamp lights, and even follow them so contentedly. That's partly
due, without doubt, to the false lights borrowing so much of the mere
outer incidentals from the true. And they succeed in producing a make-up
that easily deceives the unwary and untaught.

There's a teaching to-day, for instance, that magnifies bodily healing.
The name of Christ is freely used. And the old Book of God freely
quoted. And men are really healed. There can be no question of that.
There are sufficient facts at hand to make that incontestably clear.

But bodily healing does not necessarily argue divine power. There are
results secured through the operation of unfamiliar mental powers that
seem miraculous. And clearly there are devilish miracles as well as
divine. Miracles simply reveal a supernatural power, that is, a power
above the ordinary workings of nature. Then one must apply a touchstone,
a test, to learn what that power is.

It is striking that in this teaching I speak of now there is never
mention of the atoning blood of Christ. And this is the sure touchstone
by which to detect the real thing of light and the make-believe. The
outstanding thing in the life of Christ is His death, and the tremendous
meaning which His own teaching put into that fact of His death.

There is none of the red tinge to this make-believe light. It has the
unwholesome unnatural tingeing of swamp lights. And those who are healed
through this teaching will find themselves in a bondage the more
terrible because so subtle. And only the power of the blood of Christ
can ever break that bondage.

There was the real thing of light. Here _is_ the real thing of light.
There's a distinct tingeing of red in it. It's the only light. It only
is the light. Every other is a make-pretend light, however subtle its
imitations and reflections: it will lead only into swamp and bog and
ditch and worse.

And then John goes on to add a very simple bit that has not always been
quite understood in its simplicity. There was the real thing of light
_that lighteth every man that cometh into the world_. There is a little
group of varied readings into the English here, found in the margin of
the various revisions. But the central statement remains the same.
Whether John is saying that the light, that lighteth every man, was now
coming down into the world in a closer way. Or, that every man is
lighted as _he_ comes into the world, the chief thing being told is the
same. Every man in the world is lighted by this Light.

Through nature, the nightly twinklers in the wondrous blue overhead, the
unfailing freshness of the green out of the brown under foot; through
the never-ceasing wonders of these bodies of ours, so awesomely and
skilfully made, and kept going; through that clear quiet inner voice
that does speak in every human heart amidst all the noises of earth and
of passion; through these the light _is_ shining, noiselessly, softly,
endlessly, by day and night.

It is the same identical light that John is telling us of here that so
shines in upon every man, and always has. There is no light but His. His
later name is Jesus. From the first, and everywhere still, it is the
light that shines from Him that lights men. He was with the Father in
the beginning. He acted for the Father in that creation week. He gave
and sustained all life of every sort everywhere, and does, though only a
third of us know His later, nearer, newer Name--Jesus.

But the light was obscured, terribly beclouded and bedimmed, hindered by
earth-fogs, and swampy clouds rising up, until we are apt to think there
was no light, and is none; only darkness. Then He came closer, and yet
closer. He came in nearer form so as to get the light closer, and let
it shine _through_ fog and cloud, for the sake of the befogged,
beswamped crowd.

And then--ah! hold your heart still--_then_ He let _the_ Light-holder,
the great human Lantern, be _broken_, utterly broken, that so the light
might flash out through broken lantern in its sweet soft wondrous
clearness into our blinded blinking eyes, and show us the real way back
home. It was in that breaking that it got that wondrous exquisite red
tingeing that becomes the unfailing hall-mark, the unmistakable evidence
of the real thing of light.

And it's only as men know of this latest coming of the light, this
tremendous tragic Jesus-coming of the light, that they can come into the
full light. That's the reason He came in the way He did. That's the
reason when He gets possession of us there's the passion to take the
full Jesus-light out to every one. And this passion burns in us and
through us, and ours, and sweeps all in the sweep of its tender holy
flame. In this way every man may be fully lit, and so in following the
Jesus-light he shall not walk in the darkness where he has been, but in
the sweet clear light of life.



Looking for Recognition.


Then we come to the first of John's heart-breaking sentences. John had a
hard time writing his Gospel. He was not simply writing a book. That
might have been fairly easy for him with his personal knowledge and all
the facts so familiar. But he is telling about his dearest Friend. And
the telling makes his heart throb harder, and his eyes fill up, and the
writing look dim to him, as he tries to put the words down.

Listen: _He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and
the world recognized, or rather acknowledged, Him not._ It was His
world, His child, His creation. He had made it. But it failed to
acknowledge Him. He came walking down the street of life. He met the
world going the other way. And He gave it a warm good-morning greeting.
And it knew Him full well. It knew who He was. But it turned its face
aside and walked by with no return greeting. This is what John is
saying. It recognized, it acknowledged Him not.

You mothers know the glad hour that comes in a mother's life when her
little babe of the wee weeks knows her _for the first time._ She's busy
bathing or nursing, or, she's just hovering over the precious morsel of
humanity when there's really nothing needing to be done. And the babe's
eyes catch her own and _a smile comes,_ the first smile of recognition.
And the mother-heart gives a glad leap. She murmurs to herself, "Oh,
baby knows me!"

And when the father comes home that night she greets him with, "Baby
knew me to-day." And there's a soft bell-like tender ring in her voice
that vibrates on the strings of his heart. And all the folks within
range are advised of the day's event. And the mother clear forgets all
the sharp-cutting pain back there just a little before, in this joy,
this look of recognition.

I knew of a woman. She was of an old family, of unusual native gift, and
rare accomplishment. And her babe came. And the time came when
ordinarily there would be that first sweet look of recognition, but--_it
didn't come._ There was a defect; something not as it should be. And you
mothers all know how she felt, yes, and you true fathers, too. She was
heart-broken. And she turned aside from all the busy round of activity
in which she had been the natural leader. And for years she devoted all
her splendid talents, her strength and time, to just one thing, a very
simple thing; only this,--_getting a look of glad recognition out of two
babe-eyes._

_He_ looked into the face of His child, His world, for the look of
recognition. But there was none. And He was heart-broken. And He devoted
all His strength and time, Himself, for those human years to--what? One
thing, just one thing, a very simple thing, only this: to getting a look
of recognition out of the eyes of His child.

Aye, there's more yet here. He _looks_ into our faces, eager for that
simple direct answering look into His face and out of our eyes, yours
and mine. And we give Him--things, church-membership, orthodox belief,
intense activity, aggressive missionary propaganda, money in good
measure, tireless, and then tired-out service--_things!_ And all good
things. But _the_ thing, the direct look into His own face answering His
own hungry searching look, that look in the face that reveals the inner
heart that He _waits_ for so often, and waits, a bit sore at heart.

For you know the eye is the face of the face. It's the doorway into the
soul, out through which the soul, the man within, looks. I look at you,
the man inside here looks out at you through my eye. And I look at the
real you down through your eye. The real man is hidden away within, but
looks out through the eye and is looked at only through the eye. We
really give ourselves to Jesus in the look direct into His face which
tells Him all, and through which He transforms us.



A Heart-breaking Verse.


Then comes John's second heart-breaking verse; but it is just a bit more
heart-breaking in what it says. Listen: _He came to His own home, and
they that were His own kinsfolk received Him not into the house but kept
Him standing out in the cold and storm of the wintry night._

One of you men goes home to-night. It's your own home, shaped on your
own personality through the years. It's a bit late. You've had a long
hard day. You're tired. It's stormy. The wind and the rain chill you as
you turn the corner. And you pull your coat a bit snugger as you quicken
your steps and think of home, warmth and comfort, loved ones, and rest
for body and spirit, too.

As you come to the door you reach for your latch-key, and find, in the
busy rush, you seem to have forgotten it, somehow. So you ring the bell
or knock. And suppose--be patient with me a bit, please. Suppose your
loved ones know you're there. You even see a hand drawing aside the edge
of the window shade, and two eyes that you know so well peer out through
the crack at you; then the shade goes to again. Yes, they know you're
there. But the door, your own door, doesn't open. How would you feel?

And some one says to himself, "That's not a good illustration. That
thing couldn't happen. It isn't natural." No: you're right. It _isn't_
natural. It could not happen to _you_. I am sure it could not happen to
_me_. If it could I'd be heart-broken. _But this is what happened to
Him!_ This is what John is saying here. He came to His own front door,
and they whose very image revealed their close kinship to Him, received
Him not into the home, but kept the door fast in His face.

Then there's a later translation. This old King James version bears the
date of 1611, I think. And the English Revision is dated 1881, I
believe. And this American Standard Revision I am using has 1901 on its
title page. But there's a later revision. It bears a yet later date,
1915, April 27. But it is a shifting date. Each translator fixed his own
date.

This latest translation runs something like this: He _comes_ to His own.
That's you and myself. We belong to Him. He gave His breath to us in
Eden. He gave His breath to you and me at our birth. He gave His blood
for us on Calvary. We belong to Him. The image of His kinship is stamped
upon us. We may not acknowledge it, but that can't change the fact.

_He comes to His own, and His own_--and here, as the scholars would say,
there are variant readings. Let me give you one or two I have found.
Here is one: He comes to His own, and His own--puts a chair outside the
door on the top-step. It's a large armchair with a cushion in, perhaps.
And then His own talks about Him through the crack of the door, or
likelier, the window. It's reckoned safer to keep the door fast.

Listen to what he says: "He's a wonderful man this Jesus; great teacher,
the greatest; the greatest man of the race; His philosophy, His moral
standards are the ideals; wonderful life; great example." They fairly
exhaust the language in talking about this Man. But notice. It seems a
bit queer. The man they're talking _about_ is _outside the door_. His
own claim is left severely outside.

Some make it read like this: He comes to His own, and they who are His
own open the door a _crack_, maybe a fairly respectably wide crack. We
all like the word _Saviour_. Yes, we cling tenaciously to that.
Selfishly, would you say? We want to be saved from a certain place we
think of as _down_, that we've been taught about, and don't want to go
to--_if it's there;_ the way men talk about it to-day.

And we want to be saved into another certain place we think of as _up_,
and where we surely want to go _after_ we get through down on the
earth, and _must_ go away somewhere else; with that "after" and "must"
carefully underscored. And we want to be saved from all the
inconveniences possible along the way, and to secure all the advantages
and help available: yes, yes, open the door a crack.

But be careful about the width of the opened crack. Let it be just the
proper conventionalized width. Let there be no extremeism about the
wideness of that opening. Things must be proper. For what would the
other crack-open-door-owners think?

And then, too, yet more serious, this Jesus has a way, a most
inconsiderate way of coming in as far as you let Him, and of taking
things into His own hands. Certain people use that word
"inconsiderate"--to themselves, in secret. Jesus changes some things
when He is allowed all the way in. He might change your personal habits,
your home arrangements, some of your social customs and your business
plans.

Of course He changes only what needs changing, as He sees it.
But--then--you--well, some things can be carried _too far_--to suit
_you_. This Jesus has the _all_ habit. He contracted it when He was down
on the earth. Our needs grew the habit. He _gave_ all. And He has a way
of coming in all the way, and of reaching in His pierced hand and
_taking_ all.

He might even put His hand in on that most sacred thing, that holiest of
all, that you guard most jealously--that box. It has heavy hinges, and
double padlocks, and the keys are held hard under the thumb of your
will. Of course there may really not be much in it; and again there may
be very much. But much or little, it is securely kept under that thick
broad thumb of yours.

Oh! you _give_; of _course_; yes, yes, we're all good proper Christian
folk here. We give a tenth, and even much more. We support an aggressive
missionary propaganda. That's the thing, you know, in our day, for good
church people. We give to all the good things. Ye-es, no doubt. And we
are very careful, too, that that _inconsiderate_ Hand shall not disturb
the greater bulk that remains between hinge and lock. That's _yours_. Of
course you are _His_, redeemed, saved by His blood.

Well, well, how these pronouns, "His," "ours," do get mixed up! How
lovely some things are to _sing_ about, in church, and special services,
at Keswick and Northfield. But through it all we hold hard to that key,
we don't let go--_even to Him_, though it is He who entrusts all to our
temporary keeping. We do guard the width of that opening crack, do we
not?

One day I looked through that crack and caught a glimpse of _His face_
looking through full in my own, with those eyes of His. And at first I
wanted to take the door clear off of its hinges and stand it outside
against the bricks, and leave the whole door-space wide for Him.

But I've learned better. No man wants to leave the doorway of his life
unguarded. He must keep the strong hand of his controlling purpose on
the knob of the front door of his life. There are others than He, evil
ones, cunningly subtle ones, standing just at the corner watching for
such an opportunity. And they step quickly slyly in under your untaught
unsuspicious eyes, and get things badly tangled in your life. There's a
better, a stronger way.

Here's the personal translation that I try now, by His help, to work out
into living words, the language of life. He comes to His own, and His
own opens the door wide, and _holds_ it wide open, that He may come in
all the way, and cleanse, and change, readjust, and then shape over on
the shape of His own presence.

But every one must work out his own translation of that; and every one
does. And the crowd reads--not this printed version. It reads this other
translation, the one nearest, in such big print, the one our lives work
out daily. That's the translation they prefer. And that's the
translation they're being influenced by, and influenced by tremendously.



He Came to His Own.


In certain circles in England, they tell of a certain physician years
ago. He came of a very humble family. His father was a gardener on a
gentleman's estate. And the father died. And the mother wasn't able to
pay her son's schooling. But a storekeeper in the village liked this
little bright boy and sent him to school. And he went on through the
higher schooling, became a physician, and began his practice in London.
He became skilled, and then famous, and then wealthy.

He remembered his dear old mother, of course. He sent her money, and
fabrics for dresses, and wrote her. But for a long time, in the busy
absorption of his life, he had not been to see her. And the dear old
mother in the little cottage in the country lived in the sweet
consciousness that her son was a great physician up in the great London.
He was her chief topic of conversation. When the neighbours were in she
would always talk of her son, her Laddie, she called him.

"He's so good to me, my Laddie is. He sends me money. I put it in the
bank. He sends me cloth for dresses; it's quite too good for a plain
body like me. And he writes me letters, such good letters, wonderful
letters. But he's so busy up there, that he hasn't been to see me for a
long time now. You know he's a great doctor now, and he has great skill,
and there are so many needing him. And he's no time at all, even for
himself, I expect. But"--she would always finish her talk as they sat
over the tea by saying, half to herself, really more to herself than to
the little group, with a half-repressed longing sigh, "but, I wish, I
just _wish_ I could _see_ my _Laddie_."

Then some changes took place on the estate. And the cottage where she
had lived so long must be given up. And the dear old woman had to make
new plans. And she cudgeled her old head, and thought, and at last she
said to herself, "I know what I'll do. I'll go-up to London, and I'll
live with Laddie. He'll be so glad to have me." And bright-coloured
visions flitted through her mind, as she sat over her tea by the open
grate. But she wouldn't send him word; no, no, she would surprise him,
and add to his pleasure.

And the dear old soul, in her fine simplicity, did not think into what
this would mean, nor of the difference that had grown up with the years,
in manner of life, between her son and herself. He was a cultured
gentleman, with his well-appointed city home, and the circle of friends
that had grown up about him. And she was a simple uncultured country
woman with a broad provincial twist on her tongue. But she was
blissfully unconscious of this. She would go and live with her Laddie.
It would be so delightful for them both.

And so she went. It was her first train journey, and quite a time of it
she had finding the house. But at last she stands looking up at the
house. "Ugh! does my Laddie live here! in this great mansion?" But there
was the name on the door-plate. There was no mistaking that. And so she
rang the bell. "Is the doctor in?" She could hardly get the word
"doctor" out. She had never called him that before, just Laddie. But now
she must say it. "Is the doctor in?" And the word almost stuck in her
throat as she thought to herself, "This poor man opening the door
doesn't know that the 'doctor' really belongs to _me_."

But in a hard voice the servant said that it was past the hours. She
couldn't see the doctor.

"Ah! bat," she said, quite taken by surprise at being held there, "I
_must_ see him."

"But, I tell you, it's quite too late to see him to-day."

But she resolutely put her stout country-boot in the crack of the door,
and her English jaw set in true English fashion, and she said with that
quietness that has the subtle touch of danger in it, "I'll see the
doctor."

And the servant looked puzzled and went to report about this strangely
insistent woman. And the doctor was annoyed by the interruption in the
midst of something that was absorbing him. He said sharply, "It's past
the hours; I can see no one."

"I told her so, sir," replied the man deferentially, "but she insists in
a strange way, sir."

"What's she like?"

"Oh, just a plain country body, sir."

"Well, show her up."

And I am glad to remember that she had a warm embrace of his strong
arms, as he instantly recognized her in the doorway, while the servant
stared. Then he said rather nervously as the servant discreetly
withdrew, "How did yon happen to come? Why didn't you send word? Has
anything happened?" And then as she sat by the fire sipping a cup of
tea, she told the story, in her own simple slow way, and ended up with,
"And now I'm coming to live with you, Laddie." And the old eyes behind
the spectacles beamed, and the dear old wrinkled face glowed.

And he poked the fire, and tried to think You know, our English friends
depend almost wholly on the open grate fire, as we do so largely in the
South. And it's a great thing, is the open grate fire. It's a fire. It
warms your body, at least in front in extreme weather. But it's more
than a fire. It's a stimulus to thought. It refreshes your spirit, and
rests your tired nerves, and it is a wonderful thing to help you unravel
knotty problems. So he poked the fire and thought, while she, quite
unconscious of his embarrassment, went on sipping her tea and talking.

It would never do to have her come there, he thought. And his thoughts
went to the circle of friends at the dinner table in the evening, and to
the critical city servants that ran his bachelor establishment. And just
then his ear caught anew the broad provincial twist on her tongue. He
had never noticed it so broad, so decided, before. And she was talking
the small countryside talk, chickens and an epidemic among them. And
that grated strangely. It certainly wouldn't do to have her come there.

Then the tide began to rise gently on the beach of his heart. He
thought, "She's my _mother_. And if mother wants to come here, here she
comes." And he straightened up in his chair, as he gave a gentler touch
to a blazing lump of coal. Then the tide ebbed. It began running out
again. "No, it would hardly do." And he poked and thought. Finally he
broke into her run of talk.

"Mother, you know it is not very healthful here. We have bad fogs in
London. And you're used to the wholesome country air. It wouldn't agree
with you here, I'm afraid. I'll get a little cottage on the edge of
town, and I'll come and see you very often."

And the dear old woman _sensed_ at once just what he was thinking. She
was not stupid, if she was just a plain homely body. He got his brains
from his simple country mother, as many a man of note has done. But she
spoke not of what she felt. She simply said, with that quietness which
grows out of strong self-control:

"It's a bit late the night, Laddie, I'm thinking, to be talking about
new plans."

And he said softly, "Forgive me, mother: it is late, I forgot." And he
showed her to her sleeping apartment.

"And where do you sleep, Laddie?"

"Right here, mother, this first door on the left. Be sure to call me if
you need anything."

And he bade her a tender "good-night," and went back to his study to do
some more thinking and planning. And very late he came up to his
sleeping-chamber. And he was just cuddling his head into the soft pillow
for the night, when the door opened, so softly, and in there came a
little body in simple white night garb, with a quaint old-fashioned
nightcap on, candle in hand. She came in very softly. And he started up.

"Mother, are you ill? What's the matter?"

And she came over very quietly, and put down the candle on the table
before she answered. And then softly:

"No, no, Laddie, I'm not ill. I just came to tuck you in for the night
as I used to do at home. ... Lie still, my Laddie."

And she tucked the clothes about his neck, and smoothed his hair, and
patted his cheek, and kissed his face. And she crooned over him as
mother with little child. The years were quite forgot. She had her
little son again. And she talked mother's love-talk to a child.
"Good-night, Laddie ... good-night ... good-night ... mother's own boy."
And a little more tucking and smoothing and patting and kissing, and
then she turned so quietly, picked up the candle, and went out, closing
the door so softly, her great strength revealed in her gentleness.

And he was just on the point of starting up and saying, "Mother, you
must stay with me, right here"--no, the morning will do, he thought. But
when the morning came she wasn't down for brea