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OUR NEW EDENS 
 

Gbe Presbyterian pulpit 
 
 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. R. MILLER 
 
 Author of "Week-Day Religion," "Wedded Life," 
 " Silent Times," etc., etc. 
 
 Go ye, and stand and speak in tna temple to the people ,' /, 
 all the words of this Life." 
 
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 » ' « > * > J 3 ? > » , ' > , * » 3 » > , j 1 
 
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 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 
 
 I 9 3 
 
|THt LIBRARY Or 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 Two Ct>Wc8 RfcCfcfVED 
 
 OCT ,9 1903 
 
 Copyright entry 
 CLASS ct^XXix No. 
 
 ^5 0? 
 
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 <7 $ a- w- W- 
 7 copy b. 
 
 • • • * 
 
 Copyright, 1903, by 
 J . R . MILLER. 
 
 Published October, iqo3. 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 I. Our New Edens 
 
 II. The Way to God . 
 
 III. Prayer in the Christian Life 
 
 IV. A Parable of Growth 
 
 V. The Beauty of Quietness 
 
 VI. The Name on the Forehead . 
 
 VII. The True Glory of Life 
 
 VIII. Grieving the Holy Spirit 
 
 PAGE 
 
 • 3 
 
 • 23 
 . 43 
 
 • 63 
 ■ 83 
 . 103 
 
 • 123 
 . 141 
 
 The Scripture quotations in this volume are from the American 
 Revision. 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 
 
" And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden 
 of Eden to dress it and to keep it." — Genesis ii. 15. 
 
 " We cannot go so far 
 
 That home is out of sight — 
 The morn, the evening star, 
 
 Will say, < Good day ! Good night ! ' " 
 
 — Henry Burton. 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 The first home there ever was in this world 
 was in the garden of Eden. God the Father 
 made it ready for His first children — made it 
 ready for them before they were created. I can 
 imagine with what loving thought He prepared 
 this home for them. He made it very beautiful. 
 He gathered into it all the loveliest things of all 
 the earth — trees, plants, flowers, and fruits. 
 Streams of water rippled through it and there 
 were birds and animals of all kinds in it. 
 
 The first home was a garden. Every home 
 should be a garden spot. An important part of 
 our work in this world is garden-making. We 
 ought to make our homes as beautiful as we can. 
 They may be very plain, perhaps only two or 
 three rooms, but we should put into them all the 
 lovely things we can gather. The first home in 
 this world was in Eden. We should try to make 
 
 3 
 
4 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 our homes Edens. One writes of a quiet man 
 who had given his life to a service of love : — 
 
 In the desert, where he lies entombed, 
 He made a little garden, and left there 
 Some flowers that but for him had never bloomed. 
 
 Every home should be such a garden. Whether 
 it is a luxurious place or bare of earthly comforts, 
 it should be sweet with the fragrance of love and 
 beautiful with the beauty of the Lord. 
 
 The home has always been dear to the Divfne 
 heart. When Jesus sent His disciples out to 
 preach, one of His instructions was, " Into what- 
 soever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this 
 house." On Christ's lips this is more than a 
 salutation : it is a divine benediction as well. 
 Peace means love, heaven's love, the absence of 
 all strife and bitterness. It means also the 
 absence of care and worry. The New Testament 
 tells us of the home at Bethany where Jesus 
 Himself was welcomed by the sisters. He left 
 peace there. He taught the lesson of quietness 
 and confidence. One of the sisters was disposed 
 to worry — it is not easy to be a housekeeper, to 
 have to provide for the wants of a family, and to 
 manage all the domestic affairs of a home and not 
 sometimes fret a little. Martha was anxious and 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 5 
 
 troubled about many things. But Jesus gently 
 taught her the lesson of peace, and we may be 
 quite sure she never forgot it. We never find her 
 worrying any more. 
 
 Jesus comes to the door of each home of ours 
 and says, " Peace be to this house." We should 
 let the messenger of peace come in. Nothing 
 good ever comes of fretting. We cannot get 
 clear of cares. There are troubles enough in any 
 of our lives to spoil our happiness if we yield to 
 them. But no matter what comes, what burdens 
 press, what things go wrong, what flowers fade, 
 listen to the Master's word at the door, " Peace 
 be to this house." 
 
 "He who waters meadow lilies 
 
 With the dew from out the sky; 
 He who feeds the flitting sparrows 
 
 When in need of food they cry, 
 Never fails to help His children 
 
 In all things, both great and small ; 
 For His ear is ever open 
 
 To our faintest far-off call." 
 
 How can we make new Edens of our homes ? 
 What are some of the secrets of home happiness ? 
 I might gather them all into one word and say — 
 Christ. If we have Christ as our guest, our home 
 will be happy — Christ in the joy and Christ in the 
 sorrow ; Christ in the day of plenty and Christ in 
 
6 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 the day of pinching want ; Christ in the business 
 and Christ in the social life ; Christ at the mar- 
 riage altar and Christ as the wedded pair walk 
 together toward the sunset gate. Christ makes a 
 happy home when He is admitted into all the 
 household life. 
 
 The other day a young friend who is to be a 
 bride in a little while came to have a quiet talk 
 about her new life. She has never confessed 
 Christ as her Master and Friend, and she said she 
 wanted to do it soon, adding : " We never know 
 what trouble we may have and when we may 
 need Christ. I want to take Him now into my 
 new life and into my home. ,, She is doing right, 
 but her thought of the possible need for Christ 
 reveals a mistaken conception of His mission to 
 us. Christ is not needed merely in the days of 
 trouble. Religion is not meant to be a lamp for 
 the sick room or for the days when the shutters 
 are bowed and there is crape on the door. It is 
 for the sunny days as well. Christ's first public 
 act after His baptism was His attendance at a 
 wedding-feast. He would come into all our 
 experiences of gladness as well as into our times 
 of care or trial. Our joy needs heaven in it quite 
 as much as our sorrow does. 
 
 It is more of Christ we need in our homes to 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 7 
 
 make their happiness perfect. One of Turner's 
 pictures was being exhibited in the artist's studio. 
 It was rich and beautiful. But those who were 
 present that day saw that it lacked something. 
 It seemed all mist and cloud — hazy, vague, ill- 
 defined, incomprehensible. The friends who 
 looked at the canvas were perplexed — they could 
 not understand the picture. The artist himself 
 saw the lack, and, taking his brush, added a touch 
 of red to his painting. That took away all the 
 mystery, the vagueness, the mistiness, and made 
 it intelligible. 
 
 Some of our homes seem to have in them 
 everything they need to make them perfect. 
 They are filled with beauty. They have all the 
 equipments and conveniences of modern taste 
 and skill. Music and art and refinement and the 
 best things that money can add are present. 
 Health and happiness and the gladness of social 
 life yield their portion to the comfort of these 
 homes. But something is yet wanting to make 
 the picture complete. It is Christ's " Peace be to 
 this house." It is a touch of the red of Christ's 
 cross — His love shed abroad in the home-life. 
 If Christ w r ere admitted as a guest, His coming 
 would add immeasurably to the joy and sweet- 
 ness of the home-life. 
 
8 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 But there is only one way of taking Christ into 
 our homes and getting His blessing on our home- 
 life. In olden days there would be a little chapel 
 in great castles where God was formally honored 
 on Sundays, while He was shut out of all the life 
 of other days. Not thus can we take Christ into 
 our homes. He will not come to be a secluded 
 guest, merely to lodge in loneliness in our best 
 room. He must be welcomed into all our life. 
 He must be in each heart. He must sit at our 
 tables and mingle with us in all our intercourse. 
 Christ can bless our home only through the lives 
 of those who make the home circle. 
 
 The husband has a part in making the earthly 
 home a little garden of Eden. He must be a 
 good man. He need not be rich, nor brilliant, 
 nor famous, nor clever, but he must be good. 
 He must always be a lover — even to his old age. 
 Then he must be a man — manly, brave, true, 
 generous, worthy of honor. He must be a man 
 of unblemished life. He must be a man who 
 loves his home and lives for it. The husband has 
 an important part in the home garden-making. 
 Some husbands seem not to know this ; at least 
 they fail to take their share of the burden. 
 
 The wife too has a responsibility. The word 
 " wife " is suggestive. Some lexicographers 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 9 
 
 would connect it with " weave." In olden days 
 the wife's hands wove the garments her husband 
 wore. This is not the case now, but the wife does 
 weave the garments of her husband's prosperity. 
 Most men who amount to anything worth while 
 confess that they owe it all to their wives. Jeremy 
 Taylor's tribute to a true wife is very beautiful, 
 but as true as beautiful, though it sets a high 
 ideal : " A good wife is heaven's best gift to man, 
 his angel and minister of graces innumerable, his 
 gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels." 
 
 The wife is the real home-maker. It is her 
 sweet life that gives the home its atmosphere. 
 Her hands fashion its beauty. Her heart makes 
 its love. And the end is so worthy, so noble, so 
 divine, that no woman called to be a wife should 
 consider any price too great to pay that she may 
 be the light, the joy, the blessing, the inspiration, 
 of her home. I know how some good mothers 
 sometimes feel — that it is only a dull, dreary, 
 routine life they are living. They contrast it 
 with the lives of certain women who are achiev- 
 ing distinction in other lines, winning honors, 
 doing work which the world praises, and some- 
 times they feel that their lives are humdrum and 
 insignificant in comparison. But the woman who 
 makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love, 
 
io OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 prayer, and song, is doing something better than 
 anything else her hands could find to do any- 
 where beneath the blue skies. 
 
 " * My day has all gone ' — 'twas a woman who spoke, 
 As she turned her face to the sunset glow — 
 * And I have been busy the whole day long ; 
 Yet for my work there is nothing to show.' 
 
 " No painting nor sculpture her hand had wrought ; 
 No laurel of fame her labor had won. 
 What was she doing in all the long day, 
 With nothing to show at set of sun ? ' ' 
 
 You know what she was doing — kindly things 
 all the day long, trifles, perhaps, but trifles that 
 left blessings everywhere. She had put benedic- 
 tions into her husband's heart as he went forth in 
 the morning to his work. She had brought 
 heaven down about her children's lives as she 
 prayed with them. She had left touches of beauty 
 in every part of her home as she went about her 
 task-work. She had kept sweet amid all the 
 home care and turmoil. She had found time to 
 go out to carry to a sick neighbor or to a home 
 of sorrow, comfort and cheer. 
 
 " Humbly and quietly all the long day 
 
 Had her sweet service for others been done ; 
 Yet for the labors of heart and of hand 
 What could she show at set of sun ? 
 
OUR NEW EDENS u 
 
 " Ah, she forgot that our Father in heaven 
 Ever is watching the work that we do, 
 And records He keeps of all we forget, 
 
 Then judges our work with judgment that's true; 
 
 " For an angel writes down in a volume of gold 
 The beautiful deeds that all do below. 
 Though nothing she had at set of the sun, 
 The angel above had something to show." 
 
 Children, when they come, are also important 
 factors in making the happiness of the home. 
 They bring care, and demand toil and sacrifice, 
 and cost ofttimes pain and grief; yet the blessing 
 they bring to a true home repays a thousand 
 times the care and cost. 
 
 One of the holiest secrets of home happiness is 
 a true mother. God sends many beautiful things 
 to this world, many noble gifts ; but no blessing 
 He ever gives is richer than that which He be- 
 stows in a mother who has learned love's lesson 
 well and understands something of the meaning 
 of her sacred calling. One writes : — 
 
 "God thought to give the sweetest thing 
 
 In His almighty power 
 To earth ; and deeply pondering 
 
 What it should be, one hour 
 In fondest joy and love of heart 
 
 Outweighing every other, 
 He moved the gates of heaven apart 
 
 And gave to earth a mother." 
 
12 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 A father also has his share in the making of 
 the Eden home. It is not fair to put all the 
 responsibility for the home-life on the mother. 
 Fathers cannot evade their duty in this regard 
 without lack of faithfulness and also of chivalrous 
 conduct. God will call them to answer for their 
 part of the responsibility. Then it is not manly 
 for a man to try to roll the whole burden on her 
 whom he sometimes twits with being the " weaker 
 vessel.'' If the wife is we^k and he is so strong, 
 then — noblesse oblige. Let him bear the strong 
 man's part of the load. No doubt there are parts 
 of the home duty which a mother can do far 
 better than a father. Men's hands are awkward 
 and clumsy, and a woman's hands are gentle and 
 deft in love's arts. But let no man cherish the 
 notion that he has nothing to do in this home 
 garden-making. His strong life should be the 
 secure shelter beneath which his wife and chil- 
 dren may safely abide. His character and dispo- 
 sition should be a continual revealing of the love 
 and holiness of God. 
 
 Brothers and sisters also have their part in 
 making the home happiness. Sometimes they 
 forget this. Some young people do not add to 
 the joy and the sweetness of the home in which 
 they have been brought up as they might do. 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 13 
 
 They do not give to their parents the comfort and 
 cheer they might give. They do not remember 
 and practice the fifth commandment. Then they 
 do not live together sweetly as they might do, 
 adding to the music of the home. Children carry 
 in their hands the happiness of their parents. We 
 talk of the responsibility of parenthood — did you 
 ever think of the responsibility of children for 
 their parents ? In this home garden-making every 
 child has a share. 
 
 The artist was painting a picture of a dead 
 mother, and was using a photograph as his copy. 
 But to make the face look fresher and younger, 
 he was leaving out the lines and marks of age 
 and care on the face. " No, no," said the son. 
 " Don't take out the lines. Leave them, every 
 one. It wouldn't be my mother if all the lines 
 were gone." Then he told the story of her devo- 
 tion to her children through their infancy and 
 through times of sickness. The lines which 
 seemed to disfigure the face were love's records, 
 telling of sacrifice and suffering. We should 
 never forget what we owe to our mothers. 
 
 Then may I say a special word about children's 
 thought for their fathers ? Mothers are idealized 
 much oftener and with more just recognition and 
 praise than fathers. More children pay honor 
 
14 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 and love and attention to mothers than to fathers. 
 Of course, mothers do more for children than 
 fathers do — suffer more, are gentler and sweeter, 
 give more thought and time and strength to them, 
 and deserve more in return. We are not in danger 
 of ever overdoing our gratitude to our mothers or 
 of showing them too much kindness. But fathers 
 also hunger for love from their children. Max 
 O'Rell has a strong word somewhere about the 
 beauty of a daughter's attention and devotion to 
 her father, saying also that such love and appre- 
 ciation are rare. Love your mother and give her 
 high honor, but do not forget that you can give 
 your father great joy by being kind to him. He 
 loves you too and has lived for you all the years. 
 He needs your affection and will be cheered by 
 your thoughtfulness and attention. 
 
 I want to say some earnest words about the 
 home-life we must live if we are to make our 
 homes little gardens of Eden. As in everything, 
 love is the great master secret of home happiness. 
 When love is left out, the peace is broken. We 
 must remember too that love needs expression. 
 There are men who love their wives and would 
 die for them, but who are not always gentle and 
 kind to them. There are wives who love their 
 husbands, but say little about it and do not take 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 15 
 
 pains to show it. There is need for love that is 
 affectionate, thoughtful, fond in its expression. 
 Bring your flowers while they will do good and 
 do not keep them for the day of the funeral. 
 
 "You placed this flower in her hand, you say, 
 This pure, pale rose in her hand of clay ? 
 Methinks, could she lift her sealed eyes, 
 
 They would meet your own with grieved surprise. 
 
 ****** 
 When did you give her a flower before ? 
 Ah, well, what matter, when life is o'er? 
 
 ****** 
 
 But I pray you think 
 That love will starve if it is not fed — 
 That true hearts pray for their daily bread. " 
 
 Parents cannot think too seriously of what they 
 should try to make their homes for the sake of 
 their children. They are given to us in tender 
 infancy to be brought up by us for worthy, beau- 
 tiful lives. It is our duty to teach them and train 
 them so that they shall be ready by and by for 
 the positions in life they may be called to fill. 
 The place of the home-life among the educational 
 influences which help to mold and shape 
 character is supreme in its importance. It is not 
 enough to have a good house to live in. It is not 
 enough to have fine carpets, and handsome furni- 
 ture and pictures, and bric-a-brac, and musical 
 
1 6 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 instruments, and to live off the best products of 
 the fields and of the gardens. Most of the world's 
 worthiest men and women, those who have 
 blessed the world the most, were brought up in 
 plain homes, without luxury. It is the tone of 
 the home-life that is important. We should make 
 it pure, elevating, refining, inspiring. The books 
 we bring in, the papers and magazines, the guests 
 we have at our tables and admit to our firesides, 
 the home conversation, the pictures we hang on 
 our walls — all these are educative. 
 
 Then the religious influences are vitally im- 
 portant. In that first garden home the Lord 
 came and went as a familiar friend. Christ must 
 be our guest if our home is to be a fit place either 
 for our children or for ourselves. If no window 
 opens into heaven, it is not a true home. If there 
 is no prayer in it, it is not a home at all — it is 
 only a heathen or atheistic lodging-place. 
 
 A good man tells of going back to the home 
 of his childhood and of being put to sleep in the 
 spare room. Opening a closet, he saw an old 
 stool there, faded and worn, and noticed espe- 
 cially two deep dents in the cushion. Evidently 
 they were dents made by a pair of knees. He 
 understood at a glance. It was on that stool 
 his mother had knelt daily through years as she 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 17 
 
 prayed for her children, and prayed them one by 
 one into the kingdom. There should be such a 
 stool or spot in every home, where mothers and 
 fathers bow morning and night to plead for their 
 children. 
 
 They say that family worship is falling into dis- 
 use — going out of fashion. It is a great loss to 
 the world if this is true. There is a story of one 
 man whom his wife urged to begin family pray- 
 ers. It was hard the first time. A Bible chapter 
 had been read and the two were on their knees, 
 but there was silence — the prayer did not begin. 
 The wife at length cried out, " O God, give John 
 a lift." The lift was given and the sealed lips 
 were opened. It may not be easy to start family 
 prayers, but if we try, God will give us a lift, and 
 then great joy and good will follow. 
 
 There are godly mothers who every day kneel 
 by their children's sides and pray with them, and 
 there is great power in a mother's prayer. One 
 writes : — 
 
 "When mother prayed, then all the air 
 Grew tremulous with music rare ; 
 Love's earnest pleading for its own 
 Was wafted heavenward to the throne. 
 
 * God bless my children ' — thus the prayer : 
 
1 8 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 " * Keep them unspotted everywhere 
 O Father God ! ' In softest tone 
 Echoed the whisper upward blown 
 When mother prayed. 
 
 " O dread the day when mother's prayer 
 Breathes out no more her heart's fond care ; 
 For blessings rich from heavenly zone 
 Came angel -like from heights far flown, 
 When mother prayed." 
 
 We talk about the dangers of the street for our 
 children, and God alone knows how real and how 
 great the dangers are. What is the best way to 
 save them from these perils ? We must do it in 
 the home. There is a tendency to roll the 
 responsibility for the religious care and protection 
 of children over on the church. But we cannot 
 evade our personal duty in this way. Parents are 
 the first custodians of their children's lives. If 
 they would meet their responsibility and be able 
 to look God and their children in the face at the 
 judgment, they must make their homes as nearly 
 gardens of Eden as possible. The way to save 
 the boys from the temptations of the streets is to 
 make home so bright, so sweet, so beautiful, so 
 happy, so full of love, joy, and prayer, that the 
 streets will have no attractiveness for them, no 
 power to win them away. " Overcome evil with 
 good." 
 
OUR NEW EDENS 19 
 
 " Come, let us live with our children," is the 
 call of the new education. The parents who are 
 ready to do this will not be sorry for it by and 
 by. No other work we can do will yield larger 
 returns. But there are some who do not care to 
 devote themselves in this way to the teaching 
 and training of their children. "It is too much 
 trouble," they say. It is pathetic to think of how 
 many children there are who are always in the 
 way, whose noise always jars home nerves, who 
 never get much love at home. 
 
 Let us live with our children. Let us take 
 them into our lives. Let us enter into their lives. 
 The best thing a father can do for his boy is to 
 be a boy again himself with him. The best thing 
 a mother can do for her daughter is to be a girl 
 again herself with her. There is no revival 
 needed to-day quite so imperatively as a revival 
 of sweet, beautiful homes that shall clutch the 
 lives of the boys and girls in them with a clutch 
 of love from which no power of temptation or of 
 evil can ever tear them away. 
 
 I call upon all parents who care to heed my 
 pleading to begin to-day to make their homes 
 more winning, more attractive, more happy, 
 sweeter, heavenlier. Religion ? Yes, but not 
 religion made somber or distasteful, so that your 
 
20 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 children will not be influenced by it. Make your 
 religion sunny, cheerful, full of sympathy with 
 child-life, glad, songful — a religion for boys and 
 girls. There is no reason why religion in a home 
 should not be winsome, just as the life of Christ 
 was. Bring heaven down into your homes. Try 
 to make such a home-life as must have been in 
 Joseph's home at Nazareth when Jesus was a 
 boy there. God has planted a new garden of 
 Eden for you to dress and keep. Tend it well. 
 
 There is an Eastern legend of a rose so sweet 
 that "even the earth which lies round its roots 
 becomes permeated with fragrance, and little bits 
 of it are sold as amulets and worn by princes." 
 Make your home so sweet, so heavenly, with love 
 and prayer and song and holy living, that all 
 about it there shall be the fragrance of the heart 
 of Christ. 
 
 Thus let us make our homes little Eden gar- 
 dens, in which something of the beauty, the 
 sweetness, and the joy of heaven shall be repro- 
 duced on earth, to make the world believe in the 
 home above in the Father's house, waiting for all 
 the Master's friends. 
 
II 
 
 THE WAY TO GOD 
 
" I am the way." — John xiv. 6. 
 
 "O patient Love, that weariest not of me — 
 Alone of all, Thou weariest not of me — 
 Oh, bear with me till I am lost in Thee ; 
 Oh, bear with me till I am found in Thee. 
 
 " Speak to me out of the silences, Lord, 
 That my spirit may know, 
 As forward I go, 
 That Thy pierced hands are lifting me over the ford." 
 — Lauchlan Maclean Watt. 
 
II 
 
 THE WAY TO GOD 
 
 Jesus says He is the way to God. It is the 
 figure of a road that is in His mind. He had 
 spoken of going away to prepare a place for His 
 disciples, adding that He would come again to 
 receive them to Himself, that where He is they 
 may be also. He then said further, " Whither I 
 go, ye know the way." Thomas, whose faith was 
 always slow, said, " Lord, we know not whither 
 Thou goest ; how know we the way? " Jesus an- 
 swered, " I am the way." The meaning of His 
 reply was that it is not necessary to know every- 
 thing or even anything about the details of the 
 way. If we know Christ, if we are His, if we are 
 following Him, that is enough ; we will then find 
 the way. To be with Him is to be in the way, for 
 He Himself is the way. 
 
 It is very important that we should know the 
 way to heaven. No one knows where heaven is. 
 There have been guesses and speculations. A 
 certain star is heaven, some have said to us. This 
 
 23 
 
24 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 great universe, with its millions of worlds and sys- 
 tems of worlds, astronomers tell us, is revolving 
 round one center, one star in a certain constella- 
 tion. That central star, they suggest, may be the 
 place of the great white throne, the Father's 
 house to which Jesus said He was going, whither 
 He told His disciples they also should come when 
 their work on earth was finished. 
 
 But no one knows surely where heaven is, and 
 no one knows the way there. You can find 
 guides to show you the way through the cata- 
 combs, or among the Alps, or amid the build- 
 ings and ruins of ancient Rome, or across some 
 deep, impenetrable forest. But when you come 
 to die, and your spirit leaves your body, who will 
 show you the way home to the Father's house ? 
 And you never can get there alone without guid- 
 ance. There are no maps or charts of the way. 
 
 The question of Thomas seems proper enough : 
 " How can we know the way ? " The answer of 
 Jesus is full of comfort : " I am the way." We 
 need not trouble ourselves with geographical 
 or astronomical questions, nor try to find a chart 
 of the road to heaven. If we are Christ's, no 
 matter where we die, we shall find ourselves in 
 the hands of our Saviour, and with Him will be 
 in heaven. 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 25 
 
 There is another need still more important than 
 finding the way to heaven. We need to find the 
 way to God. We never can get to heaven unless 
 we have first got to God. Here, too, Jesus is the 
 way. He said, " I am the way," and then He 
 added, " No one cometh unto the Father, but by 
 Me." To get to God is life's first and greatest 
 need. Sin is absence from God. In a certain 
 sense we never can get away from God. 
 
 " Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? 
 Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? " 
 
 Wherever we turn God is. But in a moral and 
 spiritual sense, only those who have repented and 
 returned to God are near Him. In our sinful 
 state we are in the " far country." We must get 
 to God or we shall perish. The cry of the world 
 in all ages has been, " Show us the Father." This 
 is the interpretation of all heathen worship. Men 
 everywhere have been groping in the darkness, 
 trying to find God. Now Jesus says, " I am the 
 way to the Father." 
 
 He does not say, " I will show you the way." 
 He does that too. He came to guide us in the 
 way. He passed over this world, from the cradle 
 to the gates of glory, and left His footprints 
 wherever He went. In the early days of our 
 
26 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 country, when a pioneer went through a primeval 
 forest, his the first feet to find their way, he would 
 blaze his path with his ax on the trees, and then 
 others coming after him could easily find the way. 
 Jesus, in going through life, marked His way, and 
 all who come after Him may see where He 
 walked and follow Him. He never went on any 
 wrong path. He never was misled. He marked 
 out for us the way to God. 
 
 But that is not what He says here. He says : 
 " I am the way. I Myself am the way." The 
 figure is very suggestive. Often the words of 
 Christ invite us to Him as if we had to go a dis- 
 tance, longer or shorter, to get to Him. He says, 
 " Come unto Me." We see Him yonder, and He 
 is wondrously gracious. But we must go on 
 over the road that intervenes to reach Him. 
 When we get there, we know He will receive us, 
 welcome us, and bless us. But suppose we never 
 get to Him ? Suppose we faint and fall by the 
 way ? Yet now we learn that Christ is more than 
 goal, that He does not fix a point at which He 
 will meet us, that there is no long or even short 
 space to cross over to get to His feet. He is the 
 way as well as the goal. We have not even one 
 step to take before we come to Him. 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 27 
 
 " Thou art the way. 
 Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal, 
 
 I cannot say 
 If thou hadst ever met my soul. 
 
 " I cannot see — 
 I, child of process — if there lies 
 
 An end for me, 
 Full of repose, full of replies. 
 
 "I'll not reproach 
 The way that goes, my feet that stir. 
 
 Access, approach 
 Art Thou, time, way, and wayfarer. " 
 
 A beautiful story is told of Agassiz. When he 
 was a boy his family lived on the edge of a lake 
 in Switzerland. One day the father was on the 
 other side of the lake, and Louis and a younger 
 brother set out on the ice to join him. The 
 mother watched the boys from her window. 
 They got along well till they came to a wide 
 crack in the ice. The taller boy leaped over 
 easily, but the other hesitated. " The little fellow 
 will fall in," the mother said, " and drown." But 
 as she watched a moment she saw Louis, the 
 older boy, get down on the ice, laying himself 
 across the crack, his hands on one side and his 
 feet on the other, making a bridge of his body. 
 Then she saw the little fellow climb over him in 
 
28 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 safety to the other side, and both the boys run on 
 to find their father. This illustrates what Jesus 
 Christ did for us. There was a great chasm which 
 sin had made between us and God. We could 
 not cross that chasm ourselves. Our goodness 
 never could reach to the Divine requirements. 
 The holiest of us could never get to heaven by 
 any obedience of our own. Then Jesus came 
 and laid Himself down in love across the chasm, 
 making of His own blessed life a bridge on which 
 whosoever will may pass over into the presence 
 and the joy of the Father. " I am the way." 
 
 There are two other words here which help us 
 to understand the meaning of this figure. Jesus 
 said, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life/' 
 
 " I am the truth." He does not say that He 
 speaks the truth, reveals it. He did this. He 
 was the most wonderful teacher the world ever 
 heard. No man ever spoke as He did. His 
 words are like stars shining in the world's dark- 
 ness. We cannot begin to understand what the 
 world owes to the teachings of Jesus. The great 
 truths which mean so much, the truths about 
 God's love, mercy, and goodness, seem so familiar 
 to us that they are almost commonplace. Yet it 
 was Jesus who first made known to the world 
 these truths. Two thousand years ago nobody 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 29 
 
 knew them. The earth lay in moral darkness 
 then. Jesus was a great teacher of truth. 
 
 But He does not say He is a revealer of the 
 truth. " I am the truth " is the tremendous 
 assertion. The truth was not merely spoken by 
 His lips ; it was embodied in His person and in 
 His life. He is the truth. This is more, too, 
 than if He had said, " I am true." He was true — 
 there was nothing false in Him, nothing insincere. 
 He never professed to be what He was not. He 
 never put forth claims which He did not fulfill. 
 He never made promises which He did not keep. 
 Not one word He ever spoke has failed or will 
 fail. Many good people are not so good as they 
 profess to be, but Jesus was absolutely true. We 
 may build our hopes for eternity on any one of 
 His sayings. 
 
 But there is more than this in what He says 
 here. He is a revealer of the truth. He is true. 
 But He says, " I am the truth." God Himself is 
 the great central fountain of all truth. All truth 
 flows from Him. Christ was the incarnation of 
 God — God manifest, made known, in the flesh. 
 " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," he 
 said. All that God is was revealed, was made 
 known, in Jesus Christ. " I am the truth." 
 
 He said further, " I am the life." Again notice 
 
30 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 that He does not say : " I will show you the 
 life. I will tell you how to find life.'' You and 
 I, if living truly, may show others how to find 
 life. We can lead them to the fountain of life. 
 That is what every sincere preacher of the gospel 
 is doing continually. That is what every faithful 
 teacher is doing. That is what every saintly dis- 
 ciple does. But no preacher, no teacher, no 
 holiest saint, can say to any other, " I am the 
 life." We have no life to give to others. We 
 cannot spare any of the oil out of our vessel to 
 give for any other one's lamp. We cannot im- 
 part any portion of our little measure of grace to 
 any dearest friend who needs. Only Christ can 
 say, " I am the life." He does not merely tell us 
 that there is life — He says, " Come unto Me and 
 ye shall have life." The life is in Himself — all 
 life's fullness — and if we believe in Him we are 
 brought into union with Him, and because He 
 lives, we live too. 
 
 Now because Christ is the truth and the life, 
 He also is the way — that is, the way to heaven 
 and the way to God. But how is He the way ? 
 In what manner did Jesus by His life or by His 
 death become a way, or make His life a way to 
 God? 
 
 He did it in his incarnation. He was the Son 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 31 
 
 of God — He became Son of man ; thus His won- 
 derful being bridged the enormous chasm between 
 earth and heaven, between the " far country " and 
 the Father's house. In His humiliation He 
 reaches down to the lowest depth of human sin 
 and need, and in His Divine life He reaches up to 
 the heart of the Father. Thus He is the way 
 from the abysses of sin to the supremest reaches 
 of glory, and on Him whosoever will may go up 
 out of the dust into blessedness. 
 
 Christ is the way to God, also, because He 
 revealed God, brought God down into our com- 
 mon life. It was this that made the incarnation 
 so wonderful. Jesus said, " He that hath seen 
 Me hath seen the Father." Philip and the other 
 disciples had been with their Master all the time 
 for three years, knowing Him intimately and see- 
 ing His life in its familiar revealings. They loved 
 Him, but they did not dream that what they saw 
 in Him was what their hearts were crying out to 
 see — the beauty and glory of the Father. Philip 
 was thinking of some dazzling splendor, some 
 radiance like a transfiguration, when he pleaded, 
 " Show us the Father." Instead of this, however, 
 he had been seeing the Father all the time in the 
 sweet, patient, pure, gentle, thoughtful, lowly life 
 of Jesus. We are all apt to make Philip's mis- 
 
32 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 take, looking up to the skies for the glory that is 
 shining close to our feet. 
 
 In one of his poems Lowell tells the story 
 of an ancient prophet who made a pilgrimage 
 into the wilderness until he reached Mount Sinai. 
 God's presence had deserted him ; and he thought 
 that at Sinai, if anywhere, he should find it again. 
 As he engaged in prayer on the holy mount, 
 expecting some strange and startling answer to 
 his prayers, the moss at his feet unfolded and a 
 violet showed itself through the moss. That was 
 the answer. Then he remembered that just before 
 he left home his little daughter had come running 
 to him, offering him a bouquet of these very 
 violets. They grew at his own door; he saw 
 them every day. He had traveled all that dis- 
 tance for a message that had been whispering 
 itself to him all the time. 
 
 Many people miss the richest revealings of 
 God's love because they expect the good they 
 seek to come in some startling or unusual way. 
 We do not have to go up to heaven to find God ; 
 He has come down close beside us. We do not 
 need to ask for theophanies and transfigurations 
 — God comes to us in the breaking of bread, in 
 the love of our friends, in the sweet amenities of 
 our homes, in the simplicity of a little child. 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 33 
 
 Even yet people read the gospels and wonder 
 if God loves them, if God sympathizes with them 
 in their sorrows, if God cares when they have 
 troubles, if God hears and answers their prayers, 
 if God is really gentle, patient, kind, easily 
 approached, if God is indeed merciful, gracious, 
 and long-suffering. Even yet men cry out, " O 
 that I knew where I might find God ! " Even yet 
 disciples plead, " Show us the Father.'* Here is 
 a little story of a child and its mother, which 
 illustrates the slowness of the world to see God 
 in Christ. 
 
 i( A mother drew her darling to her breast, 
 And of her father in a far-off land 
 She strove to make the child-heart understand, 
 
 While, with a kiss of twofold love expressed, 
 
 Intent to make his fondness manifest, 
 
 She said, 'Thy father sends his love to thee.' 
 The child looked up, as fain the gift to see, 
 
 And from rose-lips, ' Where is it ? ' came the quest. 
 
 " ' Where is it ? ' Foolish child to question thus, 
 When all around and in her mother's eyes 
 It shone, and in its fullness she could bask. 
 Love needs no token. But are we more wise ? 
 Our heavenly Father sends His love to us. 
 * Where is it ? ' in our ignorance we ask." 
 
 Yes, we are like the child. Christ says to us, 
 " Your Father sends His love to you." We look 
 3 
 
34 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 up and round about us, and ask, " Where is it ? 
 where is God's love ? " Yet all the while we 
 have our New Testament in our hands, with its 
 blessed story of the love, the compassion, the 
 gentleness, the purity, the kindness, the wondrous 
 self-sacrifice of Jesus. We do not think that in 
 seeing Him we are seeing the Father, that the 
 lovely things we behold in Him are really reveal- 
 ings of God. In Christ God indeed came down 
 and lived among men to convince them of His 
 love for them, to make them know that He is 
 their Father, to show them His grace and truth. 
 As a revealer, Christ is the way to the Father. 
 
 He is the way also as the Redeemer. God 
 does not love the world because Christ died for 
 it — it is the other way ; Christ died for the world 
 because God loved it. But the Scriptures teach 
 very plainly that it was necessary for the Son of 
 God to die to make the way to life and hope and 
 heaven, v Somehow the cross opened the way for 
 men to come to God. There was a veil in the 
 temple which hid the holy of holies, the place of 
 God's presence. No one but the priest could 
 pass behind the veil. That meant separation from 
 God because of sin. When Christ was dying, that 
 veil was torn in two as by an invisible hand. This 
 meant that now the way was opened to God for 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 35 
 
 everyone who would come. Thus Christ became 
 the way to God through His death. 
 
 There is another word here. " I am the way 
 . . . no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me." 
 Not only is He the way to God, but there is no 
 other way. To reject Christ is therefore to reject 
 life and to close on one's self the only way to 
 God. The mercy of God is wide as the sea. 
 " Whosoever will may come. Him that cometh 
 unto Me I will in no wise cast out." But there is 
 only one way to come. Christ is the way to God. 
 You need not vex yourself about theological 
 questions. You need not be disturbed about the 
 articles of the creed which you cannot under- 
 stand. Christ is the way to God. To love Christ 
 is to love God. To have Christ for your friend is 
 to have God for your friend. To rest in Christ is 
 to be in the clasp of the everlasting arms. 
 
 Thus Christ is the way to peace, the peace of 
 God. He is the way to happiness. He is the 
 way to blessing and to all that is good. Christ 
 is all that we need. The trouble with many of us 
 is that we think we can find the satisfying of our 
 wants and hungers in places or things or circum- 
 stances. 
 
 "O heart, thou need'st not fly away 
 To find thy rest. 
 
36 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Peace seeks for thee, if thou wilt stay 
 
 And just be blessed. 
 Fold up thy wings, and sit at Jesus' feet ; 
 There wilt thou find thy heaven — a rest complete.' ' 
 
 For a practical thought, set together the ques- 
 tion of Thomas and the answer of Jesus. " How 
 can we know the way ? " "I am the way." We 
 are all the while asking Thomas's question. We 
 come to points every day where we are bewil- 
 dered, and know not where to go or what to do. 
 We see no path before us. Sometimes it is a 
 question of duty. Sometimes it is a choice that 
 must be made between two courses. And we see 
 no escape from it, no hope of relief or help, no 
 way out of it. 
 
 Or it may concern life in a larger sense. What 
 am I ? Why am I here ? What is there beyond 
 the bourn of death ? What is God ? Where is 
 He ? Where am I going ? How can I find Him ? 
 What and where is heaven ? How can I get 
 there? Everyone who thinks at all asks such 
 questions at some time. " How can we know the 
 way ? " 
 
 To all such questions Jesus answers, " I am the 
 way." He is the way through all perplexities. 
 He is the way out of all trouble into comfort, 
 peace, joy. He is the way through all danger 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 37 
 
 into safety. He is the way out of doubt into 
 faith. He is the way from sin to holiness. He is 
 the way from death to life. He is the way from 
 earth to heaven. 
 
 Elsewhere He says, " I am the door." A door 
 is for entrance. We pass in through the door to 
 the beauty, the comfort, the joy, the love, within. 
 Christ is the door to everything that is worthy 
 and good and blessed and eternal. There is only 
 one door ; if we will not enter at it, we must stay 
 out in the darkness and sorrow. 
 
 One of Christ's great sayings is this : " I am 
 the light of the world : he that followeth Me 
 shall not walk in the darkness. " We may not 
 know where we are going. We may not under- 
 stand the things we are experiencing. We may 
 be in sorrow. Loss may be stripping us bare. 
 We may seem to be in a calamity. But if we are 
 walking close to Christ, we are not in darkness. 
 All is plain to Him, and that is enough. 
 
 "I know not — the way is so misty — 
 The joys or the griefs it shall bring, 
 What clouds are o'erhanging the future, 
 
 What flowers by the roadside shall spring ; 
 But there's One who will journey beside me, 
 
 Nor in weal, nor in woe, will forsake ; 
 And this is my solace and comfort — 
 1 He knoweth the way that I take. ' " 
 
38 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 " How can we know the way ? " "I am the 
 way." No one can ever be lost with Christ. No 
 one can ever get out of the way with Him. The 
 greatest and saddest of all trials is to be in some 
 trouble and to be alone, to have no one with us. 
 Without Christ what can any one do in the dark- 
 ness, or in the storm, or in the floods ? How 
 could any one find the way home through this 
 world's gloom and peril without Christ ? Having 
 Christ we do not need to have to understand 
 things. He understands — and that is enough. 
 
 A saintly woman suffering for weary months in 
 painful illness said to her pastor one day, shortly 
 before she went to heaven : " I have such a lovely 
 robin that sings outside my window. In the early 
 morning, as I lie here, he serenades me." Then, 
 as a smile brightened her thin features, she added, 
 " I love him because he sings in the rain." That 
 is the most beautiful thing about the robin. When 
 the storm has silenced almost every other song 
 bird, the robin sings on — sings in the rain. That 
 is the way the Christian who is with Christ may 
 do. Anybody can sing in the sunshine ; you and 
 I should sing on when the sun has gone down, or 
 when clouds pour out their rains, for Christ is 
 with us. We should sing in the rain. 
 
 Why should we be afraid, though we cannot 
 
THE WAY TO GOD 39 
 
 see the path, though all seems inextricable con- 
 fusion about us, though circumstances appear to 
 be against us ? Christ is the way and we never 
 can be harmed and never can get lost while He is 
 with us. To all our questions and fears He an- 
 swers, " I am the way," and that is enough. 
 
 "I know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
 But we must remember that there is no other 
 way to God, to the Father's house, no other way 
 home, no other who can be to us the way in life's 
 darkness and danger. " I am the way .... no 
 one cometh unto the Father, but by Me." 
 
 Some of us scarcely know where we are or 
 whither we are going. We are not sure of our 
 ground — whether we are going forward or grop- 
 ing backward. Perhaps we are not sure of our 
 beliefs — we are troubled about some of the doc- 
 trines. Perhaps we are not sure we are saved. 
 We are like men lost in a deep, trackless forest, 
 not knowing the way out. 
 
 Suppose you found yourself thus lost some 
 day, wandering helplessly, hopelessly, and a man 
 came to you who knew all the tangle of the forest, 
 
40 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 offering to be your guide, to lead you through 
 into the broad, open plain — and to your home; 
 what would you do ? To-day, when you are in 
 doubt and fear and perplexity, sure of nothing, in 
 peril of being lost, not knowing what to do or 
 where to turn, One comes to you, One who knows 
 all the way, One who knows all about life because 
 He has lived it all, and He offers to lead you 
 through all the bewildering tangles, out of all the 
 doubt and fears, out of the gloom and the danger 
 — to God, to the Fathers house — home. What 
 should you do ? What will you do ? 
 
 "Thank God, thank God, the Man is found — 
 Sure-footed, knowing well the ground. 
 He knows the road, for this the way 
 He traveled once, as on this day. 
 He is our messenger beside ; 
 He is our door and path and guide.' ' 
 
Ill 
 
 PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
" Pray without ceasing." — I. Thes. v. 17. 
 
 1 No help but prayer, 
 A breath that fleets beyond this vain world 
 And touches Him that made it." 
 
 Rather, as friends sit sometimes hand in hand, 
 
 Nor mar with words the sweet speech of their eyes ; 
 
 So in soft silence let us oftener bow, 
 
 Nor try with words to make God understand. 
 
 Longing is prayer ; upon its wings we rise 
 
 To where the breath of heaven beats upon our brow." 
 
 
Ill 
 
 PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 What place should prayer have in a Christian 
 life ? Should we pray little or much ? Should 
 we confine our praying to certain days — Sundays, 
 for example; or to certain hours or moments of 
 our days — mornings, for example, then evenings ? 
 Should we pray concerning certain things, certain 
 affairs, portions only of our life? Are there 
 things we have no permission to take to God in 
 prayer? Should we pray only in certain places 
 — in our accustomed closet or room at home, or 
 in places set apart for divine worship ? Is there 
 any place where we may not pray ? 
 
 There is a word of Saint Paul's which seems to 
 answer all these questions. " Pray without ceas- 
 ing." That means, pray always and everywhere. 
 There is nothing we may not take to God in 
 prayer, asking Him to help us do it. There is no 
 hour of the day when we may not turn to God 
 and find Him ready to hear and bless us. The 
 gates of prayer are never shut by day or by night. 
 
 43 
 
44 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 There is no place where we may not pray. God 
 is as accessible to us on the street, in the desert, 
 in the midst of a great storm at sea, or in the most 
 debased spot of the earth as He is in our own 
 sacred closet of prayer, in a consecrated building, 
 or at the Lord's table. " Pray without ceasing." 
 
 But how is it possible to obey this teaching ? 
 Are we to spend all our time on our knees ? 
 This certainly is not the meaning. We have our 
 duties, our tasks, our work to do. Suppose that 
 men should spend all their days at home, praying, 
 for a month, for a year, what would become of 
 their business ? What would their families do ? 
 Suppose that women should give up all their 
 duties — their household duties, their social duties, 
 all the work that now fills their hands — and 
 literally pray without ceasing the remainder of 
 their days, would they please God ? 
 
 Evidently we are not to interpret the lesson 
 that way. We are put here to work. " Six days 
 shalt thou labor." Our duties fill our hands 
 every hour. We sin against God when we 
 neglect any of these. I can conceive even of a 
 kind of praying that would be sinful — praying 
 when some imperative task demands attention, 
 when some one needs help, neglecting a duty of 
 love, that you may attend some religious service 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 45 
 
 or keep some appointment for devotion. It is 
 told in monastic legends of Saint Francesca that 
 although she never wearied in her religious duties, 
 yet if during her prayers she was summoned 
 away by any domestic service, she would close 
 her book cheerfully, saying that a wife and 
 mother, when called upon, must quit her God at 
 the altar to find Him in the duties and tasks of 
 her home. There are times when prayer is not 
 the duty of the hour. What, then, are we to 
 understand by the counsel, " Pray without ceas- 
 ing " ? 
 
 For one thing, prayer is part of the expression 
 of the Christian's very life. One who does not 
 pray is not a Christian, is not a religious man. 
 He may be a moral man. A gentleman said the 
 other day of a certain prominent business man, 
 " He is the most moral and the least religious 
 man I ever knew." He meant that the man is 
 honest, honorable, just, generous, charitable, very 
 careful and exact in all his relations to men, but 
 that toward God he is utterly indifferent, never 
 thinks of Him, never recognizes Him in any way, 
 never prays. So far as he is concerned, there is 
 no God. This man would not himself admit as 
 much. He would say he believes in God. But 
 practically he is an agnostic or an atheist. He is 
 
46 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 utterly without religion, which means knowing 
 God, recognizing God as Father and Friend, 
 living in personal relations with God. 
 
 When the Lord would make Ananias under- 
 stand that Saul was now a Christian, he said, 
 " Behold he prayeth." When a man begins really 
 to pray there is no doubt of his conversion. Saul 
 prayed a great deal before he accepted Christ. 
 He was a rigid Pharisee and was very religious, 
 so far as forms of religion were concerned. But 
 he had never prayed before as he prayed that day 
 after he had seen Christ. The Christian should 
 know God intimately. One writes, " I talk to 
 God as to a companion, in prayer and praise, and 
 our communion is joy." That is religion, and 
 prayer is the heart of it. It is not a matter of 
 times and places. Wherever we go we are with 
 God. Whatever we are doing, our hearts are 
 going out to Him. 
 
 " Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 
 The Christian's native air." 
 
 God is our Father and we are His children. 
 We can easily think of the child of a good, noble, 
 and loving father, who is entirely out of relations 
 with that father. One was telling of a young 
 man who has not spoken to his father for five 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 47 
 
 years. He is estranged from him. The father is 
 a most worthy man — the fault is not his. He has 
 a heart of love — he loves his estranged son and 
 longs to give him back his place of confidence 
 and honor. But all these years the son has lived 
 as if he had no father in the world. 
 
 God is our Father, with infinite love in His 
 heart for us, ready and eager to help us and bless 
 us in every way. We can cut ourselves off from 
 Him if we will. Religion, faith, is putting our- 
 selves in the children's place toward God. We 
 do not then pray to make God willing to give 
 good things to us— He is always willing to give. 
 The Master said : - If ye then, being evil, know 
 how to give good gifts unto your children, how 
 much more shall your Father who is in heaven 
 give good things to them that ask Him?" Prayer 
 then is going to God, believing in His love for 
 us, knowing that He wants to help us, and asking 
 Him as children ask their parents for the things 
 we need. 
 
 The true child has always the child's place in 
 the home. He is not granted the privileges of a 
 child only on certain days or at certain hours. 
 To pray without ceasing is to be always in happy 
 relations of love with our Father. One tells this 
 pleasant incident : — 
 
48 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 (l My little girl to-night with childish glee, 
 
 Although her months have numbered not two score, 
 
 Escaped her nurse, and at my study door, 
 
 With tiny fingers rapping, spoke to me. 
 
 Though faint her words, I heard them tremblingly 
 
 Fall from her lips, as if the darkness bore 
 
 Its weight upon her. ' Father's child ! ' No more 
 
 I waited for, but straightway willingly 
 
 I brought the sweet intruder into light, 
 
 With happy laughter.' ' 
 
 If we always keep ourselves in the relation of 
 children to God — loving, obedient, trustful, sub- 
 missive to His will — w r e shall really pray without 
 ceasing. Every act will then be a prayer. Every 
 word will be a song of praise. All we do will 
 then be reverent worship. 
 
 Again, to pray without ceasing is to do every- 
 thing with prayer. This does not mean that 
 every piece of work we undertake must be begun 
 with a formal act of prayer — stopping, kneeling 
 down, and offering a spoken petition. To pray 
 without ceasing is to have the heart always in 
 converse with God. It is to live so near to God 
 that we can talk with Him wherever we go, ask 
 Him questions and get His answers, seek His 
 help, His wisdom, His guidance, and obtain what 
 we ask. 
 
 There is no habit that we should more sedu- 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 49 
 
 lously form than that of talking with God about 
 everything we do. We are often told that we 
 should begin every day with prayer. That is 
 very fit and beautiful. The first face our eyes see 
 in the morning should be Christ's. His too 
 should be the first voice we hear, and to Him our 
 first words should be spoken. Henry Drum- 
 mond tells us that ten minutes in the morning, 
 yes, two minutes, spent really with Christ, will 
 change all our day for us. A day without prayer 
 is a day of darkness and sadness. 
 
 It is often said that we should count that day 
 lost in which no kindness is done, no deed of love 
 to any one, no help given. But sadder far is a 
 day without prayer. It is a day without God, 
 without heaven's light shining into it, a day un- 
 blessed. The morning you forget to pray is an 
 unhappy morning for you. One writes thus of a 
 prayerless day : — 
 
 " The sunlight streaming o'er my temple gate 
 With ray beguiling, soft and fair, 
 Made me at dawn neglect until too late 
 To bar it with the wonted prayer. 
 • 
 
 u Two fair-clad robbers, Duty and Delight, 
 Won entrance and engaged my mind, 
 While dark, unnoticed, and in rags bedight 
 Worry and Folly crept up behind. 
 
 4 
 
5 o OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 "To-night there's ruin in my Holy Place, 
 Its vessels gone, its treasures spent — 
 Contentment, faith, and every hard- won grace 
 Displaced and spoiled — Lord, I repent.' ' 
 
 But besides beginning each day with prayer, we 
 may do each several act all the day with prayer. 
 We may form the habit of praying at every step 
 as we go along. That was part of St. Paul's 
 meaning when he said, " Whatsoever ye do, in 
 word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus." He would have us include every word 
 we speak as well as every deed we do. Think 
 what it would mean to have every word that 
 passes our lips winged and blessed with prayer — 
 always to breathe a little prayer before we speak, 
 as we speak. This would put heavenly sweetness 
 into all our speech. It would make all our words 
 kindly, loving, inspiring words, words that will 
 edify and minister grace to them that hear. We 
 can scarcely think of one using bitter words, back- 
 biting words, unholy words, if his heart be always 
 full of prayer, if he have trained himself to pray 
 always before he speaks. 
 
 But we are to do all our deeds, too, in the 
 name of the Lord Jesus. That means that we 
 should do everything for Him, to please Him. 
 If we could get this lesson learned, if we would 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 51 
 
 really pray without ceasing, how beautiful our 
 lives would be ! How well we should do all our 
 work ! Only think of a man in business doing 
 all his day's business in a spirit of prayer — breath- 
 ing a little prayer as he makes a bargain, as he 
 writes a business letter, as he talks with other 
 men. Think of a woman amid her household 
 cares taking everything to God for His blessing, 
 for His approval, for His direction. These are 
 not by any means impossible suppositions. In- 
 deed, this is the way a Christian is to live, should 
 always live — doing all in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus. 
 
 We are exhorted elsewhere, too, to make all 
 our requests known to God in prayer. We do 
 not know what we miss by leaving God out of so 
 much of our life. We wonder often why we fail, 
 why so little comes of our efforts, why we do not 
 get along better with people, why we are not 
 happy, why joy is so wanting in our experience, 
 why we are so easily fretted and vexed and made 
 discontented, why we fall so easily into surliness 
 and bad temper. It is because we cease to pray. 
 
 "O what peace we often forfeit, 
 O what needless pain we bear, 
 All because we do not carry 
 Everything to God in prayer." 
 
52 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 You say you haven't time to pray so much. 
 " Haven't time ? " You have time for everything 
 else — time for many things, perhaps, of question- 
 able importance. Have you not time to look into 
 God's face for a moment before you begin a new- 
 piece of work, before you make a new investment, 
 before you start on a business trip, before you go 
 out to spend an evening, before you open a new 
 book ? " Haven't time ? " Does it seem wasted 
 time when you stop to eat your meals ? Do you 
 regard your hours spent in sleep as lost hours ? 
 Does being courteous waste time ? Nor is time 
 spent in getting God's blessing ever lost time. 
 The Sabbath hours given to worship are not 
 wasted hours. 
 
 But really the habit of unceasing prayer does 
 not require time. It is but looking into God's 
 face and saying, " Help me in this." " Bless me 
 as I do this." 
 
 Francis of Assisi was mighty in prayer. God's 
 blessing seemed to be on everything he did, on 
 every word he spoke. One who loved him 
 desired to learn the secret of his devotions, and 
 watched him to see how he prayed. All he saw 
 was this — again and again Francis was heard 
 saying, with bowed head and clasped hands, the 
 name of Jesus — " Jesus ! Jesus ! " That was the 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 53 
 
 way he prayed. He did everything in that blessed 
 name, and all the power of Jesus was in what he 
 did. It wastes no time to speak that name as we 
 enter a new path, or begin a new task, or go out 
 to a new duty. Yet that is what it is to pray 
 without ceasing. 
 
 It is well for us to learn this lesson — to take 
 everything to God in prayer, to pray as we go 
 from task to task — always silently, unostenta- 
 tiously. We need to guard against making a 
 show of our praying, talking about it. But we 
 may form the habit of putting up little word- 
 prayers continually. When you feel an inclina- 
 tion to speak bitterly, to answer sharply ; when 
 you have been stung by another's speech or act ; 
 when you are tempted to refuse a request for 
 help, to do some selfish thing, to pass by a human 
 need, to speak an untruth, lift up your heart in 
 the prayer, " Jesus, help me to do thy will." Or 
 if you meet a sudden temptation and are in danger 
 of being swept away, look up and cry, " Jesus, 
 save me ! " 
 
 Do you suppose that God is far off from you 
 these days, any day? Do you suppose that 
 Christ ever leaves you alone for an instant, any- 
 where you may chance to be ? No, no ; He is 
 nearer to you all the time than your dearest, 
 
54 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 nearest friend, now close by your side. Believe 
 this, and when you feel any need, any heart 
 hunger, any sense of loneliness, the creeping over 
 you of any shadow of danger, the coming upon 
 you of any enemy ; when you fear you will fall, 
 or stumble, or say some word you would not say, 
 or let some feeling into your heart you would not 
 admit there ; if you are growing discontented or 
 discouraged, speak His name. That will be 
 prayer enough. 
 
 It is impossible to tell of the blessing of such a 
 spirit and habit of prayer. Those who have not 
 learned to pray thus " without ceasing " have no 
 conception of what they are missing. If we all 
 had learned this lesson, what a company of over- 
 coming Christians we would be ! The world 
 would have little power over us. We would 
 tread it under our feet. We would be strong 
 where now we are so weak. We would be vic- 
 torious over temptation, where now we fail so 
 sadly. If you knew that Christ was always actu- 
 ally walking with you, how strong you would be! 
 
 "Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
 Or others— that we are not always strong, 
 
 That we are ever overborne with care, 
 That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
 
 Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
 And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? " 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 55 
 
 Some people seem to think that all prayer is 
 request, asking favors from God. They never go 
 to God unless they want Him to give them some- 
 thing, to do something for them, or to get them 
 out of some trouble or danger. But if we pray 
 only when we have a favor to ask, we do not love 
 God as we should. Really, request is but a small 
 portion of truest praying. 
 
 You have a dear human friend whom you love 
 very much. You greatly enjoy being with this 
 friend. You say it strengthens you, cheers you, 
 helps you, to spend an hour with him. Now 
 when you are with this friend, what do you talk 
 about? Do you do nothing but make requests 
 and ask favors, and beg your friend to do things 
 for you ? I am quite sure that is not all you do. 
 Ofttimes you pass the whole hour that you are 
 together and do not make one request nor ask 
 one favor. You commune — that is the word. 
 You sit together, your friend and you, and talk 
 of many things that are dear to you both. Then 
 sometimes you do not talk at all. It is just 
 enough to be with your friend, to have his pres- 
 ence near you, to look into his face, to know that 
 he loves you. It strengthens you just to be with 
 him. 
 
 The same is true of communion with Christ. 
 
56 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 It is not all request. We come to Him many 
 times with no definite favor to ask. We want 
 just to be with Him, to look into His face, to sit 
 in the sweet atmosphere of His presence, to let 
 His love pour into our hearts : — 
 
 "It is not prayer — 
 
 This clamor of our eager wants 
 That fills the air 
 
 With wearying, selfish plaints. 
 
 "It is true prayer 
 
 To seek the Giver more than gift ; 
 God's life to share, 
 
 And love — for this our cry to lift. * ' 
 
 There is no lesson we need to take more to 
 heart than this lesson of prayer. This is not a 
 praying age. Every call is to work, to activity. 
 We are living in most strenuous times. The 
 pressure of active duty is tremendous. In all 
 departments of life this is true. Men have little 
 time for leisure. In the church, too, the call is to 
 activity. The cry is for the evangelizing of the 
 world. It is a missionary age in which we are 
 living. Christians hear but little about the duty 
 of meditation, of devotion, of prayer — they are 
 called rather out into the field to work, to hasten 
 the coming of the kingdom. 
 
 This is well. Every redeemed life should be 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 57 
 
 consecrated to service. But there is danger in 
 this intense activity. The danger is not that we 
 become too strenuous in carrying the gospel to 
 men — this never could be — but that we get too 
 little quiet in our lives for the cultivation of our 
 own heart piety. There must be root before 
 there can be strong branches and much fruit. 
 We must sit at Christ's feet to be fed before we 
 can go out to feed others. Not a word should be 
 said to restrain earnestness, to check enthusiasm 
 in Christ's work, to hold any one back from the 
 service of Christ. But in our much serving and 
 work we should never forget the necessity of 
 Bible reading and communion with Christ, to 
 prepare us for the noble work we are striving to 
 do. All the best things of Christian life are the 
 fruit of silent meditation. 
 
 Life is not easy for any of us. We can live 
 grandly, purely, Christianly, only by being much 
 with Christ. We will rob ourselves of Divine 
 blessing, of beauty of character, of power in ser- 
 vice, if we fail to make room in all our busy days 
 for quiet retreats from noise and strife, where we 
 may sit at Christ's feet to hear His words and lie 
 on His bosom that we may absorb His spirit, to 
 prepare us for the toil and the witnessing. 
 
 Father Ryan, a Roman Catholic poet-priest of 
 
58 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 the South, writes thus of " the valley of 
 silence " : — 
 
 In the hush of the valley of silence 
 
 I dream all the songs that I sing ; 
 And the music floats down the dim valley 
 
 Till each finds a word for a wing, 
 That to hearts, like the dove of the deluge, 
 
 A message of peace they may bring. 
 
 But far out on the deep there are billows 
 That never shall break on the beach ; 
 
 And I have heard songs in the silence 
 That never shall float into speech ; 
 
 And I have had dreams in the valley 
 Too lofty for language to reach. 
 
 And I have seen thoughts in the valley — 
 Ah, me, how my spirit was stirred ! 
 
 And they wear holy veils on their faces ; 
 Their footsteps can scarcely be heard : 
 
 They pass through the valley like virgins 
 Too pure for the touch of a word. 
 
 Do you ask me the place of the valley, 
 Ye hearts that are harrowed by care ? 
 
 It lieth afar between mountains, 
 
 And God and His angels are there : 
 
 One is the dark mountain of sorrow, 
 And one the bright mountain of prayer. 
 
 It is only in the " valley of silence " with Christ 
 that we can dream the dreams and see the visions 
 
PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 59 
 
 which we would translate into noble life, Christly 
 character, and worthy deed, out among men. 
 We must hide away much in prayer if we would 
 get strength for valiant struggle and effective ser- 
 vice for our Master. 
 

IV 
 A PARABLE OF GROWTH 
 
" I will be as the dew unto Israel ; he shall blossom as the 
 lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall 
 spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell 
 as Lebanon." — Hosea xiv.. 5, 6. 
 
 " God's Spirit falls on thee as dewdrops on a rose, 
 If but like a rose to Him thy heart unclose." 
 
 " Dear God ! Let me grow from day to day, 
 Clinging and sunny and bright ! 
 Though planted in shade, Thy window is near, 
 And my leaves may turn to the light." 
 
IV 
 
 A PARABLE OF GROWTH 
 
 God's forgiveness is wonderful. If we fail, He 
 gives us another chance. Even the saddest ruin 
 of a life may be built into a holy temple of God. 
 We have it all in a chapter in Hosea. We have 
 the Divine pleading : " O Israel, return unto 
 Jehovah thy God ; for thou hast fallen by thine 
 iniquity." Then the way back is marked out — 
 confession, repentance, consecration. Then comes 
 the assurance : " I will heal their backsliding, I 
 will love them freely; for Mine anger is turned 
 away." Then follows this wonderful promise of 
 restoration and prosperity : " I will be as the dew 
 unto Israel ; he shall blossom as the lily, and cast 
 forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall 
 spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, 
 and his smell as Lebanon." 
 
 It is a picture of beauty and fruitfulness. There 
 had been bareness and desolation. Sin is drought. 
 It causes blight. Every flower fades and every 
 green thing withers. But God's love is like rain. 
 
 63 
 
64 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 It falls on the parched life and changes it to gar- 
 den loveliness. 
 
 The prophet's words contain a parable of spirit- 
 ual growth. We may note some of the features, 
 for they belong to all true Christian life. 
 
 One of these qualities is purity. " He shall 
 blossom as the lily." The other day a friend 
 sent me half a dozen white lilies, and all the days 
 since they have kept their freshness and their 
 unblemished whiteness. They have preached 
 their little sermon to every one who has come in, 
 saying, " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they 
 shall see God." Have you ever noticed how 
 earnestly this lesson of purity is taught in the 
 Bible ? Thus in one of the Psalms we have the 
 question and the answer: "Who shall ascend 
 into the hill of Jehovah ? and who shall stand in 
 His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a 
 pure heart." 
 
 Then James tells us that we are to have " pure 
 religion and undefiled before our God and 
 Father." He tells us also that we are to keep 
 ourselves " unspotted from the world." We are 
 not to flee away from the world, for our duty is 
 in it, and we must be in it to bless it, to do good 
 in it, to be light in its darkness, to comfort its 
 sorrow : but while in the world we are not to be- 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 65 
 
 come stained by its sin or to have our garments 
 soiled by its evil. Some one tells of seeing an 
 enameled plant growing on the edge of a coal 
 mine. Though the black dust floated about it 
 continually, not a particle of it adhered to the 
 plant, and its snowy whiteness took no stain. 
 This illustrates the purity which should always 
 be found in the Christian life — in the world, but 
 unspotted by its evil. That is the way the Mas- 
 ter passed through this world. That is the way 
 He would have us go through it. 
 
 Something else is necessary, however — more 
 than our own good resolve — if our hearts and 
 lives are to be like the lily in its immaculate 
 whiteness. We need both Divine cleansing and 
 Divine keeping. The Rev. F. B. Meyer tells of 
 calling one day, in his pastoral rounds, on a 
 washerwoman whom he found hanging the last 
 of her day's washing on the line. During his 
 brief stay in her house there came a thick and 
 sudden fall of snow. When he came out the 
 ground was white. " Your clothes do not look 
 as white as they did when I came in," Mr. Meyer 
 remarked. "The clothes are just the same/' the 
 woman answered, " but what can stand against 
 God's perfect white ? " Compared with the snow, 
 the whitest garments look soiled and dingy. We 
 5 
 
66 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 think we are reasonably pure and good, but when 
 we stand beside the holy Christ we see that we 
 are unholy and unworthy and need cleansing. 
 We must pray the prayer, " Wash me, and I 
 shall be whiter than snow." Only Christ can 
 cleanse us. Only He can keep us pure and clean. 
 Purity is one of the qualities of the ideal 
 Christian life. 
 
 Another quality of a true spiritual life is 
 root. " He shall . . . cast forth his roots as 
 Lebanon." Probably the reference is to the 
 cedars of Lebanon. Lilies are pure and gentle, 
 but they are very frail, with shallow rooting, 
 easily torn out of the ground. No one simile 
 tells all the story of a noble and worthy life. 
 The cedar sends its roots down deep into the 
 earth, anchoring it so securely that the wildest 
 storm cannot tear it loose. Purity is essential in 
 a Christian life. Gentleness and delicacy are un- 
 failing characteristics of a Christlike spirit. But 
 there must also be strength. It is never easy to 
 live well in this world. We cannot hope to be 
 kept always in a shelter of tender love, where no 
 storm beats, where there are no struggles. Jesus 
 Christ, God's best beloved Son, faced the most 
 terrible temptations. His life was exposed to all 
 manner of trials. No follower of His can pass 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 67 
 
 through life and miss antagonism. There must 
 be strength to withstand the tempest as well as 
 purity to look into God's face. Roots are import- 
 ant as well as whiteness. The trees that grow on 
 the mountains are deeply and strongly rooted. 
 So if we would stand true, steadfast, unmovable, 
 as we are bidden to stand, we must be anchored 
 by an unwavering faith in Christ. 
 
 The root is not the part of the tree we admire 
 the most. Indeed, it is not seen at all. No one 
 praises it. It creeps down into the dark earth 
 and is hidden. But we know its importance. It 
 feeds the tree's life and then it holds the tree in 
 its place amid the storms. Every strong char- 
 acter must have a deep root. Shallow rooting 
 means a feeble power of resistance. Because it 
 lacked root, the seed sown on rocky ground 
 withered away in the first hot sun. We must be 
 deeply rooted in Christ if we would endure unto 
 the end. 
 
 It takes both the gentleness of the lily and the 
 strength of the cedar to make a true Christian 
 character. Gentleness without strength is not 
 noble — it is weakness. Strength without gentle- 
 ness is not great — it is only brute force. But 
 sweetness and strength combined yield heroic 
 manhood. Such a man was Luther. Such a 
 
68 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 man was Cromwell. "Kiss me, Hardy," said 
 Lord Nelson, dying. Such a man was Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Another quality in the beautiful life is breadth. 
 " His branches shall spread." If there be strength 
 with deep rooting, there will also be the extending 
 of boughs. Life broadens as it grows. We all 
 begin as babies, but we ought not to continue 
 babies. We ought to grow into men, putting 
 away childish things. Some people, however, 
 seem never to advance in spiritual life. 
 
 One of the strange freaks of Japanese horticul- 
 ture is the cultivation of dwarf trees. The Japan- 
 ese grow forest giants in flowerpots. Some of 
 these strange miniature trees are a century old, 
 and are only two or three feet high. The gar- 
 dener, instead of trying to get them to grow to 
 their best, takes infinite pains to keep them little. 
 His purpose is to grow dwarfs, not giant trees. 
 From the time of their planting they are re- 
 pressed, starved, crippled, stunted. When buds 
 appear, they are nipped off. So the tree remains 
 only a dwarf all its life. 
 
 Some Christian people seem to do the same 
 thing with their lives. They do not allow them- 
 selves to grow. They rob themselves of spiritual 
 nourishment, restrain the noble impulses of their 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 69 
 
 nature, shut out of their hearts the power of the 
 Holy Spirit, and are only dwarf Christians when 
 they might be strong in Christ Jesus, with the 
 abundant life which the Master wants all His 
 followers to have. 
 
 There is not enough breadth in many lives. 
 We ought to grow in height, reaching up to the 
 fullness of the stature of Christ. We ought to 
 grow in the outreach of our lives. We ought to 
 know more of God and of heavenly things to- 
 morrow than we do to-day. We are told that if 
 we follow on we shall know, that if we do the 
 little portion of the will of God we understand 
 we shall be led on to see and know more of that 
 will. We ought to grow in love also, becoming 
 more patient, more gentle, more thoughtful, more 
 unselfish day by day, extending the reach of our 
 unselfishness and helpfulness. 
 
 There is something else about these spreading 
 branches. A little farther down in the chapter 
 we read this : " They that dwell under his shadow 
 shall return. " The children of men find shelter 
 and rest under the shadow of the good man's 
 wide-spreading life. We all know people of whom 
 that is true — others come and live beneath the 
 shadow of their love, their strength, their be- 
 neficence. They live to serve others, not to be 
 
70 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 served by others. They seek always to do good 
 to every one they meet. Their doors are ever 
 open to those who come needing counsel, cheer, 
 help, and hope. They are an unspeakable bless- 
 ing and comfort in the world. Their lives are like 
 trees which cast a wide shade in which children 
 play, beneath which the weary stop in their jour- 
 ney to rest. Some verses by Alice W. Bailey l fit 
 in here : — 
 
 I know a nature like a tree ; 
 
 Men seek its shade instinctively. 
 
 It is a choir for singing birds, 
 
 A covert for the flocks and herds. 
 
 It grows and grows, nor questions why, 
 
 But reaches up into the sky, 
 
 And stretches down into the soil, 
 
 Finding no trouble in its toil. 
 
 It flaunts no scar to tell of pain, 
 
 Self-healed its wounds have closed again 
 
 Unaided by its pensioners ; 
 
 And yet I know that great heart stirs 
 
 To each appeal and claim, indeed 
 
 Leans to their lack and needs their need. 
 
 There is something very admirable in the beauty 
 of such a life as this picture suggests — a tree 
 putting out its branches to make grateful shade 
 and shelter for earth's hunted ones, hungry ones, 
 weary ones, sorrowing ones. Too many people 
 
 1 The Outlook, June 27, 1903. 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 71 
 
 seek to broaden their lives only to gather the 
 more into their grasp for their own selfish ends — 
 not to bless the world, but to gain the world for 
 their own enriching. Others there are who seek 
 to draw people to them, but whose branches do 
 not make a safe and wholesome shelter for the 
 weary and the troubled, but rather a poisoned 
 and perilous shadow in w r hich the innocent are 
 harmed or even ruined. We who are Christians 
 should be like trees of blessing, under which 
 others may come, sure of finding only comfort 
 and good. 
 
 Another of the qualities of the spiritual life 
 suggested here is beauty. " His beauty shall be 
 as the olive tree." Beauty is a quality of the 
 complete Christian life. Writers note the fact 
 that the beauty of the olive is peculiar. There 
 are other trees which are more brilliant, more 
 graceful in form. " The palm at once impresses 
 by its elegance, the apple tree by its blossoms, the 
 orange by its golden fruit and unique fragrance, 
 the tulip tree by its gorgeous flowers. The olive, 
 however, is by no means picturesque — it often 
 looks even stunted and shabby. . . . But the soft 
 delicate beauty grows upon you until, stirred by 
 the wind, the shimmering silver of its leaves makes 
 a picture. ... So Christian character is often not 
 
72 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 in the least brilliant, heroic, or striking. The 
 noblest men and women are modest, homely, 
 simple souls ; yet they reveal a mild and serious 
 grace which is, in truth, the perfection of beauty." l 
 
 Thus the olive tree becomes a true symbol of 
 Christlike character — not showy, not flashing its 
 brilliance in the eyes of men, but humble, quiet, 
 adorned with the beauty which pleases Christ. 
 Peter has some good words about true adorning 
 for women : " Whose adorning let it not be the 
 outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of 
 wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel ; 
 but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the 
 incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, 
 which is in the sight of God of great price." 
 
 There is a clause in Saint Paul's cluster of 
 " whatsoevers " which make up his picture of 
 noble, Christlike character that fits in here — 
 " whatsoever things are lovely." We must never 
 leave out the things that are lovely when we are 
 making up our ideal of spiritual life. There 
 are unlovely things in the dispositions of too 
 many people. We who are Christians should 
 seek always to be rid of whatsoever is not beau- 
 tiful. Our daily prayer should be, " Let the 
 beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." 
 
 1 The Rev. W. L. Watkinson. 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 73 
 
 Saint Paul told Timothy that the word of God 
 is " profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correc- 
 tion. " We know what correction is. Young 
 people at school w r rite exercises, and their teach- 
 ers go over them and correct them, pointing out 
 the mistakes. The Bible, if we read it as we 
 should, corrects our faulty essays in living, shows 
 us the errors in our lives, the defects in our char- 
 acters, the flaws in our dispositions. What then ? 
 " Count that day happy," says Ruskin, " when 
 you have discovered a fault in yourself" — not 
 happy because the fault is there, but because you 
 know it now, that you may cure it. 
 
 Another quality of a true life suggested in this 
 parable of growth is fragrance. " His smell as 
 Lebanon." "A good name is better than precious 
 oil." Another of Saint Paul's " whatsoevers " is 
 very suggestive — " whatsoever things are of good 
 report." There is an aroma that belongs to every 
 life, w r hich is the composite product of the things 
 that are said about the person. Some men live 
 beautifully, sweetly, patiently, unselfishly, help- 
 fully, joyfully, speaking only good words, never 
 rash, intemperate, unloving words, and walking 
 among men carefully, humbly, reverently; and 
 the odor of their lives is like that of Mary's oint- 
 ment. Other men are ruled by self or by the 
 
74 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 world or by greed — they are of the earth, earthy. 
 They are untruthful, resentful, unloving, of hasty 
 speech — and we know what the effluence of such 
 lives is. 
 
 There is something very mysterious about per- 
 fume. No one can describe it. You cannot take 
 a photograph of it. Yet it is a very essential 
 quality of the flower. The same is true of that 
 strange thing we call influence. Influence is the 
 aroma of a life. The most important thing about 
 our life is this subtle, imponderable, indefinable, 
 mysterious element of our personality which is 
 known as influence. This is really all of us that 
 counts in our final impression on other lives. 
 
 " His smell as Lebanon." Lebanon's gardens 
 and trees and fruits made delicious fragrance 
 which filled all the region round about. Every 
 Christian life ought to be fragrant, but there is 
 only one way to make it so. Men gather the 
 perfume from acres of roses and it fills only a 
 little phial. Your influence, the perfume of your 
 life, is gathered from all the acres of your years — 
 all that has grown upon those acres. If it is to 
 be like the essence of ten thousand roses — sweet, 
 pure, undefiled, your life must be all well watched, 
 clean, sweet, holy, loving, true. Only roses must 
 grow on your fields. The evil as well as the 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 75 
 
 good is gathered and helps to make the com- 
 posite influence of your life. 
 
 We know how easily one's influence is hurt, 
 how little follies and indiscretions in one's con- 
 duct or behavior take away from the sweetness of 
 one's reputation. Says the author of Ecclesiastes, 
 " Dead flies cause the oil of the perfumer to send 
 forth an evil odor ; so doth a little folly outweigh 
 wisdom and honor." We need to think seriously 
 of this matter. We are not always careful enough 
 about keeping out the dead flies. There are 
 many men who are good in the general tenor of 
 their lives, godly, prayerful, consistent in larger 
 ways, but the perfume of whose names is rendered 
 unsavory by little dead flies in their common liv- 
 ing. They are not always careful to keep their 
 word; they are not prompt in paying their debts ; 
 they are not watchful of their speech ; they are 
 not loyal in their friendships ; they are indiscreet 
 in their relations with others ; they are wanting 
 in refinement or courtesy ; they are resentful — we 
 all know how many of these dead flies there are 
 which cause the ointment of some people's names 
 to send forth an unsavory odor. 
 
 We need to watch our lives in the smallest 
 matters if we would keep our names sweet 
 wherever we are known. Influence is most im- 
 
76 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 portant. It is our mightiest force for good or 
 evil. Let us keep it pure and good for Christ. 
 Let us keep Christ always in it. 
 
 These are some of the lessons which this Old 
 Testament nature-parable suggests. These are 
 some of the essential qualities of a true Christian 
 life. It should be pure. It should be deeply- 
 rooted in Christ and strong. It should spread 
 out its branches and become a shelter and com- 
 fort to other lives. It should be beautiful with 
 the beauty of humility, truth, and love. It 
 should be fragrant with the aroma of a sweet, 
 holy, and loving life. 
 
 Is the picture discouraging by reason of its 
 lofty qualities ? Is it so high in its excellence 
 that we seem unable to reach it? At a recent 
 commencement one of the speakers told of two 
 scenes he had witnessed. The first was this : He 
 was in an artist's studio when the artist was 
 about beginning his work on a canvas. He was 
 putting a little daub of paint here, another daub 
 there. There certainly was no semblance of any- 
 thing beautiful on the canvas. Indeed, there 
 seemed no evidence of any design, no trace of 
 any form or figure, no clue to what the artist 
 meant to do. 
 
 That was the first scene. This was the second : 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 77 
 
 A large company of people standing before a 
 great picture, all admiring it and praising its 
 beauty. This was the finished painting of which 
 the artist, that day a year or two before, was 
 making the first rough outline. 
 
 Let us not be discouraged because to-day the 
 picture has almost none of the beauty which is 
 visioned in the great ideal we have been studying. 
 We are only beginning it. Let us continue at 
 our holy task until in every line it glows with the 
 loveliness of the ideal. But remember we cannot 
 dream the vision upon the canvas — we can put it 
 there only by patient thought, effort, and disci- 
 pline. 
 
 Then let us not forget that God will work with 
 us in our efforts to grow into the Divine beauty, 
 if only we seek His grace and help. There is a 
 story of an artist-pupil who had wrought long at 
 his canvas and was discouraged because the noble 
 vision came so slowly, because his hand seemed 
 so unskillful. Then one day he sat by his easel, 
 weary and disheartened, and fell asleep. While 
 he slept his master came and, taking the brush, 
 with a few swift touches finished the picture. 
 That is the way our Master does with us when 
 we are doing our best and seem only to fail. He 
 
78 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 comes in the stillness and puts His own hand to 
 our work and completes it. 
 
 There is one sentence in this parable of growth 
 which is full of inspiration and hope : " I will be 
 as the dew unto Israel." In the East the dew is 
 almost like rain with us. When there is no dew, 
 everything burns up. When there is dew, the 
 thirsty fields are refreshed. All the wonderful 
 beauty described in these words is produced by 
 the night-mist or dew. 
 
 Now God says, " I will be as the dew unto 
 Israel." What dew does for withering gardens 
 and fields, God says He will do for His people if 
 they but repent and return to Him. He does not 
 say He will send the dew — He says He will Him- 
 self be as the dew. So the dew which renews 
 and refreshes withered lives is God Himself. Let 
 us learn well this great truth, that God would put 
 Himself into our withered lives. That is the 
 heart of our religion. We are not set merely to 
 copy a picture upon canvas, to imitate a lovely 
 model held before us. Christianity tells us of a 
 Divine Spirit who with unseen hands comes to 
 fashion the picture upon our spirits. " I will be as 
 the dew unto Israel." What the dew or the rain 
 is to the withered fields, God's Spirit will be to 
 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 79 
 
 our bare, withered lives. We need only to yield 
 ourselves to this gentle Holy Spirit. 
 
 Some of us are perplexed to know how we 
 ever can grow into the purity, the strength, the 
 breadth, the usefulness, the beauty, the sweetness 
 of Christ. Imagine a field after long drought, its 
 foliage drooping, its flowers withering, everything 
 on it dying, perplexed and wondering how it 
 ever can grow into garden beauty. Then a cloud 
 comes up out of the sea and pours its gentle rains 
 for hours upon the parched ground. The ques- 
 tion is answered. All the field has to do is to 
 open its bosom to the treasures of the rain. All 
 we have to do in our spiritual need is to let God's 
 Spirit into our hearts. 
 
 " Receive Him as the dew into thy heart, 
 O thirsty one, who long His grace hast sought. 
 Dew forms in stillness ; struggle not, nor strive ; 
 What thou dost need to learn is to receive. 
 
 " The air surrounding thee is full of God, 
 With love and life and blessing for thee stored ; 
 Get cool and quiet, and the dew will fall — 
 A little at a time, not once for all." 
 

V 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 
 
" In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, 
 Isaiah xxx. 15. 
 
 " There the dews of quiet fall, 
 
 Singing birds and soft winds stray ; 
 Shall the tender Heart of all 
 
 Be less kind than they ? "— /. G. Whitlier. 
 
V 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 
 
 A quiet life has many points of beauty. It 
 has poise, the lack of which is always a serious 
 blemish. It has self-mastery, which is kingliness. 
 Quietness is the condition of receptiveness. Some 
 people make so much noise that they hear none 
 of the great and noble voices which are speaking 
 continually in their ears words of wisdom. Quiet- 
 ness favors thought and meditation. Some of us 
 never give ourselves time to think, and hence we 
 never have any words worth while to speak. 
 
 It would seem that anybody could keep still 
 and quiet. We would say that it requires no 
 exertion. It is activity that is hard — it ought to 
 be easy to rest. It takes energy to speak — it 
 should be easy just to be silent. 
 
 But we all know that few things are harder for 
 most people than to be still. Our lives are like 
 the ocean in their restlessness. They cannot be 
 comprised and confined within narrow limits. 
 This is one of the proofs of our greatness and our 
 
 83 
 
84 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 immortality. Life is vast and ever in motion. 
 Dead things have no trouble in keeping still. A 
 stone is never restless. The lower the quality of 
 life, the easier it is for it to be quiet. The human 
 soul was made for God, and its very greatness 
 renders its repose and quiet the most difficult of 
 all its attainments. 
 
 Yet the lesson of quietness is set for us again 
 and again in the Scriptures. We are told that 
 the effect of righteousness is quietness. We are 
 specially exhorted to " study to be quiet," to 
 make it the aim of our life to be still ; to make a 
 study of it as something to be learned, as one 
 would learn an art or train one's self in beauty of 
 living. In the margin the language is even 
 stronger — " Be ambitious to be quiet." Think of 
 human ambitions — to be rich, to be honored, to 
 have power, to do great things ! Quietness must, 
 therefore, be one of the most desirable of all 
 qualities in life. We are to be ambitious to be 
 quiet. Another saying of the New Testament is, 
 referring to women, " The apparel of a meek and 
 quiet spirit is of great price in the sight of God." 
 Quietness is extolled, too, as a privilege in a 
 noisy world. " A dry morsel and quietness 
 therewith is better than a feast with strife and 
 contention." 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 85 
 
 Quietness is evidently a mark of high culture. 
 On the mountain the prophet saw the wild con- 
 vulsions of nature — the storm, the earthquake, 
 and the fire — but in none of these was God mani- 
 fested. Then followed " the voice of gentle still- 
 ness," and that was God. Yet there are many 
 people who think that noise is strength, that 
 quietness lacks robustness and vigor. They sup- 
 pose the more noise a speaker makes, the greater 
 orator he is ; that the louder one's voice in pray- 
 ing, the more power the man has in prayer. But 
 noise is not eloquence. Mr. Beecher used to say 
 that when he was speaking and had no thoughts, 
 nothing to say, he thundered, and the people 
 were greatly moved. The greatest preacher is 
 the one who the most deeply impresses other 
 lives, turning them from sin to holiness, from 
 lower to higher things. 
 
 The common impression probably is that 
 people who make the most bluster and show in 
 their callings are the greatest workers, accomplish 
 the most, produce the deepest, best impressions. 
 But this is not true. The best Christian workers 
 anywhere are those who make the least noise. 
 They live deeply, dwelling in the valley of silence. 
 We never can do our best anywhere if we have 
 not learned to be quiet 
 
86 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 " We mar our work for God by noise and bustle ; 
 Can we not do our part and not be heard ? 
 Why should we care that men should see us 
 With our tools, and praise the skill with which we use them ? 
 And oftentimes we chafe, and think it hard 
 That we should lay our great and costly stones 
 For other men to build on and get praised, 
 While our names are forgotten or passed o , er. ,, 
 
 In all departments of life it is the quiet forces 
 that effect the most How silently all day long 
 the sunbeams fall upon the fields and gardens ! 
 They make no noise. Yet what cheer, what 
 benediction, what renewal of life, what inspirations 
 of beauty they diffuse ! How silently the flowers 
 bloom, and yet what sweetness they pour upon 
 the air ! How silently the stars move on in their 
 majestic marches round God's throne ! They 
 utter no voice. Yet they are vast worlds, or they 
 are central suns with systems of worlds revolving 
 round them. How silently God's angels work, 
 stepping with noiseless tread through our homes, 
 performing ever their quiet ministries for us and 
 about us ! Who ever hears the flutter of the 
 angels' wings or the whisper of their tongues ? 
 Yet they ever throng the air and are continually 
 bearing to us their messages of cheer, joy, hope, 
 and comfort, and are ceaselessly engaged in their 
 ministries of protection, guidance, and help. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS S7 
 
 How silently God Himself works ! He is never 
 absent from our side. He never ceases blessing 
 us for a moment. He brings us gifts while we 
 sleep and is gone before we awake. He comes so 
 quietly that He never disturbs us. He comes 
 into our sick rooms, stands beside our beds of 
 pain, and sits down beside us in our time of 
 sorrow and gives comfort, but we never hear 
 Him. He makes no ado. 
 
 One of the most beautiful qualities in the life 
 of Christ was His quietness. The prophet said 
 of Him before He came into the world, " He will 
 not cry, nor lift up His voice, nor cause it to be 
 heard in the street." When earthly kings move 
 through the land they make a great display. 
 Heralds go before them and proclaim their com- 
 ing. Attention is drawn to them and great public 
 demonstrations mark their movements. The 
 booming of cannon, the ringing of bells, and the 
 shouts of the people tell of their coming and 
 going. When heaven's King went on earth's 
 streets there was no noise. He sought not, but 
 rather shunned, publicity and fame. Throngs 
 did indeed follow Him, but they were drawn by 
 the ministry of love He wrought wherever He 
 went — healing, comforting, forgiving, saving. 
 When the people in their enthusiasm tried to 
 
88 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 make Him their king, He fled away to the moun- 
 tains, seeking refuge there with God. He never 
 advertised Himself. He did nothing for show. 
 Yet think what blessings He left in the world 
 as He passed through it. Wherever His feet 
 touched the earth, flowers grew in the path. Into 
 whatsoever home He entered He carried a breath 
 of heaven and left there the benediction of His 
 peace. Every life He touched had in it after- 
 wards something of beauty or of blessing it never 
 had had before. It is now nineteen centuries 
 since Jesus walked on the earth in human form, 
 and still the influence of His gentle, blessed, quiet 
 life fills all the world. 
 
 Which class of men have most deeply impressed 
 the world — those who have made the greatest 
 noise or the quiet people ? Of course, in the 
 records of history the names that are most promi- 
 nent are those of kings and warriors and men of 
 ambition. But there have always been in the 
 world a host of quiet folk who have attracted no 
 attention to themselves, who have done no bril- 
 liant deeds, whose names have not got into the 
 newspapers, but who have touched the world's 
 life with the spirit of their own lives. They are 
 the lowly ones who dwell near the heart of Christ, 
 catch the tone of His life, and then go on living 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 89 
 
 simply and singing the songs of love and peace 
 they have learned. 
 
 Yet we all experience the temptation to want 
 others to know us and praise us. Many people 
 think that if they do not get into official positions, 
 or grow rich, or rise to power, or gain newspaper 
 notoriety, or make a show in some way among 
 men, they have failed in living. But some day it 
 will be seen that usually those who have wrought 
 quietly and without fame or human praise have 
 achieved the noblest and most permanent results. 
 
 " What shall I do lest life in silence pass? 
 
 And if it do 
 And never prompt the bray of brass, 
 
 What need' st thou rue ? 
 Remember aye the ocean's deeps are mute — 
 
 The shallows roar ; 
 Worth is the ocean ; fame is the bruit 
 
 Along the shore." 
 
 Only the other day one came and spoke with 
 sadness of what appeared to be a useless life. It 
 seemed to have been without result, without 
 blessing to others or honor to Christ, because 
 nothing great or conspicuous had been done. 
 Yet all who know this friend are aware that with 
 her quiet life, her victorious cheerfulness, her 
 unfailing kindness, she carries benedictions wher- 
 ever she goes. 
 
90 OUR NEW EDEN3 
 
 " Something each day — a word, 
 
 We cannot know its power ; 
 It grows in fruitfulness 
 
 As grows the gentle shower. 
 What comfort it may bring 
 
 Where all is dark and drear ! 
 For a kind word every day 
 
 Makes pleasant all the year. 
 
 " Something each day — a thought, 
 
 Unselfish, good, and true, 
 That aids another's needs, 
 
 While we our way pursue ; 
 That seeks to lighten hearts, 
 
 That leads to pathways clear ; 
 For a helpful thought each day 
 
 Makes happy all the year. 
 
 " Something each day — a deed 
 
 Of kindness and of good, 
 To link in closer bonds 
 
 All human brotherhood. 
 Oh, thus the heavenly will 
 
 We all may do while here ; 
 For a good deed every day 
 
 Makes blessed all the year. ,, 
 
 Much of the best work in this world is done 
 unconsciously. Indeed, there is danger always 
 that the good deeds we do consciously and with 
 intention shall be marred by the very conscious- 
 ness with which we do them. There is a legend 
 of a good man's shadow which, when it fell 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 91 
 
 behind him where he could not see it, had healing 
 power; but which, when it fell before his face, 
 where he could see it, had no such power. The 
 legend is true in life. There are many quiet 
 people who never dream that they are useful at 
 all, who even deplore their uselessness, but whose 
 days are really full of gentleness and kindness, 
 ever setting in motion gentle tides of beneficent 
 and heavenly influences which make the whole 
 world better, sweetening its air and enriching its 
 life. Some day it will be seen that our very best 
 work in God's sight is done when we are not 
 aware that we are doing any good at all, while 
 much that we glory in as the finest achievements 
 of our lives will prove to have been of no value 
 because filled with self. 
 
 The lives of good people are sometimes com- 
 pared to the dew. One point of likeness is the 
 quiet way in which the dew performs its ministry. 
 It falls silently and imperceptibly. It makes no 
 noise. No one hears it dropping. It chooses its 
 time in the night when men are sleeping, when 
 none can see its beautiful work. It covers the 
 leaves with clusters of pearls. It steals into the 
 bosoms of the flowers and leaves new cupfuls of 
 sweetness there. It pours itself down among the 
 roots of the grasses and tender herbs and plants. 
 
92 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 It loses itself altogether, and yet it is not lost. 
 For in the morning there is fresh life everywhere 
 and new beauty. The fields are greener, the gar- 
 dens are more fragrant, and all nature is clothed 
 in fresh luxuriance. 
 
 Is there not in this simile a suggestion as to 
 the way we should seek to do good in this world ? 
 Should we not wish to have our influence felt while 
 no one thinks of us rather than that we should 
 be seen and heard and praised ? Should we not 
 be willing to lose ourselves in the service of self- 
 forgetful love, as the dew loses itself in the bosom 
 of the rose, caring only that other lives shall be 
 sweeter, happier, and better, and not that honor 
 shall come to us ? We are too anxious, some of 
 us, that our names shall be written in large letters 
 on the things we do, even on what we do for our 
 Master, and are not willing to sink ourselves out 
 of sight and let Him only have the praise. 
 
 Our Lord's teaching on the subject is very 
 plain. He says : " When therefore thou doest 
 alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the 
 hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the 
 streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily 
 I say unto you, They have received their reward." 
 That is, they have glory of men — all they seek. 
 " But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 93 
 
 know what thy right hand doeth : that thine alms 
 may be in secret." 
 
 The meaning would seem to be that we are not 
 to wish people to know of our good deeds, our 
 charities, our self-denials; that we should not 
 seek publicity, newspaper announcements, for 
 example, when we give money or do good works ; 
 indeed, that we are not even to tell ourselves 
 what we have done ; that we are not to think about 
 our own good deeds so as to become conscious 
 of them ; not to put them down in our diaries 
 and go about complimenting ourselves, throwing 
 bouquets at ourselves, and whispering: " How 
 good I am ! What fine things I have done ! " 
 
 This is a close test of our lives. Are we will- 
 ing to be as the dew — to steal abroad in the 
 darkness, carrying blessings to men's doors, 
 blessings that shall enrich the lives of others and 
 do them good, and then steal away again before 
 those we have helped or blessed waken to know 
 what hand it was that brought the gift ? Are we 
 willing to work for others without gratitude, with- 
 out recognition, without human praise, without 
 requital ? Are we content to have our lives 
 poured out like the dew to bless the world and 
 make it more fruitful, and yet remain hidden 
 away ourselves ? Is it enough for us to see the 
 
94 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 fruits of our toil and sacrifice in others' brightened 
 homes, greater prosperity and deeper happiness ; 
 or in good institutions, in renewed society, in 
 benefits prepared by us and enjoyed by others, 
 yet never hear our names spoken in praise or 
 honor — perhaps even hearing others praised for 
 things we have done ? 
 
 Yet, is it not thus that our lesson teaches us we 
 are to live if we are followers of Christ? John 
 the Baptist, when they asked him who he was, 
 said he was only a voice — a voice crying in the 
 wilderness, foretelling the Messiah. That was 
 humility — hiding away that only Christ should 
 be seen and honored. Florence Nightingale, 
 having gone as an angel of mercy among the 
 hospitals of the Crimea until her name was en- 
 shrined in every soldier's heart, asked to be 
 excused from having her picture taken, when 
 thousands of the men begged for it, that she 
 might drop out and be forgotten, and that 
 Christ alone might be remembered as the author 
 of the blessings her hands had ministered. That 
 was the true Christian spirit. 
 
 We need not trouble ourselves about fame, 
 trying to make sure of honor and praise when we 
 have done anything for the Master. What is 
 fame ? At the best, it is likely to be transient. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 95 
 
 We all know how soon the world forgets even its 
 brightest names. A man who has filled a large 
 place among his fellows dies to-day. To-morrow 
 all the newspapers will give him a notice, longer 
 or shorter. Two or three days later his funeral 
 occurs and then his name disappears from the 
 public prints unless he has so disposed of his 
 property that the announcement shall start 
 another ripple of publicity. Recently an honored 
 railroad president died, and the day he was buried 
 every wheel on the great railway system he had 
 directed stopped and stood still for ten minutes. 
 Then the trains rolled on as before, and the great 
 man will scarcely be missed or mentioned here- 
 after. 
 
 What an empty thing is fame ! How unsatis- 
 factory ! How hard it is to maintain ! How 
 fickle it is ! There is a picture of the place of the 
 crucifixion of Jesus, with the empty cross, and 
 the crowd gone, and over yonder an ass nibbling 
 at a piece of withered palm branch. That is the 
 way of fame too often. Palm Sunday and Good 
 Friday were only five days apart. Says Emily 
 Dickinson : — 
 
 Fame is a bee. 
 
 It has a song — 
 
 It has a sting — 
 
 Ah, too, it has a wing. 
 
96 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 As one writes : " When death has dropped the 
 curtain, we shall hear no more applause. And 
 though we fondly dream that it will continue after 
 we have left the stage, we do not realize how 
 quickly it will die away in silence while the audi- 
 ence turns to look at the new actor and the next 
 scene. Our position in society will be filled as 
 soon as it is vacated, and our name remembered 
 only for a moment — except, please God, by a few 
 who have learned to love us, not because of fame, 
 but because we have helped them and done them 
 some good." 
 
 The closing words of this quotation tell us the 
 secret of the only fame that is worth living for — 
 the fame of love, won not by our great deeds, but 
 by service in Christ's name. The only fame that 
 will last will be in the records of good done to 
 others. Vain was the child's wish that he might 
 help God paint the clouds and sunsets, for as we 
 watch the glorious banks of clouds in the heavens, 
 their form changes and their glory vanishes. But 
 if you go about doing good in simple ways, in 
 gentle kindnesses, not thinking of reward, not 
 dreaming of praise, not hoping for any return, 
 you are enshrining your name where it will have 
 immortal honor. 
 
 Long, long centuries ago a little fern leaf grew 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 97 
 
 in a valley. Its veins were delicate and its fibers 
 tender. It was very lovely in its green tracery. 
 But by and by it fell and perished in the indis- 
 tinguishable mass of vegetation that lay in the 
 valley. It seemed, indeed, lost, for who could 
 ever find a fern leaf again amid such heaps of 
 decay ? It had made no history and left no trace, 
 no impression in the world, had done nothing to 
 tell of its brief stay on the earth. 
 
 But the other day a thoughtful man of science, 
 searching out nature's secrets, came with pick 
 and hammer and broke off a piece of rock — and 
 there his eyes traced on the stone — 
 
 " Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, 
 Leafage, veining, fibers, clear and fine ; 
 And the fern's life lay in every line. 
 So, I think, God hides some souls away, 
 Sweetly to surprise us at the last day." 
 
 So God hides away the things of love we do in 
 the silence, with no thought of reward — hides 
 them away in the memories, in the hearts, and in 
 the lives of those we help, or bless, or influence 
 for good. Nothing done in love and in humility 
 will be lost. Fame is transient and ephemeral, 
 like the flowers you wear to-day, which will fade 
 by to-morrow ; but the touches you put upon 
 human lives are immortal. 
 7 
 
98 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Those who have learned to live " in quietness 
 and in confidence " have found the true secret of 
 beautiful living. Confidence ! God loves to be 
 trusted. We all love to be trusted. Earth has 
 no sweeter joy than when one heart trusts 
 another. God is like us in this — trusting Him 
 gives Him joy. He has a plan for our lives, a 
 plan that takes in all our days and their smallest 
 events. " The very hairs of your head are all 
 numbered " means not that God actually counts 
 our hairs — there would be no use in that — but 
 that the smallest things are included in God's 
 thought for our lives. One came to me in anxiety 
 about the future. This friend has had a good 
 position for several years, but the office would be 
 closed August thirty-first — in one month — and 
 the work would cease. " Then what shall I do ? " 
 asked the person. The answer I gave was : 
 " God has a plan for your life far beyond August 
 thirty-first. His plan takes in all the months 
 after that as long as you may live. He will have 
 something ready for you when your present task 
 is finished." God loves to have us trust Him 
 implicitly. The simpler our faith is, the more joy 
 it gives Him. And He will never disappoint our 
 confidence. 
 
 We do not know how much we grieve God by 
 
THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 99 
 
 our noisy fretfulness, our peevish complainings, 
 our miserable discontents, our sad unbeliefs. Oh, 
 for quietness and confidence ! The promise runs : 
 M In quietness and in confidence shall be your 
 strength.'' Strength — that is just what we need, 
 for we are pitiably weak. If only we would get 
 quiet and still, God's strength would come into 
 our lives. If only we had confidence — that would 
 bring us into communion with Christ, and leaning 
 on Him, His strength would become ours and 
 His peace would hold us quiet and at rest. 
 
 "Oh, the little birds sang east, 
 And the little birds sang west, 
 And I smiled to think God's greatness 
 Flowed round our incompleteness — 
 Round our restlessness — His rest." 
 
 When sailors are heaving the anchor, they start 
 a song and keep time to the music. When sol- 
 diers are going into battle, the bands play martial 
 airs to inspire the men. Carlyle said, " Give us, 
 oh, give us the man who sings at his work." 
 There is tremendous power in a songful heart. 
 Quietness and confidence will fill our hearts with 
 music, and then we will be strong. 
 
 LofC. 
 
VI 
 
 THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 
 
" His servants shall serve Him : and they shall see His face ; 
 and His name shall be on their foreheads." — Revelation 
 
 xxn. 3, 4. 
 
 " Jesus taught 
 Life beyond this life, timeless, infinite ; 
 As little parted from the world we see 
 As daytime is from dream-time, when we drowse, 
 And think 'tis night with sunlight on our lids." 
 
 — The Light of the World. 
 
VI 
 
 THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 
 
 In his vision of the holy city John saw much 
 that was wonderful. He saw the redeemed in 
 their everyday life and had glimpses of their 
 glory and their happiness. Among other things 
 he tells us, " His servants shall serve Him : and 
 they shall see His face ; and His name shall be 
 on their foreheads." It is well that we should 
 look in upon the beauty and blessedness of the 
 heavenly home when we may, that we may know 
 something of the glory that is waiting for us. It 
 is well that we should see a little of the life and 
 the privileges of the saints who are with Christ 
 that we may be stimulated and encouraged in our 
 struggles and our slow attaining. That is what 
 we are going to be by and by. These things 
 will be said of us after a while. 
 
 " His servants shall serve Him." That is what 
 
 they do here too — they serve Him. We are set 
 
 here to toil. Our hands are full of tasks. Our 
 
 work is never done. Paul loved to call himself 
 
 103 
 
104 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 the servant of Christ. He belonged to Christ 
 altogether. Once he gathered all the creeds of 
 his life into one great phrase — " Whose I am, 
 and whom I serve." The Master's disciples are 
 called and sent out to do their Lord's work in 
 this world. All our work, even what we call 
 secular work, belongs to our serving of Christ. 
 " Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in 
 the name of the Lord Jesus." The tasks that fill 
 our hands through the long days, all are done for 
 Christ, if we are really living for Him. We are 
 always serving Him, not only when we are 
 engaged in some spiritual service, but also when 
 we are attending to our business affairs. We all 
 have some little part to do also in advancing our 
 Master's kingdom. We are to help to carry the 
 gospel to every creature. Ease is not to be 
 thought of while we stay here. 
 
 But some people suppose that this life of ser- 
 vice is only for the earth, and that it will be no 
 longer required when we pass into the other life. 
 Heaven is thought of by many as a place of 
 absolute rest, where the inhabitants will have 
 nothing more to do forever. Indeed, in one of 
 the beatitudes of the book of The Revelation we 
 are told of the blessed dead that when they die in 
 the Lord they rest from their labors. But the 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 105 
 
 word " labors " here does not mean things we do 
 in love for our Master. It has in it the idea of 
 painful toils, cares, anxieties, sufferings. Much 
 of earth's work is hard, sometimes bitter. It is 
 often unrequited or poorly requited. It is bur- 
 densome and oppressive. Many good people 
 suffer injustice at the hands of others. There are 
 those also who are compelled to work in pain and 
 ill health all their days. Then many spend their 
 lives in toil and have nothing to show for it at the 
 end, nothing gathered for times of adversity and 
 need. A great deal of the world's work is full of 
 labor and sorrow. 
 
 What the words mean is that the servants of 
 Christ shall rest from all that is hard, burden- 
 some, and painful in earth's experience. Nothing 
 of fret or pain or anguish can enter heaven. 
 Whatever is burdensome or oppressive in labor 
 will be left behind, but work will be a feature of 
 the heavenly life. We are not going into a world 
 of idleness when we leave this world. Indeed, 
 heaven would not be a heaven to us if we could 
 never do anything there. For even in this world 
 the sweetest, deepest, purest joy of life is that 
 which we find in doing good, in serving others. 
 This was Christ's own sweetest joy. He came to 
 earth to serve. He loved, and love's deepest joy 
 
106 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 always comes in helping, blessing, comforting 
 others. He bequeathed His joy to us, and so we 
 find our holiest joy, as He found His, in serving. If 
 we have not learned this secret, we have one of life's 
 sweetest lessons yet to learn in beginning to serve. 
 There is a beautiful legend which tells that one 
 shepherd was kept at home watching a fevered 
 guest the night the angels came to Bethlehem 
 with the announcement of the birth of Jesus. 
 The other shepherds saw the heavenly host, 
 heard their song, and beheld the glory. Return- 
 ing home, their hearts were wonderfully elated. 
 But all the night Shemuel sat alone by the rest- 
 less sufferer and waited. His fellow-shepherds 
 pitied him because he had missed the vision and 
 the glory which they had seen. But in his patient 
 serving he had found blessing and reward of his 
 own. He had missed, indeed, the splendor of 
 that night in the fields, and in his serving he gave 
 up his own life, for the fever-poison touched him 
 and he died. But he had tasted the joy of sacri- 
 fice, and then his eyes saw a more wondrous glory 
 when he entered the Divine presence. 
 
 " Shemuel, by the fever-bed, 
 Touched by beckoning hands that led, 
 Died and saw the Uncreated ; 
 All his fellows lived and waited." 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 107 
 
 So it always is in life in this world. Those who 
 sit by fever-beds, denying themselves the ease 
 and indulgence which others seek, while they 
 minister to human need, seem to miss much that 
 is very beautiful. Their gentle ministry keeps 
 them away from places of privilege, even from 
 scenes of spiritual ecstasy. Their duty is to nurse 
 the sick. Or they are mothers, caring for little 
 children. While at their common tasks, they see 
 not the angel hosts nor hear their songs. They 
 are kept away from scenes of earthly gladness 
 and joy. Their mission is to serve. But mean- 
 while they have their own reward — the sweet, 
 sacred joy which comes into the hearts of those 
 who love and serve in Christ's name. 
 
 " His servants shall serve Him." That is, in 
 the other life. They have served Him here, and 
 they will continue to serve Him in heaven. 
 What their work there will be we do not know. 
 We are told that the saints in glory will be as the 
 angels. Angels serve. They are ministering 
 spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salva- 
 tion in this world. In the Scriptures we have 
 many glimpses of angels at their work — cheering, 
 helping, delivering, guiding God's children — 
 always serving. If we are to be as the angels, we 
 shall serve. Angels are sent everywhere to carry 
 
108 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 messages of comfort, cheer, and help. Why may 
 we not be sent to this or other worlds on min- 
 istries of love ? 
 
 We are told that in heaven we shall be like 
 Christ, and He served. His life was an unbroken 
 service of love. Of all the portraits of the Master 
 in the New Testament, none is more characteristic 
 than that one which shows Him girt with the 
 towel and with the basin in His hand, washing 
 His disciples' feet. " I am among you as He that 
 serveth," He said. He went about His tasks 
 doing good. His days were all filled with kind- 
 ness. We have accounts of a few great miracles 
 wrought by Him, but all His hours and moments 
 were filled with little words and deeds of love. 
 He was always serving. For every one He met 
 His heart yearned ; to every pain and sorrow His 
 compassion went out ; and to every human need 
 His hand was reached forth to help. He said He 
 came to do the work of His Father, and that was 
 love's work. He passed into heaven at the time 
 of His ascension, but He did not cease to show 
 kindness. Luke, referring to Christ's stay on 
 earth, says that in that time He " began both to 
 do and to teach." He only began His ministry 
 of love. We do not see Him now going on our 
 streets helping, comforting, cheering, but He has 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 109 
 
 never ceased His activity in this world. He con- 
 tinues to serve. 
 
 " So still, dear Lord, in every place 
 Thou standest by the toiling folk, 
 
 With love and pity in Thy face, 
 
 And givest of Thy help and grace 
 
 To those who meekly bear the yoke." 
 
 If we are to be like Christ in heaven, surely we 
 shall serve too as He does. We have one in- 
 stance in the Scriptures of saints from heaven 
 coming back to earth to serve. Jesus was setting 
 out on His journey to the cross. The burden on 
 Him was very heavy. His heart was tender and 
 the road before Him was indeed a sorrowful way. 
 He did not shrink, but He needed comfort. So 
 one night two glorious beings were sent from 
 their abode in heaven to talk with Him and to 
 encourage Him. These were Moses and Elijah. 
 They had been centuries at home with God. 
 Now they came back to earth to strengthen the 
 Son of man in His hour of need. 
 
 May not this one recorded instance of such 
 serving mean to us that others who have passed 
 into heaven also shall be sent back to earth on 
 errands of love to those who need them in their 
 struggles and sorrows ? We do not know — we 
 cannot tell, but if such service was rendered once. 
 
no OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 may it not be done again ? May not others of 
 Christ's servants be sent to this world to bring 
 help, cheer, encouragement to those who are weary 
 or troubled or faint? Of this, at least, we are 
 sure — that in heaven " His servants shall serve 
 Him." Death does not interrupt life, nor does it 
 end life's work. We shall have more love in our 
 hearts in heaven than we ever have here, and love 
 always serves. Love would die if it had no 
 opportunity to help, to render aid, to do good. 
 All our training in this world is toward useful- 
 ness. We are taught that we are to do good to 
 all men, to bear one another's burdens, to be sons 
 of consolation, to help the weak, to guard and 
 keep other lives. Surely all this training is not 
 for earth only. In some way in heaven we will 
 continue serving Christ by serving others. Indeed, 
 at the best, our life here is but a school of prac- 
 tice in which we are trained for the real work 
 which it will be ours to do in the immortal years. 
 " His servants shall serve Him." 
 
 " And they shall see His face." In this world 
 we do not see. our Lord's face. He is with us, 
 but we do not see Him. We endure as seeing 
 Him who is invisible, but no one ever saw God in 
 this world. The Bible tells us, however, that we 
 shall have the "beatific vision" in heaven. We 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD in 
 
 have this in Job : " After my skin, even this body, 
 is destroyed, then without my flesh shall I see 
 God." In one of the Psalms we read : — 
 
 " As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness ; 
 I shall be satisfied, when I awake > with beholding Thy form." 
 
 One of our Lord's Beatitudes reads : " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." 
 John says that in heaven we shall be like Christ, 
 for we shall see Him as He is. One day we shall 
 slip away from these scenes of earth. Our eyes 
 shall be closed on all familiar things. Next 
 moment — O rapture ! they will be opened on the 
 unveiled face of Jesus Christ. v That is what death 
 will be to you if you are God's child. You may 
 dread it, but it is only going to look at your 
 Redeemer's face. 
 
 ' ' From the dust of the weary highway, 
 
 From the smart of sorrow' s rod, 
 Into the royal presence, 
 
 They are bidden as guests of God. 
 The veil from their eyes is taken, 
 
 Sweet mysteries they are shown ; 
 Their doubt and fears are over, 
 
 For they know as they are known." 
 
 The bliss of heaven will be largely in being 
 with Christ, in seeing His face, in enjoying His 
 companionship, His friendship. 
 
H2 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 The words, " they shall see His face/' suggest 
 that this will be the inspiration of the heavenly 
 service. We know what a benediction the face 
 of a loved and honored human friend is to us as 
 we go out on any hard task or dangerous duty. 
 There are men whose " God bless you " makes us 
 braver and stronger for days. One said, speaking 
 of a dear and noble friend, " To meet him in the 
 morning and have his smile brightens all the 
 hours of the day for me." What will it be in 
 heaven to look into Christ's face of love in the 
 morning and to have His smile ! 
 
 To see the face of Christ is also a token of high 
 honor. Not many people are admitted to the pres- 
 ence of a king. Only his favorites and those high 
 in rank have this privilege. But in heaven all Christ's 
 servants shall see His face. That is, they shall be 
 admitted to the closest fellowship and shall have 
 all the privileges of intimate friends. 
 
 What a blessed moment it will be when we are 
 ushered into the presence of Christ ! No wonder 
 Saint Paul says, " To depart and be with Christ 
 . ... is very far better." This is a beautiful 
 world — it is part of our Father's house. It is 
 wondrously adorned. It is sweet to live here, 
 with human love to surround us with its gentle- 
 ness. But it will be very far better to be with 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 113 
 
 Christ, serving close by His side, looking into 
 His face as we come and go. Miss Willard's last 
 words were, " How beautiful to be with God ! " 
 and one writes : — 
 
 " Then let it fade, this dream of earth, 
 When I have done my life-work here, 
 Or long, or short, as seemeth best — 
 What matters, so God's will appear? 
 
 " I will not fear to launch my bark 
 Upon the darkly rolling flood, 
 'Tis but to pierce the mist — and then, 
 How beautiful to be with God ! ' ' 
 
 " His name shall be on their foreheads. " l 
 
 1 Recently I received a letter from Henry G. Weston, D.D., 
 LL. D., President of the Crozer Baptist Theological Semi- 
 nary. Dr. Weston is eminent as one of the most honored ex- 
 positors of the Bible in this country. Well past eighty years 
 of age, he is still active in all good work for his Master. He is 
 a man greatly beloved. His friendship for me, shown in many 
 ways along the years, has been an inspiration and a help beyond 
 measure. In the letter referred to, Dr. Weston writes : — 
 
 " My thoughts have clustered at odd times about Revelation 
 xxii. 3, 4. ■ His servants shall . . . see His face ; and His name 
 shall be on their foreheads.' The reflection will be visible to all 
 who look upon them, but will be unseen by themselves. That 
 they are Christ's is evident to all, but of this they themselves are 
 unconscious." 
 
 This sermon has been prepared, therefore, at Dr. Weston's 
 request. The thought which he specially notes regarding the 
 name on the forehead is very beautiful. 
 8 
 
ii4 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Name in the Bible stands for character. A man's 
 name gathers into itself all that the man is. 
 When you hear the name of any one mentioned, 
 any one you know, or any one of whom you have 
 heard much, the man's whole personality rises 
 before your mind. So the name of God includes 
 all that is revealed of God's character. To us it 
 means all that God is to us. When it is said here 
 that " His name shall be on their foreheads," the 
 thought is that the Divine likeness is imprinted 
 there. 
 
 There is evidently a close connection, too, be- 
 tween what is said in the second clause of the 
 verse and the third. " His servants . . . shall see 
 His face ; and " therefore " His name shall be on 
 their foreheads." While His servants look upon 
 the brightness of their Master's face its beauty is 
 imprinted upon them. That is what the beloved 
 disciple says in one of his epistles, " We shall be 
 like Him ; for we shall see Him even as He is." 
 Looking upon Christ makes us like Him. 
 
 Saint Paul teaches the same truth in a remark- 
 able passage in one of his epistles. " We all, 
 with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the 
 glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, even as from the 
 Lord the Spirit." This transformation is not a 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 115 
 
 heavenly matter altogether — it will be completed 
 there, when, all veils removed, we shall look 
 directly into the face of Christ ; but it is something 
 for our earthly life too. It begins here, and it 
 goes on, the likeness coming out ever more and 
 more fully and clearly as we know more and 
 more about Christ. Companionship with Him, 
 communion with Him, looking into His face, 
 prints upon us His likeness. Every day, if we 
 live as we should, some new line of His beauty 
 comes out on our faces. 
 
 But we must notice where the name of God is 
 printed — " on their foreheads." The suggestion 
 of Dr. Weston is very beautiful — the name is 
 where others can see it, but where it is not seen 
 by the person himself. You cannot see your 
 own forehead, and you are not aware of the 
 nobleness or the brightness that others see there. 
 This unconsciousness of the radiance on the face 
 is part of the splendor ; being aware of it would 
 dim the brightness. We know that when any 
 one is conscious of the beauty or the refinement 
 stamped on his face, a great part of the beauty 
 or the refinement is gone. So self-consciousness 
 mars spiritual loveliness. When a man knows 
 that he is humble, he is no longer humble. The 
 man who is truly poor in spirit is not himself 
 
n6 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 aware of the shining of his life, the splendor of 
 his deeds, the power of his words, or of his minis- 
 tries. The best people are always the least con- 
 scious of their goodness and worth. Others see 
 the shining, but they do not. 
 
 There is a beautiful legend 1 which tells of a 
 saintly man who was greatly beloved of the 
 angels, who had seen much of his godly life on 
 the earth. The angels asked God to give their 
 favorite some new power, some fresh mark of the 
 Divine favor, some new gift or ability, which would 
 make him still more useful. They were told 
 to see the man and ask him what special power 
 he would like to have bestowed upon him. The 
 angels visited him and asked him what gift he 
 would choose. He said he was content and 
 wanted nothing more. They pressed him to 
 name something which God might do for him 
 or give to him. Would he not like power to 
 work miracles ? He said No — that was Christ's 
 work. Would he not like power to lead many 
 souls to Christ? He answered No — it was the 
 Holy Spirit's work to lead men to the Saviour. 
 
 The angels in their eagerness still begged him 
 to name something which they might ask God to 
 grant to him. At last he answered that if he 
 
 1 Used in the author's " The Master's Blesseds," chapter i. 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 117 
 
 must choose any new power he would like the 
 ability to do a great deal of good among men 
 without even knowing it. So it was granted that 
 from that day his shadow, when it fell behind him 
 where he could not see it, had wondrous healing 
 power, but when it fell before his face where he 
 could see it, it had no such power. 
 
 The legend teaches its own lesson. When a 
 Christian is aware of the beauty of the Lord 
 upon him, the beauty is dimmed. We are pre- 
 pared for the largest usefulness when we are 
 unconscious of our preparation. " His name 
 shall be on their foreheads/' Others will see it 
 shining there. This will be true in the heavenly 
 life. "We shall be like Him." All the re- 
 deemed and all the angels will see the glory of 
 the Lord on the face of each saint. 
 
 The same is true also of every sincere believer 
 in this world. He bears the image of his Lord 
 upon his life. This is not some mystic mark 
 that no one can understand — it is the beauty of 
 holiness. When we study the gospels and see 
 Christ Himself, we learn what that name is which 
 shines on the forehead of His friends. It is 
 nothing mysterious or occult — it is patience, 
 gentleness, thoughtfulness, humility, kindness, 
 the spirit of forgiveness, meekness, peace, joy, 
 
n8 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 goodness. People have no difficulty in discover- 
 ing the marks of Jesus on those who wear them. 
 But the holy ones themselves do not know that 
 this blessed name is burning with such brightness 
 on their brows. They are surprised when others 
 speak of the beauty of the Lord upon them. 
 
 We remember it was said of Moses, when he 
 came down from the mount from speaking with 
 God, that his face was shining — the Divine glory 
 lingered there. His face was so bright that the 
 people were afraid to come near him, and he had to 
 put a veil over it while he talked with them. But it 
 is said also that Moses knew not that his face shone. 
 
 We get a lesson in humility. Let us not think 
 of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. 
 Let us not think of our goodness, our devout- 
 ness, our worthy deeds, our helpful services at 
 all. Especially, let us never talk of our virtues, 
 our piety, of what we have done. We should 
 seek to be full of the Spirit of God, but the 
 Spirit does not mean to glorify us — He would 
 honor Christ. We are to pray, " Let the beauty 
 of the Lord our God be upon us " ; but we 
 should seek to have it shining where we may not 
 see it, where it may honor God Himself. We 
 are too apt to be conscious of our power and to 
 assert ourselves before men in ways that hinder 
 
THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 119 
 
 our usefulness and lessen our influence. " Let 
 your light shine before men," said the Master, 
 " that they may see your good works, and glorify 
 your Father " — not you. 
 
 How shall we reach the blessedness of which 
 these words from the Apocalypse give us a 
 glimpse ? These servants of God, serving Him, 
 beholding His face, wearing His glory on their 
 foreheads, seem far beyond us. They have 
 climbed up the mountain to its summit while we 
 are still toiling away among the lowest foothills. 
 How can we ever attain the lofty height where 
 they appear? There is only one way — Christ. 
 This blessedness must begin here or we never 
 shall reach it there. Heaven must come down to 
 us, into our hearts, or we never can enter heaven. 
 These noble features of the heavenly home are 
 for the Christian life of earth as well as the per- 
 fected life of glory. We must begin now to 
 realize them. We must be Christ's here — doing 
 His will, going where He bids us go, busy in 
 ministries of love in His name. We must see 
 His face, dwell in His presence, enjoy His friend- 
 ship here. We must bear His name on our 
 foreheads, these common days, where the world 
 may see it. We must be Christ's now or we 
 cannot enter Christ's home and glory hereafter. 
 
VII 
 
 THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 
 
" David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me water 
 to drink of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! And 
 the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, 
 and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the 
 gate, and took it, and brought it to David : but he would not 
 drink thereof, but poured it out unto Jehovah. And he said, Be 
 it far from me, O Jehovah, that I should do this : shall I drink 
 the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? 
 therefore he would not drink it." — II. Samuel xxiii. 15—17. 
 
 " Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; 
 Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth ; 
 For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice ; 
 And whoso suffers most has most to give." 
 
 — Ugo BassVs Sermon. 
 
VII 
 
 THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 
 
 The story of David longing for water from the 
 well by the gate is very beautiful. There are 
 several interesting and profitable suggestions in 
 it. One is the influence of childhood memories 
 and associations over the life in the days of 
 strength and maturity. David and his men were 
 in the cave of Adullam. Over yonder was Beth- 
 lehem, the home of David's boyhood. He knew 
 every spot. He had played over the fields. He 
 had led his sheep into every nook, along every 
 path. Probably it was not so much thirst for 
 water as homesickness that forced from him that 
 day the cry, " Oh that one would give me water 
 to drink of the well . . . which is by the gate !" 
 
 It is easy to understand David's longing. The 
 memories of our childhood home tug at our 
 hearts through all our years. There is great 
 keeping power in such love for the old home. 
 While the picture of the familiar rooms, the faces 
 at the fireside, at the table, and at the family 
 
 123 
 
124 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 worship, and the recollections of the lessons, the 
 songs, the talks — while these abide, with their 
 sacred suggestions and associations, it is not easy 
 to drift far away into wrong. The heart that 
 cherishes no such memories, recalls no such a 
 past, in which there is no hallowed shrine of 
 recollection, has lost much. 
 
 Another suggestion in this story is the love of 
 these three men for their chief. The moment 
 they heard his wish for a drink of water from the 
 old well they determined to get it for him. The 
 well was in the hands of the enemy, and it was 
 impossible to bring the water without peril and 
 cost. Yet so strong was their love for David 
 that they went through armed ranks and brought 
 it. This reminds us of what Christ did to bring 
 to His friends the water of life from the old well 
 of salvation. One of the noblest of the old 
 litanies tells the story well : — " By the cold crib 
 in which Thou didst lie, have mercy upon us. 
 By Thy flight into Egypt and all the pains Thou 
 didst suffer there ; by Thy thirst, hunger, cold, and 
 heat, in this vale of Thy misery ; by the inward 
 and great heaviness which Thou hadst when 
 praying in the garden, and by the spitting on 
 Thee and the scourging; by Thy purple gar- 
 ments and Thy crown of thorns ; by the nailing 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 125 
 
 of Thy right hand to the cross, and the shedding 
 of Thy most precious blood ; by the nailing of 
 Thy left hand, and that most holy wound — 
 purge, enlighten, and reconcile us to God. By the 
 lifting up of Thy most holy body on the cross ; 
 by the bitterness of Thy death and its intolerable 
 pains ; by Thy glorious resurrection ; by Thy 
 glorious and wondrous ascension — have mercy 
 upon us!" 
 
 Everything about our redemption reminds us 
 of what it cost our Saviour to bring it to us. He 
 stopped at no sacrifice, because He loved us to 
 the uttermost. 
 
 Then there is a suggestion here of what other 
 friends besides Christ do for those they love. 
 Next to the love of Christ, the most precious 
 thine in all the world is human love. And how 
 often does it repeat the story of devotion, and at 
 cost and danger bring cups of water from far-off 
 springs for those who are thirsty ! We do not 
 begin to know what we owe to our friends who 
 are always doing things for us. 
 
 Then there is a suggestion of our duty to those 
 about us who have their longings, their needs, 
 their hungers, their discouragements, their sor- 
 rows. The cry of thirsty hearts falls continually 
 upon our ears. " Oh that one would give me 
 
126 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 water to drink of the well of Bethlehem ! " There 
 are many unhappy people, unsatisfied people, in 
 this world — there are those who are in sorrow, 
 those who hunger for love. We may not hear 
 their cries, for they cry in silence. But we are 
 needed continually to run to the well of Beth- 
 lehem to bring cups of water for those about us 
 who are thirsty. 
 
 There is a society in one of our great cities, 
 formed to help the poor, whose aim is said to be 
 to give to every family a friend — some one who 
 will take an interest in the household, visit the 
 home, and bring into it human sympathy, love, 
 cheer, and gentle kindness. We never can know 
 what it means to some families to give them a 
 friend — true, wise, strong, and helpful. No other 
 way of helping people anywhere, rich or poor, 
 refined or rude, good or bad, is half so Divine as 
 by being a friend to them. One of the fine things 
 we learn from the story of Saint Paul is the duty 
 and privilege of being a friend to men. His heart 
 craved friends, but he also longed to be a friend 
 to every one. He helped people by becoming 
 their friend. We are taught continually that we 
 ought to love Christ — and the lesson cannot be 
 taught too often or too earnestly, nor the blessing 
 of loving Christ extolled too highly ; but if we 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 127 
 
 would do any real good we must love people too 
 in this world. That is the way Christ helps 
 men — by loving them. Then if we really love 
 Christ, we cannot but love others — the one love 
 always begets the other. 
 
 An ancient writer said of another : " He was a 
 friend to man, and he lived in a house by the side 
 of a road." He lived by the roadside because he 
 wanted to be near people, that he might be their 
 friend and help them. There are some who do 
 not care to bother with others. They like to be 
 very conventional neighbors. They do not want 
 to be troubled in helping people. But they do 
 not know what opportunities of doing good they 
 are missing — what opportunities also of joy for 
 themselves. The deepest happiness in this world 
 is found in being a friend to others. It was the 
 joy of helping men, of saving them, of serving 
 them, of being their friend, of bringing them cups 
 of water from the well of heaven, that filled the 
 heart of Christ and enabled Him to endure the 
 cross and despise the shame. 
 
 A church visitor went every month to take 
 some money to a poor woman who lived alone 
 and was not able to leave her little house. The 
 old woman received the visitor very kindly, and 
 as she was going away, said, " I thank you very 
 
128 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 much for the money — it will pay my rent ; but I 
 thank you far more for your visit. What I want 
 most is not money, but folks." Her heart was 
 hungry for human sympathy. If you get near 
 enough to people, you will hear every day long- 
 ings and yearnings like this of David, " Oh that 
 one would give me water to drink of the well of 
 Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! " 
 
 No other well in all the world has in it such 
 water as has the well of Bethlehem which is by 
 the gate. This water is the love of Christ, the 
 grace of God, of which if a man drink he shall 
 never thirst any more. When you run to this 
 well of Bethlehem you will find no armed guards 
 to keep you away. Sometimes in the country 
 you will come to a wayside spring with a little 
 cup hanging by it. The cup means that the water 
 is free and that whosoever is thirsty may drink. 
 You may drink freely yourself from the well of 
 Bethlehem. But the water is not for you only. 
 There is another near you who is thirsty too, 
 waiting for you to give the cup to him in the 
 Master's name. 
 
 " That plenty but reproaches me 
 Which leaves my brother bare ; 
 Not wholly glad my heart can be 
 While his is bowed with care." 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 129 
 
 We have another suggestion in the way David 
 received the water which his friends brought to 
 him. He said their heroic love and achievement 
 for him made the water sacred, hallowed it. He 
 dared not use it for the mere gratifying of his own 
 personal thirst. It could be fitly honored only by 
 giving it to God. So he poured it out as an offer- 
 ing, an oblation, to God. David's act has its sug- 
 gestions for us. 
 
 One is that the best part of a noble deed is its 
 motive. The finest thing in kindness is not the 
 act, which may be very simple, but the thoughtful 
 love which inspires the kindness. An old writer 
 said, " You can paint fire, but you cannot paint 
 heat." It is not the mere flame as a picture that 
 warms you, but the warmth, which you cannot 
 see, which makes no picture. The act of the 
 three brave men was heroic. It would have been 
 heroic if done as an adventure or to receive praise 
 or reward of men. But the noble quality in the 
 deed was not merely what people saw — the dash 
 through the enemy's lines, the dipping up of the 
 water in the face of the guards, and the return 
 again with it to the cave. The really noble thing 
 in the act was the love for David which inspired 
 it. 
 
 Always, in all life, it is true that it is the motive 
 9 
 
130 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 which gives value to our acts. One man builds a 
 hospital or a home for orphans. He does it be- 
 cause he wants to be known as generous and 
 philanthropic. The motive which God sees is 
 self-love, the desire to get honor from men. The 
 deed itself seems very large to human eyes. It is 
 a noble charity. It will be praised by men. The 
 newspapers will make a great deal of it, and the 
 man who built it will be honored by his fellows. 
 But large as the great institution bulks in the 
 world, all that appears in God's eyes is a little 
 picture of a man trying to glorify himself, to get 
 his name honored. There will be a good deal of 
 shrinking and shriveling when some day we get 
 to see all things as they are. Some large things 
 — large in earthly seeming — will be pitifully small 
 then. 
 
 But there is another side to this. A lowly man 
 does a little thing — a little act in itself. It is only 
 a simple kindness — a cup of cold water given to 
 one who is thirsty. But the motive is love, and 
 that makes it shine in bright radiance, like a trans- 
 figuration, in heaven's sight. Great gifts were 
 dropped into the treasury that day when the 
 Master was watching how men gave. But the 
 only gift He praised was the widow's offering of a 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 131 
 
 farthing. He said it was greater than any of the 
 others. The motive made the difference. 
 
 The same is true in all life. We should not do 
 good to get men's praise. If we work from this 
 motive, we shall have just what we work for, but 
 nothing else. Men will praise us, but God will 
 not. All there really is of any work, even the 
 greatest, is the part that lies hidden in the worker's 
 heart. Many men's lives, therefore, are very 
 much smaller in heaven's sight than they appear 
 to their fellows to be. Then there are many 
 whose lives are a thousand times more beautiful, 
 more radiant and noble as God sees them, than 
 they are as the world sees them. Love in them 
 glorifies them. 
 
 This truth has wide application. It is not the 
 part which men see that is most important in any 
 one's life. Love glorified the deed of bravery 
 wrought by David's three friends and made it 
 holy as a sacrament. It is love that glorifies 
 whatever is pleasing to God in our lives. One 
 person sings a hymn and it is only a common 
 song breathed into the air. Another standing 
 close by sings it and it is holy worship, and 
 carries up to God a heart's incense of praise. 
 One performs an act of kindness from a selfish 
 motive, and while it may give comfort to one or 
 
132 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 to many it is only a common deed. Another 
 performs an act just like it, but with love as its 
 inspiration, and it is a sacrifice to God, acceptable 
 and pleasing to Him. The difference is in the 
 hearts of those who perform the deeds. We 
 would better do even the smallest things in love 
 and thus lift them up into radiant beauty than do 
 large and conspicuous things to glorify ourselves. 
 There is an eastern story of a king who built a 
 great temple at his own cost, no other one being 
 allowed to do even the smallest part of the work. 
 The king's name was put upon the temple as the 
 builder of it. But, strange to say, when the dedi- 
 cation day came it was seen that a poor widow's 
 name was there in place of the king's. The king 
 was angry and gave command that the woman 
 bearing the name on the scroll should be found. 
 They discovered her at last among the very poor 
 and brought her before the king. He demanded 
 of her what she had done toward the building of 
 the temple. She said, " Nothing." When pressed 
 to remember anything she had done, she said 
 that one day when she saw the oxen drawing the 
 great stones past her cottage, exhausted in the 
 heat and very weary, she had in pity given them 
 some wisps of hay. And this simple kindness to 
 dumb animals, prompted by a heart's compassion, 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 133 
 
 weighed more in God's sight than all the king's 
 vast outlay of money. What we truly do for 
 Christ and in love is glorious in His sight. 
 
 There is another suggestion in David's way of 
 receiving the water. He would not even taste it 
 himself. He gave it to God. That which made 
 the water so sacred in David's sight was its cost 
 and the love that prompted the heroic act. We 
 get the lesson, that whatever comes to us through 
 the pain and peril of others, or through blood 
 and sacrifice, is thereby made sacred, and should 
 not be used in any self-indulgence, but should be 
 given to God. 
 
 The story of national life illustrates this princi- 
 ple. Progress is costly. Whatever is great and 
 noble and worthy is the fruit of sacrifice. It is the 
 story of David's cup of water over again — it is the 
 blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their 
 lives, or who gave their lives. Our great Chris- 
 tian nations are what they are to-day because of 
 long records of sacrifice. 
 
 There is a picture which tells the story of a 
 troop of soldiers in northern India. They 
 marched forth bravely in the faultless attire of a 
 holiday. Their guns were polished, their gloves 
 were spotless in their whiteness. A fortnight 
 passed and there had come no word from these 
 
134 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 brave men. One morning the sentinel on the 
 wall saw a solitary horseman on the horizon. 
 Slowly he moved along the road. The garrison 
 went out to meet him, supposing it must be a 
 messenger from the absent army. Evidently 
 some misfortune had befallen this soldier. His 
 horse was so weary that its head drooped almost 
 to the ground. The messenger himself, it was 
 seen, had been hurt. A crimson cloth was bound 
 round his forehead. His hair was matted with 
 blood. His hands were wounded. He was 
 faint, almost unconscious. As the men of the 
 garrison drew near, the officer in the lead shouted : 
 " The army ! What news of the army ? " The 
 soldier, rousing himself from his half stupor, and 
 lifting his bleeding hand to put back his matted 
 locks, replied: "The army! Why, I am the 
 army ! " He was the only man left to come back 
 of all that gay company that had gone forth. 
 
 This has been the story of many a patriotic 
 army. Thousands went forth and only a little 
 handful returned. We should not forget the cost 
 of the blessings, the liberties, the institutions, the 
 prosperities which mean so much in our best 
 modern life. What did David do with the water 
 whose cost made it holy ? He gave it to God. 
 An element of all worthy patriotism is loyalty to 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 135 
 
 God. Good citizenship is part of all full-rounded 
 religion. It is not enough for Christian men to 
 be honest and true and incorruptible — they must 
 be positive forces for good in the community in 
 which they live. We should be strong for God 
 and for truth and right. 
 
 " Be strong ! 
 We are not here to play, to dream, to drift ; 
 We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
 Shun not the struggle ; face it. 'Tis God's fight. 
 
 " Be strong ! 
 Say not the days are evil — ' Who's to blame ? ' — 
 And fold the hands and acquiesce. O shame ! 
 Stand up, speak out and bravely, in God' s name. 
 
 " Be strong ! 
 It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong, 
 How hard the battle goes, the day, how long ; 
 Faint not, fight on ! To-morrow comes the song." 
 
 If the cost of our national blessings makes 
 them so sacred, what shall we say of the bless- 
 ings of Christianity ? They come to us without 
 price ; but there was One who paid an infinite 
 price to procure them for us. Dare we spend on 
 ourselves these precious gifts of redeemed life ? 
 We will deal with them worthily only when we 
 give them all to God. 
 
136 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 " I will away and find my God, 
 And what I dare not keep ask Him to take, 
 And taking, love's sweet sacrifice to make; 
 Then, like a wave, the sorrow and the pain 
 High heaven with glory flood — 
 For them, for all, a splendid gain." 
 
 This oldtime story suggests to us also what are 
 the really great things in life, the things that 
 endure. Noble deeds are great. It has been a 
 long time since those three friends of David's 
 went forth on their brave errand. But the world 
 has been blessed all these thirty centuries by the 
 story of their heroism. The telling of the story 
 again to-day has started noble impulses in our 
 breasts, and we will be better to-morrow for 
 learning anew the devotion of these heroic men. 
 
 Another of the great things of life is service, 
 service prompted by love. Life is made worth 
 while only by love. The heroism in David's 
 men was splendid, but it was their love for their 
 chief that gave the true glory to their deed. The 
 things we do for love are the things that will live. 
 " Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and 
 the greatest of these is love. ,, All that love does 
 is immortal. 
 
 Another great thing is worship ; that is, the 
 consecration of life's avails and fruits to God. We 
 
THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 137 
 
 are not living truly till we recognize our supreme 
 obligation to God. To leave God out of our life 
 is to leave out blessing, joy, hope, and heaven. 
 No life has found its true place in the universe till 
 it has given itself to God. Then day by day, 
 whatever new gift, power, or possession comes to 
 us, we should promptly lay it on God's altar. We 
 become great only when we link our little lives to 
 the great infinite Life. 
 
 The life that is given up to God in true devo- 
 tion need fear nothing. We may have our sor- 
 rows, our disappointments, our losses, but if all 
 our life is in the hands of God, no harm can come 
 to us. In all the events and experiences of our 
 strangest days it is life, character, that God is 
 making in us. Very beautiful is the figure of the 
 loom. God is the weaver. He has before Him 
 the pattern into which He would fashion our 
 lives. Some threads are white, some are dark, 
 but the great Weaver will blend them so that the 
 finished work will be beautiful. 
 
 " Children of yesterday, 
 Heirs of to-morrow, 
 What are you weaving ? 
 Labor or sorrow ? 
 Look at your looms again ; 
 
138 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Faster and faster 
 Fly the great shuttles 
 Prepared by the Master. 
 Life's is the loom ; 
 Room for it — room. 
 
 " Children of yesterday, 
 Heirs of to-morrow, 
 Lighten the labor 
 And sweeten the sorrow ; 
 Now, while the shuttles fly 
 Faster and faster, 
 Up and be at it — 
 At work with the Master ; 
 He stands at your loom — 
 Room for Him — room. 
 
 " Children of yesterday, 
 Heirs of to-morrow, 
 Look at your fabric 
 Of labor and sorrow, 
 Seamy and dark 
 With despair and disaster ; 
 Turn it — and lo, 
 The design of the Master ! 
 The Lord's at the loom ; 
 Room for Him — room." 
 
VIII 
 GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
"Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." — Ephesians iv. 30. 
 
 " Spirit of purity and grace, 
 
 Our weakness, pitying, see : 
 Oh, make our hearts Thy dwelling place, 
 And worthier Thee." 
 
VIII 
 
 GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 We are exhorted not to grieve the Divine 
 Spirit. So the Spirit is a person, not a mere 
 influence. You cannot grieve an influence. You 
 may resist it, but it will not care, will not feel 
 hurt. You can grieve a person, however, give 
 him pain, and the Holy Spirit is a person with 
 feelings, affections, and a heart that can be pained, 
 like your mother's. 
 
 The Holy Spirit is also your friend. You can- 
 not grieve a person who dislikes you or is indif- 
 ferent to you. But when one loves you, cares 
 for you, is deeply interested in you, you grieve 
 him if you do not trust him, if you do not prove 
 faithful and true, if you treat him ungratefully 
 or unkindly, if you slight or despise his love. 
 There are children who grieve their parents. 
 There are persons who grieve their friends. 
 Perhaps there never is love that is not hurt 
 sometimes, many times — we all are so heedless, 
 so ignorant, so thoughtless, such blunderers in 
 
 living and loving. 
 
 141 
 
142 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Now we may grieve the Holy Spirit of God, 
 for He loves us. We do not think often of the 
 love of the Spirit. We know that the Father 
 loves us, for He gave His only begotten Son to 
 redeem us. We know that the Son of God loves 
 us : His coming to this world in the Incarnation 
 and all His wonderful life of service and sacrifice 
 for us proved His love. But we do not speak 
 much of the love of the Spirit. Yet His love is 
 no less than that of the Father or the Son. 
 Think how He follows us patiently and un- 
 weariedly in all our wanderings, through all our 
 unfaithfulness, never giving us up until He gets 
 us home at last. Think how He makes us His 
 companions, entering into closest relations of 
 friendship with us. 
 
 We speak of the condescension of the Son of 
 God in coming to earth and living in a human 
 body in a world of sin and sorrow, meeting the 
 conditions of ignorance, enmity, unbelief, rejec- 
 tion, and wrong. Have you ever thought of the 
 condescension of the Holy Spirit in living with 
 us, not three years only, but continually? We 
 are told, too, that He lives in us. " Your body 
 is a temple of the Holy Spirit." What kind of 
 a place is your heart for the Holy Spirit to live 
 in ? Think of all the evil there is in it. Think 
 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 143 
 
 of the unholy thoughts, feelings, desires, affec- 
 tions, of the rebellions, the insubmissions, the 
 brood of unclean things there are in your heart. 
 Now into that heart the Holy Spirit comes, not 
 for a transient visit, as when some pure and 
 gentle woman goes into a place of wretchedness 
 and degradation for half an hour on an errand of 
 mercy, but to make His home there, to live there 
 until He has changed all the evil into good. Do 
 you not think that the love of the Holy Spirit in 
 making our hearts His home for all the years of 
 our life is quite as wonderful as was the love of 
 Christ in spending His three and thirty years in 
 this world ? The Holy Spirit loves us tenderly, 
 yearningly, infinitely. 
 
 Now we may grieve this Holy Spirit whose 
 heart is so gentle and w T ho loves us so. Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne had a little daughter called Una, who 
 often made up stories for her younger brother. 
 One day she was overheard telling him of a boy 
 who was very naughty. M He grew naughtier 
 and naughtier," said the child, " and every day 
 naughtier still, until at last — at last — he struck 
 God!" That was terrible! But there are many, 
 many people who do strike God not once only, 
 but again and again. The Holy Spirit is God. 
 " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." 
 
144 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 We must remember that this counsel is ad- 
 dressed to Christians, not to the impenitent. Of 
 course, the impenitent grieve the Holy Spirit too, 
 for He comes to them with His beseeching love, 
 and they resist His pleadings and His entreaties. 
 His mission to the impenitent is to urge them to 
 accept Jesus Christ. So long as they refuse to 
 do this, rejecting the Saviour who died for them, 
 they hurt the heart of the Holy Spirit. Mrs. 
 Stowe tells of the knocking at the door and the 
 call to open, and then in wondrously pathetic 
 words asks — 
 
 Did she open ? Doth she ? Will she ? 
 So, as wondering we behold, 
 Grows the picture to a sign, 
 Pressed upon your soul and mine ; 
 For in every breast that liveth 
 Is that strange, mysterious door ; 
 Though forsaken and betangled, 
 Ivy-gnarled and weed-bej angled, 
 Dusty, rusty, and forgotten- — 
 There the pierced hand still knocketh ; 
 And with ever-patient watching, 
 With the sad eyes true and tender, 
 With the glory-crowned hair — 
 Still a God is waiting there. 
 
 This surely is a startling picture for those who 
 have never yet accepted of Jesus Christ as their 
 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 145 
 
 personal Saviour — God kept waiting and patiently 
 knocking outside their door. It would grieve 
 you to have any one treat you so — when you had 
 gone with love in your heart to do some one 
 good, to show a great kindness — to be shut out, 
 to get no response to your knocking. Yet that 
 is the way many people treat the Holy Spirit for 
 years and years. 
 
 But the exhortation against grieving the Spirit 
 is for those who have opened the door, admitting 
 the heavenly Guest, and have then grieved Him 
 as a guest, as a friend. The connection of the 
 words is very suggestive. They stand in the 
 midst of exhortations concerning speech and con- 
 cerning unlovingness. Notice this reading : " Let 
 no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, 
 but such as is good for edifying as the need may 
 be, that it may give grace to them that hear. 
 And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." So we 
 may grieve the Spirit by our words. Jesus laid 
 great stress on speech as an expression of the 
 life. " By thy words/' he said, " thou shalt be 
 justified, and by thy words . . . condemned." 
 Saint Paul's teaching here makes it very plain 
 what kind of speech a Christian should make use 
 of. He should not use any corrupt speech, which 
 scholars say means rather worthless speech — like 
 10 
 
1 46 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 the idle words which the Master condemned. 
 What a mass of worthless words, good for noth- 
 ing, empty, vain, inept, doing nobody any good, 
 are spoken every day ! These grieve the Spirit 
 of God, for our wonderful gift of speech is given 
 to us that with it we may bless the world. 
 
 Saint Paul tells us what kind of words Chris- 
 tians should speak — such speech as is edifying as 
 the need may be, that it may give grace to them 
 that hear. Good for edifying ! That is, every 
 word we speak should be such as will give help, 
 put cheer, hope, or encouragement into others' 
 hearts — put touches of beauty on others' lives. 
 Are the words we speak these days of this kind ? 
 Do they give inspiration, encouragement, strength, 
 uplift ? Do they impart grace to those who hear 
 us ? This does not mean that all our words 
 shall be solemn and grave. Sometimes the best 
 way to minister grace to a friend is to make him 
 laugh. Humor has its place in Christian speech, 
 and without it religion would fail ofttimes in its 
 most helpful ministry. But if our best work 
 always is to make people happy, what is required 
 is that all our speech shall minister grace to those 
 who hear, make them better, truer, stronger, 
 braver, more helpful to others. There are words 
 that hurt tender hearts, and when we hurt a 
 
s 
 
 GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 147 
 
 human heart, we hurt God and grieve the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 There are other words which tell us further 
 how the lesson applies in our daily common life. 
 " Grieve not the Holy Spirit. . . . Let all bitter- 
 ness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and rail- 
 ing, be put away from you, with all malice : and 
 be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, for- 
 giving each other, even as God also in Christ 
 forgave you." 
 
 We do not know what we are doing when we 
 let bitter thoughts stay in our minds, or when we 
 speak unkind words which give pain to those 
 who love us. We are desecrating the temple in 
 us in which the Holy Spirit has His home. We 
 are hurting, grieving God, for we must remember 
 that he who wrongs one of Christ's own, wrongs 
 Christ Himself. Let us cultivate love and all the 
 gentle expressions of love. Let us remember 
 that God is love — the Holy Spirit is love. 
 Therefore only love can please Him. 
 
 We may think we have the Spirit in our hearts 
 because we are busy in Christian work, or be- 
 cause we are sound in doctrine, or because we 
 give money to good causes. Let us know also 
 that anything that is unloving in thought, or feel- 
 ing, or disposition, or act, hurts God, grieves the 
 
i 4 8 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Holy Spirit. Let us seek to make our hearts fit 
 temples for the heavenly Guest by putting out 
 all that is not loving, and welcoming love into 
 every nook and corner of our being. 
 
 But there are other ways of grieving the Spirit. 
 His work in us is to glorify Christ. He does 
 not glorify Himself, but, keeping Himself out of 
 sight, never calling attention to Himself, He 
 pours the light upon the Redeemer, that we 
 may see Him, that He may become glorious in 
 our sight, 
 
 Then the purpose of the Spirit in us is, further, 
 to have the life of Christ reproduced in us. That 
 is, all the Spirit's work in us is intended to further 
 our fashioning into the likeness of Christ. We 
 think sometimes that we are like Christ because 
 we have good manners, are polite, courteous, 
 kind, obliging, or because we are enrolled as 
 Christians in some church. These are proper 
 marks of a believer in Christ, but there are other 
 marks. " The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
 longsuffering, . kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 
 meekness, self-control." Each one of these 
 words stands for a quality that is Christlike. 
 Think of what love is as Christ interpreted it, 
 lived it out ; what peace is ; what joy is ; what 
 longsuffering is; what meekness is. Think of 
 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 149 
 
 the way Christ went through this world, loving, 
 patient, forbearing, enduring. He knew the hurts 
 of love. We think of His cross as the highest 
 expression of His love, the mountain-top of His 
 revealing of God. So, no doubt, it was. But all 
 His life, even in its smallest acts, was likewise a 
 manifestation of God. 
 
 We are not called to go to Calvary to die 
 again — there is no need for this; but we are 
 called to die on the cross, nevertheless, to die 
 continually. Loving as Christ loved is a daily 
 dying. Men must see the cross in our conduct, 
 our disposition, our treatment of others, our 
 service, our spirit of self-denying and sacrifice. 
 Whenever we fail in thus honoring Christ we 
 grieve the Holy Spirit. When we act selfishly 
 instead of unselfishly, when we are false instead 
 of true, when we show pride instead of humility, 
 when we think of our own interests before the 
 interests of Christ's kingdom, when in our rela- 
 tions with others we show an unchristlike temper, 
 we grieve the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 The great need of the Christian Church to- 
 day is not fine buildings in which to worship God, 
 not more members, not greater wealth, not larger 
 institutions — what the Church needs first and 
 most is holy life, more Christlikeness in its mem- 
 
150 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 bers. We should seek to live our faiths. We 
 should bring our living up to our professing. 
 We say we are Christians — well, let us be Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 il So, he died for his faith. That is fine — 
 More than most of us do. 
 But, say, can you add to that line 
 That he lived for it, too ? 
 
 " In his death he bore witness at last 
 As a martyr to truth ; 
 Did his life do the same in the past 
 From the days of his youth ? 
 
 " It is easy to die. Men have died 
 For a wish or a whim — 
 From bravado or passion or pride ; 
 Was it harder 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 his words with contempt. 
 
 " Was it thus that he plodded ahead, 
 Never turning aside ? 
 Then we'll talk of the life that he led— 
 Never mind how he died." 
 
 We grieve the Spirit of God when we get 
 absorbed so much in this world that we lose 
 interest in the heavenly life. A Jewish legend 
 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 151 
 
 affirms that if an angel spends seven days down 
 on the earth he becomes gross and opaque and 
 loses the power of his wings. It is true of the 
 human followers of Christ, that if they stay out 
 in the world a little while, aw r ay from the pres- 
 ence and fellowship of Christ, they will become 
 earthly, losing their spirituality, their heavenly 
 mindedness. They will also lose the power of 
 their wings and be unable to fly Godward. 
 
 There are many strong words in the New 
 Testament concerning the life of the Christian — 
 the life he ought to live in this world. We are to 
 be in the world, but not of it, said the Master. 
 We are to be filled unto all the fullness of God. 
 Our citizenship is to be in heaven. We are to 
 walk as children of light. We are to be holy as 
 God is holy. We cannot live the heavenly life 
 here unless we are always in communication with 
 heaven. He who does not abide in Christ can- 
 not bear fruit. " Apart from Me," said Christ, "ye 
 can do nothing." Seven days in the world away 
 from Christ would leave us gross and opaque, too. 
 Indeed, one day without prayer and communion 
 with God will dim the luster of our light and rob 
 us of power. The only way to maintain the glory 
 and the vigor of our spiritual life is to be always 
 under the influence of the Spirit of God, 
 
1 52 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 Another of Saint Paul's expressive counsels 
 concerning the Spirit is given in another of his 
 epistles : " Quench not the Spirit." The Spirit 
 is a fire, the fire of God burning in us, on our 
 heart's altar. This holy flame is a Divine lamp, 
 fed from heaven. Quench it not. Do not put it 
 out. Do not let it burn low. Do not resist the 
 Spirit's work in your heart. Let the fire burn, 
 and burn up all that is not good or worthy in 
 you. Let it purify you, cleanse your life, till 
 nothing unholy remains. Let it kindle your 
 whole being until your life shall be indeed a 
 burning and shining light in the world. 
 
 " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." The 
 word " grieve " is the same in the original as is 
 used in the gospels when it is said of Jesus in 
 Gethsemane that His soul was exceeding sorrow- 
 ful, y So we make another Gethsemane in the 
 heart of Jesus, make Him exceeding sorrowful, 
 even in heaven, if we do not do those things that 
 please Him, if we disappoint His longing for our 
 holiness. 
 
 How can we live so as not to grieve the Holy 
 Spirit? Think what it is the Spirit seeks to do 
 in us. His mission is to bring us back to God, 
 to undo the work of sin in us, to teach us the 
 will of God and help us to do that will. He 
 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 153 
 
 comes into our hearts when they are full of evil, 
 and His work is to cleanse us of the evil and 
 then to fill us with good. He comes to cure us 
 of all bitterness, anger, and resentment, and to fill 
 us with love. He comes to bring heaven down 
 into our hearts and lives. 
 
 What now is our part ? It is to help by not 
 hindering. It is to yield our hearts and lives to 
 the Spirit, to obey His voice, to accept His 
 guidance. It is to open every part of our being 
 to His influence, not keeping Him out of any 
 room or closet. 
 
 It is a wonderful fact that we can have all the 
 power of God come into our lives, if we will, that 
 we may be instruments which God can use. An 
 organ has a capacity for sweet music, but while 
 it is closed there is no voice in its pipes — it is 
 dumb. The organist might sit down at the key- 
 board and run his fingers over the keys, and 
 there would still be no music, only a clatter. 
 The organ is dead — it is not of any use. It 
 needs the breathing of the air through its pipes 
 before its mechanism can be effective. Only 
 start the motor and have the air blowing 
 through the organ, and then, when its keys are 
 touched, they will respond in sweet harmonies. 
 We are like organs — we have all the powers 
 
154 OUR NEW EDENS 
 
 necessary for noble living. We are meant to 
 make sweet music in our living. We have 
 reason, conscience, will, affections, intellectual 
 faculties, education. Yet until the breath of God 
 blows upon us we are only organs mute and 
 dead. The best player can bring out no heavenly 
 music. But when God breathes upon us and we 
 receive the Holy Spirit, then music will pour 
 forth from our lives — the music of joy, peace, 
 love, holiness. 
 
 One of Frances Ridley HavergaFs poems tells 
 of an yEolian harp which a friend had sent her, 
 telling her in a letter of the sweetness of its 
 tones. Without reading the letter through Miss 
 Havergal took the harp in her hands and began 
 to thrum its seven strings, thinking that was the 
 way to use it. But she could bring out no 
 music. She was disappointed. She then looked 
 at her friend's letter again, and learned that the 
 harp must be put into the window, under the 
 sash, if it would give forth its music. She 
 obeyed the instructions, and then the wind began 
 to blow over the wires and the room was in- 
 stantly filled with sweet strains. 
 
 Our lives are like iEolian harps. Skillful 
 fingers on the strings make a kind of music. 
 Human love brings out much that is beautiful. 
 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 155 
 
 But it is only when the breath of God blows 
 upon our lives that heavenly music comes from 
 them. Shall we not yield all our being to this 
 blessed Holy Spirit ? We must receive Him or 
 He will not come into our hearts. We can keep 
 Him away if we will. Let us not grieve Him by 
 resisting Him. Let us keep no door shut upon 
 Him. Then, let us obey every command and 
 impulse of the Spirit, doing always the things 
 He bids us do. Let us follow all Divine in- 
 spirations. 
 
 The true problem of Christian life is not 
 merely church-membership, not merely activity 
 in Christian service, not merely good living — it is 
 to bring all the powers of the body, mind, and 
 spirit under the influence and the sway of God. 
 
 " Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh ; 
 Teach me the struggle of the soul to bear, 
 To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh ; 
 Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer. 
 
 u Teach me to love Thee as thine angels love, 
 One holy passion filling all my frame ; 
 The baptism of the heaven-descended Dove, 
 My heart an altar and Thy love the flame." 
 
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