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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est filmi A partir de I'angle supArieur gauche, de gauche it droite. et de haut en bas. en prenant le nombre d'images nicessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mithode. ata Hure, : 2X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 I •■. i «>, ■X V^ ^ ^.j U PICTURES AND EMBLEMS. BY ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D. Being Illustrations from his Sermons. SELECTED HY JAMES H. MARTYN. "Jucundum nihil est, nisi quod reiicit variwtas." — Bacon. SECOND EDITION. 1 1 T O R O N T O, CANADA: S. R. BRIGGS, TORONTO WILLARD TRACT DEPOSITORY. T^ PREFACE. It will be conceded that illustrations have their place and purpose in sermons. But illustrations should be selected with a reference to their force rather than to the'r beauty, and be marked more by their homely propriety than by their grace or elegance. Whatever is pure is also simple. It does not keep the eye on itself. Effective illustration will not divert the mind from the truth it is designed to illustrate, as a gorgeous cathedral window, through which the light streams, tinged with a thousand hues, attracts the attention to the pomp and splen- dour of the artist's work ; but the window should be forgotten in the landscape it displays. Dr. Maclaren's Sermons have won a high place amongst our Christian classics ; and the illustrations from those Sermons which have been gathered together in this volume are characterized by freshness and refined and delicate beauty, and are rich in devotional, not less than in practical, lessons. iv Preface. It is hoped that their publication in a separate volume may be helpful to preachers and students, and acceptable to all those who can appreciate what is beautiful and true in our best Sermon literature It is proper to say that Dr. Maclaren has had no part in the selection of the illustrations, but they are published by his kind permission. I J. H. M. Rock Ferry, Cheshire. September ^ 1885. ■1 CONTENTS. Chapter I. Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. ... Chapter IX. Chapter X. L. ••• ••• •** ... .•• ... ... ... .*• •. • . . . • .. ... • •. • •• ... ... • .• ••• ... PAGE I 29 58 88 117 145 175 202 225 252 /x. fJL^jC CHAPTER I. REMEMBER once seeing a mob of revellers streaming out from a masked ball, in a London theatre, in the early morning sunlight ; draggled and heavy-eyed, the rouge showing on the cheeks, and the shabby tawdriness of the foolish costumes pitilessly revealed by the pure light. So will many a life look when the day dawns, and the wild riot ends in its unwelcome beams. ! 2. The issue and outcome of believing service and faithful stewardship here is the possession of the true life which stands in union with God, in measure so great, and in quality so wondrous, that it lies on the pure locks of the vi6lors like a flashing diadem, all ablaze with light in a hundred jewels. 3. The spiritual life is, at the best, but a hidden glory, and a struggling spark. There is no profit in seeking to gaze into that light of glory so as to B n 2 Pin,ures and Emblems. discern the shapes of those who walk in it, or the elements of its lambent flames. Enough that in its gracious beauty transfigured souls move as in their native atmosphere. 4. The final condition will be the perfection of human society. There all who love Christ will be drawn together, and old ties, broken for a little while here, be re-knit in yet holier form, never to be parted more. Ah I the all-important question for each of us is how may we have such a hope, like a great sunset light shining into the western windows of our souls. There is but one answer: Trust Christ. That is enough. Nothing else is. 5. Living by Christ, we may be ready quietly to lie down when the time comes, and may have all the future filled with the blaze of a great hope that glows brighter as the darkness thickens. That peaceful hope will not leave us till consciousness fails, and then, when it has ceased to guide us, Christ Himself will lead us, scarcely knowing where we are, through the waters, and when we open our half-bewildered eyes in brief wonder, the first thing we see will be His welcoming smile, and His voice will say, as a tender surgeon might to a little child waking after an operation, " It is all over." We lift our hands wondering and find wreaths on our Piffures and Emblems. 3 brow. We lift our eyes, and lo ! all about us a crowned crowd of conquerors. "And with the morn those angel faces smile Which we have loved long since and lost awhile." 6. The past struggles are joyful in memory, as the mountain ranges— which were all black rock and white snow while we toiled up their inhospitable steeps — lie purple in the mellowing distance, and burn like fire as the sunset strikes their peaks. 7. Many a wild winter's day has a fair cloudless close, and lingering opal hues diffused through all the quiet sky. " At eventide it shall be light." 8. The only life that bears being looked back upon is a life of Christian devotion and effort. It shows fairer when seen in the strange cros?-lights that come when we stand on the boundary of two worlds— with "the white radiance of eternity" beginning to master the vulgar oil lamps of earth — than when seen by these alone. 9. There is such a congruity between righteous- ness and the crown of life, that it can be laid on none other head but that of a righteous man, and if it could, all its amaranthine flowers would shrivel and fall when they touched an impure brow. B 2 4 Pi6ltires and Emblems, 10. All work that contributes to a great end is great ; as the old rhyme has it, " for the want of a nail a kingdom was lost." 11. We learn from historians tha': the origin of nobility in some Teutonic nations is supposed to have been the dignities enjoyed by the king's household — of which you find traces still. The king's master of the horse, or chamberlain, or cup- bearer becomes noble. Christ's servants are lords, free because they serve Htm, noble because they wear His livery and bear the mark of Jesus as their Lord. 12. There is a wide-spread unwillingness to say the word " Death." It falls on men's hearts like clods on a coffin — so all people and languages havs adopted euphemisms for it— fair names which wrap silk round his dart and somewhat hides his face. 13. We lose nothing worth keeping when we leave behind the body, as a dress not fitted for home, where we are going. 14. Man's course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city. 1 5. We may change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life may have the long, still days of heaven ; but we do not change ourselves. PiSlures and Emblems. 5 16. This world is not to be for us an enchanted garden of delights, any mc'^e than it should appear a dreary desert of disappointment and woe. But it should be to us mainly a palaestra, or gymnasium and exercising ground. You cannot expe6l many flowers or much grass in the place where men wrestle and run. We need not much mind though it be bare, if we can only stand firm on the hard earth ; nor lament that there are so few delights to stay our eyes from the goal. 17. Thinking of the past, there may be a sense of not unwelcome lightening from a load of responsi- bility when we have got all the stress and strain of the confli6l behind us, and have, at any rate, not been altogether beaten. We may feel like a captain who has brought his ship safe across the Atlantic, through foul weather and past many an iceberg, and gives a great sigh of relief as he hands over the charge to the pilot, who will take her across the harbour bar and bring her to her anchorage in the land-locked bay, where no tempests rave any more for ever. 18. The life of men and of creatures is like a river, with its source, and its course, and its end. The life of God is like the ocean, with joyous movements of tides and currents of life and energ ' and purpose, but ever the same and ever returning upon itself. 6 Figures and Emblems. 19. Every pebble that you kick with your foot if thought about and treasured, contains the secret of the universe. The commonplaces of our faith are the food upon which our faith will most richly feed. 20. The commonplaces of religion are the most important. Everybody needs air, light, bread and water. Dainties are for the few ; but the table which our religion sometimes spreads for them, is like that at a rich man's feast — plenty of rare dishes but never a bit of bread ; plenty of wine and wine-glasses, but not a tumbler-full of spring water to be had. 21. When Nero is on the throne, the only possible place for Paul is the dungeon opening on to the scaffold. Better to be the martyr than the Caesar. 22. " Heaven doth with us as men with torches do, Not light them for themselves." " God hath shined into our hearts that we might give to others the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 23. Loyola demanded from his black-robed militia obedience to the General of the Order so complete that they were to be " just like a corpse," or " a staff in a blind man's hand." Such a regiment made by a man is, of course, the crushing of the will, and the emasculation of the whole nature. Figures and Emblems. *] But such a demand yielded to from Christ is the vitalising of the will, and the ennobling of the spirit. 24. The owner of the slave could set him to any work he thought fit. So our Owner gives all His slaves their several tasks. As in some despotic east- ern monarchies the Sultan's mere pleasure makes of one slave his vizier, and of another his slipper-bearer, our King chooses one man to a post of honour, and another to a lowly place ; and none have a right to question the allocation of work. 25. Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare stone for the earth by which it must be fed. 26. The do6lrine of averages does not do away with the voluntary chara6ler of each single a6l. The same number of letters are yearly posted without addresses. Does anybody dream of not scolding the errand boy who posted them, or the servant who did not address, because he knows that ? 27. The coals were scattered from the hearth in Jerusalem by the armed heel of violence. That did not put the fire out, but only spread it, for wherever they were flung they kindled a blaze. ]' 8 /'inures and Emblems, 28. What kind of Christians must they be who think of Christ as " a Saviour for me," and take no care to set Him forth as " a Saviour for you ?" What should we think of men in a shipwreck who were content to get into the life-boat, and let everybody else drov/n ? What should we think of people in a famine feasting sumptuously on their private stores, whilst women were boiling their children for a meal, and men fighting with dogs for garbage on the dunghills ? 29. In the simple astronomy of early times, there was no failure, nor decay, nor change, in the calm heavens. The planets, year by year, returned punctually to their places; and, unhasting and unresting, rolled upon their way. Weakness and weariness had no place there ; and the power by which the most ancient heavens were upheld and maintained was God's unwearied might. 30. What God does with poor weak creatures like us, when He lifts up our weaknesses, and replen- ishes our weariness ; pouring oil and wine into our wounds and a cordial into our lips, and sendmg us, with the joy of pardon, upon our road again ; that is a greater thing than when He rolls Neptune in its mighty orbit round the central sun, or upholds with unwearied arms, from cycle to cycle, the circle Pi£lures and Emblems, 9 of the heavens with all its stars. " He giveth power to the faint " is His divinest work. 31. The leaven does not leaven the whole mass in a moment, but creeps on from particle to particle. 32. From the beginning the true " Hero " of the Bible is God ; its theme is His self-revelation cul- minating for evermore in the Man Jesus. All other men interest the writers only as they are subsidiary or antagonistic to that revelation. As long as that breath blows them they are music; else they are but common reeds. 33. Christ is all in all to His people. He is all their strength, wisdom, and righteousness. They are but the clouds irradiated by the sun, and bathed in its brightness. He is the light which flames in their grey mist and turns it to a glory. They are but the belt and cranks and wheels ; He is the power. They are but the channel, muddy and dry ; He is the flashing life which fills it and makes it a joy. They are the body; He is the Soul dwelling in every part to save it from corruption and give movement and warmth. " Thou art the organ, whose full breath is thunder ; I am the keys, beneath Thy fingers pressed." 34. Let us be thankful if our consciences speak to us more loudly than they used to do. It is a sign lO Figures and Emblems. of growing holiness, as the tingling in a frost-bitten limb is of returning life. 35. In all fields of effort, whether intelleftual, moral or mechanical, as faculty grows, consciousness of insufficiency grows with it. The farther we get up the hill the more we see how far it is to the horizon. 36. The thick skin of a savage will not be distur- bed by lying on sharp stones, while a crumpled rose- leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So the habit of evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and the practice of goodness restores tenderness and sensibility ; and many a man laden with crime knows less of its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be conspicuous on a brightly-polished blade^ but if it be all dirty and dull a dozen more or fewer will make little difference. As men grow better they become like that glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall or a rise, that would have been invisible with mercury to record it, takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous. 37. The higher the temperature the more chilling would it be to pass into an ice-house ; and the more our lives are brought into fellowship with the perfefl Life, the more we shall feel our own shortcomings. ten Figures and Emblems. II 38. We are all writing our lives* histories here, as if with one of these " manifold writers " — a black blank page beneath the flicisy sheet on which we write, but presently the black page will be taken away, and the writing will stand out plain on the page behind that we did not see. Life is the filmy, unsubstantial page on which our pen rests ; the black page is death ; and the page beneath is that indelible transcript of our earthly aftions, which we shall find waiting for us to read, with shame and confusion of face, or with humble joy, in another world. 39. In all regions of life a wise classification of men arranges them to their aims, rather than their achievements. The visionary who attempts some- thing high and accomplishes scarcely anything of it, is often a far nobler man, and his poor, broken, foiled, resultless life, far more perfe£l than his who aims at marks on the low levels and hits them full. Such lives as these, full of yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part vain, are * " Like the young moon with a ragged edge E'en in its imperfection beautiful." 40. The deeds that stand highest on the records of heaven are not those which we vulgarly call great. Many " a cup of cold water only " will be found to 12 Pi6lures and Emblems. have been rated higher there than jewelled golden chalices brimming with rare wines. 41. God's treasures, where He keeps His child- ren's gifts, will be like many a mother's secret store of relics of her children, full of things of no value, what the world calls " trash," but precious in His eyes, for the love's sake that was in them. 42. It does not matter whether you have the Gos- pel in a penny testament, printed on thin paper with black ink, and done up in cloth, or in an illuminated missal glowing in gold and colour, painted with loving care on fair parchment, and bound in jewelled ivory. And so it matters little about the material or the scale on which we express our devotion and our aspirations ; all depends on what we copy, not on the size of the canvas on which, or on the material in which, we copy it. 43. Surely he has best learned his true place, and the worth of Jesus Christ, who abides with unmoved humility at His feet, and, like the lonely, lowly fore- runner, puts away all temptations to self-assertion while joyfully accepting it as the law of his life to " Fade in the light of the planet he loves, To fade in His love and to die." 44. We shall sleep none the less sweetly, though none be talking about us over our heads. The world Figures and Emblems, 13 has a short memory, and, as the years go on, the list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is harder and harder to find room to write a new name on it, or to read the old. The letters on the tomb- stones are soon erased by the feet that tramp across the churchyard. 45. To Jesus all service done from the same motive is the same, and His measure of excellence is the quantity of love and spiritual force in our deeds, not the width of the area over which they spread. An estuary that goes wandering over miles of shallows may have less water in it, and may creep more languidly, than the torrent that thunders through some narrow gorge. 46. " Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we also look for the Lord Jesus as Saviour." The little, outlying colony in this far-off edge of the em- pire is ringed about by wide-stretching hosts of dusky barbarians. Far as the eye can reach, their myriads cover the land, and the watchers from the ramparts might well be dismayed if they had only their own resources to depend on. But they know that the Emperor in His progress will come to this sorely beset outpost, and their eyes are fixed on the pass in the hill where they expe6l to see the waving banners and the gleaming spears. Soon, like our 14 PiSlures and Emblems. countrymen in Lucknow, they will hear the music and the shouts that tell that He is at hand. Then when He comes, He will raise the siege, and scatter all the enemies as the chaff of the threshing-floor ; and the colonists who held the post will go with Him to the land which they have never seen, but which is their home, and will, with the Vi6lor, sweep in triumph " through the gates into the city." 47. The noblest use for the precious ointment of love,which the poorest of us bears in the alabaster- box of the heart, is to break it on Christ's head. 48. If we are content to see but one step at a time, and take it, we shall find our way made plain. The river wends, and often we seem on a lake without an exit. Then is the time to go half-speed, and doubtless, when we get a little further, the over- lapping hills on either bank will part, and the gorge will open out. We do not need to see it a mile off ; enough if we see it when we are close upon it. It may be as narrow and grim, with slippery, black cliffs towering on either side of the narrow ribbon of the the stream, as the caflons of American rivers, but it will float our boat into broader reaches and onwards to the great sea. 49. Our blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret our duties, or hide from us plain Figures and Emblems. 15 indications of unwelcome tasks. We are all apt to do like Nelson, and put the telescope to the blind eye when a signal is flying that we dislike. 50. Some of us have sad memories of times when we journeyed in company with those who will never share our tent or counsel our steps any more, and, as we sit lonely by our watchfire in the wilderness, have aching hearts and silent nights. 51. There are dangers and barren places, and a great solitude in spite of love and companionship, and many marchings and lurking foes, and grim rocks, and fierce suns, and parched wells, and shadeless sand wastes enough in every life to make us quail often, and look grave always, when we think of what may be before us. Who knows what we shall see when we top the next hill, or round the shoulder of the cliff that bars our way ? What shout of an enemy may crash in upon the sleeping camp ; or what stifling gorge of barren granite — blazing in the sun, and trackless to our feet, shall we have to march through to-day ? 52. There is nothing so certain as the unex- pe6led. The worst thunder comes on us out of a clear sky. Our Waterloos have a way of crashing into the midst of our feasts, and generally it is when all goes " merry as a marriage bell " that the cannon n i6 Figures and Emblems. shot breaks in upon the mirth, which tells that the enemy have crossed the river and the battle is begun. 53. An abstraft law of right is but a cold guide, like the stars that shine keen in the polar winter. 54. No man can safely isolate himself, either in- telleftually or in pra6lical matters. The self-trained scholar is usually incomplete. Crotchets take possession of the solitary thinker, and peculiarities of character — that would have been kept in check, and might have become aids in the symmetrical development of the whole man, if they had been reduced and modified in society — ^get swollen into deformities in solitrde. 55. Are we not ever in danger of giving the very choicest of our love to the dear ones of earth, lav- ishing on them the precious juice which flows from the freshly-gathered grapes, and putting God off with the last impoverished and scanty drops which can be squeezed from the husks ? 56. We are all apt to pin our faith on some trusted guide, and many of us, in these days, will fol- low some teacher of negations with an implicit sub- mission which we refuse to give to Jesus Christ We put the teacher between ourselves and God, and Figures and Efnbiems. 17 fuide, give to the glowing colours of the painted window the admiration that is due to the light which shines through it. 57. Like the armed colonists whom Russia and other empires had o.n their frontier, who received their bits of land on condition of holding the border against the enemy, and pushing it forward a league or two when possible, Christian men are set down in their places to be "wardens of the marches," ci'izen soldiers who hold their homesteads on a military tenure, and who are to " strive together for the faith of the gospel." 58. Go up to your fears and speak to them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally fade away. 59. It is usually a half-look at adversaries, and a mistaken estimate of their strength, that make Christians afraid. We may go into the battle, as the rash French minister said he did into the Franco-German war, " with a light heart," and that for good reasons. Co. It is strange and impressive when we come to think how Providence, working with the same uni- form materials in all human lives, can yet, like some skilful artist, produc€S endless novelty and surprises in each life. C { '■.^.a i8 PiHtires and Emblems. 6i. The traitor was gone (John xiii.31). His prc.r;nce had been a restraint ; and now that that spot in their feast of charity had disappeared the Master felt at ease ; and, like some stream out of the bed of which a black rock has been taken, His words flow more freely. " Therefore^ when he was gone out, Jesus said." 62. Like the pellucid waters of the Rhine and the turbid stream of the Moselle, that flow side by side over a long space, neither of them blending discern- ably with the other, so the shrinking from the cross and the desire were cotemporaneous in Christ's mind. 63. The New Testament, generally, represents the cross as the very lowest point of Christ's degrada- tion ; John's Gospel always represents it as the very highest point of His glory. And the two things are both true ; just as the zenith of our sky is the nadir of the sky for those on the other side of the world. 64. We know very early in life, unless we are wonderfully frivolous and credulous, that the thread of our days is a mingled strand, and the prevailing tone a sober neutral tint. ir-.rf/.--' ■ s .-.■ Figures and Emblems. 19 ^i"-3i). His low that that jappeared the Itrearr out of |en taken, His [when he was hine and the side by side ling discern- '& from the us in Christ's ^ represents it's degrada- as the very two things ^"^y is the side of the ess we are the thread prevaihng 65. All His life long Christ had been revealing His heart, through the narrow rifts of deeds, like someslender lancet windows ; but in His death all the barriers are thrown down, and the brightness blazes out upon men. 66. All through His life He had been trying to communicate the box of ointment exceeding precious, but when the box was broken the house was filled with the odour. 6"]. There blends, in that last a6: of our Lord's — for His death was His acl — in strange fashion, the two contradi6lory ideas of glory and shame ; like some sky, all full of dark thunder-clouds, and yet between them the brightest blue and the blazing sunshine. 68. All His life long Christ was the light of the world, but the very noontide hour of His glory was that hour when the shadow of eclipse lay over all the land, and He hung on the Cross dying in the dark. At His eventide * it was light,' and * He en- dured the Cross, despising the shame ' ; and, lo 1 the shame flashed up into the very brightness of glory, and the very ignominy and the suffering were the jewels of His crown. C 2 ' * ' L t.;. it I 1 ■ft' 20 PiHtires and Emblems. 6g. A bit of stained-glass may be glowing with angel-forms and piftured saints, but it always keeps some of the light out, and it always hinders us from seeing through it. And all external worship and form has such a tendency to usurp more than be- longs to it, and to drag us down subtly to its own level. 70. That is the perfeftion of a man's nature when his will fits on to God's like one of Euclid's tri- angles super-imposed upon another, and line for line coincides. When his will allows a free passage to the will of God, without resistance, as light travels through transparent glass ; when his will responds to the touch of God's finger upon the keys, like the telegraphic needle to the operator's hand ; then man has attained all that God and religion ran do for him, all that his nature is capable of. 71. Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creature's will. 72. The vine which trails along the ground, and twines its tendrils round any rubbish which it may come upon is sure to be trodden under foot. If it lift itself from the earth, and fling its clasping rings round the shaft of the Cross, its stem will not be bruised, and its clusters will be heavier and sweeter. The tendrils which anchor it to the rubbish heap are the same as those which clasp it to the Cross. -->--< y t" Figures and Emblems. 21 73. The trust with which we lean upon the bruised reeds of human nature is the same as that with which we lean upon the iron pillar of a Saviour's aid. 74. Just as the hand of a dyer that has been work- ing with crimson will be crimson ; just as the hand that has been holding fragrant perfumes will be perfumed ; so my faith, which is only the hand by which I lay hold on precious things, will take the tinflui.: and the fragrance of what it grasps. 75. Christ towers up above the history of the world and the process of revelation, like Mount Everest among the Himalayas. To that great peak ail the country on the one side runs upwards, and from it all the valleys on the other descend ; anc the springs are born there which cany verdure and life over the world. ^6. Christ is the true Prometheus that has come from Heaven with fire, the fire of the Divine Life in the reed of His humanity, and He imparts it to us all if we will TJ. Many an erudite scholar that has studied the Bible all his life, has missed the purpose for which it was given ; and many a poor old woman in her garret has found it. 22 Ptfltires and Emblems. 78. Suppose one of those old Spanish explorers in the i6th century had been led into some of those rich Mexican treasure-houses, where all round him were massive bars of gold, and gleaming diamonds, and precious stones, and had come out from the abundance with sixpence worth in his palm, when he might have loaded himself with ingots of pure and priceless metal ! That is what some of us do. When Jesus Christ puts the key of His storehouse into our hands, and ^ays to us "Go in and help yourselves," we stop as soon as we are within the threshold. We do little more than take some in- significant corner, nibbled off the great solid mass of riches that might belong to us, and bear that away. 79. Is there any place in any of our rooms where there is a little bit of carpet worn white by our knees ? 80. Loose things on the deck of a ship will be blown or washed overboard when the storm comes. There is only one way to keep them firm, and that is to lash them to something that is fixed. It is not the bit of rope that gives them security, but it is the stable thing to which they are lashed. Lash your- self to Christ by faith, and whatever storm or tempest comes you will be safe, and stand firm and immovable. '*■ ' '••'fCCi:, Figures and Emblems. 23 rs se im ds, he en lure do. use elp the in- lass iiat 81. All manner of differences in opinion, in politics, in culture, in race, which ma, ^oarate men from men, are h'ke the cracks upon the surface of a bit of rock which are an inch deep, while the solid mass goes down a thousand feet. 82. Each tiny particle of a magnet, if it be smitten off the whole mass, is magnetic, and sends out influence from its two little poles. And so the smallest and the feeblest faith i? one in chara6ler, and one in intrinsic value, with the loftiest and superbest. 83. The power of sympathising with any charac- ter is the partial possession of that chara6ler for our- selves. A man who is capable of having his soul bowed by the stormy thunder of Beethoven, or lifted to heaven by the ethereal melody of Mendelssohn, is a musician, though he never com- posed a bar. The man who recognises and feels the grandeur of the organ music of Paradise Lost has some of the poet in him, though he be a " mute inglorious Milton." 84. All sympathy and recognition of charadler involves some likeness to that charafler. The poor woman that brought the sticks and prepared for the prophet enters into the. prophet's mission, and shares in the prophet's work and reward, though his task was to beard Ahab, and hers was only to bake his bread. ■«T'-V ! m !; ! ; ! il 24 Pit} ares and Emblems. 85. The old Knight that clapped Luther on the back when he went into the Diet of Worms, and said to him : " Well done, little monk !" shared in Luther's viflory and in Luther's crown. He that helps a prophet because he is a prophet, has got the making of a prophet in himself. 86. As all work done from the same motive is the same in God's eyes, whatever be the outward shape of it, so the work that involves the same spiritual type of character will involve the same reward. You find the Egyptian medal on the breast of the soldiers that kept the base of communication as well as on the breasts of the men that stormed the works at Tel-el-Kebir. 87. The sculptor makes the marble image by chipping away the superfluous marble. Ah ! and when you have to chip away superfluous flesh and blood, it is bitter work, and the chisel is often deeply dyed in gore, and the mallet seems to be very cruel. 88. There is an old proverb : " The shoemaker's Avife is always the worst shod." The families of many very busy Christian teachers suffer woefully for want of remembering " He first findeth his own brother." .■,"J£5fe . -_ - «i-.- ■•^T'' Pi^tires and Emblems. 25 t 89. " Thou God seest me " is a very unwelcome thought to a great many men, and it will be so, unless we can give it the modification which it receives from belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and feel sure that the eyes which are blazing with Divine Omniscience are dewy with divine and human love. 90. If you do not seek Christ, as surely as He is parted from our scnseyou will lose Him ; and He will be parted from you wholly ; for there is no way by which a pers. n who is not before our eyes may be kept near us except only by the diligent effort on our part to keep thought, and love, and will, in conta6l with Him ; thought meditating, love going out towards Him, will submitting. Uuless there be this effort, you will lose your Master as surely as a little child in a crowd will lose his nurse and his guide, if his hand slips from out the protecting hand. The dark shadow of the earth on which you stand will slowly steal over His silvery bright- ness, as it did last night over the moon's,* and you will not know how you have lost Him, but only be sadly aware that your heaven is darkened. 91. May I say that as a mother will sometimes pretend to her child to hide, that the child's delight may be the greater in searching and in finding, so ♦Total eclipse of the moon — August 4, 1884. A h-"^ »■■■ 26 Figures and Emblems. Christ has gone away from our sight in order, for one reason, that He may stimulate our desires to feel after Him. 92. All the antagonism that has stormed against Christ and His cause and words, and His followers and lovers, has been impotent and vain. The pursuers are like dogs chasing a bird, sniffing along the ground after their prey, which all the while sits out of their reach on a bough and carols to the sky. 93. If we care anything about Christ at all, our hearts will turn to Him as naturally as, when the win- ter begins to pinch, the migrating birds seek the sunny south, turning by an instin6l that they do not themselves understand. 94. The same law which sends loving thoughts out across the globe to seek for husband, child, or friend when absent, sets the really Christian heart seeking for the Christ, whom, having not seen, it loves. As surely as the ivy tendril feels out for a support ; as surely as the roots of a mountain-ash growing on the top of a boulder fall down the side of a rock till they reach the soil ; as truly as the stork follows the warmth to the sunny Mediterranean, so truly, if your heart loves Christ, will the very law of your life be—" Ye shall seek Me." Piflures and Emblems. 27 95. The chains ofsin can be got off. Christ looses them by His blood. Like a drop of corrosive acid, that blood, falling upon the fetters, dissolves them, and the prisoner goes free, emancipated by the Son. 96. Each man of all the race may be quite sure that he had a place in that Divine-human love of Christ's, as He hung upon the cross. I may take it all to myself, as the whole rainbow is mirrored on each eye that looks. 97. The book which closes the new Testament "shuts up all" "with a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies" as Milton says, in its stately music, and may well represent for us, in that perpetual cloud of incense rising up fragrant to the Throne of God and of the Lamb, the unceasing love and thanksgiving which should be man's answer to Christ's love and sacrifice. 98. A great thinker once said that he would rather have the search after truth than the possession of truth. It was a rash word, but it pointed to the faft that there is a search which is only one shade less blessed than the possession. 99. State and place are determined yonder by character. Take a bottle of some solution in which heterogeneous matters have all been melted up to- gether, and let it stand on a shelf there and gradually mr 28 Piflures and Emblems. settle down, and they will settle in regular layers, the heaviest at the bottom and the lightest at the top, and stratify themselves according to gravity. And that is how the other world is arranged — stratified. When all the confusions of this present are at an end, and all the moisture is driven off, men and women will be left in layers, — like drawing to like. 100. Like the granite all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, Peter needed to cool in order to soliuiT)" into roclv. CHAPTER II. ME worst man is least troubled by his conscience. It is like a lamp that goes out in the thickest darkness. 2. Instant by instant, with unbroken flow, as golden shafts of light travel from the central sun, and each beam is linked with the source from which it comes by a line that stretches through millions and millions of miles ; so, God's gift of strength pours into us as we need. 3. Grace abhors a vs, um as nature does ; and, just as the endless procession of the waves rises up on to the beach, or as the restless network of the moonlight irradiation of the billows stretches all across the darkness of the sea ; so that unbroken con- tinuity of strength gives grace for grace according ,.a 30 Piflures and Emblems. to our need, and as each former supply is expended and used up, God pours Himself into our hearts anew. 4. Soldiers who could stand firm and strike with all their might in the hour of battle, will fall asleep, or have their courage ooze out at their fingers' ends, when they have to keep solitary watch at their posts through a long winter's night 5. It is a great deal easier to be up to the occasion in some shining moment of a man's life, when he knows that a supreme hour has come, than it is to keep that high tone when plodding over all the dreary plateau of unevetilful, monoto- nous travel and dull duties. It is easier to run fast for a minute than to grind along the dusty road for a day. 6. Many a ship has stood the tempest, and then has gone down in the harbour because its timbers have been gnawed to pieces by white ants. And many a man can do what is wanted in the trying moments, and yet make shipwreck of his faith in !.i:ieventful times. " Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven was all tranquillity." 7. We have all a few moments in life of hard, glorious running ; but we have days and years of walking — the uneventful discharge of small duties. Figures and Emblems. 31 8. " I am the first and the last," says Christ, and His love partakes of that eternity. It is like a golden fringe which keeps the net of creation from ravelling out. 9. When Christ was here on earth, the multi- tude thronged Him and pressed Him ; but the wasted forefinger of one timid woman could reach the garment's hem for all the crowd. 1, )f s. 10. Past — present — future. These are but the lower layer of clouds which drive before the winds and melt from shape to shape. God dwells above in the naked, changeless blue. 1 1. They tell us that the sun is fed by impa6l from obje6ls from without, and that the day will come when its furnace-flames shall be quenched into grey ashes. But Christ's love is fed by no contributions from without, and will outlast the burnt-out sun, and gladden the ages of ages for ever. 12. The hand that holds the seven stars is as loving as the hand that was laid in blessing upon the little children ; the face that is as the sun shining in its strength beams with as much love as when it drew publicans and harlots to His feet (II 32 Figures and Emblems, I The breast that is girt with the golden girdle is the same breast upon which John leaned his happy head. 13. You remember the old story of the prisoner in his tower, delivered by his friend, who sent a beetle to crawl up the wall, fastening a silken thread to it, which had a thread a little heavier attached to the end of that, and so on, and so on, each thickening in diameter until they got to a cable That is how the devil has got hold of a great many of us. He weaves round us silken threads to begin with, slight, as if wc could break them with a touch of oui fingers, and they draw after them, as certamly as destiny, at each remove a thickening chain, until, at last, we are tied and bound, and our captor laughs at our mad plunges for freedom, which are as vain as a wild bull's in the hunter's nets. 14. There is such a fate as being saved, yet so as by fire, going into the brightness with the smell of fire on your garments. 15. The starry vault that bends above us so far away, is the same in the number of its stars when gazed on by the savage with his unaided eye, and by the astronomer with the strongest telescope ; and the Infinite God, who arches above us, but IS 5y Piftiires and Emblems. 2i'h comes near to us, discloses galaxies of beauty and oceans of abyssmal light in Himself according to the strength and clearness of the eye that looks upon Him. i6. Some imperfeft Christians have but little capacity for possessing God, and therefore their heaven will not be as bright, nor studded with as majestic constellations as others. 17 "I am going down into the pit ; you hold the ropes," said Carey the pioneer missionary. They that hold the rcpes, and the daring miner that swings away down in the darkness, are one in work, may be one in the motive, and, if they are, shall be one in the reward. 18. The little child who believes in Christ may seem to be insignificant in comparison with the prophet with his God-louched lips, or the righteous man of the old dispensation, with his austere purity ; as a humble violet may seem by the side of a rose with its heart of fire, or a white iiiy, regal and tall. 19. Oh! what a reversal of this world's judg- ments and estimates is coming one day, when the names that stand high in the roll of fame shall be forgotten, like photographs that have been shut up in a portfolio, and when you take them out have faded off the paper. i , 34 PiHures and Eviblems. 20. The world knows nothing of its greatest men^ but there is a day coming when the spurious mush- room aristocracy of power and the like, tnat the world has worshipped, will be forgotten ; like the nobility of some conquered land, that is brushed aside and relegated to private life by the new nobility of the conquerors ; and the true nobles, God's greatest — the rightenus, who are righteous because they have trusted in Christ — shall shine forth like the sun ' in the kingdom of My Father." 21. The gospel is not merely a message of deliverance, it is also a rule of condu6l. It is not merely theology, it is also ethics. Like some of the ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges and proclamation of freedom is also the sovereign code which imposes duties and shapes life. 22. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be fitted to the smallest duties. The tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the same lav/s that, mould the giant sphere of the largest planet. You cannot make a map of the poorest grass field without celestial observations. The star is not too high nor too brilliant to move before us and guide simple men's feet along their pilgrimage. 23. " If ye love me keep my commandments." That draws all the agitations and fluctuations of V 1 PiHures and E, iblems. 35 \ the soul after it, as the rounded fulness of the moon does the heaped waters in the tidal wave that girdles the world. 24. The censures nor the praise of man need not move us. We report to headquarters, and subor- dinates' estimate need be nothing to us. 25. "Seek ye my face." Nothing in all the world is so blessed as to hear that wonderful beseeching call sounding in every providence, travelling to us from every corner of the universe, speaking to us in the light of setting suns and in the hush of midnight skies ; sounding in the break o" >■ ives on the beach, and in the rustle of leaves m i;i. f rest depths ; whispering to us in the depths of our c wn hearts and wooing us by all things to our rest. Everything assumes a new meaning and is appareled in celestial light when we are aware that everything is a messenger from God to guide us to Himself 26. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after God, for they shall be filled. He does not hold out a gift with one hand, and then twitch it away with the other when we try to grasp, as children do with light refle6led from a looking-glass on a wall. I y 27. The descendants of the original settlers in our colonies talk still D 2 of coming to England as » \ 36 Figures and Emblems. " going home," though they were born in Austrah'a, and have lived there all their lives. In like manner we Christian people should keep vigorous in our minds the thought that our true home is there where we have never been, and that here we are foreigners and wanderers. 28. A Christian man's true affinities are with the things not seen, and with the persons there, however the surface relationships knit him to the earth. In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a stranger here and a native of the heavens. That great City is, like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad river, with the masr^ of the metropolis on the one bank, but a wide-spread- ing suburb on the other. As the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the bridge. 29. " Seek His face evermore." That Face will brighten the darkness of death, and " make a sun- shine in that shady place." As you pass through the dark valley It will shine in upon you, as the sun looks through the savage gorge in the Hima- layas, above which towers that strange mountain which is pierced right through with a circular aperture. ' \ Pi^iires and Emblems. 2>7 i ^ < 1 30. We do belong to another polity or order of thinsfs than that with which we are connected bv the bonds of flesh and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother city. True we are here on earth, but far beyond the blue waters is another community, of which we are truly members ; and sometimes in calm weather we can see, if we climb to a height above the smoke of the valley where we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains of that other land, lying dream-like on the opal waves, and bathed in sunlight. 31. "The white radiance of Eternity " streaming through it from above gives all its beauty to the "dome of many-coloured glass" which men call life. 32. Some of us are as dead to the perception of God's gracious call, just because it has been sound- ing on uninterruptedly, as are the dwelliers by a waterfall to its unremitting voice. 33. Fixed resolves need short professions. A Spartan brevity, as of a man with his lips tightly locked together, is fitting for such purposes. 34. How few of us could honestly crystallise the aims that guide our life into any single sen- tence? We try the impossible feat of riding on two horses at once. We resolve and retrafl, and 38 Pictures and Emblems. hesitate and compromise. The ship heads now one way and now another, and that not because we are wisely tacking — that is to say, seeking to reach one point by widely-varying courses — but because our hand is so weak on the helm that we drift wherever the wash of the waves and the buffets of the wind carry us. 35. That is heaven on earth, nobleness, peace, and power, to stand as at the point of some great ellipse, to which converge from all sides the music of God's manifold invitations, and listening to them, to say, I hear, and I obey. Thou dost call, and I answer, Lo ! here am I. 36. Endeavour to keep vivid the consciousness of God's face as looking always in on you, like the solemn frescoes of the Christ which Angelico painted on the walls of his convent cells, that each poor brother might feel his Master ever with him. 37. An invisible vapour may hide a star, and we only know that the film is in the nightly sky because Jupiter, which M'as blazing a moment ago, has become dim or has disappeared. So fogs and vapours from the undrained swamps of our own selfish, worldly hearts may rob the thought of God of all its genial lustre, and make it an angry ball of fire, or may hide Him altogether from us. ! 1 Pi^itres and Emblems. 39 38. If the resolve to seek God's face be not made by us at the very moment when we become aware of His loving call, it is very unlikely to be made at all The first notes of that low Voice fall on the heart with more persuasive power than they retain after it has become familiar with them, even as the first-heard song of the thrush in spring-time, that breaks the long wintry silence, has a sweetness all its own. The echo answers as soon as the mother voice ceases. 39. The old word is true, with a new application to all who try in any shape to procure salvation by any work of their own : " Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." But there is no need for all this profitless work. It is as foolish as it would be to spend money and pains in sinking a well in some mountainous country, where every hill-side is seamed with water-courses, and all that is needed is to put one end of any kind of wooden spout into the " burn " and your vessels under the other. The well of salvation is an Artesian well that need*^ no machinery to raise the water, but only pitchers to receive it as it rises. 40. The unsubstantial abstra6lion of the meta- physical God, described only in terms as far removed as may be from human analogies, for fear of being guilty of " anthropomornhism," never helped or 40 PiHures and Emblems. gladdened any human soul. It is but a bit of mist through which you can see the stars shining. 41. We see the radiant brightness of the full moon, but no eye has ever beheld the other side of that pure silver shield. We can know but an aspe6l and a side of God's nature. 42. That solitude of great men is one of the compensations which run through all life, and make the lot of the many little more enviable than that of the few great. " The little hills rejoice together on every side," but, far above their smiling com- panionships, the Alpine peak lifts itself into the cold air, and though it be "visited all night by troops of stars," is lonely amid the silence and the snow. 43. Which of us that is a father is not glad at his children's gifts, even though they be purchased with his own money, and be of little use ? They mean love, so they are precious. And Christ, in like manner gladly accepts what we bring, even though it be love chilled by selfishness, and faith broken by doubt, and submission crossed by self-will. 44. As Philippi was to Rome, so is earth to heaven, the colony on the outskirts of th,* empire, ringed round by barbarians, and separated by P in lire s and Emblems. 41 ^ sounding seas, but keeping open its communica- tions, and one in citizenship. 45. Amid the shows and shams of earth look ever onward to the realities, " the things which are',* while all else only seems to be. The things which are seen are but smoke wreaths, floating for a moment across space, and melting into nothingness while we look. 46. God is His own motive, as His own end. As His Being, so His Love (which is His Being) is determined by nothing beyond Himself, but ever streams out by an energy from within, like the sunlight whose beams reach the limits of the system and travel on through dim, dark distances, not be- cause they are drawn by the planet, but because they are urged from the central light. 47. The temptation once yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a hole which lets out a flood. 48. The microscopic creatures, thousands of which will go into a square inch, make the great white cliffs that beetle over the wildest sea and front the storm. So, permanent and solid chara6ler is built up out of trivial a6lions ; and this is the solemn aspc6l of our passing days, that they are making us. 42 Piflures and Emblems. 49. No debt need be carried forward to another page of the book of our lives, for Christ has given Himself for us, and He speaks to us all — " Thy sins be forgiven thee." 50. As on some battle-field, whence all traces of the agony and fury have passed away, and harvests wave, and larks sing where blood ran and men groaned their lives out, some grey stone raised by the vidlors remains, and only the trophy tells of the forgotten fight ; so, that monumental word, " I have overcome," stands to all ages as the record of the silent, life-long conflict. 51. God does not lose us in the dust of death. The withered leaves on the pathway are trampled into mud, and indistinguishab'" to human eyes ; but He sees them even as when they hung green and sunlit on the mystic tree of life. 52. The planet nearest the sun is drenched and saturated with fiery brightness ; but the rays from the centre of life pa^s on to f'ach of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel away outwards to where the remotest of them all rolls in its far-off orbit, unknown for milleniums to dwellers closer to the sun, but through all the ages visited by warmth and light according to its needs. These blessed spirits around the throne do not absorb and intercept the love of God. Pitltires and Emblems. 43 53. We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They have entered so deeply into the very fabric of the soul, that, like some cloth dyed ingrain, as long as two threads hold together they will retain the tint. 54. Experience is ever the parent of hope, and the latter can only build with the bricks which the former gives. 55. When a man is walking along some narrow ledge amongst the Alps, with the precipice at his side, the guide will say to him : " Do not look down, or you perish." Your only hope is looking up. When Peter saw the water boisterous he began to sink. You fix your eye on Christ, and then your tottering faith will go in safety. 56. We can be sure of this, that God will be with us in all the days that lie before us. What may be round the next headland we know not ; but this wc know, that the same sunshine will make a broadening path across the waters right to where we rock on the unknown sea, and the same unmoving nightly star will burn for our guidance. So we may let the waves and currents roll as they list ; or rather, as He lists, and be little concerned about the incidents or the companions of our voyage, since He is with us. 44 Figures and Emblems, .|» 57. The awful power of habit solidifies actions into customs, and prolongs the reverberation of every note once sounded along the vaulted roof of the chamber where we live. 58. Few of us have reached middle life who do not, looking back, see our track strewed with the gaunt skeletons of dead friendships, and dotted with "oaks cf weeping," waving green and mournful over graves, and maddened by footprints striking away from the line of march, and leaving us the more solitary for their departure. 59. " Do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To this wide world and all her fading sweets," it matters not, if only our hearts are stayed on God's love, which " neither things present nor things to come" can alter or remove. 60. The thought of the Omnipresence of God, so hard to grasp with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine clifif of bare rock ( is when the tender morning light glows on it, when it is thought of as the Omnipresence of Love. 61. Forecasting is ever close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the golden threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the warp, and the whole texture gleaming bright or glooming, according to the angle at which it is seen. \x Pifltires and Eviblems. 45 IS )f )f w 62. It would be a very poor affair if all we had to say to men was : — "There is a beautiful example; follow it I " Models are all very well, only, unfor- tunately, there is nothing in a model to secure its being copied. You may have a most exqui ite piece of penmanship lithographed on the top of the page in a child's copy-book, but what is the good of that, if the poor little hand is trembling when it takes the pen, and if the pen has got no ink in it, or the child does not want to learn ? Copy-books are all very well, but you want some- thing more than copy-books. 63. It takes a very strenuous effort to bring the unseen Christ before the mind habitually, and so as to produce efiefls in the life. You have to shut out a great deal besides in order to do that ; as a man will shade his eyes with his hand in order to see some distant thing the more clearly. Keep out the cross lights, that you may look forward. You cannot see the stars, when you are walking down a town street and the gas lamps are lit. All those violet depths, and calm abysses, and blazing worlds, are concealed from you by the glare at your side. So, if you want to see into the depths and the heights, to see the great white throne and the Christ on it, who helps you to fight, you have to go out unto Him beyond the camp, and leave all its dazzling lights behind you. i [lf~" 46 PiSlures and E^nblems. % 64. Like some half-hewn block, such as trav- ellers find in long-abandoned quarries, whence Egyptian temples, that were destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are but partly " polished after the similitude of a palace," while much remains in the rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away, and their unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it centuries ago, till the crack of doom ; but stones for God's temples will be wrought to completeness and set in their places. 65. We have as much of God as we can hold. All Niagara may roar past a man's door, but only as much as he diverts through his own sluice will drive his mill, or quench his thirst. That grace is like the figures in the Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger than a nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent whose walls expanded or contra6led at the owner's wish ; we may enlarge them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. 66. There is ever something of dread in Hope's blue eyes. 6^. In that great ocean of the Divine Love we live, and move, and have our being ; floating in it like some sea-flower which spreads its filmy beauty and Pi^.iires and Emblems. 47 waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore. 68. We need not cower before the fixed gaze of some stony God, looking on us unmoved, like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open, lidless eyes gazing out across the sands. We need not fear the Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows. 69. " So great a cloud of witnesses." They are " a cloud " like that background of one of Raffaelle's great piflures, which, at first sight, seems only a bright mist, and looked at more closely is all full of calm, angel faces. 70. As a boy learning to swim, after trying in the shallows and finding that the water bears him up, has confidence to strike out into deeper water, so Christ perfe6ls our faith by rewarding it. 7 1 So long as we are joined to Christ, we partake of His life, and our lives become music and praise. The electric current flows from Him through all souls that are " in Him," and they glow with fair colours, which they owe to their conta