XXV.
As a rule, the more thoroughly disciplined and fit a man may be for any really great work, the more conscious will he be of his own unfitness for it, the more distrustful of himself, the more anxious not to thrust himself forward. It is only the zeal of the half-instructed when the hour of a great deliverance has come at last—of those who have had a glimpse of the glory of the goal, but have never known or counted the perils of the path which leads to it—which is ready with the prompt response, “Yes—we can drink of the cup, we can be baptized with the baptism.”
XXVI.
How can we be ever on the watch for the evil which is so near us? We cannot; but one is with us, is in us, who can and will, if we will let him.
Men found this out in the old time, and have felt it and known it ever since. Three thousand years ago this truth dawned upon the old Psalmist, and struck him with awe. He struggled with it; he tried to escape from it, but in vain. “Whither shall I go,” he says “from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”
Is any of us stronger or wiser than the Psalmist? Is there any place for us to flee to, which was not open to him? My brethren, had we not better make up our minds to accept and acknowledge the truth, to which our own consciences bear witness, that not only in heaven, and in hell, and in the uttermost parts of sea and earth, He is present, but that in the inmost recesses of our own hearts there is no escape from his Spirit—that He is there also, sustaining us, pleading with us, punishing us.
We know it by the regret we feel for time wasted and opportunities neglected; by the loathing coming back to us, time after time, for our every untrue, or mean thought, word, or deed; by every longing after truth, and righteousness, and purity, which stirs our sluggish souls. By all these things, and in a thousand other ways, we feel it, we know it.
Let us, then, own this and give ourselves up to his guidance. At first it will be hard work; our will and spirits will be like a lump of ice in a man’s hand, which yields but slowly to the warm pressure. But do not despair; throw yourselves on his guidance, and he will guide you, he will hide you under his wings, you shall be safe under his feathers, his faithfulness and truth shall be your shield and buckler.
The ice will melt into water, and the water will lie there in the hollow of the hand, moving at the slightest motion, obeying every impulse which is given to it.
My brethren, the Spirit of God which is in every one of us—the spirit of truth and love unchangeable—will take possession of our spirits, if we will but let him, and turn our whole lives into the lives of children of God, and joint-heirs of heaven with his Son.
XXVII.
“As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it,” may be a startling saying of Mr. Emerson’s, but is one which commends itself to our experience and reason, if we only consult them honestly. Let us take the most obvious examples of this law. Look at the relations of man to the brute creation. One of us shall have no difficulty in making friends of beasts and birds, while another excites their dread and hate, so that even dogs will scarcely come near him. There is no need to go back to the traditions of the hermits in the Thebaid, or St. Francis of Assisi, for instances of the former class. We all know the story of Cowper and his three hares, from his exquisite letters and poem, and most of you must have read, or heard of the terms on which Waterton lived with the birds and beasts in his Yorkshire home, and of Thoreau, unable to get rid of wild squirrels and birds who would come and live with him, or from a boat, taking fish which lay quietly in his hand till he chose to put them back again into the stream. But I suppose there is scarcely one of us who has not himself seen such instances again and again, persons of whom the old words seemed literally true, “At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh; neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.”
I remember myself several such; a boy who was friends even with rats, stoats, and snakes, and generally had one or other of them in his pockets; a groom upon whose shoulders the pigeons used to settle, and nestle against his cheeks, whenever he went out into the stable-yard or field. Is there any reasonable way of accounting for this? Only one, I think, which is, that those who have this power over, and attraction for, animals, have always felt toward them and treated them as their Maker intended—have unconsciously, perhaps, but still faithfully, followed God’s mind in their dealings with his creatures, and so have stood in true relations to them all, and have found the beasts of the field at peace with them.
In the same way the stones of the field are in league with the geologist, the trees and flowers with the botanist, the component parts of earth and air with the chemist, just in so far as each, consciously or unconsciously, follows God’s methods with them—each part of his creation yielding up its secrets and its treasures to the open mind of the humble and patient, who is also at bottom always the most courageous learner.
XXVIII.
What is true of each of us beyond all question—what every man who walks with open eyes and open heart knows to be true of himself—must be true also of Christ. And so, though we may reject the stories of the clay birds, which he modeled as a child, taking wing and bursting into song round him, (as on a par with St. Francis’ address to his sisters, the swallows, at Alvia, or the flocks in the marshes of Venice, who thereupon kept silence from their twitterings and songs till his sermon was finished), we cannot doubt that in proportion as Christ was more perfectly in sympathy with God’s creation than any mediæval saint, or modern naturalist, or man of science, he had more power than they with all created things from his earliest youth. Nor could it be otherwise with the hearts and wills of men. Over these we know that, from that time to this, he has exercised a supreme sway, infinitely more wonderful than that over birds and beasts, because of man’s power of resistance to the will Christ came to teach and to do, which exists, so far as we can see, in no other part of creation.
I think, then, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that he must have had all these powers from his childhood, that they must have been growing stronger from