 Chapter 7 Part 2 of the Hope of the Gospel This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Jordan. The Hope of the Gospel by George MacDonald Chapter 7 God's Family Part 2 God made man and woken him the hunger for righteousness. The Lord came to enlarge and rouse this hunger. The first and lasting effect of his words must be to make the hungering and thirsting long yet more. If their passion grow to a despairing sense of the unattainable, a hopelessness of ever gaining that without which life were worthless, let them remember that the Lord congratulates the hungry and thirsty, so sure does he know them of one day being satisfied. Their hunger is a precious thing to have. Nonetheless that it were a bad thing to retain unappeased. It springs from the lack but also from the love of good, and its presence makes it possible to supply the lack. Happy then ye pining souls, the food you would have is the one thing the Lord would have you have, the very thing he came to bring you. Fear not ye hungering and thirsting, you shall have righteousness enough, though none to spare, none to spare yet enough to overflow upon every man. See how the Lord goes on filling his disciples, John and Peter and James and Paul with righteousness from within. What honest soul interpreting the servant by the master, and unbiased by the tradition of them that would shut the kingdom of heaven against men, can doubt what Paul means by the righteousness which is of God by faith. He was taught of Jesus Christ through the words he had spoken, and the man who does not understand Jesus Christ will never understand his apostles. What righteousness could St. Paul have meant but the same the Lord would have men hunger and thirst after, the very righteousness wherewith God is righteous. They that hunger and thirst after such only righteousness shall become pure in heart, and shall see God. But if your hunger seems long in being filled, it is well it should seem long, but what if your righteousness tarry because your hunger after it is not eager? There are who sit long at the table because their desire is slow. They eat as who should say, we need no food. In things spiritual, increasing desire is the sign that satisfaction is drawing nearer, but it were better to hunger after righteousness forever than to dull the sense of lack with the husks of the Christian scribes and lawyers. He who trusts in the atonement instead of in the Father of Jesus Christ fills his fancy with the chimeras of a vulgar legalism, not his heart with the righteousness of God. Hear another like word of the Lord. He assures us that the Father hears the cries of his elect, of those whom he seeks to worship him because they worship in spirit and in truth. Shall not God avenge his own elect, he says, which cry day and night unto him? Now, what can God's elect have to keep on crying for, night and day, but righteousness? He allows that God seems to put off answering them, but assures us he will answer them speedily. Even now he must be busy answering their prayers. Increasing hunger is the best possible indication that he is doing so. For some divine reason, it is well they should not yet know in themselves that he is answering their prayers. But the day must come when we shall be righteous, even as he is righteous, when no word of his will miss being understood because of our lack of righteousness, when no unrighteousness shall hide from our eyes the face of the Father. These two promises of seeing God and being filled with righteousness have placed between the individual man and his Father in heaven directly. The promise I now come to has placed between a man and his God as the God of other men also, as the Father of the whole family in heaven and earth. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Those that are on their way to see God, those who are growing pure in heart through hunger and thirst after righteousness, are indeed the children of God. But specially the Lord calls those His children who, on their way home, are peacemakers in the travelling company. For surely those in any family are specially the children who make peace with and among the rest. The true idea of the universe is the whole family in heaven and earth. All children in this part of it, the earth at least, are not good children. But however far, therefore, the earth is from being a true portion of a real family, the life germ at the root of the world, that by and for which it exists is its relation to God, the Father of men, for the development of this germ in the consciousness of the children, the church, whose idea is the pure family within the more mixed, ever growing as leaven within the meal by absorption, but which itself is, alas, not easily distinguishable from the world it would change, is one of the passing means. For the same purpose, the whole divine family is made up of numberless human families, that in these men may learn and begin to love one another. God then would make of the world a true divine family. Now, the primary necessity to the very existence of a family is peace. Many a human family is no family, and the world is no family yet for the lack of peace. Wherever peace is growing, there, of course, is the live peace, counteracting disruption and disintegration, and helping the development of the true essential family. The one question, therefore, as to any family is, whether peace or strife be on the increase in it. For peace alone makes it possible for the binding grass-roots of life, love, namely, and justice, to spread throughout what were else but a wind-blown heap of still-drifting sand. The peacemakers quiet the winds of the world, ever ready to be up and blowing. They tend and cherish the interlacing roots of the ministering grass. They spin and twist many uniting cords, and they weave many supporting bands. They are the servants for the truth-sake, of the individual, of the family, of the world, of the great universal family of heaven and earth. They are the true children of that family. The allies and ministers of every clasping and consolidating force in it, fellow workers they are with God in the creation of the family. They help him to get it to his mind, to perfect his father-idea. Ever-radiating peace they welcome love, but do not seek it. They provoke no jealousy. They are the children of God, for like him they would be one with his creatures. His eldest son, his very likeness, was the first of the family peacemakers. Preaching peace to them that were afar off and them that were nigh, he stood undefended in the turbulent crowd of his fellows, and it was only over his dead body that his brothers began to come together in the peace that will not be broken. He rose again from the dead. His peacemaking brothers, like himself, are dying unto sin, and not yet have the evil children made their father hate or their elder brother flinch. On the other hand, those whose influence is to divide and separate, causing the hearts of men to lean away from each other, make themselves the children of the evil one. Born of God and not of the devil, they turn from God and adopt the devil their father. They set their God-born life against God, against the whole creative, redemptive purpose of his unifying will, ever obstructing the one prayer of the first-born, that the children may be one with him in the Father. Against the heart end of creation, against that for which the son yielded himself utterly, the sows of strife, the fermenters of discord, contend ceaselessly. They do their part, with all the other powers of evil, to make the world which the love of God holds together, a world, at least, though not yet a family, one heaving mass of dissolution, but they labour in vain, through the mass and through it, that it may cohere this way and that, guided in dance inexplicable of prophetic harmony, move the children of God, the lights of the world, the lovers of men, the fellow workers with God, the peacemakers, ever weaving after a pattern devised by, and known only to him who orders their ways, the web of the world's history. But for them the world would have no history. It would vanish, a cloud of wind-borne dust. As in his labour, so shall these share in the joy of God, in the divine fruition of victorious endeavour. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God, the children, because they set the Father on the throne of the family. The main practical difficulty, with some at least of the peacemakers, is how to carry themselves toward the undoers of peace, the disuniters of souls. Perhaps the most potent of these are not those powers of the church visible, who care for canon and dogma more than for truth, and for the church more than for Christ, who take uniformity for unity, who strain at a net and swallow a camel, knowing what spirit they are of. Such men, I say, are perhaps neither the most active, nor the most potent force working for the disintegration of the body of Christ. I imagine that neither are the party liars of politics the worst foes to divine unity, ungenerous and often knowingly false as they are to their opponents, to whom they seem to have no desire to be honest and fair. I think, rather, they must be the babbling liars of the social circle, and the faithless brothers and unloving sisters of disunited human families. But why inquire? Every self-assertion, every form of self-seeking, however small or poor, world noble or grotesque, is a separating and scattering force, and these forces are multitudinous, these points of radial repulsion are innumerable, because of the prevailing passion of mean souls to seem great and feel important. If such cannot hope to attract the attention of the great little world, if they cannot even become the signager of neighbouring eyes, they will, in what sphere they may call their own, however small it be, try to make a party for themselves, each revolving on his or her own axis, will attempt to self-centre a private whirlpool of human monads. To draw such a surrounding, the partisan of self will, sometimes nor asunder, the most precious of bonds, poison whole broods of infant loves. Such real schismatics go about, we're not inventing evil, yet rejoicing in iniquity, mishearing, misrepresenting, paralyzing affection, separating hearts. Their chosen calling is that of the strife-maker, the child of the dividing devil. They belong to the class of the perfidious, whom Dante places in the lowest infernal gulf as their proper home. Many a woman who now imagines herself standing well in morals and religion will find herself, at last, just such a child of the devil, and her misery will be the hope of her redemption. But it is not for her sake that I write these things. Would such a woman recognise her own likeness? Were I to set it down as close as words could draw it? I am rather as one groping after some light on the true behaviour toward her kind. Are we to treat persons known for liars and strife-makers as the children of the devil or not? Are we to turn away from them and refuse to acknowledge them, rousing an ignorant strife of tongues concerning our conduct? Are we guilty of connivance when silent as to the ambush whence we know the wicked arrow-privilege shot? Are we to call the traitor to account? Or are we to give warning of any sort? I have no answer. Each must carry the question that perplexes to the light of the world. For what purpose is the Spirit of God promised to them that ask it if not to help order their way aright? One thing is plain, that we must love the strife-maker. Another is nearly as plain, that if we do not love him we must leave him alone, for without love there can be no peacemaking, and words will but occasion more strife. To be kind neither hurts nor compromises. Kindness has many phases, and the fitting form of it may avoid offence and must avoid untruth. We must not fear what man can do to us, but commit our way to the father of the family. We must be no wise anxious to defend ourselves, and if not ourselves because God is our defence, then why our friends? Is he not their defence as much as ours? Commit thy friends cause also to him who judgeeth righteously. Be ready to bear testimony for thy friend, as thou wouldst to receive the blow struck at him, but do not plunge into a nest of scorpions to rescue his handkerchief. Be true to him thyself, nor spare to show thou lovest and honourest him, but defence may dishonour. Men may say, What is thy friend's esteem then so small? He is unwise who drags a rich veil from a cactus bush. Whatever our relation then, with any peace-breaker, our mercy must ever be within call. It may help us against an indignation too strong to be pure, to remember that when any man is reviled for righteousness' sake, then is he blessed. End of chapter 7 part 2 Chapter 8 of The Hope of the Gospel This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Jordan The Hope of the Gospel by George MacDonald Chapter 8 The Reward of Obedience Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Matthew chapter 5 verses 7, 10, 11 and 12 Mercy cannot get in where mercy goes not out. The outgoing makes way for the incoming. God takes the part of humanity against the man. The man must treat men as he would have God treat him. If ye forgive men their trespasses, the Lord says, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And in the prophecy of the judgment of the Son of Man, he represents himself as saying, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. But the demand for mercy is far from being for the sake only of the man who needs his neighbour's mercy. It is greatly more for the sake of the man who must show the mercy. It is a small thing to a man whether or not his neighbour be merciful to him. It is life or death to him whether or not he be merciful to his neighbour. The greatest mercy that can be shown to man is to make him merciful therefore, if he will not be merciful, the mercy of God must compel him there too. In the parable of the king taking account of his servants, he delivers the unmerciful debtor to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him. The king had forgiven his debtor, but as the debtor refuses to pass on the forgiveness to his neighbour, the only way to make a return in kind, the king withdraws his forgiveness. If we forgive not men their trespasses, our trespasses remain. For how can God in any sense forgive, remit, or send away the sin which a man insists on retaining? Unmerciful, we must be given up to the tormentors until we learn to be merciful. God is merciful. We must be merciful. There is no blessedness except in being such as God. It would be altogether unmerciful to leave us unmerciful. The reward of the merciful is that by their mercy they are rendered capable of receiving the mercy of God, yea, God himself who is mercy. That men may be drawn to taste and see and understand, the Lord associates reward with righteousness. The Lord would have men love righteousness, but how are they to love it without being acquainted with it? How are they to go on loving it without a growing knowledge of it? To draw them toward it that they may begin to know it and to encourage them when assailed by the disappointments that accompany endeavor, He tells them simply a truth concerning it, that in the doing of it there is great reward. Let no one start with dismay at the idea of a reward of righteousness, saying virtue is its own reward. Is not virtue then a reward? Is any other imaginable reward worth mentioning beside it? True the man may, after this mode or that, mistake the reward promised. Not the less must he have it or perish. Who will count himself deceived by overfulfillment? Would a parent be deceiving his child in saying, my boy, you will have a great reward if you learn Greek, for seeing his son's delight in Homer and Plato, now but a valueless waste in his eyes? When his reward comes, will the youth feel aggrieved that it is Greek and not banknotes? The nature, indeed, of the Lord's promised rewards is hardly to be mistaken, yet the foolish remarks one sometimes hears make me wish to point out that neither is the Lord proclaiming an ethical system, nor does he make the blunder of representing as righteousness the doing of a good thing because of some advantage to be thereby gained. When he promises, he only states some fact that will encourage his disciples, that is, all who learn of him, to meet the difficulties in the way of doing right and so learning righteousness, his object being to make men righteous, not to teach them philosophy. I doubt if those who would, on the ground of mentioned reward, set aside the teaching of the Lord, are as anxious to be righteous as they are to prove him unrighteous. If they were, they would, I think, take more care to represent him truly. They would make father search into the thing, nor be willing that he whom the world confesses its best man and whom they themselves, perhaps, confess their superior in conduct should be found less pure in theory than they. Must the Lord hide from his friends that they will have cause to rejoice that they have been obedient? Must he give them no help to counterbalance the load with which they start on their race? Is he to tell them the horrors of the persecutions that await them, and not the sweet sympathies that will help them through? Was it wrong to assure them that where he was going, they should go also? The Lord could not demand of them more righteousness than he does. Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. But not to help them by word of love, deed of power, and promise of good would have shown him far less of a brother and a saviour. It is the part of the enemy of righteousness to increase the difficulties in the way of becoming righteous, and to diminish those in the way of seeming righteous. Jesus desires no righteousness for the pride of being righteous, any more than for advantage to be gained by it. Therefore, while requiring such purity as the man beforehand is unable to imagine, he gives him all the encouragement he can. He will not enhance his victory by difficulties. Of them there are enough, but by completeness. He will not demand the loftiest motives in the yet far from loftiest soul. To those the soul must grow. He will hearten the child with promises and fulfill them to the contentment of the man. Men cannot be righteous without love. To love a righteous man is the best, the only way to learn righteousness. The Lord gives us himself to love and promises his closest friendship to them that overcome. God's rewards are always in kind. I am your Father. Be my children, and I will be your Father. Every obedience is the opening of another door into the boundless universe of life. So long as the constitution of that universe remains, so long as the world continues to be made by God, righteousness can never fail of perfect reward. Before it could be otherwise, the government must have passed into other hands. The idea of merit is no wise essential to that of reward. Jesus tells us that the Lord who finds his servant faithful will make him sit down to meet and come forth and serve him. He says likewise, when ye have done all, say we are unprofitable servants, we have done only that which it was our duty to do. Reward is the rebound of virtue's well-served ball from the hand of love. A sense of merit is the most sneaking shape that self-satisfaction can assume. God's reward lies closed in all well-doing. The doer of right grows better and humbler and comes nearer to God's heart as nearer to his likeness, grows more capable of God's own blessedness and of inheriting the kingdom of heaven and earth. To be greater than one's fellows is the offered reward of hell and involves no greatness. To be made greater than one's self is the divine reward and involves a real greatness. A man might be set above all his fellows to be but so much less than he was before. A man cannot be raised a hair's breadth above himself without rising nearer to God. The reward itself then is righteousness and the man who was righteous for the sake of such reward knowing what it was would be righteous for the sake of righteousness which yet, however, would not be perfection but I must distinguish and divide no farther now. The reward of mercy is not often of this world. The merciful do not often receive mercy in return from their fellows. Perhaps they do not often receive much gratitude. Nonetheless, being the children of their father in heaven will they go on to show mercy even to their enemies. They must give like God and like God be blessed in giving. There is a mercy that lies in the endeavor to share with others the best things God has given. They who do so will be persecuted and reviled and slandered as well as thanked and loved and befriended. The Lord not only promises the greatest possible reward he tells his disciples the worst they have to expect. He not only shows them the fair countries to which they are bound he tells them the truth of the rough weather and the hardships of the way. He will not have them choose in ignorance. At the same time he strengthens them to meet coming difficulty by instructing them in its real nature. All this is part of his preparation of them for his work for taking his yoke upon them and becoming fellow laborers with him in his father's vineyard. They must not imagine because they are the servants of his father that therefore they shall find their work easy. They shall only find their reward great. Neither will he have them fancy when evil comes upon them that something unforeseen, unprovided for has befallen them. It is just then, on the contrary, that their reward comes nigh when men revile them and persecute them then they may know that they are blessed. Their suffering is ground for rejoicing for exceeding gladness. The ignominy cast upon them leaves the name of the Lord's Father written upon their foreheads, the mark of the true among the false, of the children among the slaves. With all who suffer for the world persecution is the seal of their patent, a sign that they were sent. They fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake. Let us look at the similar words the Lord spoke in a later address to his disciples in the presence of thousands on the plane supplemented with lamentation over such as have what they desire. St Luke chapter 6 verses 20 to 26 Blessed be ye poor for yours is the kingdom of God Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh Blessed are ye when men shall hate you and when they shall separate you from their company and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy for behold your reward is great in heaven for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets but woe unto you that are rich for ye have received your consolation woe unto you that are full for ye shall hunger woe unto you that laugh now for ye shall mourn and weep woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you for so did their fathers to the false prophets. On this occasion he uses the word hunger without limitation. Every true want, every genuine need, every God created hunger is a thing provided for in the idea of the universe, but no attempt to fill a void otherwise than the heart of the universe intended and intends is or can be anything but a woe. God forgets none of his children, the naughty ones any more than the good. Love and reward is for the good, love and correction for the bad. The bad ones will trouble the good, but shall do them no hurt. The evil a man does to his neighbor, shall do his neighbor no harm, shall work indeed for his good, but he himself will have to mourn for his doing. A sore injury to himself, it is to his neighbor a cause of jubilation, not for the evil the man does to himself, over that there is sorrow in heaven, but for the good it occasions his neighbor. The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated may lament their lot, as if God had forgotten them, but God is all the time caring for them. Blessed in his sight now, they shall soon know themselves blessed. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. Welcome words from the glad heart of the Saviour. Do they not make our hearts burn within us? They shall be comforted even to laughter. The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated, the persecuted are the powerful, the opulent, the merry, the loved, the victorious of God's kingdom, to be filled with good things, to laugh for every delight, to be honoured and sought and cherished. But such as have their poor consolation in this life, alas for them, for those who have yet to learn what hunger is, for those whose laughter is as the crackling of thorns, for those who have loved and gathered the praises of men, for the rich, the jockened, the full fed. Silent footed evil is on its way to seize them. Divies must go without, Lazarus must have. God's education makes use of terrible extremes. There are the last that shall be first, and first that shall be last. The Lord knew what trials, what tortures even awaited His disciples after His death. He knew they would need every encouragement He could give them to keep their hearts strong, lest in some moment of dismay they should deny Him. If they had denied Him, where would our gospel be? If there are none able and ready to be crucified for Him now, alas for the age to come, what a poor travesty of the good news of God will arrive at their doors. Those whom our Lord felicitates are all the children of one family, and everything that can be called blessed or blessing comes of the same righteousness. If a disciple be blessed because of any one thing, every other blessing is either his or on the way to become his. For he is on the way to receive the very righteousness of God. Each good thing opens the door to the one next it, so to all the rest. But as if these, his assurances and promises and comfortings were not large enough, as if the mention of any condition whatever might discourage some humble man of heart with a sense of unfitness, with the fear, perhaps conviction, that the promise was not for him, as if someone might say, alas I am proud and neither poor in spirit nor meek. I am at times not at all hungry after righteousness. I am not half merciful and I am very ready to feel hurt and indignant. I am shut out from every blessing. The Lord, knowing the multitudes that can urge nothing in their own favour, and sorely feel they are not blessed, looks abroad over the wide world of his brothers and sisters, and calls aloud, including in the boundless invitation, every living soul with but the one qualification of unrest or discomfort. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9, Part 1 of The Hope of the Gospel. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Jordan. The Hope of the Gospel by George MacDonald. Chapter 9, The Yoke of Jesus, Part 1. At that time Jesus answered and said, according to Luke, in that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son, according to Luke, who the Son is, but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, according to Luke, who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Matthew, Chapter 11, Verses 25 to 27. Luke, Chapter 10, Verses 21 and 22. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew, Chapter 11, Verses 28 to 30. The words of the Lord in the former two of these paragraphs are represented both by Matthew and by Luke, as spoken after the denunciation of the cities of Corison, Bethsaida and Capernaum. Only in Luke's narrative the return of the Seventy is mentioned between, and there the rejoicing of the Lord over the Father's revelation of himself to babes appears to have reference to the Seventy. The fact that the return of the Seventy is not mentioned elsewhere leaves us free to suppose that the words were indeed spoken on that occasion. The circumstances, however, as circumstances, are to us of little importance, not being necessary to the understanding of the words. The Lord makes no complaint against the wise and prudent. He but recognises that they are not those to whom his Father reveals his best things, for which fact and the reason of it he thanks or praises his Father. I bless thy will. I see that thou art right. I am of one mind with thee. Something of each of these phases of meaning seems to belong to the Greek word. But why not reveal true things first to the wise? Are they not the fittest to receive them? Yes, if these things and their wisdom lie in the same region, not otherwise. No amount of knowledge or skill in physical science will make a man the fitter to argue a metaphysical question, and the wisdom of this world, meaning by the term the philosophy of prudence, self-protection, precaution, especially unfits a man for receiving what the Father has to reveal. In proportion to our care about our own well-being is our incapability of understanding and welcoming the care of the Father. The wise and the prudent, with all their energy of thought, could never see the things of the Father sufficiently to recognise them as true. Their sagacity labours in earthly things, and so fills their minds with their own questions and conclusions that they cannot see the eternal foundations God has laid in man or the consequent necessities of their own nature. They are proud of finding out things, but the things they find out are all less than themselves. Because, however, they have discovered them, they imagine such things the goal of the human intellect. If they grant there may be things beyond those, they either count them beyond their reach or declare themselves uninterested in them. For the wise and prudent they do not exist. They work only to gather by the senses and deduce from what they have so gathered the prudential, the probable, the expedient, the protective. They never think of the essential of what in itself must be. They are cautious, wary, discreet, judicious, unspecct, provident, temporising. They have no enthusiasm and are shy of all forms of it. A clever, hard, thin people who take things for the universe and love of facts for love of truth. They know nothing deeper in man than mere surface mental facts and their relations. They do not perceive, or they turn away from, any truth which the intellect cannot formulate. Zeal for God will never eat them up. Why should it? He is not interesting to them. Theology may be. To such men religion means theology. How should the treasure of the Father be open to such? In their hands his rubies would draw in their fire and cease to glow. The roses of paradise in their gardens would blow withered. They never go beyond the porch of the temple. They are not sure whether there be any additum and they do not care to go in and see. Why indeed should they? It would but be to turn and come out again. Even when they know their duty, they must take it to pieces and consider the grounds of its claim before they will render it obedience. All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of the children. These wise and prudent, careful to make the words of his messengers rhyme with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, understand their own hearts, but by their miserable intellects and postponing the obedience which alone can give power to the understanding, press upon men's minds their wretched interpretations of the will of the Father instead of the doing of that will upon their hearts. They call their philosophy the truth of God and say men must hold it or stand outside. They are the slaves of the letter in all its weakness and imperfection and will be until the spirit of the word, the spirit of obedience, shall set them free. The babes must beware lest the wise and prudent come between them and the Father. They must yield no claim to authority over their belief made by man or community, by church any more than by synagogue. That alone is for them to believe which the Lord reveals to their souls as true. That alone is it possible for them to believe with what he counts belief. The divine object for which teacher or church exists is the persuasion of the individual heart to come to Jesus, the spirit to be taught what he alone can teach. Terribly has his gospel suffered in the mouths of the wise and prudent. How would it be faring now had its first messages been committed to persons of repute instead of those simple fishermen? It would be nowhere or, if anywhere, unrecognizable. From the first we should have had a system founded on human interpretation of the divine gospel instead of the gospel itself which would have disappeared. As it is, we have had one dull, miserable human system after another usurping its place, but thank God the gospel remains. The little child, heedless of his trailing cloud of glory and looking about him aghast in an unknown world may yet see and run to the arms open to the children. How often has not some symbol employed in the New Testament been forced into the surface of argument for one or another contemptible scheme of redemption which were no redemption? While the truth, for the sake of which the symbol was used the thing meant to be conveyed by it has lain unregarded beside the heap of rubbish. Had the wise and prudent been the confidence of God I repeat, the letter would at once have usurped the place of the spirit the ministering slave would have been set over the household. A system of religion with its rickety, malodorous plan of salvation would not only have at once been put in the place of a living Christ but would yet have held that place. The great brother, the human God, the eternal son, the living one would have been as utterly hidden from the tearful eyes and aching hearts of the weary and heavy laden as if he had never come from the deeps of love to call the children home out of the shadows of a self-haunted universe. But the father revealed the father's things to his babes. The babes loved and began to do them. Their with began to understand them and went on growing in the knowledge of them and in the power of communicating them. While, to the wise and prudent, the deepest words of the most babe-like of them all, John Boe energies even now appear but a finger-worn rosary of platitudes. The babe understands the wise and prudent but is understood only by the babe. The father then revealed his things to babes because the babes were his own little ones uncorrupted by the wisdom or the care of this world and therefore able to receive them. The others, though his children, had not begun to be like him therefore could not receive them. The father's things would not have got anyhow into their minds without leaving all their value, all their spirit outside the un-child-like place. The babes are near enough, once they come, to understand a little how things go in the presence of their father in heaven and thereby to interpret the words of the son. The child, who has not yet walked above a mile or two from his first love, is not out of touch with the mind of his father. Quickly will he seal the old bond when the son himself, the first of the babes, the one perfect babe of God comes to lead the children out of the lovely shadows of eternity into the land of the white celestial thought. As God is the one only real father so it is only to God that anyone can be a perfect child. In his garden only can childhood blossom. The leader of the great array of little ones himself in virtue of his first born childhood, the recipient of the revelations of his father having thus given thanks and said why he gave thanks breaks out a fresh, renewing expression of delight that God had willed it thus. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight I venture to translate. Yea, O Father, for thus came forth satisfaction before thee and think he meant yea, Father, for thereat were all thy angels filled with satisfaction. The babes were the prophets in heaven and the angels were glad to find it was to be so upon the earth also. They rejoiced to see that what was bound in heaven was bound on earth that the same principle held in each. Compare Matthew chapter 18 verse 10 and 14 also Luke chapter 15 verse 10. See that ye despise not one of these little ones for I say unto you that there angels in heaven do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. Thus it is not the will before your Father which is in heaven. Among the angels who stand before him I think he means that one of these little ones should perish. Even so, I say unto you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Jordan The Hope of the Gospel by George MacDonald Chapter 9 The Yoke of Jesus Part 2 Having thus thanked his Father that he has done after his own good and acceptable and perfect will he turns to his disciples and tells them that he knows the Father being his son and that only he can reveal the Father to the rest of his children. All things are delivered unto me of my Father and no one knoweth the Son but the Father. Neither knoweth anyone the Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. It is almost as if his mention of the babes brought his thoughts back to himself and his Father between whom lay the secret of all life and all sending, yea, all loving. The relationship of the Father and the Son contains the idea of the universe. Jesus tells his disciples that his Father had no secrets from him, that he knew the Father as the Father knew him. The Son must know the Father. He only could know him and knowing he could reveal him. The Son could make the other, the imperfect children know the Father and so become such as he. All things were given unto him by the Father because he was the Son of the Father. For the same reason he could reveal the things of the Father to the child of the Father. The child relation is the one eternal, ever-enduring, never-changing relation. Note that while the Lord here represents the knowledge his Father and he have each of the other as limited to themselves, the statement is one of fact only, not of design or intention. His presence in the world is for the removal of that limitation. The Father knows the Son and sends him to us that we may know him. The Son knows the Father and dies to reveal him. The glory of God's mysteries is that they are for his children to look into. When the Lord took the little child in the presence of his disciples and declared him his representative, he made him the representative of his Father also. But the eternal child alone can reveal him. To reveal is immeasurably more than to represent. It is to present to the eyes that know the truth when they see it. Jesus represented God. The spirit of Jesus reveals God. The represented God a man may refuse. Many refuse the Lord. The revealed God no one can refuse. To see God and to love him are one. He can be revealed only to the child, perfectly to the pure child only. All the discipline of the world is to make men children that God may be revealed to them. No man, when first he comes to himself, can have any true knowledge of God. He can only have a desire after such knowledge. But while he does not know him at all, he cannot become in his heart God's child. So the Father must draw nearer to him. He sends therefore his firstborn who does know him is exactly like him and can represent him perfectly. Drawn to him, the children receive him and then he is able to reveal the Father to them. No wisdom of the wise can find out God. No words of the God loving can reveal him. The simplicity of the whole natural relation is too deep for the philosopher. The son alone can reveal God. The child alone understands him. The elder brother companies with the younger and makes him yet more a child like himself. He interpenetrates his willing companion with his obedient glory. He lets him see how he delights in his Father and lets him know that God is his Father too. He rouses in his little brother the sense of their Father's will and the younger as he hears and obeys begins to see that his elder brother must be the very image of their Father. He becomes more and more of a child and more and more the son reveals to him the Father. For he knows that to know the Father is the one thing needful to every child of the Father, the one thing to fill the divine gulf of his necessity. To see the Father is the cry of every child heart in the universe of the Father is the need where not the cry of every living soul. Comfort yourselves then, brothers and sisters. He to whom the Son will reveal him shall know the Father and the Son came to us that he might reveal him. Eternal brother we cry show us the Father be thyself to us that in thee we may know him. We too are his children. Let the other children share with thee in the things of the Father. Having spoken to his Father first and now to his disciples the Lord turns to the whole world and lets his heart overflow. St. Matthew alone has saved for us the eternal cry. Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. I know the Father. Come then to me all ye that labour and are heavy laden. He does not hear call those who want to know the Father. His cry goes far beyond them. It reaches to the ends of the earth. He calls those who are weary. Those who do not know that ignorance of the Father is the cause of all their labour and the heaviness of their burden. Come unto me, he says, and I will give you rest. This is the Lord's own form of his gospel more intensely personal and direct at the same time of yet wider inclusion than that which at Nazareth he appropriated from Isaiah differing from it also in this, that it is interfused with strongest persuasion to the troubled to enter into and share his own eternal rest. I will turn his argument a little. I have rest because I know the Father. Be meek and lowly of heart toward him as I am. Let him lay his yoke upon you as he lays it on me. I do his will, not my own. Take on you the yoke that I wear. Be his child like me. Become a babe to whom he can reveal his wonders. Then shall you too find rest to your souls. You shall have the same peace I have. You will be weary and heavy laden no more. I find my yoke easy, my burden light. We must not imagine that when the Lord says, take my yoke upon you, he means a yoke which he lays on those that come to him. My yoke is the yoke he wears himself. The yoke his Father lays upon him. The yoke out of which that same moment he speaks, bearing it with glad patience. You must take upon you the yoke I have taken. The Father lays it upon us. The best of the good wine remains. I have kept it to the last. A friend pointed out to me that the Master does not mean we must take on us a yoke like his. We must take on us the very yoke he is carrying. Dante, describing how, on the first terrace of purgatory, he walked stooping to be on a level with Odorisi, who went bowed to the ground by the ponderous burden of the pride he had cherished on earth, says, I went walking with this heavy laden soul, just as oxen walk in the yoke. This picture almost always comes to me with the words of the Lord. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Their intent is, take the other end of my yoke, doing as I do, being as I am. Think of it a moment. To walk in the same yoke with the Son of Man, doing the same labour with Him, and having the same feeling common to Him and us. This and nothing else is offered the man who would have rest to his soul, is required of the man who would know the Father, is by the Lord pressed upon him to whom he would give the same peace, which pervades and sustains his own eternal heart. But a yoke is for drawing with all. What load is it the Lord is drawing? Wherewith is the cart laden, which he would have us help him draw? With what but the will of the eternal, the perfect Father? How should the Father honour the Son, but by giving Him His will to embody indeed, by making Him hand to His Father's heart, and hardest of all, in bringing home His children? Especially in drawing this load must his yoke fellow share. How to draw it he must learn of him who draws by his side. Whoever, in the commonest duties that fall to him, does as the Father would have him do, bears his yoke along with Jesus, and the Father takes his help for the redemption of the world, for the deliverance of men from the slavery of their own rubbish laden wagons into the liberty of God's husbandmen. Bearing the same yoke with Jesus, the man learns to walk, step for step with him, drawing, drawing the cart laden with the will of the Father of both, and rejoicing with the joy of Jesus. The glory of existence is to take up its burden and exist for existence eternal and supreme. For the Father, who does His divine perfect best to impart His glad life to us, making us sharers of that nature, which is bliss and that labour which is peace, He lives for us. We must live for Him. The little ones must take their full share in the great Father's work. His work is the business of the family. Starts thy soul, trembles thy brain at the thought of such a burden as the will of the eternally creating, eternally saving God. How shall mortal man walk in such a yoke, sayest thou, even with the Son of God bearing it also? Why, brother, sister, it is the only burden bearable, the only burden that can be born of mortal. Under any other, the lightest, he must at last sink outworn his very soul gray with sickness. He on whom lay the other half of the burden of God, the weight of his creation to redeem, says, The yoke I bear is easy. The burden I draw is light. And this he said, knowing the death he was to die. The yoke did not gall his neck. The burden did not overstrain his sinews. Neither did the gole on Calvary fright him from the straightway thither. He had the will of the Father to work out, and that will was his strength, as well as his joy. He had the same will as his Father. To him the one thing worth living for was the share of the love of his Father gave him in his work. He loved his Father even to the death of the cross, and eternally beyond it. When we give ourselves up to the Father as the Son gave himself, we shall not only find our yoke easy and our burden light, but that they communicate ease and lightness. Not only will they not make us weary, but they will give us rest from all other weariness. Let us not waste a moment in asking how this can be. The only way to know that is to take the yoke on us. That rest is a secret for every heart to know, for never a tongue to tell. Only by having it can we know it. If it seem impossible to take the yoke on us, let us attempt the impossible. Let us lay hold of the yoke and bow our heads and try to get our necks under it. Giving our Father the opportunity, he will help and not fail us. He is helping us every moment when least we think we need his help, when most we think we do. Then may we most boldly, as most earnestly we must cry for it. What or how much his creatures can do or bear, God only understands. But when most it seems impossible to do or bear, we must be most confident that he will neither demand too much, nor fail with the vital creator help. That help will be there when wanted. That is, the moment it can help. To be able beforehand to imagine ourselves doing or bearing, we have neither claim nor need. It is vain to think that any weariness, however caused, any burden, however slight, may be got rid of otherwise than by bowing the neck to the yoke of the Father's will. There can be no other rest for heart and soul that he has created. From every burden, from every anxiety, from all dread of shame or loss, even loss of love itself, that yoke will set us free. These words of the Lord, so many as are reported in common by St Matthew and St Luke, namely his Thanksgiving and his statement concerning the mutual knowledge of his Father and himself, meet me, like a well-known face unexpectedly encountered. They come to me, like a piece of heavenly bread, cut from the Gospel of St John. The words are not in that Gospel, and in St Matthew's and St Luke's there is nothing more of the kind. In St Mark's nothing like them. The passage seems to me just one solitary flower testifying to the presence in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke of the same root of thought and feeling which everywhere blossoms in that of John. It looks as if it had crept out of the fourth Gospel into the first and third, and seems a true sign, though no proof, that however much the fourth be unlike the other Gospels, they have all the same origin. Some disciple was able to remember one such word of which the promised comforter brought many to the remembrance of John. I do not see how the more phenomenal Gospels are ever to be understood, save through a right perception of the relation in which the Lord stands to his Father. Which relation is the main subject of the Gospel according to St John? As to the loving cry of the great brother to the whole weary world which Matthew alone has set down, I seem aware of a certain indescribable individuality in its tone, distinguishing it from all his other sayings on record. Those who come at the call of the Lord and take the rest he offers them, learning of him and bearing the yoke of the Father are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid, neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Of taking their importance to their own credit and seeing themselves other than God saw them. Yet the Lord does not hesitate to call his few humble disciples the salt of the earth and every century since has borne witness that such indeed they were. That he spoke of them but the simple fact. Where would the world be now but for their salt and their light? The world that knows neither their salt nor their light may imagine itself now at least greatly retarded by the long-drawn survival of their influences, but such as have chosen aspiration and not ambition will cry but for those men whither should we at this moment be bound? Their master set them to be salt against corruption and light against darkness and our souls answer and say Lord, they have been the salt. They have been the light of the world. No sooner has he used the symbol of the salt than the Lord proceeds to supplement its incompleteness. They were salt which must remember that it is salt which must live salt and choose salt and be salt. For the whole worth of salt lies in its being salt and all the saltness of the moral salt lies in the will to be salt. To lose its saltness then is to cease to exist save as a vile thing whose very being is unjustifiable. What is to be done with saltless salt? With such as would teach religion and know not God. Having thus carried the figure as far as it will serve him the master changes it for another which he can carry farther for salt only preserves from growing bad it does not cause anything to grow better. His disciples are the salt of the world but they are more. Therefore, having warned the human salt to look to itself that it be indeed salt he proceeds ye are the light of the world a city, a candle and so resumes his former path of persuasion and enforcement. It is so therefore make it so. Ye are the salt of the earth therefore be salt ye are the light of the world therefore shine ye are a city be seen upon your hill ye are the Lord's candles let no bushels cover you let your light shine every disciple of the Lord must be a preacher of righteousness cities are the best lighted portions of the world and perhaps the Lord meant you are a live city therefore light up your city. Some connection of the city with light seems probably in his thought seeing as the illusion to the city on the hill comes in the midst of what he says about light in relation to his disciples as the light of the world. Anyhow, the city is the best circle in which and the best centre from which to diffuse moral light. A man brooding in the desert may find the very light of light but he must go to the city to let it shine. From the general idea of light however associated with the city as visible to all the country around the Lord turns at once in this probably fragmentary representation of his words to the homelier, the more individual and personally applicable figure of the lamp neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel but on a lamp stand and it giveth light to all that are in the house. Here let us meditate a moment for what is a lamp or a man lighted? For them that need light therefore for all. A candle is not lighted for itself neither is a man. The light that serves self only is no true light it's one virtue is that it will soon go out. The bushel needs to be lighted but not by being put over the lamp. The man's own soul needs to be lighted but light for itself only light covered by the bushel is darkness whether to soul or bushel. Light unshared is darkness. To be light indeed it must shine out. It is of the very essence of light that it is for others. The thing is true of the spiritual as of the physical light of the truth as of its type. The lights of the world are live lights the lamp that the Lord kindles is a lamp that can will to shine a soul that must shine. It's true relation to the spirits around it to God and its fellows is its light. Then only does it fully shine when its love which is its light shows it to all the souls within its scope and all those souls to each other and so does its part to bring all together toward one. In the darkness each soul is alone. In the light the souls are a family. Men do not light a lamp to kill it with a bushel but to set it on a stand that it may give light to all that are in the house. The Lord seems to say so have I lighted you not that you may shine for yourselves but that you may give light unto all. I have set you like a city on a hill that the whole earth may see and share in your light. Shine therefore so shine before men that they may see your good things and glorify your Father for the light with which he has lighted you. Take heed to your light that it be such that it so shine that in you men may see the Father. May see your work so good so plainly His that they recognize His presence in you and thank Him for you. There was the danger always of the shadow of the self-bushel clouding the lamp the Father had lighted and the moment they ceased to show the Father the light that was in them was darkness. God alone is the light and our light is the shining of His will in our lives. If our light shine at all it must be it can be only in showing the Father. Nothing is light that does not bear Him witness. The man that sees the glory of God would turn sick at the thought of glorifying his own self whose one only possible glory is to shine with the glory of God. When a man tries to shine from the self that is not one with God and filled with his light he is but making ready for his own gathering contempt. The man who, like his Lord seeks not his own but the will of him who sent him he alone shines. He who would shine in the praises of men will sooner or later find himself but a Gideon's picture left broken on the field. Let us bestow ourselves then to keep this word of the Lord and to this end inquire how we are to let our lights shine. To the man who does not try to order his thoughts and feelings and judgments after the will of the Father I have nothing to say. He can have no light to let shine. For to let our light shine is to see that in every even the smallest thing our lives and actions correspond to what we know of God that as the true children of our Father in heaven we do everything as he would have us do it. Need I say that to let our light shine is to be just honourable, true, courteous more careful over the claim of our neighbour than our own selves in danger of overlooking it and not bound to insist on every claim of our own? The man who takes no count of what is fair, friendly, pure, unselfish, lovely, gracious, where is his claim to call Jesus his Lord? Where his claim to Christianity? What saves his claim from being merest mockery? The outshining of any human light must be obedience to truth recognised as such. Our first show of light as the Lord's disciples must be in doing the things he tells us. Naturally thus we declare him our master, the ruler of our conduct, the enlightener of our souls. And while in the doing of his will a man is learning the loveliness of his life, he can hardly fail to let some light shine across the dust of his failures, the exhalations from his faults. Thus will his disciples shine, as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. To shine we must keep in his light, sunning our souls in it by thinking of what he said and did, and would have us think and do. Let the light, like some diamonds, keep it and shine in the dark. Doing his will men will see in us that we count the world his, hold that his will and not ours must be done in it. Our very faces will then shine with the hope of seeing him and being taken home where he is. Only let us remember that trying to look at what we ought to be is the beginning of hypocrisy. If we do indeed expect better things to come we must let our hope appear. A Christian who looks gloomy at the mention of death, still more one who talks of his friends as if he had lost them turns the bushel of his little faith over the lamp of the Lord's light. Death is but our visible horizon and our look ought always just beyond it. We should never talk as if death were the end of anything. To let our light shine we must take care that we have no respect for riches. If we have none there is no fear of our showing any. To treat the poor man with less attention or cordiality than the rich is to show ourselves the servants of Mammon. In like manner we must lay no value on the praise or in any way seek it. We must honour no man because of intellect, fame or success. We must not shrink in fear of the judgment of men from doing openly what we hold right or at all acknowledge as a lawgiver what calls itself society or harbour the least anxiety for its approval. In business the custom of the trade must be understood by both acting parties. Else it can have no place either as law or excuse with the disciple of Jesus. The man to whom business is one thing and religion another is not a disciple. If he refuses to harmonise them by making his business religion he has already chosen Mammon. If he thinks not to settle the question it is settled. The style of all human endeavours is to serve God and Mammon. The man who makes the endeavour betrays his master in the temple and kisses him in the garden takes advantage of him in the shop and offers him divine service on Sunday. His very church going is but a further service of Mammon but let us waste no strength in despising such men and let us rather turn the light upon ourselves. Are we not in some way denying him? Is our light bearing witness? Is it shining before men so that they glorify God for us? If it does not shine it is darkness. In the darkness which a man takes for light he will thrust at the heart of the Lord himself. He who goes about his everyday duty work the Father has given him to do is he who lets his light shine but such a man will not be content with this he must yet let his light shine. Whatever makes his heart glad he will have his neighbour share. The body is a lantern it must not be a dark lantern. The glowing heart must show in the shining face. His glad thought may not be one to impart to his neighbour but he must not quench the vibration of its gladness ere it reach him. What shall we say of him who comes from his closet? His mountaintop with such a veil over his face as masks his very humanity. Is it with the Father that man has had communion whose every movement is self-hampered and in whose eyes dwell no smiles for the people of his house? The man who receives the quiet attentions the divine ministrations of wife or son or daughter without token of pleasure without sign of gratitude can hardly have been with Jesus or can he have been with him and have left him behind in his closet? If his faith in God take from a man his cheerfulness how shall the face of a man and why are they always glad before the face of the Father in heaven? It is true that pain or inward grief may blameless banish all smiling but even heaviness of heart has no right so to tumble the bushel over the lamp that no ray can get out to tell that love is yet burning within. The man must at least let his dear ones know that something else than displeasure with them is the cause of his clouded countenance. What a sweet colour the divine light takes to itself in courtesy whose perfection is the recognition of every man as a temple of the living God sorely ruined sadly defiled the temple may be but if God had left it it would be a heap and not a house. Next to love specially will the light shine out in fairness. What light can he have in him who is always on his own side and will never describe reason or right on that of his adversary? And certainly if he that showeth mercy as well he that showeth justice ought to do it with cheerfulness but if all our light shine out and none of our darkness shall we not be in utmost danger of hypocrisy? Yes if we but hide our darkness and do not strive to slay it with our light what way have we to show it while struggling to destroy it? Only when we cherish evil is there hypocrisy in hiding it a man who is honestly fighting it and showing it no quarter is already conqueror in Christ or soon will be and more than innocent but our good feelings those that make for righteousness we ought to let shine they claim to commune with the light in others many parents hold words unsaid which would lift hundred weights from the hearts of their children yea make them leap for joy a stern father and a silent mother make mournful or which is far worse hard children need I add that if anyone hearing the injunction to let his light shine makes himself shine instead it is because the light is not in him but what shall I say of such as in the name of religion let only their darkness out the darkness of worshiped opinion the darkness of lip honour and disobedience such are those who tear asunder the body of Christ with the explosives of dispute on the plea of such a unity as alone they can understand namely a paltry uniformity what have not the good churchmen and the strong dissenter to answer for who hiding what true light they have if indeed they have any each under the bushel of his party spirit radiate only repulsion there is no schism none whatever in using diverse forms of thought or worship true honesty is never schismatic the real schismatic is the man who turns away love and justice from the neighbour who holds theories in religious philosophy or as to church constitution different from his own who denies or avoids his brother because he follows not with him who calls him a schismatic because he prefers this or that of public worship not his the other may be schismatic he himself certainly is he walks in the darkness of opinion not in the light of life not in the faith which worketh by love worst of all is division in the name of Christ who came to make one neither Paul nor Apollos nor Cephus would least of all will Christ the leader of any party save that of his own elect the party of love of love which suffereth long and is kind which envioth not is not puffed up doth not behave itself unseemly seeketh not its own is not easily provoked thinketh no evil rejoiceeth not in iniquity but rejoiceeth in the truth beareth all things leaveeth all things hopeeth all things endureth all things let your light shine says the Lord if I have none the call cannot apply to me but I must bethink me lest in the night I am cherishing about me the Lord come upon me like a thief there may be those however and I think they are numerous who have some imagining they have much light yet have not enough to know the duty of letting it shine on their neighbours the Lord would have his men so alive with his light that it should forever go flashing from each to all and all with eternal response keep clarifying the Father does thou look for a good time coming friend when thou shalt know as thou art known the joy of thy hope stream forth upon thy neighbours fold them round in that which maketh thyself glad let thy nature grow more expansive and communicative look like the man thou art a man who knows something very good thou believest thyself on the way to the heart of things walk so shine so that all that see thee shall want to go with thee what light issues from such as make their faces long at the very name of death and look and speak as if it were the end of all things and the worst of evils Jesus told his men not to fear death told them his friends should go to be with him told them they should live in the house of his father and their father and since then he has risen himself from the tomb and gone to prepare a place for them who what are these miserable refusers of comfort not Christians surely oh yes they are Christians they are gone they say to be forever with the Lord and then they weep and lament and seem more afraid of starting to join them than of ought else under the sun to the last attainable moment they cling to what they call life they are children were there ever any other such children who hang crying to the skirts of their mother and will not be lifted to her bosom they are not of Paul's mind to be with him is not better they worship their physician and their prayer to the God of their life is to spare them from more life what sort of Christians are they where shines their light alas for thee poor world hads thou no better lights than these you who have light show yourselves the sons and daughters of light of God, of hope the heirs of a great completeness freely let your light shine only take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men to be seen of them end of chapter 10 chapter 11 of the hope of the gospel this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Jordan the hope of the gospel by George McDonald chapter 11 the right hand and the left take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men to be seen of them otherwise ye have no reward of your father which is in heaven but when thou doest arms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth that thine arms may be in secret and thy father which seeeth in secret himself shall reward thee Matthew chapter 6 verses 1 and 3 let your light out freely that men may see it men may see you if I do anything not because it has to be done not because God would have it so but that I may do right not because it is honest not that I love the thing not that I may be true to my lord not that the truth may be recognized as truth and as his but that I may be seen as the doer that I may be praised of men that I may gain beauty or fame be the thing itself ever so good I may look to men for my reward for there is none for me with the father if that light being my pleasure I do it that the light may shine and that men may know thee light the father of lights I do well but if I do it that I may be seen shining and the light may be noted as emanating from me not from another then I am of those that seek glory of men and worship Satan the light that through me may possibly illuminate others will in me and for me be darkness but when thou doest arms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth how then am I to let my light shine if I take pains to hide what I do the injunction is not to hide what you do from others but to hide it from yourself the master would have you not plume yourself upon it not cherish the thought that you have done it or confer with yourself in satisfaction over it you must not count it to your praise a man must not desire to be satisfied with himself his right hand must not seek the praise of his left hand his doing must not invite his after thinking the right hand must let the thing done go as a thing done with we must meditate nothing either as a fine thing for us to do or a fine thing for us to have done we must not imagine any merit in us it would be to love a lie for we can have none there is no such thing possible is there anything to be proud of in refusing to worship the devil is it a grand thing is it a meritorious thing not to be vile when we have done all we are unprofitable servants our very best is but decent what more could it be why then think of it as anything more what things could we or anyone do worthy of being brooded over good to do they were bad to pride ourselves upon they are why should a man meditate with satisfaction on having denied himself some selfish indulgence any more than on having washed his hands may we roll the rejection of a villainy as a sweet morsel under our tongues they were the worst villains of all who could be proud of not having committed a villainy their pride would but render them the more capable of the villainy when next the temptation to it came even if our supposed merit were of the positive order and we did every duty perfectly the moment we began to pride ourselves upon the fact we should drop into a hell of worthlessness what are we for but to do our duty we must do it and think nothing of ourselves for that neither care what men think of us for anything with the praise or blame of men we have not to do their blame may be a good thing their praise cannot be but the worst sort of the praise of men is the praise we give ourselves we must do nothing to be seen of ourselves we must seek no approbation even of God else we shut the door of the kingdom from the outside his approbation will but quicken our sense of unworthiness what seek the praise of men for being fair to our own brothers and sisters what seek the praise of God for laying our hearts at the feet of him to whom we utterly belong there is no pride so mean and all pride potentially mean as the pride of being holier than our fellow except the pride of being holy such imagined holiness is foulness religion itself in the hearts of the unreal is a dead thing what seems life in it is the vermiculate life of a corpse there is one word in the context as we have it in the authorised version that used to trouble me seeming to make its publicity a portion of the reward for doing certain right things in secret I mean the word openly at the ends of the fourth the sixth and the eighteenth verses making the Lord seem to say avoid the praise of men and thou shalt at length have the praise of men thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly shall be seen of men and thou seen as the receiver of the reward in what other way could the word then or now be fairly understood it must be the interpolation of some Jew scribe who, even after learning a little of the Christ continued unable to conceive as reward anything that did not draw part at least of its sweetness from the gazing eyes of the multitude glad was I to find that the word is not in the best manuscripts and God be thanked that it is left out in the revised version what shall we think of the daring that could interpolate it but of like sort is the daring of much exposition of the master's words what men have not faith enough to receive they will still dilute to the standard of their own faculty of reception if anyone say why did the Lord let the word remain there so long if he never said it I answer perhaps that the minds of his disciples might be troubled at its presence arise against it and do him right by casting it out and so wisdom be justified of her children but there are some who if the notion of reward is not naturally a trouble to them yet have come to feel it such of certain objectors who think to take a higher stand than the Christian saying the idea of reward for doing right is a low and unworthy idea now verily it would be a low thing for any child to do his father's will in the hope that his father would reward him for it but it is quite another thing for a father whose child endeavors to please him to let him know that he recognizes his childness toward him and will be fatherly good to him what kind of a father with a man who because there could be no merit or dessert in doing well would not give his child a smile or a pleased word when he saw him trying his best would not such acknowledgement from the father be the natural correlate of the child's behavior and what would the father's smile be but the perfect reward of the child suppose the father to love the child so that he wants to give him everything but dares not until his character is developed must he not be glad and show his gladness at every shade of a progress that will at length set him free to throne his son over all that he has I am an unprofitable servant says the man who has done his duty but his lord coming unexpectedly and finding him at his post good himself and makes him sit down to meet and comes forth and serves him how could the divine order of things founded for growth and gradual betterment hold and proceed without the notion of return for a thing done must there be only current and no tide how can we be workers with God at his work and he never say thank you my child will he take joy in his success and give none is he the husband man to take all the profit and muzzle the mouth of his ox when a man does work for another he has his wages for it and society exists by the dependence of man upon man through work and wages the devil is not the inventor of this society he has invented the notion of a certain degradation in work a still greater in wages and following this up has constituted a society after his own likeness which despises work leaves it undone and so can claim its wages without disgrace if you say no one ought to do right for the sake of reward I go farther and say no man can do right for the sake of reward a man may do a thing indifferent he may do a thing wrong for the sake of reward but a thing in itself right done for reward would in the very doing cease to be right at the same time if a man does right being rewarded for it and to refuse the reward would be to refuse life and foil the creative love the whole question is of the kind of reward expected what first reward for doing well may I look for to grow pure in heart and stronger in the hope of at length seeing God if a man be not after this fashion rewarded perish as to happiness or any lower rewards that naturally follow the first is God to destroy the law of his universe the divine sequence of cause and effect in order to say you must do well but you shall gain no good by it you must lead a dull joyless existence to all eternity that lack of delight may show you pure could love create with such end in view righteousness does not demand creation it is love not righteousness that cannot live alone the creature must already be air righteousness can put in a claim but hearts and souls there love itself which created for love and joy presses the demand of righteousness first a righteousness that created misery in order to uphold itself would be a righteousness that was unrighteous God will die for righteousness but never create for a joyless righteousness to call into being the necessarily and hopelessly incomplete would be to wrong creation in its very essence to create for the knowledge of himself and then not give himself would be injustice even to cruelty and if God give himself what other reward there can be no further is not included seeing his life and all her children the all in all it will take the utmost joy God can give to let men know him and what man knowing him would mind losing every other joy only what other joy could keep from entering where the God of joy already dwelt the law of the universe holds and will hold the name of the father be praised whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap they have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting whosoever hath to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath to object to Christianity as selfish is utter foolishness Christianity alone gives any hope of deliverance from selfishness is it selfish to desire to love is it selfish to hope for purity and the sight of God what better can we do for our neighbour than to become altogether righteous toward him will he not be the nearer sharing in the exceeding great reward of a return to the divine idea where is the evil toward God where the wrong to my neighbour if I think sometimes of the joys to follow in the train of perfect loving is not the atmosphere of God love itself the very breath of the father wherein can float no thinnest pollution of selfishness the only material where with all to build the airy castles of heaven the heart might cry give me all the wages all the reward thy perfect father heart can give thy unmeriting child my fit wages may be pain sorrow humiliation of soul I stretch out my hands to receive them thy reward will be to lift me out of the mire of self love and bring me nearer to thyself and thy children welcome, divinest of good things thy highest reward is thy purest gift thou didst make me for it from the first thou, the eternal life has been laboring still to fit me for receiving it the vision, the knowledge the possession of thyself I can seek but what thou waitest and watchest to give I would be such into whom thy love can flow to me that the only merit that could live before God is the merit of Jesus who himself at once untought unimplored laid himself aside and turned to the father refusing his life save in the father like God of himself he chose righteousness and so merited to sit on the throne of God in the same spirit of self afterward to his father's children and merited the power to transfuse the life redeeming energy of his spirit into theirs made perfect he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him but it is a word of little daring that Jesus had no thought of merit in what he did that he saw only what he had to be lost do I speak after the poor fashion of a man lost in what is too great for him yet is his very life where can be a man's merit in refusing to go down to an abyss of loss loss of the right to be loss of his father loss of himself would Satan with all the instincts and impulses of his origin in him have merited eternal life by refusing to be a devil not the less would he have had eternal life not the less would he have been wrapped in the love and confidence of the father he would have had his reward I cannot imagine thing created meriting ought saved by divine courtesy I suspect the notion of merit belongs to a low development and the higher a man rises the less will he find it worth a thought perhaps we shall come to see that it owes what being it has to man that it is a thing thinkable only by man I suspect it is not a thought of the eternal mind and has in itself no existence being to God merely a thing thought by man for merit lives from man to man and not from man to thee the man then who does right and seeks no praise from men while he merits nothing shall be rewarded by his father and his reward will be right precious to him we must let our light shine make our faith our hope our love manifest that men may praise not us for shining the light no man with faith hope, love, alive in his soul could make the divine possessions a show to gain for himself the admiration of men not the less must they appear in our words in our looks in our carriage above all in honorable unselfish hospitable helpful deeds our light must shine in happiness in joy where a man has the gift in merriment in freedom from care save for one another in interest in the things of others in fearlessness and tenderness in courtesy and graciousness in our anger and indignation specially must our light shine but we must give no quarter to the most shadowy thought from the faintest thought of the praise of men we must turn away no man can be the disciple of Christ and desire fame to desire fame is ignoble it is a beggarly greed in the noble mind it is the more of an infirmity there is no aspiration in it nothing but ambition it is simply selfishness that would be proud if it could fame is the applause of the many and the judgment of the many is foolish therefore the greater the fame the more is the foolishness that swells it and the worse is the foolishness that longs after it aspiration is the soul escape from ambition he who aspires that is does his endeavour to rise above himself neither lusts to be higher than his neighbour nor seeks to mount in his opinion what light there is in him shines the more that he does nothing to be seen of men he stands in the mist between the gulf and the glory and looks upward he loves not his own soul but longs to be clean out of the gulf into the glory father my soul dark is the wolf of my dismal story through my son warp stormily drifted out of the gulf into the glory lift me and save my story I have done many things merely shameful I am a man ashamed my father my life is ashamed and broken and blameful the broken and blameful heartily shame me lord of the shameful to my judge I flee with my blameful saviour at peace in thy perfect purity think what it is not to be pure strong in thy loves essential security think upon those who are never secure fulfil my soul with the light of thy purity in love's security oh father oh brother my heart is sore aching help it to ache as much as is needful is it you cleansing me mending remaking dear potter hands so tender and heedful sick of my past of my own self aching hurt on dear hands with your making proud of the form thou hadst given thy vessel proud of myself I forgot my donor down in the dust I began to nestle poured thee no wine and drank deep of dishonour lord thou hast broken thou mendest thy vessel in the dust of thy glory I nestle oh lord the earnest expectation of thy creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of god End of chapter 11