Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

deeply again, we think-never recall those hours when life seemed for a time to breathe the air of heaven itself. But in no case are we right to waste time on such regrets. Our business now is to go forward and to redeem the past. We may not get back the freshness of early inspiration; but we may attain something better-the resolute heart of noble faith, which, trusting in a Saviour of men, has the confidence to take up duty for his sake and for the sake of men his brothers, and, though failure and failure come, to win at last, through the doing of duty, those profounder, calmer, and more enduring feelings of nearness to God, which will bear the test of time and overcome at the end the shame and fear of death.

But, after all, were our religious feelings in youth deeper than those which we possess now? Unless we have been altogether going back, I cannot think so. They seem to us now, as we look back, to have been deeper; but they only seem so. In reality, it is because we feel more keenly and more strongly now, that we so canonise our youthful feelings. We impute to them, unconsciously, our present depth and strength of passion. We retain in memory the religious impressions of our early life, and we colour them with our own deeper hues, till they seem much more earnest and divine than they really were.

The fact is, youth cannot feel so deeply as manhood and womanhood, unless manhood and womanhood have been debased and hardened. Is not doubt of God's love a worse thing to us now than it was when we were young? Is not the cry of our hearts for

light more unutterable now than in the days when it came and went so quickly? Is not our hatred of sin, and our desire to escape from the dreadful circle of self into life with God and love of all in Christ, more intense, though far more silent, than it was of old? Is not our longing for certainty, for the assurance of the eternal life in union with our Father, more profound as we advance in years? Have not this world and its worldliness, though perhaps we live more in them, less power over us? It is not that we feel less, but that the movement of our feelings is larger, and their waters so deep that they are less easily disturbed.

But, after all, whether we feel much or little is not so much matter. The one thing needful for those who have passed into the stage of life which follows upon youth is to do the will of God, to consecrate their manhood and womanhood to the welfare of Man, to look forward to finishing the work given them to do, and at last, to the rest which remaineth for the people of God.

THE AFTERNOON OF LIFE.

THE RESTORATION OF THE INTERESTS AND POETRY OF YOUTH.

'Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.'-Psalm ciii. 5.

THE afternoon of life is marked by the concentration of our powers round one centre of work and thought. In youth, at our first entrance into manhood, we take up many interests, we make experiments upon our faculties and on many subjects, and so vivid is our force, and so large our heart, that we seem to have room for all.

One by one, most of these interests die away. We discover our inability to carry them further than a short way, or we cease to care to do so. As our character developes, many are seen to be out of harmony with it, or even to check its natural movement onwards; but they are useful in telling us what we cannot do and what we can. At last one or two take special power over us, and absorb the rest. If they grow naturally out of our character, if they are fitted to our powers as the sword is to the hand, our life flows smoothly to its end. If they are imposed on us by coercion of others, or of circumstances-and in such a light we are forced to regard the life of some in this crooked world-our life is injured and our course rugged and

painful to the close. But, whether our fate be one or the other, few of us have reached the later manhood without finding ourselves fixed in one pursuit. The traveller in the Alps walking in the early morning and seeing the white clouds change around a mountain-peak, cannot distinguish at a distance which is the summit and which the cloud. Now one form and now another attracts his eager gaze. But as the sun climbs the heaven, it lifts the wreathing vapour, and, drawing nearer, he sees at last, sharply defined against the pure sky, the one clear cone. So the voyager of life delights himself in cloud after cloud in the morning of his years; but when the afternoon has come, the one thing he has. to do distinctly opens forth, and challenges his effort.

He finds the work of his life. At once all his powers concentrate themselves on this, and force, once scattered over a hundred interests, intensifies itself on one. It is then that life becomes strong, for life is at unity with itself.

And now, having found our work and settled down to climb the mountain steadily, there is a further question. What spirit is at the centre of our life? Whence do we draw the inspiration of effort? What is the motive power which influences and colours all our work? Does it depend on self or on Christ? It is a solemn question, for the answer defines whether the real labour of life will be eternal or not, useful to man or not, a source of growth or not to our own being.

And when I ask this question in this relation, I really mean whether a man's life has beyond its special aim a further aim of devotion to the cause of Man. I

mean here by the spirit of Christ the spirit which subordinates life to the cause of man, for that was the central spirit of Christ's existence. And something more I mean. I mean that he who sees the Race in Christ sees it at one with God in idea though not as yet in fact, and beholds himself as one of a great and united body who are here on earth to slowly grow up into union with God by faithful work-by long effort at last to realise that idea which God had of the fullgrown Man, and which Christ now represents in God.

The man, then, who has Christ at the centre of his life —that is, the great ideas of which Christ is the personal realisation cannot settle down into the dulness of manhood, content to lose altogether the things which made his youth so bright and happy. He desires to grow, and to grow by regaining these in a truer and more lasting form. He cannot abide in that spirit of selfishness which, by fixing our thoughts on personal success alone, forbids us to turn aside to seek in work for man higher thoughts to transfigure our life, or to refresh ourselves with the poetical aspects of man or nature. These things are unpractical,' says self; these things are necessary for your true manhood,' replies the spirit of Christ.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

How may we recover in manhood, but in a wiser way, what was noble in our youth-recover our manifold interests, our poetic feeling towards the history of man and nature—our ideal of the goodness, truth, and love of man?

The first two will form the subject of this morning's sermon; the last the subject for next Sunday.

A A

« AnteriorContinuar »