THE KING’S BUSINESS
817 needs me I will be most to your heart.” Any book found in den, in gutter, that ■wants to do this, should be received with respect. The purpose is good; if it fail, it fails in a noble object. Everywhere in this Book of God we find a supreme wish to help man. When we most need help the words are sweeter than the honey-comb. When other books are dumb, this Book speaks most sweetly. It is like a star, it shines in the darkness, it waits the going down of the superficial sun of our transient prosperity, and then it breaks upon us as the shadows thicken. This is the real greatness of God: He will not break'the bruised reed. Because the reed is bruised, therefore the rude man says he may break it. His argument in brief is this: “If the reed were strong, I should not touch it, but seeing that it is bruised what harm can there be in com pleting the wound under which it is already suffering? I will even snap it and throw the sundered parts away.” That is the reasohing of the rude man—thaj: is the vul gar view of the case. The idea of the healing is the idea of a creator. He who creates also heals. Herein we see God’s estimate of human nature: if He cared only for the great, the splendid, the mag nificent, the robust, and the everlasting, then He would indeed be too like our selves. The greatness of God and the esti mate which He places upon human nature are most seen in all these ministrations in reference to the weak and the weary and the young and the feeble and the sad. Made originally^ in the image of God, man is dear to his Maker, though ever so broken. Ob, poor prodigal soul with the divinity nearly broken out of thee, smashed, bleed ing, crushed, all but in hell—while there is a shadow of thee outside perdition, He would heal thee and save thee’. Thou art a ruin, but a grand one—the majestic ruin of a majestic edifice, for knpwest thou not that thou wast the temple of God? LACK OF SYMPATHY When we are weary, even in weariness, God sees the possibility of greatness that
Then I will change the character and be a nurse, and I will attend to my patient (perhaps I will over-attend to him—some patients are killed by over-nursing—and I will give the patient this medicine—it is the right medicine. So it is, but you are going to give it at the wrong time, and if you give the medicine at the wrong time, though itself be right, the hour being wrong you will bring suffering upon the patient, and you yourself will be involved in pains and penalties. Thus we touch that very subtle and sensitive line in human life, the line of refined discrimination. You may say “I am sure I told him.” You are right—you did tell him and he did not hear you. You may reply, “I am perfectly con fident I delivered the message—I preached the exact words of the gospel.” So you did, but you never got the hearing heart,' your manner was so unsympathetic, so ungentle, so cruel (not meant to be—unconsciously so), that the man never understood it to be a gospel. You spoilt the music in the delivery, in the giving of the message. The Lord God giveth the tongue of the learned, that*he to whom it is given may know how to speak—how to speak the right word— how to speak the right word at the right point of time. You want divine teaching in all things, in speech not least, f HELP FOR THE WEARY This is a curious word to find in the Bible. Does the Bible care about weary people? We have next to no sympathy with them. If a man be weary, we give him notice to quit: if he ask us to what place he can retire, we tell him that it is his business, not ours. Now the tenderness of this Book is one of the most Telling, con vincing arguments on behalf of its inspira tion, and its divine authority. This Book means to help us, wants to help us, it says, “I will try to help you, never hinder you: I will wait for you, I will soften the wind into a whisper, I will order the thunder to be silent, I will quit the raging seas; I will wait upon you at home, in solitude, at midnight, anywhere—fix the place, the time, yourself, and when your heart most
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