THE KING’S BUSINESS
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HIS LIFE Here-is my life. Now, the highest realm for me is the realm where all my. thoughts, and all my deeds, and all my methods, and everything in my life please God. That is the highest realm, because God only knows that I am ; only perfectly understands the possibilities o f my nature, and all the great reaches o f my being. You remember those lines that Tennyson sang—very beautifully, I always think: “ Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out o f the crannies— Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little Flower—but if I could understand What you art, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.” Beautiful confession! Absolutely true. I hold that flower in my hand, and I look at it, flower and leaves and stem and root. I can botanize it, and then I tear it to pieces —that is what the botanist mostly does— and you put some part o f it there, and some part o f it there, and some part o f it there. There is the root, there the stem, and there are the leaves, and there is everything, but where is the flower?- Gone. How did it go ? When did it go ? Why, when you Ruthlessly tore it to bits. But how did you destroy it? You interfered with the prin ciple that made it what it was—you inter fered with the principle of life. What is life? No man can tell you. “ If I could but know what you are, little flower, root and all, and all in all,” I would know what life is, what God is, what man is. I can not. Now, if you lift that little parable of the flower into the highest realm of animal life, and speak of yourself—we don’t know our selves ; down in my nature there are reaches that I have not fathomed yet. They are coming up every day. What a blest thing it is to have the Master at hand, to hand them over to Him as they come up, and say, “ Lord, here is another piece o f Thy territory; govern it; I don’t know anything about it.” But there is the business. I don’t know myself, but God knows me, understands all the complex relationships
of my life, knows how matter affects mind, and physical and mental and spiritual are blended in one in the high ideal o f humanity. Oh, remember, man is the crowning and most glorious work o f God o f which we know anything as yet. And God only knows man. DOING THINGS But here is a Man that stands amid His enemies, and He looks out upon His ene mies, and He says, “ I do the things that please him”—not “I teach them,” not “ I dream them,” not “I have seen them in a fair vision,” but “I do them.” There never was a bigger claim from the lips o f the Master than that : “I do always thé things that please- him.” You would not thank me to insult your Christian experience, upon whatever level you live it, by attempting to define that statement of Christ. History has vindi cated it. We believe it with all our hearts -f-that He always did the things that pleased God. But I have got on to a level that I can touch now. The great ideal has come from the air to the earth. The fair vision has become concrete in a Man. Now, I want to See that Man; and if I see that Man I shall see in Him a revelation o f what, God’s purpose is for men, and I shall see, therefore, a revelation o f what the highest possibility o f life is. Now this a tempting theme. It is a temptation to begin to con trast Him with popular ideals o f life. I want to see Him; I want, if I can, to catch the notes o f the music that make up the perfect harmony which was the dropping o f a song out o f God’s heaven upon man’s earth, that man might catch the key-note o f it and make music in his own life. What are the things in this Man’s life? He says: “I have realized the ideal—I do.” There are four -things that I want to say about Him, four notes in the music of his life. A MUCH-ABUSED WORD First, spirituality. That is one o f the words that needs redeeming from abuse. He was the embodiment o f the spiritu?'
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