XXI

THE BLESSING AND DISCIPLINE OF RETIREMENT

"Come ye yourselves apart and rest for a while."--Mark vi. 31.

AND thus the Saviour Himself took time to rest. He had only three years of public ministry, and yet He made time for rest. He regarded the rest as a vital element in His service. He sought "the calm of hills above" in order that He might be more fitted for the comings and goings in the busy vale below. He went aside into the green pastures so as to be braced for the next stage along the busy road. The retirement was a cordial and a restorative for body, mind, and soul. And if the Saviour of the world found time for the correctives of rest, surely His disciples must follow Him into the same refreshing fields.

John Ruskin has told us that whenever he visited some great gallery of art, he found, after a time, that the continual procession of changing colours irritated and confused his eyes, and he lost the accuracy and sanity of his artistic discernments. So he carried in his pocket a tablet of neutral hue, the restful colour of the meadows, and he would turn his bewildered vision upon it until the quietness of his perception was restored. In a certain very real way he went apart, and in the retirement he found a new competency for his work. And surely in our own day, when the rush of life is so fierce, when everything is so intense, when our besetting interests are so manifold, and often so glaring and bewildering, it is imperative that we get apart and correct our moral and spiritual vision. The strain impairs our powers and they need the rest of the neutral tints. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He restoreth my soul."

"Drop Thy still dews of quietness
Till all our strivings cease.
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace."
ENDLESS POSSIBILITTES

"All things are possible to him that believeth."--Mark ix. 23.

OUR possibilities are as big as our tasks. Nay, they are bigger than our tasks, for it is purposed that when the task is finished we shall have strength to spare. It is the will of our God that there should be a glorious "plus" in all our warfare, so that when the victory is won we are "more than conquerors." The size of a task is therefore never a justification for retreat. "If, as soldiers of the cross, we stick at anything, we are disgraced for ever!" Hesitancy casts dishonour upon the Lord. It throws suspicion upon the adequacy of His resources. He has imposed a task for which He has not provided the strength! The mission is appointed, but the needful equipment is withheld! We are ready, but God is lacking! Thus do we sit in judgment upon the Lord, while all the time our apparent prudence is disloyalty and our seeming wisdom is only the deadliest unbelief.

In our Christian warfare we are to stick at nothing. To believers in Christ the impossible is to shine in the attractive light of a glorious assurance. We are to approach boggy and trackless wastes in the confidence that thoroughfares have been provided. "And a highway shall be there and a way!" We are to march against terrific and hoary fortresses in the joyful certainty that we can overturn them to their deepest and most secret foundations. "Mighty to the pulling down of strongholds!" This is to be the shining distinction of the army of the Lord. It is to move against the impossible, and by the very character of its stride it is to compel the world to believe that the impossible is already being accomplished. The Church is not here to do what anybody else can do. She is not one of a hundred institutions standing with them in common rank and file. The Church does not share her errand. She stands alone, and her mission is to do the impossible, to achieve wonders of which no other fellowship even dreams.

But the impossible can become our achievement only through a vital faith in a living Christ. A credal connection is not a vital communion. There is connection by marriage which knows no kinship in blood. A living faith drinks Christ's blood--yes, drinks Christ's very life into the soul, and so equips the soul to meet the world and the flesh and the devil with the holy vitality of the eternal Son of God. When we drink Christ's blood and then step out to face our tasks, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low."