S. THE SILENCE OF CHRIST.

THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. But He answered her not a word. — Matthew 15:23

We often think about the different tones which may belong to the same words. We do not think so often about the different way in which silences may be understood. A man speaks to me, and I say to myself, "What does he mean by what he says?" Not merely "What do his words mean?" but "What does he mean?" But a man stands silent in my presence, and there too I must ask, before I understand it perfectly, "What does he mean by this silence? Why does he stand there and not speak? "For silence has as various moods as speech, and its moods are far more subtle. One man sits silent in my room while I am at my work, and his speechless presence fills the room with sympathetic influence and an atmosphere in which my work almost does itself. Another man the next day sits silent in the same chair, and his silence weighs like lead upon my brain and hand, and work is hopeless. And so with the same man at different times. I walk with my friend to-day, and he does not say a word, and my soul all the time is saying to itself, "Oh, if he would only break out and upbraid me; no condemnation could be half as awful as this dreadful silence." I walk with the same friend to-morrow, and am almost afraid to have him speak because it seems as if no sympathy could be so entire, no inflow of his richness into me could be so perfect as this in which our lives silently are almost mingling into one. So silence is as various as speech. Silence is what the silent man is.* There is the silence of vacancy and dullness, and the silence of the thought for which the thinker cannot find sufficient words. There is the silence of crafty concealment, and the silence which is completer revelation than any speech could be. There is the silence of utter condemnation, and the silence which is sweeter than any spoken praise. The completest joy and the profoundest sorrow, both are silent. It is as different in men as it is in Nature. There is the silence of sunrise, all tremulous with hope, and the silence of sunset, wrapped in the stillness of its memories. There is the stillness of the snake slipping unseen through the grass, the silence of the cattle feeding on the hillside, the silence of the war-horse waiting for the signal of the battle. How different they are from one another, yet all alike are silent. I turn this afternoon to the record of one of the silences of Him whose silences must have been most significant because of the richness of His nature and the deep importance of all His relations to mankind. One day a Canaanitish woman came running after Jesus with the cry, "O Lord, thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil!" We hear the sharp agony pierce the keen, trembling air. The poor woman’s whole soul is in her words. She cries to Him in whom alone seems any chance of help; then, almost frightened with her cry, she pauses. The thing is done. Her heart has told its story. The face of Christ has touched and stirred her misery into self-consciousness, and out of the cloud this lightning of her cry has flashed. The thing is done, and she waits tremblingly for the result. Can we not almost hear her heart beat as she listens? What will He say? And then see what does happen. "He answered her not a word." Bowed down before Him there, waiting to hear whether He was blaming her or blessing her, think of the dismay with which her soul must have been filled as slowly the moments passed by and she became aware that He was doing neither. The sense of His silence standing over her, how bewildering, how terrible, how worse than any blame it must have been! But, behold, I think that I can see her slowly lift her eyes. She cannot bear this suspense. She must look this awful silence in the face. Her eyes find out the face of Christ, and then she feels Him behind, within, His silence. She knows Him not clearly but certainly. He is there, and she has found Him. The disciples come and upbraid her, but she does not stir. She will know what this silence means before she goes. She knows that it means something gracious; and so she listens and listens till at last the silence is broken and she hears Him say, "Oh, woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt." Then she goes away satisfied, and finds her daughter whole. This story, then, suggests a study which must very often have forced itself on every devout and earnest soul. What is the meaning of the silences of God?

How shall I understand it when I pray to Him and He answers me not a word, when my whole life cries out to Him and there comes no reply? Such silences there are beyond all doubt, — times when the sense of need is overwhelming; when the soul, bowed down with its burden, comes staggering up to the door and finds it closed, and no knocking of the desperate and bleeding hands brings any answer. The connection seems to be broken. The sympathy seems to be lost. There, in the great depth and distance which seemed but yesterday to be full of God as the sky is full of sunlight, now there is no God at all, — nothing but emptiness and blackness. Oh, it is terrible! Better even the curse of God — so sometimes the soul thinks; better anything which should show that He was there, and that He was aware of me, than this blank silence. Oh, that He would say something! But then the question always keeps coming up. May it not be that He is saying something which I cannot hear? There is at the bottom of every soul such a true sense of its own incapacity that it does not go very far into the question of why God does not speak, before it begins to wonder whether it is ready and quick and spiritual enough to hear Him if He did. There are two kinds or grounds of silence. There is the silence of the empty, speechless ocean or prairie, and there is the silence which envelops the deaf man who stands in the very central roar of London. Which is this silence of God? It may be either; nay, it may be both. Both elements may be in it. And so our study of God’s silences divides itself into two parts: First, there are the silences which are apparent, and then there are the silences which are real. We cannot always draw the line between them, and say of any special silence to which class it belongs, but we know that both kinds exist; and he does not fully understand the fact that often his life seems to have lost its communication with the life of God who has not asked the meaning both of the apparent and the real silences which refuse his soul an answer.

Let us speak, then, first of God’s apparent silences, — of the times when He really answers us but does not seem to. That such times would be, I think that I should know beforehand if I thought in general of the greatness of God and the littleness of man. There is nothing in that contrast that should make the great refuse to hear the little. The great would become little if that were the effect. Your beast looks up appealingly into your face. The vast difference between his beast hood and your manhood ’ does not make you disregard his mute appeal, — you would be almost a brute yourself if that were so, — but it does make him in large degree unable to understand how his appeal touches you. Perhaps he catches some glimpse of sympathy upon your face, perhaps he is aware of some tone in your voice; but all your thoughtfulness, all your care and plan to help him, of that he knows nothing. The resemblance docs not tell the story, for we are far more to God than the beast is to us. We are of the same nature as God. We are God’s children. Take, then, your child. He asks you for some blessing. It seems to him an easy thing, something which you can almost take up in your hand and give him; but you know that it is something far more complicated. It is something which you must scheme and plan for, something which can only be given from life to life and not from hand to hand. When, then, your brow knits with thought as to how you may give the gift, may it not well be that he thinks you have refused him? Is it not evident that he must have your mind, and see with your eyes, before he can know what is the giving of the gift, and so can know that it is given? So that we might be sure beforehand that there would be times when God would seem to refuse what He was actually at the very moment giving. But look at it in another way. Think of the unconscious wants in us which are forever laying themselves before God: needs which we do not know ourselves enough to apprehend, far less to understand; deficiencies whose worst defect is that they are not aware of their own falling short; poverties which count themselves riches; sin which calls itself goodness; shame which imagines itself glory, — all of these go with a pathetic urgency into God’s presence and plead for a supply which is all the more needed because the needy soul itself to which they belong is not aware of want! God answers all these prayers. He gives to each unconscious need all the supply which, in its unconsciousness, it is able to receive; but the soul, ignorant of the need, cannot know the answer which its needs are getting. It does not dream what God is doing for it. Blessing comes into it, and it is wholly unaware. But may it not be — will it not almost certainly be — that, in large part by means of the unrecognized but real supply, the sense of need will be awakened, and will recognize itself in the presence of the supply which it has received? So it is that children come only gradually to know their father’s and their mother’s care. They are cared for before they are aware that they cannot care for themselves. The helplessness by and by reveals itself. Then they cry out; and only in their crying out do they attain the knowledge of how their helplessness has been already enfolded in protecting love. In the soul’s history there is the same period of wakening, — when, conscious of need but not yet conscious of supply, the spirit cries out for a God who long before it knew its own want has been supplying that want with Himself. I think my prayer unanswered when really God not merely is answering it, but has been answering it for years, before ever it knew enough of itself to be prayed.

One other thought must still be added: God is the Lord of all the world; whatever goes on in the world goes on under His care. It would be awful if that fact made God careless of any, the least or feeblest of His children; awful if all these thronging prayers, pouring in from Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the sea, had it in their power to hinder or silence the feeblest fluttering petition which tried to find its way to God from any weakest child of His who after long hesitation and doubt has dared to pray. It is not that. But is it not easy to conceive that such a multitude of need may, likely enough, have influence upon the way in which that single petitioner’s prayer receives its answer, upon the form the answer shall assume? If I prayed all alone, — my prayer the only prayer which pierced the darkness because mine was the only soul which stood in need, — then I can possibly imagine that as I stood and looked I should behold the answer come like a white dove out of the distance until it laid itself upon my soul and gave it peace. But now I cannot help seeing what a far greater richness there will be if my petition blends with a million others, and the answer comes in some great outpouring of the divine light and love which addresses itself to all the world. It seems to me almost like this: You write your letter to your friend, and straightway there comes back his reply. Thin, narrow, limited, a transaction purely between you and him, getting part of its value from its specialness and limitation, is your correspondence. But suppose your letter is one of a thousand which reaches this great helpful friend of you all; and suppose that by some great act done out in the broad face of the sun, or by some mighty book which speaks like a trumpet from a mountain-top, he answers you all together, — you all and a host besides, — tell me, are not you answered, you whose prayer started and soared out of a special closet on a certain day? Will you say almost peevishly, "Nay, but I wanted my own answer all to myself "? Is not that selfish and weak? May not the very richness of this larger answer have it for one of its purposes to rebuke that selfishness and let you know that he best finds God and is God’s who finds Him and becomes His, not in separation from his brethren but in the certainty of God’s love to all and of the belonging of all souls to God?

I must not follow farther these suggestions of the seeming silences of God. I never think of them with’ out thinking how great is the delight which comes when any man discovers that God really has been answering him all the time when he thought that his prayers were all unheard. That must be one of the most exquisite joys of heaven. Among the vials which in the Book of Revelations held the prayers of saints, there must be some which, when the saints who prayed them find them in their vision-time, shine with a brilliancy supremely precious. They are the prayers which seemed as if they were not answered, but which really did bring down their blessing. When we do really see them and know their history, two things will become very real to us about all prayer: First, that not the gift but the giver is the real answer to prayer; not to get God’s benefactions, but to get God, is the soul’s true answer. And second, that the faith which comes by the assurance that God must have answered is often a nobler culture of the soul than even the delightful thrill of the heard answer as it enters into our ears, or the warm pressure of the blessing itself, held tight in our tremulous and grateful hand. May both of these assurances come to all of us when we pray to God, and yet it seems as if He sent us no reply. Often those days of bewilderment and disappointment are the birthdays of faith. But now that we may reach the second part of our topic, shall we not come back to the poor woman who stands before the silent Saviour in that unknown spot in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon? It was no apparent silence which she had to confront. The blessed lips were really closed; the blessed hands really did not move with any gesture of bestowal. "He answered her not a word," — that is the story which His servant tells. And is there anything like that in the experience of Jesus which comes to souls to-day? Indeed there is! Many and many a prayer there is which not merely Christ does not seem to answer, — which Christ does not answer. Let us think of such prayers a while. Let us see to what classes they belong, and what ought to be the teaching of their lack of answer to our souls.

Some prayers Christ does not answer, we may say, because they ask Him to do our work for us. They ask Him to do what we ought to do for ourselves. Tell me, is there a kinder thing that you can do for your pupil who comes up to you with his slate, asking you to work out for him his problem, than to bid him go back to his seat and do his task himself, and get that discipline and learning which is really the object of his having his task set to him at all, — the object of his being in the school? You ask Christ to show you with a flash of lightning what your sorrow means. You ask him to decide for you and to reveal to you by some supernatural illumination which path of life you ought to take, which friendship you shall cultivate, what profession you can most successfully pursue. There comes no answer to those prayers. The Christ to whom you pray answers you not a word. And why? Those are your problems. It is by hard work of yours, by watchful vigilance, by careful weighing of consideration against consideration, that you must settle those things for yourself. Still, if you are wise and devout, you will not fail to say, "God showed me it!" when you have really found out the answer by the use of your own powers; for where did those powers get their enlightenment except from Him? But the first prompt, definite answer which your prayer expected never comes. It is withheld because the same God who is ready to do His work for you demands that you should do your own.

Closely united with this, and coming also very near to the story of the poor woman, there is the truth that Christ does not answer many a petition because the petitioner is not able to appropriate and understand the answer. Very often, as I said before, the sense of need becomes developed in advance of the ability to take in the supply. You, see a group of people enjoying intensely some great work of art. You cannot see its beauty; but as you hear them talk there wakens in you some dim sense that it is beautiful, and that for you not to see its beauty is in you a sad defect and loss. You speak to them and say, "Explain to me this beauty and make me feel it." They look into your face, and answer you not a word. They see that it is hopeless. You need so much before this need can be supplied. They cannot answer this prayer till many another has been prayed and answered. Is not the same thing true of Christ? Some youth upon the street in Jerusalem meets Him as He walks among the disciples and, seeing the intelligence and peace and joy which fills their faces, appeals to the Master and says, " Lord do for me what thou hast done for them," and then expects the fullness of the blessing instantly. It does not come. And why? He is not ready. It cannot come. He must be John or Peter before the Lord can do John’s or Peter’s work in him. And so the Lord looks him in the face, and answers him not a word.

One other cause there is for silence when we pray, and that is the largeness of God’s kingdom. I have spoken of it already, but here it comes in again. Two friends come to me together, one of them wants me to go with him for a pleasant walk; the other wants me to come and rescue his child from some most imminent and dreadful danger. I do not hesitate a moment. I turn away from him who wants me to walk with him and hurry off to save, if it is possible, the child’s imperiled life. And if he be the man he ought to be, my walking friend will thank me for denying his request, would have no respect for me if out of foolish fondness I let the poor child die in order that I might get with him the freshness of the autumn breeze or the glory of the mountain view. He will recognize my greater responsibility. He will see my larger kingdom. Now God is not limited exactly thus. He is above all time, and so has all time for His own. He has time enough for all His children; but there may be other kinds of complications. In many ways it may be impossible that what I ask should be done without the sacrifice of something else which is of far more importance concerning some special brother’s life, or concerning the vast world at large. What then? Shall I not rejoice in my unanswered prayer? Shall I not be thoroughly glad that my petition goes to One who will leave it unanswered if there are greater things which the answering of it would hinder, or if in my blindness I have asked something which for myself would be not good but evil? Who is there that would dare to pray at all if he had not that assurance? Who has not felt sometimes as if the face of Christ was never so gracious or won from us such perfect trust as when He simply looked on us in silence and answered not a word.

Thus we detail a few of those conditions in which God does not answer prayer. They are but specimens and instances. There are a great many others. And now, as I stand and look abroad across them all, they all give me one great impression. That impression is, that none of them are necessarily condemned to act as discouragements of the soul which prays and whose prayer goes unanswered. I think that that is very strange. Go back to our poor Canaanitish woman once again. Look at her I See what she does when Jesus gives her no reply! Does she turn off in despair? Does she go away in anger? Does she say, "He is not for me," and leave Him to His Hebrew followers? Not so! In the sweet melody of the old verses we can feel her pressing more closely to Him through the silence which He has drawn about Him like a veil. "Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, "Lord help me." And she said, "Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master’s table." Behold her undiscouraged faith! Nay, is it not much more than that? Not merely she clings to Him in spite of His silence. Do we not feel that somehow it is His very silence through which as through a rich revealing glass she looks in on His nature, and sees what is truly He? At any rate all the story lets us see clearly how the result is that she is led on to Him. Behind His gifts, which were what she first came seeking, she is led in to Him. My friends, do we know anything of that experience? Do we know anything of what it is to take refuge from Christ’s silence in Christ Himself? If we do not, there are great depths of our religion still waiting for our souls to sound. You cry, "Lord, solve me this problem!" and the solution does not come. "What! Must I walk in darkness?" your poor soul cries out; and then He comes and takes your hand and says, "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of Life." In place of the answer to your prayer comes He to whom you prayed. You have not got the solution of your problem; it still floats in doubt. You have not got the sure prophecy of the future; it is hid behind the wavering and trembling veil. You have not got the brother’s dear presence for whose life you cried and wrestled; he is walking beside the river of Life in the new Light of Heaven. You have not got what you prayed for, but you have got God! You have the source, the fountain, the sun! You have taken hold of the essential meaning and essence of all these things for which you prayed, in taking hold of Him to whom you prayed. In His silence you have pressed back to Him. If He had spoken, you might have rested in His words. Now you have pressed back to Him. Not in the word He speaks but in the word He is, you have found your reply.

It is in the silences of Nature that we are often sensible of being most near to Nature’s heart. Not when the thunder is roaring, nor when the winds are sighing, but in some hour of the morning or the evening when even the distant song of a bird seems an intrusion, when the silence of Nature grows a transparent veil which reveals and does not hide her loveliness, — then is the time when you know how lovely Nature is! It is in the silence of a great city; not in the noisy clashing noontide of its furious business, but in the solemn midnight when the hush is over all its streets, — then it is that the heart of the city opens to you, and you feel to the full its mystery and awe and delight. And is it not true about the men whom you have known best that the times when you have sat or walked side by side with them in silence, have often been the times when you have known them most deeply and most truly? Is it strange that the same thing should be true of Christ? If my brethren, who are my equals, have each some sacred chamber in his nature which only silence and not speech can open and reveal, shall I think it strange that Christ, in the completeness of His life, should many a time meet my especial petition with silence because so, and so only, can He let me see Himself, which is the purpose of all His treatment of me. We glorify talk overmuch. We meet a man and ask him countless questions. "Where was he born? Who were his father and mother? Where was he educated? What does he believe? "And so we try to know him. He answers us the best he can. He means to keep back nothing. But when his answers are all in, and I have registered them in my book, and analyzed them, and arranged them, do I know the man? And then in some crisis or emergency, or on some sunny day which is like hundreds of others in his life, I just sit in his presence, and he says nothing to me, and the result is that I get up and go away at evening full of the knowledge of what manner of man he is.

"Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground as though He heard them not." So Christ revealed Himself to the furious Jews who were howling for the life of the poor woman whom they had caught in her sin. When Pilate said to him, "Hearest Thou not how many things they witness against Thee? Jesus answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marveled greatly." So the Prisoner revealed Himself to His amazed and frightened judge. By silence often of necessity and not by speech He must make Himself known, because the revelation is too great for words to contain; because the hearer cannot hold the truth and yet, by his strange human capacity, can hold Him who speaks the truth. Him who is the truth; because words sometimes hide instead of revealing what they try to tell, — for all these reasons the Lord often when we pray to Him answers us not a word.

Oh, my friends, our answered prayers are precious to us; I sometimes think our unanswered prayers are more precious still. Those give us God’s blessings; these, if we will, may lead us to God. Do not let any moment of your life fail of God’s light. Be sure that whether He speaks or is silent. He is always loving you, and always trying to make your life more rich and good and happy. Only be sure that you are always ready!