"He yet speaketh

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Foreword

HE sermons composing this volume are published as a memorial of the Rev.

Robert Bryce Miller t D. D., who died in the pastorate of the Third United Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh on October 19, 1918. Formally the life of this true worker for the coming of the Kingdom of God can be told in a few words. He was born at New Hope, South Carolina, August 25, 1877. When he was about ten years of age the family moved to Sardis, North Carolina, near Charlotte. He was graduated from Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina, in 1899.. Having resolved on the ministry, In which he was preceded by his honoured father, he enrolled in the Pittsburgh (then Allegheny) Theological Seminary of the United Presbyterian Church, and completed the course of study in 1902, Thereafter he was continuously in the service to which he had surrendered himself, constantly obeying with seriousness of purpose and strenuousness of will the commission received from his Lord, His first charge was at Beaver, Pennsylvania, where he was ordained and installed on October 28, 1902. From there he removed to the First Church of Butler, Pennsylvania, his new pastorate beginning June 24, 1908.

FOEEWOED

After spending almost six years at Butler, he answered the call of the Third Church of Pittsburgh, taking up his duties officially on March 12, 1914, and remaining in that relationship until his appointed " twelve hours " were over. In these three fields of labour — all of them important, but with the second surpassing the first in opportunity and responsibility, and the third the second — Dr. Miller gave himself unstintedly to his allotted task. There was a wealth of real, rich manhood in him, and this, sanctified and wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, became a working force in everything to which he set his hand. Never did he let his office crush his personality. Back of the message was the messenger, with his strong, balanced, sympathetic, genial selfhood. He had a heart charged with profound feeling for his fellowmen in their spiritual needs, and thus prompted he steadily braced himself to do a man's work. This made it that his ministry, while a draft on all that was vital, never partook of drudgery, but was a source of satisfaction and delight, and esteemed a privilege.

As a preacher Dr. Miller's ideals never dwindled, and so he went from strength to strength. He saw things from the angle of the common people, and spoke concretely. His thought fulness and studious habits saved him from falling into the ruts of commonplaceness, and his sermons had power in them to grapple and stir the soul. With a broad outlook and a wholesome spirit, he kept well out of that zone of pessimism which predicts social bankruptcy

FOREWORD and general chaos just ahead, preferring to interpret truth from the sanguine and sunny point of view of one who believed in a good time coming, and progressively coming. His congregations were sure to hear the Gospel, with its appealing notes of promise and comfort. He ranged through the cardinal themes of Christian faith and practice, all the while making Christ manifest and insistent.

The sermons that occupy the following pages, though few in number, are true to type. They have been selected by Rebekah Gordon Miller, the devoted wife of Dr. Miller, aided by the counsel of some friends, and have been edited by the Rev. John S. Duncan, D. D., of Mercer, Pennsylvania. With silent eloquence they will recall a man greatly beloved whom in the midst of his days God translated into eternal usefulness, a man the issues of whose serviceable life here will flow on full of survival values.

John McNaugher.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

I. From Care Set Free . . . .11

II. Losing Christ 21

III. Accepting the Cross .... 34

II

But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. — Luke 2 : 44.

Scriptures. How a father and mother could lose their boy and not know for a whole day that he had been lost, and lose him because they had gone on their way supposing him to have been in the company instead of actually knowing it, not discovering the loss until night, is hard indeed to understand. The strangest part of It Is that he could be lost by the mother, by hef who bore him and loved him and ministered to him and knew withal that he was no ordinary child. Yet she was so eager to get home, so absorbed in the company of those with whom she journeyed, so taken up with all that she had seen in Jerusalem, that she lost her boy. He was lost in the most unlikely place, for they lost him as they were turning from church. Some of our children might be lost returning from church because their parents are not with them, but the father and mother of Jesus were in the company with him and still he was

W

HEN we come to realize the meaning of this verse we see here one of the strangest incidents to be found in the lost. They lost him because they took it for granted that he was with them, playing somewhere in the circle of children, instead of knowing certainly that he was there. Those three days between the discovery that their boy was lost and their finding him in the temple must have been extremely distressing.

In this incident there stands out one great fact which might well be considered by Christian men and women, the possibility of losing Christ. I am thinking not so much of the permanent loss of Christ as that temporary loss which means that we must go along in the journey of life sorrowfully because we are without Him.

A Christian life may be defined as one of union and communion with Christ. That, perhaps, is the simplest definition. It is a life lived in constant fellowship with Him, conversing with Him in prayer, feeling His help in the time of need, going to Him with all our secrets and living consciously as in His presence. But let us remember that He does not come where He is not welcomed. u Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Nor does He stay if He is not wanted. Therefore, let us ask ourselves this question, Is Christ really with us or do we only suppose Him to be in the company? For no one knows better than ourselves whether we have Christ with us or whether we only suppose Him to be with us. No one knows so quickly as we ourselves when we lose Him. A great musician made it a rule to practice eight hours a day.

When surprise was expressed at this, his answer was, " If I should not practice for a single day, I would know it ; if for two days, my friends would know it; and if for three days, the world would know it." The truth thus expressed applies in our relations to Christ. If we lose Him for even a short time, we are conscious that something has gone out of our lives. If we lose Him for a few weeks, our friends detect the loss. If for months we cease our Christian fellowship in prayer and public worship, the world sees the change that comes over our lives and knows that we are backsliders. Great Christians are made like great musicians, by constant " practice of the presence of Christ," who brings music into our lives by touching them with His love and grace. The theme, therefore, which I wish to have you study with me to-day is this, — Losing Christ.

Two things are to be considered : first, the possibility of our losing Him; and, second, the principle of restoration to His presence.

I. The possibility of our losing Christ.

If as they went to Jerusalem some one had said to his mother that on the journey she would lose her son, she would have laughed in scorn. Yet the fact is that she did lose him and went a whole day before she discovered her loss. If we Christians should be told that it is possible for us to lose Christ, to be without His companionship, we would not believe it. Yet it is possible and I wish to look with you at this possibility.

I

1. Some because of past experience suppose Christ to be in their company. Mary knew that the boy Jesus was with them when they were ready to start, and she supposed that he was with them still. It was only when night came upon them and darkness fell that she realized to her sorrow that he was not there. Some time in our lives we have come face to face with Christ We have felt His power and been thrilled by the resolution to live a Christian life. We have confessed Him, have become members of His Church, and had the profound conviction that He was ours and we were His. Then we have trusted to that experience and thought that because Christ was with us once He is with us still, only, like Mary, to find in some hour of need that He was not there.

I am not disparaging the experience or questioning its reality. The point I am striving to make is that one experience is not enough. It must be renewed day by day.. In Christian experience there is nothing this side of eternity that has in it the element of finality. Penitence must not be once for all ; there must be a daily sorrow for and confession of sin. Even the yielding to Christ must be repeated day by day. If we do not keep up these Christian exercises and experiences, we are just supposing Christ to be with us, when in reality He has passed out of our lives,

2. We suppose Him to be in our company because of our belief in Him and in the truths of His Word. His mother believed in Him. She believed what God revealed to her concerning Him, and yet she lost Him. One may be perfectly orthodox in his beliefs concerning Christ and yet not have Christ. We may have light and not have life. It is possible to have the head believe and not the heart. We may be like Simon Magus> who believed in Christ intellectually, and yet Peter said of him that he was in the gall of bitterness* and in the bond of iniquity. It is possible to know the Bible from beginning to end, to hold sound views as to its teachings, and yet not know the fellowship that is in Christ. I wa9 once acquainted with an old gentleman who was wont to lament the liberality of the Church, who bewailed what he believed to be a tendency on the part of the Presbyterian churches to drift away from Calvinism, a man who actually believed in infant damnation, and yet he was a hardened sinner indulging in drink and other sins. It is, therefore, possible for us to suppose that because we have sound views as to Christ we have Him with us when in reality we are strangers to Him.

3. Some suppose Christ to be in their company because they are busy at Christian work; but we must remember that the parents of Jesus were busy at Christian work. They were on their way home from church. They were talking to their neighbours about the great things of the feast, and still they lost Christ. There is a lesson here for all who are active in Christian service, for workers and officers in the Church. Business is not holiness. The hands may be full and the heart maybe empty. The lips may be warm with false fire, while the heart is as cold as a stone. Our work for Christ, strange as it may seem, may cause us to lose Christ. That is, we may so busy ourselves in the work from other motives that we lose the very heart of it all, Christ Himself. It is possible for us to keep the vineyard of others, while our own vineyard we have not kept. Christ wants our work, but most of all He wants our hearts and our daily fellowship with Him. Gypsy Smith tells that when he went back home after nine months in this country he found his pastor overwhelmed with work in arranging a home for the waifs of the city. Though Gypsy Smith had been long separated from his family, he felt it to be his duty to help out. As he was working his little daughter Syla was hanging to his coat-tails and playing about him in childish glee. Being in the company of a gentleman, whom he feared the child would disturb, he gave her some money and told her to buy some candy. The little girl quickly replied that she did not want his money, that he had been away from her so long she just wanted to be with him. The father said that it was a great rebuke to him. There are people who are willing to give Christ their services, their money, their time. All of these are good, but Christ wants us and not ours. I am not exaggerating, therefore, when I say that this may be one way in which people in the Church may lose Christ. No amount of Christian service is a substitute for fellowship with Christ. Companionship with Him comes first and service should be at once a help to that companionship and the expression of our devotion to Him who has counted us worthy of a place in His service.

4. Some suppose Him to be in their company because they are too busy with other things, often the things of the world, to find out certainly that He is there. The deepest truth about this loss on the part of Mary was that she was so busy getting her things together and enjoying the fellowship of her friends and planning for the trip home, that she just took for granted that her boy was with her and did not take time to see if he really was in the company. Her work was all good. There is no criticism to be made because of her interest in her plans and in her friends, but all of these things were secondary to that of having her boy with her, and they could have been entered into more joyfully if she had been sure that he was there.

In this there is a lesson for our own day. We are busy in these days with many things. In the home, in business, in behalf of our country, men and women are crowded with work. It is the tragedy of our souls if we allow ourselves to be so absorbed in anything, even of great importance, that we lose the Lord out of our lives, if we neglect His worship and prayer. Some sad day we shall waken to realize that our Christ has gone. II. The restoration of the lost Christ.

It was a sad hour when Mary discovered that her boy was not of the company. Those three days in which she was seeking him must have been terrible. The thought of her lost boy In a great city, and especially a country boy who did not know the city, would be enough almost to turn her heart to stone. We know how any of us would feel in such circumstances. One of the writers from the battle- front says that the most terrible news is that summed up in the one word "missing." There may be some comfort when one knows that a loved one is at rest in the sleep of death, and comfort, too, when one knows that a loved one is only wounded and is being taken care of by tender hands in a hospital ; but " missing ** may mean one or more of many terrible things. It was an awful moment for Mary when she realized that her boy was missing and we can better imagine than describe that search lasting all through that first night, the next day, and the following night until the morning of the third day, when she found him.

Let us look for a little at the steps In the restoration of the lost boy as suggesting or illustrating the way by which, if we have lost Christ out of our lives, we can find Him again and keep Him.

1. There had to be a confession of loss on the part of the mother. That would be no easy thing either. It was rather humiliating to have to confess to the throng of people that she had actually gone on and left her boy behind. It is always

LOSING CHKIST humiliating to have to confess one's shortcomings, and when we have drifted away from the loving and faithful Saviour if we would get back to Him a similar humiliation must be ours. It may be that some of us, as we look back over the years, are realizing now that we have indeed lost Christ, that prayer has lost its power, the Word of God its sweetness, and fellowship with the people of God its delight. There is but one remedy. Like honest men and women we must come and face our Lord and Christ, face Him before our friends and before the Church, and resolve that by God's grace we shall find Him. Our encouragement is in His word of promise given: " Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

2. There is the suggestion, too, that every other interest must be laid aside until this search is rewarded. Mary changed all her plans. She parted with her friends as they went on their way. She left everything and went back and searched until she found him.

This we, too, must do If Christ has departed from our lives. We must plumb the depths of our hearts, put away every sin, and make this supreme search, seeking first His kingdom and Himself and resolve that we will never give up until we have found Him. There is often a great deal in our religion that is superficial. We attack other problems seriously and go through with them. We are content to suppose that God is with us, and the fearful thing about it is that in some hour when need presses hard, we find that He is not with us. I knew a woman in this community who imagined that she was a Christian. She had become very much interested in Christian Science and felt that it would satisfy her life. The result was that she gave up the church of her fathers and her friends. The hour came when sickness took hold upon her and death stared her in the face. Then she discovered that she did not have Christ. In the time when she needed Him most He was not with her because years before she had lost Him and was fondly deluding herself that He was yet in her company. With the diligence which marked this mother's search for her boy should we search our hearts until we come to the place where we find Christ. It may be necessary to go very deep and to cut away things that have stood between us and Him, but at any cost we ought to find Him.

3. This story suggests that the best place to find Christ is in His Church. The lonely boy, when he discovered that he had been left behind in the great city, did what was the most natural thing in the world for him to do. As soon as he discovered that he had been left behind, he went to the temple, and there, after three days, his mother found him. She found him in the temple of God, and it has always seemed strange to me that she did not seek him there first.

There is a suggestion here which it might be well for us to note. We hear much of religious exercises and fellowship outside the Church. I have heard men say that they could find God as they walked by the river, on a Sabbath ride with friends, or sitting at home reading a good book. But Mary did not find Christ until she found Him in the Father's house. In the very nature of things it is in the Father's house that we still are to look for the Son. Jesus loved to linger about the temple then; He lingers within its sacred walls still. If in fidelity to its service and worship we come back to the Church, we shall find what Mary found, Jesus waiting to receive us.

4. There is a final suggestion: Mary found Jesus where she lost Him.

This is generally where men and women find Him. We have got to get back to the place where we parted company with Him, to the place where, in broken vow or deliberate sin, we turned our back upon Him and left Him. We must go back and make confession, back to the doing of some work which we have left undone, to the paying of some vow we have left unpaid, back to the place where we lost Him. There we will find Christ waiting, patiently and lovingly, to go again on life's journey with us. When Jacob lost God out of his life, he had to go back to Bethel. There he found God ready to renew His covenant with him. That Lot might find his God again he must flee from Sodom and go to the oaks of Mamre, where he had parted company with Him. Peter had to go to the lake where he had made his rash vow,

" Though all should forsake thee, yet will not I." There where he had first found Jesus he found Him again, heard His words, " Lovest thou me ? " and was restored again to the confidence of the Master and to service in His kingdom.

To-day, as we look over our past and perchance realize that Christ has gone out of our lives, a little thought will tell us just where we lost Him. It was in some sin that we committed, some wrong which we did another, some broken vow, some overwhelming enterprise which crowded Him out of our lives. If we would find Him and have restored unto us the joy of His salvation, we must retrace our steps and make confession of our sins. When Jesus said to Zacchseus, " To-day I must abide at thy house/' he knew the conditions and said, " Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold." He got right with Christ by getting right with his own past, and then Christ went home with him. To-day He waits patiently in His temple, as He waited patiently those three long days for His mother to come again and take Him home with her. If we have lost Him out of our lives, let us, through repentance and confession, go back to Him and find Him and take Him with us through the years. When we start on our journey in His company, even though the road may lead to Nazareth and it may be a rough road, and Nazareth may be poor and mean and full of toil and trial, the road will really be brighter. And we may be sure that whatever experiences may come, they will be made glorious by His promise and His presence, " Lo, I am with you alway." Let us, then, go up to the Jerusalem of our broken vows and take Christ with us to Nazareth.

III ACCEPTING THE CROSS (Matt. 26: 39-46.)

THE three sources of the temptation of Jesus were Satan, His fellowmen, and His own flesh. The temptation which we are to study to-day had its source in His own flesh, the natural shrinking of the human spirit from the agony and the shame of the Cross.

Jesus never looked out toward the cross without a reluctance and hush falling upon His spirit. He always referred to it as His " hour," and spoke of that hour in most solemn tones. At the wedding in Cana of Galilee He even rebuked His mother, saying, " Woman, what have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not yet come." On the mountain of transfiguration He spoke with the heavenly visitants of the death He should accomplish at Jerusalem. When the Greeks came seeking Him, He said that the grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die. When the sons of Zebedee strove for the foremost place in His kingdom, He referred to His cup and His baptism. Here, on the night before His passion, He sees His cross etched upon the evening sky, and He shrinks from it. In fact this was the only time in His life that He

ACCEPTING THE CBOSS 35 asked to escape His Father's will. "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me."

It was probably midnight of Thursday when He entered Gethsemane. He had experienced a busy and a trying week, teaching all the day long, talking with His disciples and with His friends till late in the night, in all probability getting no sleep at all. Judas had gone out and betrayed Him, and He knew that the crisis was near. Besides being weary from labour and loss of sleep, the thought of the cross stood out in all its black horror, and the temptation that entered His soul was to refuse the cup and run away from it altogether, choosing some easier way to perform His mission to the world ; but He found help in prayer and gained the victory, and now faces the betrayal and all the sufferings of the cross not only with perfect calm, but actually made His cross a place of counsel, of blessing, and of prayer.

Let us look then at the power of that temptation, the prayer for power, and the power received.

I. The power of that temptation.

Why did Jesus so shrink from the cross ? What was there even in this terrible experience that, more than anything else in His life, caused Jesus to shrink from doing His Father's will? We cannot answer these questions, nor shall we ever be able to answer them in their fulness this side of the veil; but there are three things about the experience that made the cross peculiarly hard to bear:

36 ACCEPTING THE CEOSS

There was, first of all, the matter of physical pain. For Jesus there was peculiar horror in the cross because, for one thing, He was of a tender and sensitive nature. He was a young man, not dying from exhausting sickness, but in the bloom of His youth. It is one thing for a man of iron nerve and brute-like frame to yield himself to the surgeon's knife ; it is another thing for a man with a keen and sensitive nature, with a vivid imagination, to yield himself to torture. The higher in the scale of being, the finer in organization, the greater is the agony both in experience and in anticipation. We would expect him to face and go through that ordeal calmly. Many of the martyrs before him sang psalms while the fire burned their flesh, and white- robed companies sang praises while the lions were bearing down upon them. Even tender women have called to each other in words of cheer while the rising tide chilled them into death. But these heroic souls had with them in flame and tide the living and all-sustaining Christ. Jesus trod the winepress alone and for Him there was no helper. In His flesh, worn by labour and strain and grief and loss of sleep, He shrank from the physical agony of the cross.

The second element In it was the pain of mental distress. After all, was this the hour to which God was leading Him, this the way? Could this be the will of God? He had all His life anticipated the cross. He had read the prophecies concerning the manner of His death, but when He came to that

ACCEPTING THE} CROSS J hour all was uncertain, and with the pain of body doubt swept in over His souL On the evening of September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln sat with the proclamation of emancipation before him unsigned. Liberty to the slaves had been one of the dreams and purposes of his life. He had looked forward to the hour when he could strike the fetters from four millions of people. With fervent lips he had prophesied its coming, through the years had cherished this high ambition, yet when he faced the actual deed he hesitated. He took up his pen again and again only to lay it down. He knew that hearts both north and south would swell in thanksgiving at his deed; he knew that sooner or later it was inevitable. Yet with quivering Hps he asked, Is this the hour? Was there no gentler way, no way that would cause less suffering in the prodigal South and even shrinking back in some hearts of the North? With less violence might not these prodigal states be won? Is this the hour and the will of God ? In that mental anguish, his biographer tells us, he remained through all the night, and only as the morning light was breaking did he sign his name.