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II THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS

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III THE WINDOWS OPEN TOWARDS JERUSALEM . . 35

II

"And when they had sung an hymn, they went out." — Mark xiv.26.

This text opens before us an endless vista of love and beauty. "And when they had sung an hymn, they went out." Think of all that was to follow, and remember that Jesus knew it. This hymn, whatever it was, was therefore the death-song of Jesus. And what was it? There is surprisingly little curiosity on the subject. I do not recollect that I have ever heard the question asked, What was the hymn that Jesus sang on the night of His betrayal ?

It may be that many here have never thought about it at all. And yet we every one of us remember with a certain sweet sadness the songs of our beloved dead, and when they sang them.

"Jesu, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly."

While I repeat the line, some person present says to himself, "Those were the last words my father ever uttered."

" To Him the first fond prayers are said Our lips of childhood frame; The last low whispers of our dead Are burdened with His name."

"Rock of Ages cleft for me." While I repeat the familiar line that we shall be singing in most of our places of worship within the next few days, someone present will be thinking, "That was my mother's favourite hymn." We remember these associations with the name of Jesus, and we graft them upon our memory of the holy dead. Is it not, then, somewhat surprising that we never ask what hymn it was that He Himself sang in the hour and article of death? There is good reason to believe that it was Psalm cxviii. It was especially appropriate to the feast which Jesus observed with His disciples, and it contains the very sentence with which the crowds greeted Him on that morning or the day before in the streets of Jerusalem, "Hosanna! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." It was being sung by more than the little group of disciples in the upper room, but it was far more appropriate than anyone but Jesus knew, for He sang it alone. The steps of His betrayer were even at that moment audible as they passed into the night. The grand, lonely soul of Jesus, august Son of God, singing in the moment of His betrayal; His murderers are ready with their swords and staves, the fires are lit in the hall of Caiaphas; the very cross is fashioned and Calvary's horror is waiting. It was all arranged ; there was no justice about the matter; the verdict was foreordained by those who had schemed to murder Him, and in this terrible moment this is what He sings : —

"I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. . . . This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. . . . God is the Lord, who hath shewed us light; bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will praise Thee: Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever."

This was the song that Jesus sang.

The death-song of Jesus is, you see, a song of triumph uttered before the agony came. He knew absolutely that the Father would not fail Him, that evil could not prevail, and that the sacrifice would be a great victory. But mark this : He could not see beyond Calvary. He knew, but He could not see. Faith never can do otherwise than that; it knows, but it cannot see. He could see the whole way right up to Calvary; He knew what He was going to do, and that it must be done alone, and as Peter and John were singing on either side of Him, "Bind the sacrifice with cords," he knew that they were going to run away; the moment they stopped singing He told them about that, as we read in the context; and He knew that He would have to fling His strong arm around them, and beg their lives from his own murderers. He knew it; He knew about the midnight trial, and the travesty of justice; He knew the face of the perplexed Roman governor on the throne when He, the King, stood before him, as an accused criminal. He saw the sea of murderous faces round the cross, and He already felt in anticipation the terrible shame of it all. Yet He could not see beyond Calvary. He only knew, "Thou wilt not leave his soul in the grave, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption" — every detail up to Calvary, and not a moment beyond it.

Someone will say, Could Jesus have done less? Surely He could see the end from the beginning. He foresaw the rending of the tomb. He knew how much hung upon His faithfulness, and upon the way He fought His conflict through. In a word, the whole destiny of humanity rested upon what Jesus would do. Could He have done less than He did? I answer, No, He could not. But that does not lessen my obligation to Him, nor the fitness of its expression. Jesus could not have done less just because He was Jesus, and because He was so noble and pure, and because His purpose had to be accomplished to the last detail. So He did not shrink from the Cross. He could not have done less, nor does this consideration diminish the grandeur of His demeanour in the slightest degree.

Two great mysteries stand out here. First, the mystery of His agony. As a Roman Catholic theologian has put it, the agony in the garden and the dereliction on Calvary present to the gaze an ocean of sorrow on the shores of which we may stand and look down upon the waveless surface, but the depths below no created intelligence can fathom. Never speak lightly of the agony of Christ, for you do not know what it was, nor how terrible, nor how overwhelming even to the Divine Son of God. The second mystery is the mystery of His deliverance. He saw through the first mystery, but not the second. He saw the agony as we never can see it, but He did not see beyond. We see the second, but not the first. We never can look on Calvary except over the empty tomb. We see on this side of the Cross; Christ looked on the other. Think, then, of the grandeur and the magnificence of that august Figure, standing pathetic and lonely in the upper room, singing, "Bind the sacrifice with cords, bind it to the horns of the altar . . . O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever."

The present Bishop of Worcester somewhere says, there was nothing endured by Christ which we may not also be called upon to suffer in our degree. I ask you to weigh that sentence. In fellowship with Christ we may be capable of the same grandeur of achievement in our degree; and herein consists the principal value of my beautiful text, "And when they had sung an hymn, they went out." Do you observe the plural number? There were twelve men singing, but only One of them sang the song as it should be sung. The eleven did not know much about it. They protested their loyalty, their faithfulness, their fervour of devotion, but by-and-bye they forsook Him and fled. But that was not the end, thank God. Peter and John and the rest had their chance again, and the time came round when they sang the death-song of Jesus as they had not sung it before, and this was the ring of it: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, I am now ready to be offered. " These terrorstricken Galileans who fled from Gethsemane ere long became heroes for the Christ, and sang the death-song of Jesus in the very face of tyranny and shame. The things that had terrified them before were mere shadows compared with this. But something had changed them: was it not that they had learned to sing the death-song of Jesus with His own accent, knowing it was but the beginning and not the end?

Looking into the face of this congregation this morning, I am conscious of a deep respect for the souls that look back at me out of your eyes. What tragedies are here; what secret agonies; what shame; what betrayal; what desertion; what midnight trial; what Calvary, I know not, but I would ask you a question in the spirit of my text: What kind of song is your heart singing? Can it sing at all? Can you see God anywhere? Or is your vision bounded by the cross? I mean the cross on which your hopes have been crucified. There are some grand things here, if I could only get at them. And, by the way, I never remember preaching a sermon here, and adducing one single illustration from the facts of human life as I know it, without someone who was here either coming or writing to me afterwards and saying, "That was my life you were describing." Well, I once heard of, but never knew, a young father who fought a battle with fate on this wise. He was smitten with a deadly disease; he knew it, and was told that his only chance of life was that he should suffer someone to minister to him, and for the rest of his days — short days, too — he should take things quietly and rest and wait for death. "Let others suffer, and let others strive; be still," said the doctor, "that is your only chance of life." But he had two little babes, so he took another course. He might have turned bitter, and cursed and railed against fate, and, with it, God. Or he might have pitied himself and taken the easier course, and called upon others to provide for these his loved ones. But he did not; he went out as if nothing had happened, back to his work with double intensity. He could not leave his children to the mercy of the world. It is not that the world is so very unkind, but it forgets. He determined they should have their chance when he himself was gone. He uttered no complaint; he never presented to them any story of his own heroism. He just went on with brave heart and cheerful face. For years that man sang the death-song of Christ, and no martyr going to the stake ever sang it better.

I have also heard of, but never knew, a young mother, whose means of livelihood was her gift of song, and once when her only child was lying ill at home she had to sing for bread before a gaping crowd, and refuse an encore that she might escape from the footlights and get back to that suffering bedside. When she got there it was only to hear that there was no hope. This was the last request of her dying child — "Mother, sing to me!" Can you think of anything more terrible than that midnight agony? In the very presence of the shadow of death the brave little woman gathers her baby to her breaking heart and paces that death-room singing : —

" I think when I read that sweet story of old When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children like lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with Him then."

The child was going home, the mother was to live, but it was she and not the child that sang the death-song of Jesus, and sang it well for love's sake.

Compare these two cases, and you can find experiences in this congregation sufficiently like them to make it worth my while to paint the picture. Of one such I have heard this very week. A mother writes to me, as many people do about the things I teach and the things I do not teach, and complains that I declare an impossible God, an imaginary God, a God, she says, for comfortable Christians. Here let me in an aside warn anyone from ever seeking to interpret another person's life and labelling it either comfortable or stern. You never can change places with anyone, and you never can penetrate to the springs of another man's being: only God can do« that. But this, in effect, is what she says. I do not give you the very words. My heart filled up with pity when I read them: "Knowing the struggle I have had to keep the wolf from the door, and how I prayed my prayers in vain, I have come to the conclusion there may be a God, but He is no< God of love, He is a God whose words are pain. If there be such a God, I loathe Him with my whole soul. My little girl of six has learnt to blaspheme His name, and I never rebuke her, rather, I am glad." Poor bitter-hearted woman! Do you know, I think I can read in a declaration of that kind that she is not so far from God as she seems. If a man has intensity enough to protest against the heavenly Father, the one feeling can be pretty quickly translated into the other, and the protest become praise. But oh what a mistake she is making now! She knows little or nothing of the fellowship of the Cross. Has she never heard anything of the meaning of Gethsemane and Calvary, or the death-song of Jesus? She has refused to sing it, and what is worse, she has stifled the song of an angel in the heart of her little child. How near together lie success and failure in the great moral crisis of life! We say of that young father whom I have just described, "Could he have done less?" Of course he could not; he would have been false to his trusteeship if he had. He did exactly what God meant him to do; no more than Jesus, could he have done less in the shadow of Calvary. He sang the death-song, sang it like a martyr, sang it like a saint, and it may be that you and I, sooner rather than late, will have our death-song to sing, and to go on living.

I speak this morning to any man or any woman who is fronting some terrible thing, who, like Christ in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, goes forward with a face towards the gleam of light at the end, with the demons whispering gibes in your ear. Your prayer for strong deliverance is heard; you can meet your fate — shall we call it fate? — your lot, with bitterness, or you can meet it with the spirit of defiance, which is the spirit of the devil all the same. There is another way: meet it in the spirit of the Christ; rise high to the opportunity. "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord . . . bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar" — and oh — can you say it? — "give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever." The Lord would not think much of humanity if He gave it only the toys in the nursery. He gives us something grander than that; it is the fellowship of the Cross. We have nothing to do with our own redemption ; we have much to do with filling up the measure that is behind. Christ fought a battle for us, let us fight our battle with Him.

I would say, then, to any man or woman of broken mutilated life, Lift up your heart and listen, listen to the death-song of Jesus, which is sung by the heavenly choir, the choir of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. When the organist was playing that lovely voluntary this morning, which came with such a sweet and quieting devotional influence upon your hearts and mine, I thought of something which I now suggest to you. If you were to place in this pulpit a violin or harp tuned to the pitch of the organ above, and leave it alone, not touching it, and that voluntary was played again, and you bent your ear near to the stringed instrument, seemingly so silent, you would hear every note of it coming from strings that are swept by the hand of no human player. My brethren, you are like the harp strung by the hand of God. Keep atune with heaven, and you shall sing such a song as you will never otherwise sing in this world. It is no human hand that sweeps the strings, only the Hand that tuned them; and your melody already joins with that of the great choir above.

As my closing application of this beautiful message of God, "When they had sung an hymn, they went out," let me quote some lines by the Rev. V. J. Charlesworth :

" When friends are few or far away,

Sing on, dear heart, sing on!

They rise to sing who kneel to pray,

Sing on, dear heart, sing on !

The songs of earth to heav'n ascend,

And with adoring anthems blend, Whose ringing echoes ne'er shall end; Sing on, dear heart, sing on ! "

Yes, even so, sing on, for even now your melody is blending with the strains of the multitude that no man can number around the throne of God.

THE WINDOWS OPEN TOWARDS JERUSALEM

The following was a business man's sermon, and preached for the sake of an individual. Probably there were many more like him in the congregation, but I only knew the one man whom I sought to help. He was not a church-goer: that is to say, he attended no place of worship on Sundays, although he was a regular attendant at the Thursday service. Years before he had been put out of touch with religious work by some real or fancied affront — in fact he seemed to have been rather hardly and unsympathetically used. He was now willing to make a fresh start, but could not help blazing out at the meanness and unscrupulousness of the treatment meted out to him in business by professing Christians. I still see this hearer sitting in the midst of the city men Thursday by Thursday. Whether this particular sermon helped him or no I never knew, but it reached one or two young fellows who were beginning to find out that success has its penalties, of which envy is one.

Ill

" Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house, and his windows being opened in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime." — Daniel vi. 10.

The book of Daniel has long been a subject of controversy amongst scholars, and is a favourite with some who profess to find in it indications concerning the political future of the world. For the present, however, you and I need not concern ourselves with questions of scholarship or prophecy. Our text is plain enough; it has a meaning and a value independent of both. Neither the scholar nor the would-be prophet, foreteller of events I mean, has aught to say that can add anything to the force and the commanding personal appeal of our text. Let us look first at the meaning, and then at the value which the meaning indicates.

Here is a great man, Daniel by name, who is a stranger in a strange land, one of a captive people; but, like so many of his race, he is found to be useful to the reigning house in the country where he now is; and so he is preferred before even the subjects of the same race as the king himself; and we are told the king thought to set him over the whole realm. You know enough about human nature to be aware of what would happen. In this case, at any rate, the writer of this book was inspired by experience. It was with Daniel as with Merlin in "The Idylls of the King" :—

" Sweet were the days when I was all unknown. But when my name was lifted up, the storm Brake on the mountain, and I cared not for it. Right well know I that fame is half disfame, Yet needs must work my work."

Daniel appears to have gone quietly on the path which not the king but God had marked out for him; lived his life, did his duty. His practice was to keep his soul right towards God by this meditation three times a day. He would enter into his private room, open his window towards Jerusalem, the home of his love, in order that he might remind himself of his allegiance to the God of Israel, and that he had no abiding city in Babylon. What was the king to him, and all the king's honour? Yonder, at Jerusalem, in the service of Israel's God, were Daniel's thought and Daniel's hope.

Now observe the devilry that is set on foot. The king loves his talented subject, and so by guile Daniel's foes have to make a way through that devotion to encompass the destruction of their rival; they suggested the king's vanity the way in which this might be done. There is to be no prayer for three days. Who ever dreams that Daniel would intermit his devotion for that? Now can you see them slinking round outside the chamber of his devotion and looking up: "Has he the window open? Just what we expected!" "Then they came near and told the king." Is not that true to life? You do not need to look very far for the meaning of my text now; and if the sermon were to stop at this point, every one of you could supply the application. It is just possible that some man present might be saying to himself, "I am sorry you have chosen this particular illustration of what human nature knows to be true; what a childish tale this is about a man being flung into the lions' den and coming out unhurt! Tell it to children." Well, I am telling it to grown men. It may seem to you altogether irrational, but I actually believe it. I remember listening to Dr Parker's posthumous message to the Free Churches, which contained something of a remonstrance against a certain kind of Biblical scholarship in these terms : — "We are now told that there was no den, that there were no lions, and, worst of all, that there was no Daniel." If my revered predecessor were here this morning, I would point out Daniel to him in the congregation. For in this story we have a very vivid picture of ordinary human life, and an epitome of the destiny of many and many a true servant of God. I am looking into the face of some men who are being committed to the den of lions, and will find themselves there before this afternoon is out. I would talk to them as from the heart of God; and this is all I have to say. You know where you are going, do you not?

You know the writing is signed; open the windows towards Jerusalem; no compromise with the enemy; be as though he were not there. We have no abiding city here, but seek a city out of sight. You will be a better citizen of this world if you live in the full vision of the next.

Let me take that youngster, perhaps the youngest male hearer that I have this morning, and I will tell you about his life. He is, as the cynic would say, cursed with a conscience. He has just earned his little piece of success. He stands well with his employer; he has worked hard enough to get there, and it seems as if the road is opening before him, and life will bring him some good things by-and-bye. Here is the enemy. This young man is finding he has to pay his price for his success — calumny, petty persecution, inflicted in ways which are difficult to fix and to face out; and sometimes you are almost inclined to turn cynic yourself. Then the preacher comes along and says : "Open the windows towards Jerusalem. Look back along the line of history to One who stood in that fateful city at Pilate's judgment seat. Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself; and when He was reviled, reviled not again." "Ah, yes!" is the response, "but I cannot see Christ in business." I am thankful you cannot, unspeakable thankful; for if you could, a great moral opportunity that you have now would never be yours at all; for persecuted and persecutor would both be on the side of Christ, seeing Him in power and great glory. There is a moral value in not knowing too much; mystery hath its uses. If you could see things as they actually are you would never even talk about the Cross, you would not hesitate as to what you ought to do. Do it now, as if you could see. Wait a moment. I said you could not see Christ. Open the windows toward Jerusalem, and gaze through the things that are seen to the things that are not seen. Look into the face of the Master and you will see something that the world cannot see, and it will keep you true. Human nature is capable of many damnable things, even now; and lest I should be held to be prophesying smooth things and telling nursery tales instead of God's word, I would just say this: you may have worse to suffer yet; this may only be the beginning. The writing is signed; you may not know it, or you may; go on as if you did not know; go to your God; open the windows of your soul heavenward, and leave the rest to Him.

We will take that woman — pure and good — who is the breadwinner in a certain family; but she has to earn her living for herself and the rest in the presence of foul and humiliating insult. Most men here will know that I am not imagining this. It is true of I know not how many in this sanctuary to-day. There are some times when you feel that you can bear no more, and will let the consequences be what they may; you must retreat from this position of hardship and shame. You have no one to tell. It is astonishing how few there are in the world to whom man or woman can disclose their whole soul. But as the living has to be won, and for somebody else who cannot win it if you do not, I think I know what you must do. The writing is signed, and it seems as though the lions are waiting; but you must go back. Open the windows toward Jerusalem; the world does not have it all its own way. There is God, and He is just, and He is strong. "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Fear nothing, save to compromise with the Highest. Live where He is, for as He is so are we in this world.

Take this business man — to whom I meant to speak at first. You are finding every day, as it were, the penalty of succeeding in almost anything, it matters not what. It seems as if life is all battle. What a weary game it is, this making money in the City! What a rest, what a relief to get home at night and leave the lions for a while! You know what professional jealousy means : you know what it is to make an implacable, inveterate, unsleeping enemy who will hit you under the belt every time he can. Sometimes you are tempted to get the blow in first, to bring down the standard of conduct and right doing and right feeling. Never submit to that temptation: it is the business man's par excellence. It is so difficult to keep a humble heart, a pure spirit, and a childlike attitude to God, when you are fighting like a man beset on the stricken field, and heaven so far away. Well, be the man; keep the windows open toward Jerusalem. The higher vision will save you from the shame of falling in this world of a thousand temptations to the strong man. Let the indications be what they may, let threatenings be all they seem, your God is stronger than they all. God and one make a majority.

Just as I came up the pulpit stairs, the sexton handed me this little spring token 1 from one of my City men. I have been looking to this man for some time for little loving tokens of this kind. From his card I see that he is an Artist and a Scot, and his house is named after that little piece of gorse I hold in my hand, which by the way a Scotsman does not call gorse. It must be a figure of his own life. There is the golden flower of success, and here are the thorns that make it so I can scarcely hold it. It reminds me of the experience of a brother artist of this man, told me a little while ago. He has just got some plans into the Royal Academy, and he showed me the only unfavourable, even a venomous, notice of them which appeared in a paper. He said, "Would you think that this man is not speaking his real sentiments at all, perhaps never saw the plans? But I happened to pass him in a competition a little while ago, and he has been waiting for me ever since." Just so, that is the way the world does. It is a curious thing that out of all this