And the prisoners heard them— Act_16:25
An Unconscious Ministry in Music
Strangers in a strange city, Paul and Silas had very violent treatment. They were seized and, without semblance of a trial, were thrust into the inner prison. It was a gloomy and miserable place and might have appalled the spirits of the bravest. Men had been known in that dark cell to curse and some, in black despair, to kill themselves. But never, since these walls had been embattled, had any prisoner been known to sing there, and yet at midnight Paul and Silas sang. It was dark, and yet all bright to them. It was exceeding loathsome, and yet beautiful. Stone walls did not a prison make for them, nor iron bars a cage. And so they sang like the lark at heaven's gate— although for them it was a prison-gate— and as they sang, the prisoners heard them. Probably some of these prisoners became Christians afterwards. It was they who told the story to the Church: told how at dead of night, dull and despairing— hark the sound of music. And one would recall how it held his hand from suicide, and another how it revived his hope, and another perhaps how it brought back the memory of his mother and his childhood and his home. Of all that service the men who sang knew nothing They were totally unconscious of such ministry. They sang because Christ was with them and was cheering them. They sang because they could not help but sing And all the time, although they never dreamed of it, they were serving others better than they knew, touching old tenderness, reviving courage, making it easier to suffer and be strong
We All Exercise Unconscious Ministries
Now something of that kind we all are doing We all of us exercise unconscious ministries. When we never dream we are affecting anybody, we are touching and turning others all the time. We fret, and others feel our fretting, though never a syllable has passed our lips. We play the game, and just because we play it, folk we have never heard of play it better. We sing at midnight because God is with us and will never leave us nor forsake us, and prisoners in other cells are cheered. One of our writers, a man of genius— yet a man whose moral character was vile— has told us how, when in the grip of shame, somebody took off his hat to him. It was only a custom of familiar courtesy— the instinctive action of a gentleman— yet to him it was a gleam of heaven in his hell. We never know what we are doing when we do it. Our tiniest actions are touched to freest issues. Like Faithful, in the Valley of the Shadow, we lift up our voice because our heart is strong. And some poor Christian, stumbling on behind us on his way also to the Celestial City, thanks God and takes courage at the music. Be quite sure that the very humblest life is full of beneficent unconscious ministries. There is not a note of song we ever raise but the ear of some other prisoner will catch it. Words that we utter and then quite forget—a smile in passing— the clasp of hands in comradeship— have got their work in God's strange world to do and will meet us in the rosy-fingered dawn.
The Ministry of Happiness
This unconscious human helpfulness is one of the chiefest ministries of happiness. Happiness is sometimes selfishness; but happiness is also sometimes service. He who resolves at all costs to be happy is generally a very miserable person. In this wide world the things we set our hearts on are so often the things we never get. But when anyone is genuinely happy, with a heart at leisure from itself, then happiness is unconscious benediction. One of the most beautiful poems of Robert Browning is a wonderful thing that he calls Pippa Passes. It is a story of murder and of guilt, portrayed with the passion and the truth of genius. And then below the house of all this vileness where vows are treachery and kisses shame, in the exquisite summer morning, Pippa passes. She is only an innocent girl, supremely happy, and because she is happy, as she goes she sings. She has no thought of doing good to anybody. She is quite oblivious of listeners. And yet that simple song of girlish happiness, entering the open casement of the house, comes with the very ministry of heaven. Happiness will sometimes do what bitterest reproach can never do. The man who can sing at midnight because God is with him is doing something for others all the time. To be happy— to be serene and radiant— when the shadows deepen and the cross is heavy is one of the finest of life's unconscious ministries.
The Influence of Children
A similar unconscious service is the sweet and tender helpfulness of childhood. Childhood never dreams that it is helping, yet its benedictions are incalculable. A well-known writer has told us that after anxious days he completed a certain book he had in hand. It had cost him much laborious research, and now it was completed. And all the joy of that completed toil, he tells us, was nothing to the gladness he experienced in the pattering footsteps of some little children whom he had taught to love him. Do you remember what they wrote upon the tombstone of a little girl who had gone home? They wrote her name and then beneath it this— It was easier to be good while she was with us. And that is what little ones are always doing— they are making it easier to be good. How many a man has been true to what is pure through the constraining influence of his children. How many a selfish heart has grown considerate when the mystery of motherhood has come. Those eyes of innocence, those pattering feel those lips that are only still when they are sleeping, have done more to beautify and bless the world than all the legislation of the sages. There is no more real ministry than that, and the wonderful thing is it is unconscious. No child awakens on a summer morning and says, "Today I am going to be a blessing" He is a blessing and he never knows it. He plays in the marketplace and Christ is gladdened. He sings like Paul because he cannot help it— and the prisoners hear.
The Service of Passivity
The same unconscious ministry, again, is often a beautiful feature of the sickroom. Patient suffering may be finest service. It is told of Dr. Norman Macleod that on one occasion he went to pay a visit to a Sunday school scholar of his own. He found him stretched upon a sorry bed, for the lad— an invalid— was dying amid scenes of crime and destitution. Norman Macleod was not a great preacher; Norman Macleod was a great human. Stooping over the bed he said, "My poor lad, I'm afraid you're very weak." "Yes, sir," was the reply, "I'm very weak, but I'm strong in Him." The following Sunday, Dr. Macleod told that story from the pulpit. It was published in religious newspapers both in England and America. And by and by, from Scotland, England, and from far-off villages of the United States, came testimonies that the story had been blessed. Out in the High Street other lads were serving, Men and women were toiling for the Master. Here in the garret, above the crowded street was a sufferer who would never serve again. Yet, like Paul and Silas in the dungeon, he sang in his midnight because God was with him, and far away the other prisoners heard. I have heard women lamenting they were useless because they could never leave their little room. Others were out and active in the world; they were nothing but cumberers of the ground. And yet that little chamber was a Bethel, and to enter it was to feel that God was there, and through the streets one walked a better man because of that patient beautiful endurance. Never forget that among life's many ministries, the freest may be the unconscious ministry. There is an exquisite service of passivity as surely as a service of activity. When the lights are low, when the strong ones bow themselves, when the silver cord is at the point of breaking, you may be serving better than you know.
We Are All Preachers
This too is the real value of genuine and unaffected goodness. It is exercising every day a beautiful unconscious ministry. A man may forget all that his mother told him. He will never forget all that his mother was. He may lose count of all his father's counsel, but never of his father's character. It is not the things which we can utter glibly— it is often things we have no power to utter— that fall on other lives with benediction. When Sir Walter Scott was building Abbotsford in England, he put the lawn in a peculiar place. And at one corner of it he built a little summerhouse where he might sit in the evening after dinner. And he told Lockhart why he built it there; was it because the view was beautiful? not so, but that he might sit there and listen to the evening worship of his coachman. Old Peter was a real old Scottish servant. He would not have talked religion for the world. But every nightfall in the year he took The Book, and "waled a portion wi' judicious care." And then a psalm was sung, and travelling heavenward to Him who understands the Scottish reticence, Sir Walter heard it, and hearing it, was comforted. Old Peter was preaching better than he knew. He was preaching when he never thought to preach. That is what all of us are doing constantly, though we were never in a pulpit in our lives. There are Spurgeons in unlikeliest places, apostles who are cheering all the prison, and they never know that they are doing anything
The Only Thing Worth Living for
Indeed, I believe that much of our Christian service must always be of that unconscious character. When that is lacking, the other is formality. I trust that when this hurrying life is over, you and I shall each have the "Well done." That is the only thing worth living for. It is the only welcome which I want. But I have sometimes thought that if I ever hear it, one of the great surprises of the dawn will be the kind of thing for which it is given. Perhaps all these sermons at which I have daily toiled will never be mentioned in that summer morning And certain ministries of which I knew not anything as I went in and out among you in the shadows here, will waken the trumpets on the other side. Men who do their best always do more though they be haunted by the sense of failure. Be good and true; be patient; be undaunted. Leave your usefulness for God to estimate. He will see to it that you do not live in vain.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Elective Affinity
And being let go, they went to their own company— Act_4:23
After a Miracle, a Sermon, an Arrest and Release from Prison
The healing of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful of the Temple had stirred an intense excitement in Jerusalem. Like the church bell which summons people to church, it had attracted a crowd to the disciples. And Peter, who never saw a crowd but he longed for the opportunity to preach to it, began to preach— there were about five thousand gathered— and many of his hearers were converted. The priests and the captain of the Temple and the Sadducees were very indignant at this powerful doctrine. They put an arrest on Peter and John and committed them to prison for the night, and the next day they had them out and examined them on their authority for this miracle. We know how bravely and nobly Peter answered: what a change from that night of denial before Calvary! We know into what a sorry pass the council came: they threatened Peter and John, and let them go. So by the narrative of facts we reach our text, "And being let go, they went to their own company."
When We Are Released from Our Particular "Prisons"
I wish, then, to spiritualize our text, for it seems to me to be full of rich suggestion. It hints at facts which lie very near to us, and which are worthy of our observation. None of us are prisoners in a literal sense. We are not immured in the dark or damp of dungeons. The age of persecution in its barbaric forms has fled from our land of liberty forever. But for all that there are shackles which still bind us, and we are under many constraints from day to day, and it is true of us as of Peter and John that being let go, we go to our own company. Like the carrier pigeon which, freed from it cage, wheels for its bearings and then starts for home; like the mountain stream which the little child may dam but which when released goes hurrying to the sea— so all of us are subject to constraint, but being let go, we go to our own company. That is the thought on which I wish to dwell.
When Freed from Home
First, then, I think of the constraint of home. It is the earliest pressure which we know. In the years when we are climbing towards maturity, we are in the sweetest of all earth's imprisonments. We are engirded by love then and by a father's ordering. We have to yield our wills up to another's will. It is not the child who chooses or decides; it is the father and the mother who do that. But the day comes when a young man leaves home. Like Peter and John in our story, he is let go. He has to face the world now on his own resources, and the day of authority and of command is over. It is in such a time, when the restraints are gone which were the safety and the strength of home, that a man steadily goes to his own company. What were the thoughts that were smoldering and burning under the gentle but firm constraint of home? What kind of life was being lived in secret under the quiet routine and through the family worship? What sort of ideal was glimmering and forming of which the mother knew absolutely nothing? It is not their liberty that wrecks men— what we call wreck is often revelation— it is the kind of life which they have led in secret before the hour of liberty arrives. The bonds of authority are broken now. There is no will to consult but a man's own. So being let go, with many a "God bless you," and hidden tears and prayers to a father's God, for all that is noblest or for all that is poorest, men go to their own company.
The Prodigal
You know the parable of the prodigal son by heart. Did you ever think of the story in this light? I am sure you would never have guessed how vile that youth was if you had seen him living with his father. But no man becomes a prodigal in one swift hour. If he went to the harlots he had been dreaming of them. There was not a hillside and there was not a field at home but could have told stories of his unclean heart. Then came the tales of his wild life abroad, and his brother said, "I could not have believed it." But in the sight of God the riot was revelation; being let go, he went to his own company.
Example: Jesus As a Boy
And you have often read of Jesus in the Temple. Did you ever think of that story in this light? Has it not been preserved for us out of these voiceless years because of its exquisite glimpse into that boyish heart? I doubt not that, as the companies turned homeward, other sons besides Jesus were missing from the crowd, and other mothers besides Mary of Nazareth went back to Jerusalem to look for them. And one would find her son among the soldiers, and another would find her son in the bazaars; Mary alone found her son in the Temple. As naturally as the sunflower to the sun, the heart of Jesus turned to that holy place. There was nothing on earth of such concern to Him as to ask and hear about eternal things. His mother thought that her dear son was lost, and she knew not where amid the crowds to find Him; but being let go, He had gone to His own company.
When Freed from Work
Again, I think of the constraint of work. There was a little book published some time ago with the attractive title Blessed be Drudgery, and I think that most of us, as the years pass, learn gladly to subscribe to that beatitude. What moods and whimsies does our work save us from! How it steadies us and how it guards us! If it were not for that bondage of our toil, how intolerable some of us should be to live with! I have known busy men who through the week would have scorned the very suggestion that they ailed, yet somehow they often ailed on Sundays. Of course there come seasons when such bondage irritates. We have all known how difficult it is in the summertime. When the cloudless mornings come and the shimmer of heat, and we hear the calling of field and lake and river, it is not easy then with quiet heart to get to the study and the office desk. But for all that, work is a wise constraint and a happy circumscription of God's finger, a narrowing of our way with such a hedge as will blossom into beauty by and by.
Where You Go after Work Shows Your Makeup
But being let go, we go to our own company. Every evening in a great city explains that. Men are imprisoned all day in the routine, but when the evening comes, they gravitate to their own. Here are three young fellows who work at the same desk. They are fellow clerks in the same city office. You will find all of them at the desk during the day; but the question is, where will you find them at night? You will find one of them in the dancehall, that most uninspiring of all haunts. You will find one at home with his few prized books around him, superbly happy in his Shakespeare or his Stevenson. You will find one down in the mission-hall, enthusiastic over his Boys' Brigade. What is your company? Where do you gravitate? When you can follow your own sweet will, where will it lead? Say to yourself when work is done tomorrow, "Being let go, I go to my own company"— and then thank God for it, or be ashamed.
When Freed from Self lnterests
Once more, and touching on more delicate matters, I think of the constraint of our self-interest. I speak of the bondage which everybody knows and which arises from our social system. No man is free, in an intricate society, to say and do exactly what he pleases. The most uncharitable people I ever met were the people who took pride in being candid. I grant you that in the heroic nature the thought of self-interest has hardly any place. But I am not talking about heroes now; I am talking of the average man in the average Christian city. And what I say is that he is so interlocked in this great mechanism which we call society that something of the rough and vigorous and outspoken liberty which characterized our forefathers is gone. It is expensive for the average citizen to speak out his whole mind. There are accommodations and compliance's and silences that are well understood on every exchange and market. And one of the hardest tasks for any man is to keep a clean conscience and an unsullied heart while bowing to those restraints of self which society or wise self-interest demands.
But that bondage is not a perpetual bondage. All are released from it in various ways. If action be fettered, thought at least is free, nor is there any veil by the fireside at home. Or it may be that when a man has made his fortune he feels that at last he can dare to be himself, for he no longer depends for his advancement on the kindly offices of any brother. The question is what are you then? What judgements do you pass by the fireside? Are you less courteous and kindly now that you are made, than in the years when your career was making? Being let go from social entanglement and from the grim and ceaseless pressure of self-interest, steadily and silently and surely men go like the apostles to their own.
When Freed from Evil Habit and Sin
Again I think of the constraint of evil habit. One of the most arresting of Christ's miracles is the curing of the Gadarene demoniac. In his isolation and in his lonely misery the man is a type of sin's separating power. He had been very happy once in Gadara; his wife had loved him, and so had his little children. He was well thought of in his little village, and the evenings were pleasant there when work was done. Then fell on him the curse that ruined him, wrecking his intellect and all his happiness and driving him apart from those he loved until that hour when he was faced by Christ. In that great hour it was farewell to bondage. His fetters were broken and he was a man again. Fain would he have followed his deliverer and shared the fortunes of his Galilean healer. But Jesus said to him, "Go home again. Thy wife has been praying for thee and thy children love thee." So being let go from the tyranny of sin, the poor demoniac went to his own company.
And that is always one of the plagues of sin. It separates a man from his own company. We may be under the same roof as our own company, and yet be a thousand miles away from them. There is a burst of temper, and then misunderstanding, and then the pride which will never ask forgiveness— and hearts that were fashioned in eternity for one another go drifting apart like ships upon the sea. Sin separates the father from the son. Sin separates the mother from her child. From all that is ours by birthright of humanity we are barred out by the tyranny of evil. And then comes Christ and gives us spiritual freedom, rescuing us from the bondage of the years, and being let go we go to our own company. For the best is our true company and not the worst. We were made for goodness; we were not made for evil. It is love and tenderness and purity and light which are the true society of a God-created spirit. So when a man is released from sin's imprisonment by the word and present power of his Redeemer, being let go, he hastens to his own.
When Freed from the Constraint of Life
Then lastly, I think of the constraint of life, for there is a deep sense in which this life is bondage. We are the children of immortality and not of time, and here we are cribbed and cabined and confined. Nothing is perfect here, and nothing rounded. We are not built to the scale of three score years. There is no such thing as ultimate success here; the only success is not to give over striving So are we fettered and hampered and imprisoned, and the bird is beating its wings against the bars; but when death comes, the spirit is set free, and being let go, it travels to its own. Did you ever think of eternity like that? It is an arresting and an awful thought. It is far wiser to think of it like that than to go about saying you do not believe in hell. I never read that even Judas went there. I read that Judas went to his own place. Being let go by his own act of suicide, he went to his own company— the rest is silence. God grant us all such love for what is good, such kinship of heart with the brave and the pure and the lowly, such secret comradeship with all who are wrestling heavenward in the living fellowship of Jesus Christ, that when death comes and the prison doors are opened and we go to our own company at last, we may go to be forever with the Lord.
After a Miracle, a Sermon, an Arrest and Release from Prison
The healing of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful of the Temple had stirred an intense excitement in Jerusalem. Like the church bell which summons people to church, it had attracted a crowd to the disciples. And Peter, who never saw a crowd but he longed for the opportunity to preach to it, began to preach— there were about five thousand gathered— and many of his hearers were converted. The priests and the captain of the Temple and the Sadducees were very indignant at this powerful doctrine. They put an arrest on Peter and John and committed them to prison for the night, and the next day they had them out and examined them on their authority for this miracle. We know how bravely and nobly Peter answered: what a change from that night of denial before Calvary! We know into what a sorry pass the council came: they threatened Peter and John, and let them go. So by the narrative of facts we reach our text, "And being let go, they went to their own company."
When We Are Released from Our Particular "Prisons"
I wish, then, to spiritualize our text, for it seems to me to be full of rich suggestion. It hints at facts which lie very near to us, and which are worthy of our observation. None of us are prisoners in a literal sense. We are not immured in the dark or damp of dungeons. The age of persecution in its barbaric forms has fled from our land of liberty forever. But for all that there are shackles which still bind us, and we are under many constraints from day to day, and it is true of us as of Peter and John that being let go, we go to our own company. Like the carrier pigeon which, freed from it cage, wheels for its bearings and then starts for home; like the mountain stream which the little child may dam but which when released goes hurrying to the sea— so all of us are subject to constraint, but being let go, we go to our own company. That is the thought on which I wish to dwell.
When Freed from Home
First, then, I think of the constraint of home. It is the earliest pressure which we know. In the years when we are climbing towards maturity, we are in the sweetest of all earth's imprisonments. We are engirded by love then and by a father's ordering. We have to yield our wills up to another's will. It is not the child who chooses or decides; it is the father and the mother who do that. But the day comes when a young man leaves home. Like Peter and John in our story, he is let go. He has to face the world now on his own resources, and the day of authority and of command is over. It is in such a time, when the restraints are gone which were the safety and the strength of home, that a man steadily goes to his own company. What were the thoughts that were smoldering and burning under the gentle but firm constraint of home? What kind of life was being lived in secret under the quiet routine and through the family worship? What sort of ideal was glimmering and forming of which the mother knew absolutely nothing? It is not their liberty that wrecks men— what we call wreck is often revelation— it is the kind of life which they have led in secret before the hour of liberty arrives. The bonds of authority are broken now. There is no will to consult but a man's own. So being let go, with many a "God bless you," and hidden tears and prayers to a father's God, for all that is noblest or for all that is poorest, men go to their own company.
The Prodigal
You know the parable of the prodigal son by heart. Did you ever think of the story in this light? I am sure you would never have guessed how vile that youth was if you had seen him living with his father. But no man becomes a prodigal in one swift hour. If he went to the harlots he had been dreaming of them. There was not a hillside and there was not a field at home but could have told stories of his unclean heart. Then came the tales of his wild life abroad, and his brother said, "I could not have believed it." But in the sight of God the riot was revelation; being let go, he went to his own company.
Example: Jesus As a Boy
And you have often read of Jesus in the Temple. Did you ever think of that story in this light? Has it not been preserved for us out of these voiceless years because of its exquisite glimpse into that boyish heart? I doubt not that, as the companies turned homeward, other sons besides Jesus were missing from the crowd, and other mothers besides Mary of Nazareth went back to Jerusalem to look for them. And one would find her son among the soldiers, and another would find her son in the bazaars; Mary alone found her son in the Temple. As naturally as the sunflower to the sun, the heart of Jesus turned to that holy place. There was nothing on earth of such concern to Him as to ask and hear about eternal things. His mother thought that her dear son was lost, and she knew not where amid the crowds to find Him; but being let go, He had gone to His own company.
When Freed from Work
Again, I think of the constraint of work. There was a little book published some time ago with the attractive title Blessed be Drudgery, and I think that most of us, as the years pass, learn gladly to subscribe to that beatitude. What moods and whimsies does our work save us from! How it steadies us and how it guards us! If it were not for that bondage of our toil, how intolerable some of us should be to live with! I have known busy men who through the week would have scorned the very suggestion that they ailed, yet somehow they often ailed on Sundays. Of course there come seasons when such bondage irritates. We have all known how difficult it is in the summertime. When the cloudless mornings come and the shimmer of heat, and we hear the calling of field and lake and river, it is not easy then with quiet heart to get to the study and the office desk. But for all that, work is a wise constraint and a happy circumscription of God's finger, a narrowing of our way with such a hedge as will blossom into beauty by and by.
Where You Go after Work Shows Your Makeup
But being let go, we go to our own company. Every evening in a great city explains that. Men are imprisoned all day in the routine, but when the evening comes, they gravitate to their own. Here are three young fellows who work at the same desk. They are fellow clerks in the same city office. You will find all of them at the desk during the day; but the question is, where will you find them at night? You will find one of them in the dancehall, that most uninspiring of all haunts. You will find one at home with his few prized books around him, superbly happy in his Shakespeare or his Stevenson. You will find one down in the mission-hall, enthusiastic over his Boys' Brigade. What is your company? Where do you gravitate? When you can follow your own sweet will, where will it lead? Say to yourself when work is done tomorrow, "Being let go, I go to my own company"— and then thank God for it, or be ashamed.
When Freed from Self lnterests
Once more, and touching on more delicate matters, I think of the constraint of our self-interest. I speak of the bondage which everybody knows and which arises from our social system. No man is free, in an intricate society, to say and do exactly what he pleases. The most uncharitable people I ever met were the people who took pride in being candid. I grant you that in the heroic nature the thought of self-interest has hardly any place. But I am not talking about heroes now; I am talking of the average man in the average Christian city. And what I say is that he is so interlocked in this great mechanism which we call society that something of the rough and vigorous and outspoken liberty which characterized our forefathers is gone. It is expensive for the average citizen to speak out his whole mind. There are accommodations and compliance's and silences that are well understood on every exchange and market. And one of the hardest tasks for any man is to keep a clean conscience and an unsullied heart while bowing to those restraints of self which society or wise self-interest demands.
But that bondage is not a perpetual bondage. All are released from it in various ways. If action be fettered, thought at least is free, nor is there any veil by the fireside at home. Or it may be that when a man has made his fortune he feels that at last he can dare to be himself, for he no longer depends for his advancement on the kindly offices of any brother. The question is what are you then? What judgements do you pass by the fireside? Are you less courteous and kindly now that you are made, than in the years when your career was making? Being let go from social entanglement and from the grim and ceaseless pressure of self-interest, steadily and silently and surely men go like the apostles to their own.
When Freed from Evil Habit and Sin
Again I think of the constraint of evil habit. One of the most arresting of Christ's miracles is the curing of the Gadarene demoniac. In his isolation and in his lonely misery the man is a type of sin's separating power. He had been very happy once in Gadara; his wife had loved him, and so had his little children. He was well thought of in his little village, and the evenings were pleasant there when work was done. Then fell on him the curse that ruined him, wrecking his intellect and all his happiness and driving him apart from those he loved until that hour when he was faced by Christ. In that great hour it was farewell to bondage. His fetters were broken and he was a man again. Fain would he have followed his deliverer and shared the fortunes of his Galilean healer. But Jesus said to him, "Go home again. Thy wife has been praying for thee and thy children love thee." So being let go from the tyranny of sin, the poor demoniac went to his own company.
And that is always one of the plagues of sin. It separates a man from his own company. We may be under the same roof as our own company, and yet be a thousand miles away from them. There is a burst of temper, and then misunderstanding, and then the pride which will never ask forgiveness— and hearts that were fashioned in eternity for one another go drifting apart like ships upon the sea. Sin separates the father from the son. Sin separates the mother from her child. From all that is ours by birthright of humanity we are barred out by the tyranny of evil. And then comes Christ and gives us spiritual freedom, rescuing us from the bondage of the years, and being let go we go to our own company. For the best is our true company and not the worst. We were made for goodness; we were not made for evil. It is love and tenderness and purity and light which are the true society of a God-created spirit. So when a man is released from sin's imprisonment by the word and present power of his Redeemer, being let go, he hastens to his own.
When Freed from the Constraint of Life
Then lastly, I think of the constraint of life, for there is a deep sense in which this life is bondage. We are the children of immortality and not of time, and here we are cribbed and cabined and confined. Nothing is perfect here, and nothing rounded. We are not built to the scale of three score years. There is no such thing as ultimate success here; the only success is not to give over striving So are we fettered and hampered and imprisoned, and the bird is beating its wings against the bars; but when death comes, the spirit is set free, and being let go, it travels to its own. Did you ever think of eternity like that? It is an arresting and an awful thought. It is far wiser to think of it like that than to go about saying you do not believe in hell. I never read that even Judas went there. I read that Judas went to his own place. Being let go by his own act of suicide, he went to his own company— the rest is silence. God grant us all such love for what is good, such kinship of heart with the brave and the pure and the lowly, such secret comradeship with all who are wrestling heavenward in the living fellowship of Jesus Christ, that when death comes and the prison doors are opened and we go to our own company at last, we may go to be forever with the Lord.
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