Matthew 9:36-38

Chapter 41

Prayer

Almighty God, now that thou hast brought us to this our closing day, so that we shall be separated the one from the other for a while, we desire to look back with gratitude, and to bless thee with fervent hearts for all thy lovingkindness and thy tender mercy. To-day we set up our stone of memorial, and we write upon it "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." When the wind was cold and high, thou didst draw us very closely to thyself and screen us from the bitter blast; when the hill was high and rugged, thou didst either break it down into dust and throw it upon the wind, or thou didst lead us up with ever increasing strength until its very ascent became a new inspiration. Through much land of beauty hast thou led us, through the cornfields on the Sabbath day, and we have plentifully plucked the ripe ears and have rubbed out the corn in our hands, and have eaten it and called it the bread of heaven; yea, again and again hast thou called us to the wedding festival, and thyself hast broken the bread for us and poured out the wine that refreshed our hearts. Wondrous even to the point of miracle, an infinite surprise, has been thy patience, thy care, thy resource; as for thy grace, no hymn of ours is sweet enough to touch the ineffable theme. We unite now, as teacher, as taught, as pastor and people, and in all the various relations we sustain to one another, in blessing thee for the year which closes this day, and in commending one another to thy tender care during the separation immediately to ensue. Let this be the brightest of ail the Sabbaths, let the benediction of this day sink deeply into every heart. As for the shadows, may they be driven away with a great light, and our whole temple-life be filled with thy presence and be resonant with thy praises.

Wherein we have been unkind or thoughtless towards one another, the Lord have pity upon us and altogether forgive every soul. Wherein we have thought one wrong thought or uttered one word lacking in nobleness and in the fire of a true charity, the Lord pity our infirmity and forgive our sin. Wherein we have studied thy word with clearness and insight and with all the power and appropriation of high and illuminating sympathy, the Lord give us a keen memory of everything we have studied, and enable us to treasure the same in thoughtful hearts, and to repronounce it in noble and useful lives.

We commend one another day by day to thy care and blessing. Save us every one, may no wanderer be lost, may no hard heart maintain its obduracy until the very last, may the hammer of the Lord smite it with effect, may the most stubborn of souls offer the hospitality of its love to the redeeming Christ. For Christ we bless thee: he is our Lamb, our Sacrifice, our Priest, our All in All, beginning before the beginning, stretching his duration throughout all eternity, the very origin and source and purpose of the everlasting. O bind us to Christ, cleanse us with his blood, fill us with his spirit, and make us all ministers of his, seen and felt afar like flames of fire.

Let this house be dear unto thee; thou wilt not neglect this as one of thy dwelling-places; here we have set up thine altar, and laid thy Book open wide before our eyes; here we have endeavoured to magnify thee in hymn, and psalm, and anthem, and in the word of exposition and doctrine of truth. O dwell here keep thou the house, be thou the preacher, be thou thyself the Paraclete, and enable thy people who shall come hither from time to time to see more and more clearly this is none other than the house of God. As for our dwelling-places, we give them all to thee; thou only art King of men and Saviour of souls; make our habitations homes indeed, light thou the fire in the winter time and give thou the message to the flowers that grow richly around in the time of summer.

Bless the old man in his weakness, the little child in its opening dream, the busy man amid all his honourable industry, the patient woman and mother in all her domestic ministry; heal the sick, lead the blind by a way that they know not, bid the husbandman be of good heart when he cometh forth to cut the field and throw into its open heart the seed which shall bring forth the staff of life.

The Lord hear all our prayers: the Lord winnow them himself that the chaff may not be answered, but the wheat only; thus have us in thy holy keeping day by day till the little life wears itself quite out and becomes part of thine own eternity. The Lord comfort his people, the Lord's hand dry every tear from the eyes of sorrow, and the Lord's almightiness be placed at the disposal of those who have lost their strength and are feeling the pain of feebleness. Amen.

Mat 9:36-38

Christ's View of the World

When we read that he was moved with compassion, we feel that it did not require much to move the pity of such a heart. It was not moved now for the first time. Again and again as we come along the line of the sacred narrative we have seen his tears, we have heard the piteousness of many of his tones, and have been, touched by the pathos of many of his deeds. The key-word of this divine life is Compassion. If you do not seize that word in its true meaning, the life of Jesus Christ will be to you little more than either a romantic surprise or a dead letter. It is not a life of genius, it is not a display of literary power, it is pre-eminently yet inclusively, a life of love, a history of compassion, an exemplification of the tenderest aspects of the infinite mercy of God. Begin at that point and read the history in that light, and you will see the right proportion of things and their right colour, and you will hear their sweetest and richest music. Again and again, therefore, would I repeat, the master-word of this divine life is the sweet and all-inclusive word Compassion.

Observe what the word means. It means "feeling with " "feeling for, " sympathy, a right view of human want and human distress, and a taking upon oneself all the pain, the feebleness, the poverty, and the anguish of those who suffer most. He bare our sins, he carried our iniquities, and himself took our infirmities and sustained our afflictions. You have been reading the life of Christ as if he were one of twenty men, leaders of human thought; we have lectured upon him as if he belonged to a gallery of heroes. Therein have we done him injustice, and therein, too, have we done ourselves injustice, for we have not viewed the great occasion from the right standpoint; therefore have we missed its majesty, its perspective, its subtlest relations, and its deepest significances. He is not one of many, he is many in one. Therein is that singular utterance most true he is All in All multitudinous Man, as great a host as the throng on which he looked; they were detailed humanity, he was our totalised nature. He felt every pang, he responded to every emotion. He is not a priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, he knows us through and through, and he is every one of us, because he is the Son of Man.

"When he saw the multitudes." Let us lay the emphasis upon the last word for a moment, for it will enable us to seize a new meaning and occupy a novel standpoint. When he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion; when we see the multitudes we are moved with wonder or with admiration. See if that be not so in matter as well as in humanity. When I see multitudinous matter, a mountain, I am moved with surprise, my wonder arises; I call attention to the infinite mass, and we stand before it with wide-open eyes, and the whole posture is one of amazement. We are wonderstruck that the rubbish should be so infinite, for it is only rubbish the greatest mountain in Europe; no man of you would care for any spadeful of it, no man would be touched by any ten feet of it, no man would go fifty yards to see twenty feet of it; it is when it multiplies itself, foot on foot, pile on pile, mile on mile, until it cools itself in snow, high up in the rarefied air then we run excursion trains to look at it, then we build villas near it and gaze on it with admiration, then we write about it in the public journals; it acquires fame by its vastness, not by intrinsic and detailed value, but by hugeness, by what we should term, in relation to human throngs, multitudinousness.

Now when Jesus saw the multitudes he was not moved with wonder, which is a partial emotion, or with admiration, which is an incomplete and babyish feeling. He was moved with compassion, and therein He differed from every other observer of great things. We know what it is to look at great things ourselves. If you see one soldier, you care but little for the sight; you may point out the intensity of the colour which he displays, or the splendour of his metal, but one passing remark will suffice for that occasion. You see an army, and you are filled with wonder, admiration, delight; it brings to you a sense of power, grandeur, and grandeur never touches compassion, it seems rather to rebuke it. If I see a mighty throng of men, the very last feeling that would come into my heart as an observer would be a feeling of compassion. Multitudinousness means power, multitudinousness means greatness, resource, all kinds of energy, amplitude of strength. Who dare pity a multitude? It could overpower you, run you down, trample you to death why pity it? Pity yourself, little creature, run away from the ever-multiplying throng that marches with the strength of an army and with the pomp of a nation.

Yet here is a man who looks upon a multitude and his heart is filled with pity. He did not say, "How great, what force, what wondrous resources of genius, and strength, and money, and power of every degree!" His heart filled with tears; he said, "It is a sad sight." If he could have taken any other view of the multitude he never would have been the Saviour of the world. There you see the meaning of his life: it touches you now. This must end in fainting or in sacrifice, must terminate in shrinking from the infinite task, or in heroic conquest in the infinite tragedy.

Those tears have great meaning, those larger emotions than any we have yet seen have a remote and infinite significance. If he had been touched with wonder only he would have failed, if he had been moved with admiration he would have lost his power; but, moved with compassion, he includes every other worthy emotion, and sets himself in a right relation to his task. Nothing but compassion will carry you through any tragedy in life; you cannot go through it merely for its own sake. The hireling will fall asleep over the sick child, but the mother will drive sleep away from her dwelling-place till she has rescued her little one from the power of the enemy, if it be within the scope of her endurance and skill to win so great a triumph. Her compassion keeps her awake, her love makes the night as the day, her pity stops the clock, so that she takes no note of time. Every other emotion grows dumb; wonder must sometimes close its eyes, admiration falls upon itself, sates its appetite and dies of the satiety, but compassion grows by what it feeds on, and is of the very nature of the love of God. He grows in the development of his compassion; he will succeed yet. Beaten back at a hundred points, he will yet win. He shall see of the travail of his soul, which is really but another word for compassion, and shall be satisfied.

It does us good to come into contact with a teacher who sees the whole of his case. We are cursed by partial views. We elect twelve men to judge a case that we may bring twelve different minds to bear upon it and a twelvefold power to grasp it fully. We have to multiply ourselves when we would be great; Jesus Christ always saw the end from the beginning, the entire situation, took the comprehensive view, excluded no aspect of the case with which he had to heal. As judges, we are ruined by our partial cleverness; if we could see more we should feel more and do more.

Take a view of a Christian congregation. What lovelier sight can the earth present? Many men, women, children, gathered together in one house sanctified to the highest uses, sweet hymn, noble psalm, penetrating, triumphant anthem, rich and pathetic prayer, reading of the divine word, exposition of the holy mysteries, exhortation, explanation poured from a loving heart and from an eloquent tongue, the spirit of peace in the house what nobler sight is there upon the earth? I look upon it, and say, "All is well; the old earth is renewing its youth, and all is bright in prospect." Am I right? I am as far wrong as I can well be within such limits; I am deceived by appearances. I may be right as to the mere literal facts of the occasion, within the four walls of any Christian building; I have only to look outside the window, and I see that in this great metropolis today the majority of men are not in the house of God, nor do they care for its worship and service. You have only to go off the broad thoroughfare, and look down certain passages and openings on the side ways, to see festering humanity, children that were never taught to clasp their little hands in prayer, houses in which there is no word of God, men imbruted, women stripped of their divinity, and the whole human name befouled, cursed, degraded into what is practically perdition. Jesus Christ would not take the view presented by any Christian congregation only, he would see the congregation within and the multitude without; he would take in the whole situation, and seeing it, his tears would drop from our hymns, and great heart-breaking agony would mingle with our broadest and most hopeful prayers.

There are men who take partial views and come to partial and, therefore, erroneous conclusions about everything. There are those who seat themselves within some vernal enclosure or summer paradise, and say, with a foolish chuckle, that the earth is not so bad a place after all. They see a bed of blooming flowers, fiery-hued or gentle-tinted, and they hear birds in the branches twittering, trilling, singing, and making melody in their hearts, and they say the earth is a very lovely place, notwithstanding all the croakers say to the contrary. Now observe how they confound the partial term with the larger word. They see a garden and then speak of the earth, they see a bed of geraniums and then speak of the globe; there is no balance in their sentences, their words do not correspond with one another at both ends of their declarations. The garden is beautiful, the flowers are lovely beyond all that it is possible for the colouring of human heart fully to represent. The painter paints the form, but he cannot touch the fragrance. We admire their poetical sympathy within given limits, but go beyond the garden wall, go into the rough streets, go into the desolate places, take in the wilderness, throw the line around the entirety, bring the whole elements within your purview, and then say what it is. The angel sees it, and says, "Mourning and lamentation and woe." Jesus sees it and cannot cease his prayer, Jesus looks upon it and is moved with compassion. Do not shut yourselves within your churches and say, "All is well;" do not shut the garden door and rejoice upon the verdant lawn and under the drooping tree, and say, "This is paradise regained." See every point of beauty, be thankful for every mercy given to you of the divine providence, but always endeavour to take in not a roof but a sky, not a circumference drawn by human compasses, but a horizon that required the sweep of the divine arm to form it, and when you see the entire scene you will be moved with compassion.

"But when he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion because they fainted" literally because they were vexed, and disturbed, and fretted, and chafed as sheep when the wolf comes into the fold. They hear his panting, they see his eye of fire and his pitiless teeth, and they hear him as he prowls and snuffs and throbs in his cruel desire and design. Jesus not only saw the sheep, he saw the wolf; he not only sees humanity, he sees the devil and his angels, he sees how we are vexed, fretted, torn, disturbed, frightened by ten thousand black spirits that darken the day, and through whose black wings the hot sun can scarcely dart one living beam. He sees men, devils, angels, earth, heaven, and whilst the whole thing sums itself up before his comprehensive and penetrating vision his eyes darken with tears.

He noted that the people were as sheep having no shepherd. This figure of shepherdliness is most beautiful. He himself had the shepherdly heart. He is called the Good Shepherd: he knows his sheep, and many sheep he has that are not of this fold. He lays down his life for the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling and careth not for the sheep. All these figures by which Jesus represents himself are figures of tenderness, sympathy, sometimes of weakness, by way of accommodation, to our human infirmities. He could blow the trumpet of thunder, and stand upon the platform of the wind and roar with the tempest blowing from every point of the compass in one fierce blast; but he sees that would overpower and affright them, so he speaks in a still small voice, thunder reduced to a whisper, and therefore not an utterance of feebleness, but a sigh of suppressed and condensed power. He is the gentle Shepherd, the good Shepherd. He made himself of no reputation, he took up our forms of endearment and service and our whole nomenclature of fellowship, sympathy, and love, and he made his tabernacle in our little words, giving them infinite enlargement according to his own purpose and motive. Observe how he comes from the multitude to the shepherd, from the many to the one. It is possible to have one man who can rule and guide and bless a countless host. I am longing for that one Man; I would speak with him a long while. He would be my preacher, my teacher; he would understand me wholly, and would speak to me in great breadths of knowledge and sympathy, and if I had any bitter shameful tale to tell, I could tell him every word of it, and he would answer me in gospels and not in condemnation. Any wolf can bite, any bigot can judge and condemn, any little detestable Pharisee can sit upon the judgment-seat and pronounce upon men whose shoe-latchet he is not worthy to unloose. It takes the great Christ and the Christly heart to judge with large judgment. Show me a man that can take in the large view, who knows all the languages of the heart, all the emotions of the wondrous human spirit, and he shall teach me and shepherd me, and I will fall asleep upon his breast; I will ask no better environment on earth than his strong and tender arm. Save me from the bigot, the literalist, the sectarian, the mean soul, and if ye know where the shepherd is show me his dwelling-place, and he will make my heart bright and young with a new hope.

"Then saith he to his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, the labourers are few." The figure changes. He has been speaking about a shepherd, and now he speaks about labourers. He has been speaking about a fold of sheep, and now he speaks about a harvest-field, and he speaks about both in the same breath. We are punctilious about the consistency of our figures; we dare not risk our reputation by the use of a mixed metaphor; no man dare utter these words as if they were his own. He would be heard of again, he would be laughed at by the last boy that left the school, he would be left by men who may have their weaknesses if you could only find them, but who could never by any possibility perpetrate the unutterable crime of uttering a mixed metaphor.

Both the figures are right: never mind about their juxtaposition. The world is a great sheepfold and a great harvest-field: it is both; it wants shepherds, wants labourers, wants compassion, wants attention. This is the great view of the great Christ; he saw the whole occasion, and saw the figures that were appropriate to it. So we can come into the text when we please. If Jesus Christ had compassion on us, ought we not to have compassion on ourselves? Is it a time for us to be flattering our heart and saying "It is all right" when Jesus Christ is crying great, bitter, hot tears? If he is uneasy for us, even to the point of agony, is it a time for us to be lying on a soft couch and to be saying "All is well"? I would rather take this view of my life than I would take my own.

And then, again, some of us are fit for bringing into the garner. I have come to seek you today as one of the labourers of God. You must not stand out there too long. Already you are golden, mellow, ripened corn, and we now want to take you into the garner will you come? This is a harvest that cannot be cut down against its own will, and garnered against its own consent. It is a great mystery, and the mystery is larger than the figure, the figure only helping us to a very partial treatment of the mystery. You are fifty years of age, and you have been out long enough; you are seventy years of age, and we want to bring you into the garner this very morning. You have ripened and ripened; there is a point after which you will rot and rot. With all the love of my heart no love at all compared with the love of Christ I would ask those of you who are yet outside the fold to hear the shepherd's voice bidding you come in, and ask those of you who are as mellow corn bowing your heads under the blessing of the summer breeze, or the autumnal wind, to allow yourselves to be garnered in the church and heart of God.