I

MESSENGERS[18]

The Eyes of Flame[19] are resting upon us; we do not want to get away for a moment from that thought as our central message. But get away from the idea that "the Bishop is asking us to come for a Quiet Day." As I believe events have proved, it is Jesus Christ Himself going round the diocese in the power of the Spirit. Wonderful things have happened on these Quiet Days. Men have been so struck to the heart that they have resigned their livings; they have seen what they ought to have been, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, before the Eyes of Flame, have contrasted that with what they are. If it is Jesus Christ coming round, then we cannot be too quiet on such a Day in listening to His voice all the time. It is therefore with the Eyes of Flame resting upon us and with the prayer "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth," "I will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning me," that we will think over three things that we are expected to be. And the first is a Messenger. You will remember that, when we first stood before the Bishop for ordination, we were told of a great treasure that was committed to our care. We have spent much time thinking over that treasure.[20] We were reminded that we were to be messengers, watchmen, stewards. Now we will simply take the title "messengers."

Let us picture the messenger; let us forget the tame surroundings and monotonous features of the life we lead, and picture ourselves as real living messengers. We might take one of our despatch-riders. Few things are more really splendid than the way the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge are doing most of the despatch-riding at the front—our own boys, we may say, have been carrying the despatches during this campaign. It is very dangerous work. One of the boys whom I have known all his life is now a despatch-rider in the war, having to take these messages at any cost. Everything depends upon the despatch getting there. The whole brigade will be cut to pieces if the despatch is not sent there. They only send despatches for the most urgent reasons. There the despatch-riders are in the darkness, threading their way through all the great holes made by the shells, pushing on to take the despatches. They are messengers with a vengeance, taking their lives in their hands, realising the vital importance of getting their message through.

Now, I am going to take a particular messenger because his character and life are very carefully described to us in detail by one of our great poets. I think it will come home to us more if I can describe the picture of the messenger of Athens given us by Browning in that wonderful poem "Pheidippides." It may be more familiar to some than it is to others. I will just sketch Browning's picture. Pheidippides tells how he started on a mission of absolutely vital importance, and the whole problem was to get to Sparta in time to get help. He dashes off, and stands before the Spartan Senate.

"Persia has come!
Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and earth;
Razed to the ground is Eretria; but Athens, shall Athens sink,
Drop into dust and die—the flower of Hellas utterly die,
Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the stander-by?"

It is a matter of absolute life and death, and that is the first thing about the messenger I want you to notice. Either he got there or he did not; either he persuaded them or he did not. He gave his message, though he did not succeed in persuading Sparta to undertake the needed help. The fate of his country depended entirely upon his effort. There is something glorious in his absolute devotion to his country. Then, when he had given his message, he waited for the answer, and he is described as quivering with eagerness:

"The limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an inch from dry wood."

That expresses the keenness with which he waited for the answer. And the answer, which, as you remember, was an evasive one, counselling delay, is thus characterised by Pheidippides:

"Athens, except for that sparkle—thy name, I had mouldered to ash."

Then, having done everything he could, he dashed back to tell them at Athens that Sparta was not coming. We see the utter abandonment of the messenger:

"Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false and the vile!
Yet 'O Gods of my land!' I cried, as each hillock and plain,
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them again."

Then comes the moment of his life. In the midst of the hurry and race he suddenly comes face to face with his god—the great god Pan. In all his hurry and haste and keenness he hushes himself in a moment, to listen to what the god has to say. Very touchingly described that is. Then, when he has received the message for himself, for his nation, once again he is off.

"I ran no longer, but flew."

And he stands before his people, and he gives them the full message which the god had given him, with all its warning and all its comfort and hope and good news. When that is done he fights on the Marathon day. And then, when the victory is won, he thinks of what the god has promised him, and he thinks to

"Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave,"

and live with her for the rest of his life.

"Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried: 'To Acropolis!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more!'"

Take the news to Athens! He takes it, and his great heart bursts with the joy of the news.

"Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed."

He sealed his message with his death.

Now, there is the messenger, and we have to think over the different points about that messenger, to compare our motives to-day with what they are expected to be. (1) Take first of all his realisation that his message was a matter of life or death. I wonder whether some of us are slipping away from that—slipping away from the awe of that first sermon, slipping into little moral essays or interminably long discourses? Are we still men with a message?

One of the tremendous revelations in London, after twenty-six years of life and work there, is the death-struggle that is going on in every human soul. And even now, as Bishop, I find that every available five minutes is taken up by the needs and struggles of some individual soul in the diocese of London. In your parishes it must be just the same. Upon that message you are going to give on Sunday morning or evening depends perhaps the salvation, or perhaps the condemnation, of some soul.

And if we once get into the way of preaching simply interesting lectures—interesting to ourselves—which we have thought out in our studies during the week, we have lost the sense of having a message. One of the most distinguished men then in the Church said to a young preacher sadly: "You seem to preach as if you have something to say, and I only preach because I must say something." Well, if we are drifting into getting up into the pulpit because we must say something, without realising the temptations and struggles of the souls in front of us, we have lost our message; we are no longer messengers.

(2) And then, secondly, what about the old keenness? Am I able to say "the old keenness"? One honest brother came to me one Quiet Day and said: "I have never felt keen at all." He could not speak of the old keenness; he had never had it. He wanted it. The keen messenger stands quivering like Pheidippides:

"Except for that sparkle, thy name, I had mouldered to ash!"

There stands the true messenger quivering with the keenness of his message. What has happened to us if we are no longer keen about our message?

(a) Is it because we have really ceased to believe it? I say that because during this past year I have had some who have openly said (the realisation of it has come to them during the day) that they have largely slipped away from their real belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. They started reading Higher Criticism or German theology. Of course, we must read very varied kinds of books; we have no right to be afraid of reading anything that will enable us to help the laity in their difficulties. But these brothers had been reading too many of these books speaking of our Lord as only a man, in which we are told that "He was mistaken in supposing this," or, "No doubt He was under the impression that this was the case"; and they have slipped away from their belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Their faith has really for a time gone; they have not got a message, because they do not believe in the old message. They would have said of such a meditation as we have had together on the Book of Revelation: "How do we know St. John ever wrote it?" And if we meditated upon our Lord's last prayer in St. John's Gospel, they would say: "How do we know that we have the words of the Lord's last prayer?" Thus their minds are really in doubt all the time, so that at last nothing really speaks to them at all. Now, what I advise is a careful study of the writings of such a man as Dr. Swete. He tells us that in that last prayer of our Lord we have, through the medium of St. John or the writer of St. John's Gospel—he believes it was St. John—as nearly as you can get them, the actual words of our Lord's prayer. I am not taking any particular case, but only trying to illustrate a state of mind. If you are losing your message because you are ceasing to believe it, then all the salt has gone out of your ministry till faith comes back. If you face it, and find it is so, ask our Lord, who has come to speak to us now, to restore to you your belief in Him once again, so that He shall be to you the centre of the universe, and you will be really in a position to say again, as you once did,

"How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer's ear!"

Then you will be able to preach again.

(b) Or is it that the fault is not so much intellectual as moral, and there is really something between you and Christ—something which is making your message appear unreal, because there is something in your life which contradicts your message? It has been a very blessed thing that a number of men have seen what that thing is during these Quiet Days. Is there anything in your life which contradicts your message? I remember hearing—it was not in this diocese—of a priest who did not dare to speak to his young men and boys about certain things, because his own conscience reproached him. That is the sort of thing that makes your message sound hollow when you get up to deliver it, in the pulpit or in the Bible-class. "Search me, O Lord, and seek the ground of my heart, prove me and examine my thoughts and see whether there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." This must be our prayer. If we say that to our people, we must say it to ourselves, and get it put right, though it may be like plucking out the right eye or cutting off the right hand. When it is put right your message will ring true again.

(c) Or is it what you may call "middle-aged low spirits"? Is it something like accidie. Dr. Paget describes that dreariness of feeling that comes over some in middle age. "You cannot expect that amount of keenness from me at my age," a man says. I think of three men myself—Bishop Wilkinson, Bishop King and Canon Body—who were to the last day of their lives as keen as when they started. So when you think of these three men, it cannot be middle age or old age that really produce this accidie. I dare say it would be equally true of Mr. Simeon or Mr. Wesley, but I only happen to know of these three men, who were like fathers to me. They were as keen up to the day that they died as ever they were in their lives. Bishop Wilkinson's last words before he died—an address to a committee of his Prayer Union in his diocese—were the same burning words that had fired the rich people of Eaton Square and the miners of the North.

Well, if it is not middle age or old age, must be ourselves who are to blame. Therefore let us ask for a revival of our keenness, and not put down the want of it to old age or middle age. Of course, it may be that a man—I want to be quite frank about that—a man has been too long where he is. If you knew how much prayer and thought I personally give to this matter, how anxious I am to move men when I see a move would be for their good, you would realise how distressing it is to me to keep a man in one place when he would be much better moved, or promoted to a living. But the simple fact is there are not enough livings to go round. I want you to realise how urgently we at the centre feel the danger of men getting stale or being kept in one place too long. But it is not from the man's point of view that we ought to look at it. He may pray to have a change. But while he is there he is the messenger to the people, who are constantly changing. There is a new population constantly coming in. He must be there ready for them. And those who remain in the parish are still depending upon him. He is their messenger; he must not let them suffer because he is tired of his particular post. I cannot imagine any of those three men, whom I knew so well, in the least letting the keenness of their message be diminished because they thought they ought to be moved somewhere else. A man may feel very sad because he cannot do more, but he must not let his work fall off, although he may be praying that in God's providence he may have a change.

(3) Then comes the waiting before God for the message. Pheidippides bowed his head even in the heat of the race, bowed his head and listened. And, you know, one of the things we have certainly found out lately is that the great fault of the Church of England is not listening. We pray, but we do not wait for an answer. It is the ten minutes after prayer that matters. It is listening for the answer to come back. One of the reasons why English clergy need a Quiet Day is that they are not good listeners to God. We talk to Him, we even, as someone has said, chatter to Him like little children chatter to their parents, but we do not listen for the reply. We must listen for the reply when we speak to God. We must wait for our message. It must be renewed every day. What is the message that I am to take to the people? Rearrange all your time so that you may have time for listening. That has been crowded out. It is not a question of how many visits you can make in a day, but of the atmosphere you take with you on those visits, and the atmosphere depends upon the previous "waiting upon God." Then when you go on your visit the Holy Spirit opens the door of the heart of those to whom you go.

(4) Then notice, fourthly, the abandonment of the messenger. I am sure St. Paul really loved the picture of the runner. Do you notice he is always going back to it? The runner flung aside his cloak, with his eyes fixed on the goal, like Pheidippides the messenger; that is exactly what he did: he flung everything away for speed and alertness, in order to be there in time—the one thing that mattered. Do you not think that it may be true that we have become too comfortable as messengers? May it not be that we have lost the alertness and keenness and the mobility of the messenger? We have just settled down into our comfortable homes and creature comforts. They hinder our movements, and we do not run with the alertness of a messenger of God. Of course, we have to be part of a great system, to have parishes, to settle down in a certain place, and to secure that no one is neglected in the parish. But we must remember, we clergy of the Church of England, that we are not working for a particular parish or country only, but for the whole world. We must not rest content in being a stolid yeomanry, who can only fight in our own country, but we are to be a mobile alert force for the conversion of the world. We ought to be entirely and absolutely independent of our comfortable homes, of our comfortable way of life. It is good to go into camp and be content to stay there for a couple of months. We ought to feel that having food and raiment, with these we shall have enough. That love of comfort is a great danger; it greatly hampers us in our task and in our alertness as messengers.

And, again, if we are a mobile army for the world, we ought to be ready to go to any part of the world to which the Spirit of the Lord directs us. It often happens that the Spirit catches away some young curate, and he is found in some unpronounceable place in Japan or China. He is there because the Spirit has taken him there. Therefore we have to question ourselves very strictly to-day, it seems to me, as to whether we are detached enough to be messengers, or whether we have got clogged by mere custom and the comforts of life, so that we do not move quickly enough. Or again, we may be hampered in our movements by the demand for a full Catholic service for our own solace and comfort. Those men at the front who are receiving the Holy Communion before the battle have little barns for their service, with flickering and guttering candles. When they come home they will tell us they have never had such a Communion service in their lives as those they had with their comrades. Honestly I consider it is right to have, if we can, a beautiful service which uplifts our souls, to give our people all the Catholic privileges possible. But we ought not to be dependent upon it; we ought to recognise that the heart of the thing is also in the poor barn and the guttering candle. We all ought to be content to do without many things that we have now, if only we may be allowed to carry our message to the ends of the earth.

(5) And then, when he comes, he is to give the full message. Pheidippides stood before his people and gave it all, the warning, and the comfort and the inspiration. Do not leave anything out. One part is as important as another. He gave the whole rounded message, and we must be careful to do the same. We must be careful not to let the Gospel consist of one doctrine only—for example, the Atonement. The Atonement is a part of the Gospel—a glorious part of it—but it is not the whole message by any means. There is the Gospel of Grace. We are saved by the death of Christ, but we are saved by Grace and the means of Grace—the power in the water of life to refresh the soul that is pardoned, and the beautiful sacramental teaching handed on to us. The prodigal comes back, and he receives the robe and the ring, and the home, and the feast, and the shoes for service—all these things. The prodigal of to-day wants them too; the Father's kiss—the outward and visible sign of the Father's love; the ring in Confirmation, the robe in Baptism, the home in the Church, the feast—the Holy Communion—the shoes for service. You have got to tell them about everything. You have no right to say of one doctrine: "This is the whole Gospel." We must teach the Gospel of the Resurrection and the Ascension as much as the Atonement, and the Church's Sacraments as well. Therefore we have to ask—have we not?—whether our teaching has degenerated into some little shibboleth, which we keep repeating over and over again. We must be messengers of the whole message, and we must see that we are giving the message in its fulness, or else there may be souls unsaved who might be saved by the very part of it which we leave out. We might be astonished if we catechised our people as to what we have really taught them in ten years. Have we simply given them a series of moral exhortations, or the same part of the message, year after year, and not the whole message?

(6) Then, lastly, we must seal the message with our lives. "Do you really mean to say"—I believe it was a girl who asked the question when present for the first time at an Ordination Service—"do you mean to say that every clergyman I have ever met has been through that?" Well, apparently we do not always give the impression that we have. The messenger has to seal the message by his life, and by conduct consistent with such a trust, but also he has got to seal it, if necessary, with his death.[21] Pheidippides died

"In the shout for his meed."

There ought to be no hesitation about going to infectious cases if we are called to do so. I am always quoting what Bishop King told us in one of his pastoral lectures. He was warning us against being nervous or having presentiments. He said: "I had a presentiment that I should die when I was twenty-six. And, sure enough, after I was ordained, the smallpox came to the parish where I was working. I had to go to the patients, and I had to sit up with them, and bury one myself. 'Here,' I thought, 'is my presentiment coming true; I am twenty-six.' But," he said to us in the lecture-hall, "I am here, gentlemen, this morning." Therefore we should make it a rule that what little risk there is in our profession we should take, after seeing to all needful precautions. And if it be so that we die in the course of our duty through some epidemic, we shall die at our posts, and be doing what a messenger ought to do.

"'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by God's grace
We've got you Ratisbon!
The marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart's desire,
Perched him!' The Chief's eye flashed, his plans
Soared up again like fire.

"The Chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes:
'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' his soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
'I'm killed, Sire!' And, his Chief beside,
Smiling, the boy fell dead."

That was a young soldier, a messenger, who came to tell Napoleon of the success of his arms. It is called simply "An Incident of the French Camp."[22]

"Smiling the boy fell dead."

Dear brothers, if we are called to seal our message with our lives, may God give us grace to do so!