4. Sometimes it is some friend who comes into the life, some influence, perhaps a parish priest, who knocks at the door. Perhaps only too unwillingly at first you open the door, and you find that in the parish priest who comes you have found your best friend on earth, and he by his coming in brings Christ to you; he brings Him with him, and he leaves Him with you, if he is a faithful steward. If the parish priest is a faithful steward, he leads you to the Master. Then, perhaps, the sudden call comes. I have seen this happen to many young soldiers. I lately spent two months with those who were just going out—they are now in the trenches. They crowded in every evening to have a talk or they lay down on the ground and drank in every word at some Church Parade service. I could see, as I watched their faces, that they were hearing the call of their country to risk their lives, their all. It brought them near to Jesus Christ. In the knocking of their country's call Jesus Christ knocked, and I believe there are many fighting in the trenches now every day borne up by a faith they did not have until this summer—a belief in the immediate presence of their Saviour with them. It would not have happened but for this sudden necessity of facing the ordeal of their lives.
Is it possible that all these things, or some of them, have been happening to you—or something different that I have not mentioned—and you have never recognised it as yet as being what it is, Jesus Christ knocking at the door? Now what are you to do? What are any of us to do, for I am just one among you? It seems clear there are three things that we are bound to do, if this great miracle (and it is nothing else) is to take place. The first thing is to listen for and recognise the voice of Jesus Christ outside the door, that we may be ready and prepared to open the door. And do you not think that the reason that many of us never hear Jesus Christ's voice is that we never listen for it, that we have no quiet time, that we have provided no time for meditation and prayer? We are too busy. We get up in the morning just in time to start off for our work; we never have this quiet time, or only a very few moments to think, in which the voice will be heard.
Now, I cannot tell you how much I believe in what I call listening to the voice of God. We pray, indeed—we all of us pray. But it is the ten minutes after prayer that matters, it is the ten minutes' listening to what He is going to say back, and often we do not give that time at all, and so we never get the answer. Is it not fair to say that some of you Church-workers just kneel down for a few hurried moments, and then are up again from your knees, off to some duty on earth, and that possibly a few minutes each day would constitute all the time we devote to listening to the voice of God? If that is all, can you wonder when you take your Sunday-School lesson that it is rather dry, or that your mission sermons do not seem to have much inspiration about them, and gradually the voice of Jesus Christ fades away and becomes very vague? You do not give time. Do not tell me that in the twenty-four hours you cannot find time for the most vital thing in this world. We are only here for a few passing years. Five minutes after death it matters more than I can say—these quiet times in our lives, they are worth more than gold, quiet times when we listen to the voice of God. After death how still it is!
"I hear no more the busy beat of time,
Nor in me feel the fluttering pulse nor faltering breath."
One moment will not be different from the next in the stillness and quiet of Paradise. And in the quiet of the other world how much we shall regret having had so few quiet times on earth! Why, one of the very busiest merchants in the City used to be very regular at a daily service. I said to him once: "How can you find time, you, one of the very busiest merchants in the City, to attend daily service?" He said: "I am so busy I must go to the daily service." He felt his business would simply sweep him away if he did not get a quiet time. And Mr. Gladstone, you will remember, kept his Sundays in unbroken quiet, waiting upon God during the very busiest period of his life. Without it he would have lost the quiet and strength of his soul. Therefore make your first resolution. "I will listen to what the Lord God will say concerning my soul." "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." If you want to have strength and happiness in your spiritual work, wait upon God. And in the silence you will hear the voice of Jesus Christ; you will hear His knock.
Then, when we have heard the voice and recognised the knock, the next thing to do is to open the door. How simple that sounds, does it not? and how difficult it often is! Picture some who have had the door of their souls closed tightly for years. You have to prise the door open, and you have to break down the fixed habits of the man who has never prayed except for a few moments or two in his life; how hard he finds it to reverse the habits of a lifetime! Someone who has an old quarrel, through jealousy or something else, with another worker—how hard it is to forgive and begin all over again! But it has got to be done, the door has to be prised or forced, because if Christ is to come in we have to open the door—that is our part in it—and Christ will come in. And if only we realised how eager He is to come in, and what a power He has to change the heart and control the thoughts and purify the conscience, we should all want Him to come, and we should not spare any time and trouble to get the door open.
And when He has come in, notice this wonderful phrase: "I will sup with him, and he with Me." He does not come in as a transient guest to stay for a little while, and go away, but He comes on a permanent visit, to take up His permanent residence. And although we should not have dared to use the words ourselves, the words "I will sup with him, and he with Me," describe the most delightful friendship. Do you desire His presence? How often do you come to Holy Communion, how carefully do you prepare for the great gift of the presence of Jesus Christ in your soul? Why, I would press this on you, that the supping with Jesus Christ and He with you which takes place in the Holy Communion is the most glorious moment of your whole day. The first Christians never thought of spending Sunday without going first to Holy Communion. It was the special service on the Lord's Day. It may be that some of you who used to be regular have drifted away from this way of receiving the presence of Christ into the soul. We know no better way for cherishing the presence of Christ in the soul than being regular at Communion. The humblest communicant comes away from his Communion with the thought: "Christ lives in me; I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
Will you, then, take from me these three thoughts, Listening, Opening, and Cherishing the Presence: Devotion, Consecration, Communion? And if you do, I tell you what will happen to your deanery. It will gradually become the most Christian fellowship in London. You will be drawn to one another in a way in which you never have been before. We want more unity in every deanery, so that the parishes may take an interest in one another, and that all Church gatherings may be keen and well attended as by a band of brothers and sisters.
This service now may be the beginning of a new life for the deanery, not only of a new fellowship, and of far greater devotion in your work, and of a joy which you never had before. Christmas in war time is not going to be a merry Christmas for any of us. But there is no reason, if we understand what happiness means, why it should not be a happy one. If these three lessons are taken home, you will as a deanery and individually and as parishes have a joy which the world can neither give nor take away.