When the watcher in the dark
Turns his lenses to the skies,
Suddenly the starry spark
Grows a world upon his eyes:
Be my life a lens, that I
So my Lord may magnify
We come from the secrecies of the young Clergyman's life, from his walk alone with God in prayer and over His Word, to the subject of his common daily intercourse. Let us think together of some of the duties, opportunities, risks, and safeguards of the ordinary day's experience.
A WALK WITH GOD ALL DAY.
A word presents itself to be said at once, about the connexion between the secret and the common walk of the servant of God. The former is never to give way to the latter; it is to run into it, underground. "To walk with God all day" is to be our distinct and practical purpose, and not merely a sweet sentiment and holy aspiration of the hymn-book. The man who prays in secret is to be the man who knows how to pray secretly in public. The man who pores over the Word all alone is to be the man who, out in the open field of life, "sins not" because he has "hid that Word in his heart" [Ps. cxix. 11.]; and who, being called upon by circumstances, however casually, to show himself actually a true "man of the Book," is internally ready to do so. Nothing short of "a life with Christ behind our work," always and everywhere, is to content us Pastors. To live that life is from one point of view our wonderful privilege, in our living union with our blessed Head. From another point of view it is our truest and deepest work, as we watch and pray over our privilege, and draw upon our Head in the holy diligence of faith.
I have spoken already of this vital connexion between the walk with God in secret and the secret walk with God in public. But it bears reiteration. It is something gained if we only remind one another, with the emphasis of repetition, that such a life is our bounden duty and our blissful possibility:—
"You may always be abiding, if you will, at Jesu's side;
In the secret of His Presence you may every moment hide."[10]
[10] I quote from a beautiful hymn, beginning, "In the secret of His Presence." It is given in part in several recent hymn-books, but for its complete form see From India's Coral Strand, (Home Words Office, Paternoster Buildings,) a collection of the poems of its gifted writer, a Hindoo Christian lady, Miss E.L. Goreh.
But now, what will be the surface and expression of such a hidden life, as the young Clergyman passes through his busy common day?
LIFE IN LODGINGS.