We have learnt to look upon certain laws of conduct and feeling, certain duties, certain standards of life, as beyond dispute, and fundamental. If so, they are also of universal application; and we should hold them as things which are altogether independent of the customs, traditions, or tone of any society into which we may go.
It is probable that some of you may find this doctrine not altogether free from difficulties before many weeks are over. You may find yourselves young and apparently
uninfluential members of some society in which the standards of life are low, and you may be tempted to think, under the pressure of surrounding opinion, that you are not called upon to set up or display any standard of your own; and there is always a chorus of voices ready enough to echo any such tempting suggestions.
But if ever you are tempted thus to let slip the things you have learnt and accepted, the voice of Isaiah should prove a help and a safeguard. And its exhortation is supported by the respect and admiration you feel for any one who has the courage to stand alone in such a case, true to his rooted convictions.
Another word may be added. We met, a great many of us, this morning at that table to which men do not come unless they entertain the purpose of treading in the footsteps of Christ, and of nursing His Holy Spirit in their hearts. As we lifted up our hearts there, as we ate of that bread and drank of that cup, as we prayed to be kept
safe from the sins that most easily beset us, as we sealed in each other’s presence the resolutions which are to direct our steps in safe paths, it was not of circumstances or places that we were thinking—it was the vision of Christ our Saviour that was before our eyes, and we pray that this vision may remain with us. When we think of all our diverging paths as we separate just now, and of the uncertainty how many of us may meet again in that far horizon, and how many may have wandered out of the way in the wilderness, we do not doubt that we shall often need the strengthening influence of this vision of Christ, if we, too, hope to inherit the blessing which is reserved for those who are faithful under all circumstances, and who sow beside all waters.
X. THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
“And Jacob awakened out of his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.”—Genesis xxviii. 16.
These words indicate the beginning of a new life in the patriarch Jacob. They tell us of the moment when, as it would appear, his soul awoke in him. And they surprise us in some degree, as such awakenings of spiritual capacity often do; for Jacob’s recorded antecedents were not exactly such as to lead us to expect the dream and the vision, and the awakening which are described in this passage.
He had cheated his brother out of his father’s blessing; he was leaving his father’s house in consequence, to avoid this brother’s threatened vengeance; and as he slept at Bethel he dreamed his dream of the ladder