A mother writes: “I fear he is going to the bad.” This she says of her son, her only son, who has left home to serve his country. “I fear he is going to the bad, but I must,” she says, “be like the woman in the Bible, who came to Jesus to cast the devil out of her daughter, and would not leave Him till He did it.” Yes, poor mother, you must, you must. That is your only hope; and you will conquer, only hold on. A mother’s love is most like the love of God of any human love. He made the mother’s heart, and He knows it to its depths. Secrets have been revealed to mothers which have not been shared by any other human being. Your heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. You shall not be “afraid of evil tidings.” If troubling reports reach you, and if things seem to have come to the worst, and friends speak coldly of your son, and shake their heads (as even Christian friends will do) over your hope and confidence, yet hold on. You have suffered, they perhaps have not. They are “miserable comforters,” though they think they are speaking truly, and for your good. Listen to the voice of God only; look into the face of Jesus only—as she did, the Syrophenician mother, of whom the disciples only said, “Send her away.” Those, who have never known a mother’s woes, know little of the consolations God has for mothers, nor of the secrets which He reveals to them. “I have been with God in the dark. Go, you may leave me alone!” Thus a mother spoke concerning her dead son, when neighbours bewailed him as a lost soul. “I have been with God in the dark,” not in the light only, when there is hope and outward evidence to cheer the heart, but in the dark. It is in the dark that His light shines the brightest. One hour with Him, alone, in the dark, in the gloom of despair and helpless woe, has taught me more than years when I walked in the light of happy and hopeful circumstances. I fear nothing now, for I have been alone with God in the dark. Hold on, poor mother! Christ has given us His word of honour. That is enough for you and me.
A picture is now held up before the eyes of the whole world of the consequences which may wait upon an injustice inflicted on a single human being. All eyes are fixed upon the bitter conflict raging around the fate of that solitary prisoner in the Devil’s Island. A combination of unusual and wondrously significant circumstances has caused this case to become a cause célèbre, engrossing the interest of the whole civilised world. We may thank God indeed for the deep teachings of this terrible drama. But let us think for a moment of the thousands who have suffered as much, and more than this typical victim; of the crushed hearts of the host of women and men whose martyrdom has been known to none but God; or if known or guessed, has been unheeded, the sufferers being of humble rank, of character suspect, friendless, poor, and uncared for. Their cry has entered into the ears of the God of Sabaoth, as much as the “sorrowful sighing” of those noble prisoners of to-day. That great injustice, against which the “elect spirits” of France are so nobly protesting, could scarcely have been perpetrated among a people trained in respect for justice, and in a measure of self-restraint. It has beneath it a foundation of stricken souls and outraged hearts. It has been built up upon a Golgotha. Those who have eyes to see are beginning to see that the smoke of the impious sacrifice of even one of the humblest and most insignificant of human beings may serve to cloud the heavens, and to shut out the favour of God from a nation; and what must it be when that one is multiplied by thousands?
For thirty years past I have pleaded as well as I could the cause of the outcast. The time may not be long in which I shall be permitted to continue to plead it in this world. Pardon me then, Christian people—and all just men and just women, Christian or not—for uttering this cry from the depths of my soul at this close of the year, and approaching close of the century. The happiest of women myself in all the relations of life, God has done me the great favour of allowing me in a manner to be, for these thirty years, the representative of the outcast, of “the woman of the city who was a sinner.” It is her voice which I utter. Oh, hear it, I beseech you! It is by right of the great sorrow with which God pierced my heart long ago for His outcasts, that I speak; a sorrow which will never be wholly comforted till the day when I shall see millions of those cold, dead hands now stretched upon the threshold of our social and national life lifted to the throne of God in adoring and wondering praise for His final deliverance.“Thy dead men shall live”—all who have been done to death in sorrow and anguish; and God shall wipe the tears from all faces. And even for the present, for the near future there is hope, abundant hope, for Jehovah reigns, and the day of sifting has dawned.
My heart is often pained by hearing good women reiterate the statement that “men cannot be expected to exercise the self-restraint which is expected of women.” They say, “Men cannot be strictly virtuous; we women do not know what they have to overcome, nor the force of their temptations; in fact they must sin.” And women, even Christian women, whisper this the one to the other, even to their daughters, and so the low standard is perpetuated. The women who foster this opinion seem not to perceive that in announcing it they are (unconsciously probably) bringing a terrible accusation against God. They are representing Him as not only an illogical, but a cruel and unjust Being. What are the facts? God has created man with a conscience and with a will. He has given to man a Law and has attached penalties to the breaking of that Law; and yet you say that He has so created man that it is not possible for him to obey that Law. If this doctrine is widely accepted by women, it is no wonder that so many of them are atheists at heart. How can you, how can I reverence such a God as you represent Him to be? You might as well ask me to love and worship Baal or Moloch or Juggernaut as such a God as that. But it is not as you say. Look a little deeper.
It has been imposed upon me from time to time during my long life work to speak with men on this point—not only with men of blameless life, but with others who have fallen low. “Is it indeed the very truth,” I have asked, “that you absolutely cannot resist temptation?” And the answer has generally been, if coming from an honest heart, “I could resist if I determined to do so;” or,“I could once have resisted and overcome, but now——” Ah, there is the secret, the sorrowful truth! After repeated and continual yielding, the will of man comes to be broken down. There comes upon him that most fatal of all moral diseases, the paralysis of the will; what he could do once he can no longer do. The will is as the citadel of a beleaguered city; when the citadel is taken the whole city yields, and then it may be and is true that there comes a time when the man cannot any longer combat or resist.
Shall we then, in so terrible a case as this, seeing such men and such women gliding down the slippery incline, regard them as hopeless, as beyond recovery? Shall we go on repeating the fatalist’s doctrine, which we hear so much around us, that it cannot be helped, it must be so, the man must go on sinning, he cannot recover himself? No, a thousand times no. With God all things are possible. He can restore power to the paralysed will, even as He can raise the dead. He does it, and we have seen with our eyes these His miracles of power and love.
And how, you ask me, by what means may such a restoration be accomplished? Replying from my own experience, I would say it is brought about very frequently by means of the divinely energised wills of others—chiefly of those creatures so dear to God, those mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and friends who have, through the teaching of the heart and the inspiration of God, learned and embraced that holiest of all ministries, the ministry of intercession. It has been said that the nearest, shortest way to a man’s heart is round by the throne of God. It is true. Direct advice, counsel, and warning to those who err may sometimes be effectual, and especially with the young. But too often they are wholly useless, and even excite antagonism. But the love, the power, the promise of God never fail.
But you tell me, “Oh, I am not good enough to pray for others, and to receive answers to my prayer.” This is a great mistake. What is our goodness to God? We are none of us good. Think of all the people mentioned in the Gospels who sought after Christ. What was it that brought them to His feet? It was not their goodness, but their great needs, wants and desires, their miseries, their sicknesses, their deep heart griefs, and the griefs and miseries of those dear to them. Our only claim in coming to Him is that we need Him and want Him. There is none other. It is written that God “turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” We learn to know God in drawing near to Him on behalf of others. We fathom the deeper treasures of His love in pleading for those whom we love.