Quiet Talks with World Winners

by S. D. Gordon

Illustrations of God from our common life are never full.

They must not betaken too critically, but they are sometimes wonderfully vivid and very
helpful. Anything that makes God seem real and near helps.
A few years ago I heard a simple story of real life from the lips of a New
England clergyman. It was told of a brother clergyman of the same
denomination, and stationed in the same city with the man who told me.
This clergyman had a son, about fourteen years of age, who, of course, was
going to school. One day the boy's teacher called at the house and asked
for the father. When they met he said:
"Is your son sick?"
"No; why?"
"He was not at school to-day."
"You don't mean it!"
"Nor yesterday."
"Indeed!"
"Nor the day before."
"Well!"
"And I supposed he was sick."
"No, he's not sick."
"Well, I thought I should tell you."
And the father thanked him, and the teacher left. The father sat thinking
about his son, and those three days. By and by he heard a click at the
gate, and he knew the boy was coming in. So he went to the door to meet
him at once. And the boy knew as he looked up that the father knew about
those three days.
And the father said, "Come into the library, Phil."
And Phil went and the door was shut.
Then the father said very quietly, "Phil, your teacher was here a little
while ago. He tells me you were not at school to-day, nor yesterday, nor
the day before. And we thought you were. You let us think you were. And
you don't know how bad I feel about this. I have always said I could trust
my boy Phil. I always have trusted you. And here you have been a living
lie for three whole days. I can't tell you how bad I feel about it."
Well, it was hard on the boy to be talked to in that gentle way. If his
father had spoken to him roughly, or had taken him out to the wood-shed,
in the rear of the dwelling, it wouldn't have been nearly so hard.
Then the father said, "We'll get down and pray." And the thing was getting
harder for Phil all the time. He didn't want to pray just then. Most
people don't about that time.
And they got down on their knees, side by side. And the father poured out
his heart in prayer. And the boy listened. Somehow he saw himself in the
looking-glass of his knee-joints as he hadn't before. It is queer about
that mirror of the knee-joints, the things you see in it. Most people
don't like to use it much. And they got up from their knees. The father's
eyes were wet. And Phil's eyes were not dry.
Then the father said, "My boy, there's a law of life, that where there is
sin there is suffering. You can't get those two things apart. Wherever
there is suffering there has been sin, somewhere, by somebody. And
wherever there is sin there will be suffering, for some one, somewhere;
and likely most for those closest to you."
"Now," he said, "my boy, you have done wrong. So we'll do this. You go
up-stairs to the attic. I'll make a little bed for you there in the
corner. We'll bring your meals up to you at the usual times. And you stay
up in the attic three days and three nights, as long as you've been a
living lie." And the boy didn't say a word. They climbed the attic steps.
The father kissed his boy, and left him alone.
Supper-time came, and the father and mother sat down to eat. But they
couldn't eat for thinking of their son. The longer they chewed on the food
the bigger and drier it got in their mouths. And swallowing was clear out
of the question. And the mother said, "Why don't you eat?" And he said
softly, "Why don't you eat?" And, with a catch in her throat, she said,
"I can't, for thinking of Phil." And he said, "That's what's bothering
me."
And they rose from the supper-table, and went into the sitting-room. He
took up the evening paper, and she began sewing. His eyesight was not very
good. He wore glasses, and to-night they seemed to blur up. He couldn't
see the print distinctly. It must have been the glasses, of course. So he
took them off, and wiped them with great care, and then found the paper
was upside-down. And she tried to sew. But the thread broke, and she
couldn't seem to get the thread into the needle again. How we all reveal
ourselves in just such details!
By and by the clock struck ten, their usual hour of retiring. But they
made no move to go. And the mother said quietly, "Aren't you going to
bed?" And he said, "I'm not sleepy, I think I'll sit up a while longer;
you go." "No, I guess I'll wait a while too." And the clock struck eleven;
then the hands clicked around close to twelve. And they arose, and went to
bed; but not to sleep. Each one pretended to be asleep. And each knew the
other was not asleep.
After a bit she said—woman is always the keener—"Why don't you sleep?"
And he said softly, "How did you know I wasn't sleeping? Why don't you
sleep?" And she said, with that same queer catch in her voice, "I can't,
for thinking of Phil." He said, "That's the bother with me." And the clock
struck one; and then two; still no sleep. At last the father said,
"Mother, I can't stand this. I'm going up-stairs with Phil."
And he took his pillow, and went softly out of the room; climbed the attic
steps softly, and pressed the latch softly so as not to wake the boy if he
were asleep, and tiptoed across to the corner by the window. There the boy
lay, wide-awake, with something glistening in his eyes, and what looked
like stains on his cheeks. And the father got down between the sheets, and
they got their arms around each other's necks, for they had always been
the best of friends, and their tears got mixed up on each other's
cheeks—you couldn't have told which were the father's and which the
son's. Then they slept together until the morning light broke.
When sleep-time came the second night the father said, "Good-night,
mother. I'm going up with Phil again." And the second night he shared his
boy's punishment in the attic. And the third night when sleep-time came
again, again he said, "Mother, good-night. I'm going up with the boy." And
the third night he shared his son's punishment with him.
That boy, now a man grown, in the thews of his strength, my acquaintance
told me, is telling the story of Jesus with tongue of flame and life of
flame out in the heart of China.
Do you know, I think that is the best picture of God I have ever run
across in any gallery of life? It is not a perfect picture. No human
picture of God is perfect, except of course the Jesus human picture. The
boy's punishment was arbitrarily chosen by the father, unlike God's
dealings with our sin. But it is the tenderest and most real of any that
has come to me.
God couldn't take away sin. It's here. Very plainly it is here. And He
couldn't take away suffering, out of kindness to us. For suffering is
sin's index-finger pointing out danger. It is sin's voice calling loudly,
"Look out! there's something wrong." So He came down in the person of His
Son, Jesus, and lay down alongside of man for three days and nights, in
the place where sin drove man.
That's God! And that suggests graphically the great passion of His heart.
Sin was not ignored. Its lines stood sharply out. The boy in the garret
had two things burned into his memory, never to be erased: the wrong of
his own sin, and the strength of his father's love.
Jesus is God coming down into our midst and giving His own very life, and
then, more, giving it out in death, that He might make us hate sin, and
might woo and win the whole world, away from sin, back to the intimacies
of the old family circle again.

On a Wooing Errand.

Jesus was a mirror held up to the Father's face for man to look in. So we may know what the Father is like. When you look at Jesus and listen to Him you are looking into the Father's heart and listening to its warm throbbing. And no one can look there without being caught by the great passion burning there, and feeling its intense soft-burning glow, and carrying some of it for ever after in his own heart.

Jesus was on a wooing errand to the earth. The whole spirit of His dealings with men was that of a great lover, wooing them to the Father. He was insistently eager to let men know what His Father was like. He seemed jealous of His Father's reputation among men. It had been slandered badly. Men misunderstood the Father. He would leave no stone unturned to let men know how good and loving and winsome God is. For then they would eagerly run back home again to Him. This was His method of approach to the world He came to win.

Jesus is the greatest wooer the old world has ever known, and will be the greatest winner of what He is after, too. Run thoughtfully through these Gospels, and stand by Jesus' side in each one of these simple, tremendous incidents of His contact with the common people. Then listen anew to His teaching talks, so homely and so gripping. And the impression becomes irresistible that the one thought that gripped at every turn, never forgotten, was to woo man back to the Father's allegiance.

Jesus' World-passion.

Have you not marked the world-wide swing of Jesus' thought and plan? It is stupendous in its freshness and bold daring. The bigness of His idea of the thing to be done is immense. To use a favorite phrase of to-day, He had a world-consciousness. It is hard for us to realize what a startling thing His world-consciousness was. We are so familiar with the Gospels that we lose much of their force through mere rote of familiarity.

It takes a determined effort, and the fresh touch of the Holy Spirit, too, to have them come with all the freshness of a new book. And then we have gotten sort of used in our day, and in our part of the world especially, to talking about world-wide enterprises.

We don't realize what a stupendous thing a world-consciousness was in Jesus' day. He certainly did not get it from His own generation; not from the Jews. It stands out in keen contrast to their ideas. They lived within very narrow alleyways. They supposed they were the favorites of God; and everybody else—dogs, and damned dogs, too; not in the profane usage, but actually.