Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

Acts ix. 36-43.

TO a man who believes in a living, personal God the world's history is the record of God's actions. The Bible story is an account of an exceptional period in the Divine activity, during which God's dealings with men are peculiarly significant; as it were more immediate, frank, and expressive, more true to His inmost character. Then, traits found utterance that in general are mute. Repression gave way to expression. The incidents in this expression are out of the common, look marvellous; we call them miracles. Such things do not happen to us, but we hold they happened for us. They are, so to say, a personal explanation on God's part, at once a disclaimer and a declaration. He is not altogether to be judged by the normal course of events. His feelings do not quite answer to appearances. His heart does not correspond entirely to His hand. He is more than His deeds. Measure Him by these, and you mistake Him, because for the most part He acts under restraint. His love may be much greater than His language, His kindness warmer than His conduct. Reticence is often imposed on affection. You do not always tell your child all the praise you might express, and admiration you feel. When he has entered the struggle of school-life you look on while he battles with a hard task, till his weariness pains you, but you hold back and do not help him. It may be my lot to know of a friend contending against unjust accusation, well-nigh crushed, and I may not stand by him, knowing my aid would harm, not help, though at the risk of his misunderstanding me. God would have us know, as we with perplexity look to His silent heaven out of our sin and sorrow, that spite of strange seeming, His heart is love. We do not fare as our Father fain would have us fare. Things are not as He would wish them. There is a discrepancy between the desires of His heart and the doings of His hand. He cannot quite trust us as He would. There is an obstacle; we should be better off but for that. We do right to say, with Martha, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died." And that we may be sure it is so, once He broke through His reticence; He was here; He gave His heart full play, and treated men as He always feels towards them. Their sicknesses were healed, their sins forgiven; the Infinite Love laid soft hands on their pain; the Eternal Pity whispered peace in their souls. Now we can look on Christ and say we know what God is. But for hindrances, we can say, He would always act so. Spite of our fortunes, that is how He feels. At length the barrier will be overthrown, and He will treat me so likewise.

This is the practical use we are to make of such stories of Scripture as Dorcas's restoration from death. It is a marvel—what, precisely, we know not. But, for this woman God did a splendid and wonderful act of love, that dispelled the eclipse of death in a sunshine of endless security. What happened to her happens not to us. But God's heart is unchanged. If you be like her, such another, the Divine regard round you in life and in death is as tender and strong as it was about her.

In the important seaport town of Joppa there were gathered together some believers in Jesus. Among them was a woman named Tabitha (Heb.), or Dorcas (Gr.). The name signifies Gazelle, or Fawn. It was one of those pet names given to woman, a name of beauty, though the bearer of it may have been plain enough. Not much is told about her, but what is told is of such a kind that we may conjecture more. Little things have a significance in combination. Thus we can fill in the meagre outline that is given us, till the picture grows into completeness.

Dorcas was a lone woman. Of husband or of children we hear nothing. Unlike those others with whom she is linked in Bible story as fellow-sharers in the miracle of restoration to life—unlike Lazarus, unlike the daughter of Jairus or the widow's son at Nain—we read in her case of no loving relatives who soothed her dying bed and wept when she was gone. She stands alone in the world—one of those women of whom we speak as of persons to be pitied, unhappy; with a woman's natural hopes and occupations, in which she finds rest for her instincts, denied or blighted.

Dorcas is a forlorn figure, stricken by grief and woe. We feel inclined to turn away from such. The bleak, cold winds that blow across the lonely spaces where they find their planting seem to chill our joy. We forget that it is not thorns alone which grow in spots that we deem waste; not seldom God's fairest flowers and fruits spring up on what we count barren and forsaken ground. In Dorcas, we may well believe, there was nothing woe-begone or repellent; it is as pleasant, amiable, and beloved that we think of her. The tree of her life had been stricken by the lightning; its own leaves and branches stripped; but it did not remain a bare and unsightly stump, naked and alone. Lichens and clinging plants had gathered at its roots, and twined about its stem, and clothed it with a new verdure and beauty.

All this might have been so different. Dorcas might have succumbed to sorrow, and amid the ruins of her shattered home she might have flung herself on the ground in despair. She might have been moping and repining, selfishly nursing her grief, embittered, envious, and grudging to others their joy. God pity those who are; it is often that the milk of human kindness has turned sour: the fault is of misfortune. She might have made herself a burden to all around, held the world a debtor, and herself a wronged creditor. She might have insisted on being miserable—as if a long face made a lighter heart. Some in her position act so. They resent the smiles of others, and hold that if weeping is their portion, then all should weep. Others hide under a smiling face a sad heart, and laugh with you. Dorcas did none of these things. She set herself to be of use, to give aid and help to others. Ah! I think it sometimes happens that God removes the home of a woman's love, breaks down its walls, and unroofs it before the storm, in order that the love may go out to embrace a larger family. The hearts of some women are made to shelter and console all homeless ones. Their love takes wings, and flies through the earth in search for the desolate and afflicted. It does not need the ties of home, of husband and children, to form a loving, useful, warm-hearted woman.

How long had Dorcas been such a woman as the story tells of? We cannot say. Perhaps she was humbly good and sensible, and had borne her sorrows bravely from the first, an unconscious follower of Jesus. Perhaps she was once soured, bitter, and woe-begone, till she heard of the great Sorrow-bearer, and learnt from Him to make her sorrow an offering, and to use her knowledge of sadness to lighten others' woe. For she was "a disciple." That means just one who looks how Christ went about the world, and sets to to go likewise.

Having made up her mind to do good, what could she do? Nothing much. She could not preach; she could not be an apostle, and do great deeds of healing. She was too poor, too stupid, too uninfluential to start a mission or build a hospital. But she could darn, and stitch, and plan garments for widows—and how many such does not the life of a seafaring town create! She could speak kind words and do good turns, go to meeting, and be a quiet, gentle, sweet, helpful woman. That she could be, nothing more; and that she was. Why should she be more? That is what God means a good woman to be.

A homely, unromantic, dull, unattractive life, you say; good, but uninteresting. So, perhaps, the neighbours said. So we all go on thinking and saying, while the angels laugh at our folly. As if God did not often conceal under the hardest, coarsest shells and husks the silkiest of downy lining and the very sweetest of fruit-kernels. Yes, outside it looked a stripped, bare, monotonous life. But within there was a whole world of beauty and pathos. God knew the tender thoughts of the dead; the rising of old cravings that woke and called once more for buried loves; the silent, speechless prayers in lonely eventides. He knew of memories that were tears to her, but turned to warmth and cheer for others; of very kindly thoughts and gentle love woven and sown into those garments. No, the neighbours did not see all this. But God's eyes looked, and saw a very garden of the Lord for beauty and fragrance. I know it must have been so, from the love her way of doing kindness won. Merely to do good is not enough to get love; one must be good. It is wonderful how some people do endless good, and yet none cares for them. Dorcas was not a machine, actively good because actively wound up. People do not weep such tears as fell when she died for the loss of a sewing-machine, useful though such might be, and working for nothing. Nor was she a woman with a mission, bustling, important, loud-voiced; useful and needed such may be, respected, but not quite loved. Nor was she a lady patroness, looking down on those upon whom she showered her benefits. Those who work like Dorcas do not work of mechanical duty, nor for fuss of fame, nor for thanks. It is but little likely that thanks were given her. People would say, "She has nothing else to do;" "She has no family to look after;" "She has plenty of time on her hands;" "It's almost a kindness to take her sewing;" "She had sooner work than not." Exactly, that was it. She was nothing more than a kindly, humble-hearted, womanly soul, that feared God and loved men, and did good in solid ways; one whose life made other women glad that she was born. What more would you have her be? Are you sure you understand what that was?