Walter F. Adeney

“ As surely as the empty sea-shell tossed up on the beach can never secrete a living organism to inhabit it, a mere building—whether it be the most gorgeous cathedral or the plainest village meeting-house—will never induce a living spirit of worship to dwell in its cold desolation. Every true religious revival begins in the spiritual sphere and finds its place of worship where it may—in the rustic barn or on the hill-side—if no more seemly home can be provided for it, because its real temple is the humble and contrite heart. ”

“ The mourner sits in the night, while the world around lies in the peace of sleep. The darkness has fallen, yet she does not stir, for day and night are alike to her—both dark. She is statuesque in sorrow, petrified by pain, and yet unhappily not dead; benumbed, but alive in every sensitive fibre of her being and terribly awake. In this dread night of misery her one occupation is weeping. ”

“ How could they do a father's work and watch the training of the future kings? It was left to the mothers, and unhappy they who had mothers like Ahaziah's.
And is not this an everlasting story, true to-day as it was in those old days? It is the mother's hand mainly that shapes men for good or evil. Women more than men make the atmosphere of home—the atmosphere which young lives breathe, and breathing never lose. The wise woman buildeth her house—the foolish plucketh it down with her hands. What time does a father spend in disciplining the moral and spiritual nature of his children? ”

“ It will do so directly a right sense of the goodness of God is attained. Surely the best worship is that in which man's needs and hopes and fears are all swallowed up in the vision of God's love and glory, as the fields and woods are lost in a dim purple haze when the sky is aglow with the rose and saffron of a brilliant sunset. ”

“ Children cry to their mothers for bread, and faint with hunger at every street corner; the ghastly rumour goes forth that a mother has boiled her baby; elders sit on the ground in silence; young maidens hang their heads despairing; princes tremble in their helplessness; the enemy break through the walls, carry havoc into the city, insolently trample the sacred courts of the temple; even the priest and the prophet do not escape in the indiscriminate carnage; wounded people are seen, with blood upon their garments, wandering aimlessly like blind men ”

“ When such unbroken intercourse with God is maintained, all duty and labour have a new meaning, and are suffused with a new glory. Every occupation or profession becomes a transparency by which divine truth and purity are translated to the world. No man is then a menial or a slave, but a free man, living in love and by love. He becomes an evangel, who, by words of holiness and deeds of sacrifice, adorns the doctrine of God and Christ in all things. Nothing is common, nothing is unclean; all life is sanctified and beautiful; the man is a temple consecrated by and for God alone. ”

“ Or the noise of the world's great loom and the busy thoughts of our own hearts drown the music that still floats down from heaven to ears that are tuned to catch its notes; for it does not come in thunder, and we must ourselves be still if we would hear the still small voice, inwardly still, still in soul, stifling the chatter of self, stopping our ears to the din of the world. ”

“ Then the selfishness of vanity promotes cruelty still further by another of its effects. It destroys the sense of proportion. Self is not only regarded as the centre of the universe; like the sun surrounded by the planets, it is taken to be the greatest object, and everything else is insignificant when compared to it. What is the slaughter of a few thousand Jews to so great a man as Haman, grand vizier of Persia? It is no more than the destruction of as many flies in a forest fire that the settler has kindled to clear his ground. ”

“ It is this divine afflatus, this outpouring of the Spirit, which is the great need of the age we live in. The Church seems to be lying listless as a sailing ship, due to leave harbour, but still waiting for a breeze. Her masts are firm, the canvas ready to be stretched, and her equipment complete. The helmsman stands impatient at the wheel, and all the sailors are alert, but not a ripple runs along the vessel's side. She waits, and must wait, for a heavenly breeze to fill her sails, and till it comes she cannot stir. ”

“ Luxury had undermined the vigour of the wealthy; vice had blackened the beauty of the young. There is a fine gold of character which will be sullied beyond recognition when the foul vapours of the pit are permitted to break out upon it. The magnificence of Solomon's temple is poor and superficial in comparison with the beauty of young souls endowed with intellectual and moral gifts, like jewels of rarest worth. ”

“ To be a child of a really noble house, to spring from a family truly without reproach—a family all whose sons are pure and all whose daughters are brave—surely this is to receive a high commission to cherish the good name unsullied. As the later Jews gazed at the towers of Jerusalem and marked well her bulwarks, with the thought that this massive strength was the fruit of the toil and sacrifice of their own forefathers—so that the very names of individual ancestors were linked with exact spots on the grey walls—they would hear a call to loyal service worthy of their noble predecessors. ”

“ I could take you round a certain town and point you to a hundred men who have repeated that bit of biography in their own lives, and I tell you that even now the chances are plentiful: waiting at the feet of those who tread life's way, a brave heart within and God overhead, and that no one need despair, however unpromising his start, who makes God his guide, and prayer his inspiration, and duty his chosen companion, and shuns evil, and pursues that which is good. Faith and loyalty to conscience and a courageous temper are still the weapons which conquer in the fight. ”

“ This shame of dethroned popularity is the greatest humiliation. The unhappy man who has brought himself to live on the breath of fame cannot hide his fall in oblivion and obscurity as a private person may do. Standing in the full blaze of the world's observation which he has so eagerly focussed on himself, he has no alternative but to exchange the glory of popularity for the ignominy of notoriety.
Possibly the confusion consequent on their exposure is all that the poet is thinking of when he depicts the blind staggering of the prophets and priests. ”

“ Just as the fading, dank autumn gives way to the desolation of winter in order that in due time the sleeping seeds and buds may burst out in the birth of spring with the freshness of Eden, God has ordained that the decaying old things of human life shall fall away and be forgotten, while He calls us into the heritage of the new—giving a new covenant, creating a new heart, promising a new heaven and a new earth. ”

“ For it is ever the temptation of young life to think lightly of their father's wisdom, and to despise what they call the narrow religious beliefs, and the careful moral scruples of the old, and to fancy that they know all things so much better than those who have gone before. They want to try experiments of their own with life, and shake off the shackles of old moral laws and religious creeds, and be free to do and think as they please, and put the Bible away on the shelf, and shove prayer aside as a sort of worn-out heirloom, and have a merrier and better time than the old folks knew. ”

“ The instruments blare and clash, the choristers cry aloud, and the people join them with a mighty shout. When shrill discordant notes of bitter wailing, piped by a group of melancholy old men, threaten to break the harmony of the scene, they are drowned in the deluge of jubilation that rises up in protest and beats down all their opposition with its triumph of gladness. To a sober Western the scene would seem to be a sort of religious orgy, like a wild Bacchanalian festival, like the howling of hosts of dervishes. ”

“ Does he think that she will serve as a new dainty for the great banquet, as a fresh fillip for the jaded appetite of the royal voluptuary? If so he is much mistaken. The king's promises have no attraction for her, and she turns for relief to dear memories of her true love. The thought of him is fragrant as the bundle of myrrh she carries in her bosom, as the henna-flowers that bloom in the vineyards of far-off Engedi.
Clearly Solomon has made a clumsy move. This shy bird is not of the common species with which he is familiar. He must aim higher if he would bring down his quarry. ”

“ Yes! this is indeed a romance of faith—faith overcoming the world. This child or youth starts out with all things against him. He is likely to grow up into an Ishmaelite if he grows up at all. He starts with an ill-starred name—a name that spells misfortune. He starts without his mother's blessing and without a glimmer of hope to cheer him; no father to give him a helping hand by the way—without endowment, fortune, family, or friends. What chance can there be in the race for one so heavily handicapped? Failure is written on his brow by the hand that nursed him. ”

“ And yet, when all is said, we cannot find the consolation we hunger after in hours of darkness among bare conclusions of common-sense. The grave is not an illusion, at least when only viewed in the light of the past though even this chill, earthy reality begins to melt into a shadow immediately the light of the eternal future falls upon it. The melancholy that laments the lost past can only be perfectly mastered by that Christian grace, the hope which presses forward to a better future. ”

“ City life is corporate life. It is not at all easy for us to appreciate this fact while our idea of a city is only represented by a crowd of men, women, and children crammed into a limited space, but with scarcely any sense of common life and aims; still less when we look behind the garish splendour of the streets to the misery and degradation, the disease and famine and vice, that make their nests under the very shadow of wealth and pleasure. ”

“ Any who are content, with tireless hand, to make crooked things straight and rough places plain, will ultimately see glory revealed. But if ambition is not ruled by righteousness, if it is not modified by love and consideration for others, it becomes a sin, and will prove to be the herald of disobedience and death, for it is such ambition which has cursed the world by tyrannies and bloodshed, and dragged down angels from realms of light. This was the ambition which let Adonijah exalt himself, and say, "I will be king." ”

“ Various rites follow the great central sacrifice of the burnt-offering, ushered in by the most joyous festival of the year, the Feast of Tabernacles, when the people scatter themselves over the hills round Jerusalem under the shade of extemporised bowers made out of the leafy boughs of trees, and celebrate the goodness of God in the final and richest harvest, the vintage. Then come New Moon and the other festivals that stud the calendar with sacred dates and make the Jewish year a round of glad festivities. ”

“ Possibly we have been oblivious of our own character, until suddenly we are awakened to our true state, to be overwhelmed with shame at an unexpected revelation of sordid meanness, of despicable selfishness. Or perhaps the vision is of the heart of another person, whose quiet, unassuming goodness we have not appreciated, because it has been so unvarying and dependable that we have taken it as a matter of course, like the daily sunrise, never perceiving that this very constancy is the highest merit. ”

“ No man, however ripe in goodness, however firmly rooted and grounded in faith, love, and Christian qualities, ever gets beyond the need of vigilant sentinel work—watching himself. He must always be buffeting himself, and keeping under his body, as Paul did, lest he himself should be a castaway. Let him grow careless, presumptuous, neglectful of prayer, and all the old tempers and passions slowly steal in, and bit by bit obtain the mastery, and the Christian disgraces his profession, and the saint becomes a sinner again. Every Christian knows this. He knows the evil powers that are in him. ”

“ But wherever the true idea of marriage was realised—and we must have sufficient faith in human nature to be assured that this was sometimes the case even in the realm of Xerxes—the husband and wife who knew themselves to be one, united by the closest ties of love and sympathy and mutual confidence, would laugh in their happiness and perhaps spare a thought of pity for the poor, silly king who was advertising his domestic troubles to the world, and thereby exhibiting his shallow notions of wedded life—blind, absolutely blind, to the sweet secret that was heaven to them. ”

“ Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage, Florence and Venice, were rivals which could never take the place of one another. Most assuredly Jerusalem stood alone, stamped with a character which no other place in the world approached, and charged with a perfectly unique mission. For such a city to vanish off the face of the earth was the impoverishment of the world in the loss of what no nation in all the four continents could ever supply. ”

“ Man craves for fellowship and friendship. Happiest is he who has the noblest companion. God alone fills the deep craving of the heart for a congenial and helpful presence, and Enoch "walked with God." The words imply regular, unbroken, well-sustained communion with Him. With a sublime and lofty aspiration Enoch had risen above shadows, idols, and pretences, and with simple, manly faith had grasped the unseen substance and reality, the personal God, the Father of us all. ”

“ The true elixir of life, the secret of perpetual youth of soul, is interest in the present and the future, with the forward glance of faith and hope. Old men who cultivate this spirit have young hearts though the snow is on their heads. And such are wise. No doubt, from the standpoint of a narrow common sense, with its shrunken views confined to the material and the mundane, the old men who wept had more reason for their conduct than the inexperienced younger men who rejoiced. ”

“ The anger of God is as real as His love. No being can be perfectly holy and not feel a righteous indignation in the presence of sin. But if God is angry, and while He is so, He cannot at the same time be holding friendly intercourse with the people who are provoking His wrath. Then the Divine anger must be as a thick, impervious curtain between the prayers of the sinful and the gracious hearing of God. The universal confession of the need of an atonement is a witness to the perception of this condition by mankind. ”

“ Each man is to himself, and each woman too, the greatest of all mysteries save the one greater mystery, God. None of us know of what elements he is composed, and how strangely the good and evil mix and mingle and clash and strive in each day's doings, and through the whole of life. They who believe that the saint is all saint, and the sinner all sinner, are blindly and pitiably ignorant of human nature. God has made no man without putting some little bit of the Divine image in him. ”

“ And yet this was not the conclusion of the whole matter to Nehemiah. It is really nothing better than a frivolous vanity, that can induce any one to be willing to sacrifice the prospect of a real eternal life in exchange for the pallid shadow of immortality ascribed to the "choir invisible" of those who are only thought of as living in the memory of the world they have influenced enough to win "a niche in the temple of fame." What is fame to a dead man mouldering in his coffin? Even the higher thought of being remembered by God is a poor consolation in prospect of blank non-existence. ”

“ After all, it is only the underlying guilt that can justify a verdict which carries disgrace as well as suffering for its penalty. Even when the judgments of men are too confused to recognise this truth with regard to other people, it should be apparent to the conscience of the humiliated person himself. The humiliation which follows nothing worse than a fall into external misfortunes is but a superficial trouble, and the consciousness of innocence can enable one to submit to it without any sense of inward shame. The sting of contempt lies in the miserable consciousness that it is deserved. ”

“ If you would have an example of the highest type of love—love to God manifesting itself as love to man—go to a Christian home, and you will find it there in all its charm, uniting husband and wife, parents and children, master and servants, making the house a veritable "paradise regained."
There is a sense in which the Christian even loves the world—loves it as no other man can love it—that is, when the term is applied to the wondrous system of nature. He loves sometimes to wander in the fields, where innumerable lovely forms, both animate and inanimate, reveal their beauty to the eye ”

“ The eminence on which we have been standing so proudly is seen to be a wretched mole-hill compared with the awful snow-peak from which the clouds have just dispersed. Can we ever climb that? Goodness now seems to be hopelessly unattainable; yet never before was it so desirable, because never before did it shine with so rare and fascinating a lustre.
But, it may be objected, was not the religious and moral character of the teaching of the great prophets—of Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah—larger and higher and more spiritual than the legalism of the Pentateuch? ”

“ This singular mode of courtship between two lovers who are so passionately devoted to one another that we might call them the Hebrew Romeo and Juliet, is not without significance. Its recurrence, now on the lips of the bride, helps to sharpen still more the contrast between what passes for love in the royal harem, and the true emotion experienced by a pair of innocent young people, unsullied by the corruptions of the court—illustrating, as it does at once, its sweet intimacy and its perfect purity. ”

“ It was not the returning favour of the court under Darius, it was not the fame of the house of David, it was not the priestly dignity of the family of Zadok that awakened the slumbering zeal of the Jews; the movement began in an unofficial source, and it passed to the people through unofficial channels. It commenced in the meditations of a calm thinker; it was furthered by the visions of a rapt seer. This is a clear indication of the fact that the world is ruled by mind and spirit, not merely by force and authority. Thought and imagination lie at the springs of action. ”