Joshua 4:13-15

Signs of the Times

Jos 4:13-15

"We have no such visions now" may be the easy comment of men who walk by sight and not by faith. Everything depends upon what you mean by "vision." Jesus Christ said How is it that ye cannot discern the signs of the times? Jesus Christ saw signs. All men whose eyes are set in their head see tokens, omens, and prefigurations of many kinds and full of urgent suggestion. We should see more if we looked more. He who looks sees. But there is a looking which is not seeing a casual inspection, a hurried glance, a superficial regard scarcely to be distinguished from utter unconcern. We should put things together; we should follow facts until they become laws. This indeed is the only way of finding out laws namely, to gather facts together from every quarter, facts of every quality and every degree; fearlessly bring together whatever has been established in the way of fact, and then when the evidence is thus as nearly complete as our time can make it, the inference which we draw from this collation will have of necessity the authority and force of a law. We must not judge by one fact, nor must we betake ourselves to any special field and say all the facts we require are to be found within the four corners of this particular plot. All facts must be recognised, admitted into the great composition, and from the whole of them we must bring those inductions which settle themselves into law, until still larger facts are brought in to displace them or give them newness of accent and value. The "man" is still standing over against us. Nothing has been lost of all that is morally significant in this apocalypse. We have been looking in the wrong direction, or we have not been looking with sufficient eagerness, or we have failed before the spirit of languor, having succumbed to its lull; and so we have lost our hold upon the age and all its forces. There is a man (visible to the spiritual eye) standing in this day or in that day over the whole continent with a drawn sword. It is the day of war. We shall hear presently, when we see such signs, the clash of battle. All the uneasiness, restlessness, discontent, unholy ambition with which we are made familiar from time to time, being interpreted means that the war spirit is ahead, is animating the sentiment of nations, is troubling the peace of the world. Thus we can find out from the journals of the day what figure it is that presides over the fortunes of the hour; but we must bring, let us repeat, steadily and fearlessly, facts from every quarter, and shape them into this man, that we may through facts know his name, his figure, and his purpose. Account for it as we may, "coming events cast their shadows before." There is a spirit regulating and directing all things, and we may see with considerable clearness of vision what the spirit of the age is if we will only open our eyes and look at events and chasten our hearts, and study them with religious constancy. Sometimes the figure changes into quite another expression. The man is the same, but he is bent on other work. The sword has gone. What has he in his hand now? a plomb, square, balances, weights, what means he? He says he will rectify things; he will reform, and he will reconstruct; he will have justice done; he will apportion things on another principle: he will carry up justice to generosity, and regulate generosity by justice; he counts the flock and says, There is one wanting, and that one must be found. He audits the accounts of the day and he says, Every man has not had his due; some have worked and have not reaped the reward of their labour, and the cry of the labourer has entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, That is the image of reform, which has displaced the spectre of war We can easily see that figure through all the agitations and sudden movements and violent and even spasmodic and disastrous efforts of the times. We must not construe such events too harshly or too narrowly. Within themselves and within easily given limits they are bad and they are only to be condemned; but all these upheavals have a history, and we cannot judge of the immediate event except in the atmosphere which is historical. We must know what happened generations ago. There is no event which belongs merely to the passing twenty-four hours: hence the rashness and imperfectness of our judgment. Now this spirit which is in the air from time to time, standing over against doomed cities and doomed institutions, can easily be distinguished if we ask the meaning of the things that are going on round about us. It will not do to shut our ears and say, We hear nothing; to close our eyes and to say, Behold, all is in peace. We must face the spectre; we must look at the image of the time; we must not fear the form which is standing over against a nation, or a continent, or the world. Blessed is he who can fearlessly ask the meaning of that presence and interrogate it as to its purpose. They are short-sighted men who hurry to their own houses, enclose themselves within their own quarters, and say, every fire is as bright as their own, every table is well-laden, and every house is well-cared for. How is it ye cannot discern the signs of the times? Rightly discerning them, you will be patient with many of their features. They are irritating, exasperating; they have about them at first sight an aspect of injustice, and in their assertion there may be more clamour than music; but we must see the reality within the appearance; we must penetrate the environment if we would understand the soul of the age. Now another spirit comes over the times. What is the man like who now holds dominion over the current thought of the age? He has no sword; he has in his hand, books, written leaves, scrolls; his eyes are deeply set in his head, his head is bent in an attitude of study, perusal, meditation akin to worship. What means that man? He says I will have all the people well-informed: every child on the face of the earth shall be taught to read and write and think; knowledge is power, knowledge is self-control, I will not rest until the institution of ignorance is thrown down and the Jericho of superstition is destroyed; the people shall be taught, and when they are taught well-taught and fully taught all tyrannies will go down priestly, social, imperial; and the Son of man shall come the glorious and complete humanity: the very Christ of God shall be realised in the newly-constructed race. Are there not times when this is perfectly evident? We say, the day is given up to the work of education. That is too short and superficial a way of accounting for things. The spirits do not come and go by some rule of mere whim or fancy. There is a purpose in the ages, a method in the infinite government of things. Now the man has a sword; now he weighs with the balances of the sanctuary; now he cries, Come, and be taught; come, and read and think, and chasten your life by the spirit of knowledge: how long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and ye fools hate knowledge? We must accept the spirit of the times, and work according to its inspirations. We cannot double one age over another, or turn the ages backward to catch some ancient spirit; every day has its dawn, its own particular meaning, its own special and definite opportunity; and blessed is he who can read the spectres in the air so as to make out the purpose of their coming and the end of their revelation. Who does not see in our own day another attitude and expression of the same spirit? What is the man doing now? He has no sword, no balance, no book, we can see: they are still within his reach; but now what does he? He weeps: he is in sorrow. He does not shed tears for himself but for others: "Jesus wept." What spirit is it that rules the age? A spirit of pity, compassion, tenderness; a spirit that has heard the sighing and crying of all earth's weary trouble, and that bends over the suffering creation with infinite compassion. Now every one is trying to alleviate distress, to make homes glad, to bring in the erring and far-straying one. The great question is, What can be done to chase away poverty, to make the sad happy, to dry the tears of sorrow, to plant flowers on the tomb of mortality? "Can ye not discern the signs of the times? "Why should we attempt to change those signs when they are providential writing, every day having its own duty, and its own vocation, and its own opportunity? Blessed is that servant who can hear the footfall of his Lord's coming, and understand somewhat of the signs of the times, and who is not trying to do something that was quite in place five hundred years ago, but who is answering the call of this very morning with instancy of obedience and with absolute consecration of love. Live in your own day; express the spirit of your own time; be fearless; "Quit you like men."

The right reading of these signs brings us into a sure and blessed consciousness of a spiritual presence. We begin to feel that things are ghostly, rather than material. There is matter enough on which the broad hand can lay itself, and about which there can be no dispute; but the more we put history together into shape and form, and watch it assuming its true colour, the more we begin to say, Surely God is in this history and I knew it not; this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. We have missed the spirit. We have thought things were all living according to some rule of their own, without relation, without responsibility one to the other; we looked upon things as constituting a kind of seething chaos; but the more patient, the more highly chastened we are in mind, the more sober in understanding, and the more fearless, the more do we see that account for it as we may, or not account for it at all there is a spirit that rules, and guides, and directs everything. The chariots of God are twenty thousand in number. In what chariot he will come tomorrow, none can tell. It is not for us to say whether this or that chariot is God's. The number baffles us; we cannot read a record of the whole. God will come into his own universe as it pleases him.

When we are in great religious moods, in sublime spiritual ecstasies, in immediate and vital touch with God, we are not afraid to adopt apparently impracticable measures in carrying out the purposes of righteousness and wisdom. What could be more ridiculous, from a purely military point of view, than the directions given for the capture and overthrow of Jericho? They had no relation to the event. On the face of them, from a military point of view, they were absurd: the carrying an ark around the walls of the city, walking round the city day by day for seven days, blowing a loud blast of trumpets, and the wall should fall, and the city should surrender! We are quite prepared for the mocker to enjoy himself over such an absurd proposition. But what is absurdity? The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. We cannot always judge things by appearances. We ourselves are often startled by the want apparent, at least of adaptation of means to ends. Life is carried by surprises; the whole scheme of things is made remarkable by sudden incomings and new interpretations and positions. To describe great historical events as in any measure absurd, is to approach the danger of self-idolatry by exalting personal judgment above the occurrences of ancient or modern times. The religious method may always be called impracticable. It is very slow; it does not seem to work with any immediate effect. What can be duller, slower, than what is generally understood as teaching? Yet it is by teaching that the kingdom of heaven is to be prepared for, sitting down with men and communicating ideas to them, endeavouring to touch their higher natures, to move their mental springs, to bring their whole mental life into relation to other and unfamiliar truths. It is a very slow method. One gleam from heaven's own midday would startle the world more surely! Why not this sudden outburst of intolerable glory? Because there is no lasting in it, no power of duration and sustenance. Men cannot live upon such visions. Men are so constituted that they can only live upon knowledge, truth, conviction, moral persuasions, ideas that vitalise and ennoble their whole nature. The apostle is said to have spoken of "the foolishness of preaching." That is a sentence very often misunderstood. The apostle was not speaking of the foolishness of preaching as an art and practice, because he was addressing himself to men who valued eloquence above all other gifts; he was speaking of the foolishness of the thing that was preached the foolishness of the Cross: the idea that a dying man was to be king of the universe; that a slain victim was to sit upon the eternal throne, judging and directing all things in righteousness and love. The apostle represents in his epistle to the Corinthians the very picture which we have in relation to the capture of Jericho. Things that are not, are employed to bring to nought things that are. Foolish things, little things, contemptible things, are used by the hand almighty to shake down towers and walls and temples and capitals, and bring them to nought before the throne of righteousness. Thus religion is not afraid of the impracticable at least, of what may appear to be impracticable to those who look only upon the surface. Religion has never been afraid to claim prayer as one of its very pillars the signature of its very power. What can, from the outside, be more futile and ridiculous than to be speaking into the vacant air to exclude all living things upon the earth, and to speak to one we have never seen, and pour our heart's penitence, woe, hope, into an ear we cannot detect amid all the clouds which float through the heavens? Yet religion says, "Continue instant in prayer;" you have no other hope; there is a throne accessible; heed not the voices that mock you; you cannot pray without being the purer for the prayer; the words of prayer cleanse the mouth that uses them; the desire expressed in prayer purges the heart in which it burns, "pray without ceasing." So religious men ought not to be deterred by apparent impracticableness; by the mocker, who has but two hands, and wants to use them both in great impetuosity; by the giber and sneerer, who wants all things done today. We are content to follow in the wake of Jesus Christ. If we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, we would exercise great sovereignties; we would kill the wolf of hunger long before he came to our door; we would be full of wealth within, without a coal in the grate, or a crust in the cupboard; we would have triumphed over death ere yet we had seen his ghostly figure. Besides, processes may be long, and results may be brought about in startling suddenness. We have read of a place not far from the city of New York which was called Hell's Gate, a dangerous place for navigators, in fact, practically an impassable gate. What was to be done? It was to be attacked with the slowness of wisdom, with the calmness of science; men must go down into that great rocky region nine acres in extent; they must pierce the rock, and fill the cavities with dynamite. Month by month they must work at that and come slowly up, and still Hell's Gate defies the navigator. The year passed, and another year, and still the process goes on. Science says, Be calm, industrious; the process is very tedious; we do not wonder that men are weary with waiting; but continue the work, stroke by stroke, day by day. Now you are within a month of closing your labours, now but one little week remains, now tomorrow all you can do in that preparatory direction will be done. A strange hush falls upon the interested public. What is to be the issue? See, the rocky gate still remains; there it abides to mock the scientific engineer; facts are against him: the rock has been hammered, tunnelled, pierced, charged with dynamite; but it is still there, and not a ship dare come near. The scientific engineer knows more than the ignorant public. He says, I think we are ready now, and tells his own little girl, far off, to touch a tiny knob and communicate an electric spark according to his directions. The spark is communicated, and the nine acres of rock, and all the water floating over them, are heaved two hundred feet into the air in the twinkling of an eye, rent, torn, never to be put together again; and it will require some two years or more to take away the rent stones. So there is a period of waiting, a period of preparation, a period of clearing out; but who can tell what sudden things may occur anywhere in cities, in states, in doomed laws? What we are doing now, if we are wise servants of the King, is to go down morning by morning to our work preaching the gospel, teaching the young, standing up in living testimony for righteousness: and the Lord will suddenly come to his temple. Blessed is that servant who shall be found waiting, watching, working. We have nothing to do with the communication of the electric spark; that is in the hands of God. Hope on, work on; who can tell when the end may be? Yet now and again on the road we are blessed with visions which give us comfort and encouragement. In 1832 the most celebrated naturalist in the world, our illustrious countryman Charles Darwin, went round the world in a ship called the Beagle. The diary of that circumnavigation is full of abiding interest. The great naturalist called at Tierra del Fuego on the South American coast. His description of the people of that part of the world is full of horror; he says he never saw such people. They represented the very lowest type he had ever seen of humanity. They were savages of the worst degree and quality. No civilised man dare approach that awful place; the figures of the people were shocking to behold; their habits were not to be described in language. The naturalist left them, supposing them to be beyond the reach of civilisation. This is the testimony, not of a missionary, but of a naturalist a man supposed to be without religious emotion. One day a little babe was found lying on the streets of Bristol, in very deed a foundling, without known father or mother, or friends, a. little crying thing in all the wilderness of life "Oh, it was pitiful! near a whole city-ful, home it had none." The day on which it was found, by a constable, was St. Thomas's Day; so the infant was called by the name of the dead Thomas. The child was found in a place which lay between two bridges of the city, so was called Thomas Bridges. The little foundling was lodged in the workhouse, and brought up on the public bounty. Years came and went, and the boy, now a young man, longed to be a missionary. He offered his services to the Church Missionary Society; having special work in that part of the world which we have just described in the language of Darwin, he went out, not fearing what might befall him. The gospel is heroic; it has never been terrified. He went amongst the people, lived amongst them, heard their curious vocal tones, put them into shape, created a language for the people, interested them in these forms which he had traced with his own hand, taught them to read the forms and understand them, every day living in peril of his life. He translated part of the story of the Saviour's life, and got the people to read it in the Yah-gan tongue. They read it, understood a little of it, were melted by it, and they wanted to read still further; and the missionary translated more of the Blessed Word into the tongue which he may be said to have created, and the people read, and were subdued and civilised and christianised; and the facts were brought before the great English naturalist, and he honest, fearless soul, pure and noble in every instinct instantly subscribed to the Missionary Society, one of whose agents had wrought, under God, this stupendous change. The English Admiralty had issued orders that that part of the coast was not to be approached by their ships; hearing of the change that had taken place, the orders were recalled, ships were allowed to go to visit and to trade there. What wrought that mighty, wondrous change? Let us be honest; let us be fearless. It was the Gospel of Christ. Agnosticism did not do it; Secularism did not do it; Rationalism did not do it: the heroic Cross did it; Christ did it. It was impracticable as to its mechanical arrangements, laughable, absurd, contemptible; but it was done.

Amen, amen!

The following is an extract from a graphic account of the destruction of Hell Gate Rock, which appeared in the New York Times the day after the explosion:

Over nine acres of obstructing rock formed the barrier which was yesterday destroyed. Just 21,670 feet of tunnelling, in galleries whose floors lay from 50 to 64 feet below mean low tide, with walls from 10 to 24 feet thick between them, and supported by 467 columns of rock, each 15 feet square, had been charged with cartridges filled with explosives. In an instant the tremendous convulsion of an explosion reaching through those four miles of galleries tore the solid rocks asunder, and hurled them in broken masses into the waters of the river. And when those shattered pieces have been gathered up and taken away by the dredgers, Hell Gate will have lost its dangers, and the wrinkled front of navigation through the Sound will have been smoothed into an inviting smile. Ocean steamers will find 26 feet of good, clear water over the once treacherous bottom, and a new highway will be open for the commerce of the world.

People held their breath. Eyes were strained and riveted on the bare brown rock. There was a death-like silence. No one saw her, but over on the Astoria shore a young girl, the daughter of General Newton, was preparing to free the imprisoned forces. Nine years ago, when but a prattling babe, her tiny finger had performed the same office. Then she could not know what she did. But yesterday what did she think?

Away it flew, that viewless spark, to loose three hundred thousand chained demons buried in darkness and the cold, salt waves under the iron rocks. A deep rumble, then a dull boom, like the smothered bursting of a hundred mighty guns far away beyond the blue horizon, rolled across the yellow river. Up, up, and still up into the frightened air soared a great, ghastly, writhing wall of white and silver and grey. Fifty gigantic geysers, linked together by shivering, twisting masses of spray, soared upward, their shining pinnacles, with dome-like Summits, looming like shattered floods of molten silver against the azure sky. Three magnificent monuments of solid water sprang far above the rest of the mass, the most westerly of them still rising after all else had begun to fall, till it towered nearly 200 feet in air. To east and west the waters rose, a long blinding sheet of white. Far and wide the great wall spread, defying the human eye to take in its breadth and height and thickness. The contortion of the wreathed waters was like the dumb agony of some stricken thing.

For a trembling moment the sublime spectacle stood sharp against the sky, like a mighty vision of distant snow-capped mountains. Then down, down, and still down the enormous mass rushed with a wild hissing, as if ten thousand huge steam valves had been opened. The yellow waters of the river were riven and torn into immense boiling masses of white foam. Great waves, ten feet high, rolled outward. Big streaks and spots of deep brown mingled with the white and made ominous shadows under the silver lights. All around the rocks the river swirled and rolled and leaped upward, like the whirlpool of Niagara. A dazzling yellow cloud the pent-up gases of that subterrene convulsion spread over the spot. Then it widened and turned to a brilliant green, then to a faint blue, and floated slowly away toward Astoria. Showers of spray fell like summer rain through the air, and returned to the river. The big hoisting apparatus over the shaft had toppled over and lay broken and smashed on its side. It had not risen into the air. Not a stone was seen to go upward. The wall of ghost-like waters was unbroken. And when the spray had sunk down, and the waters of the river, filled with brown mud, lay boiling around the site of the great explosion, there lay the old rock, torn into myriads of pieces and scattered with debris a ragged, smoking, dun-brown mass. Troja fuit (Flood Rock was).

A hundred steam whistles broke into a shriek of triumph, and cheers were heard on every side. Then the oarsmen in the rowboats bowed their backs, and the steamers opened up their valves, and all hands on the water hastened to the scene of the explosion. All around the place the water was turned to a dirty brown by the upheaval of the bottom of the river. The foam was still bubbling, nearly ten minutes after the explosion. Thousands of pieces of wood, mingled with marine weeds and myriads of dead fish, killed by the shock, were floating down into the East River. Wide sheets of feathery scum, such as may be seen along the seashore after a gale, were lying on the surface of the water. It was all a dingy brown, tinted with the colour of the riven rock and earth. Among the foam and scum floated quantities of fine, yellowish powder, which looked like sawdust. It was the material of which the covering of the cartridges was made. As more than 75,000 of them had exploded, the quantity of this powder was not surprising.

"The survey," says General John Newton, the engineer, "will occupy two or three weeks, and when that is completed, and the necessary advertisements can be published, the work of removing the broken rock will begin. This will occupy two or three years... and will probably cost $500,000.... The channel is, to all intents and purposes, practically doubled, and, when the rock is removed, will be fully 1200 feet in width, as compared with 600 feet, its present dimensions. New York can get along very well without the removal of the other rocks and reefs in the Hell Gate basin, and, if necessary, a new entrance for ocean steamers is afforded. At certain stages of the tide they can come in through the new channel without any trouble whatever, and with very little trouble at any stage of the tide. The principal difficulty of Hell Gate Channel will hereafter not be on account of its width or depth, but will be due to the crowded nature of the thoroughfare. There will be fully 26 feet of water, and, when all the debris is removed, probably more."

I reprint this account because of its suggestiveness in many spiritual directions.

Prayer

Almighty God, we would do everything according to thy will. Do thou settle everything for us, and simply entrust us with thy commandment. Not our will, but thine, be done. We would have no concern except with the dignity and sacredness of thy purpose, our hearts' desire being that thy will should be done on earth as it is done in heaven. To this end do thou grant unto us daily the comforting ministry of thy Holy Spirit, that the spirit of disobedience may be cast out of us, and the spirit of loyalty may be established within us. Without thee we can do nothing; without thy Spirit we are blind, selfish, utterly ignorant, as well as helpless. We therefore cast ourselves upon God, and would be God's chosen servants, instruments in his hands, vessels to be used as he may direct or wish. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Whilst we were perverse and self-willed, we knew not what was right and what was best, and would listen to no voice, but would repel every advancing teacher. Now we have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls; we have seen our folly; we mourn our sin; we would now, through Jesus Christ, the Priest of the everlasting Covenant, be made one with the living God. We come always by the Cross of Christ; there we find the loving, compassionate, forgiving God; there we find law satisfied, righteousness exalted, compassion made possible, and pardon offered to the sons of guilt. Hear us, then, as we pray for more light, more truth, for deeper peace, for a sweeter consent to all the will of God. May we be enabled to say, by day and by night, in summer and in winter, on the birthday and the day of death, It is well, it is best, for God's holy will is done. Dry the tears of our sorrow, comfort us in our unspoken distresses, enter into our hearts and see what is wrong there, and if there be in us any wicked way, cast it out and make our hearts beautiful as thine own temples, holy as thine own sanctuaries. Direct us amid all perplexity, show us what is right, wise, just, and good; keep down within us all evil temper, all rebelliousness, all self-will; fill us with the spirit of charity, which is the Spirit of Christ, and under its blessed inspiration may we do our day's work and await the issue of the toil. Amen.