his life there rings many a sweet
prophetic echo of the harvest home.

_He that goeth forth and weepeth._ No man ever wept like that and went not
forth, but some go forth who have not wept. And they go forth to certain
failure. They mishandle life, and with good intent do harm. But that is not
the worst thing to be said about these toilers without tears. It is not
that they touch life so unskilfully, but they touch so little of it. It is
only through his tears that a man sees what his work is and where it lies.
Tearless eyes are purblind. We have yet much to learn about the real needs
of the world. So many try very earnestly to deal with situations they have
never yet really seen. For the uplifting of men and for the great social
task of this our day we need ideas, and enthusiasm, and all sorts of
resource; but most of all, and first of all, we need vision. And the man
who goes farthest, and sees most, and does most, is 'he that goeth forth
and weepeth.'




VII.

DELIVERANCE WITH HONOUR


He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble:
I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him,
And show him My salvation.

Ps. xci. 15, 16.

_He shall call upon Me._ He shall need Me. He shall not be able to live
without Me. As the years pass over his head he shall learn that there is
one need woven into human life larger and deeper and more abiding than any
other need--and that need is God. Thus doth divinity prophesy concerning
humanity. Thus doth infinite foresight predict a man's need.

We peer in our purblind fashion into the future and try to anticipate our
needs. We fence ourselves in with all sorts of fancied securities, and then
we comfort ourselves with the shrewdness and completeness of our
forecasting and provision-making. And sometimes it is just folly with a
grave face. 'He shall call upon Me.' A man has learned nothing until he has
learned that he needs God. And we take a long time over that lesson. It has
sometimes to be beaten into us--written in conscience and heart by the
finger of pain. How the little storehouse of life has to be almost stripped
of its treasures, how our faith in the things of the hour has to be played
with and mocked, ere we call upon God in heaven to fill us with abiding
treasure and fold us in eternal love.

_He shall call upon Me, and, I will answer him._ But I have called, says
one, and He has not answered. I called upon Him when my little child was
sick unto death, and, spite my calling, the little white soul fluttered
noiselessly into the great beyond. My friend, you call that tiny green
mound in the churchyard God's silence. Some day you will call it God's
answer. Our prayers are sometimes torn out of our hearts by the pain of the
moment. God's answers come forth from the unerring quiet of eternity. 'He
shall call upon Me.' 'He shall ask Me to help him, but he does not know how
he can be helped. He is hedged about by a thousand limitations of thought.
His life is full of distortions. He cannot distinguish between a blessing
and a curse. I cannot heed the dictations of his prayers, but I will answer
him.' This is the voice of Him to whom the ravelled complexities of men's
minds are simplicity itself; who dwells beyond the brief bewilderments and
mistaken desirings and false ideals of men's hearts.

Oh these divine answers! How they confuse us! It is their perfection that
bewilders us; it is their completeness that carries them beyond our
comprehension.

There is the stamp of the local and the temporary on all our asking. The
answer that comes is wider than life and longer than time, and fashioned
after a completeness whereof we do not even dream.

_I will be with him in trouble._ Trouble is that in life which becomes to
us a gospel of tears, a ministry of futility. This is because we have
grasped the humanity of the word and missed the divinity of it. We are
always