A Handful of Stars Part 9

III

The joy of finishing and of finishing well! How pa.s.sionately good men have coveted for themselves that ecstasy! I think of those pathetic entries in Livingstone's journal. 'Oh, to finish my work!' he writes again and again. He is haunted by the vision of the unseen waters, the fountains of the Nile. Will he live to discover them? 'Oh, to finish!'

he cries; 'if only I could finish my work!' I think of Henry Buckle, the author of the _History of Civilization_. He is overtaken by fever at Nazareth and dies at Damascus. In his delirium he raves continually about his book, his still unfinished book. 'Oh, to finish my book!' And with the words 'My book! my book!' upon his burning lips, his spirit slips away. I think of Henry Martyn sitting amidst the delicious and fragrant shades of a Persian garden, weeping at having to leave the work that he seemed to have only just begun. I think of Dore taking a sad farewell of his unfinished _Vale of Tears_; of d.i.c.kens tearing himself from the ma.n.u.script that he knew would never be completed; of Macaulay looking with wistful and longing eyes at the _History_ and _The Armada_ that must for ever stand as 'fragments'; and of a host besides. Life is often represented by a broken column in the church-yard. Men long, but long in vain, for the priceless privilege of finishing their work.

IV

The joy of finishing and of finishing well! There is no joy on earth comparable to this. Who is there that has not read a dozen times the immortal postscript that Gibbon added to his _Decline and Fall_? He describes the tumult of emotion with which, after twenty years of closest application, he wrote the last line of the last chapter of the last volume of his masterpiece. It was a glorious summer's night at Lausanne. 'After laying down my pen,' he says, 'I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias which commands a prospect of the country, the lake and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent.' It was the greatest moment of his life. We recall, too, the similar experience of Sir Archibald Alison. 'As I approached the closing sentence of my _History of the Empire_,' he says, 'I went up to Mrs.

Alison to call her down to witness the conclusion, and she saw the last words of the work written, and signed her name on the margin. It would be affectation to conceal the deep emotion that I felt at this event.'

Or think of the last hours of Venerable Bede. Living away back in the early dawn of our English story--twelve centuries ago--the old man had set himself to translate the Gospel of John into our native speech.

Cuthbert, one of his young disciples, has bequeathed to us the touching record. As the work approached completion, he says, death drew on apace.

The aged scholar was racked with pain; sleep forsook him; he could scarcely breathe. The young man who wrote at his dictation implored him to desist. But he would not rest. They came at length to the final chapter; could he possibly live till it was done?

'And now, dear master,' exclaimed the young scribe tremblingly, 'only one sentence remains!' He read the words and the sinking man feebly recited the English equivalents.

'It is finished, dear master!' cried the youth excitedly.

'Ay, _it is finished_!' echoed the dying saint; 'lift me up, place me at that window of my cell at which I have so often prayed to G.o.d. Now glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost!' And, with these triumphant words, the beautiful spirit pa.s.sed to its rest and its reward.

V

In his own narrative of his conversion, Hudson Taylor quotes James Proctor's well-known hymn--the hymn that, in one of his essays, Froude criticizes so severely:

Nothing either great or small, Nothing, sinner, no; Jesus did it, did it all, Long, long ago.

'_It is Finished!_' yes, indeed, Finished every jot; Sinner, this is all you need; Tell me, is it not?

Cast your deadly doing down, Down at Jesus' feet; Stand in Him, in Him alone, Gloriously complete.

Froude maintains that these verses are immoral. It is only by 'doing,'

he argues, that the work of the world can ever get done. And if you describe 'doing' as 'deadly' you set a premium upon indolence and lessen the probabilities of attainment. The best answer to Froude's plausible contention is the _Life of Hudson Taylor_. Hudson Taylor became convinced, as a boy, that 'the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid.' 'There is nothing for me to do,' he says, 'but to fall down on my knees and accept the Saviour.' The chapter in his biography that tells of this spiritual crisis is ent.i.tled '_The Finished Work of Christ_,' and it is headed by the quotation:

Upon a life I did not live, Upon a death I did not die, Another's life, Another's death I stake my whole eternity.

And, as I have said, the very words that Froude so bitterly condemns are quoted by Hudson Taylor as a reflection of his own experience. And the result? The result is that Hudson Taylor became one of the most prodigious toilers of all time. So far from his trust in '_the Finished Work of Christ_' inclining him to indolence, he felt that he must toil most terribly to make so perfect a Saviour known to the whole wide world. There lies on my desk a Birthday Book which I very highly value.

It was given me at the docks by Mr. Thomas Spurgeon as I was leaving England. If you open it at the twenty-first of May you will find these words: '_"Simply to Thy Cross I cling" is but half of the Gospel. No one is really clinging to the Cross who is not at the same time faithfully following Christ and doing whatsoever He commands_'; and against those words of Dr. J. R. Miller's in my Birthday Book, you may see the autograph of _J. Hudson Taylor_. He was our guest at the Mosgiel Manse when he set his signature to those striking and significant sentences.

VI

'_We Build Like Giants; we Finish Like Jewelers!_'--so the old Egyptians wrote over the portals of their palaces and temples. I like to think that the most gigantic task ever attempted on this planet--the work of the world's redemption--was finished with a precision and a nicety that no jeweler could rival.

'_It is finished!_' He cried from the Cross.

'_Tetelestai! Tetelestai!_'

When He looked upon His work in Creation and saw that it was good, He placed it beyond the power of man to improve upon it.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

And, similarly, when He looked upon His work in Redemption and cried triumphantly '_Tetelestai_,' He placed it beyond the power of any man to add to it.

There are times when any addition is a subtraction. Some years ago, White House at Washington--the residence of the American Presidents--was in the hands of the painters and decorators. Two large entrance doors had been painted to represent black walnut. The contractor ordered his men to sc.r.a.pe and clean them in readiness for repainting, and they set to work. But when their knives penetrated to the solid timber, they discovered to their astonishment that it was heavy mahogany of a most exquisite natural grain! The work of that earlier decorator, so far from adding to the beauty of the timber, had only served to conceal its essential and inherent glory. It is easy enough to add to the wonders of Creation or of Redemption; but you can never add without subtracting.

'_It is finished!_'

VII

Many years ago, Ebenezer Wooton, an earnest but eccentric evangelist, was conducting a series of summer evening services on the village green at Lidford Brook. The last meeting had been held; the crowd was melting slowly away; and the evangelist was engaged in taking down the marquee.

All at once a young fellow approached him and asked, casually rather than earnestly, 'Mr. Wooton, what must _I_ do to be saved?' The preacher took the measure of his man.

'Too late!' he said, in a matter of fact kind of way, glancing up from a somewhat obstinate tent-peg with which he was struggling. 'Too late, my friend, too late!' The young fellow was startled.

'Oh, don't say that, Mr. Wooton!' he pleaded, a new note coming into his voice. 'Surely it isn't too late just because the meetings are over?'

'Yes, my friend,' exclaimed the evangelist, dropping the cord in his hand, straightening himself up, and looking right into the face of his questioner, 'it's too late! You want to know what you must _do_ to be saved, and I tell you that you're hundreds of years too late! The work of salvation is done, completed, _finished_! It was finished on the Cross; Jesus said so with the last breath that He drew! What more do you want?'

And, then and there, it dawned upon the now earnest inquirer on the village green as, at about the same time, it dawned upon young Hudson Taylor in the hay-loft, that '_since the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid upon the Cross, there was nothing for him to do but to fall upon his knees and accept the Saviour_.' And there, under the elms, the sentinel stars witnessing the great transaction, he kneeled in glad thanksgiving and rested his soul for time and for eternity on '_the Finished Work of Christ_.'

VIII

'_The Finished Work of Christ!_'

'_Tetelestai! Tetelestai!_'

'_It is finished!_'

It is not a sigh of relief at having reached the end of things. It is the unutterable joy of the artist who, putting the last touches to the picture that has engrossed him for so long, sees in it the realization of all his dreams and can nowhere find room for improvement. Only once in the world's history did a finishing touch bring a work to absolute perfection; and on that day of days a single flaw would have shattered the hope of the ages.

X

RODNEY STEELE'S TEXT

I

'As soon,' Dr. Chalmers used to say, 'as soon as a man comes to understand that _G.o.d IS LOVE_, he is infallibly converted.' Mrs.

Florence L. Barclay wrote a book to show how Rodney Steele made that momentous and transfiguring discovery. Rodney Steele--the hero of _The Wall of Part.i.tion_--was a great traveler and a brilliant author. He had wandered through India, Africa, Australia, Egypt, China and j.a.pan, and had written a novel colored with the local tints of each of the countries he had visited. He was tall, strong, handsome, bronzed by many suns, and--largely as a result of his literary successes--immensely rich. But he was soured. Years ago he loved a beautiful girl. But an unscrupulous and designing woman had gained his sweetheart's confidence and had poisoned her heart by pouring into her ear the most abominable scandals concerning him. She had returned his letters; and he, in the vain hope of being able to forget, had abandoned himself to travel and to literature. But, on whatever seas he sailed, and on whatever sh.o.r.es he wandered, he nursed in his heart a dreadful hate--a hate of the woman who had so cruelly intervened. And, cherishing that hate, his heart became hard and bitter and sour. He lost faith in love, in womanhood, in G.o.d, in everything. And his books reflected the cynicism of his soul.

This is Rodney Steele as the story opens. The boat-train moves into Charing Cross, and, after an absence of ten years, he finds himself once more in London.

II