Beside the Still Waters A Sermon

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BESIDE THE STILL WATERS:

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN

RENSHAW STREET CHAPEL, LIVERPOOL,

ON

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1871.

BY

CHARLES BEARD, B.A.

PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.




LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON,
STRAND, W.C.




In Memory of

ELIZABETH GREENE GAIR.




BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.

    "He leadeth me beside the still waters."
                    PSALM xxiii. 2.


There has been a period of geological speculation, at which all the
changes which have taken place upon the earth's surface, and have left
their unmistakable marks in countless relics of animal and vegetable
life, were attributed to the action of sudden and violent forces, of
which, to-day, earthquake and tempest and volcano are only the feeble
and transitory types. Those changes have manifestly been so great and so
universal, as to stand out in vivid contrast to the imperceptibly slow,
the gently gradual processes, which are all that we are now able to
watch and to record: surely we can attribute them only to causes as
exceptional as themselves. We see Niagara cutting its backward way
through the ravine, so many feet in a thousand years; the lava stream
descends the mountain-side like a black and burning glacier, and
destruction too plainly marks its path; a storm bursts upon the hills,
and for long miles the valleys are choked with barren mud, the bridges
scattered in ruin through the stream, the cheerful husbandry of men laid
hopelessly waste. But we cannot watch the slow upheaval of a long line
of coast, where the fisherman hardly knows at the end of a lifetime
whether the sea has drawn back or his own landmarks have been moved; we
are all unable to note how new continents are now being formed in the
ocean's stillest depths, from whose hardened and uplifted strata future
ages may dig out the relics of so much that has been dear and precious
to us; we fail to notice how every running stream, from the tiniest
mountain rill to muddy Po and fertilizing Nile, is perpetually at work
to carry down the hills into the plains, and to change the world's
familiar face. But so it is, and so, we have some right to conclude, it
has been always. God's chosen ways of working in the physical world are
not wholly of the sudden and violent sort. Storm and earthquake and
flood have undoubtedly played their part; but not more than--perhaps
hardly as much as--the perpetually dropping rain, the wind that seems to
blow as it listeth, the tides that come and go and no man heeds them,
the sun that shines upon barren rock and fertile meadow with serene
impartiality of blessing. God seems to work, by preference, slowly and
in silence. To Him a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is
past, and the dial on which His operations are recorded takes no note of
human thoughts and expectations.

The same is true, I think, in the moral world. It is indeed difficult to
over-estimate the force of a great soul; though it is needful to remark
that not all great souls work in the full light of publicity and have
their path marked by revolution, and equally needful to remember that
not all dislocating and disturbing spirits put forth any true claim to
greatness. We are far too apt to confound the occasions with the causes
of any great change, and to forget that if fire do indeed come out of a
noble heart, it can only kindle other hearts that are already prepared
to burn. Many souls were hot with Luther's indignation, before he
burned the Bull in the market-place of Wittenberg; many spirits had
inwardly rebelled against the deadness of the age, before Wesley told
the Gospel tale to the colliers of Kingswood. One indeed speaks what the
many feel; to him has been given a clearer insight, a diviner ardour, a
more articulate speech; but his word is with power because of the dumb
aspirations stirring in many breasts, and an universal emotion which has
not yet found fit expression. And this is even more the case with regard
to moral operations of a quieter and less signal, though hardly less
important kind; forces which do not so much suddenly change the world,
as keep it (in some poor and imperfect way) sweet and pure, and perhaps,
in the course of ages, urge it a little nearer the throne of God. Is the
faith of Christendom sustained from generation to generation by the
succession of heroes and saints, to whose achievements all men look up
with despairing admiration, and in whose acknowledged and recorded
excellence they see the full embodiment of their own desire, or by the
thousand nameless fidelities to duty, and obscure victories of
self-devotion, and hidden glories of purity, that pass away without
celebration? If you, my brethren, have any stoutness of heart to resist
mean temptation, if you are conscious of any uplifting of desire towards
better and more stable things than form the common stuff of life, if any
quiet trust in God sustains you amid the world's chance and change, to
what do you owe them?