The After-glow of a Great Reign | Page 3

again--would to God we had not to add it!--what a revolution
would be worked in Christian work itself--Christian work that is
supposed to demand from everyone who undertakes it perfect
forgetfulness of self, and entire self-abnegation, to have as its workers
men and women conspicuous for humility, for thinking of others before
themselves, for being ready to bear the cross on the way to the crown.
And yet can we deny--would God we could!--that in Christian work
there is an amount of self-advertisement, of jealousy among workers,
and of insincerity which lowers our cause, and damages the progress of
Christianity? Think for a moment what it would be if all Christians
were really united as Christ meant them to be, if they worked with one
another, showing a common front to the world, one great society, as
Christ conceived it, without jealousy, without conceit, without pride,
but throwing themselves into one magnificent common cause. Why,
nothing could stand before the Christian Church if it were like that. Can
we not in this coming reign, and the century just begun, try and plant in
the heart of every Christian worker truth in the inward parts?
How are we, then--that comes to be the last question--how are we to
attain this wonderful gift, the secret of a strong character?
And, first of all, let us be perfectly clear as to the first essential. The
first essential is detachment of mind. Oh! what cowards we are with
regard to the opinion of others! You will find time after time men and
women, who think themselves free, living under the most degrading
tyranny of fear as to what will be thought of them by others. Not to care
at all what anybody thinks is inhuman, but to be bound by a kind of
trembling terror as to what people will say or think, is a degrading
slavery. Bit by bit it creates in the character a habit of insincerity; little
by little the question is in the heart and in the mind, "Will this be
popular or not? Shall I be liked for this?" We speak or do something
according to the reflection it will make in the thoughts of others. There

may be some here who know that that is their temptation, who know
that they are not true, that they are never themselves, they are always
somebody else, or the reflection of the mind of somebody else. Let the
example of our truthful Queen speak like a trumpet note the old words
of the New Testament, "Stand upright on thy feet," and be a man.
And, if the first secret is detachment of mind, putting aside
self-consciousness, which is very often other-people-consciousness, the
second secret is an increasing consciousness of God. Is it not an
extraordinary thing that when we are only here for a few fleeting years,
and everybody around us is hurrying to his grave as fast as he can, and
when the only person whose opinion matters the least is the eternal God,
Who goes on generation after generation, and before Whom everyone
must appear at the last--is it not an extraordinary thing how little we
think of Him at all? How often during the past week have you thought
of God? To actually acquire a continual sense of His presence, to be
conscious that His eyes, the eyes of Him Who is from everlasting to
everlasting, are always fixed upon us, to rise in the morning with the
feeling, "One more day's work for God," and to go to bed in the
evening with only one care, "How have we done it?"--that is to
gradually foster in the character the second great thing which will
produce truth in the inward parts--a consciousness and love of God.
And then, thirdly, learn truth like a lesson. If we did not learn it as the
Queen did as a child, let us begin now. Watch every word. Are we in
the habit of boasting, are we in the habit of lying, are we in the habit of
being insincere? Not "What did we do?" but "Why did we do it?" is the
real question. Why did we give that donation to something? For the
good of the cause or to see our name in the paper? Why did we do this
thing? Was it done from a true and pure motive? And if, as we try and
learn truth like a lesson, step by step, in word and deed, we also pray
continually, "Give me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit
within me," then there shall emerge gradually something that will last
beyond the grave--an image, which is also the pattern, the character of
the child, slowly won, but which was the prototype to start with; and
thus