JESUS AND OUR INFLUENCE

WE must go to the East to realize that a person's shadow has there a far greater significance than it has here. In Indian villages still, a Brahmin would throw his food away if the shadow of an outcaste passed over it. A poor widow once flattened her­self against the wall, and afterwards continually manceuvred her body, lest her shadow should fall on my wife in a hospital ward which the latter was visiting. The woman feared the shadow would do harm. Conversely, I have seen people manoeuvre themselves so that Mr. Gandhi's shadow should fall upon them and bring them blessing. I have won­dered whether the people mentioned in Acts were healed when Peter's shadow passed over them, not because there was anything in the shadow, but because there was a very great deal in their belief that a good man cast a healing influence around him.

Though it seems presumptuous to modest people to say so, I am quite sure that each one of us does cast some kind of shadow, and can no more help doing so than we can avoid casting a real shadow on a sunny day. You cannot throw a pebble into a pond without causing ripples, which will go on till they reach the shore. And you cannot put a person into
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any sphere of life without causing ripples of influence which, at long last, break on the shores of eternity.

There is a thought which, to me, is even more solemn than that. It is that that influence is either good or bad. We cannot be neutrals. Jesus put it very definitely when He said that those who were not for Him were against Him. If you were not gathering, you were scattering. The total effect of our life is either on the side of the saints or it is on the side of those who are the definite enemies of God. It is so fatally easy to suppose that we can satisfy God by one or two bits of what we call Christ‑Ian work, forgetting that nine‑tenths of our life is spent in doing our private job, so that the way we do that is the determining factor in reckoning up what our influence really is. ' Many,' says Jesus, 'will say to Me in that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Thy name, and by Thy name do many mighty works, and by Thy name cast out devils? " And I will profess unto them, " I never knew you."' And, if we put that in terms of modem language, it comes to this, 'Lord, Lord, did we not teach in the Sunday school, and fill many offices in the Church, and attend one hundred and four services a year, and do this and that and the other in Thy name ? ' And He will answer, ' You only exerted a good influence where the environment was easy and helpful and already good. As soon as you got into an atmosphere where My name was not revered, you did as others did, you would not show your colours, you hauled
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down your flag.' It is a solemn truth, so solemn that I do not think we should take it from any lips save those of Jesus, that we are either, in the totality of our influence, making it easier or harder for other people to be good.

Turn to a more comfortable thought, having faced an uncomfortable one. Notice the unrealized power of influence. I doubt if Peter knew what his shadow was making possible as he walked down the street. The stone knows nothing of the ripples it makes. The Christian often knows nothing of the effect of an open Christian life lived before men with all the flags flying. The most wonderful example of this I have ever known is as follows‑I copy it from one of my note‑books and am only sorry that I cannot trace where I first saw it : A little more than two hundred years ago an old Puritan doctor wrote a book, and died without knowing that it had been of any use to any one. As to who he was we are in doubt, but he called his book The Bruised Reed. Richard Baxter, was converted by reading The Bruised Reed, and he wrote A Call to the Uncon­verted. Philip Doddridge was converted by reading Baxter's book, and he himself wrote The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. William Wilberforce read Doddridge's book, and he wrote A Practical View of Christianity. That book went north and south. In the north, Thomas Chalmers read it, and he set all Scotland on fire with God. It went south, and Leigh Richmond read it, and it inspired him to write The Dairyman's Daughter, a book which has made God more real to many. An
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unknown book by an unknown writer, and no one can see the end of the influence or count the ripples it makes. But the whole point of my illustration is missed if we think that it is only by writing books that such influence is spread. The point is that, because it lay largely with writing books, we can trace the influence. It is a matter of literary criticism. But, if we had any means of tracing it, we should find that the spoken word has the same kind of glorious history, spoken by people often in great timidity of soul; but 'one loving spirit sets another on fire,' and the word, the look even, the handshake, the silent life, have just as thrilling a history as that old Puritan's book if we only think about it for a moment.

I shall never forget staying for a week‑end during the war with a gifted lady who had a letter from a man unknown to her, written in the trenches before an offensive. We will call him Murray, because that was not his name. To make the story short, he said that he was once in her Sunday‑school class. She had spoken of Christ as the boys' Hero. He men­tioned the date when she had altered his whole boyish outlook. He said he was going over the top very soon, but he wanted to write and say that all was well with him. The interesting thing was that she had kept a diary. While I was there she turned up the date. She found that she had come home very disconsolate, almost determined to give up teaching. She had made an entry something like this? 'Had an awful time. The boys were so rest­less. I am not cut out for this kind of thing. I had
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to take two classes together. No one listened, except, at the end, a boy from the other class called Murray seemed to be taking it in. He grew ‑ very quiet and subdued. But I expect he was just tired of playing up.' Not that time. ' The wind bloweth where it listeth '‑and that afternoon a boy was being' bom of the Spirit.' Well has Phillips Brooks said, 'No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good without the world being better for it, without some one being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.'

We are sometimes depressed because things do not happen quickly. Our influence does not work instant miracles. Look at this picture a minute. Here is a bare, rugged mountain ‑ so high and so barren is its summit that not even the tiny mountain flowers can grow on the top. There is soil, but it is dry, and hard, and sun‑bitten. Two possibilities suggest themselves to my mind. Lightning may come down from the clouds, rend the peak, and, in the fraction of a second, leave a scar. And in that cleft the little flowers may grow. But there is another alternative. In the quiet of some evening, all silently, there steals down upon that mountain peak a long, white, fleecy cloud, like some great mantle put by a mother's tender hand about her fretful, wakeful child. The great mountain seems to sigh, and turn to sleep.~ In the early dawn the sun with gentle fingers unwraps the engirdling mist, and the great mountain wakes to life and joy and sunlight. Night after night this happens, and
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every time the soil is moistened, till at last fertility is reached.

I have gone into the presence of some people and, like a flash of lightning, I have known them saints of God. To come into their very presence is immediate help. One passes out of it a better man. But there are others, not less saintly. We must fall back, perhaps, on the word personality for an explanation. The effect is gentler. There is no electricity in the air around them. Their influence droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, but the effect is the same. I am glad God's Spirit works like that, and that in the same hymn we can pray ' Come as the fire ' and ' Come as the dew.' There is Peter with his sudden miracles. But, thank God, there is also healing where gentle Pippa passes.

I love the story in Drummond's life of the Ameri­can medical student who tried to win an atheist. The two were great friends, but the American was a sincere Christian. Drummond himself had tried to win the atheist, but in vain. At last the American finished his course, packed his trunks, and got ready to return to his own country to start a practice. ' Then,' he told Drummond later, 'I wondered whether a year of my life would be better spent in starting as a doctor in America or staying in Edin­burgh to win that man for Christ. I have decided tostay.' ' Well,' said Drummond, 'it will pay you. You will get your man.' It took eleven months, but after that time Drummond saw the two sitting together at a Communion service. Before the
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one‑time atheist left the University, he came to Drummond's room. Drummond said, ' What do you want?' The man said, 'I want to be a medical missionary.' It was the cloud coming down again and again and again, till the ground was softened, and then very quietly going away, without any fuss or noise. The healing shadow had done its work and passed on.

Yet it is little use our saying, ' Go to, I will exert an influence.' You might as well get some gaudy artificial flowers and soak them with vulgar scent, pin them on a twig, and send them to the sick, expecting them to say what can only be said with flowers. Influence, like fragrance, cannot be con­veyed in that artificial way. I have read of a Valley of Roses so extensive that the air is heavy for miles with the perfume of the flowers. And he who passes through the valley finds that the scent hangs in his very clothing, so that, if he goes into a room full of folk at the end of his journey, they look at one another and smile. They know where he has been. Peter knew the secret of His influence. So did John. Gradually the people learnt it. 'They took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.' His shadow had fallen upon them. They were changed men. Their fragrance was His own.

Let us urge one another to this blessed ministry. One sentence in workshop or factory, in college or school, and others see the colours shine and find it easier to follow. One girl in a workroom who will not gamble, though it makes her feel foolish to
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stand out; one man in an office who will not laugh at the filthy jest, though for life he is branded as 4 pi ' ; one ' daring act of rectitude,' and a host will follow and in their hearts thank God for the one who was brave. God called Peter from a fishing business, and Matthew from an office, and Livingstone from a loom, and Chalmers from a plough, and Moffat from a garden, and Mary Slessor from a mill, and they became immortal ; but, if the world is going to be filled with the glory of God, He must have His ministers in all these places, not only called from them; but people who are doing the , same work, ‑the work which has captured the most heroic spirits in all history. And they too will be among the immortals:

The choir invisible
Of those immortal dead, who live again
In lives made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge Man's search
To vaster issues.