There are … voices … and none of them is without signification.
Voices
1. It does not follow that because the voice has no meaning for you that therefore it has no meaning for others. I heard some splendid music the other clay, and a friend exclaimed, “What tenderness, what pathos is in it.” John Stuart Mill said that the first meaning of Wordsworth’s poetry was a new birth to him; he felt himself a better man. Maurice often talked in an unknown tongue once; people understand him now. You may read a chapter of Christian experience and it may be in an unknown tongue to you.
2. But the difficulty will be to reduce what you have seen and heard into intelligible speech that will edify others. A young person is asked to sing, and she dashes at once into a French or German song. What affectation it is when there are troops of English songs with the sweet pathos of English traditions in them. There are artists a great deal more silly. Their chief pride is that they don’t edify. Many words might be spoken in praise of the noble address from the chair of the British Association; but I give the highest praise when I say you can understand it. The best part of your creed is what you can put into a little child’s mouth. If you want to know what the essence of the gospel is, take a little boy of eight between your knees and tell him the gospel, and what you can make him understand is its pith and essence.
3. There are many voices in the world, and our business is to try to discover their significance. There are voices which are transitory, which speak to one generation and then cease. They startle one, and then are heard no more, like the rousing proclamation of some half-forgotten truth or a wail of consternation at the spiritual condition of England. But some voices speak on for age and age, and uninterruptedly.
I. The voice of the material creation. For its scientific or philosophical signification. You must listen to the scientific report of the year. What is its spiritual signification? What is there to be converted into fuel that can feed our faith and enlarge our hope? The material world is the revelation of the Divine intellect and heart. What do we find in this material creation that sends a message to our spiritual nature which may be converted into fuel for our faith? I think it is this: You can always calculate upon God. God has always known His own mind. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Think of the value of that in your religious life. The first instinct of your religious life is to have unchanging things. We have said hard things about Nature. We have called her blind and pitiless. There can be not the slightest divergence from her path. Every heart in this creation may break, but the earth will still go on. But there is another side to that. You can calculate always upon God, He will never disappoint you. All of our life would break out into panic if there were any disorganisation of the laws of nature of which we complain sometimes. The farmer knows that the seasons will come round, and the mariner goes out to sea without fear. If you care to meet God this morning, there can be no doubt as to where to meet Him. There is a certainty with regard to God and our souls which we cannot have with regard to anything else. Take any promise in His Word. “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He has never moved away from that. If you put your life and the lives of your children in God’s path every morning, you may be perfectly sure that He will pass that way. The Church oftentime feels that the paralysis is creeping over her and that she can do nothing. You are not content with things as they are. You want a re-vi-val, a re-consecration, a re-awakening, a fresh joy in the gospel of Christ, and a fresh equipment for service. We can have it without any uncertainty; we have as a Church only to place ourselves in God’s way. We have only to get out of the things He hates, to redouble our energies in the Sunday school, and among the erring. I have seen, when the heavens said there was a great shower coming, the housewife put out every vessel to catch the rain. You must range every faculty you possess at God’s disposal. Be ready! God will not disappoint you. If the channels are doubled the rain is sure to come.
II. The voices in your own souls. These are of two kinds. There are the imperative voices. Then there are the pathetic voices. George Eliot said, “See if the sigh does not discover Him who touched the heart into a sigh.” What a chapter it would be if every one in this congregation were this morning to write out one of his sorest needs. We need a living God, we need the grasp of His hand, we need heaven! We want to be forgiven; we want home. We have loved and lost. And oh, the unspeakable blessedness of the voice of our need in prayer. I have cried, “Father, I am sad, I am lonely.” And a voice has come into my soul, saying, “Fear not; I am with thee.” You may pile the scepticism of the world then, but it takes nothing of this from me. And this is the significance of our need. I have read a very wonderful book, written by a man who sums up the arguments in this way: there is as much to be said for the existence of God as there is to be said against it, and vice versa. If this were so it is enough for me. If the arguments for or against the existence of God were so equally balanced, my necessities and needs would weigh the balance down. (Morlais Jones.)
A preacher should study plain language
I. Language is designed as the vehicle of thought.
1. Many languages.
2. All significant.
II. Language ceases to be the medium of thought when not understood. There is--
1. No instruction.
2. No sympathy of mind.
3. No edification.
III. Plainness should therefore be studied--
1. As the most excellent of gifts.
2. For the benefit of the Church. With much prayer. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The diversity of human language
Consider--
1. Language as the vehicle of thought.
2. Its extraordinary variety.
3. The cause.
4. Its effect upon the condition of mankind--social and moral.
5. Its gradual alleviation.
6. Its final removal. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Sweetness of voice
There is no power of love so hard to get and keep, writes Elihu Burritt, as a kind voice. A kind hand is dead and dumb. It may be rough in flesh and blood, yet do the work of a soft heart, and do it with a soft touch. But there is no one thing which love so much needs as a sweet voice, to tell what it means and feels; and it is hard to get and keep in the right tone. One must start in youth, and be on the watch night and day, at work and at play, to get and keep a voice which shall speak at all times the thoughts of a kind heart. It is often in youth that one gets a voice or tone which is sharp, and it sticks to him through life, and it stirs up ill-will, and falls like a drop of gall upon the sweet joys of home. Watch the voice day by day as a pearl of great price, for it will be worth more to you in the days to come than the best pearl hid in the sea. A kind voice is to the heart what light is to the eye. It is a light which sings as well as shines.
