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VI

THE ONE TOUCH MORE

"Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes."-ST. MARK VIII: 25.

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NE of the advantages of the New Year is the psychological benefit it affords us in freshening up our spiritual being. We are reminded that, after all, our great task is not so much to succeed in life as to succeed in living. Wordsworth thought men lived by admiration, by hope, by love; and it is certain that for lack of these shining qualities, men inwardly die. The season is propitious, therefore, because it invites us to retire into our deeper, truer selves and consider the timeless, abiding values. One of these values is splendidly hinted in the text, and it is broadly seen in the Master's entire life and ministry. It is that immeasurable value of doing a little more than is actually required, of planning more largely than is in keeping with average human nature, of speaking somewhat more generously than is customary for tongues natively critical. A few Sundays ago, after conducting a vesper service in one of Brooklyn's hospitals, I was taken through the wards by the founder, that we might say a word to the sufferers.

By each bed I noticed a flower, and by way of explanation, my friend said: "Do you see that little flower? Well, it is our custom here to have a flower by each bed when the patient is placed in it. Patients receive flowers from their friends, of course, but we do not want a single patient to wait even a day for a bit of bloom and cheer. And this," he added, gently, "is what we call 'the one touch more.'" Instantly I was back in old Bethsaida looking at a blind man, or else the Master of Bethsaida had come gloriously close to my side! For I found myself repeating: "Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes."

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Is not the one touch more the secret of Christianity? Surely, the wonder of our religion is in its overflow of graciousness, its thrill of the uncatalogued, its utterance of the unlanguaged, its conquest of the added touch. Compared with all other religions, Christianity excels in what it adds, not in what it takes away; in what it fulfils, not in what it destroys; in what it supplies, not in what it suppresses. To-day we frankly recognize the good in other religions; we are not unmindful of what the world owes to Confucianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and other faiths. Some of us can recall the time when, if a scintilla of good was discovered in these venerable beliefs, we

thought a direct attack had been made upon the validity of our own religion. Happily, our mood is wiser and more Christlike now. We say: "Yes; there is much that is excellent in ethnic religions. God has never left Himself without witness in any nation. Religion is the noblest aspiration in the heart of man; no people have been without a religion; hence their prophets and teachers. Schoolmasters of the race, they have led their scholars gropingly, ofttimes very crudely and imperfectly, along the dim-lit paths opening into the larger day. What these faiths lack, our own supplies; their imperfection but helps to more fully reveal the completeness of the Christian's faith."

Here, then, we take our stand for the divinity of Christ's revelation: It offers the one touch more. In the best sense, ours is not a religion of exclusion, but of inclusion. Other creeds may furnish the first touch and the second; Christianity alone adds the third and final touch of uttermost salvation. Are you a mystic? Christianity contains enough mysticism to satisfy a race of mystics. Are you a pragmatist? Christianity is so practical that, with all its mysticism, there is no hope whatever of understanding it without practising it, doing it up in flesh and blood and sending it forth into the roaring, dusty streets of the everyday. Are you a poet? Well, one angel undertook to tell those shepherds of the Christ-child. But I suppose it was too much for him. Maybe his voice broke, and maybe

all the strings on his harp snapped-I don't know. At any rate, one angel was not enough to sing the Advent song, for "suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." But if you are neither a mystic, nor a pragmatist, nor a poet, I know you are a sinner. We are all sinnersthat is the horrible, unspeakable indictment of our humanity. Yet, here again, is the one touch more of Christianity: The shame of being a sinner is offset by being saved from sin in Christ Jesus!

But if this law of the added touch is embodied in the Christian system, how wondrously, how heartbreakingly is it seen in the Master's personal relations. Witness the scene from which the text is taken. Here is this blind man-who in that weltering mass of oriental humanity cares anything for a blind man? I fear earth's answer would be disappointing; but Heaven has a big, sweet, tender, golden answer. You ought to dip your voice in tears before attempting to read it: "And He took hold of the blind man by the hand." If you can read that without a kind of sob, my friend, your heart is as hard as marble. Oh, my soul, what is this! Methinks angels are hiding behind their wings, the silence of awe is on their lips, as they gaze on this new world's wonder. The Hand that hammered out the stars and set them in their places has clasped the hand of a blind man! The Hand that nestles the

seas in its hollow, teaching them now to roar in awful harmony and now to sigh with infinite yearning-ah, me! that Hand is leading a sightless man out of the village! He who walks the worlds and the eternities knows how to keep step with a poor, halting, eyeless human! But the wonder is not yet. True, He took him by the hand and led him forth, touching those dead eyes. Already the man can see somewhat-men as trees, walking. But that is not enough for the Master; He must yet add that touch of tender grace, that fine, rich, wordless, beautiful something-sweet as a flower by a sick man's bed; white as mother-love, stealing into the daughter's room and kissing the fair sleeping girl that on the morrow will be a bride; artless as the child coming out of the Vast Unseen into our noises, and then toddling back again into the heavens with a merry peal of lyric laughters, while we stand looking up, thinking "unworded things and old." Or, take the case of the nameless woman. That day the Master came to the temple in the early morning. While He was teaching, heartless men drag this soiled creature into His presence. Her crime, said these men, must be expiated by stoning. "But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground." Moses added a pile of stones to such as she; but Jesus added the Divine Forgiveness, making the sweet flowers of her girlhood bloom amid the desolate wastes of life; for her blasted noonday and the dread oncoming night, Jesus gave

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