THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH, Preached in Cuddesdon Parish Church, June 14, 1892. "Wherefore, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."-ACTS xxvi. 19. If the key to the importance of an event is the result that comes from it, the measure of the value of a life is its influence when it is done. If the middle-aged live in the present, and are apt to be absorbed in it; if the old live in the past, and, as the case may be, either reproach themselves unreasonably for what they could not help, or unduly glorify themselves for what would equally have happened without them, the young live in the future, and if they act as well as dream, dig in the earth as well as build in the air, who shall justly blame them? Imagination, with all its admitted perils, has a distinct and reasonable influence on human conduct. "We are saved by hope." "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen." By the visions of faith, and the diffidence that grows out of experience, and the sense of capacity, and the grace of God, we feel our way, and see our duty, and fill our place, and perfect our life. In the passage before us, the apostle tells Agrippa that he had not been disobedient to his heavenly vision. Agrippa, if he was listening, may have felt puzzled. We, at the end of eighteen centuries, observing that that heavenly vision has transformed the face of the world, and that the king's name survives only because for a brief hour it came into contact with that of Saul of Tarsus, are better able to measure the value of the obedience, and of the vision to which it was rendered; may also have come to see that in a very real and lofty sense every true son of God, and every commissioned herald of His gospel, will have heavenly visions of some kind, though not by dreams or trances; that each will have his own, answering to his gifts and capacities; and that they will come when they are wanted. On these visions, and what they mean for us, I wish to speak to you this morning. Our visions, among other things they do for us, test and measure, and in a sense prepare us for a life in which, like St. Paul, He who counts us worthy of it—while He is even quick to dispel the visions that are of earth and self-will little by little, and very gently, unfold to us what great things we must suffer, and perhaps do, for His name's sake. It is a poor and tame soul that has no visions. It is a shallow and ill-balanced one that is for long unsteadied by them. There are many of them, and of differing value; and they open out one by one in the vistas of the gathering years before the listening conscience of the dutiful servant. If they have not begun for us yet, we are not fit for duty; if they are all over for us, our duty is finished. Yet of all of us, be we only true men, it may be said that we stand between two visions -one behind, and one in front; one which has come to us, one which is sure to come,-the vision of the Personal Christ, who, we humbly trust, has chosen and called us, that we should labour with Him for the salvation of the world; the other, the tremendous vision of judgment, when the task to which we have given ourselves is over, the opportunities gone, the past irrevocable, the record filled, the eternity made; when the sheep and lambs of Christ, over whom in His mercy He made us overseers, and about whom He will ask us, "Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?" will all have passed within the veil to see God, and to find themselves, and to give their account of us. Of the four great visions which more or less seize the imagination and fire the heart of Christ's ministers, first, surely, comes the vision which summons us to be the living voice of the divine oracles, the ministers of reconciliation between God and men. This was Isaiah's vision. "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." Who can exaggerate the solemnity of this call, or the issues that hang on it, or the blessedness of being faithful to it, or the misery of some day repenting that it had ever been made? I suppose the soundest condition of heart is that which, like Isaiah's, while it is abashed by the loftiness of the service, shrinks yet more from the baseness of refusing it because it is lofty-in the end, fired with the joy of salvation, quite surrenders itself to Christ. Our second vision-it recurs again and again—is the vision that sends us. It points us to the place where we are to labour, and to the people whom we are to serve, and to the fellows with whom our work is to be done, and it may be to the fathers and elders who are to train us in doing it. This vision touches at once the wisdom and the righteousness of God, the fruitfuiness and faithfulness of |