26 Our Lord's Holidays and Ours
XXVI OUR LORD’S HOLIDAYS AND OURS
What a never-to-be-forgotten time the twelve disciples must have had when at leisure and alone with their Master up among the hillsides and watersheds of Galilee! To have had His generous discharge for a short season from their far too hard work, and then to have been continually and uninterruptedly with Him when He was in His holiday mind--what a memorable experience that must have been! "Come away," He said to the overworked twelve, "and I will take you to a place apart that no man knows. For if this goes on, we shall all sink under it before we have half finished the work that has been given us to do. There are so many coming and going that we have no leisure so much as to eat." And having so said, He arose and led His disciples into a hill country that no man knew but He Himself And all their after days His disciples remembered their first holiday with their Divine Master: the place of it, and the occupations of it, and the recreations and amusements of it, so high up among the delectable mountains Israel. Jesus of Nazareth had known the whole of that hill country, every foot of it, from the days of His youth. He knew all the places where the water-springs rose and ran among the hills. He knew where the fowls of heaven had their habitation which sing among the branches. He took and conducted His disciples to where the hills were watered from the chambers of God, where the grass grew for the cattle and herbs for the service of man. The trees of the Lord were full of sap in the place He chose for them to make their tabernacles, the cedars of Lebanon which God had planted with His own hands; where the birds build their nests, and where, as for the stork, the fir-trees are her house. The high hills all around their retreat were a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conics. And away up there, for days and for weeks, they held their Summer School of natural and revealed theology. No; the Stoics were not the founders of natural theology. The prophets and the psalmists of Israel first founded that heavenly science, and Jesus of Nazareth and His twelve disciples were the devoted scholars and the direct successors of those ancient prophets and psalmists. The Eighth Psalm and the Nineteenth Psalm and the Hundred-and-fourth Psalm are all full of natural theology; and those twelve natural theologians, with their Master at their head, had a memorable holiday-time singing those psalms and offering those prayers up among the highlands of northern Israel.
We are not told with any detail just how our Lord and His disciples spent their mornings and their noonday’s and their nights when they were on their first holiday together. But if we have come to think how He would have us ourselves to plan for beforehand, and then actually to carry out our holidays, that will throw back a sure light upon how He spent His holiday up among the hills of the Holy Land. Well, to begin with, we learn from this scripture, as well as from our own observation, that holidays are designed for those who deserve them. A holiday is like wages for work well done; and we must work for our wages before we begin to spend them. One of the best preparations for a happy holiday is to carry into it a good conscience for good work well done. And thus it is that experienced holiday-makers work their very hardest and do their very best just before their holiday time. They have learned by many instances that nothing ruins a holiday like a bad conscience about bad work. A bad conscience about work badly done, or left undone, is a very millstone round the neck of many a holiday-maker. But a good conscience is continual sunshine, even in wet weather. A good conscience is a perpetual feast. Let us be sure then that we are like our Lord and His disciples in this also—that we honestly earn our happy holiday before we begin to spend it. The working world has always had its holidays. But there never were so many and so long holidays as there are nowadays. And the reason of that is because holidays were never needed as they are needed nowadays. We smile as we read in the prophet that many ran to and fro in his day till knowledge was increased. And we smile even more at the complaint of the preacher that of making of many books there was no end in his day, and that much study was a weariness to his flesh. What would Solomon and Daniel have said had they seen our trams, and our trains, and our steamships? What would they have said if they had seen our publishers’ weekly lists, and our booksellers’ loaded counters? Working men never worked so hard as they do in our day, especially those men who work with their heads and their hearts. And then there is a haste and a hurry in our day of which our hardest worked forefathers knew nothing: till our holiday time is as indispensable at this season of the year as is the repose of the night after the hard-worked day, and as is the rest of the Lord’s day after the hard-worked week.
Hackneyed in business, wearied at the oar, Which thousands, once fast chained to, quit no more, The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade, Pant for the refuge of some rural shade-- For regions where, in spite of sin and woe, Traces of Eden are still seen below; Where mountain, river, forest, field and grove, Remind him of his Maker’s power and love. To them the deep recess of dusky groves, Or forest where the deer securely roves, The fall of water, and the song of birds, And hills that echo to the distant herds, Are luxuries excelling all the glare The world can boast, and her chief favorites share. So sang William Cowper, a most delightful poet for a thoughtful holiday. And John Milton supports him with his stately prose :--"In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and a sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake of her rejoicing with heaven and earth." At the same time, while a season of retreat and relaxation is indispensable for the worker, and especially for the brain-worker, of our busy day, a wholesome and a happy holiday cannot be spent without its own proper occupation. As William Cowper again sings :-- Tis easy to resign a toilsome place, But not to manage leisure with a grace.
Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. And Pascal, throwing all his power and passion into this subject, says :--"Nothing is so insupportable to man as to be completely idle. For he then feels all his nothingness, all his loneliness, all his insufficiency, all his weakness, all his emptiness. At once in his idleness, and from the deeps of his soul, there will arise weariness, gloom, sadness, vexation, disappointment, despair." Something of that, if not the whole of that, most holiday-makers have experienced when they have set out to enjoy themselves without reflecting that nothing is so intolerable, either in town or country, as pure idleness and emptiness of mind.
Good books are as necessary for the healthy mind on a holiday as good bread is necessary for the healthy body. And a wise and experienced holiday-maker will no more neglect to go to the bookseller than he will neglect to go to the baker. And what an intense delight are good books, new and old, on an autumn holiday! New books that we have not had time to read in the city, and old books that we want to read over again and again, as Jowett read Boswell for the fiftieth time, and as Spurgeon read Bunyan for the hundredth time; the best novel of the year, the best poem, the best biography, the best book of travels, or science, or philosophy, or of learned or experienced religion; and old books--our old Shakespeare, and Bacon, and Hooker, and Milton, and Bunyan, and Butler. It is only well-experienced and wary holiday-makers who can tell to new beginners what memorable summer mornings and summer evenings can be spent in the society of such old and long-tried friends as these. But there are still other books for a holiday time besides those that the booksellers supply. "Exempt from public haunts, we find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." Yes; what tongues in trees the holiday botanist finds, and what sermons in stones the geologist! With one of Darwin’s books in our hands, how our eves open on the world around us! With such a book as Geikie’s "Scenery of Scotland" well studied, how we learn to look with new wonder at the most familiar hills and valleys around our holiday home! And with Herschell and Proctor and Ball in our hands, how we stand and worship under the autumn evening sky!
Perhaps the very happiest of all holiday-makers is the man who has some favorite hobby, for his hobby has this happy power about it, that it makes him forget for the time the whole world of things outside of itself. Be it shooting, or fishing, or botanising, or geologising, or cycling, or motoring, or catching moths, or inspecting cathedrals if only it is the man’s hobby, how happy he is, and how his hobby absorbs him! A day on the hillside with the sportsman or with the geologist or with the botanist, or at the river-side or loch-side with the angler or the artist, a day among the ruins of old abbeys and old Roman roads and camps--either he who rides his hobby is very selfish, or we who follow him about are very stupid, if we do not confess when we return home that such an enthusiastic day is an ideal day for a holiday. One of the most delightful holiday’s I ever enjoyed was spent as sole companion to a friend of mine who was riding a hobby of which I could not so much as hold the bridle. But so happy did his hobby make him, and through him me, that I look back to those days in Central France as almost my very best holiday. But after all is said, it is not in any or all of these things that the true and sure happiness of our next holiday will stand. If we would be happy ourselves we must first make others happy. This is the Divine law that is laid on every human life and on every human heart at all times and in all places--he only is happy who is doing good to other people. A Spartan’s best holiday, said Thucydides, is the day on which he does his duty best. Let all intending holiday-makers lay that to heart. Let them not begin by seeking a happy holiday for themselves, but rather for other people. Let the husband resolve in his heart to make his wife happy, and the wife her husband. The brother his sister, and the sister her brother. The student his fellow-student, and the schoolboy his schoolfellow. Let those who have shootings and fishing’s resolve to share those holiday delights with those who have none of these things. Let those who have a long holiday cut out a short holiday for those who otherwise will have none at all. And let those who are well off in the world send for and make happy guests of those who are not so well off. And especially, let us be thoughtful and considerate toward the people in whose country we reside for a season. Let us not offend or vex them in any way. Let us respect their religious observances, their very superstitions, and traditions, and prejudices. Let us learn from them what they have to teach us, and let us not set up to teach them. If you are among Roman Catholics abroad, do not desecrate their sacred shrines. If you are among devout and scrupulous Highlanders at home, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Attend the church of your fathers all the more regularly and reverently that it is unfashionable and poor. And stand up for the oppressed and the downtrodden as you have opportunity. Such things as these constitute the divine secret and sure guarantee of a happy holiday. And there is this also. A holiday is a providential opportunity for restoring and reviving impaired and decayed friendships. What a pleasant surprise you could give this summer to some old friends who think and say that you have clean forgotten them. If they received a letter telling them where you are to be found and demanding that they name a day to come and see you and yours. "As cold waters to a thirsty soul," they would say, "so is good news from a far country." And your old friends’ visit would be a red-letter day in your holiday; it would be the most sunshiny day of all the summer. "Keep your friendships in repair" was a great saying of old Dr. Johnson. And by the way, be sure you put Boswell among your holiday books. And then after your holiday is over and you have returned home, make a point of keeping up an occasional correspondence with some of the friends you made during your holiday. Send, or still better get your son or your daughter to take charge of sending, an old monthly magazine or a weekly paper to the gamekeeper’s family. Send a parcel of books at Christmas to the district Sabbath-school. Send the theological book that all the town is talking about to the minister, and a pound of tea to that godly old soul that you sometimes visited. It will cost you next to nothing to do all that, and it will keep alive feelings towards you and yours that much gold cannot purchase. And then, besides a rested and a recruited body, be sure you bring home a better mind than you took away. Take some autumn Sabbath mornings of some length, and spend them all alone with God. Do not avoid and forget Him all through your holiday. Keep that friendship in repair. Make more appointments than one with Him, and He will keep them all with you. In the garden, by the river-side, in the wood, on the hill-top, enter into matters at some length and depth with Jesus Christ. And if there is any misunderstanding or any controversy between you and Him, refuse to return home till it is all set right. Resolve to do that. Set out on your holiday with that in your heart, and you will have as good times in Scotland as the disciples ever had with Jesus Christ up in the highlands of Israel.