Notes of a Sermon Preached by the Rev. C £. Darwent in Union Church, Tientsin, Text: I Samuel X. I; What is this that has come to the son of Kish? among the prophets?"
What a way the Bible stories, more than any others that have! come to us from olden times, have of living again! The writers had a knack of hitting off the salient ivatures of human nature, which in its essence rever seems to! change at all. The Bible is indeed a revelation of God, but it is equally a revelation of man. "Saul among the prophets" is an old story, and the modern Saul on whom wish to speak to-night the late Admiral Fisher. First for a few moments we will consider him himself, and then how hei comes to be among the prophets. We all have some idea of his work and character. He was a kind of human besom. Wherever he went he swept things clean. The phrase he is mostly connected with is "Sack the lot." Once he did sack 6,000 men from a dockyard, That! needed some doing, a huge courage, for the hatreds engendered must have been something fierce. When he saw a naval reform was needed he went for the obstructors of it, no matter how highly placed. Ho was a fierce determined man. He says, "I entered the navy penniless and always had to fight. And fighting like hell has made me what Iam. Hunger and thirst are the best ways to heaven."
That is a tonic for an ago that is inclined to want everything done for it. He got things done. He seems to have been a main cause of Mr. Gladstone's final resignation. The old gang opposed every necessary innovation, and he had to fight. Typical of him is his appreciation of a bit of advice given him by a relative of Lord Beaconsfield: "If you are to have a row with anyone, begin it yourself." There is a lot in that. He admired men who got things done. In America he met a man who had built a hotel in three months. Talking with one of the workmen, he found that the men called the firm, "Jolly and Hustle." The man said, "We call it 'Jolly' because none of us get less than $5 a day, and we get all refreshments we want while working, and we call it 'Hustle,' because we work 16 hours a day, and hard too." Pisher remembered this, for later he wanted a fort built in a month or so. The British builder declared that it was impossible. Whereupon Fisher asked Jolly and Hustle. They agreed. Thereupon our own contractor saw his way do it.
Tue Drivinc Power.
Lord Fisher, was a driver. He knew everything about ships. It Is Saul also was he who was responsible for the scrapping of 160 ships of the navy. We can all imagine the furious opposition to that by the economists and howling pacificists. He die tributed the fleet according to the then needs, placing the main strength in the North Sea. What do we not owe him for that? He was the author of the new type of battleship, called the Dreadnought." His war mottoes are not exactly pacificist: an instant offensive is obligatory"; "whoever hits soonest and oftenest will win "the enemy must be smitten down, and then you may spare him."
So youl read, and you think of Lord Fisher as a man, who thinks about nothing but guns, torpedoes, submarines, forts; as if he were a man thirsting for the gore of his fellow-men, only happy when there is a war in prospect. You expect to find this kind of thing endlessly, or Society items. here are photographs of him on battleships with empresses and queens and other high personages about him. Possibly you think of him as a kind of Society admiral, like the officer in one of Rider Haggard's books, who could not well fight unless he had had @ shave. So you read on in his book of "Records" until you are pulled up in surprise. And there is nothing for you to do, if you know your Bible at all, but to think at once of this text and this incident in the life of the first king of Israel; "What is this that has come to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?" To your surprise—at all events to mine~you turn to a new chapter and find that torpedoes and guns and ships have vanished, and you find yourself not only reading about a version of the Bible, but about particular texts of Scripture, as if you were reading the life of a superannuated minister. You say, "Can this be the man, who said that your enemies must be "smitten to the ground," that if you are fo have a row, you start it?' You can hardly believe it.
When you remember such a number of people who profess to be bored to death with religion, you ask, Can it be that this man of guns, this admirer, of "Jolly and Hustle," actually had his ideas about texts of the Bible, and was as interested in them as any minister could possibly be? Yet it is so. Saul is actually "among the prophets." Indeed he is. He was as busy a man as most of the people who say they have no time for these things, yet here is the man of Dreadnoughts a deeply-interested Bible student. It is all most interesting, surprising, and instructive. No book, that I have read for a long time has taught me as' much as this. I only wish that Admiral Fisher had seen his way to write a pithy commentary on some parts of the Scriptures. It would have sold, as they say, "like hot cakes."
Years or Levine Stupy.
His comments on the Bible show, first, that his interest was a steady one and of long standing. That is a great thing. We are all religious. Churches were thronged in August, 1914, when the war broke out. I went into Westminster Abbey at noon the day after war was declared. It was crammed. It is not now. No, But Lord Fisher's interest in the religious side of things was not like that. It was constant and deep, and spontaneous. It was not the result of his being prodded up by well-meaning friends, who "had his good at heart." Let us take some examples of this surprising Saul among the surprised prophets.
He once went to hear Dr. Hugh Black preach. Cly. Black was the colleague of Dr. Alexander Whyte in Edinburgh. Now _he is a professor in America, Lord Fisher says, it was a very eloquent' sermon, but had one big blunder in jit. That was that he stated that the "Authorized Version" of Scripture is superior to that of the "Great Bible." "Great Bible!" How many here know anything about the "Great Bible?" But "Sack the Lot" did. He says that Dr. Black's text was Wait on the Lord" (Psalm XXVII). The rendering in the "Great Bible" is, "Tarry thou the Lord's leisure." That is fine, is it not? No one can doubt that Lord Fisher had a sound taste in Scriptural English and you don't get that in five minutes. It is the growth of years of loving study. What a-world of truth in that! We want the Lord who finds "a thousand years as one day" to straighten out all the tangles of the world in five minutes. He does nothing of the kind. 'There is a stately leisurely way with God in grace, as there is in' His processes in nature. "Tarry thou the Lord's leisure" is a text we well might ponder in these days, with much profit to ourselves, and to our peace of mind.
Tue Founpation or Prayer.
But think for a moment of the intense surprise of Dr. Black at being pulled up on a matter within his own specialty, by the great champion of Dreadnoughts! Any preacher would be surprised at having his attention called to the version of his text in the "Great Bible." A good many know nothing about it. Fisher did. Then he goes on to speak of the rest of the text, "And he shall strengthen thine heart." Here he agrees with Dr, Black that the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.