32 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
In the Solitary Place 
Sermon by Rev. L. H. Ruge, Congregational church, Manchester, Sunday, Aug. 1, 1909. 
“Then was Fesus led up of the Spirit 
into the wilderness.’ —Matt. IV: 1. 
The Spirit, that higher power and per- 
sonality that governs the destiny of man, 
takes this man into the solitude of the 
desert. This spiritual direction is ever 
our need, but especially in the trial that 
tests the soul. 
‘*The clouds hang heavy round my way, I can- 
not see; 
But through the darkness, I know God still 
leadeth me. 
-‘Tis sweet to keep my hand in his while all is 
dim; 
To close my weary, aching eyes and follow Him. 
Through many a desert path he leads my tired 
feet, 
Through many a starless night I go; but it 
is sweet 
To know that he is close to me, my friend, 
my guide, 
He leadeth me, and so I walk, quite satisfied.”’ 
Jesus was led by the Spirit, not driven. 
It was his voluntary act to meet the test 
of self-sacrifice. There isno fatality in 
human destiny, no fighting a solitary bat- 
tle against an unconquerable foe, for this 
is God’s universe and he cannot be pitted 
against his creatures. 
He was led as a brave man is led into 
battle. No true soldier feels forced to 
fight. When the ‘‘ Captain of our Sal- 
vation’’ leads us to conflict it is not to 
defeat us but for the high and holy pur- 
pose that we may come from the test 
*‘more than conquerors.”’ 
He was led as a lamb submissively. 
The way led through the desert, through 
Gethsem ‘ne and over Golgotha and so 
he followed on submissive to the leadings 
of the Father. 
Some are pleased to lay the scene of 
the conflictin the desert of Judea. Here 
the cliffs are cave-hollowed where an- 
chorites dwelt for centuries and even 
now alonely hermit may be found in 
imitation of the Savior. 
Tradition peopled the place as the 
abode of sinister spirits. Here devils 
were supposed to slink among the shad- 
ows in evil councils at night and were 
said to assume form and personality as 
nowhere else. 
Above the head of the solitary watcher 
rose the cliffs six hundred feet high, 
below him the blistered wady of the 
Kedron; above him the singing stars, 
below him the silent sterile waste places 
of the earth. But they tell us that here 
nature prepares a picture at times match- 
less for effect when the splintered peaks 
become stained in purple and pink and 
the bands of grey mists drifting over the 
jagged points are shot with gold. The 
desert place has its compensations at 
times when touched with a strange glory 
that only asombre background can reveal. 
Did the Spirit lead Jesus to Sinai and 
Horeb? The poetry of the thought may 
prompt this belief. What a setting, this 
desert, for this strange Prince of the 
House of David! What historic scenes 
might be reviewed here! 
But in either desert there was not a 
tree to extend its welcome boughs, not a 
bit of greensward was there to rest upon, 
not a flower to smile at him, not a_ bird 
ever soared through the swirling sands to 
leave a song behind in the silent place. 
Do you know ought of the fierce heat 
of the dry plains, with the whirl of the 
white alkali under foot and the merciless 
sun overhead? Do you know nothing 
of the endless stretch .of road with no 
turn that leads nowhere? 
Notice how Jesus lived his supreme 
moments alone. Alone he fasted in the 
desert. Alone he moved among the 
mass of sinful men, for in all the throngs 
there was not another soul of like purity. 
No one understood him, no one could 
comprehend him. In the deeper emo- 
tions of this man none could share. - No 
one could feel his sorrows. He stood 
alone in that solitary place of his divine 
passion. He had ‘“‘totread the wine 
press alone.’’ 
In his solitary life he had not a single 
social joy as we have. John, the be= 
loved disciple, leaned on him, Mary and 
Martha leaned on him, the disciples, the 
poor and sick and weak and sinful, all 
these leaned for support upon him, but 
he had to stand alone. 
Alone he went out into the night to 
pray. Alone he walked the troubled 
waters of Galilee, alone he agonized in 
the moonlight of Gethsemene. Alone 
he stood before Caiphas, Pilate, Herod 
and the mob with nota single sympathetic 
face near him. Alone he struggled up 
the “‘place of the skull’? under the 
dreadful weight of the cross beams. 
Alone he hung there between heaven and 
earth until even the Father left him alone 
in his agony. 
He told men they could not follow 
him. His was a path where none could 
follow; his was a trial none could bear; 
his was an agony none could share. 
He stands alone. There is something 
too great, too lofty, too awful in this 
man for us to analyze or comprehend. 
Only God knows the full import of this 
life. We may understand something of 
this life as we see him among the multi- 
tude in his ministry, but when he with- 
draws from us to be.alone with God and 
his awful passion he js as alone and re- 
mote from us as the farthest star in the 
infinite vault of heaven. 
But this we do understand that there is 
a solitude for every soul. There is no 
companionship in the supreme hours of the 
soul. There are yearnings too deep for 
human understanding, a cry too remote 
for human hearing, a pain too intense 
for human sympathy. And this is not 
so much because no one cares, but be- 
cause all the world is helpless to follow 
us there. 
There is this strain of solitude in every 
great poem. ‘The great work of art 
makes us feel it. You cannot read 
Hamlet without having a sense of tread- 
ing an unbroken forest. Every mountain 
peak that lifts its white brow to the sun 
illustrates it. Inthe ‘“‘moaning of the 
lonely seas’’ we hear this minor strain. 
Every great thought in the clear vision 
it portrays, every great career in its depth 
of experience, show us the solitary char- 
acter of aman. Socrates as he drinks 
the hemlock and Jesus as he drinks the 
vinegar and gall show us unexplored 
realms of human nature. 
A great joy like a great sorrow brings 
solitude. Its strange throb presses for 
utterance upon a silent tongue until the 
very heart quivers within you, and if the 
lips break into speech, behold you are 
still alone before your hearers. Matthew 
Arnold twangs the very heart of this 
sense of solitude in the-lines: — 
‘*__A God their severance ruled! 
And bade betwixt their shores to be 
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.”’ 
What solitude is the crowded streets. 
I have ventured a friendly remark to a 
stranger and only silence was its response 
and I felt the solitude deeper. I must 
not be interested in the sweetest face and 
a manly act must arouse not a single 
word of praise. I can speak to the trees 
of the forests andthe birds of the glen 
better than | can speak to my fellows. 
A strange city with its dense crowds 
awes me with its unbroken solitutde. 
There is, however, a thought in Haw- 
thorne’s valuation of solitude that gives 
me a sweeter sense of it. In ‘““A Soli- 
tary at Home,’’ or that delicious sketch 
of a day alone by the seaside there is 
something that responds to this sense 
within me when he says—*‘ grudge me 
not the day that has been spent in’ seclu- 
ion which yet was not solitude, since the 
greatsea has been my companion, and. 
the little seabirds my friends, and the 
wind has told me his secrets, and airy 
shapes have flitted around me in my 
heritage. Such companionship works 
an effect upon a man’s character as if he 
had been admitted to the society of 
creatures that are not mortal. And, 
when at noontide, I tread the crowded 
streets, the influence of the day will still 
be felt, so that I shall walk among men 
kindly and as a brother, with affection 
and sympathy, but yet shall not melt into 
the indistinguishable mass of human kind. 
I shall think my own thoughts and feel 
my own emotions and possess my in- 
dividuality unviolated.’’ 
So I am trying to tell you that solitude 
