This book, while produced under wartime conditions, in full compliance with government regulations for the conservation of paper and other essential materials, is COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED
PAGE | |
UNDER THE FIG-TREE | 7 |
IN TIME OF FLOOD | 15 |
DIVINE AMELIORATIVES | 23 |
THE CURE FOR CARE | 30 |
PREPARING FOR EMERGENCIES | 37 |
“SILENT UNTO GOD” | 45 |
MY STRENGTH AND MY SONG! | 53 |
THE ABIDING COMPANIONSHIP | 60 |
LIGHT ALL THE WAY | 69 |
OUR BRILLIANT MOMENTS | 76 |
THE LORD’S GUESTS | 84 |
HIDDEN MANNA | 95 |
THE REJOICING DESERT | 102 |
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GRAVEYARD! | 110 |
COMFORTED IN ORDER TO COMFORT! | 118 |
THE MINISTRY OF HOPE | 126 |
LIFE WITH WINGS | 136 |
THE UNEXPECTED ANSWER | 143 |
THE CENSER AND THE SACRIFICE | 152 |
THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST | 161 |
170 | |
WEALTH THAT NEVER FAILS | 179 |
THE DIVINE ABILITY | 189 |
NEW STRENGTH FOR COMMON TASKS | 197 |
THE MINISTRY OF THE CLOUD | 206 |
THE REALMS OF THE BLEST | 216 |
“When thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee.”—
“WHEN thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee.” But was there any special
significance in this? There must have been something of very deep significance,
for it inspired Nathaniel to an outburst of joyful faith: “Thou art the Son of
God.” Perhaps there was something in the tone in which the words were spoken;
for revelations are not always contained in the literal words, they are often
found in the way in which they are spoken. It is possible to say to a sorrowful
and mourning widow, “I saw you,” and the words will suggest nothing more than
bare recognition; and one may use the same phrase and it would be weighted with
warm and helpful sympathy. There was surely something in the tone of the Master
which called forth the exuberant response of Nathaniel’s heart. But there was
more than this. “Under the fig-tree,” was a phrase which
Can we exercise a prudent imagination, and attempt to realise Nathaniel’s state? I think he was probably
burdened in worship. He felt his spirit fettered by
the multitudinous rules and regulations which had gathered round about the acts
and offices of worship. He sought to be punctilious in their observation, but he
laboured under the heavy load. A certain amount of harness is helpful to a
beast; it directs and concentrates his strength at the needful points, and makes
the yoke tolerable and easy. But it is possible so to multiply the harness that
it adds to the
And then, too, I think he was faint in waiting. The promised deliverer was long
in coming. He looked out with aching, weary eyes, but the emancipator did not
appear. And his spirit grew faint and desponding. There is nothing so exhausting
as mere waiting. Work does not tire a man so much as the looking for work. The
hour of labour speeds like a weaver’s shuttle; the hour of waiting drags like a
cumbersome load, How long the minutes seem when we are waiting for the doctor!
The loved one is passing into deeper need, and we listen for the hand upon the
latch. Every moment seems an age. And there
“I saw thee.” And how much the seeing means! The phrase has infinitely more
significance than that of bare recognition. It is not only that Nathaniel was
noticed; it means that he was understood. Our Lord’s sight is insight. The
majority of us see, but only a few perceive. “See ye, indeed, but perceive not.”
We see a sign, but we cannot give it an interpretation. We see a wrinkle, a grey
hair, a tear, a smile, a look of care, a bent back, but we do not perceive their
spiritual significance. Our Master not only sees; He “in-sees.” When He looked
at Nathaniel He understood him. He interpreted his thoughts and fears. He saw
him through and through. “He knew what was in man.” But the Master’s
Here, then, is the evangel. Our Lord sees us when we are under the gloom of the
fig-tree, when in sadness and weariness we are turning tired eyes at the
expectancy of help. “Before that Philip called thee,” before he came out into
the open, when he was half hidden, when his soul-life was secret and unconfessed, when in grave despondency he was turning his weary eyes toward
heaven—“I saw thee.” He sees and knows us then. He sees us in the gropings in
the gloom. That is the glory of our Redeemer. Anybody can see an electric light,
but to feel the current,
And was it not so with Zacchæus? Can we think that when Jesus looked up at Zacchæus and bade him come and offer hospitality, it was the first time He had seen him? Nay, I think He had often passed him in the streets, He had seen the shadow over his face. There was unrest and trouble in his eye. He looked like a man who was often awake at nights. For Zacchæus often went home with a full purse and a very empty and improvished heart. He was often “under the fig-tree,” in gloom and despondency, casting fitful glances at the better life. And so when the Master called to him, there was something in the very tone which revealed that he was understood. We are not told what they talked about on their way to the publican’s house, but I think I can hear the Master saying to His newly-found disciple, “when thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee.” I say this is the way of the Master. He sees us in the faint beginning and gropings of the spiritual life. “When he was yet a long way off his father saw him!” That is characteristic of the Divine eyes. He sees us in the long distance! The first faint impulses are recognised; the first turning is known. When we are under the fig-tree He sees us!
This, surely, is a word full of heartening and inspiration. We are never alone. Our Saviour understands us, sympathises with us, co-operates with us. He is with us under the fig-tree! And see how rich and wealthy is the promise. “Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” How glorious and fitting is the issue! Nathaniel is to see heaven opened! The man who has been in the gloom of the fig-tree, with fitful and uncertain glimpses through the broken clouds, is to attain to firm, clear, and permanent vision. And the man who is so frequently timid, and wonders at the controlling power of life and the world, is to have his confidence steadied and stayed, and is to be made sure of the sovereignty of Christ.
“When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up
a standard against him.”—
THESE heartening words were spoken to exiles who were preparing to return to the homeland. They had become so accustomed to their captivity that emancipation seemed a dream. Even when they lifted their eyes to the possibilities of return they seemed to gaze upon range after range of accumulating difficulties which would obstruct their journey home. As often as the prophet proclaimed their deliverance they proclaimed their fears. Their fears were laid one by one, but as soon as one was laid another arose!
There was, for example, the wilderness to be crossed with all its fierce and
sombre desolation! “The wilderness shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” And
there was the weary, pathless desert, offering only the prospect of homelessness
to the bewildered pilgrim! “And an highway shall be there, and a way,” clean
and clear across it. There are waters to be crossed and floods to be overcome!
“When thou passest through the
“When the enemy shall come in like a flood.”! think that the figure is surely taken from the river-beds of their native land. They had looked upon the dry, bleached ravines in time of drought, when scarcely a rivulet lisped down its rocky course. And then the rain had fallen on the hills, or the snow had melted upon the distant mountains, and the waters had torn down like a flood. I have picnicked away up in the solitudes of the higher Tees, when there was only a handful of water passing along, a little stream which even a child could cross. And once I saw what the natives call the “roll” coming away in the distance. Great rains had fallen upon the heights, and this was their issue; in a moment the quiet stream became a roaring torrent, and shouted along in thunderous flood. That, I think, is the figure of my text. When the sudden “roll” shall come in the life, and the little rivulet is changed into tempestuous waters, “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.”
Now, what are some of these flood times in life when the enemy comes against us
in overwhelming power? There is the flood of passion. There are many among my
readers who do not know that flood. We are very differently constituted, and
some there are in whom these particular
And sometimes the flood is in the form of a great sorrow, and we are engulfed by
it. Billow after billow goes over us, and does tremendous damage. I know that
there is a sorrow appointed of the Almighty, but it is never ordained to hurt or
destroy. And yet how often this particular flood, rushing into a life, works
havoc with spiritual
And so it is, one may say, with all the perilous waters that arise in human life. Sometimes the flood gathers from a multitudinous contribution of petty cares. It is amazing how mighty a volume can be made with small contributions. We could deal with one; the multitude overwhelms us! We could deal with one worry, but multitudes of them create the flood we call anxiety, and we are overthrown. And again great damage is done, working havoc to our peace and self-control and magnanimity.
Now, whenever a flood in the life damages a life the work is the work of the
devil. When I am tempted into overflowing passion, or into
And so, too, it is in the flood times of sorrow. The Spirit of the Lord will
engage for us, “lest we be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.” Have I not seen
it done a hundred times? Have I not seen sorrow come into a life, and it has
been entirely a minister of good and never of ill? The devil has not got hold
of it, and used it as a destructive flood. Not one thing has been damaged or
destroyed. It has been a minister of
“The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard!” Well, then, let Him do it. Do not let us attempt to do it for ourselves. Let us hand it over to Him. “Undertake Thou for me, O Lord.” The life of faith just consists in a quiet, conscious, realising trust in the all-willing and all-powerful Spirit of God.
“Sleeping for sorrow.”—
I AM not concerned with the element of human weakness suggested by my text; I want to dwell entirely upon the Divine graciousness which I think is enshrined in it.
“Sleeping for sorrow.” Is it not a very strange conjunction of words? One would
have thought that wakefulness and sorrow would have been associated, and that
sleep and sorrow would never have found communion. But here is sorrow passing
into sleep! As though sorrow itself contains a gracious opiate which lulls and
subdues into slumber. As though God had determined that every distress should
carry a certain palliative in order that we might not be burdened beyond
measure. When sorrow becomes very intense it induces sleep. A Divine
ameliorative is at hand, and the strain of the galling burden is lightened. They
say in the North that there is never a nettle that has not its companion dock.
The dock supplies the opiate for relieving and destroying the sting of the
nettle. And so I wish to consider some of these Divine amelioratives which the
good Lord has appointed for reducing
The ameliorative of sleep. What a wonderful minister is the genius of sleep When our bodies are tired out, and the nervous force is almost spent, and we feel ourselves wearied and “down,” what a hotbed is provided for irritableness, and doubt, and despondency and despair! A tired-out body offers a fertile rootage to all manner of mental ailments. Many a man in the evening time feels that life is very colourless and juiceless, and this ’sense of the sombreness and dullness arises from a body which has temporarily lost its spring. And then comes sleep! During the hours of sleep our gracious God comes and refills the exhausted lamp, and in the morning the touchiness and irritableness and tastelessness have all gone, and we face the new day as men renewed. The Lord has been near with His gracious palliative of sleep, and the oppressiveness of the passing day has been removed.
Then how frequently sleep acts as a gracious opiate when we are inclined to make
precipitate vows! Something has happened and we hastily resolve upon hasty
action. But some discreet friend says to us, “Sleep on it.” And the influence of
the one night’s sleep scatters our rash resolve like morning mist. Have we not
recently
And what a wonderful servant is this same sleep in the time of bereavement! I have frequently known a widow in the very first day of her widowhood, when the body of her husband was scarcely cold, pass into a deep and most refreshing sleep. “I have had the best night’s sleep I have had for many a month,” she has said; and this was the first night of bereavement! “Sleeping for sorrow.” It is a wonderfully gracious providence of our God to mingle this Divine opiate with our sorrows, and to put us into a quiet and restoring sleep. “He giveth His beloved sleep.”
The ameliorative of Time. What a healing minister we have in Time itself. The
old proverb tells us that Time brings roses. And a still older proverb, coming
down from the days of the Romans, tells us that Time is generally the best
doctor. The new railway cutting is a great red gash in the green countryside,
but Time is a great healer and restorer, and day after day the bald, bare place
is being re-covered with fern and grass
The Divine ameliorative of work. May we not
I am not surprised, therefore, when I turn to the New Testament to find how great was Paul’s fear of indolent Christians. The early believers gave up their ordinary work and passively waited the coming of their Lord. Now Paul knew that, in the time of stress, and persecution, and tribulation, to have no work would be to take sides with the enemy. Therefore “let every man abide in the calling wherein he was called.” Let every man go on working, for he will find in his work an ameliorative for his sorrows. To cast aside work is to deprive oneself of the means of grace. A doctor, quite recently in my hearing, said to a man who was inclined to become a little morbid and depressed, “Go out and weed your garden.” The weeding of the garden was the smallest part of the hour’s work; while the man was weeding the garden he was also extracting weeds from his own heart and life. Let us thank God for work.
The Divine ameliorative of service. I distinguish between work and service. Work
is primarily for our own profit; service is primarily profit for others. And
therefore I speak now of labour expended in another’s good, and in this kind of
service I say there is a grand ameliorative for the griefs and distresses of
life. It is an
All these are Divine amelioratives, the gracious ministers of God, and I would that we might more frequently remember them when we seek to tell the story of His mercy and grace. Let us think of them as the angels of the Lord, appointed by Him to do us service in the dark and cloudy day. “He shall give His angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”
“Fret not thyself.”—
“Fret not thyself.” Do not get into a perilous heat about things. And yet, if
ever heat were justified, it was surely justified in the circumstances outlined
in the psalm. Evildoers were moving about clothed in purple and fine linen, and
faring sumptuously every day. “Workers of iniquity” were climbing into the
supreme places of power, and were tyrannising over their less fortunate
brethren. Sinful men and women were stalking through the land in the pride of
life, and basking in the light and comfort of great prosperity. And good men
were becoming heated and fretful. “Fret not thyself.” Do not get unduly heated!
Keep cool! Even in a good cause fretfulness is not a wise helpmeet. Fretting
only heats the bearings, it does not generate the steam. It is no help to a
train for the axles to get hot; their heat is only a hindrance; the best
contribution which the axles can make to the progress of the train is to keep
cool. Fretfulness is just the
Now, when the axles get heated it is because of unnecessary friction; dry surfaces are grinding together which ought to be kept in smooth cooperation by a delicate cushion of oil. And is it not a suggestive fact that this word “fret” is closely akin to the word “friction,” and is indicative of the absence of the anointing oil of the grace of God? In fretfulness, thought is grinding against thought, desire against desire, will against will; a little bit of grit gets into the bearings—some slight disappointment, some ingratitude, some discourtesy, and the smooth working of the life is checked. Friction begets heat, and with the heat most dangerous conditions are created.
We can never really foresee to what kind of disaster this perilous heat may
lead. The psalmist, in the early verses of this psalm, points out some of the
stages of increasing destructiveness to which this unclean fire assuredly leads.
It is
How, then, is fretfulness to be cured?—The Psalmist brings in the heavenly to
correct the
“Trust in the Lord.” “Trust.” It is, perhaps, helpful to remember that the word which is here translated “trust” is elsewhere in the Old Testament translated “careless.” “Be careless in the Lord!” Instead of carrying a load of care let care be absent! It is the carelessness of little children running about the house in the assurance of their father’s providence and love. It is the singing disposition that leaves something for the parent to do. Assume that He is working as well as thyself, and working even when things appear to be adverse.
I remember meeting a man in Birmingham, not so very long ago, a man who is
honestly and earnestly seeking to live a Christian life, but he mourned to me
the depression under which he was suffering on that particular day. “I feel very
depressed; my feelings are gloomy; I feel as though my Lord were far away!”
It was a very miserable morning; the unclean snow was melting in the streets,
and a November fog possessed the town. I said to him, “Do you think the Welsh
water is running into our town today?
“Delight thyself also in the Lord.” How beautiful the phrase! The literal
significance is this, “Seek for delicacies in the Lord.” Yes, and if we only set
about with ardent purpose to discover the delicacies of the Lord’s table, we
should have no time and no inclination to fret. But this is just what the
majority of us do not do. We take the crumbs from the Master’s table, and we
have no taste of the excellent delicacies. Now the delicacies of anything are
not found in the
“Commit thy way unto the Lord.” “Thy way!” What is that? Any pure purpose, any
worthy ambition, any duty, anything we have got to do, any road we have got to
tread, all our outgoings. “Commit thy way unto the Lord.” Commit it to Him, not
merely when we are in the middle of the way and are stuck and lost in the mire.
Let us commit our beginnings unto Him, before we have gone wrong; let us have
His companionship from the very outset of the
“Rest is the Lord.” Having done all this, and doing it all, trusting in the Lord, delighting in the Lord, committing my way unto the Lord, let me now just “rest.” Don’t worry. Whatever happens, just refer it to the Lord! If it be anything injurious He will suppress it. If it be anything containing helpful ministry He will adapt it to our need. This is the cure for care.
“Before governors and kings shall ye be brought for My sake, for a testimony to
them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, be not anxious how or
what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall
speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh
in you.”—
“Ye shall be brought before governors and kings.” This was said to fishermen who
had lived a quiet, unobtrusive life on and by the Galilean lake. It does not require
much imagination to enter into the panic occasioned by the Master’s words. In
our day, to appear before a Court even as a plaintiff makes one limp and weak
and useless; to appear as defendant is to suffer collapse. And these humble,
toiling men, with their horny hands, with their homely dialect, are told that
they must appear before kings and governors to answer for their lives! It is no
easy experience for obscure people to appear in the presence of the great and mighty. They
are often either the victims of awkwardness or the prey of paralysing fear. They
do the wrong
Here, then, are the disciples contemplating a remote emergency. The emergency will come. It is inevitable. The line of their life, at present commonplace and even, will rise into a great crisis. As sure as the morrow comes the emergency will come with it! What shall they do? That was the pregnant question, and the question suggests our present meditation. How shall we prepare for emergencies?
Our life now may be a level, regular road; but to-morrow the character of the
road will be changed, and we shall be confronted by some great and unusual task.
What shall we do? It
“Ye shall be brought before kings.” When the disciples heard the words many of them began already to prepare the words which they would address to the king. “No,” said the Master, “do not prepare a speech, be not anxious what ye shall speak. Don’t
prepare a speech, prepare yourselves!” That is the way to meet all emergencies. Not to make little detailed arrangements and little specified plans and finished speeches, but to have our souls in health and to
“Be not anxious.” The first step in all wise preparation for emergencies is to cultivate the strength of stillness. Anxiety is mental and spiritual unrest. It always signifies the absence of stillness, the calmness which is the very secret of strength.
Most of us are familiar with the calm people to whom we instinctively turn in
times of stress and danger. Among the poor and the working classes, where
neighbourliness is more alive than among the well-to-do, it is beautiful how
some one neighbour is renowned for this quality of calmness. There is nearly
always some woman in the locality to whom poor people turn when life passes into
the strain of some great emergency. She is sent for in cases of accident, or
when bad news is received, or when Death is at the door. The neighbours say one
to another, as their first and readiest counsel, “Send for Mrs. So-and-So,” and
the calm woman comes on the scene of general panic and disorder, and her
presence at once begins to restore confidence. She has the strength of
stillness. What do we mean by this calmness? We mean that she is
self-possessed, that she has everything in hand, that all her powers are at her
disposal like the
But if we are to obtain the strength of stillness
If I am to be a capable expert, living in the present, I must engage in the practice of trusting God in every passing moment of my life. What is this that is nearest to me? What is this duty? What is this task? What is this immediate trouble? Just here and just now let me trust in God. Let me turn this present moment into happy confidence, and in this very season let me hold communion with my God. Let my trust be deliberate, repeatedly deliberate, until by conscious, volitional trust I come to have instinctive confidence in my God. Let me fill the present with holy faith, and “the changes that will surely come I shall not fear to see.”
And why shall I not fear them? “Be not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of
your Father that speaketh in you.” Lay hold of the last two words of this
great promise, “in you.”
That is the secret of everything. Every act of trust increases your capacity for
God. Every time I trust Him
Here, then, is the little sequence I have been endeavouring to unfold. Put your trust in the Lord and you will live well in the immediate present; live well in the immediate present and you will have the spirit of calmness which is the secret of strength. The emergency will not affright you. You will approach it with that quietness which is the essential factor in triumph.
“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him. He only is my
rock and my salvation; He is my defence; I shall not be moved.”—
“My soul!” Here is a man communing with his own soul! He is deliberately
addressing himself, and calling himself to attention. He is of set purpose
breaking up his own drowsiness and indifference, and calling himself to a
fruitful vigilance. There is nothing like the deliberate exercise of a power for
making it spontaneously active. Men who come to have keen and discerning vision
begin by deliberate exercise of the eyes. It is a good and a healthy thing to
stand before a flower and to clearly and strongly challenge the eyes to
attention. It is a profitable thing to stand before some natural panorama and
wake the eyes to diligent quest. Eyes that are trained in deliberateness come at
last to watch instinctively. We may apply the same reasoning to the realm of the
spirit. We must challenge our own souls, and rouse them to the contemplation of the things of God. “My soul!
Here in my text the Psalmist calls upon his soul to contemplate the manifold glory of God. Let us gaze at one or two aspects of the inspiring vision.
“He only is my rock.” Here is one of the figures in which the Psalmist expresses
his conception of the ministry of his God. “My rock!” The figure is literally
suggestive of an enclosure of rock, a cave, a hiding-place. There are two or
three kindred words used in the Old Testament Scriptures which will, perhaps,
unfold to us something of the wealthy content of the speech which the Psalmist
employs. All the words are suggestive of encirclement; they describe the state of
being surrounded, protected, and secured. Here is one of the kindred words, “Thou hast
beset me behind and before.” How perfectly complete is the suggestion
of an all-encircling presence, round about me on every
But let me remind you of another kindred word, “Bind up the money in thy hand.” You place a coin in the palm of your hand, and your fingers close over it, and the precious metal is strongly secured. It is encircled by a muscular grasp. Let us carry the suggestion into the relationships between ourselves and God. Our Father will secure us as a precious jewel in His own clenched hand. His fingers will wrap round about us, and there shall be no crevice through which the sheltered piece may slip. “None shall pluck you out of My hand!” This, then, is the significance of the word “rock.” It is a strong enclosure, an invincible ring, a grand besetment within which we move in restful security.
“He is my salvation.” Then He not only shields me, but strengthens me! We are not left by protection in the state of weaklings. We are nourished and developed into healthy children. Salvation is a wealthy and comprehensive word. It denotes not merely “first aid,” the primary treatment given to those who are bruised and wounded by the wayside; it means, also, “last aid,” the bringing of the wounded into strength again. Salvation implies more than convalescence, it denotes health. It is vastly more than redemption from sin; it is redemption from infirmity. It offers no mediocrity; its goal is spiritual prosperity and abundance. This promise of health we have in God. He accepts us in our disease; He pledges His name to confer absolute health. “Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end.”
“He is my defence.” The Psalmist is multiplying his figures that he may the
better bring out the richness of his conception. Defence is suggestive of
loftiness, of inaccessibility. It denotes the summit of some stupendous,
out-jutting, precipitous crag! It signifies such a place as where the eagle
makes its nest, far beyond the prowlings of the marauders, away on the dizzy
heights which mischief cannot scale. God is my defence! He lifts me away into
the
In these three words the Psalmist expresses something of his
thought of the all-enveloping and protecting presence of God. He is “my rock,”
“my salvation,” “my defence.” What, then, shall be the attitude of the soul
towards this God? “My soul, wait thou only upon God.” “Wait!” Or as the marginal rendering so
beautifully gives it, “be thou silent unto God.” We are to be in the presence of
God with thoughts and feelings which are the opposite to those of false haste.
The spirit of impatience is to be hushed and subdued. There is to be nothing of
passion or of heated distemper. Loud murmurings are to be silenced. Our own clamorous wills are to be checked. The perilous heat is to be cooled. We
“My expectation is from Him.” It is to my
“I shall not be moved.” Of course not! man whose conception of God is that of
“Rock,” “Salvation,” and “Defence,” and who is “silent unto Him,” and is bound
to Him by the golden
“The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my
salvation.”—
THE storm is over. Even the distant rumblings have ceased. The righteous, and yet very tender and pitiful, severity of the Lord has perfected its ministry and has passed away. The alienated heart has been constrained by the sharp instrument of suffering to turn its weary self unto God. And now the sun is shining again, the birds are singing, the desert is blossoming like the rose! There is a new heaven and a new earth! “The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song: He also is become my salvation.”
What does this sweet and joyful singer find in God? “My strength”!
“My song”! “My salvation”! How extraordinarily rich and comprehensive! Everything is
there! All that a man needs in the battle of life is enshrined in this most
wealthy and ancient word. “My strength”; the very power to fight! “My song”;
with my God I can fight to music; I can march to the war to the accompaniment
of the band; I can be a
“The Lord Jehovah is my strength.” That is primary and fundamental. The first
thing we need is that our weakness be transformed, and that we become possessed
of resource. All other gifts are useless if this initial gift be denied. A box
of tools would be impotent without the strong hand to use them. There are many
gifted lives that are held in languor and are altogether inefficient because the
gifts ire not backed by this elementary strength. Phrenology is far from being a
science, and much of its teachings savour of quackery, but, amid all its
vagaries, one lesson has been emphasised, and I think to great advantage, that,
however finely built a man’s mind may be, it is like a magnificent engine, idle
and productless, unless beneath and behind it there is a fine force of executive
strength. Our mental powers are built up, layer upon layer, from
And the strength is continuous; reserves of power come to us which we cannot
exhaust. “As thy day so shall thy strength be,” strength of will, strength of
affection, strength of judgment, strength of ideals and of achievement. “The
Lord is my strength,” strength to go on. He gives us the power to tread the dead
level, to walk the long lane that seems never to have a turning, to go through
those long reaches of life which affords no pleasant surprise, and which depress
the spirits in the sameness of a terrible drudgery. “The Lord is my strength,”
strength
Let us bring out the music of the pronoun which also brings out the wonder of the promise. “The Lord is my strength.” Is the conjunction presumptuous, to bring the Almighty in communion with me? I made a little toy water-mill the other day for my little girl, and I used the water from the Welsh hills to work it. And we can let in the river of Water of Life to work the little mill of our life, to make all its powers fruitful and effective. Our God is
“A gracious, willing Guest,
Where He can find one humble heart
Wherein to rest.”
“The Lord is my song.” The religious life must not only be characterised by
strength but by music. If the life of the Christian is not musical it is because
there is not strength enough. Have you ever heard an organ when the wind-power
was insufficient? Have you ever listened to a man with defective lung-power
trying to blow a bugle? The wind with inadequate strength results in imperfect
harmonies. It is when the strength is abounding that we have full song. Go to
the Book of the Acts, the pentecostal book, where the Holy Spirit is sweeping
“The Lord has become my salvation.” That is a fine, full-blooded word, literally signifying “wealth of space.” It is as though a man had been fighting in a tight corner, and by the aid of immeasurable “strength,” used to the accompaniment of a “song,” he had fought his way through into a wide space, into larger liberties, into more glorious possessions. Salvation includes deliverance, inheritance, and freedom. This man has fought and sung his way into ever richer inheritances of spiritual liberty. And that may happen to all of us after every one of our battles. The Lord will always become our salvation. And then, surely, after every fresh deliverance the soul will have more strength for its next victory, and in its victory it will sing a larger song, and in its song it will be ready for the next fray! “And they sang a new song.” I do not wonder at it, and they changed it every day!
“My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”—
THE other morning I went for a walk up the valley of the Tees. My path left the home, passed under the shadow of the County School, crossed the Recreation grounds, wound in and out among the wide-spreading meadows, now and again coming within sight and sound of the swift, eager river, and now veering round and threading the crowded street of the busy market-town, and now narrowing to the little track that led to a new-made grave. And through all the varying way this evangel possessed my mind, “My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”
And then suddenly I realised that my walk had been parabolic, and that in all
its shifting changes life itself had been pourtrayed. My walk had been a
Pilgrim’s Progress, every turning laden with spiritual significance. I had
touched life at all its emphases, and the gracious evangel was fitted to all. “My Presence shall go with thee,” in the serious affairs of the home, in the
serious
Whither is our road going to lead? What sudden and unexpected turnings shall we
experience? Shall we find the road firm and smooth and easy, or shall we find
it rough and “rutty,” straining and tiring to the limbs? Will it provide a
pleasant saunter, or will it involve bleeding feet? Will it be a green lane, or
a stony steep? Will the way be clear and legible as a turnpike, or will it
sometimes be faint and doubtful, like an uncertain track across the moor? We do
not know: we are alike in a common ignorance: culture and wealth ensure no
favour: all distinctions are here wiped out: we are all upon an unknown road,
and for everybody the next step is in the mist! “Thou knowest not what a day may
bring forth.” If it were good for us to know it, we should be taken into the
counsels of the Almighty. The knowledge of the future path really matters
nothing: the perception
There is the loneliness of unshared sorrow. Is there anything more solitary than sorrow that can find no friendly ear? Sorrow which has an audience can frequently find relief in telling and retelling its own story. How often the bereaved one can find a cordial for the pain in recalling the doings and prowess of the departed! It is a wise ministry in visiting the bereaved to give them abundant opportunity of speaking about the lost. The heart eases itself in such shared remembrance. Grief is saved from freezing, and the genial currents of the soul are kept in motion. But when sorrow has no companionable presence with which to commune, the grief becomes a withering and desolating ministry.
“When I kept silence, my bones waxed old.” Aye, there is nothing ages people
like the loneliness of unshared grief. And there are multitudes
There is the loneliness of unshared triumph. I asked a little while ago if there is anything more lonely than sorrow that can
find no friendly ear? I am bound to say that I sometimes think that lonely
triumph is as desolate as unshared grief. My memory recalls with vivid clearness
one of the boys in the school where I received my earliest training. He was an
orphan-boy, but more
Let me illustrate further. I had a friend who in mature life published a book on
which he had bestowed the hard labours of many years. Some time before its
publication his wife died, and he was left alone. The book received an
enthusiastic welcome, and now enjoys high eminence in its own department of
learning. I spoke to my friend of his well-deserved reward, and of the triumph
of his labours. His face immediately clouded, and he quietly said, “Ah, if only
she were here to share it!” I say, his loneliness culminated
It is not otherwise with the moral triumphs of the soul. When I sin and falter, I feel I need a companion to whom I can tell the story of my defeat: but when I have some secret triumph I want a companion to share the glow and glory of the conquest, or the glow and glory will fade. Even when we conquer secret sin the heart calls for a Companion in the joy! And here He is! “My Presence shall go with thee!” If you will turn to the book of the Psalms you will find how continually the ringing paeans sound from hearts that are just bursting with the desire to share their joy and triumph with the LORD. They are the communings of victory, the gladsome fellowship of radiant souls and their GOD. His Presence shall go with us, and He will destroy the loneliness of unshared joy.
And there is the loneliness of temptation. Our friends can accompany us so far
along the troubled way, and by GOD’S good grace they can partially minister to
our progress by re-arranging our environment, and removing many of the snares
and pitfalls from our path. But in this serious business of temptation it is
little that friend can do for friend. The great battle is waged behind a door
they cannot enter. The real
And there is the loneliness of death. It is pathetic, deeply pathetic, how we
have to stand idly by at the last moment—doctor, nurse, husband, wife, child—all
to stand idly by, when the lonely voyager launches forth into the unknown sea! “It is the loneliness of death that is so terrible. If we and those whom we love
passed over simultaneously, we should think no more of it than changing our
houses” from one place into another. But every voyager goes alone! Alone? Nay,
there is a Fellow-voyager! “My Presence shall go with thee.” The last, chill
Now, if we only firmly believed this, and clearly realised this gracious Presence, what would be the ministry? Well, we should work without worry. We should step out without dread. We should waste no energy in fruitless fear and sapping care. We should face the unknown not daunted by our ignorance. The great Companion may still think it good to deny us the light of comprehension: but then, though we may not comprehend the nature of the entire way, He will see to it that we have light at the next turning of the road. Don’t let us be afraid of our ignorance. Our Companion is a great husbander of light, and at the appointed moment, when “His hour is come,” He shall “bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.”
And do not let us be afraid of our weakness. You feel about as little like
carrying the possible load of the new day as a grasshopper! Never
But we must lean upon Him and allow Him to carry our load. An aged, weary woman, carrying a heavy basket, got into the train with me the other day, and when she was seated she still kept the heavy burden upon her arm! “Lay your burden down, mum,” said the kindly voice of a working man. “Lay your burden down, mum; the train will carry both it and you.” Aye, that’s it! “Lay your burden down!” The LORD will carry both it and you! “I will give thee rest”: not by the absence of warfare, but by the happy assurance of victory: not by the absence of the hill, but by the absence of the spirit of fainting. “I will give thee rest.”
“I am the light of the world.”—
“I AM the light!” breaking up the empire of darkness, making things luminous by the gracious rays of His own presence. “I am the light of the world,” breaking upon the tired eyes of men with the soft, quiet glory of the dawn. Twice recently has it been my privilege to watch the sun rise in circumstances of unusual beauty. Long before his appearing we had tokens of his coming. The horizon, and the clouds that gathered in little flocks about the horizon, and banks of clouds further remote abiding motionless in the highest places, beg-an to clothe themselves in appropriate raiment to welcome the sovereign of the morning. Dull greys, gleaming silver, deep reds, dark purple—all available hues were to be seen in that array. Then in the fullness of time the great flame rode out among the encircling glories, making them all appear dim and faint in the presence of his own effulgence.
“I am the light of the world”; and before His coming, His appearance was foretold in tokens
“I am the light”; and what multitudes of things He illumined I He threw light
upon the character of God, upon the nature of man, upon the beauty of holiness,
upon the abominableness of sin. He revealed the poverty of the far country, and
with a clear, winning light he showed the way back home. The illumination
touches everything, enlightening and quickening everywhere. Let me narrow our
subject, and bring our consideration into certain immediate aspects and needs of
the personal life. Christ is the light and I need Him. When? Where? I need a
light in the unknown day of life. I need a light in the unknown night of death.
I need
I need the light in the unknown day of life. If I interpret myself aright I am in need of three great primary things: I want to see the right way, I want to love it, and I want power to walk in it. The Light of Life will satisfy all these needs and equip me throughout my pilgrimage. How shall we interpret light? Let us begin here. Science tells us of the conversion of forces, how one force can be translated into another, how motion can become heat and heat become light; and this process of translation can be reversed. Our scientific papers have been recently telling us of a great experiment which has been tried in America. A vast machine was invented in the shape of a gigantic windmill, the arms being composed of reflectors catching the light of the sun. The concentrated light, in the form of heat, was then made to generate steam, and the steam was used to drive complicated machinery.
Now in this wonderful invention we have illustrated the process of
transformation by which light is converted into heat and heat into motion. In
light we have the secret of fire, and in fire we have the secret of movement. So
that when my Lord uses the figure of light I may find in its
In my desires I need warmth! Bright ideas would not adequately serve my need.
If I am cold in desire the lucid ideal will have no allurement. “Lack of desire
is the ill of all ills.” And when the revelation has been given, aspiration is
needed. How often this healthy desire is mentioned in the Word of God! “They
desire a better country.” “Desire the sincere milk of the Word.” “Desire
spiritual gifts.” Now it is this desire which the Light of the World enkindles.
And I need strength in my will! The power to see and the power to feel would not give me perfect equipment. I need the strength to move. In the illustration I employed it was seen how light could be translated into the power of motion; and the Light of Life conveys energy to the spirit which enables it to follow the gleam. In Him we live and move. “It is God that worketh in you to will.” And so in light and warmth and power the Lord will be to me all that I need in the day of life. I shall know His mind, I shall love His appearing, I shall be strengthened to move at His command.
But the night cometh! I shall need Him to-night.
To-night I shall have to lie down and die. Is there any light? “I am the light.”
He claims that to those who are in Him the night shineth even as the day. What
does my Lord do in the hour of death to break up the reign of darkness? He gives
us the cheer of sovereignty. “All things are yours . . . . death!” Then I do not
belong to death? No, death belongs to me. Death is not my master, he is my
servant. He is made to minister to me in the hour of translation, and I shall
not be enslaved by his
And what about the morrow? When the river is crossed, is there any light upon
the regions beyond? Am I to gaze into blackness, impenetrable, inscrutable? “I
am the light.” What kind of light does He give me here? “In my Father’s house!” Is there not a softening gleam in the very phrase? Look here for a sheaf of
rays of welcome light. “In my Father’s house,” there is our habitation! “I go
to prepare a place
“While ye have light believe in the light, that ye may be the children of
light.”—
“WHILE ye have light.” Take advantage of the sun while it shines. The vivid illumination is not constant. Life’s visions do not shine and glow like brilliant and continuous noons. The lucid seasons are rare and infrequent. They come and they go, bright intervals in the wastes of grey twilight and darker night. There is an illumination for a moment; in that moment we have a glimpse of reality, and the colours and outlines of things are clearly revealed. “While ye have light believe in the light.”
A little while ago, on a dark and stormy night, I wandered along a winding road
on a bleak hillside. Things in the distance were hidden from my view, and the
things which were near were revealed in weird and portentous guise. Then the
clouds divided, and the full moon swept into the rift, and in the blaze of light
the road stood out like a white ribbon across the hill, and the whole
countryside emerged into view, river and hedgerow and tree. And the rift closed
again,
As it is in the realm of nature so it is in the finer region of the soul. We
have our brilliant moments. In those moments the near view opens out into the
distant prospect and we see things clearly. We are privileged to have “heavenly
visions.” We have the light! In these bright, lucid seasons we gain some
clearer apprehension of God, we look more deeply into the mystery of life, we
can behold our ideal possibilities and gaze upon our purified and exalted
selves. We see in the winsomeness of duty the repulsiveness of sin, and the
charm and fascination of unselfish service. These are the brilliant moments in
life, when the clear light is shining upon our changing way. We can never be
sure
Sometimes the brilliant moment comes to us when we are contemplating a scene of superlative beauty. Who has not read that wonderful passage in one of Kingsley’s letters wherein he describes how the trout stream on Dartmoor, and all its immediate surroundings, opened out into an apocalypse of the unseen? The temporal divided, and he saw God! I heard a man a little while ago describing his experiences amid the unspeakable wonders of the Alps, and his story culminated in a never-to-be-forgotten morning when, away up on the solitary heights, he declared there was “only a film between him and the Lord.” I heard another man tell a little company that there had been five or six distinct moments in his life, and perhaps the most commanding of them was a season of sunset in the Austrian Tyrol, when his soul literally trembled in the unfolding glory. Yes, these are brilliant moments, when the heavenly light breaks upon our wondering eyes.
Sometimes the brilliant moment comes in a season of calm and lonely meditation. Everybody else is at rest. The house is quiet. The last book has been put away. And suddenly our surroundings fade away, or are eclipsed, and life’s possibilities shine before us in dazzling summits of ambition, pure as Alpine heights. Range upon range of surpassing loveliness breaks upon our spiritual vision, and we behold what we might be in the Lord. It is one of the moments of the Son of Man, a brilliant moment, and we have the light.
Or perhaps the brilliant moment comes to us in the rending ministry of sorrow. It is amazing how far we can see through the tiniest niche and crevice. And when our imprisoning and commonplace environment has been shaken and convulsed in some season of upheaval and trouble, through the very rifts of the disaster we often obtain a clear glimpse of a forgotten or neglected world. “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.” The vision came in a bewildering season of night. Our tears frequently give lucidity and range to our views. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now . . . !” The light had come in the midnight. The brilliant moment had come in the time of the shadow.
Or perhaps, again, the brilliant moment is experienced
“While ye have light believe in the light.” The brilliant moment passes. The
ecstatic revelation comes to an end. The clouds close again. The grey and
commonplace twilight returns.
And the principle is as applicable to people as to individuals. Let us believe
in the revelation of our brilliant moments, in our national possibilities as
seen by our nation at its best. Sometimes a man appears upon the grey and
commonplace
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”—
THIS is a desert scene. A hot, panting fugitive is fleeing for his life, pursued
and hunted by the forces of a fierce revenge. His crime is placarded on his
garments. The marks of blood are upon him. In a moment of passion, or in cool
deliberateness, he has maimed and outraged his brother. And now fear has spurred
him to flight. Nemesis is upon his track. He takes to the desert! The wild,
inhospitable waste stretches before him in shadowless immensity. No bush offers
him a secret shelter. No rock offers him a safe defence. He can almost feel the
hot breath of his pursuers in the rear. Whither shall he turn? His terrified
eyes search the horizon, and in the cloudy distance he discerns the dim outlines
of a desert-tent. His excited nerves play like whips about his muscles, and with
terrific strain he makes for the promised rest. The way is long! The enemy is
near! The air is feverish! The night is falling! The runner is faint! Spurring
himself
Such is the desert symbol. What is its spiritual significance? The soul is a fugitive, in flight across the plains of time. The soul is pursued by enemies, which disturb its peace, and threaten its destruction. The soul is often terror-stricken. The soul is often a “haunt of fears.” There are things it cannot escape, presences it cannot avoid, enemies that dog its track through the long, long day, from morning until night. What are these enemies that chase the soul across the ways of time? Can we name them?
Here is an enemy, the sin of yesterday. I cannot get away from it. When I have half-forgotten it, and leave it slumbering in the rear, it is suddenly awake again, and, like a hound, it is baying at my heels. Some days are days of peculiar intensity, and the far-off experience draws near and assumes the vividness of an immediate act. Yesterday pursues to-day, and threatens it!
And what were the “ugly sights” which filled the time with
“dismal terror”? They were the threatening presences of old sins, pursuing in
full cry across the years! The affrighted experience is all foreshadowed by the
Word of God. Whether I turn to the Old Testament or to the New Testament the
awful succession is proclaimed as a primary law of the spiritual life. “Evil pursueth sinners.” That sounds significant of desert-flight and hot pursuit! “Be
sure your sin will find you out!” as though our sin were an objective reality. The hounds of
Nemesis have found the scent, and they are following on in fierce pursuit! “Be
sure your sin will find you out.” If I turn to the New Testament the dark
succession is made equally sure. “Their works do follow them.” I know these
words are spoken of the good, the spiritually-minded, the men and the women who
have spent themselves in beneficent sacrifice. “Their works do follow them!”
They are attended by the radiant procession of their services, a shining,
singing throng, conducting them in jubilation along the ways of time into the
temple of the blest! But the converse is equally true. The
spiritually-rebellious and unclean are followed by the dark and ugly procession
of their own deeds, every deed a menacing foe, reaching out a condemnatory
Here is another enemy, the temptation of today. Yesterday is not the only
menacing presence; there is the insidious seducer who stands by the wayside
to-day. Sometimes he approaches me in deceptive deliberateness; sometimes his
advance is so stealthy that in a moment I am caught in his snare! At one time
he comes near me like a fox; at other times he leaps upon me like a lion out of
the thicket. At one time the menace is in my passions, and again it crouches
very near my prayers! Now the enemy draws near in the heavy guise of carnality,
“the lust of the flesh”; and now in the lighter robe of covetousness, “the lust
of the eyes”; and now in the delicate garb of vanity, “the pride of life”! But
in all the many guises it is the one foe. In the manifold suggestions there is
one threat “The enemy that sowed them is the devil.” If I am awake I fear! If I
move he follows! “When I would do good evil is present with me.” “O wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The soul is
Here is a third enemy, the death that awaits me to-morrow. “And I looked and
beheld a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed
with him!” Man seeks to banish that presence from his conscience, but he
pathetically fails. The pale horse with his rider walks into our feasts! He
forces himself into the wedding-day! “To love and to cherish until death us do
part!” We have almost agreed to exile his name from our vocabulary. If we are
obliged to refer to him we hide the slaughterhouse under rose-trees, we conceal
the reality under more pleasing euphemisms. I have become insured. What for?
Because to-morrow I may—— No, I do not speak in that wise. I banish the word at
the threshold. I do not mention death or dying. How then? I have become
insured, because “if anything should happen to me——?” In such circumlocution do
I seek to evade the rider upon the pale horse. Yet the rider is getting nearer!
To-morrow he will dismount at the door, and his hand will be upon the latch!
Shall we fear his pursuit? “The terrors of death compassed me,” cries the
Psalmist. “Through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to
bondage,” cries the Apostle of
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.” In the
Lord our God is the fugitive’s refuge. “In the secret of His tabernacle shall He
hide me.” In the Lord our God we are secured against the destructiveness of our
yesterdays, the menaces of to-day, and the darkening fears of the morrow. Our
enemies are stayed at the door! We are the Lord’s guests, and our sanctuary is
inviolable! But what assurance have we that the Lord will take us in? I will
give you the assurance. “Hath He not said, and shall He not do it?” I
This, then, is my assurance. What He wants me to do, He does. What He empowers me to be, He is!
“Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift, That I doubt His own love can compete with it? . . . Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,
And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
. . . . .
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would . . .
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou—so wilt Thou!”
“I will flee unto Him to hide me.”
And what shall I find in the tent? “Thou preparest a table before me in the
presence of mine enemies.” There is something so exuberantly triumphant in the
Psalmist’s boast! It is laughingly defiant in its security. The enemies frown
at the open door, while he calmly sits down to a feast with his Lord. “Yesterday” glowers, but cannot hurt.
“To-day” tempts, but cannot entice. “To-morrow” threatens, but can. not destroy.
“O death! where is thy sting?”
They are like the enemies which John Bunyan saw just outside the Valley of the
Shadow, two giants by whose power and tyranny many had been cruelly put to
death, but who can now “do
In “the secret of His tabernacle” we shall find a sure defence. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” We shall find a refreshing repose. The shock of panic will be over. The waste of fear will be stayed. We shall “rest in the Lord,” and “hide under the shadow of His wing.” We shall find an abundant provision. Our Host is grandly “given to hospitality.” As quaint John Trapp says, “There is not only fullness, but redundance.” He giveth “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over!” On the Lord’s table there is provision for everybody, and the nutriment is suited to each one’s peculiar need.
The only time I have ever heard a sermon on this text was twenty years ago, when
I heard Horatius Bonar proclaim its good news to a great company of blind people
gathered from the many institutions and homes of the city of Edinburgh. “Thou
preparest a table before me,” a poor, burdened pilgrim, groping sightless through the ways of time! Aye, there was provision on the table for the blind!
And for all of us there is a table prepared and arranged for
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give
him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth
saving he that receiveth it.”—
I THINK we ought not to refer the fulfilment of this great prophecy to some remote futurity when we have passed through the veil and are in the kingdom of eternal day. If this promise is to be of much worth to me, it must be worth something now. I don’t suppose there will ever be a time when I shall need the hidden manna more than I need it now. Certainly there will never come a day when I shall be in greater need of the white stone than I am to-day. Therefore I want at once to draw this word quite back from that remote day, and regard it as a promise for current need, as a blessing offered to men and women to-day.
Hidden manna! What is it? Hidden resources; strengthening and sustaining food given to the man who is in the fighting line—a feast upon the battlefield. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”
There is nothing that distinguishes one man from another more than staying power. What resources has a man upon which he can draw? What hidden bread can he call out in the dark and impoverished day? You know how that contrast prevails even in the realm of the body; how we contrast and distinguish one from another by the amount he can visibly endure. Why, even of the men who try to achieve the feat of swimming across the Channel the great outstanding contrast is the amount of hidden manna they possess, the amount of secret resources, their capacity to hold out.
Then the contrast prevails in the realm of dispositions. Take the first
half-dozen of your friends, and try to measure the length of their tempers;
try to put your finger just at the point where irritability begins. You will be
amazed how different are the lengths you will have to measure out. One man
swiftly exhausts his little store, and has no hidden manna upon which to draw.
We say, “his patience was soon spent.” Others have hidden manna, and are
marvellous in their powers of toleration. How long can you go on, how far can
you go in an atmosphere of discouragement, ingratitude, apparent
ineffectiveness, and open contempt? How long can you go on teaching a
Sunday-school class, and never
The contrast prevails in wider fields still. We hear people saying of a man, “How does he do it?” He is not over strong, sickness is never out of his house, the funeral hearse has often stopped at his door, money does not appear to be plentiful, business is not brisk; his sky is continually overcast. How does he do it? His disposition remains cheery, his hope remains bright, his endeavour abides persistent! What is his staying power? “Hidden manna.”
Now, observe, there are two primary emphases of the Christian evangel. The first primary note is that our Lord is acquainted with the secret need of the individual life. “I know My sheep.” “Thy Father”—is not this beautiful?—who seeth beneath the skin, who seeth in secret where the kindliest eye of thy dearest friend cannot pierce—“thy Father seeth thy secret need.”
The second primary note is this: our God will bring the secret bread to the
secret need. Our secret life shall be preserved from starvation, or, to use the
words of Paul, our inner life is renewed—fed up, sustained, nourished. That is
what constitutes the outstanding contrast between men. Some men are in covenant
with the One who has the secret knowledge, and He brings
What is the second promise of the evangel? “I will give him a white stone.” This
phrase was running through my brain when I was away for my holiday recently, and
in passing along a pebble-strewn beach I picked up a white pebble. I looked at
it very intently and inquisitively—and spiritually, in the hope that it would
communicate something to me of the significance of the Apostle’s figure. It was
wonderfully pure; it was intensely hard; it was exceedingly smooth. My Lord
will give to me a “white stone.” What is the significance of it? My
interpretation was
“Perfectly pure I will make thee—and hard!” Oh, not the hardness of insensitiveness, but the hardness of strength. Said one of my young fellows, speaking of another man, “His muscles are as hard as nails.” That is the hardness we want in the spirit. Muscular hardness that will not yield to an easy threat or even to a formidable threat, the hardness which is the opposite to flabbiness, softness of limb. The man whose moral muscles are as hard as pebbles, as hard as nails, cannot be broken by any temptations which assail him. That is the character we want--rock-character!
Then there is this beautiful addition: “In the stone a new name written.” The
name I bore in the old life before I turned to the Lord is to be forgotten. A
man came to me in my vestry and said, “Do you think God ever forgets and
forgives a man’s past?” I replied, “God so forgets a man’s past that He forgets
the man’s name! He blots it out, and gives him a new one.” We have not to wait
for the white stone, but I think we shall have to wait for the unveiling of the
new name. No one will enter into the meaning of it except the one to whom it is
given. How can any man know my triumphs who has not known my shame? I don’t
think that Lydia, who lived in Philippi, will ever be able to comprehend the new
name of the jailer who lived in the same town. If there had been a kind of
Wesleyan fellowship meeting in Philippi, I think their experiences would have
been a perfect enigma to each other. I wonder if Billy Bray can ever appreciate
the new name given to Henry Drummond, or if Henry Drummond will quite appreciate
that of Billy Bray. I wonder if Catherine Booth will understand the new name of
Mary Magdalene. I wonder if Mary Magdalene will ever be able to get beneath the
surface of the new name of Catherine Booth. We all have our little secrets with
our Lord. When
God will feed us with strength, and endow us with a character like a white stone, and will give to us a unique and individual name. Will you have it? I remember hearing Henry Drummond, addressing a great meeting of graduates and undergraduates, say (and it was about the most sensational thing he ever did say): “Gentlemen, do you mean business? Here is my Lord. If you mean business, give Him your hand—and stick!”
“The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”—
THERE is nothing more interesting and fascinating than to watch the
transformation of the barren into the beautiful. Conversion is often more
wonderful than creation. We gaze with extraordinary attention as some
half-repellent thing passes through some mysterious process, and in the process
becomes lovely. There is always something alluring about the transformation of
the desert. In my schooldays I had a drawing-master who was a very pronounced
expert in his profession, and he adorned the walls of the schoolroom with many
of his own creations. I have almost completely forgotten those masterpieces, but
I perfectly well remember the transformation of one of my own drawings into a
thing of comparative beauty. The drawing itself, as I had left it, was fearfully
imperfect, and I looked upon it almost with feelings of loathing; but the
master touched it and retouched it, and the half-ugly thing became a passable
representation of an ancient arch. “The desert
It is not long since the first trees were planted in the great work of
re-afforesting the Black Country. In all broad England there is no stretch of
country more depressing than that which lies in dismal waste between Birmingham
and Wolverhampton. And now the attempt is being made to transform it, and to
redeem the Black Country from its well-deserved notoriety. Yes, it is
transformation that arrests our attention.
Our Lord will transform the desert of the soul and make it blossom as the rose.
Who has not known the desert-soul? There is nothing gracious about it, nothing
winsome and welcome. When people draw near they can find nothing satisfying in
its presence. There is no fruit they can pluck, no water of inspiration they can
drink, no grateful shade in which they may find refreshing rest. The whole being
is hot and dry and feverish and fruitless. Men speak to one another of such a
life and say, “You will get nothing out of him,” which means they will not only
be denied money, but denied things even more valuable than money they will be
denied time and strength and service. Was not Scrooge in Dickens’s “Christmas
Carol” a desert-soul?
“I will make the dry land springs of water.” First of all, wells shall break out in the desert-soul. Kindly impulses shall be born. Generous emotions shall flow in plenteous abundance. Gracious feelings shall pervade the once dry and feverish soil. I do not quite know how the Lord will start these springs. He has many ministries, and they are all of them ministers of re-creation. I heard a farmer say a little while ago, “There is nothing like snow for feeding the springs!” And I have known men whose souls have been desert-like, who have been graciously blessed by the Lord under the snows of some chilling sorrow or disappointment. And most assuredly the genial springs have been born again. It is very frequently a seasonable moment, when you want help from anybody, to go after they have passed through some grave and serious affliction. The wells of sympathy are flowing, the first step has been taken in the transformation of the desert.
“In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” The kindly
impulse shall
“I will plant in the desert the cedar.” He will not only make the springs to
leap and the rivers to flow, He will continue the transformation by the culture
of spiritual vegetation. He will plant the cedar, the symbol of strength. The
effeminate shall become the masculine, and the soft and yielding shall become
the durable and the persistent. There shall be nothing capricious about the
life, nothing weak and rootless, but in the transformed desert there shall be
virtuous habits with the strength of cedars. “I will set in the desert the
fir-tree,” the symbol to the Oriental of things sweet and musical. It provided
the material out of which they made their harps, and it would suggest to them
the end of the desert silence, and the outbreak of praise and song. Well, is not
all this a wonderful transformation
Sometimes our work appears to us like a desert. One of the great characteristics of the desert is its monotony, and we frequently go to its unchanging wastes for a figure to describe our monotonous toil. In the desert the progress is merely on and on! There is no turn of the road! There is no surprise! And so it is with much of our daily life and calling. There is a great deal of sameness in the work of every man. It is a little round, the well-known track. We trudge it daily, we know every stone in the pavement; and we have become so subdued by the monotony that we have begun to regard ourselves as the victims of drudgery. I think that is how a great many people regard their work. It is a desert and not a garden. I have sometimes spoken to men when they have finished their holiday and returned to their labour, and I have asked them how they have enjoyed it, and they very frequently reply that after such experiences it is very tame returning to the common work.
I stood a little while ago on the Great Orme’s Head, on a wonderfully beautiful day, gazing upon the colours of that exquisite coast. There was a fine air blowing over the headland, and everything was fresh and sweet. One who was standing near me suddenly made this remark, “Fancy auctioneering after this!” He had thought of his work, and with the work immediately appeared the desert! His holiday provided the garden, and he was returning to the waste. Now, can the desert of our work be made to blossom like the rose? Most assuredly it can. I wonder how it was with Paul when he was making tents? I feel perfectly sure there was no suggestion of “desert” in the labour. And why did he not regard his work as a desert? Just because there was no desert in his soul. His own soul was a bit of Emmanuel’s land, and therefore his work formed a part of the same inheritance. What we are in soul will determine what we see in our work. If our soul is “flat” then everything will drag. The light upon our work comes from our own eyes. If the sunshine is on our souls it will most assuredly beam out of our eyes and rest on our labour.
I knew a cobbler who used to sit at his work just where he could catch a glimpse
of the green fields! I think that is suggestive of how we
And surely sometimes our sorrows appear as the desert. We pass into experiences that are dark and cold and lonely, and over which there blows a bitter wind. Surely sorrow is a Black Country to untold multitudes of souls! “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” Can He feed us in the season of a sorrow? Let us remember it was in the desert that the miracle of the loaves was wrought, and in the desert of our sorrow a harvest miracle may be wrought to-day. At His word our desert can abound with lilies and violets and heart’s-ease and forget-me-nots. “He will also feed thee with the finest of the wheat.” Your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Oh, thou troubled soul, turn to the great Wonder Worker, and thy desert shall blossom as the rose!
“You did He quicken, when ye were dead through your trespasses and
sins.”--
“Dead through your trespasses and sins,” . . . “you did He quicken.” The
transition is like passing from a graveyard into a sweet meadow in which the
children are playing! But this illustration is very imperfect, and in order to
make it in any way an adequate analogy of the apostle’s thought we must conceive
the transformation of the graveyard itself. The graveyard must be converted into
a sweet and winsome meadow, and its dead must emerge from their grave clothes in
the brightness and buoyancy of little children. It is not a transition from the
cemetery to the sweet pastures; it is the transformation of the graveyard
itself. “Dead through your trespasses and sins,” . . . “you did He quicken”! Or
we may change the figure and regard it as the passing of winter into spring.
There is winter; cold, bare, flowerless and fruitless. Then there is a feeling
of spring in the air. Everything is vitalised and begins to manifest
Winter! “Dead through your trespasses and sins.” And what are the deadening ministries which create this appalling condition? The apostle mentions two, “the course of this world,” and “the prince of the power of the air.” These are the two mighty forces ever at work upon the lives of men, producing paralysis of the higher powers, benumbing and impairing the finer sensitiveness, and sinking all the worthy things in the life to degradation and death.
Here is the first of the deadening ministries, “the course of this world.” And
is there anything more deadening than the ordinary course and custom of the
present world? Look at the world’s way of thinking. How deadening is its
influence upon the perceptions of the spirit! The
And the second of the deadening ministries is “the prince of the power of the air.” We are confronted with a personal power, who is ever at work in the realm of evil suggestion and desire. There is a great leader in the hierarchy of evil spirits. He is the antagonist of men’s welfare, and seeks to destroy the finer faculties by which they hold communion with God. He is “the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.” When some little flame of carnal desire is kindled in the life, “the prince of the power of the air” blows upon it, and seeks to fan it into fierce and destructive fire. Who has not experienced his influence? It is painfully marvellous how the spark of evil-thinking so speedily becomes a devouring heat! The prince of the power of the air is ever at work blowing upon these incipient fires, in order that in the intense heat of a greater conflagration he may scorch and burn up the furniture of the soul.
Now see how these two deadening ministries work. The apostle declares that they
seek to determine our manner of “walk,” and also our manner of “life.” They seek
to subject us to a bondage in which we shall “walk according to the course of
this world,” and in which we shall “live in the lusts of the flesh, doing the
desires of the flesh and of the mind.” Now, to influence
Now, when men’s conduct is determined by “the course of this world,” and their life is limited by the will of “the prince of the air,” all the higher powers in the life languish and droop, and at length pine away in paralysis and death. The deadening ministries complete their work, and man is “dead in trespasses and sins.”
Spring! “You did he quicken.” It is well to read the earlier verses of this
great chapter, and to go slowly through its description of the winter time,
until we are pulled up by this great and hopeful word: “But God”! The
antagonistic
The quickening is sometimes a painful experience to the one who is being
revived. I am
What shall we say then, one to another, when God has lifted us out of the graves? Let us urge one another not to go back to the cemetery, not even to look upon it, lest we stumble into the grave again. It is a strange and harrowing thing how frequently even saved men will go perilously near to the grave out of which they were redeemed! It is altogether a wise and healthy and secure thing to keep a great space between us and the place of our old enslavement.
“And hath made us sit together with Him in the heavenly places.” Said an old
Puritan, “A
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies
and God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be
able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith
we ourselves are comforted of God.”--
“Blessed be God!” The apostle begins with his usual doxology. He will have a great deal to say in this epistle about affliction, but he begins upon another note. He begins with the contemplation of the mercies of God, and from that standpoint he surveys the field of his own trouble.
Everything depends upon our point of view. I stood a short time ago in a room
which was furnished with wealthy pictures, and I fixed my gaze upon a Highland
scene of great strength and glory. The owner of the picture found me gazing at
this particular work, and he immediately said, “I am afraid you won’t get the
light on the hill.” And, sure enough, he was right. From my point of view I was
contemplating a dark and storm-swept landscape, and I did not get the light on
the hill. He moved me to another part of
Now where does the apostle find his comfort? This verse always rears itself
before me like a mountain range, in which there is a valley through which there
flows a gladdening, refreshing river of mercy and comfort. “Blessed be God!”
That is the supreme height. The other end of the text describes the gladdening
river of comfort and grace. You see to what elevation he traces his comfort;
away up to God! And so his resource is no mere trickle, to be dried up in the
day of drought, or swiftly congealed in the nip of the first wintry day. The
apostle loved to proclaim the infinitude of his
Yes, it all depends where we look for our comfort. Do we seek it from books?
Again how welcome the service; but it is amazing how the ministry varies. You
go to a book one day and the river is full; you return on the morrow ands the
bed is bleached and dry. We cannot depend on the gracious ministry of our books.
Do we seek our comfort in Nature? Again how healing the ministry, and yet how
uncertain! have known a June day deepen a sorrow! I have known a moonlight
night throw a heavy soul into a denser gloom! I have known a little flower open
out an old wound! We cannot depend upon
“Blessed be God, the Father of mercies.” The Father of pity, of compassion, the Father of that gracious spirit to which we have given the name “Samaritanism.” That is the kind of mercy that streams from the hills. Mercy is the very spirit of Samaritanism. It stops by the wounded wayfarer, it dismounts without condescension, it is not moved by the imperative of duty, but constrained by the tender yearnings of humanity and love. It is not the mercy of a stern and awful judge,* but the compassion of a tenderly-disposed and wistful friend. Our God is the Father of such mercies. Wherever the spirit of a true Samaritanism is to be found, our God is the Father of it. It was born of Him. It was born on the hills.
Wherever we discover a bit of real Samaritanism we may claim it as one of the tender offsprings of the Spirit of God. With what boldness the apostle plants his Lord’s flag on territory that has been unjustly alienated from its owner, and he claims it for its rightful King! “The Father of mercies.”
“The God of all comfort.” What music there is about the word! It means more than tenderness: it is strength in tenderness, and it is tenderness in strength. It is not a mere palliative, but a curative. It does not merely soothe, it heals. Its ministry is not only consolation but restoration. “Comfort” is “mercy” at work, it is Samaritanism busy with its oil and wine. And again let us mark that whenever we find this busy goodness among the children of men, exercising itself among the broken limbs and broken hearts of the race, the Lord is the fountain of it. He is “the God of all comfort,” of every form and kind and aspect. Again I say, how boldly the apostle plants the Lord’s flag, and claims the gracious kingdom of kindly ministries for our God I
“Who comforteth us in all our affliction.” Let us note the word in which the
apostle describes
Sometimes a comfort is mediated to us through the ministry of one of our
fellow-men. The apostle never allowed the human messenger to eclipse the Lord
who sent him. He had a keen eye for his Lord’s comings, even when He wore some
lowly human guise. “God comforted me by the coming of Titus!” Happy Paul! to
be able to tell by the fragrance of the message that the messenger had come from
the King’s garden.
“He comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” Then the Lord comforts us, not to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters. Thou hast received the gift of comfort; now go out and comfort others! “We take God’s gifts most completely for ourselves when we realise that He sends them to us for the benefit of other men.”
It is not enough for us to have sympathy. Sympathy can be
exceedingly fruitless, or it may be exceedingly clumsy, irritating the wound It
purposes to heal. There are many men who are exceedingly sympathetic, but they
have not the secret ministry of those who have been closeted with the Lord. No,
if we would be able to comfort
Let us get away to our God, let us bare our souls to Him, and let us receive His marvellous gifts of comfort and mercy. And then let us use our glorious wealth in enriching other people and by our ministry bring them to the heights.
“Having no hope. . . . But now in Christ.”—
“HAVING no hope.” We are familiar with hopelessness in common life. We know the rout that begins in the sick chamber when hope goes out of the room. So long as the patient remains hopeful the doctor has a mighty helpmeet in his ministry, but when the patient loses heart and hope the doctor strives in the face of almost assured defeat.
The influence is similar in the ministry of the nurse. I was impressed by a phrase uttered in my hearing by a nurse in a conversation which I had with her concerning the nature of her work. “I like a life-and-death case,” she said, “with just a chance for life!” She rejoiced in the struggle if the bias was on the side of victory. But when the last chance is gone, and there is no possibility of recovery, and the nurse has to labour confronted by sheer defeat, the service becomes a burdensome task.
It is not otherwise on the battlefield. Armies that go out without the inspiring
presence of hope
Now, what prevails when hopelessness invades the sick room and the battlefield is also experienced in the more secret life of the spirit, in the realm of religion. When a man becomes hopeless in religious life he loses the very springs of activity, and he sinks in ever-deepening degradation. The Scriptures employ a very powerful figure to express the state of those in whose life there is no hope. “They that sit in darkness.” It is a very graphic picture. Try to realise it. You sit by the fireside on a winter’s night, with a bright fire making the room genial and cheery. You sit on until the fire burns low and eventually dies out, and the warmth gives place to a searching chill. Then the light goes out and darkness is added to the coldness. You sit on. “They that sit in darkness.” And there are people whose soul-life is just like that. There is no fire in the grate and their light is gone out, and they abide in cold and dreary desolation, “Having no hope.”
Now, what are some of the causes of this dingy and paralysing hopelessness?
Surely I must in
The second cause of hopelessness which I will name, is the tempest of sorrow. I
saw an account, a little while ago, of one of our steamships which had passed
through tremendous seas, and the waters had got down into her engine-room and
put out the fires. When I read the record I immediately thought of a kindred
experience in the spirit, which I find expressed in the ancient words of the
Psalmist: “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.” The passage
through heavy seas of sorrow may be attended with complete security, or it may
be accompanied by unspeakable loss. It is when the waters of sorrow get down
among the fires of the life, the driving passions, the loves and the joys and
the hopes, that dire ruin is wrought. It is unfortunately not an infrequent
occurrence that the sorrow of a life is permitted to approach the central fires,
and the light and warmth and cheer of the life are put out. I have many times
heard sorrowing people say, “I feel as cold as stone.” May we not say that the
engine fire is temporarily
And the third of the causes which I will name is the monotony of labour. All monotony is tedious and depressing. To be compelled to listen to one persistent note of the organ would be an intolerable affliction, and would weigh the life down in heavy depression. To be obliged to listen even to a monotonous speaker tends to drain away the springs of inspiration. It is the unchanging note that makes the life sink in weariness. And this perhaps is pre-eminently so when one’s daily toil is one of unrelieved monotony. There are people whose work calls for no intelligence, no ingenuity, no skill. It makes not the slightest demand upon their thought. It is a purely mechanical service, and works as unsentimentally and as rigidly as a machine. The life looks out every day and sees nothing new. The morning finds it at the old routine. There is no expectancy in the day, no surprise by the road. The hammer of the daily experience hits the same place at every moment, until life settles down into a benumbment which has no vision and no hope. The spring goes out of the spirit, and frequently it happens, as it did in other days, that “Because they have no changes they fear not God.”
Now, so far we have not brought in the Lord Christ, and just because He has been so deliberately left out, the hopelessness of men has been unrelieved. Let us now bring Him into the dark cold life, and see what happens. “But now in Christ Jesus”—what? What kind of hope does the Master kindle when He enters into communion with a human life? Well, I think He kindles and keeps aflame a threefold hope; hope in the perfectibility of self, hope in the instrumentality of all things, and hope in personal immortality.
Christ kindles hope in the perfectibility of self. He comes to me, a poor
sensitive, devil-governed man, and whispers to me that I too can attain to
freedom and put on the strength of the ideal man. I stand amazed before the
suggestion. Quietly He reassures me and tells me that I too can be perfected.
What, I; with the fires out, a poor bit of driftage upon life’s sea, that I can
be renewed and filled with power and made master of circumstances, and voyage
happily and safely to the desired haven? Can I be perfected? I have seen what
men can do. I have seen my fellows take a mere refuse place in the city, one of
its eyesores, and turn it into a place of beauty. Yes, I have seen the place of
refuse transformed into a garden. And even now I hear my fellows
And when I have experienced even a little of His emancipating ministry my soul walks in a wonderful hope. That is the reason why I am always so anxious that men should have one experience of the power of the Master’s grace. One experience will make them the children of a confident hope. Once they have tasted they will want to remain at the feast. “Oh, taste and see how gracious the Lord is.” “He will perfect that which concerneth me.”
The Master kindles hope in the instrumentality of all things. If He purposes my
perfection, then all my circumstances will be made to conspire to the
accomplishment of His will. Nothing that comes to me will make me despair. I am
hopeful that He will convert everything into a helpmeet and friend. “All things
work together for good to them that love God.” Even sorrow? Yes, sorrow. Sorrow
is one of the “all things,” and is subjected to the Master’s will, and is one of
His instruments for the attainment of His ends. Sorrow can accomplish what
comfort would always fail to do. There is a legend that tells of a German baron
who, at his castle on the Rhine, stretched wires from tower to tower, that the
winds might convert it into an Æolian harp. And the soft breezes played about
the castle, but no music was born. But one night there arose a great tempest,
and hill and castle were smitten by the fury of mighty winds. The baron went to
the threshold to look out upon the terror of the storm, and the Æolian harp was
filling the air with strains that rang out even above the clamour of the
tempest. It needed the tempest to bring out the music! And have we not known
men whose lives have not given out any entrancing music in the day of a calm
prosperity, but who, when the tempest drove against them, have astonished
And surely this applies to my work, however monotonous it may be. With the assurance that my Lord will use it for my spiritual profit, into my labour I shall put a song, and the way of drudgery will become the very highway of my Lord. Everything will give me a lift if I am in close communion with my Lord.
The Master kindles hope in my personal immortality. “Because I live, ye shall
live also.” “He hath begotten us again unto a living hope.” “He that believeth
on Me shall never die.” What a hope He kindles! Such a hope gives to life an
amazing expectancy. When Samuel Rutherford was near his end, he was so
gloriously excited at the prospect that those about him had to counsel
These, then, are some of the hopes kindled and inspired by Jesus Christ our Lord. What He kindles He will keep burning. “Having loved His own, He will love them unto the end.”
“They shall mount up with wings as eagles.”--
“They shall mount up with wings as eagles.” Who shall? “They that wait upon the Lord.” And waiting upon the Lord is not merely a passing call, but an abiding in Him. Waiting is not so much a transient action as a permanent attitude. It is not the restless vagrant calling at the door for relief, it is rather the intimacy of the babe at the breast.
They who thus wait upon the Lord shall obtain a marvellous addition to their
resources. Their life shall be endowed with mysterious but most real equipment.
They shall obtain wings. We do well when picturing the angel presences to endow
them with wings. At the best it is a clumsy symbolism, but all symbolisms of
eternal things are clumsy and ineffective. And what do we mean by wings? We
mean that life has gained new powers, extraordinary capacity; the old self has
received heavenly addition, endowing it with nimbleness, buoyancy, strength. We
It is life characterised by buoyancy. We become endowed with power to rise above
things! How often we give the counsel one to another, “You should rise above it!” But too often it is idle counsel, because it implies that the friend to whom
we give it has the gift of wings too frequently he is only endowed with feet.
If,
How frequently we are held in bondage by grovelling to the mean and trifling! Some small grievance enters into our life and keeps us from the heights. Some disappointment holds us in depressing servitude. Some ingratitude paralyses our service and chills our delight in unselfish toil. Or some discourtesy is done to us, we cannot get away from it. Or, perhaps, it is “the murmur of self-will,” or “the storm of passion” which prevents our emancipation. Whatever it may be, and there are a thousand such tyrannies, life is separated from the heavenlies, and becomes utterly mundane, of the earth earthy. Well, now, when we get the wings we have the power to rise above these trifles, and even above the things that may be larger than trifles and may appear like gigantic hills. Wing-power gives buoyancy, and we are enabled to look down even upon the hills and see them beneath our feet. The life with wing-power is not the victim of “the spirit of heaviness.” It does not creep along in deep, heavy melancholy. In the day of difficulty and disappointment it can soar and sing at heaven’s gate.
Life with wing-power is characterised by loftiness.
The wing-life is characterised by comprehensiveness. High soaring gives wide
seeing. Loftiness gives comprehension. When we live on the low grounds we only
possess a narrow outlook. One man offers his opinion on some weighty matter and
he is answered by the charge, “That is a very low ground to take.” The low
ground always means petty vision. Men who do not soar always have small views of
things. We require wings for breadth of view. Now see! The higher you get the
greater will be the area that comes within your view. We may judge our height by
the measure of our outlook. How much do we see? We have not got very high if we
only see ourselves; nay, we are in the mire! “Look not every man on his own
things, but every man also on the things of others.” It is well when we get so
high that our vision comprehends our town, better still when it includes the
country, better still when it encircles other countries, best of all when it engirdles the world. It is well when we are interested in home missions; better
still when home and foreign work are comprehended in our view. We cannot do this
without wings, for without the wings we cannot get into the heights. The higher
we get
The wing-life is characterised by proportion. To see things aright we must get
away from them. We never see a thing truly until we see it in its relationships.
We must see a moment in relation to a week, a week in relation to a year, a year
in relation to eternity. Wing-power gives us the gift of soaring, and we see how
things are related one to another. An affliction looked at from the lowlands may
be stupendous; looked at from the heights it may appear little or nothing. “This light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” What a breadth of view! And here is
another. “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory which shall be revealed to
All these are characteristics of the life with wings. And does it not sound a strong and joyful life? “As eagles!” How mighty the bird from which the picture is taken! What strength of wing!And such is to be ours if we wait upon the Lord. We shall be able to soar above the biggest disappointment and to wing our way into the very presence of the sun. “They that wait upon the Lord” shall have all this. Let us abide in waiting and find our joy and our power in the heights.
“Many were gathered together praying.”—
“Many were gathered together praying.” What had prompted the prayer-meeting?
“James the brother of John” had been killed “with the sword.” “And because Herod
saw it pleased the Jews” . . ! Ah, that is one of the dangerous crises in a
man’s life! When a man finds that a certain course of conduct is receiving
popular applause he is led on to further excesses. He is often doubly betrayed
by the seductions of the shouting crowd. A public speaker descends to a coarse
and vulgar jest, and because it pleases the baser sort in the audience, and the
speaker is awarded a round of applause, he is prone to descend to still further
depths of degradation. “He proceeded further to take Peter also”! The apostle
was arrested, shut up in prison, and guarded by four quaternions of soldiers.
And now what can the little company do with whom he has been wont to associate
in the evangelical ministry? They have no influence with the king. Not one of
the little band has any connections with the imperial house. “Not many noble are
But in such an emergency as this does not a prayer-meeting appear absurd? Here
is a man in prison, surrounded by a tenfold defence. The material obstacles are
overwhelming. What is the use of a prayer-meeting? Can we pray a man out of his
chains, and through the prison gate, and through the assembled soldiery? The
world regards it as a grotesque expedient. And perhaps there are many Christians
who would regard it as legitimate and reasonable to pray for the quietness of
Peter’s spirit, that he might be kept in boldness of faith and in open
communication with his Lord, but who would regard a prayer for his release as
trespassing upon forbidden ground. Does not this timidity very frequently spoil
the range of our petitions, and rob us of the promised inheritance? If the
dominion of prayer is to be limited by the prison gates, we are reduced to a
pitiful impoverishment. If the ministry of prayer is absolutely ineffective in
the material world, then I, for one, am stupefied. I am told I may pray for
mental enlightenment, or for moral strength, or for spiritual perception and
gift, but I am warned off
And if prayer is the communion of the human mind with the Divine mind, is it
altogether incredible that by my fellowship with the Lord I can indirectly
exercise the mighty prerogative of influencing the movements even of the
material world? And, therefore, I see nothing incredible and illegitimate in
praying for favourable weather. It may be that the prayer is sometimes unwise,
but the unwisdom of a prayer does
“And behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him.” That was a great moving mission begotten by the ministry of prayer. I will not at the bidding of unbelief reduce the narrative to mere poetry and regard the incident as a commonplace event, for which, if we knew everything, we could find a commonplace explanation. It is one of the profoundest beliefs in my own life that there was a vital connection between the prayer-meeting and the prison. Do not let us throw away our dignities and prerogatives at the cry of the timid, or at the sneer of a flippant unbelief. Do not let us limit our communion. Let us believe that the little prayer-meeting can set in motion ministries which will take the chains from a man’s limbs, and lead him out of the iron gates and bring him into healthy freedom.
A little while ago Sir Oliver Lodge met a company of evangelical ministers, and
I felt greatly humiliated that we had to receive the warning from his lips not
to relinquish the boldness of
Now let us look at these praying people. It is the dead of night. The doors are
locked. It is something after the fashion of those prayer-meetings which used
to be held in the cellar at Scrooby by the men who founded the commonwealth
across the seas. And while one of the little company is praying, a knocking is
heard at
Now let us go into the meeting itself. Rhoda, I said, had just heard one of the
brethren praying, “Lord, restore him unto us!” The damsel eagerly returns with
the announcement that Peter is at the gate. Now what? The petition had scarcely
fallen from the brother’s lips; she had interrupted him in the middle of his
petition; and it was probably the suppliant himself who replied to Rhoda, “Thou
art mad!” How can Rhoda’s announcement be true? Think of the prison, the
chains, the soldiers, gate after gate, and especially that notorious iron gate
at the last! “Thou art mad!” Again I say, how suggestive the incident! They
were praying for an answer; the answer comes to the door; and it strikes them
as incredible. I know the condition of the little troubled company. There were
two empty places in their ranks, and they knew not how soon the vacancies might
be multiplied.
Now, God’s answers to our prayers ought not to surprise us into incredulity. These momentous occurrences ought to be daily commonplaces in our lives. The responses of the Almighty should be grand familiarities. Why should we suppose the herald of the answer to be mad? God is good! God is faithful! It is the most natural of all things that the prison gates should open and the apostle be free. The answer often comes knocking at the door but we don’t let it in, and we never know that the answer has been given. We are in an unexpectant mood, and we have never suspected the wealth which the Lord would have left at our gate.
Now let us listen to the word of the apostle.
“Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense; and the lifting up of my
hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the
door of my lips. Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked
works with men that work iniquity; and let me not eat of their dainties.”—
“LET my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord.” How priestly is the entire exercise! Incense! Sacrifice! Supplication! When I had read the verse I rejoiced that I, too, was a priest unto God, and that in Christ Jesus we all have access to the same incomparable privilege and glory. “He hath made us kings and priests unto God.” We can all swing the censer; we can all lay the sacrifice upon the altar; we can all engage in the marvellous ministry of intercession.
And then I read the words over again, and I observed the process and order of
their thoughts, and I think I can discern in them the primary and all-essential
elements in all personal communion with God. These are three in number, and
their
“Let my prayer be set before Thee as incense.” The first thing we have to do
when we come into the holy Presence is to swing our censer, and send the odour
of our praise upwards to our Lord. The figure is taken from a very popular
Eastern custom. Every Oriental is exceedingly partial to sweet odours. He always
offers sweet perfume to those whom he delights to honour. In the olden times it
was customary in India to scent the roads when the king went out. And what is
the significance of the act? It is an acknowledgment of sovereignty, and a
tribute of honour and praise. “Let my prayer be set forth as incense”! Let it
be “set forth”: that is to say, let it begin in adoration and thanksgiving! I
think it would be well if sometimes we were to go into the presence of our King
just to swing the censer and nothing more. A private praise-service would be an
exceedingly efficient and
I do not think we sufficiently appreciate the effect of praise in the enrichment
of our fellowship. The old monasteries used to arrange for relays of monks to be
engaged in chanting ceaseless praise, and thereby keeping the entire community
susceptible and sweet. The heart is always at its best when it is in the genial
influence of praise. There is first of all the preliminary exercise of observing
the amazing providences which crowd our ways; for the man who is to praise must
become an expert at discernment. It is the man who sees the love-tokens of his
Lord crowding about him who comes into His house “in the multitude of His
mercies.” If we have little or nothing for which to offer praise it is a clear
proof that we have been making a most; infrequent use of the censer. Let us go
into our life, let us ransack its provinces, let us look for the marks of the
King’s coming and goings, and we shall soon take up the censer. And then when we
are in the atmosphere of praise we are one with the spirits of just men made
perfect, for
And let “the lifting up of my hands be as the evening sacrifice.” What is the lifting up of the hands to be like? As a sacrifice. That itself is almost startling. The lifting up of the hands has come to mean an act of supplication, a petition, but here the primary significance is the offering of something to God. It does not betoken a pleading, but a giving, not a request, but a sacrifice. It is like unto the lifting up of the hands of the Roman soldiers when they swore fealty to their emperor and lord. It is our sacramentum. It is our pledge. It is the yielding of ourselves to the Lord, for whose goodness we have just swung the censer.
Now our sacrifice must never be vague, and therefore meaningless. It is quite
easy to sing, “Were the whole realm of nature mine,” and to jubilantly proclaim
what then would be our sacrifice. The whole realm of nature is not ours, and our
responsibility begins and ends with what we
And now, having swung the censer, and sent to heaven the odour of acceptable
praise, and having erected the altar and offered to Heaven the sacrifice of our
gifts, what remains for us to do? After these primary exercises the Psalmist
feels himself justified in proceeding to the gracious ministry of supplication.
And see where his petitions begin: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep
the door of my lips.” I do not wonder he begins there. He asks for the strength
of silence. I say, I do not wonder, for he is a persecuted man, and the hardest
of all things to a persecuted man is self-restraint. Indeed, it is the severest
test of everybody, this controlling of the speech. The Psalmist begins with his
cardinal weakness, he goes to the place where he most easily breaks down, he
invokes the Divine help at the door of his lips. “By thy words thou shalt be
justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” And then he moves from
speech to inclination. “Incline not my heart to any evil thing.” He goes down
among his
Here, then, is the trend of the Psalmist’s ----tions, beginning with speech, and passing thr---- inclinations to his daily delights. And he ---- the larger trend of the Psalmist’s comm---- with his Lord, beginning with the glad---- swinging of the censer of praise, and mo---- through the priestly act of sacrifice to the ----cious ministry of supplication.
“Learn of Me.”—
THIS is a word of the Master, to which the heart of man turns with most ready inclination. It is a little favourite rendezvous of pilgrims to Zion. In other parts of the Scriptures we may find only a few footprints or a faintly-outlined road. For instance, there are some parts of Ezekiel, and some parts of what we have foolishly called the Minor Prophets, and large areas of the Book of Revelation, where it is like untrodden moor. But in other places we find a well-made road, suggestive of the passage of multitudinous feet. Such a road we find at the twenty-third Psalm, and at the fourteenth of John; and there are many well-trodden parts which are like the immediate circumference of a pool in the meadows where the kine have gathered to drink. And this word of my text marks one of the well-trodden places where thousands of pilgrims are gathered every day.
But just now, amid the abundant wealth of the evangel, I want to concentrate
upon one particular part of the counsel, “Learn of Me.” How
It is to this latter class that I want to try to speak a word of heartening and
cheer. A great student and scholar, speaking about quite other roads and realms
of knowledge than the purely religious, recently gave some helpful counsel, and
If, then, we would learn of Christ we must “ask much.” Now “asking” is a great
sign of a fine learner. We cannot come into contact with a man who is finely
receptive in any department of knowledge without discovering his fierce
inquisitiveness in his own particular realm. I walked out some little time ago
with a most learned geologist, and in the course of our journey we passed a
common gravel-pit, and at once my friend was all alert and full of inquiry, and
immediately began to question the little heap of pebbles which he took in his
hand. His “asking” led him to the secrets of a new neighbourhood. Within the
last few months I walked also in the company of a renowned botanist, and I was
amazed at the eager spirit of inquiry which possessed him in every dale and
country lane. He
And let us ask for illumination as to conduct.
“Remember much!” Ah, there is the difficulty for many of us! We can take, but
we cannot keep. We can receive an impression, but we cannot retain it. We can do
the exposure, but we are not expert in the fixing. We have a vision in the
night, but it fades in the glare of the next day. We have a glimpse of glory or
of duty, but common affairs obliterate it again, and the experience
But it will perhaps be best for you to devise your own helpmeets for the ministry. You want to recollect God, and the things of God, and the things He has made known to you. Well, sit down and devise some means of “stirring up your remembrance” in this holy exercise. But do not let any one assume that he is alone in the labour of remembrance. We have a great Helper in the sacred work. “He shall bring to your remembrance whatsoever things I have said unto you.” Only let us be honest and eager, sincere and ingenuous, and He will work to the establishment of our souls in the knowledge of God.
“Teach much!” We shall never really know
“And He said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a
while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as
to eat.”—
THIS is not the speech of an old man, but of quite a young man, barely thirty-three years of age, and who is burdened with the superlative ministry of the redemption of the race. All the arrangements of His public life are made on the assumption of its brevity. And yet He made time for rest! Sometimes we allow the sacredness of our labour to tempt us to regard rest as indolence and relaxation as waste. True rest is the minister of progress. The hour of seclusion enriches the public service.
What were the special circumstances which impelled our Lord to call His
disciples apart? They were twofold. They had just experienced the shock of a
great sorrow. John the Baptist had been done to death. The deed had come upon
them as an awful collision with their rosiest expectancies. The great Deliverer
was near; the Kingdom was at hand; the Divine sovereignty was about to be
established; on the morrow He
But, in the second place, there was the constant distraction of the ubiquitous
crowd. “There were many coming and going.” There is a strangely exciting
interest about a multitude. It whips up the life to a most unhealthy speed and
tension. And the peril is that we do not realise the intensity when we are in
it. When we are on board ship we do not realise how noisy the engines have been
until for a moment they cease. We are not conscious of the roar and haste of the
traffic of Ludgate Hill until we turn aside into St. Paul’s. And it is even so
with the influence of a crowd. It acts upon us like an opiate; it externalises
our life, it draws all our interests to the outsides of things, and we are
almost unconscious of the distraction. And this was the mesmeric influence in
which the disciples were constantly moving. The outsides of things were becoming
too obstrusive, and the insides of things were becoming dim. And these same two
presences
Now what will these deliberately contrived seasons of spiritual rest do for the
stunned and distracted soul? In the first place, they will help us to realise
the reality of the invisible, the immediacy of “things not seen.” I know that if
we were spiritual experts this fine perception would be experienced everywhere.
But the possibility in publicity is conditioned by experiences in private. If we
are to have a real sense of God in the crowd it must be by discipline in secret.
We require special centres if we would spread the healthy influence over the
life. One special day of rest is demanded if the entire week is to become a
Sabbath. One special place is to be sanctified if the Lord is to be apprehended
everywhere. In my own experience I know that the shocks of the day and the
distractions of the crowd tend to remove the Invisible into the dim background,
until the Invisible plays no mighty and awe-inspiring part in our lives. It is
apart, in the awed quietness and individual loneliness, that the Invisible rears
itself like a great mountain.
In the second place, by going apart for rest we shall gain a bird’s-eye view of
the field of life and duty. In the midst of life’s moving affairs we see life
fragmentarily and not entire. We note a text, but not a context. We see items,
but we are blind to their relationships. We see facts, but we do not mark their
far-reaching issue and destiny. We are often ill-informed as to the true size of
a thing which looms large in the immediate moment. Things seen within narrow
walls assume an appalling bulk. A lion in your back yard is one thing; with a
continent to move in it is quite another. There are many feverish and
threatening crises which would dwindle into harmless proportions if only we saw
them in calm detachment. There are some things which we can never see with true
interpretation until we get away from them. There is nothing more hideous and
confusing than an oil painting when viewed at the distance of an inch. To see it
we must get away from it. Detachment is essential
Sometimes this season of discerning detachment is forced upon us by the ministry
of sickness. The Lord says to a long-time healthy man, “Come apart, I have
something to say to thee. I have things to show thee which thou hast forgotten,
or Which thou hast never seen.” And then the man is detached by sickness from
the immediate labours to which he has been applying himself with fierce and
blinding quest. And what frequently happens, as the outcome of his seclusion, is
a transformed conception of life and destiny; “I see things quite differently
now!” He had been engrossed in fireworks, and had forgotten the stars. He had
been busy building and enlarging his barns and had overlooked his mighty soul.
He had been feverish about the
And sometimes a holiday provides the requisite apartness, when life passes in review, and we apprehend its true significance and proportion. I think this is peculiarly true of a minister and his ministry. We are so apt to become riveted to the mere organisation, and overlook the very products for which it was devised. We become engrossed with agricultural implements, and we forget the harvest. Now a holiday takes us. apart and gives us a more comprehensive view of our work. In some of Dr. Dale’s letters, as published in his biography, it is very evident how he utilised his holidays for this most fruitful purpose. He brought all his life under review—his work, the emphasis of his teaching, and the general proportions of his ministry. And what is pertinent for the ministry would be surely fruitful to all men. We may use our holiday times as seasons for looking at things from the standpoint of healthy detachment, and noting the real quality and bearings of our work, its drift and ultimate destiny.
But what holidays and sicknesses sometimes accomplish we can achieve by more
immediate
And there is something further. It is only by this seclusion with the Lord that
we can obtain the restoration of our squandered and exhausted strength. Look at
this handful of fishermen who were attending our Lord, and mark the life they
were leading in these exacting days. They were subjected to the exhausting
ministry of constant surprise. We all know how a day of wonders drains our
strength, until even wonder itself is spent and weary. These men lived in the
thick of the miraculous, and the presentation of every new infirmity was the
occasion of a new surprise. I think, I say, wonder itself was dulled, and they
Now this need is as pressing and serious today, perhaps even more so, than in
the days of the disciples. Think of the constant drain in modern life. Think of
the multiplicity of our correspondence, and every series of letters making its
own exaction. Calculate the mere drain upon nerve force, the ceaseless suck upon
our most vital resources, and then think of the influence of this constant
efflux upon the mind, the organ of discernment, upon the emotions, the ministers
of fellowship, and upon the soul, the
Now there is nothing that so refreshes the entire man as deep, quiet waiting upon God. Every other refreshment may be welcome, but it is only partial, and will leave some weary power still impaired. Get the soul restored, and every part of the being will feel the mighty influence of its rejuvenation. There are multitudes of men and women who take a week-end at the seaside who would be incomparably more benefited, even in body, if they spent the week-end in quiet, restful communion with their God. There is more real recreation in one hour of communion with Christ than in a whole week of social revelries, however gracious and worthy they may be. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
“The unsearchable riches of Christ.”—
“THE unsearchable riches!” The inexplorable wealth, ranging vein beyond vein, mine beyond mine, in land beyond land, in continent beyond continent! “The unsearchable riches of Christ!” And then, side by side with this immeasurable glory, the apostle puts himself. “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given!”
What an arresting and daring conjunction! “The unsearchable riches” . . . “me, the least of all saints!” It is like some solitary mountaineer contemplating the uplifted splendours of Mont Blanc. “The unsearchable riches” . . . “unto me . . . given!” I turned my eyes away from the printed page, and I saw a bee exploring the wealth of a nasturtium flower. Then I thought of all the flowers in the garden, and of all the flowers in my neighbourhood, and of all the flowers in my country, growing in quiet meadows, on heathery moor, and in twilight glen and then my imagination roamed away to the floral splendours of other lands, bending on the blowing plain or nestling in the hollows of the towering
Let us turn our contemplation to one or two aspects of this “unsearchable” wealth. The Lord Jesus Christ has created so exacting a conception of Himself in
the minds of men that no ministry of man can satisfy it. No human ministry can
express it. In all our best representations of the Lord there is always a
missing something, an “unsearchable” something, which the most
Nor can literature express Him. The finest lineaments leave
the half untold. I suppose that Tennyson has given us his conception of the
Christ-man in King Arthur, as Thackeray has
But it is not only that our Saviour has created an exacting conception of
Himself, He has also, by His “unsearchable riches,” created an exacting ideal of
human possibility. When His disciples have been emancipated from the bondage of
sin, and have been led to occupy some radiant summit in the realm of piety and
virtue, even in the midst of their highest attainment they have an overwhelming
sense of inexhaustible glories
“Unsearchable riches!” We cannot compute their glory in Christ our Lord, we
cannot put our finger upon their limits in human possibility, and, thirdly, we
cannot exhaust their Dowers of
It is so with the inexhaustible “riches of Christ,” their glory is found in
their immediate applicability to all the changes of our changing years. They
never leave us, we never have to
But it is not only that “the unsearchable riches of Christ” adapt themselves, and reveal their wealth, to the changing condition of our years, it is that in our personal crises, when life suddenly leaps into fierce emergency, their resources are all available, and never leave us in the lurch. There are three great crises in human life—the crisis of sin, the crisis of sorrow, and the crisis of death—and by its ability to cope with these crises every philosophy and every ministry must be finally determined and tried.
How fares it with the riches of Christ in these emergencies? Is the ocean of grace only for childlike paddling, or can it carry a liner? When we come to crises like these, is the Christian’s exchequer empty, or is there an abundance of money, and is it current coin? How is it with sin? Are “the unsearchable riches” available? Is there any ministry in broad England dealing with the real virus of sin, and the haunting, paralysing Nemesis of guilt, except the redeeming grace of Christ? Do you know of any other ministry that is seeking to
Is it not the bare truth to say that every other
It is even so with the other crises I have named, the emergency of sorrow and the solemn and austere occasion of death. What wealth of grace He piles up about the sorrow of them that love Him, throwing upon it riches of soft and softening light; until, like the bare screes at gloomy Wastwater when the sunshine falls upon them, colours emerge which make the grief tolerable, as it lies transfigured before the countenance of God. “The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light.” “In Thy light shall we see light.” “Now are ye light in the Lord.”
And at the end of the journey, when we arrive at the toll-gate through which we all must pass, we need fear no ill. The “unsearchable riches” will be still available, and we shall pass quietly and serenely into the realm of clearer air and of larger service. We can never get to the end of “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” They are our glory in time: they will be our endless surprise in eternity.
“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding alma• dandy above all that we ask or
think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.
Amen.”—
How is this doxology born? What are the circumstances which make it spring
forth from the apostle’s mind and heart? It is preceded by a glorious panorama
of spiritual prospect. He has been feasting his eyes upon a vista of bewitching
spiritual promise. Let us rehearse the glowing speech in which the vision is
described: “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell
in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be
able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth,
and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye
might be filled with all the fullness of God.” How rich and radiant is the
passage! How overwhelming in its visions of glory! But is it all
“Now unto Him that is able to do.” There is something so quiet, so easy, so
tremendous in the contents of this word “do.” It is not the noisy, obtrusive
doings of a manufacturer; it is suggestive of an easy creation. Behind this
word “do” there hides that other word “poem,” and it is to the naturalness and
ease which mark the creation of poetry that the term refers. There
“Exceeding abundantly.” Here Paul coins a word for his own peculiar use. It
seems as though at times the Holy Spirit crowded such great and radiant
revelations into the apostle’s mind and heart that even the rich vocabulary at
his disposal was not sufficient to express them. But when ordinary language
fails Paul employs his own. There was no superlative at hand which could
describe his sense of the overwhelming ability of God, and so he just
constructed a word of his own, the intensity of which can only be suggested in
our English phrase “exceeding abundantly.” The power flows up,
“Above all we ask.” The ability of God is beyond our prayers, beyond our largest
prayers! I have been thinking of some of the petitions that have entered into my
supplications innumerable times. What have I asked for? I have asked my God for
forgiveness. I have asked my God for deliverance. I have asked Him for seasons
of renewal. Sometimes I have thought that my asking was too presumptuous, it was
even beyond the power of God to give. And yet here comes in the apostolic
doxology. What I have asked for is as nothing compared to the ability of my God
to give. I have asked for a cupful, and the ocean remains! I have asked for a
sunbeam, and the sun abides! My best asking falls
“Or think.” Then His ability is beyond even our imagination! Let us stretch our
imaginations to the utmost! Let us seek to realise some of the promised
splendours that are ours in Christ. Let our imagination soar amid the offered
sublimities of the Word of God. What is it possible for us to become? Think of
the splendours of holiness that may be ours! Think of the range of affection
that may be ours! Think of the amplitude of service that may be ours! And when
our imagination has almost wearied itself in the effort to conceive our possible
dignities, let us hear the apostolic song,—“Above all that we can think!” I
call to mind the men who have been supreme in holy imagination. I think of the
marvellous imaginative power of John Bunyan, and his unique capacity for
realising the splendours of the Unseen. But even when I have accompanied John
Bunyan, and have been amazed at his power, beyond all his dreams and visions I
hear the apostolic word:—“Above all that we can think.” I remember Richard
Baxter’s “Saints’ Everlasting Rest.” I remember how he deals with the glories of
our prospective home, how he seems to have been endowed with special vision for
unveiling the raptures of the
How does this ability manifest itself toward us? What are the human conditions? “According to the power that worketh in us.” A certain power on our side creates the possibility in which our God can clothe us with grace and spiritual strength. If our God is to do “exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think,” there must be a certain power working on our side. There must be a certain energy on the human side, co-operating with the inconceivable strength of the Divine. What is the human power? The power of faith. And what is faith? Faith is a twofold constitution, the elements of which are in vital relation. It is an attitude and a venture. To sever the two is to destroy the life of both. We can no more divide the attitude and the venture and preserve their vitality than we can sustain life by the separation of flesh and blood.
And what is the attitude in faith? It is the
It is therefore evident that the act of faith implies the exercise of will. It
is more than an emotion; it is an exercise. Before God can “do,” my will must
be operative. Our wills, however weak, must be on the side of God. “But I have
“And immediately she arose and ministered unto them.”—
THIS woman used her new strength to return to her old duties. She employed her divinely restored health in homely ministries about the house. The first evidence of her restoration was found in her own home. “Immediately she arose and ministered unto them.” She did not even make her way to the synagogue to offer public praise to the Lord. Nor did she retire to her chamber, that she might place upon the altar some secret thanksgiving to the King. She just took up her duties with a new strength, and found her joy in immediate ministration to those who were round about her.
It is beautiful to think that one of those to whom she ministered was the Lord Himself. The Lord of all glory sat down to her table, and the once helpless and fever-stricken woman used her new-found strength in ministering to His needs. The mother went on with her motherly work.
Now this is one of the Lord’s miracles, but, like all the Lord’s miracles, it is full of parabolic suggestion. We read His miracles amiss unless we regard them as vestures of deeper wonders and profounder truths. And I want now to regard this particular act of healing, and the beautiful ministry that followed, as portraying larger workings in which we may all find a share. Here, then, are some of the teachings which I think may be justly inferred from this beautiful story:—
Health is imparted at the touch of the Lord. Our Lord is the health-centre for
the race. “In Him was life.” It is not that some life, in certain degree and
quality, was found in Him, but that life of every kind finds in Him its source.
“With Thee is the fountain of life.” We cannot find that anywhere else. We can
no more find healthy life apart from the King than we can find heat independent
of the sun. “It pleased God that in Him should all fullness dwell.” Now this
Life-source can communicate its treasures to others, and they are communicated
through the ministry of contagion. We come into touch with our Lord, and by the
touch the health-force is conveyed. Let us mark the analogies in the material
sphere. Here is the leper, bearing his loathsome disease, and banned from the
society
It was even so with the blind man. “And Jesus anointed his eyes.” By that
wonderful communion the ministry of the Godhead drove away the impeding scales
from the eyes and the man received his sight. It is the same in the incident
before us. Here is the woman fever-stricken and helpless. “And Jesus touched
her,” and before the power of that fellowship the fever left her. Sometimes the
initiative appears to be taken by the children of need. Here is a woman bent and
broken, threading her way through the dense and indifferent crowd. Now she is
borne nearer to the Master, and now carried further away. But at one favourable
drift of the crowd she comes near enough to the Lord to stretch out her hand and
touch Him. “Who touched Me?” The disciples were amazed at the simplicity of the
question, knowing that the multitude was pressing about Him on every side. But
Jesus knew that a touch had been given which had tapped the fountain! “Virtue
hath gone out of Me!” Through the channels of that communion the woman had
received invigoration
Now this contact comprises a twofold approach, the human and the Divine. It implies the grasp of two hands, the Healer and the healed. It necessitates the union of two wills, the man’s and his Lord’s. Here, again, the material analogies will help our thought. “Lord, if Thou wilt!” There is the projection of the human will, the approach from the side of man. “I will!” And here is the Divine approach, the marvellous condescension of our God. “What wilt thou have Me to do unto thee?” That is the approach of the Lord. “Lord, that I might receive my sight”; that is the approach of the man that is blind. And so, I say, the contact is composed of the unifying of two wills, the will of faith and the will of the redeeming Lord. Our spiritual health begins with the same contact.
No matter what our disease may be, and how deep and established it be, through
the power of this union it is driven away. “I will restore health unto thee.”
When we move our will toward the Lord we may have perfect confidence that. He is
inclined toward us, and through the
Health is sustained in the channels of service. When our health has been restored how shall we maintain it? No life can preserve its spiritual health which in any way seeks to be independent of the Lord. Those to whom the Lord imparts, health are still dependent upon the Lord. But the health forces will flow to us from our Lord through the channels of service. That is so, I think, in the glory-land, among those who live in the immediate presence of God. Their holiness is maintained in service. “They serve Him, day and night.” It is not all singing and harping in heaven! And I think that even the harping and the singing will be so arranged as to be ministers to communion. You can depend upon it, we shall need one another there, only it will not be a painful need, and everybody will find their delight and health in serving one another. The “spirits of just men made perfect” are kept in their perfection through mutual ministry.
Whether or not this be the principle prevalent in heaven, it
is certainly the principle by which health is preserved on earth. “He that would
be great among you let him be your minister.” And what did Jesus mean by
“great”? Certainly
“Immediately she arose and ministered unto them.” A man once came into my vestry
who
Our field of service must first be sought in the need that is most immediate.
Peter’s wife’s mother began with the humdrum work of the home. Now the first
temptation in the converted life is to despise the commonplace. The devil may
say to you, now that you are re-born, “You must be a missionary,” while all the
time the Lord is pointing to a bit of needy work at your own feet. The devil
gets your mind set upon Africa, and you ignore your own town you look for a big
sphere, and you ignore your own house. There is nothing more insidious than the
temptation to take our eyes away from the immediate need
How is it in your workshop? Is there a Jesus-finish about your work? Is there a Jesus-fragrance about your relationships with your fellow workers? You say you wish to go to the foreign field suppose your workshop were a bit of India, how are you getting ready for the work? Have you the love-girdle on? Or is the devil saying to you, “You will not want the love-girdle until you are in India”? “Arise and minister.” I know a woman who was brought out of darkness into light, and out of bondage into the liberty of the Lord. She lived in one of the poorest courts of our city. And when she was converted she said to herself, “Now I must tidy things up a bit. I must have a Jesus-house, a Martha-and-Mary kind of home. My house must be the tidiest, cleanest, and sweetest house in the court.” And such it became. Was not this a bit of real ministry for the King?
We are all so ambitious to be stars. while our
“His pavilions round about Him were . . . thick clouds of the skies.”—
“The clouds drop down the dew.”—
His pavilions are thick clouds! Then the cloud is not a destructive libertine,
some stray, haphazard, lawless force, the grim parent of shadow and chill and
tempest! “His pavilions are thick clouds.” The clouds are the dwelling-places
of God. He lives in them; He moves through them. He pervades them with the
gentle ministries of grace and love. “The clouds drop down their dew.” Then the
clouds are more than shutters; they are springs. They do more than exclude the
sunlight; they are the parents of the fertilising rains and the drenching mists
and dews. It is something of a triumph when we have got thus far in our
religious faith. In the early days it was believed that only the sunlight was
the token and vehicle of our Lord’s appearing. But here is a man with a larger
and more comprehensive faith. Not only the sunlight, but the cloud also Is the
minister of His purpose and will. It is lot only prosperity which glows with the
seal of
A few years ago, we were asking the Lord to bless our nation; there came a
chilling disappointment; the answer was in the cloud! We asked the Lord to
save and bless our King; to enrich him with the continual dews of His Holy
Spirit; and deep shadows came upon the palace; the answer was in the cloud. We
asked the Lord to weld our people together in purer and more fruitful sympathy;
and over the people there descended
And so I have thought it might be calming and cheering if I thus direct your
meditations to the ministry of the cloud. Have you ever noticed how many of the
dispositions of the perfected life can only be richly gained in the baptism of
shadow and tears? We are accustomed to speak of them as the fruits and flowers
of the Spirit. I sometimes think we might be nearer the truth if we spoke of
them as the ferns. Flowers are suggestive of the sunny glare; ferns are more
significant of the moistened shade. And when I contemplate the dispositions
which are the creations
Here is an exquisite fern—“gentleness.” Where will you find it growing in
richest profusion? You will find it growing in the life that has known the
shadow and the tear. There is no touch so tenderly gentle as the touch of the
wounded hand. There is no speech so insinuatingly sympathetic as the speech of
those who have been folded about by the garment of night. Gentleness is a fern,
and it requires the ministry of the cloud. Here is another rare and beautiful
fern—“long-suffering.” How can you grow that in the “garish day”! You may as
well plant out your ferns in the middle of the unprotected lawn, and let the
fierce darts of light strike upon them through the long day, and expect to have
a mass of broad, healthy, graceful fronds, as expect
Now, I do not think we have any difficulty in perceiving the influence of the
cloud in the individual life. Perhaps we may find its best expression in the
familiar words of the Psalmist, “In my distress Thou hast enlarged me.” Enlarged! It is a very spacious word, and includes the complementary meanings of
broadening and enrichment. “In my cloud-experience Thou hast enriched me!” Some
little languishing fern of tenderness or thoughtfulness has been revived by the
ministry of the moistened shade. Is that an
The cloud experience is the minister not only of enrichment, but of enlargement.
It is in the cloud that men grow the fern of a spacious tolerance. Narrowness is
transformed to breadth. I have known a man of very stern, severe, and rigid
creed, who definitely relegated to damnation all who lived beyond its sharp and
imprisoning fence; and I have met him again in after years, and I found that
the barbed wire was down, and the field of his sympathy was immeasurably
enlarged. “But that is not what you used to believe ten years ago?” “No, but
many things have happened since then.” Then I learned that he had been in the
valley of the shadow! Adversity had wrapped him in its clammy embrace! He had
become very familiar with the grave; the way to the cemetery was well worn by
his accustomed feet; he had been under the tuition and ministry of the cloud,
and in his distress he had been enlarged The clouds had dropped their dew! In
the personal life, if it were not for the
It is not otherwise with the ministry of the cloud in the sphere of the home.
There is many a family which never realises its unity until it is enveloped in
the folds of a chilling cloud. Health and luxury are too often divisive;
sickness and sorrow are wondrous cements. Luxury nourishes a thoughtless
individualism; adversity discovers hidden and profounder kinships. There is
many a home, whose light has been as the glitter and the dazzle of a garish day; and the daughters of the house have been the creatures of levity and flippancy
and of an endless trifling. And the cloud has come, and gloom has filled the
house; the father is stricken, and adversity shows its famine-teeth at the door;
and these flippant daughters awake from their luxurious sleep, and they put on
moral strength and beauty like a robe. The family has found its unity in its
distress. “We shall know each other better when the mists have rolled away!” Ah!
but we sometimes never know each other until we meet together in the mist! It is
in the common cloud that the family finds its kinship. It is in our sorrow
Is it otherwise in the larger life and family of the nations?
Does the cloud-ministry exercise its influence in the State? Surely we may say
that the common life of a people is deepened and enriched by the ministry of the
shade. A people is not consolidated by common material interests and aims. It is
not by free trade or by reciprocity that we shall forge the links of enduring
fellowships. These ties are only skin-ties, and they are the subjects of skin
disease. Juxtaposition is not fellowship. You may place men in a common schedule
and yet not make them more akin. Men may march together without being agreed. We
may revise our commercial relationships, and yet the springs of unity may not be
touched. We shall never owe our deepened fellowship to the dazzle; we shall owe
it to the shade. It is not the prosperous glare that makes us one. We fall apart
in the noontide; we draw closer to each other in the night. It is in the
national clouds and shadows, and in the nation’s tears that you will find the
forces of a true consolidation. It is not in the nation’s shout, but in the
nation’s hush that the unifying forces are at work. There has been a marvellous
growth in the mutual attachment
The clouds, in their courses, have been the friends of the national life.
“And so shall we ever be with the Lord.”—
I WANT to turn your attention to that blessed land in which our Saviour rules as King, and where our departed have ceaseless communion, with Him. I know it is out of fashion to meditate about heaven. It is regarded as somewhat effeminate even to speak of the abodes of the blessed. I suppose it partly arises from what is regarded as a very healthy disparagement of mere emotion and sentiment. It seems to be commonly thought that people who ponder much upon heaven have their fibre softened and their faculties generally debilitated and impaired.
I remember that when I first came out of college, and took up the work of the
Christian ministry, I fervently shared this common belief, and I felt with a
good many other young reformers that instead of singing about the things of the
blessed and the doings of the eternal life, I would engage the interest of my
congregation in the condition of the slums, and the uncleanness of the common
streets of our own city. Rather than
I think I have learned a larger lesson. I have discovered that no man works less eagerly in the slums, because now and again he has a view of the City of God, and no man has a softened fibre because he stimulates his imagination in trying to realise the life that is to be. What kind of power does it impair? What kind of faculty does it soften, to think occasionally about the land to which we are all hastening? Does it soften the will? Does it in any way bedim the conscience? Does it narrow or strain the affections? Let us be definite in our charge, let us seek to put our finger upon that particular part of our mental or spiritual constitution which is in any way injured by the steady, frequent, regular contemplation of the Eternal Rest. In what way does it unfit men for practical life? In what way does it create dreamers? “I should like to meet with a few of these dreamy people,” says Faber, “first to be sure of the fact, which I venture to doubt, and secondly to be sure I should condemn their dreaminess, which I doubt also.”
Well, now, suppose we do give a little of our time to thought about the better
land, and the Lord of the better land, what may we hope to
What else have the saints found in heavenly contemplation? Here is Richard
Baxter’s answer: “It will open the door between thy head and thy heart,” and
then he goes on to say, in what I consider a very suggestive phrase: “He is
usually the best Christian who has the readiest passage from his brain to his
heart.” Do you see the significance of that? We take into our minds a certain
truth, a certain mental conception; if we meditate upon the truth received, the
ministry of meditation transfers the truth from the mind to the affections. It
becomes mare than a mental apprehension; it becomes a part of our love. It
turns a thing of the brain into a power of the life. It begins to energise the
passions, waking them, feeding them, nourishing
What else will it accomplish? It will bring the needed inspiration in times of temptation and distress. “When should we take our cordial,” says our friend the Puritan, “but in times of fainting?” When the tempter is very near you, or when distress seems to overwhelm you like a flood—then is one of the seasons when you ought to turn your mind to the land of the blessed, because from that contemplation there will come nutriment and inspiration by which you shall be sustained in your darkest hour and carried through in safety. Now that is most characteristic of Samuel Rutherford. I confess that when I am reading one of his letters, and I find that he is dealing with some season of distress, some season of overwhelming tribulation, I almost welcome it because I know he will bring out some of the heavenly counsel and experience which he has acquired in season of communion with God. “I had rather,” he says, “I had rather have Christ’s buffet and Christ’s love stroke than any king’s kiss.” He weighs his pain over against the coming glory. In the hour of his sorrow he meditates upon the coming bliss, and the contemplation of the bliss transfigures the present sorrow.
Find out the best place whence you can send your thoughts heavenward. Richard Baxter said that he always found that his “fattest time” was in the evening, from the sunset to the twilight. It may not be your best time, it may not be your convenient time; but find a place and find an hour when you can send your imagination among the realms of the blessed, to remind yourselves of the country towards which you are going, of the inheritance to whose possession you are succeeding, and give yourself the sense of the dignity of one who has part and lot in the matter, who is a partaker of the Divine nature, and will share with the Eternal the blessedness of eternity.
What are some of the characteristic glories of the life which is to be spent for ever with the Lord? I can tell you nothing you do not know; but perhaps just by repeating a commonplace in a fresh way I may give it a certain newness.
It is a life of rest. I do not wonder that Faber, in one of his books, when he
had mentioned this word “rest,” added the sentence: “Let us stay and suck that
word as if it were a honeycomb.” Now people who are never tired cannot know the
significance of rest. But people who have to labour very hard, and amid very
straitened circumstances, find in the word a delicious
It is a life of quest. It is not a life of mere passivity, but a life of
glorious activity. First of all our quest is to be under the immediate
leadership of our Lord: “He shall lead them to living fountains of water.” The
unveiling of new things, the unsealing of new springs! When we have dropped the
clay and the veil of the flesh, we shall stand out with immeasurably increased
powers of perception, and going with our Lord
It is a life of service. I like that little phrase that Swedenborg uses—and among all the apparent fictions and fancies and flimsy conceits of Swedenborgianism you sometimes come across what you feel at once to be rare gems of superlative truth—Swedenborg says concerning the employments of heaven: “There will be occupation but no labour.” The worker is never tired His activity is never toil! It is a life of uses, and every soul will have its individual enterprise.
And it is a life of wondrous communion. First of all, it is communion with one another. I sometimes say to my people when they are telling me their sorrows and their troubles, and when neither the teller nor the hearer can find even the faintest clue, “You will explain it to me some day!” I say it as a glorious conviction that one of the joys and delights of the heavenly country will be the perfect understanding of the things that have bewildered us here. We shall get the clue, and we shall tell one another the story which down here we found a burden and a destroyer of our peace.
But the joy of fellowship will be not only fellowship one with another, but fellowship with those spirits who “have never, never known a fallen world like this.” If you were to ask me to put my finger upon one page in all the published writings of Dr. Dale which is written most deeply on my mind and heart, it would be that glorious passage in which he is expounding this great word to the Ephesians: “to the principalities and powers in the heavenly place there shall be made known the manifold wisdom of God.” Dr. Dale speaks about the redeemed pilgrims of time telling the inhabitants of the heavenly city who have never known our estate, who have never known our sin, the story of redemption, and of how our hunger was met and how our peace was renewed; and they will tell the pilgrims about the unclouded day, about the far-away time when sin had not fallen upon the world, and all about the wonderful developments and experiences of the unsullied life.
But pre-eminently, and above all other things, it is to be a life of fellowship
with the Lord. “For ever with the Lord! Amen, so let it be!” “The Lamb which
is in the midst of the throne shall tabernacle among them.” It is a homely
figure; it is the figure of a meeting-place of many tents, and our God comes
and adds His tent to
Well, now, let us give a little time to thinking about these things. In twelve months’ time some of us will probably be in the heavenly country. Surely it is well just to think a little about the glories and beauties of the land. “Half-an-hour in heaven,” said a working man to me one day, “half-an-hour in heaven and I am ready for anything!” Spend a little time with the Lord now, and you will be prepared to spend the “for ever with the Lord.” Amen.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 69 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 167 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224