WRESTING THE SCRIPTURESThe Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter III, part of 16th verse. “In which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.”In speaking from this text I might dilate upon the etymology of the words “unlearned” and “unstable.” I might go on to observe that we must take the Bible as a whole and be taught of the Spirit in order to practice its plain truths and fathom its more difficult ones; that as in the schools of human science the elementary text-books are simple while those designed for the advanced classes are more abstruse, thus the Bible contains many things which are now far beyond the reach of our minds, but to the comprehension of which we shall clamber up in eternity; that in the Bible, the book of time and eternity, the twovolumes are bound in one. Here we only read the preface and the introduction; in the hereafter we shall peruse the whole of the book.But as these themes are frequently discussed with more of learning than I can presume to bring to the task, I shall pursue a less beaten path and content myself with observing that to “wrest” a thing signifies to wrench or twist it from its true position; the very word implies violence. Thus to wrest a truth of Scripture signifies to detach it from the other truths of the system, to make it bear a false meaning, or to rob it of all meaning. A truth of Scripture thus wrested is no longer a truth, and is, therefore, of no avail to the man who has wrested it. It can do him no good; he can no more get to heaven with it than a man who should tear a plank or a breast-hook from a ship could cross the Atlantic upon it. But as there are capillary veins and nerves in the bodily organization which discharge important though minute functions, and becoming diseased affect larger vessels and tissues, the consequence of which is sickness, and the result death, so there are methods of wresting the Scriptures less violent but notless fatal in their consequences. So great, my friends, is the evil bias of our nature and so deceitful is the human heart that we are prone to deceive ourselves, imagining that we are doing the will of God while we are doing our own will, obeying while we are wresting the Scriptures. This principle, following the example of Jesus of Nazareth, I will illustrate by a parable.In that never-to-be-forgotten year when the Pilgrim Fathers of New England rose up from their knees beneath the cliffs of Holland and embarked, there dwelt, where Derwent-Water pours its swift current into the black gorges of a lonely tarn, the descendant of a house, rich in ancestral memories and renowned in arms. Often had these massive walls rung to the battle clarion and its floors echoed to the tread of mail-clad men. But their descendant, though inheriting all the lofty heroism of his race, is, with a heart subdued by grace, a man of scholarly tastes, of peace, and of God.Amid the family circle where are the mother that reared, the wife that cherishes him, and the children who climb his knees, he lives, labors, and prays. “Surely,” said some lookerat the outward appearance, “this man does not serve God for naught. Has not God made a hedge about him and all that he has? He would have his good things in both lives. Is he willing to sacrifice anything? Would he do anything with the Cross of Christ other than build it into the masonry of his castles or inscribe it upon the banner folds of his vassals?” Let us see.He enters his library, a room of antique mould; the roof groined and blazoned reflects a thousand hues of soft light from lamps of fretted gold. The thickly carpeted floor returns no echo to the footfall. View him as he stands beneath that mellow light: The face is the face of a prophet. The pure white brow, which no hardship has bronzed and around which the locks of early manhood are clustering, is as radiant with goodness as heaven’s own light. The eyes suffused, not dimmed, by that mist which is the forerunner of tears, are turned toward heaven, while from their calm depths, pure as those through which wanders the light of stars, beam glances of gentle affection, a humility not assumed but ingrained like the summer flush upon the cheek of a ripened grape. The strong, firm lipsare slightly parted with an expression of purpose and action; motionless they seem to utter, “Father, what wilt Thou have me to do?”Thoughtful he stands, then bows that stately head in deep contrition before God. He kneels, indeed, upon an embroidered cushion, but it is wet with tears. This man of noble blood and old descent, who sayeth “to this man ’Go,’ and he goeth, and to another ’Come,’ and he cometh,” grovels in the dust before his Maker. In his anguish he prostrates himself upon the floor; he cannot get low enough before his God. It is in his heart to embark with the Pilgrims, and he asks counsel of Heaven: “Father, wilt Thou that I leave these towers of my ancestors, moistened with their blood and beneath whose shadows their bones lie mouldering, and my mother now in the wane of life? Wilt Thou that I should take the wife of my bosom, my little ones reared in luxury and with tenderness, that I myself ever having lived and loved among the gifted and the great should go forth with my brethren to the wilderness? Tell me, O my Father, that it is my duty, and I will fling my whole estate into thy treasury as willingly as ever prodigal wasted his in riotous living; I will venture my life and the lives of those dearer to me than my own as readily as ever one of my warrior ancestors laid lance in rest to break a hedge of spears. Thou knowest that I love mother, wife, and children, comfort, refinement, wealth; that life is sweet to the lusty and the young. Thou knowest how dear to me are these old trees beneath which in childhood I played, these swelling hills, these gently sloping vales, this fair stream whose gleam I love at the sunset hour to catch through green foliage and to whose murmur I love to listen, this chosen retreat filled with books that embalm the lore of centuries whither I may retire after drinking a thousand inspirations from without, and in silent prayer and thought make them my own, growing in the reaches of my lonely thought to greater affluence of progress and power. But I love Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, my Saviour, more than these; therefore let me go. Already my brother and my kindred deem that I shrink from sacrifice and thus shall thy name be dishonored through me. Thou lovest me not, else wouldst Thou chasten me, wouldst permit me to endurehardness. Surely I am a bastard and no son. He that never suffered never loved.”But while thus he prays and pleads, a voice from the Excellent Glory whispers to his soul: “I know thou lovest me. Yet shalt thou not embark. In Abraham I accepted the full purpose and the firm intent; so will I in regard to thee. I have in reserve for thee tasks as stern, and sacrifices as great, as the forests of America can furnish, tasks for which I created thee and gave thee thy capacities. Thy forefathers were men of brawn, but thou art a man of mind. Have not I chosen the men who are to go? Their flesh is hard, their bones are strong to bear the harness, and their whole course of thought is of a sterner cast, better fitted than thine to bear the sword and set the battle in array. It is not my will that the fire shall die upon the ancient altars; remain thou to quicken its flame. I will not that thy mother, that old saint who hath reared her household in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, shall in her old age lack the protection of the son best fitted of all her race to cherish her declining years; for I am a covenant-keeping God. Remain, therefore, to lay thy hand upon her eyes. Learning, eloquence, and passing knowledge to bend the minds of men of all ranks to thy wish are thine. Go then into the councils of the nation, there to use thy power for me, to moderate the fierceness of persecution and send succor to those who are to go forth with the wolf and the bear to the hillside. There are keener pangs than those born of flowing blood and stiffening wounds on lonely battlefields, gashes deeper than the tomahawk and the scalping knife can make, wrestlings more terrible than those with flesh and blood. Fear not that thou shalt lack occasions to prove thy zeal. Thou shalt find all the sunny memories of thy life turned to gall. The church to whose altar thy mother had thee linked with all the sweet memories of thy childhood shall close to thee its doors. Thy children shall be excluded from those seats of learning where their kindred and their mates resort. And thou must endure all these things being among them, and thus the iron will be pressed into thy soul day by day, which is more terrible than to endure in a foreign land where thou art equal to thy fellows in suffering and in privilege. These are sterner trials to the flesh and to the faith, than when warhorses are neighing and clarions sounding to the charge, and the maddening rush and roar of conflict impart the very courage they require to rush on perils and set thy life upon a cast. Over the wreck of chosen thoughts and blighted hopes, through the anguish of susceptibilities which refinement and culture have made capacious of suffering of which under natures are incapable, shalt thou glorify me.” Yet how many a short-sighted onlooker at that day, unable to appreciate the inward motive, judged him who remained as shrinking from the reproach of the Cross and wresting the Scriptures to suit a carnal policy and the love of ease.Let us view this principle in yet another light. In a distant apartment of the same castle is seated one whose features, though of a stronger and sterner cast, browned by toils and exposure on fields of battle, still bear that family resemblance which denotes them brothers. But his limbs are cast in nature’s stronger mould, and his hand turns naturally to the sword hilt. Upon his knees is a bundle of letters that he peruses with eager interest. They are from the exiles in Holland, informing him of the time of their departure,and urging him to join them. And among the letters are some from his old companions in the war of the low countries. Wrapped in thought the hours pass by him unheeded. At length, rising suddenly to his feet and thrusting open the door that leads to the great hall of the castle, he paces the stone floor. His eye kindles as it glances over the portraits of grim warriors and the proud trappings that adorn its walls. He stops in his lofty stride, a frown gathers upon his brow, his hand grips to the hilt of the sword at his side. He has made up his mind. His is the giant strength and haughty pride of an heroic line. Retiring to his chamber, he likewise kneels to pray, while the frown of anticipated conflicts and the flush of stirring memories have scarce yet faded from his brow. But there is no tremor in the hard tones of his voice, none of those bitter tears that wet the pillow of the other fall from his eyes. There is no breaking down of the strong man before Him who is stronger than the strong man armed. But he prays like Henry the Fifth at Agincourt or Bruce at Bannockburn. To carry his point he prays “my will be done” with the spirit of those who inscribed upon the muzzles of theircannon, “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.”This man has condescended to help God. Through the long tempestuous voyage, those fearful months of mingled famine and plague when the icy breath of winter penetrated even to the pillows of the dying, and the Pilgrims drove the ploughshare through the graves of those most dear to them lest the savage should count the dead and ascertain their weakness, he passed unbroken. Neither hunger nor sickness bows his iron frame nor breaks his haughty spirit, and yet, unknown to himself, he is all the while wresting the truths of Scripture, and deems he is doing the will of God while he is consulting his own inclinations. Is the discipline of Providence therefore to waste itself upon this rugged nature, only to be repelled like the surf from the rock, in broken wreaths of foam? Will he never become as a little child that he may enter into the kingdom?Yes. His daughter is dying. The daughter, the only remaining member of a once numerous household, whom he loves with an affection the more absorbing since he loves nothing else, to whom he has given the scantymorsel suffering hunger himself, whom he pressed to his bosom in the long nights of that terrible winter that she might gather warmth from his hardier frame, and around whom cluster all the affections that throb beneath the crust of his rugged nature, as the oak wrappeth its roots about the place of stones,—that daughter is dying. Though it is now the Indian summer and an abundant harvest has scattered plenty among the dwellings of the exiles, his daughter is perishing beneath the terrible exposure she has endured. Upon her delicate frame the previous winter and spring have done their work. Stretched upon a couch of skins, she is fading like the yellow and falling leaves that the forest is showering upon the roof, and the morning breeze is gathering in little heaps around the threshold of the rude cabin. The strong man has met one stronger than himself. The arrow aimed by no uncertain hand has found the joints of the harness. A sweet smile begotten of that peace of God, which passeth all understanding, mingles with the hectic flush on her cheek; and as he watches the ebbing tide of life, every sigh of pain, every frown that furrows the pale brow, wrung from her by the agony of dissolution, shakes his iron frame. But it is suffering, not submission. She lifts her finger, and he is at her side, takes her head upon his broad shoulder, and his war-worn cheek is pressed to hers, while the golden locks mingle with his white hairs like sunbeams reposing upon a fleecy cloud, as he listens to her low speech.“Father, I must soon leave thee.” A hot tear falling on her cheek is the only reply. “Father,” she says, laying her thin finger upon a yellow leaf that an eddy of the wind just then blew in at the open door upon the bed, “I am like this leaf, almost at my journey’s end.”“I know it, my child,” is the low answer.“Canst thou give me up?”“I cannot give thee up. Not a drop of my blood flows in any living being but in thee, the blood of a noble race. I had thought that in this new soil, transplanted, the old oak might flourish with renewed strength; but over thee, the dearest and the last, is creeping the shadow of the grave. My sons died a soldier’s death, and I mourned them as a soldier should. Thy mother I married as the great marry, for reasons of state and policy, but thou with thy gentle ways hast knit thyself into my very heart, and I must lay thee in a nameless grave, and conceal it from the Indian’s gaze, while thy kindred sleep beneath sculptured marble and the shadow of proud banner folds. Thine uncle who thought to take the journey with us flinched when it came to the trial, while I have faced pestilence, treachery, and war. Surely I have borne a heavy cross, and thus am I rewarded. God is too hard with me. He has no right to bereave me in my old age of the only being I ever truly loved.”“Father, whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”“Dear child, torture me not thus or I shall go mad.”“No, father, but thou wilt go mad if, in this desperate sorrow, thou dost not win Heaven’s grace. If thy heart does not break in penitence, thy brain will reel in madness. Father, dear father, it becomes me to seek knowledge of thy gray hairs, and thou art esteemed by all a man of shrewd counsel. But to those who, like me, are on the brink of eternity, there is given a knowledge not of earth, and through these weak lips the spirit speaks. Deceive not thyself. Thou hast asyet borne no cross, but thou hast wrested the Scriptures. May it not be to thine own destruction. Thy spirit could not brook oppression, and, as thou couldst not resist, so hast thou fled from it. The perils of exile and the stormy seas were less terrible to thee than the foot of the oppressor on thy neck. Thou wast bred amid the alarms and in the bloody frays of the border wars; thou hast loved the clash of steel, and the smoke of battle is as the breath of thy nostrils. Thou hast been a man of blood from thy youth up. My uncle was bred a scholar amid home delights, unused to scenes of trial and hardship. They had terrors for him, whereas they had none for thee. And yet he would have gladly come with us had he not been forbidden of Heaven. I heard him pleading with God to make known to him his duty. That which would have been to him a real cross but was none to thee he was willing to take up. But God has laid upon him a weightier one at home. Thus hast thou prayed to have thine own way, hast suffered in accordance with thine own will, not the will of God. The cross, the real cross, is now before thee. Wilt thou take it up? If thou dost not do this,father, whither I go thou canst not come. For nineteen years thou hast anticipated my slightest wish. Wilt thou now refuse my last request? I, a timid maid, a daughter of affluence and luxury, who had never listened to a harsher sound than the murmur of Derwent-Water over the rocky bed and the breath of morn among the hills, have broken every tie, torn from my heart the youth I loved, because he stood between me and Christ, encountered perils before which warriors quail, for the love of Jesus. I have drunk of the bitter cup, but the cross has brought me to the crown. I see it. It glitters in the hand of Christ. Soon it shall press my brow. Never in the flush of youth and love in my early home did I know such joy as in this savage wilderness, this rude hut, and at this dying hour fills my soul. So will the cross bring thee to the crown. Dear father, wilt thou not say, ’Thy will be done’?”The words died upon her lips like the murmur of distant music. Her head which in the last energies of expiring nature she had raised from his shoulder fell back, and she passed away even on his bosom. The red light of morning fell on that still cold face on whichthe strong man’s tears were showering like the summer rain, but they were tears of submission. In that midnight vigil he had lived years, had fathomed the difference between doing the will of God when it suited and when it crossed his inclination, between wresting and wrenching the Scriptures into conformity with a haughty spirit and bringing that spirit into obedience to the truth; between making a cross to suit ourselves and then bearing it in our own strength and for our own glory, and taking up that which Christ places before us.Are we, my dear friends, wresting the Scriptures, picking and choosing among the commands of God, and obeying only those that run parallel with our inclinations? Have you gone just so far in obeying the commands of God as fashion and the custom of your acquaintances would go and stopped short when duty became self-denial? Have you done just as little for Christ as you thought could in any way consist with a fair profession in the eyes of the world, and have you gone just as far in the pleasures of the world as you in your judgment might go and still escape the fate of the unbeliever?Some persons wrest the Scriptures with a rude force, a noisy and destructive violence, denying the existence and attributes of their Maker, and are open scoffers and unbelievers; but others with a silent, imperceptible force, unperceived even by themselves, and silent as the power of frost which lifts the whole northern continent upon its shoulders. Their morality, Christian culture, urbanity of deportment, earnestness in defence of sound doctrine, private and public charities, are not grounded on a new heart, but proceed from other motives; force of education, the restraints of society, the love of a sect, connection of religion with some political opinion, and not from the spirit of love to Christ which it breathes; they spring from the desire to be reconciled to God by something less galling to the pride of the human heart than unconditional surrender. My friends, receiving the doctrines of Scripture without obeying their requirements is a plain and palpable wresting of the Scriptures. You believe there is a God whose hand rules the universe, yet you have never bent the knee to ask for His direction or to thank Him for the mercies He has bestowed. You believe that you must strive to enter in at the strait gate,yet you have never striven. You believe that when a person feels in his soul the strivings of the Holy Spirit directing him to God, he ought, if he would be saved, to fall in with and supplement them by his own efforts. You have felt these strivings, yet you have never lifted a finger to help yourselves. Is not this holding the truth in unrighteousness?Delay is wresting the Scriptures. God saith, “Now is the accepted time.” Unbelief says, “Will not another time do just as well?” God says, “To-day if you will hear his voice.” Procrastination says, “Will not to-morrow do as well?” God says, “You know not what a day may bring forth.” The careless hearer says, “To-morrow shall be as this day and much more abundant.” Thus you think one thing and do another. This is not the way to live, and certainly it is not the way to die. Remove, I entreat you by faith and repentance, this strange discrepancy between faith and practice.Interior view of Elijah Kellogg’s Church at Harpswell, Maine.
The Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter III, part of 16th verse. “In which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.”
In speaking from this text I might dilate upon the etymology of the words “unlearned” and “unstable.” I might go on to observe that we must take the Bible as a whole and be taught of the Spirit in order to practice its plain truths and fathom its more difficult ones; that as in the schools of human science the elementary text-books are simple while those designed for the advanced classes are more abstruse, thus the Bible contains many things which are now far beyond the reach of our minds, but to the comprehension of which we shall clamber up in eternity; that in the Bible, the book of time and eternity, the twovolumes are bound in one. Here we only read the preface and the introduction; in the hereafter we shall peruse the whole of the book.
But as these themes are frequently discussed with more of learning than I can presume to bring to the task, I shall pursue a less beaten path and content myself with observing that to “wrest” a thing signifies to wrench or twist it from its true position; the very word implies violence. Thus to wrest a truth of Scripture signifies to detach it from the other truths of the system, to make it bear a false meaning, or to rob it of all meaning. A truth of Scripture thus wrested is no longer a truth, and is, therefore, of no avail to the man who has wrested it. It can do him no good; he can no more get to heaven with it than a man who should tear a plank or a breast-hook from a ship could cross the Atlantic upon it. But as there are capillary veins and nerves in the bodily organization which discharge important though minute functions, and becoming diseased affect larger vessels and tissues, the consequence of which is sickness, and the result death, so there are methods of wresting the Scriptures less violent but notless fatal in their consequences. So great, my friends, is the evil bias of our nature and so deceitful is the human heart that we are prone to deceive ourselves, imagining that we are doing the will of God while we are doing our own will, obeying while we are wresting the Scriptures. This principle, following the example of Jesus of Nazareth, I will illustrate by a parable.
In that never-to-be-forgotten year when the Pilgrim Fathers of New England rose up from their knees beneath the cliffs of Holland and embarked, there dwelt, where Derwent-Water pours its swift current into the black gorges of a lonely tarn, the descendant of a house, rich in ancestral memories and renowned in arms. Often had these massive walls rung to the battle clarion and its floors echoed to the tread of mail-clad men. But their descendant, though inheriting all the lofty heroism of his race, is, with a heart subdued by grace, a man of scholarly tastes, of peace, and of God.
Amid the family circle where are the mother that reared, the wife that cherishes him, and the children who climb his knees, he lives, labors, and prays. “Surely,” said some lookerat the outward appearance, “this man does not serve God for naught. Has not God made a hedge about him and all that he has? He would have his good things in both lives. Is he willing to sacrifice anything? Would he do anything with the Cross of Christ other than build it into the masonry of his castles or inscribe it upon the banner folds of his vassals?” Let us see.
He enters his library, a room of antique mould; the roof groined and blazoned reflects a thousand hues of soft light from lamps of fretted gold. The thickly carpeted floor returns no echo to the footfall. View him as he stands beneath that mellow light: The face is the face of a prophet. The pure white brow, which no hardship has bronzed and around which the locks of early manhood are clustering, is as radiant with goodness as heaven’s own light. The eyes suffused, not dimmed, by that mist which is the forerunner of tears, are turned toward heaven, while from their calm depths, pure as those through which wanders the light of stars, beam glances of gentle affection, a humility not assumed but ingrained like the summer flush upon the cheek of a ripened grape. The strong, firm lipsare slightly parted with an expression of purpose and action; motionless they seem to utter, “Father, what wilt Thou have me to do?”
Thoughtful he stands, then bows that stately head in deep contrition before God. He kneels, indeed, upon an embroidered cushion, but it is wet with tears. This man of noble blood and old descent, who sayeth “to this man ’Go,’ and he goeth, and to another ’Come,’ and he cometh,” grovels in the dust before his Maker. In his anguish he prostrates himself upon the floor; he cannot get low enough before his God. It is in his heart to embark with the Pilgrims, and he asks counsel of Heaven: “Father, wilt Thou that I leave these towers of my ancestors, moistened with their blood and beneath whose shadows their bones lie mouldering, and my mother now in the wane of life? Wilt Thou that I should take the wife of my bosom, my little ones reared in luxury and with tenderness, that I myself ever having lived and loved among the gifted and the great should go forth with my brethren to the wilderness? Tell me, O my Father, that it is my duty, and I will fling my whole estate into thy treasury as willingly as ever prodigal wasted his in riotous living; I will venture my life and the lives of those dearer to me than my own as readily as ever one of my warrior ancestors laid lance in rest to break a hedge of spears. Thou knowest that I love mother, wife, and children, comfort, refinement, wealth; that life is sweet to the lusty and the young. Thou knowest how dear to me are these old trees beneath which in childhood I played, these swelling hills, these gently sloping vales, this fair stream whose gleam I love at the sunset hour to catch through green foliage and to whose murmur I love to listen, this chosen retreat filled with books that embalm the lore of centuries whither I may retire after drinking a thousand inspirations from without, and in silent prayer and thought make them my own, growing in the reaches of my lonely thought to greater affluence of progress and power. But I love Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, my Saviour, more than these; therefore let me go. Already my brother and my kindred deem that I shrink from sacrifice and thus shall thy name be dishonored through me. Thou lovest me not, else wouldst Thou chasten me, wouldst permit me to endurehardness. Surely I am a bastard and no son. He that never suffered never loved.”
But while thus he prays and pleads, a voice from the Excellent Glory whispers to his soul: “I know thou lovest me. Yet shalt thou not embark. In Abraham I accepted the full purpose and the firm intent; so will I in regard to thee. I have in reserve for thee tasks as stern, and sacrifices as great, as the forests of America can furnish, tasks for which I created thee and gave thee thy capacities. Thy forefathers were men of brawn, but thou art a man of mind. Have not I chosen the men who are to go? Their flesh is hard, their bones are strong to bear the harness, and their whole course of thought is of a sterner cast, better fitted than thine to bear the sword and set the battle in array. It is not my will that the fire shall die upon the ancient altars; remain thou to quicken its flame. I will not that thy mother, that old saint who hath reared her household in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, shall in her old age lack the protection of the son best fitted of all her race to cherish her declining years; for I am a covenant-keeping God. Remain, therefore, to lay thy hand upon her eyes. Learning, eloquence, and passing knowledge to bend the minds of men of all ranks to thy wish are thine. Go then into the councils of the nation, there to use thy power for me, to moderate the fierceness of persecution and send succor to those who are to go forth with the wolf and the bear to the hillside. There are keener pangs than those born of flowing blood and stiffening wounds on lonely battlefields, gashes deeper than the tomahawk and the scalping knife can make, wrestlings more terrible than those with flesh and blood. Fear not that thou shalt lack occasions to prove thy zeal. Thou shalt find all the sunny memories of thy life turned to gall. The church to whose altar thy mother had thee linked with all the sweet memories of thy childhood shall close to thee its doors. Thy children shall be excluded from those seats of learning where their kindred and their mates resort. And thou must endure all these things being among them, and thus the iron will be pressed into thy soul day by day, which is more terrible than to endure in a foreign land where thou art equal to thy fellows in suffering and in privilege. These are sterner trials to the flesh and to the faith, than when warhorses are neighing and clarions sounding to the charge, and the maddening rush and roar of conflict impart the very courage they require to rush on perils and set thy life upon a cast. Over the wreck of chosen thoughts and blighted hopes, through the anguish of susceptibilities which refinement and culture have made capacious of suffering of which under natures are incapable, shalt thou glorify me.” Yet how many a short-sighted onlooker at that day, unable to appreciate the inward motive, judged him who remained as shrinking from the reproach of the Cross and wresting the Scriptures to suit a carnal policy and the love of ease.
Let us view this principle in yet another light. In a distant apartment of the same castle is seated one whose features, though of a stronger and sterner cast, browned by toils and exposure on fields of battle, still bear that family resemblance which denotes them brothers. But his limbs are cast in nature’s stronger mould, and his hand turns naturally to the sword hilt. Upon his knees is a bundle of letters that he peruses with eager interest. They are from the exiles in Holland, informing him of the time of their departure,and urging him to join them. And among the letters are some from his old companions in the war of the low countries. Wrapped in thought the hours pass by him unheeded. At length, rising suddenly to his feet and thrusting open the door that leads to the great hall of the castle, he paces the stone floor. His eye kindles as it glances over the portraits of grim warriors and the proud trappings that adorn its walls. He stops in his lofty stride, a frown gathers upon his brow, his hand grips to the hilt of the sword at his side. He has made up his mind. His is the giant strength and haughty pride of an heroic line. Retiring to his chamber, he likewise kneels to pray, while the frown of anticipated conflicts and the flush of stirring memories have scarce yet faded from his brow. But there is no tremor in the hard tones of his voice, none of those bitter tears that wet the pillow of the other fall from his eyes. There is no breaking down of the strong man before Him who is stronger than the strong man armed. But he prays like Henry the Fifth at Agincourt or Bruce at Bannockburn. To carry his point he prays “my will be done” with the spirit of those who inscribed upon the muzzles of theircannon, “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.”
This man has condescended to help God. Through the long tempestuous voyage, those fearful months of mingled famine and plague when the icy breath of winter penetrated even to the pillows of the dying, and the Pilgrims drove the ploughshare through the graves of those most dear to them lest the savage should count the dead and ascertain their weakness, he passed unbroken. Neither hunger nor sickness bows his iron frame nor breaks his haughty spirit, and yet, unknown to himself, he is all the while wresting the truths of Scripture, and deems he is doing the will of God while he is consulting his own inclinations. Is the discipline of Providence therefore to waste itself upon this rugged nature, only to be repelled like the surf from the rock, in broken wreaths of foam? Will he never become as a little child that he may enter into the kingdom?
Yes. His daughter is dying. The daughter, the only remaining member of a once numerous household, whom he loves with an affection the more absorbing since he loves nothing else, to whom he has given the scantymorsel suffering hunger himself, whom he pressed to his bosom in the long nights of that terrible winter that she might gather warmth from his hardier frame, and around whom cluster all the affections that throb beneath the crust of his rugged nature, as the oak wrappeth its roots about the place of stones,—that daughter is dying. Though it is now the Indian summer and an abundant harvest has scattered plenty among the dwellings of the exiles, his daughter is perishing beneath the terrible exposure she has endured. Upon her delicate frame the previous winter and spring have done their work. Stretched upon a couch of skins, she is fading like the yellow and falling leaves that the forest is showering upon the roof, and the morning breeze is gathering in little heaps around the threshold of the rude cabin. The strong man has met one stronger than himself. The arrow aimed by no uncertain hand has found the joints of the harness. A sweet smile begotten of that peace of God, which passeth all understanding, mingles with the hectic flush on her cheek; and as he watches the ebbing tide of life, every sigh of pain, every frown that furrows the pale brow, wrung from her by the agony of dissolution, shakes his iron frame. But it is suffering, not submission. She lifts her finger, and he is at her side, takes her head upon his broad shoulder, and his war-worn cheek is pressed to hers, while the golden locks mingle with his white hairs like sunbeams reposing upon a fleecy cloud, as he listens to her low speech.
“Father, I must soon leave thee.” A hot tear falling on her cheek is the only reply. “Father,” she says, laying her thin finger upon a yellow leaf that an eddy of the wind just then blew in at the open door upon the bed, “I am like this leaf, almost at my journey’s end.”
“I know it, my child,” is the low answer.
“Canst thou give me up?”
“I cannot give thee up. Not a drop of my blood flows in any living being but in thee, the blood of a noble race. I had thought that in this new soil, transplanted, the old oak might flourish with renewed strength; but over thee, the dearest and the last, is creeping the shadow of the grave. My sons died a soldier’s death, and I mourned them as a soldier should. Thy mother I married as the great marry, for reasons of state and policy, but thou with thy gentle ways hast knit thyself into my very heart, and I must lay thee in a nameless grave, and conceal it from the Indian’s gaze, while thy kindred sleep beneath sculptured marble and the shadow of proud banner folds. Thine uncle who thought to take the journey with us flinched when it came to the trial, while I have faced pestilence, treachery, and war. Surely I have borne a heavy cross, and thus am I rewarded. God is too hard with me. He has no right to bereave me in my old age of the only being I ever truly loved.”
“Father, whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”
“Dear child, torture me not thus or I shall go mad.”
“No, father, but thou wilt go mad if, in this desperate sorrow, thou dost not win Heaven’s grace. If thy heart does not break in penitence, thy brain will reel in madness. Father, dear father, it becomes me to seek knowledge of thy gray hairs, and thou art esteemed by all a man of shrewd counsel. But to those who, like me, are on the brink of eternity, there is given a knowledge not of earth, and through these weak lips the spirit speaks. Deceive not thyself. Thou hast asyet borne no cross, but thou hast wrested the Scriptures. May it not be to thine own destruction. Thy spirit could not brook oppression, and, as thou couldst not resist, so hast thou fled from it. The perils of exile and the stormy seas were less terrible to thee than the foot of the oppressor on thy neck. Thou wast bred amid the alarms and in the bloody frays of the border wars; thou hast loved the clash of steel, and the smoke of battle is as the breath of thy nostrils. Thou hast been a man of blood from thy youth up. My uncle was bred a scholar amid home delights, unused to scenes of trial and hardship. They had terrors for him, whereas they had none for thee. And yet he would have gladly come with us had he not been forbidden of Heaven. I heard him pleading with God to make known to him his duty. That which would have been to him a real cross but was none to thee he was willing to take up. But God has laid upon him a weightier one at home. Thus hast thou prayed to have thine own way, hast suffered in accordance with thine own will, not the will of God. The cross, the real cross, is now before thee. Wilt thou take it up? If thou dost not do this,father, whither I go thou canst not come. For nineteen years thou hast anticipated my slightest wish. Wilt thou now refuse my last request? I, a timid maid, a daughter of affluence and luxury, who had never listened to a harsher sound than the murmur of Derwent-Water over the rocky bed and the breath of morn among the hills, have broken every tie, torn from my heart the youth I loved, because he stood between me and Christ, encountered perils before which warriors quail, for the love of Jesus. I have drunk of the bitter cup, but the cross has brought me to the crown. I see it. It glitters in the hand of Christ. Soon it shall press my brow. Never in the flush of youth and love in my early home did I know such joy as in this savage wilderness, this rude hut, and at this dying hour fills my soul. So will the cross bring thee to the crown. Dear father, wilt thou not say, ’Thy will be done’?”
The words died upon her lips like the murmur of distant music. Her head which in the last energies of expiring nature she had raised from his shoulder fell back, and she passed away even on his bosom. The red light of morning fell on that still cold face on whichthe strong man’s tears were showering like the summer rain, but they were tears of submission. In that midnight vigil he had lived years, had fathomed the difference between doing the will of God when it suited and when it crossed his inclination, between wresting and wrenching the Scriptures into conformity with a haughty spirit and bringing that spirit into obedience to the truth; between making a cross to suit ourselves and then bearing it in our own strength and for our own glory, and taking up that which Christ places before us.
Are we, my dear friends, wresting the Scriptures, picking and choosing among the commands of God, and obeying only those that run parallel with our inclinations? Have you gone just so far in obeying the commands of God as fashion and the custom of your acquaintances would go and stopped short when duty became self-denial? Have you done just as little for Christ as you thought could in any way consist with a fair profession in the eyes of the world, and have you gone just as far in the pleasures of the world as you in your judgment might go and still escape the fate of the unbeliever?
Some persons wrest the Scriptures with a rude force, a noisy and destructive violence, denying the existence and attributes of their Maker, and are open scoffers and unbelievers; but others with a silent, imperceptible force, unperceived even by themselves, and silent as the power of frost which lifts the whole northern continent upon its shoulders. Their morality, Christian culture, urbanity of deportment, earnestness in defence of sound doctrine, private and public charities, are not grounded on a new heart, but proceed from other motives; force of education, the restraints of society, the love of a sect, connection of religion with some political opinion, and not from the spirit of love to Christ which it breathes; they spring from the desire to be reconciled to God by something less galling to the pride of the human heart than unconditional surrender. My friends, receiving the doctrines of Scripture without obeying their requirements is a plain and palpable wresting of the Scriptures. You believe there is a God whose hand rules the universe, yet you have never bent the knee to ask for His direction or to thank Him for the mercies He has bestowed. You believe that you must strive to enter in at the strait gate,yet you have never striven. You believe that when a person feels in his soul the strivings of the Holy Spirit directing him to God, he ought, if he would be saved, to fall in with and supplement them by his own efforts. You have felt these strivings, yet you have never lifted a finger to help yourselves. Is not this holding the truth in unrighteousness?
Delay is wresting the Scriptures. God saith, “Now is the accepted time.” Unbelief says, “Will not another time do just as well?” God says, “To-day if you will hear his voice.” Procrastination says, “Will not to-morrow do as well?” God says, “You know not what a day may bring forth.” The careless hearer says, “To-morrow shall be as this day and much more abundant.” Thus you think one thing and do another. This is not the way to live, and certainly it is not the way to die. Remove, I entreat you by faith and repentance, this strange discrepancy between faith and practice.
Interior view of Elijah Kellogg’s Church at Harpswell, Maine.
Interior view of Elijah Kellogg’s Church at Harpswell, Maine.