“He that is down needs fear no fall;He that is low, no pride;He that is humble ever shallHave God to be his guide.“I am content with what I have,Little be it or much;And, Lord, contentment still I crave,Because thou savest such.”
“He that is down needs fear no fall;He that is low, no pride;He that is humble ever shallHave God to be his guide.“I am content with what I have,Little be it or much;And, Lord, contentment still I crave,Because thou savest such.”
“He that is down needs fear no fall;He that is low, no pride;He that is humble ever shallHave God to be his guide.
“I am content with what I have,Little be it or much;And, Lord, contentment still I crave,Because thou savest such.”
“Do you hear him?” said the guide. “I will dare to say that this boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of that herb called heart’s-ease in his bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet.”
Why should a man blush for his humble origin? The Saviour’s mother was a poorwoman; and no head ever lay in a meaner cradle than the manger where Mary laid her first-born—the Son of the Most High God. Why should any be ashamed of honest poverty? Men of immortal names, the apostles, were called from the lowest ranks, and went forth to conquer and convert the world without a penny in their purse. Was not our Lord himself poor? He earned His bread, and ate it, with the sweat of His brow, while others lay luxuriously on down; He had often no other roof than the open sky, or warmer bed than the dewy ground; and never had else to entertain His guests than the coarsest and most common fare—barley-loaves and a few small fishes. Though rich in the wealth of Godhead, with the resources of heaven and of earth at His sovereign command, poverty attended His steps like His shadow, along the way from a humble cradle to a bloody grave. He made Himself poor that He might make us rich; and it seemed meet that to poor rather than to rich men God should reveal the advent of Him who came to enrich thepoor, whether kings or beggars, peers or peasants. As if to censure the respect paid to rank apart from merit, or to wealth apart from worth, He who has no respect for persons honoured in these shepherds honest poverty and humble virtue. They received ambassadors not accredited to sovereigns; as cottages, not palaces, housed Him whom the heavens have received, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain.
Mothers cumbered with a load of domestic cares, merchants worried with business, statesmen charged with their country’s affairs, and thousands who have a daily fight to keep the wolf from the door, fancy that, if they enjoyed the leisure some have, and could bestow more time on divine things, they would be more religious than they are, and, rising to higher, calmer elevations of thought and temper, would maintain a nearer communion with God. It may reconcile such to their duties to observe how the men were employed on whom God bestowed this unexpected and exalted honour. They were engaged in the ordinary business of their earthly calling; of a hard and humbleone. Types of Him to whose care His people owe their safety amid the temptations, and their support amid the trials of life, these shepherds were watching their flocks; peering through the gloom of night; listening for the stealthy step of the robber; ready, starting to their feet, to beat off the sneaking wolf, or bravely battle with the roaring lion.
He whose sun shines as brightly on the lowliest as on the stateliest flower, regards with complacency the humblest man who wins his daily bread, and discharges the duties of his station, whatever they be, in such a way as to glorify God and be of advantage to his fellow-creatures. Heaven, as this case brilliantly illustrates, is never nearer men, nor are they ever nearer it, than in those fields or workshops, where, with honest purpose and a good conscience, they are diligently pursuing their ordinary avocations. No doubt—for God does not cast His pearls before swine—these shepherds were pious men. One passing a night in their humble dwellings would have seen the father with reverentmien gather his household to prayer; and one passing these uplands, where they held their watch, might have heard their voices swaying on the midnight air, as they sang together the psalms of David amid the very scenes where he tuned his harp and fed his father’s flocks. But people are too apt to suppose that religion lies mainly, if not exclusively, in prayers, reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and attending on sacraments; in time spent, or work done, or offerings made, or sacrifices endured, for what are called, in common language, religious objects. These are the means, not the end. He who rises from his knees to his daily task, and, with an eye not so much to please men as God, does it well, carries divine worship to the workshop, and throws a sacred halo around the ordinary secularities of life. That, indeed, may be the highest expression of religion; just as it is the highest expression of devoted loyalty to leave the precincts of the court and the presence of the sovereign, to endure the hardships of a campaign, and stand insoiled and tattered regimentals by the king’s colours amid the deadly hail of battle. He who goes to common duties in a devout and Christian spirit proves his loyalty to God; and, as this case proves, is of all men the most likely to be favoured with tokens of the Divine presence—communications of grace which will sustain his patience under a life of toil, and fit him for the rest that remaineth for the people of God.
Mingled with its rattling shingle, the sea-beach bears hazel-nuts and fir-tops—things which once belonged to the blue hills that rise far inland on the horizon. Dropped into the brooks of bosky glens, they have been swept into the river, to arrive, after many windings and long wanderings, at the ocean; to be afterwards washed ashore with shells and wreck and sea-weed. The Gulf Stream, whose waters by a beautiful arrangement of Providence bring the heat of southern latitudes to temper the wintry rigour of the north, throws objects on the western coasts of Europe which have performed longer voyages—fruits and forest-trees that have travelled the breadth of the Atlantic, casting the productions of the New World on the shores of the Old.
Like these, the record of events which happened in the earliest ages of the world has been carried along the course of time,and spread by the diverging streams of population over the whole surface of the globe. The facts are, as was to be expected, always more or less changed, and often, indeed, fragmentary. Still, like old coins, which retain traces of their original effigies and inscriptions, these traditions possess a high historic value. Their remarkable correspondence with the statements of the Bible confirms our faith in its divinity; and their being common to nations of habits the most diverse, and of habitations separated from each other by the whole breadth of the earth, proves the unity of our race. If they cannot be regarded as pillars, they are buttresses of the truth; being inexplicable on any theory but that which infidelity has so often, but always vainly, assailed, namely, that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and that He has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.
To take some examples. Look, for instance, at a custom common among the Red Indians, ages before white men had crossed the sea and carried the Bible totheir shores! At the birth of a child, as Humboldt relates, a fire was kindled on the floor of the hut, and a vessel of water placed beside it; but not with the murderous intent of those savage tribes who practise infanticide, and, pressed by hunger, destroy their children to save their food. The infant here was first plunged into the water—buried, as we should say, in baptism; and afterwards swept rapidly and unharmed through the flaming fire. A very remarkable rite; and one that, as we read the story, recalled to mind this double baptism, “He shall baptize you,” said Jesus, “with the Holy Ghost and with fire;” “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Its administration to infants, to such as had committed no sin, nor knew, indeed, their right hand from their left, implied a belief in the presence, not of acquired, but of original impurity. It is based on that; and without it this rite is not only mysterious, but meaningless. Blind is the eye which does not see in this old pagan ceremony a tradition ofthe primeval Fall, and dull the ear which does not hear in its voice no faint echo of these words, “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.... Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
Like the Fall, the Flood also was an event which, though it may have worn no channel in the rocks, has left indelible traces of its presence on the memory of mankind. The Greeks had strange traditions of this awful judgment; so had the Romans; and so had almost all the heathen nations of antiquity—strange legends, to which the Bible supplies the only key. Its account of the Deluge explains the traditions, and the traditions corroborate it; and by their general mutual correspondence we are confirmed in our belief that its authors were holy men of old, who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. To evade this argument, infidels may trace these legends to Jews, who, led captive of the heathen, related to them the Mosaic story, and took advantage of man’s love of themarvellous to practise on his credulity. The attempt is vain; since, on turning from the Old World to the New, we find the very same traditions there; and there, long ages before Jew or Christian knew of its existence, or had landed on its shores. Those paintings which were to Mexicans and Peruvians substitutes for history, for a written or printed language, embody the story of the Flood. One of these pictures, for example, shows us a man afloat with his family in a rude boat on a shoreless sea; in another, the raven of Bible story is cleaving on black wing the murky sky; in a third, the heads of the hills appear in the background like islands emerging from the waste of waters, while, with such confusion as is inseparable from traditionary lore, the raven is substituted for the dove, and appears making its way to the lone tenants of the boat with evidence of the subsidence of the waters—a fir-cone in its bloody beak. Rolled down the long stream of ages, the true history is more or less changed, and even fragmentary, like a water-worn stone.Still, between these traditionary records and Bible story there is a remarkable agreement. They sound like its echo. In them pagan voices proclaim the holiness of God. Lest we also should perish with those who, looking on the placid sea and starry sky of the Old World’s last night, asked, “Where is the promise of His coming?” they warn us to flee from wrath to come.
Of all these venerable legends painted in colours or embalmed in verse, written in story or sculptured on stone, none are more remarkable than those where the serpent appears. Old divines imagined that the creature whose shape Satan borrowed for the temptation had originally no malignant aspect; neither the poisoned fangs, nor eyes of fire, nor cold, scaly, wriggling form which man and beast recoil from with instinctive horror. They fancied that the curse, “Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat,” was followed by a sudden metamorphosis, and that till then the appearance of the serpent was as lovely as it is now loathsome. They gavethe words of the curse a literal interpretation. They bear a deeper meaning, no doubt; yet the fancy of these old divines may have approached nearer to fact than many perhaps suppose. Science reads the history of remote ages as she finds it inscribed on the rocks; and, on turning over these stony leaves, we find that the earliest form of the serpent was different from that which, as it crawls and wriggles along the ground, so forcibly recalls the very words of the curse. Though they have now only such powers of motion as belong to the meanest worm, those skeletons which the rocks entomb show that the serpent tribe had once feet to walk with, and even wings to spurn the ground and cleave the air. Such is the testimony of the rocks! And, taking the words of Scripture in their literal sense, there is, to say the least of it, a very curious coincidence between the voices of the rocks and the voice of revelation. But, be that as it may, what else but fragmentary traditions of Eden and the Fall are the forms of serpent worship among the heathen, who acted, asthey still often act, on the principle of propitiating the powers of evil, the many old monuments on which its figure is sculptured, and the many old legends in which it plays a conspicuous part? What else was the belief of our pagan fathers, that within a dark cave in the bowels of the earth there sat a great scaly dragon, brooding on gold? What else was the fabled garden of the Hesperides, where the trees, guarded by a fierce and formidable serpent, bore apples of gold? What else was the tragic story of a father and his sons dying by the bites and crushed within the scaly folds of a coil of serpents; and on which, as touchingly represented in the sculptured marble, we have never looked without recalling the fate of Adam and his unhappy offspring? And what else is the old legend of him who with rash hand sowed serpent’s teeth, and saw spring from the soil, not clustering vines, or feathery palms, or stalks of waving corn, but a crop of swords, and spears, and armed men? Read that fable by the light of the Bible, and the wild legend stands out the record ofan awful fact. To the serpent the world owes it wars, and discords, and the sin which is their source. Disguised in its form, Satan brought in sin; and when sin entered on the scene, peace departed—peace between God and man, peace between man and man, peace between man and himself—the peace which, with all its blessings, He descended from heaven to restore who is our Peace, and whom angels ushered on the scene of His toils and triumphs, of His atoning death and glorious victory, with songs of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”
There are things which God cannot do—which it were not to honour but dishonour Him to believe He could. He can neither tempt, nor be tempted, to sin. The sinner He may love, but not his sin; that is impossible; as the prophet expresses it, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” Indeed, I would as soon believe that God could condemn a holy spirit to the pains of hell, as admit a guilty one, unjustified and unsanctified, to the joys of heaven. In that terrible indictment which God thunders out against Israel by the mouth of Ezekiel, He says, “Thou art the land which is not cleansed. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening theprey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. Her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord.” So he arraigns this and the other class. And how of the priests? “Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean.” He censures His servants for not separating between the clean and unclean; and it insults Him to suppose that He could do in His own practice what He condemns in theirs. Events, such as old murders brought to light, ever and anon occur to show that God’s mill, as runs the proverb, though itgrinds slow, grinds sure; yet because He does not execute judgment speedily on workers of iniquity—giving them space to repent; because He often seems, like one far remote from earth, to treat its crimes and virtues with equal indifference, men have not believed these solemn words, “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” But let the wicked hear His words, and take the warning, “Thou hatest instruction; thou castest My words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him. Thou hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue practiseth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.”
The universal conscience of mankind isstricken with a sense of guilt. Alarmed by an instinctive sense of danger, men have felt the need of reconciliation; and, under a sense of His displeasure, have everywhere, and in all ages, sought to make their peace with God. For this end altars were raised and temples built; sacrifices offered, and penances endured. If the colossal structures of Egypt, and the lovely temples of Greece and Rome, were erected, as well to adorn the state as to please the gods, it was less to please approving, than to appease angry divinities, that their courts resounded with the cries of victims, and smoking altars ran red with blood. So much did the heathen feel their need of peace, such store did they set by it, that many of them sought it at any price. They would buy peace at any cost; nor did they shrink from giving all their fortune, even the fruit of their body, for the sin of their souls. For peace with God the Hindoo walked to his distant temples in sandals that, set with spikes, pierced his flesh at every step, and marked all the long, slow, painful journeywith a track of blood; for peace with God the Syrian led his sweet boy up to the fires of Moloch, and, unmoved in purpose by cries, or curses, or passionate entreaties, cast him shrieking on the burning pile; for peace with God the Indian mother approached the river’s brink with streaming tears and trembling steps, and, tearing the suckling from her bursting heart, kissed it, to turn away her eyes, and fling it into the flood. We pity their ignorance. But how do they rebuke the indifference of many; their unwillingness to submit to any sacrifice whatever for the honour of Jesus and the interests of their souls? These heathens may pity thousands whom they shall rise up in judgment to condemn. Neglecting the great salvation, preferring the pleasures of sin, what a contrast do these offer to a poor Hindoo, who, hearing a missionary tell of the blood of Christ, sprang from the ground, and, loosing his bloody sandals, flung them away to exclaim, “Now, now I have found what I want!”
The peace which he found all menwant, and shall find in Jesus, if they seek it honestly, earnestly. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He never had. We pronounce him an unnatural father, who, on a breach occurring between him and his child, though he is the injured and not the injurer, does not long to be reconciled—is not the first to make advances and overtures of peace. In this feature of the parental character God has stamped upon our hearts the beautiful image of His own. Yearning over them as the kind old man over his wayward prodigal, his exiled child, God was willing to receive back sinners to His arms; to reinstate them in His family, and restore them to His favour. But how was this to be done?—done without dishonour to His holy law, and with due regard to His character as a God of truth. He had said, “The soul that sinneth shall die;” nor could peace be restored between Him and man but on such terms as maintained His truth. A father or mother punishes one child, and allows another, guilty of the same offence, to go free. But had God cast fallen angels intohell, and, without any regard to His word, admitted fallen men to heaven, what had angels, what had devils, what had men themselves thought of a God who conducted his government with such caprice—playing fast and loose with His most solemn words? “The way of the Lord,” said ancient Israel, “is not equal;” and in such a case there had been ground for the charge, and none for the indignation with which He repels it, saying, “Hear now, O Israel, is not my way equal? are not yours unequal?”
There was only one way of restoring peace; but it involved a sacrifice on God’s part which the most sanguine had never dared to hope for. If the Lord of heaven and earth, veiling His glory, would assume our nature, would take the form of a servant, would stoop to the work of a subject, would die the death of a sinner, we might be saved—not otherwise; if He would leave heaven, we might enter it—not otherwise; if He would die, we might live—not otherwise; if He would enter the grave its captor, we might leave it its conquerors—nototherwise; if He, as our substitute, would fulfil the requirements of the law, both in doing our work and discharging our debt, both obeying and suffering in our stead, peace could be restored—not otherwise. For these ends God did not spare His Son, but gave Him up to death, “that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life;” and the “set time” having come at length, Jesus descended on our world, to make peace through the blood of His cross—His angel-train, ere they returned to heaven, holding a concert in the skies.
Dying, the just for the unjust, He has made peace; and these are the easy terms, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” How gladly should we accept them? If men reject peace, what chance for them in war? “Hast thou an arm like God? Canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” “Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth; but woe to the man who striveth with his Maker!” He has proclaimed a truce—granting a suspension of arms, andoffering most generous proposals of peace. How should men improve the pause, and accept the overtures!—as eagerly seizing salvation through the cross of Christ as a drowning man life through the rope some kind hand flings within his reach. In warfare patriots have stood up gallantly against overwhelming odds, and, closing their broken ranks, have said, “Better fall on the field, better lose life than honour;” but when sinners, dropping the weapons of rebellion, yield themselves up to God, honour is not lost, but won, in a crown that fadeth not away. Brave men have said, “Better fight to the last, die with our swords in our hands, than become captives to pine away a weary, ignoble life within the walls of a prison;” but when the sinner gives himself up to God, he goes not to exile but home; not to chains and a dungeon, but to glorious freedom, a palace, and a throne. God asks you to give up your sins that they, not you, may be slain. It is of them, not of you, He says, “But those mine enemies which would not thatI should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me!”
In these circumstances, oh for the wisdom of her who showed herself on the city walls in the thick of the assault, crying to Joab, “Hear, hear, come near hither, I pray you, that I may speak with thee!” A woman’s figure there, her voice sounding above the thunder of the captains and the shouting, suspends the attack. Assailants and assailed alike rest on their arms; and as one marked as a leader by his plume and bearing, covered with the dust and blood of battle, steps forward, she bends over the battlements to ask, “Art thou Joab?” “I am he,” is the reply. “Then hear the words of thy handmaid,” she cries; “I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel!” He solemnly repudiates the charge. “Far be it from me,” he answers, “that I should swallow up and destroy. The matter is not so: but a man of Mount Ephraim, Sheba, the son of Bichri, hath lifted up his handagainst the king, against David: deliver him only, and I will depart from the city.” She accepts the terms; and saying “Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall”—vanishes. Prompt in action as wise in counsel, she goes to the people, deals with them, sways the multitude to her will; and ere the last hour of the brief truce has closed, a bloody head goes bounding over the wall. It rolls like a ball to the feet of Joab; and in its grim and ghastly features they recognise the face of the son of Bichri. So Joab blows the trumpet, and the host retires from the walls, every man to his own tent. So let men deal with their sins. Let them die with the son of Bichri: they have “lifted up their hand against the King.” Why should we spare them, and lose our souls? By His precious blood Jesus has opened up a way to peace. He has come, but not “to swallow up and destroy.” Blessed Lord, He came to save, not to destroy. “O earth, earth, earth,” cried the prophet, “hear the word of the Lord;” and be it known to the world’s utmost bounds thatGod willeth not the death of the sinner, but rather that he would turn to Him and live. With her flaming sword, red with the blood of men and angels, Justice holds to us no other language but that of Joab, “Deliver up your sins only, and I will depart!” and, inspired of God with the wisdom that chooseth the better part, and maketh wise unto salvation, let us say, “Better my sins die than I; better Satan be cast, than Jesus be kept out of it; better strike off the heads of a thousand sins that have lifted up their hands against the King, than that I should fall—sparing my sins to lose my soul!”
Ahab and Jezebel, two of the worst characters in sacred story, had a son; and with such blood as theirs in his veins, no wonder that Joram, on succeeding to the throne of one parent, exhibited the vices of both. His mother does not seem to have had a drop of human-kindness in her breast. Yet he was not altogether dead to humanity, as appears by an incident which occurred during the siege that reduced his capital to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of “Help, my lord, O king!” touches him; and he asks, “What aileth thee?” Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she replies, with hollow voice, “This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiledmy son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son.” Struck with horror at the story, Joram rent his clothes. He had pity, but no piety.
“Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will but revolt more and more.” Never were these words, never was the fact that unsanctified afflictions have the same hardening effect on men which fire, that melts gold, has on clay, more strikingly illustrated than on this occasion. So far from rending his heart with his garment, and humbling himself before the Lord, Joram flares up into fiercer rebellion; and turning from these victims of the famine to his courtiers, he grinds his teeth to profane God’s name and vow vengeance on his prophet, saying, “God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day.” Impotent rage against the only man who could have weathered the storm, and saved the state! The prophet’s head stood on his shoulders when that of thisson of a murderer—as Elisha called him—lay low in death in the dust of Naboth’s vineyard. The day arrives which sees the cup of Joram’s iniquity full, and that of God’s patience empty—drained to the last drop. The chief officers of the army are sitting outside their barrack, when one wearing a prophet’s livery approaches them. Singling out Jehu from the group, he says, I have an errand to thee, O captain! The captain rises; they pass in alone; the door is shut; and now this strange, unknown man, drawing a horn of oil from his shaggy cloak, pours it on Jehu’s head. As if it had fallen on fire, it kindled up his smouldering ambition—so soon at least as this speech interpreted the act, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed thee king over the people of this land. Thou shall smite the house of Ahab thy master; dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.” Having spoken so, the stranger opens the door, and flies. But faster flies God’s vengeance. Ere his feet have borne the servant to Elisha’sdoor, the banner of revolt is up, unfurled; troops are gathering to the sound of trumpets; and soldiers, eager for change and plunder, are making the air ring to the cry, Jehu is king!
Launched like a thunderbolt at the house of Ahab, Jehu makes right for Jezreel with impetuous, impatient speed. A watchman on the palace tower catches afar the dust of the advancing cavalcade, and cries, I see a company! Guilt, which sleeps uneasy even on downy pillows, awakens, on the circumstance being reported to him, the monarch’s fears. A horseman is quickly despatched with the question, Is it peace? Thus, pulling up his steed, he accosts the leader of the company, who, drawing no rein, replies, in a tone neither to be challenged nor disobeyed, What hast thou to do with peace? Get thee behind me! Failing the first’s return, a second horseman gallops forth to carry the same question and meet the same reception. Sweeping on like a hurricane, the band is now near enough for the watchman to tell, “Hecame near unto them, and cometh not again;” and also to add, as he marks how their leader is shaking the reins and lashing the steeds of his bounding chariot, “The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.” Displaying a courage that seemed his only redeeming quality, or bereaved of sense, according to the saying, Whom God intends to destroy He first makes mad, Joram instantly throws himself into his chariot, advances to meet the band, and demands of its leader, Is it peace, Jehu? What peace, is the other’s answer, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother and her witchcrafts are so many? With the words that leave his lips an arrow leaves his bow to transfix the flying king—entering in at his back and passing out at his breast; and when he is cast, a bloody corpse, into Naboth’s vineyard, and dogs are crunching his mother’s bones, and Jehu has climbed the throne, and Elisha walks abroad with his head safe on his shoulders, and the curtain falls on the stage of these tragic and righteous scenes,it was a time for the few pious men of that guilty land to sing, “Lo thine enemies, O Lord, lo thine enemies shall perish; but the righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: they shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.”
Such was the mission of Jehu, the son of Nimshi. How different that of Jesus, the Son of God! They might have been identical; presented at least grounds of comparison rather than grounds of striking contrast. Yet so remarkable is the contrast that Jehu’s mission—and therefore have we related the story—forms as effective a background to Christ’s, as the black rain-cloud to the bright bow which spans it. The cause of the difference lies in God’s free, gracious, sovereign mercy—in nothing else; for had mankind, at the tidings that the Son of God, attended by a train of holy angels, was approaching, met Him on the confines of our world with Joram’s question, “Is it peace?” that question might justly have met with Jehu’s answer, “What hast thou to do with peace?”—what have you done to obtainit, or to deserve it? Yet, glory be to God in the highest, it is peace—peace more plainly and fully announced in these most gracious words, “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven.”
Having reconciled us to God by the blood of His cross, Christ is “our Peace,” as the apostle says. He is called so, first, because He restores us to a state of friendship with God; and, secondly, because a sense of that fills the whole soul with a peace which passeth understanding. So, speaking of the righteousness which Christ wrought out for us, the prophet says, “The work of righteousness is peace”—His righteousness being the root, and our peace the fruit—that the spring, and this the stream. To describe for the comfort of the Church the constancy of the last and the fulness of the first, another prophet borrows two of nature’s grandest images, “Thy peace shall be like a river, and thy righteousness like the waves ofthe sea”—the believer’s peace flowing like a broad, deep stream, with life in its waters and smiling verdure on its banks; and a Saviour’s righteousness covering all his sins, as the waves do the countless sands of their shore, when, burying them out of sight, the tide converts the whole reach of dull, dreary sand into a broad liquid mirror, to reflect the light of the sky and the beams of the sun.
Christ’s imputed righteousness is bestowed equally on all believers—none, the least any more than the greatest sinner, being more justified than another. Feeling assured or not of their salvation, all His are equally safe—“those whom Thou hast given me I have kept, and none of them are lost.” There is no such equal enjoyment among believers of peace in believing; some walking all their days under a cloud, and some who walk in darkness and have no light, only reaching heaven, like a blind man guided homewards by the hand of his child, by their hold of the promise, Who is he that feareth the Lord and obeyeth the voiceof His servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light; let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself in his God. But where there is peace springing from a sense of forgiveness, of all the fruits of the Spirit that grow in Christ’s fair garden, this is sweetest. Among the blessings enjoyed on earth, it has no superior, or rival even. It passeth understanding, says an apostle. Nor did David regard any as happy but those who enjoyed it—pronouncing “blessed,” not the great, or rich, or noble, or famous, but “the man,” whatever his condition, “whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” And so he might. With this peace the believer regards death as the gate of life: enters the grave as a quiet anchorage from seas and storms; and looks forward to the scene of final judgment as a prince to his coronation, or a happy bride to her marriage day. A sense of forgiveness lays the sick head on a pillow softer than downs; lightens sorrow’s heaviest burdens; makes poverty richbeyond the wealth of banks; spoils death of his sting; arms the child of God against the ills of life; and, lifting him up above its trials, makes him like some lofty mountain, at whose feet the lake may be lashed into foaming billows, and adown whose seamed and rugged sides clouds may fall in gloomy folds, but whose head, shooting up into the calm blue heavens, reposes in unbroken peace, rejoices in perpetual sunshine.
Happy such as obtain a firm hold of Christ, and, having made their calling and election sure, enjoy unclouded peace! Feeling that there is now no more condemnation for them, because they believe in Jesus, and walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, they see a change come on objects such as imparts pleasure and surprise in what are called dissolving views. Where death, with grim and grisly aspect, stood by the mouth of an open grave, shaking his fatal dart, we see an angel form opening with one hand the gate of heaven, and holding in the other a shiningcrown—from the face of God we see the features of an angry, stern, inexorable judge melt all away, and in room of an object of terror we behold the face and form of a kind, loving, forgiving Father, with open arms hastening to embrace us. The God of hope give you joy and peace in believing, is the prayer of the apostle—a prayer in many cases so fully answered that the dying saint has been borne away from all his earthly moorings; and, ready to part from wife and children, has exclaimed with Simeon when he held the infant Saviour in his joyful arms, “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
“Be at peace among yourselves,” is a blessed injunction which an apostle lays on families, on friends, and on churches. In happy contrast to the storm which, hurtling through the troubled air, and shaking doors and windows, goes raving round every corner of the house, let peace reign on the domestic hearth, and alsowithin the church, when, like the ark of old, she drifts on the billows of a shoreless sea—God only at the helm.
It is good to be at peace with our brethren, but to be at peace with one’s-self is better. At peace with conscience, one can afford, if God will have it so, to be at war with all men. It is painful, when we cannot be at peace with all men—to have enemies without; but his case is infinitely worse who lodges an enemy in his own breast—in a guilty, uneasy conscience, in self-reproaches, in terror of death, in the knowledge that God and he are not friends, nor can be so, so long as he cherishes his sins. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. There cannot be. Drugged with narcotics, you may sleep as quietly on a bed of thorns as of roses. Drugged with narcotics, you may lie down on the cold pavement, and fancy as you throw your arms around the curbstone that it is the wife of your bosom. Drugged with narcotics, you may go to sleep in a cell with visions of home playinground the head that shall be capped for hanging to-morrow. But no more than I call these peaceful sights, can I apply the name of peace to the insensibility of a conscience seared by sin; to the calmness, or rather callousness of one who has allowed the devil to persuade him that God is too merciful to reckon with us for our transgressions. The peace we are to seek, and, seeking to pursue, is not that of death, but life,—not that the lake presents in winter, when no life appears on its shores, nor sound breaks the silence of its frozen waters; but that of a lake which, protected from tempests by lofty mountains, carries life in its waters, beauty on its banks, and heaven mirrored in its unruffled bosom. Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the peace which we are to seek—a peace which, springing from a sense of reconciliation through the blood of the Lamb and wrought within the soul by the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, has so raised the saint above allfears of death, and shed such a flood of glory around his dying head, that wicked men have turned from the scene to exclaim, May I die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like his!
How many pages of history are written with the point of the sword—not with ink, but tears and blood? It is chiefly taken up with the recital of wars. What age has not been the era, what country the scene of bloody strifes? What soil does not hold the dust of thousands that have fallen by brothers’ hands? Our glebes have been fattened with the bodies of the slain? On those fields where, with the lark carolling overhead, the peasant drives his ploughshare, other steel than the sickle has glanced, and other shouts have risen than those of happy reapers bearing some blushing, sun-browned maid on their broad shoulders at the Harvest Home. The tall gray stones, the hoary cairns, tell how on other days these quiet sceneswere disturbed by the roar of battle, and lay red with another dye than that of heath or purple wild flowers. Go wherever our foot may wander, we find tokens of war; and select what age soever we may, since Abel fell beneath a brother’s hand, we find in man’s first death, and the earth’s first lone grave, a bloody omen of future and frequent crimes. What a commentary is human history on these words of Holy Scripture, “The whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain till now!—nor shall it cease to groan, or hail the day of its redemption, till the Prince of Peace is enthroned in the heart of all nations, and the labours of missionaries have extended that kingdom to the ends of the earth, whose triumphs are bloodless—whose walls are Salvation and her gates Praise.”
Without disparagement to the happy influence of education, the extension of commerce, and the efforts of benevolent men, the real Peace Society is the Church of God; the olive branch which the Spirit, dove-like, is bearing on blessed wing to atroubled world, is the Word of God; and the gospel’s is the voice which, like Christ’s on Galilee’s waves, shall speak peace to a distracted earth, and change its wildest passions into a holy calm. Till all nations receive the Bible in its integrity and own it as their only rule of policy, till kings reign for Christ and lay their crowns at His feet, a lasting peace is an idle dream. Treaties will no more bind nations that lie under the influence of unsanctified passions, that chains him who dwelt among the tombs, and within whom dwelt a legion of devils. Till other and better days come, the best cemented peace is only a pause—a truce—an armistice; the breathing-time of exhausted combatants. Alas, that it should be so: yet true it is, that that nation dooms itself to disaster, if not destruction, which, pursuing only the arts of peace, leaves its swords to rust, and its navies to rot, and forts with empty embrasures to moulder into ruins. The trumpet of the world’s Jubilee has not yet sounded, nor have all the vials of the Apocalypse been emptied of the wrathof God. And so, till the nations have emerged from spiritual darkness; till God’s Word is an open book, and duly honoured in all lands; till immorality has ceased to weaken the bonds of social happiness, discontent to rankle in the bosom of the people, and ambition to fire the breasts of kings, the world may expect ever and anon to hear the voice of Joel sounding out this trumpet call, “Prepare ye war; wake up the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near—beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears—put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.”
Better days are coming—some think near at hand. Turning a seer’s eye on futurity, Isaiah descried them in the far distance—saw the reign of the Prince of Peace—Jesus crowned King of kings and Lord of lords—swords beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks—every man, whether at hall or cottage door, sitting under the shade of his vine and fig-tree—the whole earth quiet, and at rest. And glad is the Church, as,weary of strife and sin and sorrow, she looks up into the darksome sky, and cries, Watchman, what of the night? to get a hopeful response,—to catch any sign, in break, or blush, or gray gleam however feeble, that seems to reply, The morning cometh! Come blessed morn, come Prince of Peace—come Lord Jesus—come quickly! Let wars cease unto the ends of the earth! Scatter Thou the people that delight in war.
The vision tarries, but come it shall. In answer to the cry of blood that rises to heaven with a different voice from that of Abel’s, peace shall reign and wars shall cease. By the hands that men nailed to a cross God will break the bow, the battle, and the spear—burning the chariot in the fire. And though any peace which our age may enjoy should be only a breathing-time, but a pause in the roar of the bloody tempest, let us improve it to remedy all wrongs at home; to educate our ignorant and neglected masses; to eradicate the vices that disgrace and degrade our nation; to build up the Church wherever it lies inruins; to extend not so much Britain’s empire as Christ’s kingdom abroad, and so hasten forward the happy time when the Song of the Angels shall be echoed from every land, and the voices of the skies of Bethlehem shall be lost in the grander, fuller, nobler chorus of all nations, singing, Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will toward men!
Though the last to be dropped into its place, the keystone is of all the stones of an arch the first in importance; the others span no flood, carry no weight, are of no value, without it. It gives unity to the separate parts, and locking all together, makes them one. Of such consequence to the other parts of the Angels’ Song is its last clause. It was not simply Glory to God, nor peace on earth, but good will toward men, which made the angels messengers of mercy, and the news they brought tidings of great joy. Glory to God! Amid the rush of the waters that drowned the world, and the roar of the flames that laid Sodom in ashes, they sang glory to God. God is glorious in acts of judgment as well as in acts of mercy—“the God of Glory thundereth.” So onshores strewn with the corpses of the dead, beside a sea which opened its gates for the escape of Israel and closed them on Egypt, burying king and bannered host beneath its whirling waves, Moses and Miriam cried, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea! Then the deep lifted up its voice, and all the waves of the sea sang Glory to God! as, bearing the dead in on their foaming crests, they laid them at Moses’ feet. And when that judgment comes to which these are but as the big drops that prepare us for a burst of thunder and the rushing rain, when the great white throne is set, and the books are opened, and the Judge rises in awful majesty to pronounce words of doom, the voices of ten times ten thousand saints shall add, Amen; and in an outburst of praise that drowns the wail of the lost, the whole host of angels shall sing, Glory to God! With such ascription of praise Christ’s heralds would have announced Hisadvent, had He come not to save, but to destroy.
“Glory to God,” the first clause of this song, does not, therefore, necessarily involve good will towards men; and no more does the second, “peace on earth.” Peace! Peace was in the valley where the prophet stood with the grim wrecks of war around him,—friend and foe sleeping side by side, skeletons silently turning to dust, and swords to rust. Peace is in the battle-field when the last gun is fired, and, the last of the dying having groaned out his soul in a gush of blood, the heaving mass is still. Peace was on the sea and the storm suddenly became a calm, when the waves leaping up against the flying ship obtained their prey, and from the deck where he stood summoned by the voice, Arise, O thou that sleepest, and call upon thy God, Jonah was flung into the jaws of death. Peace was in that land he had ravaged of whom men said, “He made a solitude, and called it peace,”—all its homesteads lay in ashes, and itscities stood in silent ruins. Peace was in Israel, when, provoked by their sins, God cast His people out: swept them all into captivity. The land had its Sabbaths then. The Angels’ Song might have announced a similar, but greater, judgment—that, as a landlord clears his estate of turbulent, lawless, bankrupt tenants, God, who had repented long ago that He had made man, was at length coming to clear the earth of his guilty presence, and make room for better tenants; a purer, holier race. It is the last clause of this hymn, therefore, that gives it an aspect of mercy—the revenue of glory which God was to receive, and the peace which earth was to enjoy, flowing from that fountain of redeeming love which had its spring in God’s good will. Of this Christ was the divine expression, and angels were the happy messengers.
Happy messengers indeed! No wonder they hastened their flight to earth, and having announced the good tidings, lingered over the fields of Bethlehem, singing asthey hovered on the wing. To announce bad news is the unenviable office often imposed on ministers of the gospel; and recollecting with what slow, reluctant steps my feet approached the house where I had to break to a mother the tidings of the wreck, and how her sailor boy with all hands had perished; or, in the news of a husband’s sudden death, I had to plant a dagger in the heart of a young, bright, happy wife. I never have read the story of Absalom’s tragic end, without wondering at the race between Ahimaaz and Cushi who should first carry the tidings to David. It had been easier, I think, to look the foe in the face and hear the roar of battle than see the old man’s grief, and hear that heart-broken cry, “O Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” I can enter into the feelings of the two Marys, when, to quote the words of Holy Scripture, “they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring the disciplesword.” I see them, as, regardless of appearances, and saluting no one, they press on, along the road, through the streets, with panting breath and gleaming eye and streaming hair and flying feet, striving who shall be first to proclaim the resurrection, and burst in on the disciples with the glad tidings, crying, “The Lord is risen!” Teaching the Churches how to strive, their only rivalry who shall first carry the tidings of salvation to heathen lands, I dare to say those holy women never took such bounding steps, nor sped on their way with such haste before. And never, I fancy, did angels leave the gates of heaven so fast behind them, pass suns and stars in downward flight on such rapid wing, as when they hasted to earth with the tidings of great joy. May we be as eager to accept salvation as they were to announce it! May the love of God find a responsive echo within our bosoms! Would that our wishes for His glory corresponded to His for our good, and that His good will toward us awoke a corresponding good will toward Him—felt in hearts glowing withzeal for Christ’s cause, and expressed in lives wholly consecrated to His service.
In studying this, we shall now consider the persons to whom good will is expressed.
It is expressed to men—to all men; so that if we are finally lost, the blame as well as the bane is ours. God has no ill will to us, or to any. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; nor is He willing that any should perish, but that all should come to Him, and live. His good will embraces the world.
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of man, that thou visitest him?” So said the royal psalmist. And, in a sense, time should only have deepened the astonishment which this questionexpresses. For man’s ideas of the magnificence of the heavens have grown with the course of ages; and though the stars in the transparent atmosphere of Palestine shone with a brilliancy unknown to us, our conceptions of the heavens are grander and more true than David’s—thanks to the discoveries of modern science. As navigators, so soon as by help of the mariner’s compass they could push their bold prows into untravelled seas, were ever adding new continents to the land and new islands to the ocean, so, since the invention of the telescope, science has been discovering new stars in the heavens; filling up their empty spaces with stellar systems, and vastly enlarging the limits of creation. And since every new orb has added to the lustre of Jehovah’s glory, another world to His kingdom, another jewel to His crown, these discoveries, by exalting God still higher, have added point and power to the old question, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of man, that thou visitest him?”
Yet, apart from man’s sinfulness, I cannot feel that he is beneath the regards of the Maker and Monarch of the starry heavens. I can fancy that an earthly sovereign who, dwelling apart from his people, is jealous of their intrusion within his palace gates, and sits enthroned amid an exclusive though brilliant circle of proud and powerful barons, may neither know nor care about the fortunes of lowly cottagers; but there could be no greater mistake than out of such a man’s character to weave our conceptions of God, or fancy that because we are infinitely beneath His rank, we are therefore beneath His notice. A glance at the meanest of His creatures refutes and rebukes the unworthy thought. It needs no angels from heaven to inform us that God cherishes good will to all the creatures of His hand, nor deems the least of them beneath His kind regards. Look at bird, or butterfly, or beetle! Observe the lavish beauty that adorns His creatures, the bounty that supplies their wants, the care taken of their lives, the happiness, expressed in songs or merry gambols ormazy dances, which He has poured into their hearts. The whole earth is full of the glory of God’s infinite benignity and good will. Insignificant as I—a speck on earth, and earth itself but a speck in creation—seem to myself when, standing below the starry vault, I look up into the heavens, yet, apart from the thought that I am a sinner, I cannot say, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? How can I, when I see Him mindful of the brood that sleep in their rocking nest, of the moth that flits by my face on muffled wing, of the fox that howls on the hill, of the owl that hoots to the pale moon from ivy tower or hollow tree? Are you not of more value than many sparrows? said our Lord. Fashioned originally after the divine image, with a soul outweighing in value the rude matter of a thousand worlds, able to rise on the wings of contemplation above the highest stars and hold communion with God himself, man, apart from his sinfulness, was every way worthy of divine good will; that God should be mindful of him.
But we are sinners—sinners by nature as well as practice; polluted; unholy; so unclean that our emblem is that hideous form which, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, is wounds and bruises and putrifying sores; and the news that God cherishes good will to such guilty creatures may well evoke the old, wondering cry, Hear, O heavens; be astonished, O earth! On recalling the happy days of early life, when, a child, he lay in his father’s arms; a boy, he sat on his knee; a youth, he walked by his side—the tears that at parting streamed over the old man’s cheeks—his kind counsels, his tender warnings, his warm kisses, and how he had stood and watched his departing steps till the brow of a hill or a turn of the road hid him from view, the poor prodigal ventured to hope that his father would not turn him from his door; for the sake of the past and of his mother in the grave, would grant him at least a servant’s place. Weighed down by a sense of guilt, his hopes rose to no higher flight—expected nothing beyond a menial’s office.To be received with open arms, to be welcomed back again like some youth who has gone abroad to win a fortune or be crowned with laurels—that his should be the fairest robe, the finest ring, the fatted calf—that instead of stealing in under the cloud of night to be concealed from strangers’ eyes, the old house on his return should ring to the sound of music, and floors should shake to the dancers’ feet, and the whole neighbourhood should be called to rejoice with a father whose shame and sorrow he had been, was a turn of fortune he never dreamt of; never dared to hope for. On the part of that loving, forgiving father, what amazing good will! But how much more amazing this which God proclaimed by the lips of angels, and proved by the death of His beloved Son!
I have known fathers and mothers who were sorely tried by wayward, wicked children—I have seen their gray hairs go down with sorrow to the grave. With hearts bleeding under wounds from the hands of one they loved, I have seen themwelcome the grave; saying as they descended into its quiet rest, “the days of my mourning are ended.” It is a horrid crime to wring tears from such eyes, to crush such hearts: but was ever patient, hoping, loving parent tried as we have tried our Father in heaven? Not without reason does He ask, “If I be a father, where is mine honour? if I be a master, where is my fear?” And who that thinks of his sins, their guilt, their number, and, as committed against infinite love and tender mercy, their unspeakable atrocity, but will acknowledge the truth of these words, “Because I am God, and not man, therefore the children of men are not consumed”—just as it is because the ship rides by a cable, and not a cobweb, that, when sails are rent, and yards are gone, and breakers are foaming on the reef, she mounts the billows and survives the storm. That we are not suffering the pains of hell, that we have hopes of heaven and ever shall be there, we owe not to our good works, but to God’s good will; to that only. Till converted, man does notdesire this good will; and never deserves it. We have no claim to it whatever. It is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy God saves us, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost”—therefore His good will has no root in any good works of ours. A sacred mystery, we may apply to it the words which Job, contemplating the grand mysteries of nature, applied to our earth when, seeing this great globe floating in ethereal space, sustained by no pillars, nor suspended by any chain that linked it to the skies, he said, Thou hast hung it upon nothing!
The person is God—He who spake by holy men of old, speaking here by the lips of angels. Where there is a will, there is a way, is a brave and admirable proverb. Yet, though comparatively true in most cases, to some it is altogether inapplicable. Look, for example, at the women who, when the men had turned cowards, boldly follow our Lord to Calvary, bewailing and lamenting Him! What tears they shed, what a wail they raise, when the door opens, and, surrounded by armed guards, Jesus comes forth from the Judgment Hall, bleeding, bound, crowned with thorns. When He sank down on the street under the weight of the cross, and His blessed head lay lowin the dust, had there been a chance of saving Him, how had they rushed to His help; and, giving their naked breasts to the Roman spears, burst through the circle to rescue Him; to die with Him rather than desert Him. But they were helpless. Their good will availed the loved object nothing—beyond this, that the sympathy flowing in their tears and expressed in their looks, somewhat soothed the sorrows of His heart, and fell like balm drops on His smarting wounds.
Again, what good will did David bear to Jonathan! Did Jonathan love David as his own soul? and under circumstances calculated to dissolve all common friendships, and work such change on the heart as wine suffers when it turns into vinegar, did Jonathan’s sentiments continue unchanged, his affection unabated to the last? His love was strong as death; many waters could not quench it. But it was amply requited. David proved that with his harp; had he been present on that fatal field where the bow of Jonathan was broken, he had proved it with his sword.With what a lion spring had he answered Jonathan’s cry for help; how had he bestrode his fallen friend, covering him with his battered shield; mowing a way through the ranks of the Philistines, how had he borne him off to a place of safety, or falling in the attempt, left others to compose their elegy, and sing, They were pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided! God is a very present help in time of trouble; but there was no help for Jonathan in David. Far away from that bloody field, his good will availed Jonathan nothing—beyond embalming his rare virtues in immortal song, and in an imperishable lament raising an imperishable monument to the memory of a man whose love to him was wonderful, passing the love of women.
Again, what good will in his father’s heart to Esau? But the old man’s hands are tied. Fresh from the chase, and ignorant of what has happened in his absence, Esau approaches Isaac, saying, Let my father arise and eat of his son’s venison, that thy soul may bless me!Who art thou? says the blind old man—astonished that any should ask what he has already given away. Recognising the beloved voice which replied, I am thy son, thy first-born Esau, and dreading some dire calamity, Isaac trembled exceedingly, crying, “Who? where is he that hath taken venison and brought it me; and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.” By the basest, cruelest fraud, Jacob has possessed himself of the blessing; and if their mother, his own partner in guilt, was watching the issue of this perfidious plot, how had it pierced her heart to hear Esau, when the truth flashed on his mind and he saw the treasure stolen, cry, “with a great and exceeding bitter cry, Bless me, even me also, O my father!” The strong man, the bold hardy hunter, lifted up his voice and wept; seeking repentance, as the apostle says—to get Isaac to undo the deed—with tears but found it not. What availed his father’s good will to him, his favourite son? What was done must stand.The blessing was gone; and Isaac, though he had the will, had no way to recall it.
But what need to ransack old history for examples? How often have our hearts overflowed with good will, yet we could only weep with them that wept—pity sorrows we could not soothe, wants we were powerless to relieve? Tears we might give, but they could not clothe the naked, or feed the hungry, or save the dying, or recall the dead, or close the wounds which death had made. In dying chambers how are we made painfully, bitterly to feel that man’s power is not commensurate with his will? What good will, what tender affection toward some dear, beloved object! yet, as we hung over the dying couch, all we could do was to moisten the speechless lips, to wipe the clammy sweat from death’s cold brow and watch the sinking pulses of life’s ebbing tide. What would we not have done to meet the wishes of the eye that, when speech was gone, turned on us imploring, never-to-be-forgotten looks! Alas, our good will availed them nothing!
Such recollections, by the contrast which they present to God’s good will, greatly enhance its preciousness. “His favour is life, his loving-kindness is better than life.” Where God has a will, God always has a way. At the throne of divine grace, none had ever to shed Esau’s tears, or cry with him, Hast thou but one blessing, O my father? Our father in heaven is affluent in blessings, plenteous in redemption, abundant in goodness and in truth. Who ever turned an imploring eye on God, and brought to prayer the earnestness of him that bends the knee to yon blind old man, but became in time the happy object of God’s loving, saving mercy. Let men trust in the Lord. In the name of Christ let them throw themselves on His mercy. What though they cannot see it? It is around them, like the invisible but ambient air on which the eagle, with an awful gulf below, throws herself from her rocky nest in fearless freedom, and with expanded wings. So let men, trusting in God’s faithful word, spread out the wings of faith, and cast them on Hisgood will. Wrapping the world round in an atmosphere of mercy, it shall sustain their weight, and bear them aloft, till, ascending into the calm regions of Christian hope, they bathe their eyes in the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and feel their feet firmly planted on the Rock of Ages.
But let one thing be remembered, this, namely, that God will not save any against their will. Let us therefore seek, and seek till we obtain, a change of heart. He draws, not drives—will not force any into heaven—nor be served by the hands of a slave. If I would not have a sullen, crouching slave wait at my table, work in my house, stand in my poor presence, much less He who says, Give me thy heart, my son! He makes His people willing in the day of His power. Softened in the flames of Divine love, their stubborn wills yield to His, and, under the hand of His Holy Spirit and the hammer of His mighty word, take the fashion and form of His own. Thus, His will and their wills being brought into perfect harmony,His people feel their duty to be their delight, and regard His holy service as no irksome bondage, but the truest liberty and highest honour.
THE END.
Ballantyne, Roberts, & Co., Printers, Edinburgh.