Ninth Day.Ninth Day.
“He continued all night in prayer to God.”—Luke, vi. 12.
We speak ofthisChristian andthatChristian as “a man of prayer.” Jesus was emphatically so. The Spirit was “poured upon Him without measure,” yet—He prayed! He was incarnate wisdom, “needing not that any should teach Him.” He was infinite in His power, and boundless in His resources, yet—He prayed! How deeply sacred the prayerful memories that hover around the solitudes of Olivet and the shores of Tiberias! He seemed often to turn night into day to redeem moments for prayer, rather than lose the blessed privilege.
We are rarely, indeed, admitted into the solemnities of His inner life. The veil ofnight is generally between us and the Great High Priest, when He entered “the holiest of all;” but we have enough to reveal the depth and fervor, the tenderness and confidingness of this blissful intercommunion with His heavenly Father. No morning dawns without His fetching fresh manna from the mercy-seat. “He wakeneth morning by morning; He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.” (Isa. l. 4). Beautiful description!—a praying Redeemer, wakening, as if at early dawn, the ear of His Father, to get fresh supplies for the duties and the trials of the day! All His public acts were consecrated by prayer,—His baptism, His transfiguration, His miracles, His agony, His death. He breathed away His spirit in prayer. “His last breath,” says Philip Henry, “was praying breath.”
How sweet to think, in holding communion with God—Jesusdrank of this very brook! He consecrated the bended knee and the silent chamber. He refreshed His fainting spirit at the same great Fountain-head from which it is life for us to draw and death to forsake.
Reader! do you complain of your languid spirit, your drooping faith, your fitful affections, your lukewarm love? May you not trace much of what you deplore to an unfrequented chamber? The treasures are locked up from you, because you have suffered the key to rust; the hands hang down because they have ceased to be uplifted in prayer. Without prayer!—It is the pilgrim without a staff—the seaman without a compass—the soldier going unarmed and unharnessed to battle.
Beware of encouraging what indisposes to prayer—going to the audience chamber with soiled garments, the din of the world following you, its distracting thoughts hovering unforbidden over your spirit. Can you wonder that the living water refuses to flow through obstructed channels, or the heavenly light to pierce murky vapors!
On earth, fellowship with a lofty order of minds imparts a certain nobility to the character; so, in a far higher sense, by communion with God you will be transformedinto His image, and get assimilated to His likeness. Make every event in life a reason for fresh going to Him. If difficulted in duty, bring it to the test of prayer. If bowed down with anticipated trial,—“fearing to enter the cloud,”—remember Christ’s preparation, “Sit ye here while I go andprayyonder.”
Let prayer consecrate every thing—your time, talents, pursuits, engagements, joys, sorrows, crosses, losses. By it, rough paths will be made smooth, trials disarmed of their bitterness, enjoyments hallowed and refined, the bread of the world turned into angels’ food. “It is in the closet,” says Payson, “the battle is lost or won!”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Tenth Day.Tenth Day.
“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us.”—Eph. v. 2.
“Jesus,” says a writer, “came from heaven on the wings of love.” It was the element in which he moved and walked. He sought to baptize the world afresh with it. When we find Him teaching us by love to vanquish anenemy, we need not wonder at the tenderness of His appeals to thebrethrento “love one another.” Like a fond father impressing his children, how the Divine Teacher lingers over the lesson, “This isMycommandment!”
If selfishness had guided His actions, we might have expected him to demand all His people’s love for himself. But He claims nosuch monopoly. He not only encourages mutual affection, but He makes it the badge of discipleship! He gives them at once its measure and motive. “Love one another, as I have loved you!” What a love was that!—it reached to the lowliest and humblest,—“Inasmuch as ye did it to theleastof these, ye did it untoMe.”
Ah! if such was the Elder Brother’s love to His younger brethren, what should the love of these younger brothers be for one another! How humbling that there should be so much that is sadly and strangely unlike the spirit which our blessed Master sought to inculcate alike by precept and example! Individual Christians, why these bitter estrangements, these censorious words, these harsh judgments, this want of kind consideration of the feelings and failings of those who may differ from you? Why are your friendships so often like the summer brook, soon dried? You hope, ere long, to meet in glory. Doubtless when you enter on that “sabbath of love,” many a greeting will be this, “Alas!my brother, that on earth I did not love thee more!”
Do you see the image of God in a professing believer? It is your duty to love him for the sake of that image. No church, no outward livery, no denominational creed, should prevent your owning and claiming him as a fellow-pilgrim and fellow-heir. It has been said of a portrait, however poor the painting, however unfinished the style, however faulty the touches, however coarse and unseemly the frame, yet if thelikenessbe faithful, we overlook many subordinate defects. So it is with the Christian: however plain the exterior, however rough the setting, or even manifold the blemishes still found cleaving to a partially-sanctified nature, yet if the Redeemer’slikenessbe feebly and faintly traced there, we should love the copy for the sake of the Divine Original. There may be other bonds of association and intercourse linking spirit with spirit; family ties, mental congenialities, intellectual tastes, philanthropic pursuits; but that which ought totake the precedence of all, is the love of God’s image in the brethren. What will heaven be but this love perfected—loving Christ, and beloved by those who love Him?
Reader! seek to loveHimmore, and you will love His people more. John had more love than the other disciples. Why? He drank deepest of the love within that Bosom on which he delighted to lean, every beat of which was love. “Walk,” then, “in love!” Let it be the very foot-road you tread; let your way to heaven be paved with it. Soon shall we come to look within the portal. Then shall every jarring and dissonant note be merged into the sublime harmonies of “the new heavens and the new earth,” and we shall all “see eye to eye!”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Eleventh Day.Eleventh Day.
“Jesus wept.”—John, xi. 35.
It is an affecting thing to see a Great man in tears! “Jesus wept!” It was ever His delight to tread in the footsteps of sorrow—to heal the broken-hearted—turning aside from His own path of suffering to “weep with those that weep.”
Bethany!That scene, thatword, is a condensed volume of consolation for yearning and desolate hearts. What a majesty in those tears! He had just been discoursing on Himself as the Resurrection and the Life—the next moment He is a Weeping Man by a human grave, melted in anguished sorrow at a bereaved one’s side! Think of the funeralat the gate of Nain, reading its lesson to dejected myriads—“Let thy widows trust in me!” Think of the farewell discourse to His disciples, when, muffling all His own foreseen and anticipated sorrows, He thought only of soothing and mitigating theirs! Think of the affecting pause in that silent procession to Calvary, when He turns round and stills the sobs of those who are tracking His steps with their weeping! Think of that wondrous epitome of human tenderness, just ere His eyes closed in their sleep of agony—in the mightiest crisis of all time—when filial love looked down on an anguished mother, and provided her a son and a home!
Ah, was there ever sympathy like this! Son! Brother! Kinsman! Saviour! all in one! The majesty of Godhead almost lost in the tenderness of a Friend. But so itwas, and so it is. The heart of the now enthroned King beats responsive to the humblest of His sorrow-stricken people. “I am poor and needy, yet the Lordcarries me on His heart!” (margin.)
Let us “go and do likewise.” Let us beready, like our Lord, to follow the beck of misery,—“to deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper.” Sympathy costs but little. Its recompense and return are great, in the priceless consolation it imparts. Few there are who undervalue it. Look at Paul—the weary, jaded prisoner,—chained to a soldier—recently wrecked, about to stand before Cæsar. He reaches Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, dejected and depressed. Brethren come from Rome, a distance of sixty miles, to offer theirsympathy. The aged man is cheered! His spirit, like Jacob’s, “revived!” “He thanked God, and took courage!”
Reader! let “this mind,” this holy, Christ-likehabitbe in you, which was also in your adorable Master. Delight, when opportunity occurs, to frequent the house of mourning—to bind up the widow’s heart, and to dry the orphan’s tears. If you can do nothing else, you can whisper into the ear of disconsolate sorrow those majestic solaces, which, rising first in the graveyard of Bethany, have sent theirundying echoes through the world, and stirred the depths of ten thousand hearts. “Exercise your souls,” says Butler, “in a loving sympathy with sorrow in every form. Soothe it, minister to it, succor it, revere it. It is the relic of Christ in the world, an image of the Great Sufferer, a shadow of the cross. It is a holy and venerable thing.”
Jesus Himself “lookedfor some to takepity, but there wasnone; and for comforters, but He foundnone!” It shows how evenHevalued sympathy, and that, too, in its commonest form of “pity,” though an ungrateful World denied it.
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Twelfth Day.Twelfth Day.
“The Lord turned and looked upon Peter.”—Luke, xxii. 61.
Jesus never spake one unnecessarily harsh or severe word. He had a Divine sympathy for the frailties and infirmities of a tried, and suffering, and tempted nature in others. He was forbearing to the ignorant, encouraging to the weak, tender to the penitent, loving to all,—yet how faithful was He as “the Reprover of sin!” Silent under His own wrongs, with what burning invectives did He lay bare the Pharisees’ masked corruption and hypocrisy! When His Father’s name and temple were profaned, how did He sweep, with an avenging hand, the mammon-crowd away, replacing thesuperscription, “Holiness to the Lord,” over the defiled altars!
Nor was it different with His own disciples. With what fidelity, when rebuke was needed, did He administer it: the withering reprimand conveyed sometimes by an impressiveword(Matt. xvi. 23); sometimes by a silentlook(Luke, xxii. 61). “Faithful always were the wounds ofthisFriend.”
Reader! art thou equally faithful with thy Lord in rebuking evil; not with “the wrath of man, which worketh not the righteousness of God,” but with a holy jealousy of His glory, feeling, with the sensitive honor of “the good soldier of Jesus Christ,” that an affront offered to Him is offered to thyself? The giving of a wise reproof requires much Christian prudence and delicate discretion. It is not by a rash and inconsiderate exposure of failings that we must attempt to reclaim an erring brother. But neither, for the sake of a false peace, must we compromise fidelity; even friendship is too dearly purchased by winking at sin. Perhaps, when Peter was led to callthe Apostle who honestly reproved him, “Our beloved brother Paul,” in nothing did he love his rebuker more, than for the honest boldness of his Christian reproof. If Paul had, in that crisis of the Church, with a timidity unworthy of him, evaded the ungracious task, what, humanly speaking, might have been the result?
How often does a seasonable reprimand, a faithful caution, save a lifetime of sin and sorrow! How many a death-bed has made the disclosure, “That kind warning of my friend put an arrest on my career of guilt; it altered my whole being; it brought me to the cross, touched my heart, and, by God’s grace, saved my soul!” On the other hand, how many have felt, when death has put his impressive seal on some close earthly intimacy, “This friend, or that friend,—I might have spoken a solemn word to him; but now he is no more; the opportunity is lost, never to be recalled!”
Reader! see that you act not the spiritual coward. When tempted to sit silent when the name of God is slighted or dishonored,think,would Jesus have done so?—wouldHehave allowed the oath to go unrebuked—the lie to be uttered unchallenged—the Sabbath with impunity to be profaned? Where there is a natural diffidence which makes you shrink from a more bold and open reproof, remember much may be done to discountenance sin, by the silent holiness of demeanor which refuses to smile at the unholy allusion or ribald jest. “A word spoken in due season, how good is it!” “Speak gently,” yet speak faithfully: “be pitiful—be courteous:” yet “quit you like men; be strong!”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Thirteenth Day.First Thirteenth.
“Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?”—John, xxi. 15.
No word here of the erring disciple’s past faithlessness;—his guilty cowardice—unmentioned;—his base denial—his oaths—and curses, and treacherous desertion—allunmentioned! The memory of a threefold denial issuggested, and no more, by the threefold question of unutterable tenderness, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” When Jesus finds His disciples sleeping at the gate of Gethsemane, He rebukes them; but how is the rebuke disarmed of its poignancy by the merciful apology which is added—“The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak!” How different fromtheirunkind insinuation regardingHim, when, in the vessel on Tiberias, “He was asleep”—“Master carest thou not that we perish!” The woman of Samaria is full of earthliness, carnality, sectarianism, guilt. Yet how gently the Saviour speaks to her—how forbearingly, yet faithfully. He directs the arrow of conviction to that seared and hardened conscience, till He lays it bleeding at His feet! Truly, “He will not break the bruised reed—He will not quench the smoking flax.” By “thegoodnessof God,” He would lead to repentance. When others are speaking of merciless violence, He can dismiss the most guilty of profligates with the words, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.”
How many have an unholy pleasure in finding a brother in the wrong—blazing abroad his failings; administering rebuke, not in gentle forbearance and kindly expostulation, but with harsh and impatient severity! How beautifully did Jesus unite intense sensibility to sin, along with tenderest compassion for the sinner, showing in this that “Heknoweth our frame!” Many a scholar needs gentleness in chastisement. The reverse would crush a sensitive spirit, or drive it to despair. Jesus tenderly “considers” the case of those He disciplines, “tempering the wind to the shorn lamb.” In the picture of the good shepherd bearing home the wandering sheep, He illustrated by parable what He had often and again taught by His own example. No word of needless harshness or upbraiding uttered to the erring wanderer! Ingratitude is too deeply felt to need rebuke! In silent love, “He lays it on His shoulders rejoicing.”
Reader! seek to mingle gentleness in all your rebukes; bear with the infirmities of others; make allowance for constitutional frailties; never say harsh things, if kind things will do as well; do not unnecessarily lacerate with recalling former delinquencies. In reproving another, let us rather feel how much we need reproof ourselves. “Consider thyself,” is a searching Scripture motto for dealing with an erring brother. Remember thy Lord’s method of silencing fierceaccusation—“Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” Moreover, anger and severity are not the successful means of reclaiming the backslider, or of melting the obdurate. Like thesmoothstones with which David smote Goliath,gentlerebukes are generally the most powerful. The old fable of the traveller and his cloak has a moral here as in other things. The genial sunshine will effect its removal sooner than the rough tempest. It was said of Leighton, that “he rebuked faults so mildly, that they were never repeated, not because the admonished were afraid, but ashamed to do so.”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Fourteenth Day.Fourteenth Day.
“Who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself.”—Heb. xii. 3.
What endurance was this! Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation—“oppressed and afflicted, He opened not His mouth!” “For my love” (in return for my love), “they are mine adversaries;but” (see His endurance!—the only species of revenge of which His sinlessnature was capable) “I give myself unto prayer!” (Ps. cix. 4.)
Reader! “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus!” The greatest test of an earthly soldier’s courage ispatient endurance! The noblest trait of the spiritual soldier is the same. “Having done allto stand,” “Heendured, as seeing Him who is invisible!” Beware of the angry recrimination, the hasty ebullition of temper. Amid unkind insinuations—when motives are misrepresented, and reputation assailed; when good deeds are ridiculed, kind intentions coldly thwarted and repulsed, chilling reserve manifested where you expected nothing but friendship—what a triumph over natural impulse to manifest a spirit of meek endurance!—like a rainbow, radiant with the hues of heaven, resting peacefully amid the storms of derision and “the floods of ungodly men.” What an opportunity of magnifying the “sustaining grace of God!” “It is a small thing for me to be judged of you, or of man’s judgment; He that judgeth me is the Lord.”“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what man can do unto me.” “Blessed is the man thatendureth.” “He thatendurethto the end, the same shall be saved.”
If faithful to our God, we must expect to encounter contradiction in the same form which Jesus did—“the contradiction ofsinners.” It has been well said, “There is no cross of nails and wood erected now for the Christian, but there is one of words and looks which is never taken down.” If believers are set as lights in the earth, lamps in the “city of destruction,” we know that “he that doeth evilhateththe light.” “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you!”
Weary and faint ones, exposed to the shafts of calumny and scorn because of your fidelity to your God; encountering, it may be, the coldness and estrangement of those dear to you, who can not, perhaps, sympathize in the holiness of your walk and the loftiness of your aims, “considerHimthat endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself,lestye be weary and faint in your minds!” Whatisyour“contradiction” toHis? Soon your cross, whatever it be, will have an end. “The seat of the scorner” has no place in yonder glorious heaven, where all will be peace—no jarring note to disturb its blissful harmonies! Look forward to the great coronation-day of the Church triumphant,—the day of your divine Lord’s appearing, when motives and aims, now misunderstood, will be vindicated, wrongs redressed, calumnies and aspersions wiped away. Meanwhile, “rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Fifteenth Day.Fifteenth Day.
“I do always those things that please Him.”—John, viii. 29.
What a glorious motto for a man—“I live for God!” It is religion’s truest definition. It is the essence of angelic bliss—the motive-principle of angelic action; “Ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure.” The Lord of angels knew no higher, noothermotive. It was, during His incarnation, the regulator and directory of His daily being. It supported Him amid the depressing sorrows of His woe-worn path. It upheld him in their awful termination in the garden and on the cross. For a moment, sinking human nature faltered under the load His Godhead sustained;but the thought of “pleasing God” nerved and revived Him. “Not my will, butThinebe done.”
It is only when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, that this animating desire to “please Him” can exist. In the holy bosom of Jesus, that love reigned paramount, admitting no rival—no competing affection. Though infinitely inferior in degree, it is the same impelling principle which leads His people still to link enjoyment with His service, and which makes consecration to Him of heart and life its own best recompense and reward. “There is a gravitation,” says one whose life was the holy echo of his words, “in the moral as in the physical world. When love to God is habitually in the ascendant, or occupying the place of will, it gathers round it all the other desires of the soul as satellites, and whirls them along with it in its orbit round the center of attraction.” (Hewitson’s Life.) Till the heart, then, be changed, the believer can not have “this testimony that hepleases God.” The world, self, sin—thesebe the gods of the unregenerate soul. And evenwhenchanged, alas that there should be so many ebbings and flowings in our tide of devotedness! Jesus could say, “I doalwaysthose things that please the Father.” Glory to God burned within His bosom like a living fire. “Many waters could not quench it.” His were no fitful and inconsistent frames and feelings, but the persistent habit of a holy life, which had the one end in view, from which it never diverged or deviated.
Let it be so, in some lowly measure with us. Let God’s service not be the mere livery of high days,—of set times and seasons; but, like the alabaster box of ointment, let us ever be giving forth the fragrant perfume of holiness. Even when the shadows of trial are falling around us, let us “pass through the cloud” with the sustaining motive—“All my wish, O God, is to please and glorify Thee! By giving or taking—by smiting or healing—by the sweet cup or the bitter—‘Father, glorify thy name!’” “I don’t want to beweary of God’s dealing with me,” said Bickersteth, on his death-bed; “I want to glorify Jesus in them, and to find Him more precious.” Do I shrink from trials—duties—crosses—because involving hardships and self-denial, or because frowned on by the world? Let the thought of God’s approving countenance be enough. Let me dread no censure, if conscious of acting in accordance withHiswill. Let the Apostle’s monitory word determine many a perplexing path—“If I please men, I am not the servant of Christ.”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Sixteenth Day.Sixteenth Day.
“Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.”—Mark, iii. 5.
On this one occasion only is the expression used with reference to Jesus—(what intensity of emotion does it denote, spoken of a sinless nature!)—“He looked round on themwith anger!” Never did He grieve for Himself. His intensest sorrows were reserved for those who were tampering with their own souls, and dishonoring His God. The continual spectacle of moral evil, thrust on the gaze of spotless purity, made His earthly history one consecutive history of grief, one perpetual “cross and passion.”
In the tears shed at the grave of Bethany, sympathy, doubtless, for the world’s myriadmourners, had its own share (the bereaved could not part with so precious a tribute in their hours of sadness), but a far more impressive cause was one undiscerned by the weeping sisters and sorrowing crowd; His knowledge of the deep and obdurate impenitence of those who were about to gaze on the mightiest of miracles, only to “despise, and wonder, and perish.” “Jesus wept!”—but His profoundest anguish was over resisted grace, abused privileges, scorned mercy. It was the Divine Artificer mourning over His shattered handiwork; the Almighty Creator weeping over His ruined world; God, the God-man, “grieving” over the Temple of the soul, a humiliating wreck of what once was made “after His own image!”
Can we sympathize in any respect with such exalted tears? Do we mourn for sin, ourownsin—the deep insult which it inflicts on God—the ruinous consequences it entails on ourselves? Do we grieve at sin inothers? Do we know any thing of “vexing our souls,” like righteous Lot, “from day to day,” withthe world’s “unlawful deeds,” the stupid hardness and obduracy of the depraved heart, which resists alike the appliances of wrath and love, judgment and mercy? Ah! it is easy, in general terms, to condemn vice, and to utter harsh, severe, and cutting denunciations on the guilty: it is easy to pass uncharitable comments on the inconsistencies or follies of others: but to “grieve” as our Lord did, is a different thing; to mourn over the hardness of heart, and yet to have the burning desire to teach it better things; to hate, as He did, the sin, but, like Him also, to love thesinner!
Reader! look specially to your own spirit. In one respect, the example of Jesus falls short of your case. He had no sin of His own to mourn over. He could only commiserate others.Yourintensest grief must begin withyourself. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever be your besetting iniquity, your constitutional bias to sin, seek to guard it with wakeful vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadowof displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy preservative in your every hour of temptation, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
Grieve for a perishing world—a groaning creation fettered and chained in unwilling “subjection to vanity.” Do what you can, by effort, by prayer, to hasten on the hour of jubilee, when its ashy robes of sin and sorrow shall be laid aside, and, attired in the “beauties of holiness,” it shall exult in “the glorious liberty of the sons of God!”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Seventeenth Day.Seventeenth Day.
“He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet.”—John, xiii. 4, 5.
What a matchless picture of humility! At the very moment when His throne was in view; angel-anthems floating in His ear; the hour come “when He was to depart out of this world;” possessing a lofty consciousness of His peerless dignity, that “He camefromGod and wenttoGod;”then“Jesus took a towel, and girded Himself, and began to wash the disciples’ feet!” All heaven was ready at that moment to cast their combined crowns at His feet. But the High and the Lofty One, inhabiting eternity, is on earth “asone that serveth!” “Thatinfinite stoop! it sinks all creature humiliation to nothing, and renders it impossible for a creature tohumblehimself.”—(Evans).
Humility follows Him, from His unhonored birthplace to His borrowed grave. It throws a subdued splendor over all He did. “The poor in spirit,”—the “mourner,”—the “meek,”—claim His first beatitudes. He was severe only to one class—those who looked down upon others. However He is employed; whether performing His works of miraculous power, or receiving angel-visitants, or taking little children in His arms, He stands forth “clothed with humility.” Nay, this humility becomes more conspicuous as He draws nearer glory. Before His death, He calls His disciples “Friends;” subsequently, it is “Brethren,” “Children.” How sad the contrast between the Master and His disciples! Two hours had not elapsed after He washed their feet, when “there was a strife among them which should be the greatest!”
Let the mental image of that lowly Redeemerbe ever bending over us. His example may well speak in silent impressiveness, bringing us down from our pedestal of pride. There surely can be no labor of love too humiliating whenHestooped so low. Let us be content to take the humblest place; not envious of the success or exaltation of another; not, “like Diotrephes, loving preëminence;” “but willing to be thought little of;” saying with the Baptist, with our eye on our Lord, “He must increase, but I must decrease!”
How much we have cause to be humble for! the constant cleaving of defilement to our souls; and even what is partially good in us, how mixed with imperfection, self-seeking, arrogance, vain-glory! A proud Christian is a contradiction in terms. The Seraphim of old (type of the Christian Church, and of believers) had six wings—twowere for errands of love, but “withfourhecoveredhimself!” It has been beautifully said, “You lie nearest the River of Life when youbendto it; you can not drink, but as youstoop.” The cornof the field, as it ripens, bows its head; so the Christian, as he ripens in the Divine life, bends in this lowly grace. Christ speaks of His people as “lilies”—they are “lilies ofthe valley,” they can only grow in the shade!
“Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.” “Go” with what Rutherford calls “a low sail.” It is the livery of your blessed Master; the family badge—the family likeness. “With this man will I dwell, even with him that ishumble.” Yes! the humble, sanctified heart is God’ssecond Heaven!
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Eighteenth Day.Eighteenth Day.
“He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter.”—Isa. liii, 7.
How great was thepatienceof Jesus! Even among His own disciples, how forbearingly He endured their blindness, their misconceptions and hardness of heart! Philip had been for three years with Him, yet he had “not known Him!”—all that time he had remained in strange and culpable ignorance of his Lord’s dignity and glory. See how tenderly Jesus bears with him; giving him nothing in reply for his confession of ignorance but unparalleled promises of grace! Peter, the honored and trusted, becomes a renegade and a coward. Justly might his dishonored Lord, stung withsuch unrequited love, have cut the unworthy cumberer down. But He spares him, bears with him, gently rebukes him, and loves him more than ever! See the Divine Sufferer in the terminating scenes of His own ignominy and woe. How patient!—“As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.” In these awful moments, outraged Omnipotence might have summoned twelve legions of angels and put into the hand of each a vial of wrath. But He submits in meek, majestic silence. Verily, inHim“patience had herperfectwork!”
Think of this same patience with His Church and people since He ascended to glory. The years upon years He has borne with their perverse resistance of His grace, their treacherous ingratitude, their wayward wanderings, their hardness of heart and contempt of His holy word. Yet, behold the forbearing love of this Saviour of God! His hand of mercy is “stretched out still!”
Child of God! art thou now undergoing some bitter trial? The way of thy God, itmay be, all mystery; no footprints of love traceable in the checkered path; no light, in the clouds above; no ray in the dark future.Be patient!“The Lord is good to them thatwaitfor Him.” “They thatwaiton the Lord shall renew their strength!” Or hast thou been long tossed on some bed of sickness—days of pain and nights of weariness appointed thee?Be patient!“I trust this groaning,” said a suffering saint, “is not murmuring.” God, by this very affliction, is nurturing within thee this beauteous grace which shone so conspicuously in the character of thy dear Lord. With Him it was a lovelyhabitof the soul. With thee, the “tribulation” which worketh “patience” is needful discipline. It isgoodfor a man that he should both hope and quietlywaitfor the salvation of God. Art thou suffering some unmerited wrong or unkindness, exposed to harsh and wounding accusations, hard for flesh and blood to bear?Be patient!Beware of hastiness of speech or temper; remember how much evil may be done by a few inconsiderate words ”spokenunadvisedly with the lip.” Think of Jesus standing before a human tribunal, in the silent submissiveness of conscious innocence and integrity. Leave thy cause with God. Let this be the only form of thy complaint, “O God, I am oppressed; undertake Thou for me!”
“In patience,” then, “possess ye your souls.” Let it not be a grace for peculiar seasons, called forth on peculiar exigences; but an habitual frame manifested in the calm serenity of a daily walk;—placidity amid the little fretting annoyances of every-day life—a fixed purpose of the heart to wait upon God, and cast its every burden upon Him.
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Nineteenth Day.Nineteenth Day.
“As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.”—John, xiv. 31.
Jesus as God-man had omnipotence slumbering in His arm. He had the hoarded treasures of eternity in His grasp. He had only to “speak, and it was done.” But, as an example to His people, His whole life on earth was one impressive act of subordination and dependence. At Nazareth He was “subject to His parents.” There He remained in studied obscurity, occupying for thirty years a lowly hut, willing to continue in a state of seclusion, till the Father’s summons called Him to His appointed work.
At His baptism, sinless Himself, He givesthis reason for receiving a sinner’s rite at a sinner’s hands—“Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh Me to fulfill all righteousness.” The same beautiful spirit of filialsubjectionshines conspicuous amid His acts of stupendous power. “Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me; and I know that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that Thou has sent Me.” Even among His own disciples His language is, “I am among you as He that serveth.” With an act of submission He closed His pilgrimage and work of love. “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”
What an example to us, in all this, is our beloved Lord! Surely, ifHe, “God only wise”—the Self-existent One, to whom “all power was committed;”—the Sinless One, never liable to err, on whom “the Spirit was poured without measure”—ifHemanifested such habitual dependence on His heavenly Father, how earnestly oughtwe, weak, erring,fallible creatures, to seek to live every hour—every moment—as pensioners on God’s grace and love, following in all things His directing hand! As the servant has his eyes on his master, or the child on its parent, “so should our eyes be on the Lord our God.” Howsoever He speaks, be it ours with all docility to follow the voice, indorsing every utterance of providence, and every precept of Scripture, with our Lord’s own words, “This is the Father’s will!”
Beware of self-dependence. The first step in spiritual declension is this: “Let him thatthinketh he standeth!” The secret of real strength is this: “Keptby thepower of God!”
How it sweetens all our blessings, and alleviates all our sorrows, to regard both as emanations from a loving Father’s hand. Even if we should be, like the disciples of old, “constrained” to go into the ship; if all should be darkness and tempest, frowning providences—“the wind contrary;” how blessed to feel that in embarking on theunquiet element, “the Lord has bidden us!” Paul could not speak even of taking an earthly journey, without the parenthesis (“if the Lord will”). How many trials, and sorrows, andsins, would it save us, if the same were the habitual regulator of our daily life! It would lead to calm contentment with our lot, hushing every disquieting suggestion with the thought that that lot, with all that is apparently adverse in it, wasordainedfor us. It would teach us not to be aspiring aftergreatthings, but humbly to wait the will and purposes of a wise Provider; not to gobeforeour Heavenly Guide, but tofollowHim, saying, in meek subjection, “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for for me ... my soul is even as a weaned child!”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Twentieth Day.Twentieth Day.
“Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again.”—1 Peter, ii. 23.
What a common dictate of the fallen and regenerate heart to resent and recriminate! How alien to natural feeling to answer cutting taunts, and meet unmerited wrong with the Divine method the Gospel prescribes—“Overcome evil with good!” It was in the closing scenes of the Saviour’s humiliation, when, silent and unresenting, He stood “dumb before His shearers,” that this beautiful feature in His character was most wondrously manifested; but it beams forth, also, for our imitation in the ordinary and less prominent incidents of His pilgrimage.
When He met Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, He found him clinging to an unreasonable prejudice—“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” The severe remark is allowed to pass unnoticed. Overlooking the unkind insinuation, the Saviour fixes on the favorable feature of his character, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” After His resurrection, He appears to His disciples. They were cowering in shame, half afraid to confront the glance of injured goodness. He breathes on them, and says, “Peace be unto you!” Peter was the one of all the rest who had most reason to dread estranged looks and upbraiding words; but a special message is sent to reassure that trembling spirit that there was no alienation in the unresentful Heart he had so deeply wounded; “Go and tell the disciples ... andPeter!” Even when Judas first revealed himself to his Lord as the betrayer, we believe it was not in bitter irony or rebuke, but in the fullness of pitying tenderness, that Jesus addressed him, “Friend, wherefore art thou come?” Tears and prayerswere His only revenge on the city and scene of His murder. “Beginning at Jerusalem,” was the closing illustration of a spirit “not of this world”—a significant parting testimony that in the bosom that uttered it retaliation had no place.
More than one of the disciples seem to have imbibed much of this “mind” of their Lord. “We owe St. Paul,” says Augustine, “to the death of Stephen;” “they stoned Stephen ... and he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord! lay not this sin to their charge.”
Take another example: The great Apostle of the Gentiles felt himself under a painful necessity faithfully to rebuke Peter in presence of the whole Church. He hadrecordedthat rebuke, too, in one of his epistles. It was thus to be handed down to every age as a permanent and humiliating evidence of the wavering inconstancy of his fellow-laborer. Peter, doubtless, must have felt acutely the severity of the chastisement. Does he resent it? He, too, puts on record, long after, in one of hisown epistles a sentence regarding his Rebuker, but it is this—“Ourbeloved brotherPaul!”
Reader! when tempted to utter the harsh word, or give the cutting or hasty answer, seek to check yourself with the question, “Is this the reply my Saviour would have given?” If your fellow-men should prove unkind, inconsiderate, ungrateful, be it yours to refer the cause to God. Speak of the faults of others only in prayer; manifesting more sorrow for the sin of the censorious and unkind, than for the evil inflicted on yourselves.Retaliate!No such word should have a place in the Christian’s vocabulary.Retaliate!If I cherish such a spirit towards my brother, how can I meet that brother in heaven?—“But ye have not so learned in Christ.”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”