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MIDNIGHT HARMONIES
by Octavius Winslow

"Songs in the Night"

"God my Maker, who gives songs in the night." Job 35:10.

It will be acknowledged by all, competent to form an opinion in the matter,

that a holy man is from the very necessity of the case a happy man. It is as
impossible to separate happiness from holiness, as it is to separate light from
the sun. The introduction of sin opened the door to all wretchedness; the
restoration of divine purity closes the door by restoring the Divine image; and
the nearer we approximate to the image of God, the more deeply we
participate in the happiness of God. Sin is nothing more than a disturbance of
the harmony once subsisting between the divine and the human will. Restore
that harmony—let the will of God be done on earth as it is done in heaven—
and earth will again, as it once did, reflect back the purity of heaven, just as
the tranquil lake mirrors from its bosom the image and the splendor of the
sun.

A saint of God is, then, a happy man. He is often most so when others deem
him most miserable. When they, gazing with pity upon his adversities, and his
burdens, and silently marking the conflict of thought and feeling passing
within—compared with which external trial is but as the bubble floating upon
the surface—deem him a fit object of their commiseration and sympathy, even
then, there is a hidden spring of joy, an under current of peace lying in the
depths of the soul, which renders him, chastened and afflicted though he is, a
happy and an enviable man.
Worldling! refrain your tears, spare your pity. "Blessed are those who mourn
now, for they are, and they shall be, comforted." "Thus says the Lord God:
behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry: behold, my servants
shall drink, but you shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you
shall be ashamed: behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but you shall
cry for sorrow of heart, and shall wail for vexation of spirit." Weep not for
him, but, O you Christless souls! weep for yourselves!

How fully do the words placed at the head of this chapter sustain this train of
thought. Midnight harmony! Who can inspire it? Songs in the night! Who can
create them? God can, and God does. The "God of all consolation," the "God
who comforts those who are cast down," the "God of hope," who causes the
"bright morning star" to rise upon the dreary landscape, the "God of peace,
who himself gives peace, always, and by all means;" even he, our Maker and
our Redeemer, gives songs in the night.

All music is of God's inspiration. The lark's cheerful carol—the nightingale's

plaintive note—an infant's praise, and the music of the spheres—all are the
voice of God. There is no instrument whose broken and untuned strings he
cannot make discourse sweet strains—even a heart collapsed with grief. And
there is no season in the Christian history which he cannot render vocal with a
melody to which a seraph might breathlessly listen, from which he might
derive new rapture, but which he would imitate in vain.

Music, at all times sweet, is the sweetest amid the sublimity of night. When in
the solemn stillness that reigns—not a breath rustling the leaves, and echo
herself slumbers,—when in the darkness that enshrouds, the thoughts that
agitate, the gloomy phantoms that flit before the fancy, like shadows dancing
upon the wall, there breaks upon the wakeful ear the soft notes of skillfully
touched instruments, blending with the melting tones of well-tuned voices, it is
as though angels had come down to serenade and soothe the sad and jaded
sons of earth. But there are songs richer, and there is music sweeter still than
theirs,—the songs which God gives, and the music which Jesus inspires in the
long dark night of the Christian's pilgrimage. To this harmony let us now
hearken. Three reflections are suggested by the words—The night season,—
the songs in the night,—and the author of these night-songs. "God, my Maker,
who gives songs in the night."

The season referred to by the inspired penman is figurative of the sorrow,

gloom, and despondency into which all God's people are, more or less,
brought,—the season of night. Designed though this little work is for the
period of Christian solitude and sorrow, it is not improbable that it may find
its way into the sick and gloomy chamber of a mind yet more sick and dark. It
may not, then, be inappropriate to remark what an expressive image is the
season of night of an unconverted state—a state of spiritual darkness and of
death. Night is the season of gloom, of slumber, of visions. Such is the moral
condition of the soul, unenlightened, unawakened, unsanctified by the Holy
Spirit. The apostle touches upon this state, in the contrast which he finely
draws between the believer and the unbeliever. "But you, brethren, are not in
darkness, that the day should overtake you as a thief. You are all the children
of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness,
therefore, let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober; for they
that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the
night."

What a solemn picture this, of an ungodly world, of our unconverted

relatives; perhaps, my reader, of yourself. "Children of the night"—asleep—
in darkness. Is not the night-season especially the season of dreams? Such is
the spiritual night of the soul. Thus graphically is it described by the
evangelical prophet Isaiah,—"As when a hungry man dreams, and, behold, he
eats; but he awakens, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreams,
and, behold, he drinks; but he awakens, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul
has appetite." Such is your state. You are asleep; the chains of spiritual
slumber bind your moral senses; your plans, your pursuits, your pleasures,
your realizations, all are but as the visions that sport around the pillar of
night.

You imagine you are happy, you fancy liberty in your fetters, substance in
your shadows, reality in your visions. But, by and by, you awake to the
conviction—O how keen—that all is but a dream! The spirit is restless, the
mind is unfed, the heart is sick, the soul is unsatisfied; all, all is one dark and
desolate blank. Yes, God will write, yes, God has written, the sentence of
death upon the worldling's enjoyment; and will teach him that all happiness is
unreal, and all pleasure is unsubstantial that flows not from himself, and of
which he is not the "exceeding joy."

Rouse yourself, then, from your sleep; the bridegroom is coming! the
midnight cry of the approaching judge is about to break upon the slumber
and darkness of your soul. It is high time to awake out of sleep. What if these
words should startle you amid your worldliness and folly, your sin and
rebellion, your day-dreams of earthly good,—"You fool, this night your soul
shall be required of you!" What if you should awake up in hell! Horror of
horrors! Listen to the warning of the Savior, "What shall it profit a man, if he
should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul." Then, "awake you that
sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life."

Awful, if the present night of your unsanctified sorrow should be the

harbinger, the prelude, the forecasting shadows of a future and an endless
night of woe! But this season of night is signally descriptive of some periods in
the history and experience of a child of God, and to them we especially restrict
it. It reminds us of the period of soul darkness which often times overtakes the
Christian pilgrim. "My servant that walks in darkness and has no light," says
God. Observe, he is still God's servant. He is the "child of the light," though
walking in darkness. Gloom spreads its mantle around him—a darkness that
may be felt. Shadows thicken upon his path. God's way with him is in the
great deep: "You are a God that hide yourself," is his mournful prayer. The
Holy Spirit is, perhaps, grieved—no visits from Jesus make glad his heart—he
is brought in some small degree into the blessed Savior's experience: "My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But, sorrowful pilgrim, there is a bright light in this, your cloud—turn your
eye towards it—the darkness through which you are walking is not judicial. It
is not the darkness of an unconverted, alienated state. O no! you are still a
"child of the day," though it may be temporary night with your spirit. It is the
withdrawment but for "a little moment,"—not the utter and eternal
extinction,—of the Sun of Righteousness from your soul. You are still a child,
and God is still a Father. "In a little wrath I hid my face from you for a
moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on you, says the
Lord your Redeemer." "Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for
since I spoke against him I do earnestly remember him still."

And what are seasons of affliction but as the night-time of the Christian? The
night of adversity is often dark, long, and tempestuous. The Lord frequently
throws the pall of gloom over the sunniest prospect, touching his beloved child
where that touch is the keenest felt. He knows the heart's idol: he is best
acquainted with the fowler's snare—the temptation and the peril lying in our
path. He knows better far than we the chain that rivets us to some
endangering object; he comes and draws the curtain of night's sorrow around
our way. He sends messenger after messenger. Deep calls unto deep: He
touches us in our family—in our property—in our reputation—in our bodies.
And O, what a night of woe now spreads its drapery of gloom around us!

Then it is—amid the deepening shadows—we seem to take a more dismal view
of every object. All things loom in the mist. Our position, our circumstances,
our losses, our prospects, all present a more gloomy and discouraging aspect,
and assume a more exaggerated and magnified form, viewed in the somber
hues now gathering and darkening around them. It is a "day of darkness and
of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread
upon the mountains."

Such, too, is the season of mournful bereavement. What a night is that when
the shadow of death falls upon our once bright and joyous tabernacle; when
the destroyer enters and lays low some beloved object, around which the
heart's affections, perhaps, too closely entwined. It is as though the noonday
sun had suddenly become quenched in midnight gloom. "Lover and friend
have you put far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness," is the heart's
sad breathing. It was such a night to the heart of Jesus when he left the house
of Bethany to go to the grave of Lazarus. Ah! who has not passed through the
gloom and the pangs of this season? Who has not seen—the shadows
approaching which forewarned of the coming woe? To take our position in the
room of suffering, and to watch through the wearisome day and the lonesome
night, the slow advance of the fell-destroyer,—to see the light retiring from
our 'pleasant picture,' and its features of expression and its lines of beauty
growing dimmer and fainter, until the shadow of death completely veiled it
from our view—what a night of heartache is this! But hush!

"All are not taken! there are left behind

Living beloved, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a blessed thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind.
But if it were not so—if I could find
Not love in all the world to answer me,
Nor any pathway but rang hollowly,
Where 'dust to dust' the love from life disjoined—
And if with parched lips—as in a dearth
Of water-springs the very deserts claim,—
I uttered to these sepulchers unmoving
The bitter cry, 'Where are you, O my loving?'
I know a voice would sound, 'Daughter, I AM,
Can I suffice for heaven, and not for earth?'"
But dark, and often rayless for a time, as are these various night-seasons of
our pilgrimage, they have their harmonies. It is not completely night, as it is
not completely day with us here. If the day has its dark periods, the night has
its bright ones. If the one has its sounds of woe, the other has its notes of
melody. There are—provided by him who "divides the light from the
darkness"—softenings, alleviations, and soothings, which can even turn night
into day, and bring the softest tones from the harshest discord. How humbling
is the reflection, that in the depth of the deepest sorrow, the darkness of the
darkest shade, we should lose sight of this precious truth.

The strong consolations which our God has laid up for those who love him,
are so divine, so rich, so varied, that to overlook the provision in the time of
our sorrow, seems an act of ingratitude darker even than the sorrow we
deplore. O! it is in the heart of God to comfort you, his suffering child. Once
convinced of this, and the bitterest ingredient in your cup has become sweet.

Let me assist you to the conviction of this truth by directing your attention,
perhaps in an hour of dark woe, to some of those songs which the Lord
enables his people to sing in the night-watches of their journey. This was pre-
eminently David's experience. Few of the Lord's saints knew more of the
night-travel of faith than this wonderful man of God. Happy shall we be if we
study closely his instructive life. After alluding to the "Waves and the billows
which had gone over him," he seems to be suddenly checked in his
complainings by the recollection of the night-song: "Yet the Lord will
command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall
be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life," (Psalm 42:8.)

Here was midnight harmony! Amid the "noise of the water-spouts," and the
swellings of "billows"—the midnight of his soul—lo! music rises! A song is
sung, such as is not heard in heaven—for there is no night there—it is of
kindness, it is of love, yes, it is of loving-kindness, manifested and experienced
in the hour,—when sinking amid deep and dark waters the soul cries out for
fear, "Lord, save, I perish!" O what loving-kindness must that be, suffering
believer, which inspires a song so sweet, amid a season so dark as this!

"Awake my soul, in joyful lays,

And sing your dear Redeemer's praise;
He justly claims a song from me,
His loving-kindness, O how free!
When trouble, like a gloomy cloud,
Has gathered thick and thundered loud;
He near my soul has always stood,
His loving-kindness, O how good!"

The Psalmist, too, on another occasion of night-travel fed his drooping faith
with the remembrance of songs he had previously sung: "I call to
remembrance my song in the night," (Psalm 77:6.) It is no small wisdom, tried
Christian, to recall to memory the music of the past. Think not that, like
sounds of earth-born melody, that music has died away never to awake again.
Ah, no! those strains which once floated from your spirit-touched lips yet live!
The music of a holy heart never dies; it lingers still amid the secret chambers
of the soul. Hushed it may be for awhile, by other and discordant sounds, but
the Holy Spirit, the Christian's Divine Remembrancer, will summon back
those tones again, to soothe and tranquilize and cheer, perhaps in a darker
hour and in richer strains, some succeeding night of heart-grief.

"I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the night-watches."
"Restore unto me the joys of your salvation." Yet again: "At midnight I will
arise to give thanks unto you because of your righteous judgments," (Ps.
119:62.) At midnight—the most lonely, rayless, desolate hour. 'When other
hearts of sympathy are hushed to rest; when all the world seems dead to me,
wrapped in deep unconsciousness of my silent vigils, in the midnight of my
soul's deep grief I will arise from my pillow, moist with tears, and from my
couch, worn with my tossings, and will give thanks unto you because of your
righteous judgments.'

O what midnight harmony, beloved, is this! The blessed spirits of another

world are hearkening: God bows down his ear and listens. Ah! my reader,
there is not a single midnight of your history—never so dark as that midnight
may be—for which God has not provided you a song, and in which there may
not be such music as human hand ever awoke, and as human lip never
breathed—the music that God only can create.

But what are some of the materials—the chords and notes—of these songs in
the night? We begin with the key-note. Jesus himself is our song! If we cannot
sing of Jesus and of his love in the night of our pilgrimage, of what, of whom,
then, can sing? As all music has its ground-work—its elementary principles—
so has the music of the believing soul. Jesus is the foundation. He who knows
nothing experimentally of Jesus, has never learned to sing the Lord's song.
But the believer, when he contemplates Jesus in his personal dignity, glory,
and beauty—when he regards him as God's equal—when he views him as the
Father's gift—as the great depositary of all the fulness of God, can sing in the
dark night of his conscious sinfulness, of a foundation upon which he may
securely build for eternity.

And when, too, he studies the work of Jesus, what material for a song is
gathered here! when he contemplates Christ as "made of God unto him
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption;" when he views the
atoning blood and righteousness which presents him moment by moment
before God, washed from every stain, and justified from every sin, even now,
in the night-season of his soul's deep depravity, he can sing the first notes of
the song they chant in higher strains above: "Unto him that loved us, and
washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests
unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion, forever and ever.
Amen."

O! yes, Jesus is the key-note—Jesus is the ground-work of our midnight

harmony. Is it a season of heart-ploughing, of breaking up of the fallow
ground, of deeper discovery of the concealed plague? Still to turn the eye of
faith on Jesus, and contemplate the efficacy of his blood to remove all sin, and
the power of his grace to subdue all iniquity, O what music in the sad heart
does that sight of him create! "My soul does magnify the Lord, and my spirit
has rejoiced in God my Savior."

Is it a night of sorrowful affliction? What a friend, what a brother, what a

helper is Jesus! Never, no never, does he leave his suffering one to travel that
night unvisited, unsoothed by his presence. He is with you now, and of his
faithfulness that never falters, of his love that never changes, of his tenderness
that never lessens, of his patience that never wearies, of his grace that never
decays, of his watchfulness that never slumbers, you may sing in the storm-
night of your grief.

Fix your eye, dim with weeping though it be, upon this touching picture of
your sympathizing Lord thus presented to your view: "The ship was now in
the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the
fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And
when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It
is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spoke unto them,
saying, "Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid." Do you think there were no
songs on that dark tempestuous night? Did no music rise from that storm-
tossed vessel, and swell above the moaning of the sea? Ah, yes, beloved! Jesus
was there! And Jesus gave the key-note: "It is I; be not afraid!" And then rose
the music of faith and love from the lips of his transported apostle: "Lord, if it
be you, bid me come unto you on the water."

Trembling believer! Jesus had been all that night in earnest, wrestling prayer
for those loved disciples; and when their peril and fear were at their height, he
hastened to their rescue and their comfort, treading the limpid wave with all
the majesty and the firmness of a God. Jesus loves to visit us in our night-
watches. Jesus is praying for us when in the storm! The incarnate God
delights to be near his helpless and timid saints! And he is near—yes, near to
you—the strength of your fainting heart, the support of your sinking soul; and
you "shall have a song as in the night, when a holy solemnity is kept; and
gladness of heart, as when one goes with a flute to come into the mountain of
the Lord, to the mighty one of Israel."

Is it the night of bereavement? Ah, heavy as that night is, there is a song even
for it, smitten, weeping soul. Jesus was bereaved. Can you not sing of this?
"Jesus wept." Is there no melody in these words? O yes! As one, who himself
knew and felt the blank which death creates in human friendship: as one,
whose tears once fell upon the cold clay, while no hand was outstretched to
wipe them, he sympathizes with your present sorrow, and is prepared to make
it all his own. Wide as is the chasm, deep as is the void, mournful as is the
blank which death has created, Christ can fill it; and filling it with his love,
with his presence, with himself, how sweet will be your song in the night of
your sorrow,—"He has done all things well." O there is not a single hour of
the long night of our woe, but if we turn and rest in Jesus, we shall find
material for a hymn of praise, such as seraphs cannot sing.

Nor must we pass by David's sweet song in the dark night of his domestic
calamity and grief: "Although my house be not so with God; yet he has made
with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure for this is all
my salvation, and all my desire, although he makes it not to grow," (2 Sam.
23:6.) The everlasting covenant which God has made with Jesus, and through
Jesus with all his beloved people, individually, is a strong ground of
consolation amid the tremblings of human hope, the fluctuations of creature
things, and the instability of all that earth calls good. The Word of God meets
the peculiar sorrow of domestic calamity with especial tenderness. David was
tried in his children—how deep that trial was, few of us may know. But the
covenant was enough for it; it was a covenant ordered in all things, and sure:
and this was his song in the night. And of this same covenant, O sorrowful
child of the covenant, you too may sing: The God of the covenant is your God,
your Father, your unchangeable Friend.

What though domestic calamity enshrouds your spirit as with midnight

gloom—the covenant in which your name is written, and your sorrow
appointed, and your consolation provided, and your steps ordered, sheds its
mild luster upon your way, and bids you sing in the night-time of your grief—

"Since you, the everlasting God,

My Father are become;
Jesus, my guardian and my friend,
And heaven my final home:
I welcome all your sovereign will;
For all that will is love:
And when I know not what you do,
I wait the light above.
Your covenant in the darkest gloom
Shall heavenly rays impart,
Which, my eyelids close in death,
Shall warm my chilling heart."

And who gives these songs in the night? "God our Maker." Who but God
could give them? No saint on earth, no angel in heaven, has power to tune our
hearts to a single note of praise in the hour of their grief. No, nor could any
creature above or below breathe a word of comfort, of hope, or of succor,
when heart and flesh were failing. Who but the incarnate God has power
enough, or love enough, or sympathy enough to come and embosom himself in
our very circumstances—to enter into the very heart of our sorrow—to go
down into the deepest depth of our woe, and strike a chord there that,
responding to his touch, shall send forth a more than angel's music?

It is God who gives these songs. He is acquainted with your sorrows: he

regards your night of weeping: he knows the way that you take. He may be
lost to your view, but you cannot he lost to his! The darkness of your night-
grief may veil him from your eye, but the "darkness and the light are both
alike to him." Then repair to him for your song. Ask him so to sanctify your
sorrow by his grace, and so to comfort it by his Spirit, and so to glorify
himself in your patient endurance of it, and so to make you to know the
wherefore of your trial, and your trial so to answer the mission on which it
was sent, as will enable you to raise this note of praise: "You have turned my
mourning into dancing; you have put off my sackcloth, and girded me with
gladness; to the end that my glory may sing praise to you, and not be silent."

In giving you a throne of grace, God has given you a song, methinks one of the
sweetest ever sung in the house of our pilgrimage. To feel that we have a God
who hears and answers prayer,—who has done so in countless instances, and
is prepared still to give us at all times an audience—O! the unutterable
blessedness of this truth. Sing aloud then, you sorrowful saints, for great and
precious is your privilege of communion with God. In the night of your every
grief and trial and difficulty, forget not that, in your lowest frame, you may
sing this song, "Having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way, I will draw near, and pour out my heart to God."

Chant, then, his high praises as you pass along, that there is a place where you
may disclose every need, repose every sorrow, deposit every burden, breathe
every sigh, and lose yourself in communion with God—that place is the blood-
sprinkled mercy-seat, of which God says, "There will I meet with you, and I
will commune with you."

Ah! but perhaps you exclaim, "Would that I could sing! I can weep, and
moan, and even trust, but I cannot rejoice." Yes, but there is One who can
give even you, beloved, a song in the night. Place your harp in his hands, all
broken and unstrung as it is, and he will repair and retune it; and then,
breathing upon it his Spirit, and touching it with his own gentle hand, that
heart that was so sad and joyless shall yet sing the high praises of its God!

How much of God's greatness and glory in nature is concealed until the night
reveals it! The sun is withdrawn, twilight disappears, and darkness robes the
earth. Then appears the brilliant firmament, studded and glowing with
myriads of constellations. O the indescribable wonder, the surpassing glory, of
that scene! But it was the darkness that brought it all to view.

Thus it is in the Christian's life. How much of God would be unseen, how
much of his glory concealed, how little would we know of Jesus, but for the
night-season of mental darkness and of heart sorrow. The sun that shone so
cheeringly has set; the gray twilight that looked so pensively has disappeared;
and just as the night of woe set in, filling you with trembling, with anxiety,
and with fear, lo! a scene of overpowering grandeur suddenly bursts upon the
astonished eye of your faith. The glory of God as your Father, has appeared—
the character of Jesus as a loving tender brother, has unfolded—the Spirit as
a Comforter, has whispered—your interest in the great redemption has been
revealed—and a new earth redolent with a thousand sweets, and a new heaven
resplendent with countless suns, has floated before your view! It was the
darkness of your night of sorrow that made visible all this wonder and all this
glory: and but for that sorrow how little would you have known of it. "I will
sing of mercy and of judgment: unto you, O Lord, will I sing."

Suffering, sorrowful believer! pluck your harp from your willow, and with the
hand of faith and love sweep it to the high praises of your God. Praise him for
himself—praise him for Jesus—praise him for conversion—praise him for
joys—praise him for sorrows—praise him for chastenings—praise him for the
hope of glory—O praise him for all! Thus singing the Lord's song in a strange
land, you will be learning to sing it in divine sounds, such as are—

"Sung before the sapphire-colored throne

To him that sits, thereon—
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright seraphims, in burning row,
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow,
And the cherubic host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout, and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly;
That we on earth undiscording voice
May rightly answer with melodious noise;
As once did, until disproportioned sin
Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect harmony,
while they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that song,
And keep in tune with heaven, until God before long
To his celestial concert us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light."
"Jesus Veiling his Dealings"

Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou
shalt know hereafter. John 13:7

Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will
understand." John 13:7

Jesus replied, "You don't understand now why I am doing it; someday you
will." John 13:7

Our Lord, when he spoke these words, had just risen from the lowliest act of
his most lowly life. Around that act there was thrown a veil of mystery which
partially concealed its significance and its end from the view of his wondering
disciple. There was much in this simple but expressive incident of the Savior's
life which filled Peter's mind with perplexing thought. His first feeling was
that of resistance, to be succeeded by one of astonishment, still deeper. He had
marked each step in the strange proceeding—the loosened sandal, the bathing
of the feet, the replacing of the robe; but the deep significance of the whole
was to his view wrapped in impenetrable mystery. And how did the Savior
meet his perplexity? Not by denying its mysteriousness, but by a promise of
clearer light anon. "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you
will understand." And this explanation and assurance satisfied the mind of
the amazed disciple. Simon Peter exclaimed, "Then wash my hands and head
as well, Lord, not just my feet!" John 13:9

Each individual believer has a personal interest in this subject, especially

those to whom these pages are inscribed—the Father's chastened ones. These
words imply a concealment of much of the Lord's procedure with his people.
In the preceding chapter we contemplated, under the similitude of the night-
season, the present pilgrimage of the saints; a night, however, not entirely
rayless, nor songless; not without some harbingers of the joyous morning, nor
some key-notes of the entrancing melody with which that morning of joy will
be ushered in. It is our wisdom to know that no pure, unmixed sorrow, ever
befalls the Christian sufferer. Our Lord Jesus flung the curse and the sin to
such an infinite distance from the church, that could his faith but discern it,
the believer would see nothing but love painting the darkest cloud that ever
threw its shadow upon his spirit. Akin to the preceding subject is the one upon
which we now propose briefly to address the suffering reader. It speaks of a
veiling of Christ's dealings, with the promise of an unveiling in a day far
sunnier and happier than this. "You do not realize now what I am doing, but
later you will understand."

With regard to our heavenly Father, there can be nothing mysterious, nothing
inscrutable to him. A profound and awful mystery himself, yet to his infinite
mind there can be no darkness, no mystery at all. His whole plan—if plan it
may be called—is before him. Our phraseology, when speaking of the divine
procedure, would sometimes imply the opposite of this. We talk of God's fore-
knowledge, of his foresight, of his acquaintance with events yet unborn; but
there is in truth no such thing. There are no tenses with God—no past—nor
present—nor to come.

The idea of God's Eternity, if perfectly grasped, would annihilate in our

minds all such humanizing of the Divine Being. He is one ETERNAL NOW.
All events to the remotest period of time, were as vivid and as present to the
divine mind from eternity, as when at the moment they assumed a real
existence and a palpable form.

But all the mystery is with us, poor finite creatures of a day. And why, even to
us, is any portion of the divine conduct thus a mystery? Not because it is in
itself so, but mainly and simply because we cannot see the whole as God sees
it. Could it pass before our eye, as from eternity it has before his, a perfect
and a complete whole, we should then cease to wonder, to cavil and repine.
The infinite wisdom, purity, and goodness, that originated and gave a
character, a form, and a coloring, to all that God does, would appear as
luminous to our view as to his, and ceaseless adoration and praise would be
the grateful tribute of our loving hearts.

Throw back a glance upon the past, and see how little you have ever
understood of all the way God has led you. What a mystery—perhaps, now
better explained—has enveloped his whole proceedings! When Joseph, for
example, was torn from the homestead of his father, sold, and borne a slave
into Egypt, not a syllable of that eventful page of his history could he spell. All
was to his mind as strange and unreadable as the hieroglyphics of the race,
whose symbolical literature and religion now for the first time met his eye.
And yet God's way with this his servant was perfect. And could Joseph have
seen at the moment that he descended into the pit, where he was cast by his
envious brethren, all the future of his history as vividly and as palpably as he
beheld it in after years, while there would have been the conviction that all
was well, we doubt not that faith would have lost much of its vigor, and God
much of his glory. And so with good old Jacob. The famine—the parting with
Benjamin—the menacing conduct of Pharaoh's prime minister, wrung the
mournful expression from his lips, "All these things are against me." All was
veiled in deep and mournful mystery. Thus was it with Job, to whom God
spoke from the whirlwind that swept every vestige of affluence and domestic
comfort from his dwelling. And thus, too, with Naomi, when she exclaimed,
"Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly
with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty."
How easy were it to multiply these examples of veiled and yet all-wise
dispensation.

And is this the way of the Lord with you, my reader? Are you bewildered at
the mazes through which you are threading your steps; at the involved
circumstances of your present history; the incidents which seem so netted and
interlaced one with the other as to present to your view an inextricable
labyrinth? Deem yourself not alone in this. No mystery has lighted upon your
path but what is common to the one family of God: "This honor have all his
saints." The Shepherd is leading you, as all the flock are led, with a skillful
hand and in a right way. It is yours to stand if he bids you, or to follow if he
leads. "He gives no account of any of his matters," assuming that his children
have such confidence in his wisdom, and love, and uprightness, as, in all the
wonder-working of his dealings with them, to 'be still and know that he is
God.' That it is to the honor of God to conceal, should in our view justify all
his painful and humiliating procedure with us. "It is the glory of God to
conceal a thing," as it will be for his endless glory by and bye fully to reveal it
all. But there is one thing, Christian sufferer, which he cannot conceal. He
cannot conceal the love that forms the spring and foundation of all his conduct
with his saints. Do what he will, conceal as he may; be his chariot the thick
clouds, and his way in the deep sea; still his love betrays itself, disguised
though it may be in dark and impenetrable providence. There are undertones,
gentle and tender, in the roughest accents of our Joseph's voice. And he who
has an ear ever hearkening to the Lord, and delicately attuned to the gentlest
whisper, shall often exclaim—"Speak, Lord, how and when and where you
may—it is the voice of my beloved!"

But we have arrived at an interesting and cheering truth—THE FULL

UNVEILING OF ALL THE LORD'S DEALINGS IN A HOLIER AND A
BRIGHTER WORLD. "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later
you will understand." That there is a present partial understanding of God's
will and ways concerning us, we readily concede. We may, now and then, see a
needs be for his conduct. The veil is just sufficiently lifted to reveal a portion
of the 'end of the Lord.' He will make us acquainted with the evil which he
corrects, with the backsliding which he chastens, with the temptation which he
checks, and with the dangerous path around which he throws his hedge; so
that we cannot escape. We see it, and we bless the hand outstretched to save.
He will also cause us to be fruitful. We have mourned our leanness, have
confessed our barrenness, and lamented the distance of our walk, and the
little glory we bring to his dear name—and lo! the dresser of the vineyard has
appeared to prune his sickly branch, "that it may bring forth more fruit."
"By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the
fruit to take away his sin." The deeper teaching, too—the result of the divine
chastenings—has revealed to some extent the 'end of the Lord' in his
mysterious conduct. O there is no school like God's school; for "who teaches
like him?" And God's highest school is the school of trial. All his true scholars
have graduated from this school. "Who are these who are clothed in white?
Where do they come from? These are the ones coming out of the great
tribulation. They washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them
white." Rev. 7:13-14. "Blessed is the man, O Lord, whom you chasten and
teach out of your law." Ask each spiritually, deeply-taught Christian where he
attained his knowledge—and he will point you to God's great university—the
school of trial.

But there is a time coming, a blessed time of "good things to come," when the
darkness will all have passed away, the mystery of God will be finished, and
the present conduct of our Savior will be fully cleared up. "What I do, you
know not now; but you shall know hereafter." O that "hereafter," what a
solemn word to the ungodly! Is there, then, a hereafter? Jesus says there is;
and I believe it, because he says it. That hereafter will be terrible to the man
that dies in his sins. It will be a hereafter, whose history will be "written in
mourning, lamentation and woe." It had been better for you, reader, living
and dying, impenitent and unbelieving, had you never been born, or, had
there been no hereafter. But there is a hereafter of woe to the sinner, as of
bliss to the saint. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the
righteous into life eternal." (Matt. 25:46.)

The position which the Christian shall occupy hereafter, will be most
favorable to a full and clear comprehension of all the mysteries of the way.
The "clouds and darkness"—emblems in our history of obscurity and
distress—which now envelop God's throne, and enshroud his government of
the saints, will have passed away; the mist and fog will have vanished, and
breathing a purer atmosphere, and canopied by a brighter sky, the glorified
saint will see every object, circumstance, incident and step, with an eye
unobscured by a vapor, and unmoistened by a tear. "Now we know in part,
then shall we know even as we are known." And what shall we know? All the
mysteries of Providence. Things which had made us greatly grieve, will now
be seen to have been causes of the greatest joy. Clouds of threatening, which
appeared to us charged with the agent of destruction, will then unveil, and
reveal the love which they embosomed and concealed. All the mysteries of
faith too will be known. "Now we see through a glass, darkly; (in a riddle) but
then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am
known."

The great "mystery of Godliness" will develop and unfold its wonders. His
everlasting love to his church—his choice of a people for himself—his
sovereign grace in calling them, all, all, will shine forth with unclouded luster
to the eternal praise of his great and holy name. O what a perfect,
harmonious, and glorious whole will all his doings in providence and grace
appear, from first to last, to the undimmed eye, the ravished gaze of his white-
robed, palm-bearing church.

Many and holy are the lessons we may gather from this subject. The first is—
the lesson of deep humility. There are three steps in the Christian's life. The
first is—humility; the second is—humility; the third is—humility. "You shall
remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in
the wilderness, to humble you, and to prove you, to know what was in your
heart." In veiling his dealings, Jesus would "hide pride" from us. How loftily
and self-sufficiently would we walk did we see all our present and future
history plain before us.

We would ascribe to our own wisdom and skill, prudence and forethought, the
honor which belongs to Christ alone. Let us, then, lie low before the Lord, and
humble ourselves under his mysterious hand. "The meek will he guide in
judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. All the paths of the Lord are
mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." Thus
writing the sentence of death upon our wisdom, our sagacity, and our
strength, Jesus—the lowly one—seeks to keep us from the loftiness of our
intellect, and from the pride of our heart prostrating us low in the dust at his
feet. Holy posture! blessed place! There, Lord, would I lie; my trickling tears
of penitence and love, falling upon those dear feet that have never misled, but
have always gone before, leading me by a right way, the best way, to a city of
rest.

"To cure you of your pride—that deepest-seated ill,

God humbled his own self—will you your pride keep still?"

We should learn from this subject to live by faith amid the enshrouding
dealings of our God. Therefore are those dealings often so dark. Could we
ever see all the road, faith would have no play; this precious, this Christ-
honoring, this God—glorifying grace would lie dormant in the soul. But, in
"leading the blind by a way that they know not," he teaches them to confide in
the knowledge, truth, and goodness of their Divine escort—and that
confidence is the calm unquestioning repose of faith.

"My spirit on your care,

Blest Savior, I recline;
You will not leave me to despair,
For you are love divine.

"In you I place my trust,

On you I calmly rest;
I know you good, I know you just,
And count your choice the best.

"Whatever events betide,

Your will they all perform;
Safe in your breast my head I hide,
Nor fear the coming storm.

"Let good or ill befall,

It must be good for me;
Secure of having you in all,
Of having all in thee." [Rev. H.F. Lyte]

Oh, sweet, consoling words of Jesus!—"What I do." Not what men do—not
what angels do—not what you do—but, "what I do." Is the loved one
wrenched from your heart?—"I have done it," says Jesus. Is the desire of
your eyes smitten down with a stroke?—"I have done it," says Jesus. Is it the
loss of property, of health, of position, of friends, that overwhelms you with
grief?—"I have done it," says Jesus. "What I do you know not now; but you
shall know hereafter." How many a mother has this promise soothed, while
with an anguish such as a mother only knows, she has gazed upon the
withered flower on her breast! How many a father, standing by the couch of
death, grasping the cold clammy hand of the pride of his heart, has felt the
power of these words, more sweet and more soothing than an angel's music—
"What I do you know not now; but you shall know hereafter." Wait, then,
suffering child, the coming glory—yielding yourself to the guidance of your
Savior, and submitting yourself wholly to your Father's will.

"O Lord! how happy would we be,

If we could cast our care on thee,
If we from self could rest;
And feel at heart that One above,
In perfect wisdom, perfect love,
Is working for the best.

"How far from this our daily life!

Ever disturbed by anxious strife,
By sudden wild alarms;
O could we but relinquish all
Our earthly props, and simply fall
On your Almighty arms!

"Could we but kneel, and cast our load,

E'en while we pray, upon our God;
Then rise with lightened cheer,
Sure that the Father who is near
To still the famished raven's cry
Will hear, in that we fear.

"We cannot trust him as we should,

So chafes fallen nature's restless mood
To cast its peace away;
Yet birds and flowerets round us preach,
All, all the present evil teach
Sufficient for the day.

"Lord, make these faithless hearts of ours,

Such lessons learn from birds and flowers,
Make them from self to cease;
Leave all things to a Father's will,
And taste, before him lying still,
E'en in affliction, peace."

Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will
understand." John 13:7

"Solitude Sweetened"

"I am not alone, because the Father is with me" John 16:32.

It was not one of the least mournful features in the Savior's humiliation that
the path he trod was in a measure solitary, and that the sorrow he endured
was in its character a lonely one. He had created and had peopled the world—
he had given to man a social constitution, had inspired the pulsation of love,
and had imparted to his creatures a secret and strong affinity of mind to
mind; and yet he was in the world as one to whom it afforded no home, and
proffered no friendship. And was this no felt-trial to the Son of God? Did it
enter nothing into the curse which he came to endure? Did it add no gall-
bitter to his cup, no keenness to the sadness of his heart, no deepening to the
shade upon his brow? Did the absence of a perfectly congenial mind,
assimilating spirit, fond, confiding, sympathizing heart, on whose pillow he
could lay to rest the corroding cares and mental disquietudes which agitated
his own, create no aching void in the Redeemer's bosom? Surely it must. Our
Lord was human—though divine—and as man he must have felt, at times, an
intensity of yearning for human companionship proportioned to his capacity
to enjoy, and his power to enrich it. The human sympathies and affections
that belonged to him, pure and elevated as they were, could only awaken a
responsive chord in a human breast. And for this he must have sighed. He was
formed for the enjoyment of life, was endowed with a sensibility to the objects
around him. He had affections—and he delighted to indulge them: he had a
heart—and he longed to bestow it.

There were times, too, when he seemed to contract an attachment to

inanimate objects: the tree beneath whose shade he had occasionally sat, the
fields over whose verdure he had roamed, the sequestered spots where he had
often strayed, the sea whose shores he had frequently trod, the mountain-
slopes where he had been wont to stand, associated as they were with
communion with God and converse with his disciples, had become sacred and
endeared haunts to the holy and sensitive heart of Jesus.
It might indeed be said that the Savior loved and coveted solitude,
occasionally stealing away to some favorite place for meditation and prayer.
But there were other and more frequent occasions, especially in the deep,
lonely sorrow of Gethsemane, when he seemed to feel the need and to ask the
soothing of human sympathy. With what melting tones must these words have
fallen on the ears of his little band of followers: "Tarry here, and watch with
me."

Yes, our Lord's was a solitary life. He mingled indeed with man—he labored
for man—he associated with man—he loved man—but he "trod the wine-
press alone, and of the people there was none with him." And yet he was not
all alone. Creatures, one by one, had indeed deserted his side, and left him
homeless, friendless, solitary—but there was One, the consciousness of whose
ever-clinging, ever-brightening, ever-cheering presence infinitely more than
supplied the lack. "Behold, the hour comes, yes, is now come, that you shall be
scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not
alone, because the Father is with me."

But from the history of Jesus let us turn to a parallel page in the history of his
saints. The disciples of Christ, like their Lord and Master, often feel
themselves alone. The season of sickness—the hour of bereavement—the
period of trial, is often the occasion of increased depression from the painful
consciousness of the solitude and loneliness in which it is borne. The heavenly
way we travel is more or less a lonely way. We have, at most, but few
companions. It is a "little flock," and only here and there we meet a traveler,
who, like ourselves, is journeying towards the Zion of God. As the way is
narrow, trying and humiliating to flesh, but few, under the drawings of the
Spirit, find it.

If, indeed, true religion consisted in mere profession, then there were many
for Christ. If the marks of discipleship were merely an orthodox creed—
excited feeling—denominational zeal—flaming partisanship, then there are
many that "find the way." But if the true travelers are men of broken heart—
poor in spirit—who mourn for sin—who know the music of the Shepherd's
voice—who follow the Lamb—who delight in the throne of grace—and who
love the place of the cross, then there are but 'few' with whom the true saints
journey to heaven in fellowship and communion.

But the path is even narrower than this—the circle is smaller still. How few
real companions do we meet even among the saints of God! Loving them as we
do, and yearning for a wider fellowship, yet how few there are with whom we
can walk side by side! Doctrine divides us from some. If we speak of God's
eternal love, and free choice, and discriminating mercy, we offend. "When our
Lord preached the doctrine of sovereign grace, we read that "from that time
many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." O it is a
solemn and affecting thought, that even the very doctrines of Christ's gospel
build a wall of partition between his true disciples.

Church government and ordinances sunder others. The blemishes and

imperfections still clinging to the saints, such indeed as separated Paul and
Barnabas, often interrupt the full harmony of Christian communion.

The difference of spirituality, too, which we find in the Lord's people, tends to
abate much of that communion which ought to distinguish the one family of
God. We meet, perhaps, with but few who have been taught precisely in our
school, who see truth as we see it, and who observe ordinances as we observe
them, or who can understand the intricacies of Christian experience through
which, with toil and difficulty, we are threading our way. Few keep the same
pace in the Christian race with us. Some linger behind, while others outrun
us. There is one always so lost in a sense of his unworthiness as never to enter
into our joy; and there is another towering, as on the eagle's wing, and soaring
into a region whose very purity awes, and whose effulgence dazzles us. Thus
are we learning the solitariness of the way, even in the very church and family
of God within which we are embosomed.

But not from these causes alone springs the sense of loneliness which the saints
often feel. There is the separation of loving hearts, and of kindred minds, and
of intimate relationships, by the providential ordering and dealings of God.
The changes of this changing world—the alteration of circumstances—the
removals to new and distant positions—the wastings of disease and the
ravages of death, often sicken the heart with a sense of friendlessness and
loneliness which finds its best expression in the words of the Psalmist: "I
watch, and am as a sparrow alone on the house-top." But if God "places the
solitary in families," as he occasionally does, he more frequently sets the godly
apart from others; and this has often been found to be one of his wisest and
holiest appointments. "Come away and rest awhile;" "I will allure her into
the wilderness," are divine expressions which would seem to indicate this
instructive truth.
Shall we enter the chamber of sickness? Ah! what solitude reigns here. The
gentle movement, the subdued voice, the soft tread, the smouldering embers,
the shaded light, all signify that the scenes and the society and the excitement
of the world without, intrude not upon the stillness of that world within.
Weeks and months and years roll on, and still God keeps his child a "prisoner
of hope." But since he has done it, it must be well done, for "his way is
perfect."

To be arrested in the midst of activity, enterprise, and usefulness,—to be

snatched from the pinnacle of honorable distinction, from the scene of
pleasant labor, from the soothing society of friends, from the bosom of the
domestic circle, within all of which we were so warmly nestled, and to find
ourselves the sickly occupant of a lone and gloomy chamber, from which
books and friends and family are excluded, is to some a trial of faith and
patience demanding grace of no ordinary degree. The pastor torn from his
flock, feels it,—the minister banished from his pulpit, feels it,—the Christian
laborer laid aside from his loved employ, feels it,—the mother separated from
her little ones, feels it; all feel it to be a school of which, though the teaching is
most blessed, yet the discipline is most severe.

Shall we enter the house of mourning? Here is solitude indeed—the heart-

aching solitude such as death only can create. What an awful stillness reigns
here! The dread silence of all sounds has entered; even the living seem to hold
their breath while the king of terrors passes by. The blinded windows—the
light foot-fall—the wrapped thoughtfulness—the suppressed conversation—
the air of desolateness resting on each countenance—and speaking from each
eye, betokens how sad and deep and lonely is the grief with which each heart
is breaking. Ah, yes! what a solitude does death often create in the life of the
Christian.

The old companion, and the confiding friend removed—the "strong staff
broken, and the beautiful rod,"—what a blank does the universe appear? But
should we murmur at the solitary way along which our God is conducting us?
Is it not his way, and therefore the best way? In love he gave us friends—in
love he has removed them. In goodness he blessed us with health—in goodness
he has taken it away. In faithfulness he vouchsafed to us affluence—in
faithfulness he has recalled it.

And yet this is the way along which he is conducting us to glory. And shall we
rebel? Heaven is the home of the saints; "here we have no continuing city."
And shall we repine that we are in the right road to heaven? What, if in
weariness and sorrow, you were journeying to the metropolis, where your
heart's fondest treasure was embosomed; and you were to come to a way on
whose finger-post was inscribed,—"The road to London," or, "The road to
Paris," would you, because that road was lone and dreary and irksome,
indulge in repining feelings, or waste your moments and your energies in
useless regrets? Would you divert into another and an opposite, because a
more pleasant and inviting path?

No! The image of your home with its sweet attractions—reposing like a fairy
island in the sunny distance—would give wings to your feet, and carpet every
step of that rough way with a soft mantle of green. Christ, your heart's
treasure, is there! And will you murmur that the way that leads you to it and
to him is sometimes enshrouded with dark and mournful solitude? O the
distinguished privilege of treading the path that Jesus walked in!

But the solitude of the Christian has its sweetness. The Savior tasted it when
he said, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me;" and all the lonely
way that he traveled he leaned upon God. Formed for human friendship, and
even knowing something of its enjoyment—for there reposed upon his breast
the disciple whom he loved—he yet drew the love that sweetened his solitude
from a higher than a human source. His disciples were scattered, and he was
left to plod his weary way alone: but his Father with him—O this was enough!
The companionship of God is the highest, purest, sweetest mercy a saint of
God can have on earth. Yes, it is the highest, purest, sweetest bliss the saints of
God can have in heaven. What is the enjoyment of heaven? Not merely
exemption from trial, and freedom from sorrow, and rest from toil, and
release from conflict: O no! it is the presence—the full, unclouded presence of
our Father there. To be with Christ—to behold his glory—to gaze upon his
face—to hear his voice—to feel the throbbings of his bosom—to bask in the
effulgence of God's presence—O this is heaven, the heaven of heaven!

The twilight of this glory we have here on earth. "I am not alone," can each
sorrowful and banished soul exclaim, "because the Father is with me." Yes,
beloved, your own Father. "You shall call me, my Father." In Jesus he is your
Father—your reconciled, pacified Father—all whose thoughts that he thinks
of you, are peace; and all whose ways that he takes with you, are love. The
presence, the voice, the smile of a parent, how precious and soothing!
especially when that presence is realized, and that voice is heard, and that
smile is seen in the dark desolate hour of adversity.
God is our heavenly parent. His presence, his care, his smiles are ever with his
children. And if there be a solitary child of the one family that shares the
richer in the blessing of the Father's presence than another, it is the sick, the
suffering, the lone, the chastened child. Yes, your Father is with you always.
He is with you to cheer your loneliness—to sweeten your solitude—to sanctify
your sorrow—to strengthen your weakness—to shield your person—to
pardon your sins, and to heal all your diseases.

Hearken in your deep solitude to his own touching words: "Fear you not; for I
am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God: I will strengthen you; yes, I
will help you; yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness."
Enough, my Father! if thus you are with me, I am not, I cannot be alone—and
if such the bliss with which you do sweeten, and such the glory with which you
do irradiate the solitude of your hidden ones, Lord, let me ever be a hidden
one—shut out from all others, shut in alone with you!

"You are near,—yes, Lord, I feel it,

You are near wherever I move;
And though sense would sincerely conceal it,
Faith often whispers it in love.

"You are near,—O what a blessing

To the souls your love has blest!
Souls, your daily care confessing,
Daily by their God confessed.

"Why should I despond or tremble

When Jehovah stoops to cheer?
But O far rather, why dissemble
When Omniscience is near!

"Am I weak? your arm will lead me

Safe through every danger, Lord:
Am I hungry? you will feed me
With the manna of your Word.

"Am I thirsting? you will guide me

Where refreshing waters flow;
Faint or feeble, you will provide me
Grace for every need I know.

"Am I fearful? you will take me

Underneath your wings, my God!
Am I faithless? you will make me
Bow beneath your chastening rod.

"Am I drooping? you are near me,

Near to hear me on my way:
Am I pleading? You will hear me,
Hear and answer when I pray.

"Then, O my soul, since God does love you,

Faint not, droop not, do not fear;
For though his heaven is high above you,
He himself is ever near!

"Near to watch your wayward spirit,

Sometimes cold and careless grown;
But likewise near with grace and merit,
All your Savior's, His, His own." [J.S. Monsell]

There are many thoughts calculated to sweeten the season of Christian

solitude which we need but simply suggest to the reflective mind. You cannot
be in reality alone when you remember that Christ and you are one—that by
his Spirit he dwells in the heart, and that therefore he is always near to
participate in each circumstance in which you may be placed. Your very
solitude he shares: with your sense of loneliness he sympathizes. You cannot
be friendless—since Christ is your friend. You cannot be relationless—since
Christ is your brother. You cannot be unprotected—since Christ is your
shield.

Do you need an arm to lean upon?—his is outstretched. Do you need a heart

to repose in?—his invites you to its affection and its confidence. Do you need a
companion to converse with?—he welcomes you to his fellowship. O sweet
solitude, sweetened by such a Savior as this!—always present to comfort, to
counsel, and to protect in times of trial, perplexity, and danger.

There is so much soothing in the reflection that it is a Father's presence that

sweetens the solitude of his child, that I know not how to express it. "MY
FATHER IS WITH ME!" O what words are these! Who can harm you now?
What can befall you? When and where can you be alone, if your heavenly
Father is with you? He is with you on the ocean, he is with you on the land. He
is with you in your exile, he is with you at home. Friends may forsake, and
kindred may die, and circumstances may change—but "my Father is with
me!" may still be your solace and your boast.

And O to realize the presence of that Father—to walk with God in the
absorbing consciousness of his loving eye never removed, of his solemn
presence never withdrawn, of his encircling arm never untwined—welcome
the solitude, welcome the loneliness, welcome the sorrow, cheered and
sweetened and sanctified by such a realization as this! "I am not alone,
because my Father is with me."

Let the season of temporary solitude be a time of earnest prayer—of deep

searching of heart—of much honest, close, filial transaction with yourself and
with God. He may have allured you into the wilderness, he may thus have set
you apart from all others for this very end. You have been communing much
with books, and with men, he would now have you commune with your own
heart and with himself!

And this, too, may be the school in which he is about to train you for greater
responsibility, for more extended usefulness, and for higher honors in his
church. Moses was withdrawn from Pharaoh's court and banished to the
solitude of the wilderness forty years, in order to train him to be the great
legislator and leader of God's people. Who can tell what numerous blessings
are about to be realized by you, and through you, by the church of God, from
the present season of silence and repose through which you are passing?

O to feel a perfect satisfaction, yes, an ecstatic delight, with all that our
heavenly Father does! Submission is sweet, resignation is sweeter, but joyous
satisfaction with the whole of God's conduct is sweeter still. "My Father, not
my will but yours be done." Be this, then, your solace—this your boast—this
your midnight harmony—"I AM NOT ALONE, BECAUSE MY FATHER IS
WITH ME."

"How heavily the path of life

Is trod by him who walks alone,
Who hears not, on his dreary way,
Affection's sweet and cheering tone;
Alone, although his heart should bound
With love to all things great and fair,
They love not him,—there is not one
His sorrow or his joy to share.

"Alone,—though in the busy town,

Where hundreds hurry to and fro—
If there is none who for his sake
A selfish pleasure would forego;
And O how lonely among those
Who have not skill to read his heart,
When first he learns how summer friends
At sight of wintry storms depart.

"My Savior! and did you too feel

How sad it is to be alone,
Deserted in the adverse hour
By those who must your love have known?
The gloomy path, though distant, still
Was ever present to your view;
O how could you foreseeing it,
For us that painful course pursue?

"Forsaken of your nearest friends,

Surrounded by malicious foes—
No kindly voice encouraged you,
When the loud shout of scorn uprose.
Yet there was calm within your soul,
No stoic pride that calmness kept,
Nor Godhead unapproached by woe—
Like man you had both loved and wept.

"You were not then alone, for God

Sustained you by his mighty power;
His arm most felt, his care most seen,
When needed most in saddest hour.
None else could comfort, none else knew
How dreadful was the curse of sin;
He who controlled the storm without,
Could gently whisper peace within.
"Who is alone if God be near?
Who shall repine at loss of friends,
While he has One of boundless power,
Whose constant kindness never ends
Whose presence felt, enhances joy,
Whose love can stop each flowing tear,
And cause upon the darkest cloud
The bow of mercy to appear."

"A Look from Christ"

"The Lord turned, and looked upon Peter"—Luke 22:61.

And who can fully interpret that look? Painters have often attempted to
portray it, but the pencil has fallen despairingly from their hands. The Savior
was now standing face to face with Caiaphas—infinite purity confronting sin,
infinite truth confounding error. It was to him a solemn and a critical
moment. Pleading for his life, all his thoughts, and sympathies, and moments
might be supposed to concentrate wholly upon himself. But no! he heard a
voice behind him, the tones of which were familiar, though startling, to his
ear. It was a voice to which he had often listened, as the ear listens to sweet
sounds; but dear and familiar as it was, it uttered words of appalling import.
It was the voice of a loved disciple, a sworn friend, who, but a few hours
before, had vowed, with all the solemnity and emphasis of an oath, attachment
and fidelity unto death. And what was its affirmation? "I know not the man!"
His attention diverted from the trial, and his eye, withdrawn from his
accusers, the "Lord turned, and looked upon Peter."

All thought and emotion seemed now to gather around one object--the Christ-
denying disciple. His own personal case, now fraught with the deepest interest
and peril; the tremendous responsibility which he at that moment sustained;
standing on the eve of accomplishing the eternal purpose of his Father in the
redemption of his church; the woe through which he was about to pass
lowering and darkening around him; yet all seemed for the moment to
tremble in the balance, before the case of a now fallen apostle. "And the Lord
turned and looked upon Peter." Peter met the glance. Not a word was uttered,
not a syllable was breathed, not a finger was lifted by the Savior; it was but a
look, and yet it was such a look as pierced the heart of the sinning apostle.
"Peter went out and wept bitterly."

Let us attempt its interpretation. The eye of Jesus is still upon us; it has often
reproved us in our waywardness and folly; it has often cheered us in our
loneliness and sorrow; and it may often chide and gladden us again. What is
its language? It was a look of injured love. Christ loved Peter; he loved him
with an everlasting love. When he allured him from his lowly calling,
summoned him to be a disciple, and ordained him to be an apostle, and "a
fisher of men," he loved him. Yes; and he loved him, too, at that moment. He
was about to die—to die for Peter. He knew how false and treacherous he
would prove; how, at a most critical period of his life, and amid circumstances
the most painful, he would deny that he knew him, confirming the
disownment with an oath and a curse; yet he loved Peter, loved him with an
affection that never faltered or cooled--no, not even at the moment when the
denial and the imprecation rose, fiend-like, from his lips.

What, then, was the language of that look which Christ now bent upon Peter?
It was a look of Injured love! It seemed to say, "I am about to die for, you,
Peter, and can you now deny me? What have I done, or what have I said,
worthy of such requital?" And what, my reader, are all our backslidings, and
falls, and unkind returns, but so many unjust injuries done to the deep,
deathless love of Jesus? How do we forget, at the moment of excited feeling,
that every step we take in departure from God, each temptation to which we
yield assent, and each sin we voluntarily commit, is in the face of love
inconceivably great, and unutterably tender. Injured love! how reproving its
glance! "I have died for you," Jesus says; "for you I poured out my heart's
blood; and can you, in view of love like mine, thus grieve, and wound, and
deny me?"

It was a look of painful remembrance. "And the Lord turned and looked upon
Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord." His Lord's solemn
prediction of his sin he seemed quite to have forgotten. But when that look
met his eye, it summoned back to memory the faded recollections of the
faithful and tender admonitions that had forewarned him of his fall. There is
a tendency in our fallen minds to forget our sinful departures from God.
David's threefold backsliding seemed to have been lost in deep oblivion, until
the Lord sent his prophet to recall it to his memory. Christ will bring our
forgotten departures to view, not to upbraid or to condemn, but to humble us,
and to bring us afresh to the blood of sprinkling. The heart-searching look
from Christ turns over each leaf in the book of memory; and sins and follies,
inconsistencies and departures, there inscribed, but long forgotten, are read
and re-read, to the deep sin-loathing and self-abasement of our souls. Ah! let a
look of forgiving love penetrate your soul, illumining memory's dark cell, and
how many things, and circumstances, and steps in your past life will you
recollect to your deepest humiliation before God.

And O! how much do we need thus to be reminded of our admonitions, our

warnings, and our falls, that we may in all our future spirit and conduct
"walk humbly with God." The season of solitude and sorrow, suffering
reader, is peculiarly favorable for this. It is a time of recollection. The past is
recalled, the life is reviewed, principles, motives, and actions are examined,
scrutinized, and weighed, and "the result, if the process is fairly and honestly"
gone into, will be, "Lord! I do remember this day my sin and folly; pardon it,
for your name's sake, and do you remember it no more forever!"

It was a look of gentle reproof. It seemed to convey that reproof in language

like this—"I am now bearing your sin and curse; I am about to drink the cup
of woe for you; to take you, a poor, lost, condemned sinner, into my very
bleeding heart; and do you deny that you did ever know me? Can you inflict
another and a deeper wound? Can you add another and a keener pang to
those now falling, like a storm, upon me from my enemies, deriding, and
scorning, and rejecting me?" O, what a reproof was that look! It was indeed
tender; but its very tenderness made it all the more keen. Blessed Jesus! we
love you for all the reproofs of your eye--reproofs most deserved, most
searching. We have met your look in secret; in solitude and in sorrow it has
spoken to us, revealing our sin and your displeasure, and we bless you for the
look.

It was a look of full forgiveness. Who can doubt but that, at this moment,
Jesus, by his blessed Spirit, did secretly write upon the heart of his backsliding
disciple the free pardon of his sin. And such is ever the look of Christ to us. Be
it a look expressive of wounded love; be it a look of mournful remembrance;
or be it a look of searching reproof; it yet is always a look of most free and full
forgiveness. "I have pardoned," is its language. And this is the meaning of
Christ's look now penetrating the dark cloud of your heart's grief, suffering
believer. It may revive the recollection of past offences; it may search, and
rebuke, and alarm; yet beware of interpreting it all of displeasure; it is a look
of loving forgiveness. The sharpest reproof the look of Christ ever conveyed to
a believer, spoke of pardoned sin. It must be so, since the covenant of peace
provides, and the atonement of Jesus secures, the entire canceling of all his
sin.

Meet the eye of Jesus, then, with confidence and love. There may be self-
reproach in your conscience; there is no harsh reproach in his look. The
uplifted glance of your eye may be sin-repenting, the downward beaming of
his is sin-forgiving. O! press to your heart the consolation and joy of this
truth—the glance of Jesus falling upon his accepted child ever speaks of
pardoned sin. Chastened, sorrowful, and secluded, you may be, yet your sins
are forgiven you for his name's sake. O! I know not a truth more calculated to
light up the gloom of a lone chamber, to lift up the drooping spirit of a heart-
sick child of God, than the announcement that God, for Christ's sake, has
pardoned all his transgressions and his sins, and stands to him in the relation
of a reconciled Father.

Suffering child of God! with this divine declaration would I come to you in
your sorrow and seclusion—"O Israel! you shall not be forgotten of me. I
have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your
sins. Return unto me; for I have redeemed you." O! that the Spirit, the
Comforter, may sweeten your solitude and cheer your gloom, and give you
this song to sing in the night season of your grief: "Bless the Lord, O my soul!
and forget not all his benefits; who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all
your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, and crowns you with
loving-kindness and tender mercies." Forget not that the look of Christ is
ever, to his saints, a look of pardoning love.

The posture of Jesus when he looked upon his sinning disciple was most
expressive. "The Lord turned." Here was the first step of recovery taken on
the part of Christ. And what has all the restoring conduct of our Lord been
towards us, but just this turning to us, when we had turned from him? We
have wandered, he has gone after us; we have departed, he has pursued us; we
have stumbled, he has upheld us; we have fallen, he has raised us up again; we
have turned from him, he has turned to us. O! the wonderful love, and
patience of Christ! And what is still his language, speaking to us in that look?
"Return unto me, for I have redeemed you." And what should be the response
of our hearts? "Behold, "we come unto you, for you are the Lord our God."
Then, "let us search and try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord."

Yes, my reader, again. What! after all my backslidings and recoveries, my

departures and returns, may I turn again to the Lord? Yes! with confidence
we say it, "turn again unto the Lord." That look of love beaming from the eye
of Jesus, invites you, woos you to return again, yes, this once more, to the
shelter of his pierced side, to the home of his wounded heart.

And O! how acute the sorrow awakened by a look from Christ. "Peter went
out and wept bitterly." How melting is the look of wounded love! A Father's
eye, beaming with tenderness upon a rebellious, wandering child, inviting,
welcoming his return—what adamant heart can resist it?

Peter's sorrow, too, was solitary. He went out from the high priest's hall, and
sought some lone place to weep. Ah! the deepest, bitterest, truest grief for sin,
is felt and expressed beneath God's eye alone. When the wakeful pillow of
midnight is moistened, when the heart unveils in secret to the eye of Jesus,
when the chamber of privacy witnesses to the confidential confessions, and
moanings, and pleadings of a wandering heart, there is then felt and expressed
a sorrow for sin, so genuine, so delicate, and so touching, as cannot but draw
down upon the soul a look from Christ the most tender in its expression, and
the most forgiving in its language.

And what, my reader, shall be the one practical lesson we draw from this
subject? Even this—Let us always endeavor to realize the loving eye of Jesus
resting upon us. In public and in private, in our temporal and spiritual
callings, in prosperity and in adversity, in all places and on all occasions, and
under all circumstances, O! let us live as beneath its focal power. When our
Lord gave this look to Peter, his eyes were dim with grief; but now that he is
in heaven, they are "as a flame of fire." To his saints not a burning, withering,
consuming flame, but a flame of inextinguishable love! Deem not yourself,
then, secluded believer, a banished and an exiled one, lost to all sight. Other
eyes may be withdrawn and closed, distance intercepting their view, or death
darkening their vision; but the eye of Jesus, your Lord, rests upon you always,
in ineffable delight, and with unslumbering affection. "I will guide you with
my eye," is the gracious promise of your God. Be ever and intently gazing on
that Eye, "looking unto Jesus." He is the Fountain of Light; and in the light
radiating from his eye you shall, in the gloomiest hour of your life, see light
upon your onward way. "By his light I walked through darkness."

"We all, with open face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord."
"Honey in the Wilderness"

"And when the people had come into the wood, behold the honey
dropped…Wherefore he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand, and
dipped it in an honey-comb, and put his hand to his month; and his eyes were
enlightened."—1 Samuel 14:26, 27.

And when the people were come into the wood, behold, the honey dropped;
but no man put his hand to his mouth: for the people feared the oath. But
Jonathan heard not when his father charged the people with the oath:
wherefore he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand, and dipped it
in an honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth; and his eyes were
enlightened.—1 Samuel 14:26-27

When they went into the woods, they saw the honey oozing out, yet no one put
his hand to his mouth, because they feared the oath. But Jonathan had not
heard that his father had bound the people with the oath, so he reached out
the end of the staff that was in his hand and dipped it into the honeycomb. He
raised his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened.—1 Samuel 14:26-27

They didn't even touch the honey because they all feared the oath they had
taken. But Jonathan had not heard his father's command, and he dipped a
stick into a piece of honeycomb and ate the honey. After he had eaten it, he
felt much better.—1 Samuel 14:26-27

The Word of God is rich with the most beautiful and instructive similitude.
We are aware there is a limit to its use, and that if that limit be overstepped,
we may leave the field of a sober reality, for the uncertain and unsafe path of
imagination. Yet, on the other hand, since God has "used similitudes by the
ministry of the prophets," it were folly, no, it were sin to disregard them
altogether as useless aids in illustrating and elucidating divine truth.

The army of the Lord was now faint and weary in the conflict. Saul had rashly
enjoined that no individual should taste of food until the battle had been
fought. Ignorant of the royal command, Jonathan, on coming to a certain
woods, and beholding honey dropping upon the ground, in a moment of
exhaustion, put forth the end of his rod, dipped it in the honey-comb and
partook of it; "and his eyes were enlightened." Now each particular here is
suggestive of some spiritual truth.
Firstly: the Lord's people are often weary and faint in their spiritual conflicts.
It is no ideal picture of the Christian life when the Word of God represents it
in the character of a warfare—it is a solemn and serious truth. To the tactics
of this warfare we do not now refer; our remarks bear particularly upon that
peculiar state which the conflict produces—weariness and exhaustion. It may
be instructive to trace this condition to some of its causes.

Among these may be stated, the nature and the number of HIS SPIRITUAL
FOES. It may be at the risk of damping the ardor of a young recruit, that we
give prominence to this idea, nevertheless, ignorance of our enemies, their
strength and variety, has often led to disastrous consequences. The very field
upon which the battle is fought is one of sore temptation. What is the world to
the believer, but one of his greatest snares? Is there in it anything that
sympathizes with the Christian character? Anything in its pursuits, its
pleasures, its policy, which advances in his soul the divine life? Can he in his
weakness extract from it strength? Can he in his trials derive from it comfort?
Can he in his difficulties ask from it aid? Quite the reverse. Yes, the very
battlefield is one of severe temptation to the Christian warrior. We can only
compare his position to an armed force going out to war, and startled at every
turn by some wild beast rushing from its lair, or periled by some pitfall lying
concealed at every step. This is no over-wrought picture of the world through
which the saints are passing. Things that are lawful, are snares. Things, too,
that wear the most innocent and innocuous form, often conceal the greatest
danger. Yet how little are we broad awake to this. Why does the apostle so
frequently and so earnestly warn the Church of God against the world?
Because he knew it to be one of his most subtle and most dangerous foes. I
believe the day is coming—hasten, Lord, its arrival! when God will so pour
out his Spirit upon his church, that it will be considered then as glaring an
inconsistency for a Christian man to become a partner in business with a
worldly man, as it is now to form an alliance still closer and more sacred with
one who is not a follower of the Lord Jesus. "Don't you know that the
friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore will be a
friend of the world is the enemy of God." "Wherefore come out from among
them, and be separate, says the Lord."

And what shall we say of his great, unseen, but not less dangerous enemy—the
devil? Satan has a more accurate knowledge of us than we have of ourselves.
He studies us as we study a book. Without ascribing to him divine attributes,
there is a kind of ubiquity belonging to him which renders him a most
formidable, because an ever-present foe. Nor do we think that it is in things
decidedly evil that Satan proves most successful with the child of God. It is
oftener in things which wear the appearance and the semblance of good. It is
Satan robed as "an angel of light" not Satan appearing as a fiend of darkness,
that we have most to dread. Hence we have reason to beware of the many
specious, but false religions of the day.

And when with the world and the devil, he numbers among his spiritual foes,
the corruptions of his fallen nature, the subtlety and deep depravity of his own
heart; is it marvellous that the believer should often be dispirited in the
spiritual conflict? "Cast down, but not destroyed."

The DEFEATS too which he is constantly sustaining—the cutting off of

supplies upon which he depended—the seeming withdrawment of the Captain
of his salvation, as if indifferent to the conflict—the rusting of his armor—the
defection in the camp of some, the desertion from the ranks of others, and the
falls upon the battlefield of yet more, often deeply discourage the Christian
soldier. His heart sickens, his spirits droop, his courage fails, and he lays down
upon his shield, as if to die.

But there is HONEY IN THE DESERT for the Christian soldier, "faint yet
pursuing." There is appropriate refreshment for the weariness and
exhaustion of the conflict. The Israelites had been sore pressed by the
Philistines. They had fought hard all that day. The rash injunction of their
royal leader, had greatly aggravated their suffering. They were forbidden to
partake of any nourishment until the evening. Exhausted and faint, weary and
discouraged, they light upon a spot in the forest where honey fell, luxuriant
and inviting, upon the ground. It met the case of the king's son. He partook of
it, and his drooping spirit revived within him.

The Lord of hosts, the Captain of our salvation, has a kind and considerate
regard for his weary and discouraged soldiers. They are fighting in his
cause—they are battling for his truth—they have come to his help against the
mighty, and in the hour when their strength fails, and their spirits droop, and
their hearts faint, he will guide them to the spot in the desert, where the
honey—the nourishment of his providing—is found, and of which they may
eat abundantly.

The similitude of honey is one of frequent occurrence in the Bible. When God
would describe the richness of Palestine, he speaks of it as a "land flowing
with milk and honey." This, too, would appear to have been a provision
especially made by him for the nourishment of his church in the wilderness.
Moses says that the Lord made his people to "suck honey out of the rock, and
oil out of the flinty rock." It is quite clear, then, that we may regard this
species of food as the symbol of great spiritual blessings.

The SOURCES from where the Christian's nourishment is derived are

various. We should be grateful to God that he has not limited us to one
secondary source of spiritual nourishment. It was proper, it was wise and
gracious in God that there should be but one Plant of Renown, but one Rose
of Sharon, but one Lily of the Valley, but one Living Vine; in other words,
that there should be but one Savior and Redeemer, but one Head and
Reservoir of the church. But there are offshoots from this divine plant; there
are streams issuing from this sacred fountain-head, from each of which the
believer in his weariness and sorrowing may, by faith, extract the
nourishment that strengthens and revives him. I would repeat it—be grateful
to God for this. Suppose his people were shut up to but one means of grace—
that means being the Gospel ministry; and suppose he were to assign your lot
where no such channel were accessible—how would it fare with your soul?
But it is not so. Let his Providence guide you to the farthest spot on the
earth—the desert, the forest, the prairie—where no ministry of reconciliation
proclaims the unsearchable riches of Christ, yet, even there, he can guide you
to the spot where falls the honey, abundant as his own affluence, and free as
his own grace can make it.

Such, believer, may be your present condition. The seclusion of a sick

chamber, the solitude of the house of mourning, the deprivation in other ways
of the wonted means of grace, may be to you like an exile from the land of
milk and honey; but the Lord has his heart upon you still, and "he does devise
means, that his banished are not expelled from him." There is honey for you
in the wood.

What is the Word of God but this honey? David's experience shall testify.
"How sweet are your words unto my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my
mouth!" And from where does this honey fall, but from the heart of God?
What is the word of God? It is the unfolding of the heart of God. His mind
conveys the word, but his heart dictates the word. Take the promises: how
"exceeding great and precious" they are. Have you not often found them
sweet to your taste as the honey and the honey-comb? When some portion of
the word suited to your present need has been brought home to your heart by
the sealing power of the Holy Spirit, how have all other sweets become bitter
to your taste compared with this. Your Heavenly Father saw your grief, your
divine Captain beheld your conflict and your exhaustion, and bade his Spirit
go and drop that sweet promise into your sad heart, and you found the
entrance of God's word gave light and comfort to your sad and gloomy spirit.

The love of God in Christ! O it is sweeter than honey! The love that gave
Christ—that chose us in Christ—that has blessed us in Christ—that gives us
standing in Christ; surely it passes all knowledge. To see it traveling over all
the opposition of our unbelieving minds, and the corruption of our depraved
hearts, and meeting us at some peculiar stage of our journey, in some painful
crisis of our history, in some bitter lonely trial through which we are passing;
how does this exalt our views of its greatness, and bring us into the experience
of its sweetness.

Such, too, is the love of the Spirit. His love as tasted in his calling—in his
comforting—in his sanctifying—in his witnessing, and in all his effectual and
unwearied teaching. "God is love"—and on this truth—sweet in our present
experience—we shall be living through eternity: "If so be we have tasted that
the Lord is gracious."

But let us not overlook the honey-comb—the depository of this spiritual

nourishment. "It pleased the Father that in Jesus should all fulness dwell." If
the grace that flows from Jesus is sweet, Jesus himself is sweeter still. Let us
not, then, be satisfied with the fulness of Christ; but let us live on the person of
Christ: "He that eats of my flesh, and drinks of my blood, dwells in me, and I
in him." I fear we have too little contact with Christ himself. We do not
sufficiently make him our personal friend—walking with him, talking with
him, confiding in him as we would with the dearest personal friend of our
hearts. And yet this is our high and precious privilege. "This is my Friend,"
should be the language of every believer, as he points to, and leans upon,
Christ.

The PLACE where this honey—the symbol of such spiritual blessing—was

found, was the "wood." Beloved, the covenant of grace, the fulness that is in
Christ, is not for heaven, but for earth. It is not for the church triumphant,
but for the church militant—the church in her warfare. Here it is the battle is
fought, and the conflict is passing, and the enemy assails, and the wound is
inflicted, and the heart faints, and the spirit is discouraged, and the soul is
weary. This honey of God's providing is for the season of sorrow and
seclusion, for the need and weariness, the entanglement and loneliness of the
forest.

Then, refuse it not, O child of sorrow! Stretch forth your rod of faith, and
gather of it abundantly. "Eat, O friends," is your Lord's invitation. Drink
deeply of your Father's love—draw largely from Christ's fulness—confide
implicitly in God's word—invoke believingly the Spirit's help. All is for you.
God is the God of the tried—Jesus is the Savior of the tried—the Spirit is the
Comforter of the tried—the Bible, with all its consolations and its hopes, is the
Book of the tried. Eat of this honey, and your spirit shall be revived. Your
eyes will be opened to see new depths of love in God, new chambers of repose
in Christ, new promises of sweetness in the Word, and new unfoldings of
wisdom, truth, and goodness in the present conduct of him whose dealings
may be veiled in painful mystery, but who will never forget to lead his valiant
yet exhausted soldier to the honey in the wood.

Nor let us overlook the mingling of the bitter and the sweet in the Lord's
dealings with us here. Like the Apocalyptic book eaten by John, which was in
his "mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as he had eaten, was bitter;" so are
often blended the varied dispensations of our God. It is a most wise and
gracious arrangement. All bitter would have dispirited; all sweet would have
glutted. The one would have created despondency, and the other, loathing.
Thus, our sorrows and our joys, our trials and our succorings, our defeats and
our victories, are strangely, wisely, and kindly blended in this the "time of our
sojourning."

Be skillful and diligent to extract this honey from every, the bitterest flower. O
that God may make us wise to do this. The sweetest apprehensions of Christ
have often been in the bitterest dispensations of God's providence. The stone
that was rolled upon the tomb of Christ was heavy: but Christ was beneath it.
There may be a stone of difficulty in the way of our mercies, but faith rolling
it away, that very difficulty will be found to have brought us to a living Christ
full of sweet grace and truth. And let us remember, too, that it is along the
path of filial and unreserved obedience that this honey is most thickly strewed.
"O that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my
ways!" What would have been their reward? "He would have fed them also
with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should have
satisfied them."

Beware of being so surfeited with the world, with earthly care and carnal
enjoyment as to loathe this honey. "The full soul loathed the honey-comb."
Israel loathed the manna. Learn one reason why God has placed you just
where you are—even to create in your soul a zest and a taste for this honey.
He will embitter the world's sweets, when they embitter his. But Jesus can
make the world's bitter, sweet, and the creature s sweet, sweeter. Receive all
as from Christ, and enjoy all as in Christ, and then shall Christ be to you all
and in all.

Soon we shall be in glory, soon we shall escape from the world, and enter the
paradise of God. There the boughs are laden, and drop with honey that never
wastes, and that never gluts. The weary pilgrim and the veteran warrior shall
repose by the side of the rock from where flowed this precious food all
through the desert, partaking of its fulness, lasting as eternity. You who have
tasted the honey in the wilderness, shall assuredly partake of it in your
Father's house.

"Spent with the toil of wasting war,

His hosts, with him, compelled to fast,
The longing chief of Israel saw
Where nature furnished wild meal.

"The aged terebinth had shed

Its pure and luscious treasure round;
And the rich feast lay duly spread,
Free as the winds along the ground.

"For there, upon the tangled grass,

Dropt the sweet burden of that hive;
Yet, until the dial's shade should pass,
No Hebrew might partake and live.

"The monarch's son, the empire's heir,

The leader in the conflict's van,
The victor—say, what was he there?
A weary, worn and famished man!

"He took and ate—no more oppressed,

From eyes, enlightened, flashed his joy!
O fainting soul! be you as blest
With drops of grace, that never cloy.
"And praise Him who leads sons of care,
Pursued by sin and sore distress—
From famine and from flight, to where
There's honey in the wilderness."
—William B. Tappan

The Godly Widow Confiding in the Widow's God

"Let your widows trust in me."—Jeremiah 49:11.

It is well! All that he does, who speaks these touching words, is well. It is well
with you, for he who gave in love, in love has taken away the mercy that he
gave. The companion of your youth, the friend of your bosom, the treasure of
your heart, the staff of your riper and the solace of your declining years, is
removed, but since God has done it—it is, it must be well.

Look now above the circumstances of your deep and dark sorrow, the second
causes of your bereavement, the probable consequences of your loss—God has
done it; and that very God who has smitten, who has bereaved, and who has
removed your all of earthly good, now invites you to trust in him. 'Chance' has
not brought you into this state; 'accident' has not bereft you of your treasure;
God has made you a widow, that you may confide in the widow's God.

With your peculiar case the word of God in a pre-eminent degree

sympathizes. It would seem, indeed, as if a widow's sorrow and a widow's
desolateness took the precedence of all other bereavements in the Bible. It is
touched with a hand so gentle, it is referred to with a tenderness so exquisite,
it is quoted with a solemnity so profound, it would seem as if God had taken
the widow's sorrow, if I may so express myself, into his heart of hearts. "You
shall not afflict any widow,"—"He does execute the judgment of the
widow,"—"The sheaf in the field shall be for the widow,"—"He relieves the
widow,"—"He will establish the border of the widow,"—"A judge of the
widow is God,"—"Plead for the widow,"—"If you oppress not the widow,"—
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the
widows in their affliction,"—"Let your widows trust in me."

What a cluster of divine and precious consolations for the widow is here! How
do their extraordinary appropriateness to her case, their extreme delicacy in
dealing with her position, their especial regard for her circumstances; above
all, their perfect sympathy with her lonely sorrow, betray the heart from
where they flow!

And who is the object of the widow's trust? "In me," says God. None less than
himself can meet your case. He well considers that there is an acuteness in your
sorrow, a depth in your loss, a loneliness and a helplessness in your position,
which no one can meet but himself. The first, the best, the fondest, the most
protective of creatures has been torn from your heart, is smitten down at your
side; what other creature could now be a substitute? A universe of beings
could not fill the void. God in Christ only can.

O! wonderful thought, that the Divine Being should come and embosom
himself in the bereft and bleeding heart of a human sufferer—that bereft and
bleeding heart of yours! He is especially the God of the widow. And when he
asks your confidence, and invites your trust, and bids you lift your weeping eye
from the crumbled idol at your feet, and fix it upon himself, he offers you an
infinite substitute for a finite loss; thus, as he ever does, giving you infinitely
more than he took; bestowing a richer and a greater blessing than he
removed. He recalled your husband, but he bestows himself!

And O, the magnitude of this trust! It is to have infinite power to protect you,
infinite wisdom to guide you, infinite love to comfort you, infinite faithfulness
at all times to stand by you, and boundless resources to supply your every
need. It is to have the God who made heaven and earth, the God to whom the
spirits of all creatures are subject, the God who gave his dear Son to die for
you, the God of the everlasting covenant to be your shield, your counselor,
your provider, your God forever and ever, and your guide even unto death.

And what are you invited thus to entrust to God? First, your own self. It is one
of the greatest, as it is one of the most solemn peculiarities of the Gospel, that
it deals with us as individuals. It never, in all the commands it enjoins, and in
all the blessings it promises, loses sight of our individuality. This, then, is a
personal confiding. You are to trust yourself into God's hands; God seems
now to stand to you in a new relation. He has always been your Father and
your Friend. To these he now adds the relation of Husband.

Your present circumstances seem to invest you with a new claim, not upon his
love—for he has always loved you, as he loves you now—but upon his especial,
his peculiar, his tender care; the affectionate solicitude of the husband
blending with the tender love of the father. You are to flee to him in your
helplessness, to resort to him in your loneliness, to confide to him your needs,
and to weep your sorrows upon his bosom.

Secondly, your children. "Leave your fatherless children; I will preserve them
alive." A state of half-orphanage is one of peculiar interest to God. A
fatherless child is an object of his especial regard and care. "You are the
helper of the fatherless,"—"A father of the fatherless is God,"—"Enter not
into the field of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is mighty, he will plead
their cause with you." Encouraged by this invitation and this promise, take,
then, your fatherless ones, and lay them on the heart of God! He has removed
their earthly father, that he may adopt them as his own. His promise that he
will "preserve them alive," you are warranted to interpret in its best and
widest sense.

It must be regarded as including, not temporal life only, but also spiritual life.
God never offers us an inferior blessing, when it is in his power to confer, and
our circumstances demand, a greater. He will preserve your fatherless ones
alive temporarily, providing all things necessary for their present existence;
but, infinitely more than this, he will, in answer to the prayer of faith,
preserve their souls unto eternal life. Thus it is a promise of the life that now
is, and also of that which is to come.

Thirdly, your concerns are to be entrusted to God. These, doubtless, press at

this moment with peculiar weight upon your mind. They are new and strange.
They were once cared for by one in whose judgment you had implicit
confidence, whose mind thought for you, whose heart beat for you, whose
hands toiled for you, who in all things sought to anticipate every wish, to
reciprocate every feeling; 'who lessened his cares by your sympathy, and
multiplied his pleasures by your participation;' whose esteem, and affection,
and confidence, shed a warm and mellow light over the path of life. These
interests, once confided to his judgment and control, must now be entrusted to
a wiser and more powerful friend—to him who is truly and emphatically the
widow's God. Transferred to his government, he will make them all his own.
Your care will be his cares; your concerns will be his concern; your children
will be his children; your need the occasion of his supply; and your fears,
perils, and dejection, the period of his soothing, protection, and love.

And just at this period of your life, when every object and every scene appears
to your view trembling with uncertainty and enshrouded with gloom, God—
the widow's God—speaks in language well calculated to awaken in your soul a
song in the night—"LET YOUR WIDOWS TRUST IN ME." O! have faith,
then, in this word of the living God, and all will be well with you. It will be
well with your person, it will be well with your children, it will be well with
your estate. The God who cared for the widow of Zarephath, the Savior who
had compassion on the bereaved widow of Nain, is your God and Savior; and
the same regard for your interests, and the same sympathy for your sorrow,
will lighten your cares and cheer the desolateness of your widowhood.

Only trust in God. Beware of murmuring at his dealings, of doubting his

kindness, of distrusting his word, and of so nursing your grief as to refuse the
consolation your God and Savior offers you. The sweetest joy may yet spring
from your bitter, lonely sorrow; and the richest music may yet awake from
your unstrung and silent harp. If a human power and sympathy could "make
the widow's heart to sing for joy," O! what joy cannot God's power and love
create in that desolate, bleeding, widowed heart of your. Place it, then, all
stricken and lonely as it is, in God's hands; and, breathing over it his loving
Spirit, he will turn its tears, its sighs, its moanings, into the sweetest midnight
harmony!

"Long have I viewed, long have I thought,

And held with trembling hand this bitter draught;
'Twas now first to my lips applied;
Nature shrank in, and all my courage died.
But now resolved and firm I'll be,
Since, Lord, it is mingled and reached out by Thee.

"Since its your sentence I should part

With the most precious treasure of my heart,
I freely that and more resign;
My heart itself, as its delight is Thine.
My little all I give to you;
You gave a greater gift, your Son, to me.

"He left true bliss and joys above,

Himself he emptied of all good but love;
For me he freely did forsake
More good than he from me can take,
A mortal life for a divine
He took, and did at last even that resign.
"Take all, great God! I will not grieve;
But still will wish that I had still to give.
I hear your voice; you bid me quit
My paradise; I bless, and do submit;
I will not murmur at your word,
Nor beg your angel to sheathe up his sword."

LOOKING UNTO JESUS

"Looking unto Jesus"—Hebrews 12:2.

It was no little kindness in our God that as one saving object, and one alone,
was to engage the attention and fix the eye of the soul, through time and
through eternity, that object should be of surpassing excellence and of
peerless beauty. That he should be, not the sweetest seraph nor the loveliest
angel in heaven, but his own Son, the "brightness of his glory, the express
image of his person." God delights in the beautiful; all true beauty emanates
from him. What a beautiful picture was this world as it rose from beneath his
pencil! What a magnificent piece of sculpture was man, as he came forth from
his hands! And despite of the withering blight which has fallen upon all that
was once so perfect, how much beauty still lingers around the works and
creatures of God! "He has made all things beautiful."

To recur to the thought just advanced, how worthy of himself that, in

providing a Savior for fallen man, bidding him fix the eye of faith supremely
and exclusively upon him, that Savior should unite in himself all divine and all
human beauty; that he should be the "chief among ten thousand, the
altogether lovely One." Adore the name, O! praise the love of our God, for
this. To this peerless object, to this glorious Savior, then, we are now invited to
look. And in "looking unto Jesus," let it be remembered that it is not exclusive
of the Father, nor of the Holy Spirit. In looking unto Jesus for salvation, we
include each Divine Person of the glorious Trinity. We cannot look unto Jesus
without seeing the Father, for Christ is the revelation of the Father. "He that
has seen me," says Christ, "has seen the Father." Nor can we contemplate
Jesus exclusive of the Holy Spirit, because it is the Spirit alone who imparts the
spiritual eye that sees Jesus. Thus, in the believing and saving view a poor
sinner has of Jesus, he beholds, in the object of his sight, a revelation of each
separate Person of the ever blessed Trinity, engaged in devising and
accomplishing his eternal salvation.
Oh what a display of infinite love and wisdom is here, that in our salvation
one object should arrest the eye, and that that object should embody an equal
revelation of the Father, who gave Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit of truth, who
leads to Jesus, and that that object should be the loveliest being in the
universe! Looking unto Jesus! most refreshing and sweet are these words!
What an embodiment of truth! How simple, yet how grand! How brief, yet
how expressive! They involve the following points: "Looking unto Jesus,"
from everything; "Looking unto Jesus," in everything; "Looking unto Jesus,"
for everything.

First, "Looking unto Jesus," FROM everything. The eye cannot properly
contemplate two different objects with equal simplicity and distinctness at the
same moment. It is equally contrary to the philosophy of mind, that it can give
its supreme study to more than one subject at a time. This will hold good in
matters of faith. The object of faith is one, the trust of faith is one, the giver of
faith is one, "looking unto Jesus." Now a true spiritual beholding of the Lord
Jesus in the great matter of our eternal salvation, requires that we look away
from every other object that would divide our attention, to him alone.

We must look from ourselves. This is, perhaps, the most common and
insidious object that comes between the eye of the soul and Jesus. When God
was ejected from the heart of man, self vaulted into the vacant throne, and has
ever since maintained a supremacy. It assumed two forms, from both of which
we are to look in looking savingly to Jesus. We must look from righteous self;
from all works of righteousness which we can perform, from our almsgivings,
from our charities, from our religious observances, our fastings, and prayers,
and sacraments; from all the works of the law by which we are seeking to be
justified; from all our efforts to make ourselves better, and thus to do
something to commend ourselves to the Divine notice, and to propitiate the
Divine regard; from all this we must look, if we rightly look unto Jesus to be
saved by his righteousness, and by his alone. The noble language of the apostle
must find an echo in our hearts: "I once thought all these things were so very
important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has
done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting
it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him. I no
longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God's law, but I trust
Christ to save me. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on
faith."
We must equally, too, look unto Jesus from unrighteous self. Our sins and
transgressions and iniquities, red as crimson, countless as the sands, and
towering as the Alps, are not for one moment to intercept or obscure our
looking unto Jesus for salvation. Jesus is a Savior, as his precious name
signifies. As such, he came to save us from our sins, be those sins ever so great
for magnitude, or infinite for number. It is impossible that we can look unto
Jesus, and feel the joy of his salvation flowing into our hearts, while at the
same time we are looking at the number and the turpitude of our sins. We
must not look at the sin and at the Savior at the same time; but beholding by
faith him who "bore our sins in his own body on the tree," who was "made a
sin-offering for us," who was "wounded for our transgressions, and was
bruised for our iniquities," who shed his precious blood that the guiltiest may
be cleansed, and the vilest saved, and between whom and the penitent sinner,
though he were another Manasseh, another Saul of Tarsus, another dying
malefactor, no transgression and no crime can interpose an effectual barrier,
we shall see the exceeding greatness and sinfulness of sin in a clearer, and
more searching and solemn light, than we possibly could viewing it apart from
the cross.

Look unto Jesus, then, from your sins; their magnitude and their number
interpose no difficulty, and from no real discouragement to your immediate
approach to Christ. No argument based upon your unworthiness can avail to
exclude you from an interest in his great salvation. He came into the world to
save sinners, even the chief. All that he did, and all that he said, and all that he
suffered, was for sinners. It is his work, it is his joy, it is his glory to save
sinners. For this he exchanged heaven for earth, relinquished the bosom of his
Father for the embrace of the cross. He was never known to reject a poor
sinner that came to him; he has never refused to take within his sheltering
side, to hide within his bleeding bosom, the penitent that sought its protection,
fleeing from the condemnation of the law to the asylum of the cross.
"Whoever comes unto me I will in no wise cast out." With such a declaration
as this, flowing from the lips of Jesus, who can refuse to look from the
greatness of his own sin and guilt to the greatness of his love, the greatness of
his grace, the greatness of his salvation, "who came into the world to save
sinners?"

In "looking unto Jesus," we must also look from churches, as from ourselves.
God has placed salvation for a lost sinner in no church upon earth. He has
ordained that salvation should exist only in the Lord Jesus. To substitute,
then, the church of God for the Christ of God, faith in the church for faith in
the Savior of the church, surely were a crime of the deepest guilt, entailing
consequences the most dire. The church of God is herself a fallen, sinful, and
impotent body. She is pardoned, justified, and accepted alone in her one
divine and great Head; and "there is no other name given among men
whereby they may be saved," but the name of Jesus. He, then, who is looking
to any church, or to church privileges, for salvation, whatever the name by
which that church is called, whatever the power it claims, or the authority it
assumes, shall as assuredly perish in his vain refuge as Joab perished when he
fled from the vengeance of the king, into the "tabernacle of the Lord, and
caught hold of the horns of the altar," but fell beneath its sacred shadow,
weltering in his blood. Escape, then, from every other refuge, and flee to
Jesus, the true Sanctuary and the true Altar, where safety and salvation alone
are found.

Second, "Looking unto Jesus," IN everything. In the deep study of the

holiness of the law, and the strictness of Divine justice, what a suitable and
glorious object for the alarmed and trembling spirit to look upon is he who
came to honor that law and to satisfy that justice. Are you agitated by
thoughts of the Divine holiness, and your own impurity? Do you tremble as
you contemplate God's determination to punish sin, by no means clearing the
guilty? Look unto Jesus, and let your trembling subside into the calmness with
which his whisper stills the tempest. He has become "the end of the law for
righteousness," to all that believe. His atonement, while it vindicates the
majesty of the Father's government, spreads its mighty shield around the
Father's child; and thus protected, neither the thunder of the law nor the
flaming sword of justice can reach him. Oh the blessedness of looking, by
faith, to Jesus, from the wrath and the condemnation justly due to our
transgressions; to see all that wrath and condemnation borne by him who
wept and bled in the garden, who languished and died upon the tree; to see
Jesus, with the keys of all authority and power suspended from his girdle,
closing up our hell, and opening wide our heaven! In the season of solitude
and sorrow, Christian reader, when thoughts of God's holiness mingle with
views of your sinfulness, and fears of Divine wrath blend with the
consciousness of your just deserts, darkening that solitude and embittering
that sorrow, O! turn and fix your believing eye upon the Divine, the suffering,
the atoning Savior, and peace, composure, and joy will lull your trembling
spirit to rest.

You are not sick, nor in solitude, nor in sorrow, because there is wrath in God,
for all that wrath was borne by your Redeeming Surety. You are so—oh that
you could believe it—because God is love. Divine goodness sent the sickness,
mingled the cup of sorrow, and marked out your lonely path. It must be, since
Jesus so bore away the curse and the sin, that God now brims the cup he
emptied with the love that passes knowledge. "My son, despise not the
chastening of the Lord, neither be you weary of his correction: for whom the
Lord loves he corrects, even as a father the son in whom he delights." Your
heavenly Father loves you, and delights in you; therefore he chastens and
corrects you. "Despise" it not, then, on the one hand; and do not be "weary"
of it on the other.

In every position of life, our privilege is to be "looking unto Jesus." God can
place us in no circumstances, be they humble or exalted, in which we may not
repair to Christ for the wisdom and the strength, the grace and the
consolation, those circumstances demand. It is our mercy to know that God
adapts himself to every position of his saints. He knows that in times of
prosperity, the feet of his saints are apt to slide; and that in times of adversity,
they are often pierced and wounded. Thus, in the smooth path, as in the
rough, Jesus is to be the one object to which the eye is raised, and upon which
it rests. If he exalts you, as he may do, to any post of distinction and
responsibility, look unto Jesus, and study the self-annihilation and lowliness of
his whole life; and seek the grace to sustain you in the position for which your
own powers are most inadequate. If he lays you low, as in his dealings with his
people he often does, from the depth of your humiliation let your eye look
unto Jesus, who reached a depth in his abasement infinitely beneath your
own; and who can descend to your circumstances, and impart the grace that
will enable you so to adapt yourself to them as to glorify him in them. Thus
you will know both how to abound, and how to suffer need.

In each season of affliction, to whom can we more appropriately look than to

Jesus? He was pre-eminently the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. If
you would tell your grief to one who knew grief as none never knew it; if you
would weep upon the bosom of one who wept as none ever wept; if you would
disclose your sorrow to one who sorrowed as none ever sorrowed; if you
would bare your wound to one who was wounded as none ever was wounded;
then in your affliction turn from all creature sympathy and support, and look
to Jesus; to a kinder nature, to a tenderer bosom, to a deeper love, to a more
powerful arm, to a more sympathizing friend, you could not take your trial,
your affliction, and your sorrow. He is prepared to embosom himself in your
deepest grief, and to make your circumstances all his own. So completely and
personally is he one with you, that nothing can affect you that does not
instantly touch him.

Your temptations from Satan, your persecutions from man, the woundings of
saints, and the smitings of the watchmen, all fall upon him. "The reproaches
of those who reproached you fall on me." Tender to him are you as the apple
of his eye. Your happiness, your reputation, your usefulness, your labors, your
necessities, your discouragements, your despondencies, all pass beneath his
unslumbering notice, and are the objects of his tenderest love and incessant
care. If Jesus, then, is willing to come and make, as it were, his home in the
very heart of your sorrow, surely you will not hesitate in repairing with your
sorrow to his heart of love.

And when heart and flesh are fast failing, and the trembling feet descend into
the dark valley of the shadow of death, to whom shall we then look, but unto
Jesus? The world is now receding and all creatures are fading upon the sight;
one object alone remains, arrests, and fixes the believer's eye, it is Jesus, the
Savior; it is Immanuel, the incarnate and now present God; it is the Captain
of our salvation, the conqueror of death, and the spoiler of the grave; it is our
Friend, our Brother, our Joseph, our Joshua, loving, and faithful, and present
to the last. Jesus is there to confront death again, and vanquish him with his
own weapons. Jesus is there to remind his departing one, that the grave can
wear no gloom and can boast of no victory, since he himself passed through its
portal, rose and revived and lives for evermore.

Sick one! in your languishing, look to Jesus! Departing one! in your death
struggles, look to Jesus. Are you guilty? Jesus is righteous. Are you a sinner?
Jesus is a Savior. Are you fearful, and do you tremble? The Shepherd of the
flock is with you, and no one shall pluck his sheep out of his hands. How fully,
how suitably does the gospel now meet your case! In your bodily weakness
and mental confusion, two truths are, perhaps, all that you can now dwell
upon,—your sinfulness and Christ's redemption, your emptiness and Christ's
sufficiency. Enough! you need no more; God requires no more. In your felt
weakness, in your conscious unworthiness, midst the swelling of the cold
waters, raise your eye and fix it upon Jesus, and all will be well. Do you hear
not the words of your Savior calling you from the bright world of glory to
which he bids you come,—"Arise, my love, my fair one! and come away." Let
your trusting, joyful heart respond,

Jesus! my breath is failing; lead me on

Softly and gently, as my strength can bear;
Draw me to you in closer union,
And for eternal life your child prepare.
Let your love shine upon my soul, and chase
This mistiness and darkness quite away,
Until faith discerns her holy resting-place
Distinctly, in the perfect light of day.
Roll me in snowy clothing; store my heart
With precious jewels from your treasury.
This world is not my rest; let me depart,
And let my ransomed soul return to thee.
Well may I trust you, who yourself have given
To gain for me the peace and bliss of heaven.

Third, "Looking unto Jesus," for everything. A few words must express all
that we would say upon this view of our subject. God has but one Treasurer,
and the church but one Treasury, the Lord Jesus. He has deposited all fullness
exclusively in Christ, that we might, in all need, repair only to Christ.
"Looking unto Jesus," for our standing before God; "Looking unto Jesus,"
for the grace that upholds and preserves us unto eternal life; "Looking unto
Jesus," for the supply of the Spirit that sanctifies the heart, and fits us for the
heavenly glory; "Looking unto Jesus," for each day's need, for each moment's
support; "Looking unto Jesus," for the eye that sees him, the faith that
beholds the invisible; in a word, "Looking unto Jesus," for EVERYTHING.
Thus has God simplified our life of faith in his dear Son. Severing us from all
other sources, alluring us away from all other dependencies, and weaning us
from all self-confidence, he would shut us up to Christ alone, that Christ might
be all and in all. "They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and shall
mourn." "Look unto me, all you ends of the earth, and be you saved, for I am
God, and there is none else."

"For the weakness of faith's eye" remember that Christ has suitably
provided. His care of, and his tenderness towards, those whose grace is
limited, whose experience is feeble, whose knowledge is defective, whose faith
is small, are exquisite. He has promised to "anoint the eye with eye-salve that
it may see," and that is may see more clearly. Repair to him, then, with your
case, and seek the fresh application of this Divine ointment. Be cautious of
limiting the reality of your sight to the nearness or distinctness of the object.
The most distant and dim view of Jesus by faith, is as real and saving as if that
view were with the strength of an eagle's eye.
A well-known example in Jewish history affords an pertinent illustration: the
wounded Israelite was simply commanded to look to the brazen serpent.
Nothing was said of the clearness of his vision or the distinctness of his view;
no exception was made to the dimness of his sight. His eye might possibly be
blurred, the phantoms of a diseased imagination might float before it,
intercepting his view; no, more, it might already be glazing and fixing in
death? Yet, even under these circumstances, and at that moment, if he but
obeyed the Divine command, and looked towards, simply towards, the elevated
serpent, distant and beclouded as it was, he was immediately and effectually
healed. Thus is it with the operation of faith. Let your eye, in obedience to the
gospel's command, be but simply raised and fastened upon Jesus, far removed
as may be the glorious object, and dim as may be the blessed vision, yet thus
"looking unto Jesus," you shall be fully and eternally saved. And soon—oh
how soon!—we shall see him unveiled, unclouded in glory. Until then, let us
run the race set before us; looking unto Jesus as the goal which we shall soon
reach, and as the prize which we shall forever possess.

Wherefore droops your trembling soul?

Wherefore saddened is your brow?
Clouds around your path may roll,
But your God is present now;
Raise your eyes, the cross is there,
Steadfast still, though tempest frown;
Lift your head and breathe your prayer,
Claim your Savior for your own:
Make through him your strong appeal,
'Looking unto Jesus,' kneel.

He, the Author of the faith

Which your spirit shall renew,
In his sacred hour of death
Finished your salvation too;
Learn your Savior's power to see,
He the 'life, the truth, the way,'
Interceded e'en for thee
Before your heart had learned to pray.
Lift your heart, and lift your hand,
'Looking unto Jesus,' stand.
When the water-floods of grief,
Round your helpless head shall rise,
When there seems no relief,
Look towards the eternal skies.
There behold how radiantly
Beams the star of faith divine;
Yesterday it shone for you,
And today it still shall shine.
Ask no aid the world can give,
'Looking unto Jesus,' live.

When you feel by many a token

That the flesh shall soon decay,
And the golden bowl be broken,
And the silver cord give way;
There beyond the darksome veil,
Trust that he your eyes shall bless;
As the light of life shall fail,
Keep the Sun of Righteousness
Ever brightening in your eye,
And 'looking unto Jesus,' die!

"Leaning on the Beloved"

"Who is this that comes up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?"
Song of Solomon 8:3.

The path of the believer is an ascent, from a dark path and desolate world
under the dominion of sin and Satan, to a bright and glorious world, where
God and holiness supremely and eternally reign. The first step, which he takes
in this heavenly journey, is out of the wilderness of a wrecked and ruined
nature, into the glories of a nature new and divine. Until this is done, there
cannot possibly be any right direction or real progress of the soul towards
heaven. Years may be exhausted in the rigid performance of religious duties—
sacraments, fasts, charities, pilgrimages—but they count with God for
nothing; they but fetter and impede, rather than free and propel the spirit in
its holy and heavenly course. All these self-endeavors must cease; all these
human doings must be abandoned.
Conversion, the conversion of which Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, is the
severance of the sinner from himself, his divorcement from his wedded
attachment to a broken law of Works, a legal righteousness, and his simple
escape to the refuge set before him in the Gospel. There is no turning of the
face to the Savior, until there is a turning of the back upon self! No man is in
Christ, savingly and sensibly, until he is out of himself, legally and
meritoriously. No man will enfold himself with the righteousness which is of
God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, until, seeing the utter worthlessness of
his own righteousness, he renounces it at once and forever. This single step
taken, it becomes the first of a series, each one constituting a daily coming up
out of self, conducting the believer nearer and nearer to perfect and endless
glory.

That the Christian's path should wind its way along an ascent, sometimes
steep and perilous, always difficult and toilsome, should awaken no surprise
and create no murmur. There is ever this great encouragement, this light
upon his way, that it is a heaven-pointing, a heaven-conducting, a heaven-
terminating path; and before long the weary pilgrim will reach its sunlit
summit; not to lie down and die there, as Moses did upon the top of Pisgah,
but to commence a life of perfect purity and of eternal bliss!

Turn your eye, dear reader, and rest it for a moment upon the beautiful
picture, which Solomon presents, to your view in his inspired song. To what is
the world compared? a wilderness. What object is seen in this wilderness? the
church of God. What is she doing? she is coming up from the wilderness.
What company is she in? the company of her Beloved. By what is she
strengthened and upheld in her journey? she is leaning upon her Beloved.
And what does the sacred painter describe as the effect of this spectacle? it
excites the admiration and astonishment of all who behold it, and they
exclaim:—"Who is this that comes up from the wilderness leaning upon the
Beloved?" To one feature of this graphic description of the Church of God, let
us turn our attention, namely, the posture of the believer in his ascent from
the wilderness—leaning upon Jesus.

The object of the believer's trust is Jesus, his Beloved. He is spoken of by the
apostle as "the Beloved," as though he would say, "There is but one beloved
of God, of angels, of saints—it is Jesus." He is the beloved One of the Father.
"Behold my servant, whom I uphold; my elect one, in whom my soul
delights." "The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father."
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." If Jesus is thus so dear
to the Father, what then must be the turpitude of the sin of rejecting him!—a
sin, let it be remembered, of which even Satan cannot be guilty. Yes; Jesus is
the beloved of God; and therefore, coming to God through him, it is
impossible that a believing soul can be rejected.

But he is also the church's beloved, the beloved of each member of that
church. Thus can each one exclaim, "This is my beloved, and this is my friend.
He is ten thousand times more glorious to my view and precious to my soul,
because he is mine. His person is beloved, uniting all the glories of the
Godhead with all the perfections of the manhood. His work is beloved, saving
his people from the entire guilt, and condemnation, and dominion of their
sins. His commandments are beloved, because they are the dictates of his love
to us, and the tests of our love to him."

O, yes! you have but one beloved of your heart, dear believer. He is "white
and ruddy, the chief among ten thousand;" he is all the universe to you!
Heaven would be no heaven without him; and with his presence here, earth
seems often like the opening portal of heaven. He loved you, he labored for
you, he died for you, he rose for you, he lives and intercedes for you in glory;
and all that is lovely in him, and all that is grateful in you, constrain you to
exclaim—"I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine."

Such is the company in which the believer is journeying through, and coming
up from, the wilderness. Was ever a poor pilgrim more honored? Was ever a
lonely traveler in better company? How can you be solitary or sorrowful, be
in peril or suffer need, while you are journeying homewards in company with,
and leaning upon, Jesus?

But for what are you to lean upon your Beloved? You are to lean upon Jesus
for your entire salvation. He is "made of God unto you wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption;" and for each one of these inestimable
blessings, you are to depend daily upon Christ. Where can you lean for
pardon but upon the atoning blood of Jesus? Where can you lean for
acceptance, but upon the justifying righteousness of Jesus? And where can
you lean for sanctification, but upon the sin-subduing grace of Jesus?

This leaning upon the Beloved, then, is a daily coming up out of ourselves in
the great matter of our salvation, and resting in the finished work of Christ,
no more, in Christ himself. We are to lean upon Jesus for a constant sense of
pardon; to be coming perpetually to the blood of sprinkling, thus preserving
the conscience clean and tender, and maintaining a filial, loving, and close
walk with God.

You are to lean upon the fulness of your Beloved. He is full to a sufficiency for
all the needs of his people. There cannot possibly occur a circumstance in your
history, there cannot arise a necessity in your case, in which you may not
repair to the infinite fullness which the Father has laid up in Christ for his
church in the wilderness. Why, then, do you seek in your poverty, what can
only be found in Christ's riches? why look to your emptiness, when you may
repair to his fulness? "My grace is sufficient for you," is the cheering
declaration with which Jesus meets every turn in your path, every crook in
your lot, every need in your journey. Distrust, then, your own wisdom, look
from your own self, and lean your entire weight upon the infinite fullness that
is in Christ!

The posture is expressive of conscious weakness, and deep self-distrust. Who

is more feeble than a child of God? Taught the lesson of his weakness in the
region of his own heart, and still learning it in his stumblings and falls, and
mistakes many and painful, in his self-inflicted wounds and dislocations, he is
at length brought to feel that all his strength is out of himself, in another. He
has the "sentence of death in himself, that he should not trust in himself." "I
am weak, yes, weakness itself," is his language, "I am as a bruised reed,
shaken in the wind; I stumble at a feather; I tremble at an echo; I frighten at
my own shadow; the smallest difficulty impedes me; the least temptation
overcomes me. How shall I ever fight my way through this mighty host, and
reach in safety the world of bliss?"

By leaning daily, hourly, moment by moment, upon your Beloved for

strength! Christ is the power of God, and he is the power of the children of
God. Who can strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees but
Jesus? "In those who have no might, he increases strength." When they are
weak in themselves, then are they strong in him. His declaration is—"My
strength is made perfect in weakness." It is illustrated, it shines forth, and is
exhibited in its perfection and glory in upholding, keeping, and succoring the
weak of his flock. Lean, then, upon Jesus for strength. He has strength for all
your weakness; he can strengthen your faith, and strengthen your hope, and
strengthen your courage, and strengthen your patience, and strengthen your
heart, for every burden, and for every trial, and for every temptation.

Lean upon him; he loves to feel the pressure of your arm; he loves you to link
your feebleness to his almightiness, to avail yourself of his grace. Thus leaning
off yourself upon Christ, "as your day so shall your strength be." In all your
tremblings and sinkings, you will feel the encircling of his power. "The eternal
God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."

And where would you lean in sorrow but upon the bosom of your Beloved? If
you lean upon his arm for support, it is equally your privilege to lean upon his
heart for sympathy. Christ is as much your consolation, as he is your strength.
His heart is a human heart, a sinless heart, a tender heart, a heart once the
home of sorrow, once stricken with grief, once an aching, bleeding, mournful
heart.

Thus disciplined and trained, Jesus knows how to pity and to succor those
who are sorrowful and solitary. He loves to chase grief from the spirit, to bind
up the broken heart, to staunch the bleeding wound, and to dry the weeping
eye, to "comfort all that mourn." It is his delight to visit you in the dark night-
season of your sorrow, and to come to you walking upon the tempestuous
billows of your grief, breathing music and diffusing calmness over your scene
of sadness and gloom. When other bosoms are closed to your sorrow, or are
removed beyond your reach, or their deep throbbings of love are stilled in
death,—when the fiery darts of Satan fly thick around you, and the world
frowns, and the saints are cold, and your path is sad and desolate, and all
stand aloof from your sore,—then lean upon the love, lean upon the grace,
lean upon the faithfulness, lean upon the tender sympathy of Jesus.

That bosom will always unveil to welcome you. It will ever be an asylum to
receive you, and a home to shelter you. Never will its love cool, nor its
tenderness lessen, nor its sympathy be exhausted, nor its pulse of affection
cease to beat! You may have grieved it a thousand times over, you may have
pierced it through and through, again and again,—yet, returning to its
deathless love, penitent and lowly, sorrowful and humble, you may lay within
it your weeping, aching, languid head, depositing every burden, reposing
every sorrow and breathing every sigh upon the heart of Jesus. Lord! to
whom shall I go? yes, to whom would I go, but unto you!

This posture of faith is equally expressive of the advancement of the soul. The
church was seen leaning, but not stationary. She was strengthened and upheld
of her Lord, but she was going forward. She was leaning and walking, walking
and leaning. The power she was deriving from Christ stimulated her greater
progress. She gathered strength from her close dealing with her Lord, only to
employ that strength in urging her upward, heavenward, homeward way. It
was not the posture of indolence, in which individual responsibility was lost
sight of in conscious weakness, and weakness was made an excuse for
slothfulness and drowsiness of spirit. We lean truly upon Jesus that we may
advance in all holiness, that the grace of the Spirit may be quickened and
stimulated, that we may cultivate more heavenly mindedness, and be
constantly coming up from the world, following him outside the camp, bearing
his reproach.

O! what encouragement have we here to cultivate heavenly mindedness, since

for the task, so difficult, yet so pleasing, we may lean upon the all-sufficiency
of our Lord's grace. Let our movement, then, be an advance; let our path be
upward; let us gather around us the trailing garment, casting away whatever
impedes rather than accelerates our progress; and leaning upon our Beloved,
hasten from all below, until we find ourselves actually reposing in the bosom
upon which, in faith and love, in weakness and sorrow, we had rested amid
the trials and perils of the ascent.

What more appropriate, what more soothing truth could we bring before you,
suffering Christian, than this? You are sick,—lean upon Jesus. His sick ones
are peculiarly dear to his heart. You are dear to him. In all your pains and
languishings, faintings and lassitude, Jesus is with you; for he created that
frame, he remembers that it is but dust, and he bids you lean upon him, and
leave your sickness and its issue entirely in his hands.

You are oppressed,—lean upon Jesus. He will undertake your cause, and
committing it thus into his hands, he will bring forth your righteousness as the
light, and your judgment as the noonday.

You are lonely,—lean upon Jesus. Sweet will be the communion, and close the
fellowship which you may thus hold with him, your heart burning within you
while he talks with you by the way.

Is the ascent steep and difficult? lean upon your Beloved. Is the path straight
and narrow? lean upon your Beloved. Do intricacies, and perplexities, and
trials weave a webbing around your feet? lean upon your Beloved. Has death
smitten down the strong arm, and chilled the tender heart, upon which you
were wont to recline? lean upon your Beloved. O! lean upon Jesus in every
difficulty, in every need, in every sorrow, in every temptation. Nothing is too
insignificant, nothing too lowly to take to Christ.
It is enough that you need Christ to warrant you in coming to Christ. No
excuse need you make for repairing to him; no apology will he require for the
frequency of your approach. He loves to have you quite near to him, to hear
your voice, and to feel the confidence of your faith, and the pressure of your
love! Ever remember that there is a place in the heart of Christ sacred to you,
and which no one can fill but yourself, and from which none may dare exclude
you.

And when you are dying, O! lay your languishing head upon the bosom of
your Beloved, and fear not the foe and dread not the passage, for His rod and
staff they will comfort you. On that bosom, the beloved disciple leaned at
supper; on that bosom the martyr Stephen laid his bleeding brow in death;
and on that bosom, you, too, beloved, may repose, living or dying, soothed,
succored, and sheltered by your Savior and your Lord!

"Jesus can make a dying bed

Feel soft as downy pillows are,
While on his breast I lean my head,
And breathe my soul out sweetly there."

Thus leaning ever on Jesus, how sweet will be your song in the night of your
pilgrimage. "Blessed be the Lord, because he has heard the voice of my
supplications. The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in
him, and I am helped! therefore my heart greatly rejoiced, and with my song
will I praise him."

"Holy Savior, friend unseen,

Since on your arm you bid me lean,
Help me throughout life's varying scene,
By faith to cling to you!

"Blest with this fellowship divine,

Take what you will, I'll never repine;
E'en as the branches to the vine,
My soul would cling to you.

"Far from her home, fatigued, oppressed,

My soul has found her place of rest;
An exile still, yet not unblest
While she can cling to you.

"Without a murmur, I dismiss

My former dreams of earthly bliss;
My joy, my consolation, this—
Each hour to cling to you.

"What though the world deceitful prove,

And earthly friends and joys remove;
With patient, uncomplaining love,
Still would, I cling to you.

"Often when I seem to alone tread

Some barren waste with thorns overgrown,
Your voice of love, in tenderest tone,
Whispers, "Still cling to me."

"Though faith and hope awhile be tried,

I ask not, need not, anything beside;
How safe, how calm, how satisfied,
The soul that clings to you.

"They fear not Satan, or the grave,

They feel you near, and strong to save,
Nor fear to cross even Jordan's wave,
Because they cling to you.

"Blest is my lot, whatever befall;

What can disturb me, what appall,
While as my rock, my strength, my all,
Jesus! I cling to you!"

"The Weaned Child"

"Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his
mother: my soul is even as a weaned child"—Psalm 131:2.

There are few lessons taught in God's school more difficult to learn, and yet,
when really learned, more blessed and holy, than the lesson of weanedness.
The heart resembles the vine, which as it grows, grasps and unites its feeble
tendrils to every support within its reach. Or, it is like the ivy, which climbs
and wraps itself around some beautiful but decayed and crumbling ruin. As
our social affections develop and expand, they naturally seek a resting-place.
Traveling, as it were, beyond themselves, breathing love and yearning for
friendship, they go forth seeking some kindred spirit, some "second self,"
upon which they may repose, and around which they may entwine. To detach
from this inordinate, idolatrous clinging to the animate and the inanimate
creatures and objects of sense, is one grand end of God's disciplinary dealings
with us in the present life. The discovery which we make, in the process of his
dealings, of the insufficiency and insecurity of the things upon which we set
our affections, is often acutely painful. Like that vine, we find that we grasped
a support at the root of which the cankerworm was secretly feeding,—and
presently it fell! Or, like that ivy, we discover that we have been spreading our
affections around an object which, even while we clung to and adored it, was
crumbling and falling into dust,—and presently it became a ruin! And what is
the grand lesson which, by this process, God would teach us? The lesson of
weanedness from all and everything of an earthly and a created nature. Thus
was David instructed, and this was the result: "Surely I have behaved and
quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a
weaned child." It may be profitable, tried and suffering reader, briefly to
contemplate this holy state, and then the way by which the Lord frequently
brings his people into its experience.

Every true believer, whatever may be the degree of his grace, is an adopted
child of God. It is not the amount of his faith, nor the closeness of his
resemblance to the family, that constitutes his relationship; it is the act of
adoption by which his heavenly Father has made him his own. If he can only
lisp his Father's name, or bears but a single feature of likeness to the Divine
image, he is as much and as really a child of God as those in whose souls the
lineaments are deeply and broadly drawn, and who, with an unfaltering faith,
can cry, "Abba, Father!" Doubtless there were many of feeble faith, of limited
experience and of defective knowledge—mere babes in Christ—in the church
to which the apostle inscribed his letter; and yet, addressing them all, he says,
"Behold, what manner of love that we should be called the sons of God." But
it is the character of the weaned child we are now to contemplate. All believers
are children, but are all believers weaned children? From what is the child of
God thus weaned?

The first object from which our heavenly Father weans his child, is—himself.
Of all idols, this he finds the hardest to abandon. When man in paradise
aspired to be as God, God was dethroned from his soul, and the creature
became as a deity to itself. From that moment, the idolatry of self has been the
great and universal crime of our race, and will continue to be until Christ
comes to restore all things. In the soul of the regenerate, divine grace has done
much to dethrone this idol, and to reinstate God. The work, however, is but
partially accomplished. The dishonored and rejected rival is loath to
relinquish his throne, and yield to the supreme control and sway of another.
There is much yet to be achieved before this still indwelling and unconquered
foe lays down his weapons in entire subjection to the will and the authority of
that Savior whose throne and rights he has usurped. Thus, much still lingers
in the heart which the Spirit has renewed and inhabits, of self-esteem, self-
confidence, self-seeking, and self-love. From all this, our Father seeks to wean
us. From our own wisdom, which is but folly; from our own strength, which is
but weakness; from our own wills, which are often as an uncurbed steed; from
our own ways, which are crooked; from our own hearts, which are deceitful;
from our own judgments, which are dark; from our own ends, which are
narrow and selfish, he would wean and detach us, that our souls may get more
and more back to their original center of repose—God himself. In view of this
mournful exhibition of fallen and corrupt self, how necessary the discipline of
our heavenly Father that extorts from us the Psalmist's language: "Surely I
have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother." Self
did seem to be our mother—the fruitful parent of so much in our plans and
aims and spirit that was dishonoring to our God. From this he would gently
and tenderly, but effectually, wean us, that we may learn to rely upon his
wisdom, to repose in his strength, to consult his honor, and to seek his glory
and smile supremely and alone. And O how effectually is this blessed state
attained when God, by setting us aside in the season of solitude and sorrow,
teaches us that he can do without us. We, perhaps, thought that our rank, or
our talents, or our influence, or our very presence were essential to the
advancement of his cause, and that some parts of it could not proceed without
us! The Lord knew otherwise. And so he laid his hand upon us, and withdrew
us from the scene of our labors, and duties, and engagements, and ambition,
that he might hide pride from our hearts—the pride of self-importance. And
O, is it no mighty attainment in the Christian life to be thus weaned from
ourselves? Beloved, it forms the root of all other blessings. The moment we
learn to cease from ourselves—from our own wisdom, and power, and
importance—the Lord appears and takes us up. Then his wisdom is displayed,
and his power is put forth, and his glory is developed, and his great name gets
to itself all the praise. It was not until God had placed Moses in the cleft of the
rock that his glory passed by. Moses must be hid, that God might be all.

Our heavenly Father would also wean us from this poor, perishing world. In a
preceding chapter we touched upon the great snare which the world presented
to the child of God. It is true Christ has taken him out of, and separated him
from, the world; assailed by all its evils, and exposed to all its corrupting
influences. The intercessory prayer of our Lord seems to imply this: "They
are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that you should
take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil." And
O what an evil does the Christian find this world to be! In consequence of the
earthward tendency of his affections, and the deep carnality with which the
mind is imbued, things which God designed as blessings to soothe and soften
and cheer, become, by their absorbing and idolatrous influence, powerful
snares. Rank is a snare, wealth is a snare, talent is a snare, friendship is a
snare. Rank may foster pride and ambition; wealth may increase the thirst for
worldly show; talent may inspire a love of human applause; and friendship
may wean the heart from Christ, and betray us into a base and unholy
compromise of Christian profession. Now from this endangering world our
heavenly Father would shield, by withdrawing us. It is not our rest, and he
agitates it; it is not our portion, and he embitters it; it is not our friend, and he
sometimes arms it with a sword. It changes, it disappoints, it wounds; and
then, thankful to expand our wings, we take another and a bolder flight above
it. Ah! beloved, how truly may the Lord be now sickening your heart to the
world, to which that heart has too long and too closely clung. It has been your
peculiar snare; your Father saw it, and wisely and graciously laid his loving,
gentle hand upon you, and led you away from it, that from a bed of sickness,
or from a chamber of grief, or from some position of painful vicissitude, you
might see its sinfulness, learn its hollowness, and return as a wanderer to your
Father's bosom, exclaiming with David, "My soul is even as a weaned child."

This weanedness, of which we speak, often involves the surrender of some

endeared object of creature affection. The human heart is naturally
idolatrous. Its affections, as we have previously remarked, once supremely
centered in God. But now, disjoined from him, they go in quest of other
objects of attachment, and we love and worship the creature rather than the
Creator. The circle which our affections traverse may not indeed be a large
one; there are perchance but few to whom we fully surrender our heart; no, so
circumscribed may the circle be, that one object alone shall attract, absorb,
and concentrate in itself our entire and undivided love—that one object to us
as a universe of beings, and all others comparatively indifferent and insipid.
Who cannot see that in a case like this, the danger is imminent of
transforming the heart—Christ's own sanctuary—into an idol's temple, where
the creature is loved and reverenced and served lucre than he who gave it?
But from all idolatry our God will cleanse us, and from all our idols Christ
will wean us. The Lord is jealous, with a holy jealousy, of our love. Poor as
our affection is, he asks its supreme surrender. That he requires our love at
the expense of all creature attachment, the Bible nowhere intimates. He
created our affections, and he it is who provides for their proper and pleasant
indulgence. There is not a single precept or command in the Scriptures that
forbids their exercise, or that discourages their intensity. Husbands are
exhorted to "love their wives, even as Christ loved his church." Parents are to
cherish a like affection towards their children, and children are bound to
render back a filial love not less intense to their parents. And we are to "love
our neighbors as ourselves." Nor does the word of God furnish examples of
Christian friendship less interested and devoted. One of the choicest and
tenderest blessings with which God can enrich us, next to himself, is such a
friend as Paul had in Epaphroditus, a "brother and companion in labor, and
fellow-soldier;" and such an affectionate friendship as John, the loving
disciple, cherished for his well beloved Gaius, whom he loved in the truth, and
to whom, in the season of his sickness, he thus touchingly poured out his
heart's affectionate sympathy: "Beloved I wish above all things that you may
prosper and he in health, even as your soul prospers." Count such a friend,
and such friendship among God's sweetest and holiest bestowments. The
blessings of which it may be to you the sanctifying channel, are immense. The
tender sympathy—the jealous watchfulness—the confidential repose—the
faithful admonition—above all, the intercessory prayer, connected with
Christian friendship, may be placed in the inventory of our most inestimable
and precious blessings. It is not therefore the use, but the abuse, of our
affections—not their legitimate exercise, but their idolatrous tendency—over
which we have need to exercise the greatest vigilance. It is not our love to the
creature against which God contends, but it is in not allowing our love to
himself to subordinate all other love. We may love the creature, but we may
not love the creature more than the Creator. When the Giver is lost sight of
and forgotten in the gift, then comes the painful process of weaning! When the
heart burns its incense before some human shrine, and the cloud as it ascends
veils from the eye the beauty and the excellence of Jesus,—then comes the
painful process of weaning! When the absorbing claims and the engrossing
attentions of some loved one are placed in competition and are allowed to
clash with the claims of God, and the attentions due from us personally to his
cause and truth,—then comes the painful process of weaning! When creature
devotion deadens our heart to the Lord, lessens our interest in his cause,
congeals our zeal and love and liberality, detaches us from the public means of
grace, withdraws from the closet, and from the Bible, and from the
communion of the saints, thus superinducing leanness of soul, and robbing
God of his glory,—then comes the painful process of weaning! Christ will be
the first in our affections—God will be supreme in our service—and his
kingdom and righteousness must take precedence of all other things. In this
light, beloved, read the present mournful page in your history. The noble oak
that stood so firm and stately at your side, is smitten,—the tender and
beautiful vine that wound itself around you, is fallen,—the lowly and delicate
flower that lay upon your bosom, is withered—the olive branches that
clustered around your table, are removed—and the "strong staff is broken
and the beautiful rod;" not because your God did not love you, but because he
desired your heart. He saw that heart ensnared and enslaved by a too fond
and idolatrous affection,—he saw his beauty eclipsed and himself rivaled by a
faint and imperfect copy of his own image, and he breathed upon it, and it
withered away! "The day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon all…pleasant
pictures." When an eminent artist, who had concentrated all the powers of his
genius upon a painting of our Lord celebrating the last supper, observed that
the holy vessels arranged in the foreground were admired to the exclusion of
the chief object of the picture, he seized his brush and dashed them from the
canvass, and left the image of Jesus standing in its own solitary and unrivaled
beauty. Thus deals our God oftentimes with us. O solemn words! "The day of
the Lord of hosts shall be upon all…Pleasant Pictures,"—all pictures that veil
and eclipse the beauties of him who is the "brightness of the Father's glory,
and the express image of his person," God will obliterate.

Filial submission to God's will, is, perhaps, one of the most essential features
in this holy state of weanedness of which we speak. "Surely I have behaved
and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother." There are some
beautiful examples of this in God's word. "And Aaron held his peace." Since
God was "sanctified and glorified," terrible as was the judgment, the holy
priest mourned not at the way, nor complained of its severity, patient and
resigned to the will of God. He "behaved and quieted himself as a child that is
weaned of his mother." Thus, too, was it with Eli, when passing under the
heavy hand of God: "It is the Lord; let him do what seems him good." He
bowed in deep submission to the will of his God. Job could exclaim, as the last
sad tidings brimmed his cup of woe, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken
away; blessed be the name of the Lord." And David was "dumb and opened
not his mouth, because God did it." But how do all these instances of filial and
holy submission to the Divine will—beautiful and touching as they are—fade
before the illustrious example of our adorable and blessed Lord: "O my
Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, your will be
done." Ah! how did Jesus, in the deepest depth of his unutterable sorrow,
"behave and quiet himself as a child that is weaned of his mother? his soul
was even as a weaned child." Such, beloved, be the posture of your soul at this
moment. "Be still." Rest in your Father's hands, calm and tranquil, quiet and
submissive, weaned from all but himself. O the blessedness of so reposing!

"Sweet to lie passive in his hands,

And know no will but his."

"God's love!" It is written upon your dark cloud—it breathes from the lips of
your bleeding wound—it is reflected in every fragment of your ruined
treasure—it is penciled upon every leaf of your blighted flower—"God is
Love." Adversity may have impoverished you—bereavement may have
saddened you—calamity may have crushed you—sickness may have laid you
low—but, "God is Love." Gently falls the rod in its heaviest stroke—tenderly
pierces the sword in its deepest thrust—smilingly bends the cloud in its
darkest hues—for, "God is Love." Does the infant, weaned from its wonted
and pleasant fount, cease from its restlessness and sorrow reposing calmly and
meekly upon its mother's arms?—so let your soul calmly, submissively rest in
God. How sweet the music which then will breathe from your lips in the
midnight of grief: "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is
weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child."

And who can bring you into this holy position? The Holy Spirit alone can. It is
his office to lead you to Jesus—to reveal to you Jesus—to exhibit to your eye
the cross of Jesus—to pour into your heart the grace and love and sympathy
of Jesus—to bend your will and bow your heart to the government of Jesus,
and thus make you as a weaned child. The work infinitely transcends a power
merely human. It is the office and the prerogative of the Divine Spirit—the
"Spirit of holiness"—who only can sever between flesh and spirit, to bring
you into the condition of one whose will in all things is completely merged in
God's. And what is his grand instrument of effecting this? The cross of Christ!
Ah! this is it. The Cross of Christ! Not the cross as it appeared to the
imagination of the Mohammedan Chief, leading the imperial army to battle
and to conquest; not the cross pictured—the cross engraved—the cross
carved—the cross embroidered—the cross embossed upon the prayer-book,
pendant from the maiden's neck, glittering on the cathedral's spire, and
springing from its altar: not the cross as blended with a religion of Gothic
architecture, and painted windows, and flaming candles, and waving incense,
and gorgeous pictures, and melting music, and fluttering surplices: O no! but
the cross—the naked, rugged cross—which Calvary reared, which Paul
preached, and of which he wrote, "God forbid that I should glory save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which* the world is crucified unto me, and
I unto the world." Faith, picturing to its view this cross, the Holy Spirit
engraving it on the heart in spiritual regeneration, the whole soul receiving
him whom it lifts up, as its "wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,
and redemption," gently and effectually transforms the spirit, that was
chafened and restless, into the "meekness and gentleness of Christ." O what
calmness steals over his ruffled soul! O what peace flows into his troubled
heart! O what sunshine bathes in its bright beams, his dark spirit, who from
the scenes of his conflict and his sorrow, flees beneath the shadow and the
shelter of the cross. The storm ceases—the deluge of his grief subsides—the
Spirit, dove-like, brings the message of hope and love—the soul, tempest-
tossed, rests on the green mount, and one unbounded spring clothes and
encircles the landscape with its verdure and its beauty. Child, chastened by
the Father's love, look to the cross of your crucified Savior. And as you fix
upon it your believing, ardent, adoring gaze, exclaim—

"Wearily for me you sought,

On the cross my soul you bought;
Lose not all for which you wrought."

What is your sorrow compared with Christ's? What is your grief gauged by
the Lord's? Your Master has passed before you, flinging the curse and the sin
from your path, paving it with promises, carpeting it with love, and fencing it
around with the hedge of his divine perfections. Press onward, then, resisting
your foe resolutely, bearing your cross patiently, drinking your cup
submissively, and learning, while sitting at the Savior's feet, or leaning upon
his bosom, to be like him, "meek and lowly in heart." Then, indeed, shall "I
have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother: my
soul is even as a weaned child."

"Quiet, Lord, my froward heart,

Make me teachable and mild,
Upright, simple, free from are;
Make me as a weaned child.
From distrust and envy free,
Pleased with all that pleases Thee.

"What You shall today provide,

Let me as a child receive;
What tomorrow may betide,
Calmly to Your wisdom leave.
'It is enough that You will care,
Why should I the burden heart.

As a little child relies

On a care beyond its own;
Knows he's neither strong nor wise—
Fears to stir a step alone—
Let me thus with You abide,
As my Father, Guard, and Guide.

"Thus preserved from Satan's wiles,

Safe from dangers, free from fears,
May I live upon your smiles
Until the promised hour appears;
When the sons of God shall prove
All their Father's boundless love."

"God, Comforting as a Mother"

"As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you" Isaiah 66:13.

It would appear from the Bible, that all the relations and affections of our
humanity were really impressions of the Divine. All doubt, indeed, as to the
correctness of this idea would seem to be removed by the inspired history of
man's creation. We read: "God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him." The human soul, cast as it were in this Divine mold,
comes forth imprinted and enstamped with the likeness of God. There is the
transfer of the Divine to the human. The creature starts into being, a
reflection of its Creator. Marred by sin though this image is, yet not utterly
effaced are the lines and traces of the sacred original. The temple is in ruin,
but it is still a temple, and beauty lingers round it, and God reenters it. The
splendor of the creature is spoiled, but it is still God's offspring, and he
disowns not his child. Man is fallen, but God, looking down upon the spoiled
and scattered parts of the ruined structure—like the strewn fragments of a
broken mirror—beholds in each the dim and multiplied but real resemblance
of himself.

Trace each feature of this resemblance. Is it the parental relation? God is a

Father. Is it the filial? Christ is a Son. Is it the conjugal? Our Maker is the
Husband of his church, and the church is the Lamb's wife. And is not Christ
described as a Friend and a Brother, and his church called by him his sister?
Thus, then, would it appear that the different relations in which we stand each
to the other, and the affections which these relations foster, have their
counterpart in God—copies and impressions of a Divine original.

But there is yet another relation still more tender and holy, which would seem
to be equally a reflection of the Divine character; we allude to the maternal.
God represents himself as clothed with the attributes of a mother! "As one
whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." In all the similitudes which
we have employed in the preceding pages, illustrative of the Christian's
consolation and support, is there any one that transcends, or that equals, this?
Would it not seem that in adopting this impressive figure, in appropriating to
himself this endearing relation, with which he would express the great depth
of his love and the exquisite character of his comforts, God had surpassed
himself? Has he before reached a point of tenderness like this? Could he have
exceeded it? "As one whom his Mother comforts, so will I comfort you." Let
us not obscure the beauty, or weaken the force of these words, by an extended
exposition. A few thoughts will suffice.

God's family is a sorrowing family. "I have chosen you," he says, "in the
furnace of affliction." "I will leave in the midst of you a poor and an afflicted
people." The history of the church finds its fittest emblem in the burning yet
unconsumed bush which Moses saw. Man is "born to sorrow;" but the
believer is "appointed thereunto."

It would seem to be a condition inseparable from his high calling. If he is a

"chosen vessel," it is, as we have just seen, in the "furnace of affliction." If he
is an adopted child, "chastening" is the distinguishing mark. If he is
journeying to the heavenly kingdom, his path lies through "much
tribulation." If he is a follower of Jesus, it is to "go unto him outside the camp,
bearing his reproach." But, if his sufferings abound, much more so do his
consolations. To be comforted by God, and to be comforted as a mother
comforts her child, may well reconcile us to any sorrow with which it may
please our heavenly Father to invest us!

God comforts his sorrowful ones with the characteristic love of a mother. That
love is proverbial. No line can fathom it, no eloquence can depict it, no poetry
can paint it. Attempt, if you will, to impart brilliance to the diamond, or
perfume to the rose, but attempt not to describe a mother's love. Who created
the relation, and who inspired its affection? That God who comforts his
people with a love like hers. And what is a mother's affection—fathomless and
indescribable as it is—but as a drop from the infinite ocean of God's love!

Did ever a mother love her offspring as God loves his? Never! Did she ever
peril her life for her child? She may. But God sacrificed his life for us. See the
tenderness with which that mother alleviates the suffering, soothes the sorrow
of her mourning one. So does God comfort his mourners. O there is a
tenderness and a delicacy of feeling in God's comforts which distances all
expression. There is no harsh reproof—no unkind upbraiding—no unveiling
of the circumstances of our calamity to the curious and unfeeling eye—no
heartless exposure of our case to an ungodly and censorious world; but with
all the tender, delicate, and refined feeling of a mother, God, even our Father,
comforts the sorrowful ones of his people.

He comforts in all the varied and solitary griefs of their hearts. Ah! there may
be secrets which we cannot confide even to a mother's love, sorrows which we
cannot lay even upon a mother's heart, grief which cannot be reached even by
a mother's tenderness; but God meets our case! To him, in prayer, we may
uncover our entire hearts; to his confidence we may entrust our profoundest
secrets; upon his love repose our most delicate sorrows; to his ear confess our
deepest departures; before his eye spread out our greatest sins. "As one whom
his mother comforts, so will I comfort you."

God comforts the penitential sorrows of his backsliding children with a

mother's changeless love. With our hearts 'bent upon backsliding,' how many,
how aggravated, and how mournful are our departures from God! But does
he disown and disinherit us for this? No! he still calls and receives us, and
welcomes our return as children. "Turn, O backsliding children, says the
Lord." "Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings."
"As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." Inextinguishable,
undecaying, and deathless is a mother's love. "It may be autumn, yes, winter,
with the woman; but with the mother, as a mother, it is always spring." When
has the door of her heart or her dwelling been closed and fastened against her
wayward one? He may have abandoned the roof that sheltered his early years,
and, tearing himself from the influences and the attractions of home, have
become a wanderer upon life's troubled sea; he may have made shipwreck of
character, of fortune, and of happiness, and become an outcast of society, with
the stamp of infamy and outlaw branded upon his brow,—yet, should he in his
far-wanderings come to himself, and his soul be humbled within him, and his
heart burst with penitential grief, and, thinking of his sin, his baseness and
ingratitude, resolve to arise and go to his mother, and sue for forgiveness at
her feet, do you think that that mother could close her heart against her
repentant child? Impossible! She would be the first, and, perhaps, the only
one, who would extend to him a welcome, and volunteer him a shelter.

In the depth of her quenchless love, she would hail his return with gladness,
forgetting all the bitterness of the past in the sweet joy of the present; and
while other eyes might look coldly, and other hearts might be suspicious, and
other doors might be closed and barred, the bosom which nursed him in
infancy, and the home which protected his earlier years, would expand to
receive back the poor, downcast, penitent wanderer. And see how she
comforts! With what words of love she greets him! with what accents of
tenderness she soothes him! with what gentleness she chases the tear from his
eye, and smoothes his rugged brow, and hastens to pour into his trembling
heart the assurance of her free and full forgiveness.

This is the figure to which God likens his love to his people. "As a man whom
his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." Acute is the penitential grief of
that child which has strayed from its heavenly Father. Deep and bitter the
sorrow when he comes to himself, resolves, and exclaims, "I will arise and go
to my Father." Many the tremblings and doubts as to his reception. "Will he
receive back such a wanderer as I have been? Will he take me once more to
his love, speak kindly to me again, restore to me the joys of his salvation, give
me the blessed assurance of his forgiveness, and once more admit me with his
children to his table?" He will, indeed, weeping penitent!

Yet again, O listen yet again to his words, "As one whom his mother comforts,
so will I comfort you." Is not this declaration well calculated to create the
sweetest midnight harmony in the gloomy season of your contrition and grief?
Surely it is. In the valley of your humiliation there is open to you a "door of
hope," and you may enter and "sing there as in the day of your youth, and as
in the day when you came up out of the land of Egypt," and in the first love of
your espousals, gave your heart to Christ.
God will comfort your present sorrow by the tokens of his forgiving love. He
invites, he calls, he beseeches you to return to him. He is on the watch for you,
he advances to meet you, he stretches out his hand to welcome you, he waits to
be gracious, he yearns to clasp his penitential, weeping Ephraim to his heart.
"When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion,
and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."

Will a mother's love live on, warm and changeless, amid all the long years of
her child's rebellion, forgetfulness and ingratitude? Will she, when he returns,
and gently knocks at her door, and trembling lifts the latch, and falls, weeping
and confessing, upon the bosom he had pierced with so many keen sorrows,
press him to a heart that never ceased to throb with an affection which no
baseness could lessen, and which no dishonor could quench? And will God our
Father, who inspired that mother's love, who gave to it all its tenderness and
intensity, and who made it not to change, turn his back upon a poor, returning
child, who in penitence and confession sought restoring, pardoning mercy at
his feet? Impossible! utterly impossible!

The love of God to his people is a changeless, quenchless, undying love! No

backslidings can lessen it, no ingratitude can impair it, no forgetfulness can
extinguish it. A mother may forget, yes, has often forgotten, her child; but
God, never! "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have
compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, she may forget, yet will I not forget
you." How touching, how impressive the figure! It is a woman,—that woman
is a mother,—that mother is a nursing mother,—and still she may forget and
abandon her little one: "yet will I not forget you," says your God and Father.

Touching, heart-melting, heart-winning truth! "Lord! we come unto you in

Jesus' name! We have sinned, we have gone astray like lost sheep, we have
followed the devices of our own hearts, we have wandered after other lovers,
we have wounded our peace, and have grieved your Spirit: but, behold, we
come unto you, we fall down at your feet, we dare not so much as look unto
you, we blush to lift up our faces,—receive us graciously, pardon us freely, so
will we loathe ourselves, hate the sin you do pardon, and love and adore and
serve the God that forgives and remembers it no more forever! As one whom
his mother comforts, so do you comfort us!"

Who can supply a mother's place? There is one, and only one, who can, and
who promises that he will; it is the God who removed that mother. "As one
whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." "Acquaint now yourself
with him, and be at peace." The fond, affectionate, confiding mother sleeps in
the dust. The most beautiful light of your home is extinguished. The sweetest
voice that echoed through your dwelling is silent. The kindest and brightest
eye that beamed upon you is closed in death. The author of your being, the
guide of your youth, the confidant of your bosom, the joy of your heart is no
more. Now let God enter and take her place.

All that that mother was—a refuge in every sorrow, an arbiter in every
difficulty, a counselor in every perplexity, a soother in every grief, the center
that seemed to unite and endear all the other sweet relations and associations
of the domestic circle—God made her. She was but a dim reflection, an
imperfect picture, a faint image of himself. All the loveliness, and all the grace,
and all the wisdom, and all the sweet affection which she possessed and
exemplified, was but an emanation of God!

Make him your mother now. Take your secrets to his confidence, take your
embarrassment to his wisdom, take your sorrows to his sympathy, take your
temptations to his power, take your needs to his supply. O! acquaint yourself
with him as invested with the holy character, and clothed with the endearing
attributes of a mother.

He will guide you, shield you, soothe you, provide for you, and comfort you, as
that mother, upon whose picture—as it smiles mutely upon you from the
wall—you gaze with swimming eyes, never could. In vain you breathe before
it your complaints, exclaiming, "as one that mourns for his mother" once so
touchingly did,—

O that those lips had language! Life has passed

With me but roughly since I heard you last.
These lips are your,—your own sweet smile I see,
The same that often in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,—
'Grieve not, my child, chase all your fears away!'

Go and breathe your sorrows into God's heart, and he will comfort you, oh!
with more than a mother's love! Blessed sorrow, if in the time of your
bereavement, your grief, and your solitude, you are led to Jesus, making him
your Savior, your Friend, your Counselor, and your Shield. Blessed loss, if it
be compensated by a knowledge of God, if you find in him a Father now, to
whom you will transfer your ardent affections, upon whom you will repose
your bleeding heart and in whom you will trust, as you have been wont to
trust in that mother—'Who has reached the shore, Where tempests never
beat, nor billows roar'.

How sweet is the thought that Jesus once felt the throbbings of a mother's
bosom. And with what filial affection did he commit that mother to the care of
the beloved disciple in the darkest hour of his woe. Acquainted with your loss,
sympathizing with your sorrow, compassionating your loneliness, in all
respects capable of entering into the circumstances of your case, he invites you
to repair to him for comfort, the tender sanctifying comfort, which not even a
mother could pour into your heart.

He can guide your youth, he can solace the cares of your riper years, he can
strengthen and soothe the weakness and sorrow of declining age. But let your
heart be true with him. Let faith be simple, childlike, unwavering. Cling to
him as the infant clings to its mother. Look up to him as a child looks up to its
parent. Love him, obey him, confide in him, serve him, live for him; and in all
the unknown, untrod, unveiled future of your history, a voice shall gently
whisper in your ear—

As one whom his mother comforts,

so will I comfort you.
Act but the infant's part,
Give up to love your willing heart;
No fondest parent's melting breast
Yearns, like your God's, to make blest:
Taught its dear mother soon to know,
The tenderest babe its love can show;
Bid your base servile fear retire,
This task no labor will require.
The sovereign Father, good and kind,
Wants to behold his child resigned;
Wants but your yielded heart—no more—
With his large gifts of grace to store:
He to your soul no anguish brings,
From your own stubborn will it springs.
But crucify that cruel foe,
Nor pain, nor care, your heart shall know.
Shake from your soul, overwhelmed, oppressed,
The encumbering load that galls your rest,
That wastes your strength in vain;
With courage break the enthralling chain.
Let prayer exert its conquering power,
Cry in the tempted, trembling hour—
My God, my Father, save your son!
It is heard, and all your fears are gone.—Martin Luther

JESUS ONLY

"And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, except Jesus
only"—Matthew 17:8.

There were occasions in our Lord's wondrous history when the drapery of his
humiliation could but imperfectly conceal the indwelling splendor of His
Godhead. Profound as that humiliation was—and to fathom its depth, we
must scale the infinite height from when he stooped—it could not intercept all
the rays of the Shekinah which slumbered within. Here and there a beam
would dart forth from beneath the enshrouding cloud, often overwhelming
with its effulgence those upon whom its brightness fell. Such was one of those
occasions, a single incident in which has suggested the subject of the present
chapter. Our Lord was now transfigured—the unveiling of his glory
overpowered the three disciples who were with him in the Mount, who, when
the bright cloud overshadowed them, and they heard a voice out of the cloud
which said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to
him," "fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched
them, and said, Arise, and do not be afraid. And when they had lifted up their
eyes, they saw no man, except Jesus only." Blessed company in which now
they found themselves alone! Moses, the type of the Law, and Elijah, the
representative of the prophets, had passed away, and no one was left "except
Jesus only." All their fears had subsided, for Jesus had calmed them. All their
happiness was complete, for Jesus was with them. And is not this still the
motto of every true believer, in the matter of his salvation, in the spiritual
circumstances of his history, in the yearnings of his heart, in the hour of
death, and amid the solemn scenes of the final judgment—"JESUS ONLY?"
Let us reflect awhile upon each of these particulars.

In the believer's salvation, it is "Jesus only." The salvation of man is an

embodiment of God himself. We will not merely say that it reveals his love, or
that it reflects his wisdom, or that it displays his power, or that it unveils his
holiness—it does all this—but much more. Salvation is not merely a
demonstration of the Divine perfections; it is a demonstration of the Divine
Being. The essence—the heart—the mind—the attributes—the character—the
government of God, are all embarked, embodied, and exhibited in the
salvation of man. It is a work so surpassingly stupendous, glorious, and divine,
we can account for its vast and unique character, and its transcendent results,
upon no other principle that its essential demonstration of Deity—"GOD
manifest in the flesh." To mix, then, anything extraneous with this great and
finished work, to add to it anything of human device, would seem a crime of
deepest dye—a sin, the pardon of which might well extend beyond the
provision of its mercy. God has, at every point, with a jealous regard for his
own glory, exhibited and protected this great truth. Over the cross beneath
which as a sinner I stand—inscribed upon the portal of the refuge into which
as a sinner I flee—above the fountain within which as a sinner I bathe—upon
every object on which as a sinner I believingly gaze, God has written one
sentence—solemn, pregnant, and emphatic—"JESUS ONLY." Let us briefly
confirm and illustrate it.

Jesus only could stoop to our low estate. He only could stand between justice
and the criminal—the day's-man between God and us. He only had divinity
enough, and merit enough, and holiness enough, and strength enough, and
love enough, to undertake and perfect our redemption. None other could
embark in the mighty enterprise of saving lost man but he. To no other hand
but his did the Father from eternity commit his church—his peculiar
treasure. To Jesus only could be entrusted the recovery and the keeping of
this cabinet of precious jewels—jewels lost, and scattered, and hidden in the
fall, yet predestinated to a rescue and a glory great and endless as God's own
being. Jesus only could bear our sin and sustain our curse, endure our
penalty, cancel our debit, and reconcile us unto God. In his bosom only could
the elements of our hell find a flame of love sufficient to extinguish them, and
by his merits only could the glories of our heaven stand before our eye
palpable and revealed. Jesus must wholly save, or the sinner must forever
perish. Listen to the language of Peter, uttered when "filled with the Holy
Spirit," and addressed with burning zeal to the Christ-rejecting, self-righteous
Sanhedrin; "The stone that you builders rejected has now become the
cornerstone. There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of
heaven for people to call on to save them." Thus, in the great and momentous
matter of our salvation, Jesus must be all. He will admit no co-adjutor, as he
will allow no rival. The breach between God and man he will heal alone.
The wine-press of Divine wrath he will tread alone. The battle with the power
of darkness he will fight alone. The bitter cup of Gethsemane he will drink
alone. The rugged cross to Calvary he will bear alone. The last conflict with
the power of hell he will sustain alone. The passage through the grave he will
tread alone. Man's sins and sorrow, the sinner's curse and woe, he will endure
singly and alone; "of the people there shall be none with him." What majesty
gathers around the work and conquest of Jesus, thus accomplished and
achieved single-handed and alone! What an impressive view does the fact
present of the inconceivable mightiness of the work, and of the unparalleled
almightiness of him who wrought it! Salvation was a word distancing all
created power. It could only be secured by a power essentially and absolutely
Divine. Jesus undertook the work alone, and alone he accomplished it.

What is the deduction, rigidly logical, and scripturally true? JESUS IS

DIVINE. Here is the key to the mystery of the whole. Deity in alliance with
humanity—the Deity supplying the merit; and the humanity the vehicle of
atonement—singly and unaided wrenched the prey from the destroyer, broke
the chain of the captive, and brought salvation and glory within the reach of
the vilest of Adam's race. And because the Son of God wrought the
stupendous achievement alone, alone "he shall bear the glory." Not a note
shall swell to the praise, not a monument shall rise to the honor, not a beam
shall irradiate the brow of another, from the work of our redemption. To
Jesus only shall the anthem be sung, to Jesus only shall the honor be ascribed,
to Jesus only shall the glory redound, Jesus only shall wear the crown. Hark!
How they chant his high praises in the heavenly temple: "Worthy is the Lamb
that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and
honor, and glory, and blessing." Oh yes, in heaven it is "Jesus only."

It follows, then, from all this, that salvation is a finished work. Precious is this
truth to the believer's heart. And yet, how much is it practically overlooked!
The judgment unequivocally admits it, but the doubts and tremblings which
enslave and agitate the heart, and which, like ripples upon the surface, impart
and unevenness to the peaceful serenity of the Christian's life, too evidently
betray the feeble hold which his faith has upon this truth. But the doctrine
remains substantially and unchangeably the same. The obedience, with which
he answered the claims of justice, formed the two cognate parts of that mighty
and illustrious work, of which, when he bowed his head in death, he
exclaimed, "IT IS FINISHED."
Believer in Jesus! Remember all your confidence, all your hope, all your
comfort flows from the finished work of your Savior. "Jesus only." See that
you unwittingly add nothing to the perfection of this work. You may be
betrayed into this sin and this folly by looking within yourself rather than to
the person of Jesus; by attaching an importance too great to repentance and
faith, and your own doings and strivings, rather than ceasing from your own
works altogether, and resting for your peace and joy and hope, simply,
entirely, and exclusively in the work of Jesus. Remember, that whatever we
unintentionally add to the finished work of Christ, mars the perfection and
obscures the beauty of that work. "If you lift up your tool upon it, you have
polluted it." Nothing have we to do but, in our moral pollution and nakedness,
to plunge beneath the fountain, and wrap ourselves within the robe of that
Savior's blood and righteousness who, when he expired on the tree, so
completed our redemption, as to leave us nothing to do but to believe and be
saved.

"It is finished!" O words, pregnant of the deepest meaning! O words, rich of

the richest consolation! Salvation is finished! "Jesus only!" Look from
fluctuating frames, and fitful feelings, and changing clouds, to "Jesus only."
Look from sins and guilt, from emptiness and poverty, to "Jesus only." The
veil of the temple was rent in twain, and you may pass into its holiest, and lay
upon the altar the sacrifice of a broken and a contrite heart, which shall be
accepted through him who "gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to
God, for a sweet-smelling savor."

"It is finished!" Let devils hear it, and tremble! Let sinners hear it, and
believe! Let saints hear it, and rejoice! All is finished. "Then, Lord, I flee to
you, just as I am! I have stayed away from you too long, and 'am nothing
bettered but rather grown worse.' Too exclusively have I looked at my
unworthiness, too absorbed have I been with my penury, too bitterly have I
mourned having nothing to pay. Upon your own finished work I now cast
myself. "Save, Lord and I shall be saved!" Before this stupendous truth, let all
creature merit sink, let all human glory pale, let all man's boasting vanish, and
Jesus be all in all. Perish forms and ceremonies—perish rites and rituals—
perish creeds and churches—perish, utterly and forever perish, whatever
would be a substitute for the finished work of Jesus, whatever would be
attempt to add to the finished work of Jesus, whatever would tend to
neutralize the finished work of Jesus, whatever would obscure with a cloud, or
dim with a vapor, the beauty, the luster, and the glory of the finished work of
Jesus! It was "Jesus only" in the councils of eternity—it was "Jesus only" in
the everlasting covenant of grace—it was "Jesus only" in the manger of
Bethlehem—it was "Jesus only" in the garden of Gethsemane—it was "Jesus
only" upon the cross of Calvary—it was "Jesus only" in the tomb of Joseph—
it was "Jesus only" who, "when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down
on the right hand of the Majesty of high." And it shall be "Jesus only"—the
joy of our hearts, the object of our glory the theme of our song, the Beloved of
our adoration, our service, and our praise, through the endless ages of
eternity. O, stand fast, in life and in death, by the FINISHED work of Jesus.

"Tis finished!" see the Victor rise,

Shake off the grave, and claim the skies;
You heavens, your doors wide open fling;
You angel choirs, receive your King.

"Tis finished!"—but what mortal dare

In the triumph hope to share?
Savior, to your cross I flee;
Say, "Tis finished!" and for me.

Then will I sing, "The Cross! The Cross!"

And count all other gain but loss:
I'll sing the cross, and to your tree
Cling evermore, blest Calvary.

In the spiritual exercises of the believer's soul, still it is "Jesus only." In the
corrodings of guilt upon the conscience, in the cloud which veils the reconciled
countenance of God from the soul, where are we to look, but to "Jesus only?"
In the mournful consciousness of our unfaithfulness to God, our aggravated
backslidings, repeated departures, the allowed foils and defeats by which our
enemies exult, and the saints hang their heads in sorrow, to whom are to turn,
but to "Jesus only?" In the cares, anxieties, and perplexities which troop
around our path, in the consequent castings down of our soul, and the
disquietude of our spirit within us, to whom shall we turn but to "Jesus
only?" In those deep and mysterious exercises of soul-travail, which not
always the saints of God can fully understand—when we see a hand they
cannot see, and when we hear a voice they cannot hear; when we seem to
tread a lone path, or traverse a sea where no fellow-voyager ever heaves in
sight; the days of soul-exercise wearisome, and its nights long and dark—oh!
to whom shall we then turn, save to "Jesus only?" Who can enter into all this,
and understand all this, and sympathize with all this, but Jesus? To him alone,
then, let us repair, with every sin, and with every burden, and with every
temptation, and with every sorrow, and with every mental and spiritual
exercise, thankful to be shut up exclusively to "Jesus only."

And whom does the heart in its best moments, and holiest affections, and
intensest yearnings, supremely desire? Still the answer is, "Jesus only."
Having by his Spirit enthroned himself there, having won the affections by the
power of his love and the attractions of his beauty, the breathing of the soul
now is, "Whom have I in heaven but you, and who is there on earth beside
you?" Blessed is that soul, the utterances of whose heart are the sincere and
fervent expression of a love of which Christ is the one and supreme object. Oh
to love him more! Worthy, most worthy is he, of our first and best affection.
Angels love him ardently and supremely; how much more should we, who owe
to him a deeper debt of love than they; for whom he has done infinitely more
than for angels! Would that this night be our motto, our principle, our life,—
"To me to live is Christ." Let the love of Christ, then, constrain us to love him
in return with an affection which shall evince, by the singleness of its object
and the unreserved surrender of its obedience, that he who reigns the
Sovereign Lord of our affections is—"Jesus only."

And when the time draws near that we must depart out of this world, and go
unto the Father, one object will fix the eye from which all others are then
receding, it is—"Jesus only." Ah! to die, actually to die, must be a crisis of our
being quite different from reading of death in a book, or from hearing of it in
the pulpit, or from talking of it by the way-side. The world fading in the
view—life congealing at its fount—the brain swimming—the eye fixing—and
yet conscious that in a few hours, or moments, the soul will take the
tremendous leap, and bound away to a world unknown; rushing through suns
and systems and scenes all new and strange and wondrous—Oh it is a solemn,
an appalling thing to die!

But to the believer in Jesus, how pleasant and how glorious! "Absent from the
body," he is "present with the Lord." Jesus is with him then. The blood of
Jesus is there, cleansing him from all his guilt; the arms of Jesus are there,
supporting him in all his weakness; the Spirit of Jesus is there, comforting
him in all his fears: and now is he learning, for the last time on earth, that as
for all the sins, all the perils, all the trials, and all the sorrows of life, so now as
that life is ebbing fast away, and death is chilling, and the grave is opening,
and eternity is nearing, "Jesus only" is all-sufficient for his soul.
And when the trumpet of the archangel sounds—waxing louder and louder—
and the dead in Christ arise, and ascend to meet their Savior and their Judge,
as he comes, in majesty and great glory, to receive his Bride to himself,—then,
oh then, will every heart, and every thought, and every eye, of that ransomed
church, be fixed and fastened and centered upon one glorious object—
"JESUS ONLY." Believer! look to him—lean upon him—cleave to him—
labor for him—suffer for him—and, if need be, die for him. Thus loving and
trusting, living and dying for—JESUS ONLY.

Why should I fear the darkest hour,

Or tremble at the tempest's power?
Jesus vouchsafes to be my tower.
Though hot the fight, why quit the field,

Why must I either flee or yield,

Since Jesus is my mighty shield?
When creature comforts fade and die,
Worldlings may weep, but why should I?

Jesus still lives and still is night.

Though all the flocks and herds were dead,
My soul a famine need not dread,
For Jesus is my living bread.

I know not what may soon betide,

Nor how my needs may be supplied;
But Jesus knows, and will provide.
Though sin would fill me with distress,

The throne of grace I dare address,

For Jesus is my righteousness.
Though faint my prayers and cold my love,
My steadfast hope shall not remove,

While Jesus intercedes above.

Against me earth and hell combine,
But on my side is power Divine;
Jesus is all, and he is mine.
THE INCENSE OF PRAYER

"Let my prayer be set before you as incense"—Psalm 141:2.

God has a temple outside of heaven. Not all the worship, nor all the
worshipers, are confined to that blissful world where he immediately dwells.
He has another sanctuary upon earth—other worshipers and other services,
where, with whom, and with which, the beams of his presence are as strictly
promised and as truly shine as in the general assembly of the church gathered
around him in glory. It is not the magnificent structure made with hands, with
its splendid ritual and its ponderous ceremonial, flattering to the pride and
captivating to the sense of man, but a temple and a temple-service far more
beautiful in God's eye is that of which we speak. "Thus says the Lord, The
heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that you
build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all these things has my
hand made, and all these things have been, says the Lord: but to this man will
I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my
word." "Thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name
is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite
and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of
the contrite one." This is God's temple upon earth, this his worshiper, and this
his worship. The material structure is nothing, the magnificent service is
nothing, the formal worshiper is nothing, "but to this man will I look, even to
him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembles at my word." Oh
most solemn truth! Oh most precious words! "Lord! engrave them upon my
heart by your blessed Spirit. Be my body your temple, my heart your
sanctuary, your presence my life, my life your service."

The believer in Jesus is a royal priest, ordained to offer up spiritual sacrifices

to God. He is called and consecrated, clothed and anointed, to a high and holy
service. His calling is divine, his consecration is holy, his clothing is costly, his
anointing is fragrant. Before the standing and the glory and the service of one
of the royal priesthood, all the pomp and gorgeousness of Aaron's priesthood
fade into nothing. Called according to God's purpose, consecrated and set
apart by sovereign grace, invested with the righteousness of Christ, anointed
with the Holy Spirit, and offering up the spiritual sacrifice of a "broken and a
contrite heart,"—is it surprising that God should look with an eye of ineffable
delight upon such a worshiper? But of a single one only of these many
interesting points must we allow ourselves at present to speak. We refer to the
incense which every true believer in Jesus, in his character of a royal priest,
offers to the Lord.

The subject presents the Christian to our view in his holiest and most solemn
feature—drawing near to God, and presenting before the altar of his grace the
incense of prayer. The typical reference to this is strikingly beautiful. "You
shall make an altar to burn incense upon…and Aaron shall burn thereon
sweet incense every morning; when he dresses the lamps he shall burn incense
upon it. And when Aaron lights the lamps at even he shall burn incense upon
it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations." That
this incense was typical of prayer would appear from Luke 1:10, "And the
whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the time of incense."
And David, though dwelling in the more shadowy age of the church, thus
correctly and beautifully interprets this type: "Let my prayer be set before
you as incense." It is an appropriate and an impressive figure. And thankful,
dear reader, should we be to avail ourselves whatever in the Divine Word
tends to teach us the nature, to illustrate the blessedness, to deepen the
solemnity, and to engage our heats in the holy duty and sweet privilege of—
PRAYER. Interesting and important as are the topics upon which we have
previously addressed you, all must yield to the interest and importance of this
one. Prayer is the vital breath of the living soul; prayer is the mode of our
approach to God; prayer is the appointed channel of all blessing. The season
contemplated throughout this little volume is especially the season in which
prayer is found the most soothing and sanctifying.

All the precious blessings which we have endeavored to bring before your
sorrowful heart, as calculated to comfort and heal it, are conveyed to you
through this one mode—communion with God. Once we can persuade you to
pour out your heart to him—thus severing you from all other resources of
comfort, and shutting you up exclusively to prayer; in other words, shutting
you up exclusively to God, we feel that we have conducted you through the
surges of your grief to the rock that is higher than you. May the Eternal Spirit
be our Teacher and our Comforter while briefly we speak of the INCENSE
OF PRAYER.

The believer's censer—what is it? From where arises the incense of prayer
ascending to the throne of the Eternal? Oh, it is the heart. The believer's
renewed, sanctified heart is the censer from where the fragrant cloud ascends.
Ah, believer, there are false, there are spurious censers waved before the
throne of grace. There is no precious incense in them, no fire, no cloud. God
smells no sweet savor in their offering. True prayer is the incense of a heart
broken for sin, humbled for its iniquity, mourning over its plague, and
touched and healed and comforted with the atoning blood of God's great
sacrifice. This is the true censer; this it is at which God looks. May we not
quote his words again, so expressive, so solemn, so precious are they? "TO
THIS MAN WILL I LOOK, EVEN TO HIM THAT IS POOR AND OF A
CONTRITE SPIRIT, AND THAT TREMBLES AT MY WORD." This is
God's own chosen censer. This, and this only, will he regard. Oh! who can
describe the worth, the beauty, and the acceptableness of this censer to him
whose "eyes move to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself
strong in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards him?" To this God
looks. "For the Lord sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). Precious censer!
molded, fashioned, beautified by God.

There exists not upon earth a more vile and unlovely thing, in the self-
searching view of the true believer, than his own heart. From every other
human eye that bosom is deeply, impenetrably veiled. All that is within is
known only to itself. What those chambers of abomination are, God will not
permit another creature to know. But oh, how dark, how loathsome, how
unholy to him "who knows the plague of his own heart!" And yet—oh
wondrous grace! God, by his renewing Spirit, has made of that heart a
beautiful, costly, and precious censer, the cloud of whose incense ascends and
fills all heaven with its fragrance. With all its indwelling evil and self-loathing,
God sees its struggles, watches its conflict, and marks its sincerity. He has his
finger upon its pulse—he feels every beat, records every throb. Not a feeling
thrills it, not an emotion agitates it, not a sorrow shades it, not a sin wounds it,
not a thought passes through it, of which he is not cognizant. Believer! Jesus
loves that heart of yours. He purchased it with his own heart's blood, agonies,
and tears, and he loves it. He inhabits it by his Spirit, and he loves it. It is his
temple, his home, his censer, and never can it approach him in prayer, but he
is prepared to accept both the censer and incense with a complacency and
delight, which finds its best expression in the language of his own word, "I will
accept you with your sweet savor."

And what is the incense pouring forth like a cloud from this precious censer?
Oh, it is the incense of prayer! The most precious and fragrant incense that
ever rose to heaven from a mere human heart. How shall we describe the
costliness of this incense? Its materials, like those which Aaron cast into the
censer, which the priests burned before the Lord, the offering of which was
termed the "incense of spices," are most costly. They are divine materials cast
into it by God himself; the heart's conviction of sin, its sense of self-loathing,
its sweet contrition, its holy sorrow, its sincere repentance, its ingenuous
confession, its full, free, and unreserved pouring out of itself before God, the
Holy Spirit created. And that must in very deed be costly of which the Holy
Spirit of God is the author.

And what shall we say of the fragrance of this incense? Oh how much have we
yet to learn of the intrinsic sweetness of real prayer! We can but imperfectly
conceive the fragrance there must be to God in the breathing of the Divine
Spirit in the heart of a poor sinner. It is perhaps but a groan, a sigh, a tear, a
look, but it is the utterance of the heart, and God can hear the voice of our
weeping, and interpret the language of our desires, when the lips utter not a
word; so fragrant to him is the incense of prayer. And when prayer arises
from a heart touched by the Spirit of adoption, and is the breathing of a
child's love and confidence and strong desire in the bosom of God, oh how
rich the incense then!

And is the incense of a praying heart borne down by grief, smitten, and
withered like grass, less fragrant to God? No, mourning Christian, prayer is
God's appointed and surest relief for your sad heart. Give but yourself unto
prayer, now in the hour of your sorrow and loneliness, and your breathings
sent up to heaven in tremulous accents, shall return into your own
disconsolate and desolate heart, all rich and redolent of heaven's sweet
consolations. The holy breathings which ascend from a believer's heart,
gather and accumulate in the upper skies, and when most he needs the
refreshing, they descend again in covenant blessings upon his soul. No real,
believing prayer is ever lost, even as the moisture exhaled from earth is never
lost. That thin, almost invisible vapor, which the morning's sun has caught up,
returns again, distilling in gentle dews, or falling in plentiful rain, watering
the earth and making it to bring forth and bud. That feeble desire, that faint
breathing of the soul after God, and Jesus, and holiness, and heaven, shall
never perish.

It was, perhaps, so weak and tremulous, so mixed with grief and sorrow, so
burdened with complaint and sin, that you could scarcely discern it to be real
prayer; and yet, beloved, ascending from a heart inhabited by God's Holy
Spirit, and touched by God's love, it rose like the incense cloud before the
throne of the Eternal, and blended with the fragrance of heaven. Around that
throne prayers are gathering, like clustering angels, and although the vision
may tarry, yet, waiting in humble faith God's time, those prayers will come
back again freighted with the richest blessings of the everlasting covenant,
"even the sure mercies of David." God will grant you the desires of your
heart. Jesus will manifest himself to your soul. To nothing has our Heavenly
Father more strongly and solemnly pledged himself than to the answering of
the prayer of faith. "You shall call, and I will answer."

But there is yet one aspect of our subject indescribably glorious, unspeakably
precious. From where does the incense of prayer derive its true fragrance,
power, and acceptance with God? Ah! beloved, the answer is near at hand.
From where, but from the incense of our Great High Priest's atoning merit
offered upon earth, and by ceaseless intercession presented in heaven. The
opening of the seventh seal, in the apocalyptic vision, revealed this glorious
truth to the wondering eye of the evangelist. "And another angel came and
stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much
incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the
golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which
came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angels
hand" (Rev. 8:3, 4). This angel is none other than the Angel of the covenant,
Jesus, our Great High Priest who stands before the golden altar in heaven,
presenting the sweet incense of his divine merits and sacrificial death; the
cloud of which ascends before God "with the prayers of the saints."

Oh, it is the merit of our Immanuel, "who gave himself for us an offering and
a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savor," that imparts virtue,
prevalence, and acceptableness to the incense of prayer ascending from the
heart of the child of God. Each petition, each desire, each groan, each sigh,
each glance, comes up before God with the "smoke of the incense" which
ascends from the cross of Jesus, and from the "golden altar which is before
the throne." All the imperfection and impurity which mingles with our
devotions here, is separated from each petition by the atonement of our
Mediator, who presents that petition as sweet incense to God. See your Great
High Priest before the throne! See him waving the golden censer to and fro!
See how the cloud of incense rises and envelops the throne! See how heaven is
filled with its fragrance and its glory! Believer in Jesus, upon the heart of that
officiating High priest your name is written; in the smoke of the incense which
has gone up from that waving censer, your prayers are presented. Jesus' blood
cleanses them—Immanuel's merit perfumes them—and our glorious High
Priest thus presents both our person and our sacrifice to his Father and our
Father, to his God and our God. Oh wonderful encouragement to prayer!
Who, with such an assurance that his weak, broken, and defiled, but sincere
petitions shall find acceptance with God, would not breathe them at the
throne of grace? Go, in the name of Jesus; go, casting yourself upon the merit
which fills heaven with its fragrance; go, and pour out your grief, unveil your
sorrow, confess your sin, sue out your pardon, make known your needs, with
your eye of faith upon the Angel who stands at the "golden altar which is
before the throne," and the incense which breathes from your oppressed and
stricken heart will "ascend up before God out of the Angel's hand," as a
cloud, rich, fragrant, and accepted.

O, give yourself to prayer! Say not that your censer has nothing to offer. That
it contains no sweet spices, no fire, no incense. Repair with it, all empty and
cold as it is, to the Great High Priest, and as you gaze in faith upon him who is
the Altar, the slain Lamb, and the Priest, thus musing upon this wondrous
spectacle of Jesus' sacrifice for you, his Spirit will cast the sweet spices of
grace and the glowing embers of love into your dull, cold heart, and there will
come forth a cloud of precious incense, which shall ascend with the "much
incense" of the Savior's merits, an "offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet-
smelling savor."

Remember, that Jesus offers with the "much incense" the prayer of "all
saints." In that number you, beloved, are included. The tried saints, the sick
saints, the sorrowful saints, the tempted saints, the bereaved saints, the weak
and infirm saints, the wandering and restored saints. Yes, "the prayers of all
saints" are "offered upon the golden altar which is before the throne." Nor
forget that there is evening as well as morning incense. "When Aaron lights
the lamps at evening, he shall burn incense." And thus when the day-season of
your prosperity and joy is past, and the evening of adversity, sorrow, and
loneliness draws its somber curtains around you, then take your censer and
wave it before the Lord. Ah! methinks at that hour of solemn stillness and of
mournful solitude, that hour when grief loves to indulge, and visions of other
days dance before the eye, like shadows upon the wall, that hour when all
human support and sympathy fails, that then the sweetest incense of prayer
ascends before God. Yes, there is no prayer so true, so powerful, so fragrant as
that which sorrow presses from the heart. O, betake yourself, suffering believer
to prayer.

Are you a pilgrim, and alone?

Far from the home once called your own?
From friendship's faithful bosom wrested,
In stranger hands your comforts vested,
Your life a cheerless wintry day,
Unlit by sunshine!—Rise and pray!

Smiled on you once the bliss of earth,

And flittering joys of transient worth?
Have you adored some idol shrine,
Or bent how many a knee at thine?
Faded those creatures of a day,
What have you left?—Arise and pray!

With tears, with bitterest agony,

The Savior wrestled, soul! for thee,
Before he could all-triumphant rise
To plead the accepted sacrifice:
So, until the world shall pass away,
Shall stand his words—Arise and pray!

Bring forth, then, your censer, sorrowful priest of the Lord! Replenish it as
the altar of Calvary, and then wave it with a strong hand before the God, until
your person, your sorrows, and your guilt are all enveloped and lost in the
cloud of sweet incense as it rises before the throne, and blends with the
ascending cloud of the Redeemer's precious intercession. Prayer will soothe
you, prayer will calm you, prayer will unburden your heart, prayer will remove
or mitigate your pain, prayer will heal your sickness, or make your sickness
pleasant to bear, prayer will expel the temper, prayer will bring Jesus sensibly
near to your soul, prayer will lift your heart to heaven, and will bring heaven
down into your heart. "Lord, I cry unto you: make haste unto me: give ear
unto my voice when I cry unto you. Let my prayer be set forth before you as
incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." "I GIVE
MYSELF UNTO PRAYER."

The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,

If You the Spirit give by which I pray:
My unassisted heart is barren clay,
That of its native self can nothing feed:
Of good and pious works You are the seed
That quickens only where You say it may:
Unless You show to us Your own true way,
No man can find it: Father! You may lead.
Oh, do then breathe those thoughts into my mind
By which such virtue may in me bred,
That in Your holy footsteps I may tread;
The fetters of my tongue do You unbind,
That I may have the power to sing of Thee,
And sound Your praises everlastingly.

The Day Breaking

"Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the
mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense"—Song Sol. 4:5.

IT is proper that we should now conduct our 'night thoughts' to a close. And
with what topic more soothing and appropriate can we terminate our present
reflections than the one suggested by the portion of the sweet song just
quoted—the arrival of that blessed period when the shadows of our present
pilgrimage will all have fled, succeeded by a "morning without clouds," and a
day without a night? That we dwell so much in the region of present clouds,
and so little in the meridian of the future glory, entails upon us a serious loss.
We look too faintly beyond the midnight of time into the daylight of eternity.
We are slow of heart to believe all that is revealed of the bliss that awaits us,
and do not sufficiently realize that, in a little while,—O how soon!—the day
will break,—the shadows will flee away,—and we shall bathe our souls in
heaven's full, unclouded, endless light. 'Absent from the body,' we shall be
'present with the Lord.' To the consideration of this deeply interesting subject
let us for a few moments; in conclusion, bend our thoughts.

We have already considered the night-season of travel as constituting a great

portion of the celestial pilgrimage of the saints. Solomon, in the sacred Idyl
from which we have selected the sublime stanza at the head of this chapter,
again recalls our thoughts to this point, he refers to the "shadows" which
gather round the pathway of the believer on his way to the eternal city. Nor is
this an exaggerated description of the reality. The portrait of the Christian's
life has its lights, bright and glorious: but it also has its shadows, deep and
long; and both the light and the shade are essential to the perfection of the
picture.

We have emerged, beloved, in our conversion, from the scene of shadows.

Divine and sovereign grace has chosen and called us out of a world over which
the funeral pall of the 'darkness of the shadow of death' spreads its broad
mantle. "Darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people." The
natural sun illumines,—its beams of light and splendor streaming alike
through the windows of the palace and the lowly cot; but until Jesus, the Sun
of Righteousness, is revealed and known, neither 'those who dwell in kings'
houses,' nor those who occupy the humblest cottage on the hillside, are guided
to eternity by a single ray from heaven. Now, seeing that the path of the "child
of the light" lies through this dark world, it is no marvel if shadows, often
varied and thick, should brood around his steps. Let us for a moment glance
at some of them.

There are the shadows of spiritual ignorance thrown upon our path. With all
our attainments, how little have we really attained! With all our knowledge,
how little do we actually know! How superficially and imperfectly are we
acquainted with truth, with Jesus, who is emphatically "The truth," with God,
whom the truth reveals. "We know but in part." "We see through a glass
darkly"—all is yet but as a riddle, compared with what we shall know when
the shadows of ignorance have fled. There are, too, the enshrouding shadows
of God's dark and painful dispensations. Our dealings are with a God of
whom it is said, "Clouds and darkness are round about him." Who often
"covers himself as with a cloud," and to whom the midnight traveler to the
world of light has often occasion to address himself in the language of the
church, "You are a God that hide yourself." Ah! beloved, what clouds of dark
providences may be gathering and thickening around your present path!
Through what a gloomy, stormy night of affliction faith may be steering your
tempest-tossed bark. That faith eyeing the promise and not the providence—
the "bright light that is in the cloud," and not the lowering cloud itself, will
steer that trembling vessel safely through the surge. Remember that in the
providences of God, the believer is passive—but with regard to the promises
of God, he is active. In the one case, he is to 'be still' and know that God
reigns, and that the "Judge of all earth must do right." In the other, his faith,
child-like, unquestioning and unwavering, is to take hold of what God says,
and of what God is, believing that what he has promised he is also able and
willing to perform. This is to be "strong in faith, giving glory to God."

The divine withdrawment is another shadow, often imparting an aspect of

dreariness to the path we are treading to the Zion of God. "Wherefore hide
you yourself?" says Job. "For a small moment," says God to the church,
"have I forsaken you.…In a little wrath I hid my face from you for a
moment." Ah! there are many who have the quenchless light of life in their
souls, who yet, like Job, are constrained to take up the lamentation, "I went
mourning without the sun." There are no shadows darker to some of God's
saints than this. Many professing Christians dwell so perpetually in the region
of shadows, they so seldom feel the sunshine of God's presence in their souls,
that they scarcely can discern when the light is withdrawn. But there are
others, used to walk so near with God in the rich, personal enjoyment of their
pardon, acceptance and adoption, that if but a vapor floats between their soul
and the sun, in an instant they are sensible of it. O blessed are they whose
walk is so close, so filial with God, whose home is so hard by the cross, who,
like the Apocalyptic angel, dwell so entirely in the sun, as to feel the
barometer of their soul affected by the slightest change in their spiritual
atmosphere. In other words—who walk so much beneath the light of God's
reconciled countenance as to be sensible of his hidings even "for a small
moment." And then there comes the last of our shadows, "the valley of the
shadow of death." There they terminate. This may be the focus where they all
shall meet; but it is to meet only to be entirely and forever scattered. The
sentiment is as true as the figure is poetic,—"the shadow of death." It is but a
'shadow' to the believer; the body of that shadow, Jesus, the "Captain of our
salvation," met on the cross, fought, and overcame. By dying he so completely
destroyed death, and him that had the power of death, that the substance of
death in the experience of the dying Christian dwindles into a mere shadow,
and that shadow melts into eternal glory. O death! how great was your
triumph, and how overwhelming was your defeat when Jesus died. Never was
your gloomy domain so dark as when Essential Life bowed his head and gave
up the spirit. Yet never was it illumined with an effulgence so great, as when
the Divine Conqueror passed through its gloomy chambers, and with a power
and a victory mightier and more glorious far than Samson's, tore away its
iron gates, and demolished its strongholds; throwing a brightness and a
fragrance around the bed of death, in which, "until the day dawn and the
shadows flee away," those who sleep in Jesus lie down and rest. "If a man
keep my sayings he shall never see death." "Whose believes in me shall never
die."

"Death's terror is the mountain faith removes;

'Tis faith disarms destruction,—
Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb."

"O you timorous souls! that are terrified at the sound of the passing bell; that
tremble at the sight of an opened grave; and can scarce behold a coffin
without a shuddering horror; you that are in bondage to the grisly tyrant, and
tremble at the shaking of his iron rod, cry mightily to the Father of your
spirits for faith in his dear son! Faith will free you from your slavery. Faith
will embolden you to tread on this the fiercest of serpents. Old Simeon,
clasping the child Jesus in the arms of his flesh, and the glorious Mediator in
the arms of his faith, departs with tranquility and peace. That bitter
persecutor Saul, having won Christ, being found in Christ, longs to be
dismissed from cumbrous clay, and kindles with rapture at the prospect of
dissolution. Methinks I see another of Emmanuel's followers trusting in his
Savior, leaning on his beloved, go down to the silent shade with composure
and alacrity. 'Knowing,' says Peter, 'that shortly I must put off this
tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has showed me.' In this powerful
name, an innumerable company of sinful creatures have set up their banners
and overcome through the blood of the Lamb. Authorized by the Captain of
your salvation, you also may set your feet upon the neck of this 'king of
terrors.' Enriched with this antidote you may play around the hole of the asp,
and put your undaunted hand on the cockatrice den. You may feel the viper
fastening to your mortal part, and fear no evil; you shall one day shake it off
by a joyful resurrection, and suffer no harm."

But let us turn from the shadows of night to the day-dawn, by which those
shades will presently be succeeded. "Until the day break and the shadow flee
away." It will not always be night with the expectants of glory. As the
"children of the day and of the light," their present time-state would seem to
be but an accident of their being, a temporary obscuration only, through
which they are passing to the world of which it is said, " there shall be no
night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord
God gives them light: and they shall reign forever and ever." And yet we
would be far from penning a sentence tending to foster in the Christian mind
a spirit of discontent with his present night-season of humiliation and sorrow.
We have already remarked, in a former part of this work, that there are
glories revealed by the natural night, which the sun in all its splendor, so far
from revealing, only hides from our view by its very brightness. We are as
much indebted to the darkness of night for its magnificent unveilings of God's
wonderful works, as to the noon-tide splendor which lights up the wonders
and glories of earth. How limited had been our knowledge of the universe, and
how partial our view of the divine affluence and greatness, had there been no
natural night. A world of perpetual sunshine, would have been a world of
gross mental darkness! The earth beneath and the sun above us would have
been the limits of our knowledge. The beauties spread out upon the dissolving
landscapes around us, we might have surveyed with admiration and delight,
but the mighty expanse above us, the overspreading skies, the remote depths
stretching far into space, all studded and crowded with suns and systems and
constellations, would never have burst in grandeur and wonder upon our
view. Of astronomy, that most delightful and fascinating of all sciences, we
should have known nothing. But when the last lingering ray of the sun retires,
and evening, glittering with heaven's rich jewelry, approaches; and night,
wearing her diadem of star and planet, takes her allotted place in the earth's
revolution,—then it is we go forth on our wondrous travel, and as we
"consider the heavens, the moon, and the stars, which he has ordained," we
exclaim with that devout astronomer, the Psalmist, "The heavens declare the
glory of God; and the skies shows his handiwork." Thus is it with the dark
dispensation of God with his people. Would you pass through a spiritual
course of perpetual sunshine? Would you be exempt from the night-season of
sorrow and of trial? O how little would you then know of God, and of Christ,
and of truth! We hesitate not to affirm, that as in the natural world we are
more deeply indebted to the instructions of the night than to those of the day,
so in the spiritual world we experimentally learn infinitely more in the night-
season of deep and sanctified affliction than in the bright, sunny day of
gladness and prosperity. It may be a dark and tedious night of weeping and of
trial, yet is it often a night in which Christ visits us, as he visits us at no other
season. But from this digression let us turn our thoughts to the day-dawn,
when the shadows shall all flee away.

We have alluded to the moral darkness of man,—the spiritual unregeneracy

in which he is found by nature. The first light, then, that dawns upon the soul
is the day-break of grace. When that blessed period arrives, when the Sun of
Righteousness has risen upon the long-benighted mind, how do the shadows of
ignorance and of guilt instantly disappear! What a breaking away of, perhaps,
a long night of alienation from God, of direct hostility to God, and of
ignorance of the Lord Jesus, then takes place. Not, however, strongly marked
is this state always at the first. The beginning of grace in the soul is frequently
analogous to the beginning of day in the natural world. The dawn of grace is
at first so faint, the day-break so gentle, that a skillful eye only can observe its
earliest tints. The individual himself is, perhaps, ignorant of the extraordinary
transition through which his soul is passing. The discovery of darkness which
that day-dawn has made, the revelation it has brought to view of the desperate
depravity of his heart, the utter corruption of his fallen nature, the number
and the turpitude of his sins, it may be, well near overwhelms the individual
with despair! But what has led to this discovery? What has revealed all this
darkness and sin? O! it is the day-break of grace in the soul! One faint ray,
what a change has it produced!

And is it real? Ah! just as real as that the first beam, faintly painted on the
eastern sky, is a real and an essential part of light. The day-break—faint and
glimmering though it be—is as really day as the meridian is day. And so is it
with the day-dawn of grace in the soul. The first serious thought—the first
real misgiving—the first conviction of sin—the first downfall of the eye—the
first bending of the knee—the first tear—the first prayer—the first touch of
faith, is as really and as essentially the day-break of God's converting grace in
the soul as is the utmost perfection to which that grace can arrive. O glorious
dawn is this, my reader, if now for the first time in your life, the day-break of
grace has come, and the shadows of ignorance and guilt are fleeing away
before the advancing light of Jesus in your soul. If now you are seeing how
depraved your nature is; if now you are learning the utter worthlessness of
your own righteousness; if now you are fleeing as a poor, lost sinner to Christ,
relinquishing your hold of everything else, and clinging only to him; and
though this be but in weakness and tremulousness, and hesitancy, yet sing for
joy, for the day is breaking,—the prelude to the day of eternal glory,—and the
shadows of unregeneracy are forever fleeing away. And as this day of grace
has begun, so it will advance. Nothing shall impede its course, nothing shall
arrest its progress. "He which has begun a good work in you will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ." The Sun now risen upon you with healing in his
beams shall never stand still—shall never go back. "He has set a tabernacle
for the sun" in the renewed soul of man, and onward that sun will roll in its
glorious orbit, penetrating with its beams every dark recess, until all mental
shadows are merged and lost in its unclouded and eternal splendor. "The path
of the just is as the shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect
day."

But there awaits the believer a day brighter far than this; such a day as earth
never saw, but as earth will surely see,—the day-break of glory. "Until the
day break, and the shadows flee away." O what a day is this! It will be "as the
light of the morning, when the sun rises, even a morning without clouds."
Grace, which was the day-dawn of glory, now yields its long-held empire; and
glory, which is the perfect day of grace, begins its brilliant and endless reign.
The way-worn "child of the day" has emerged from the shadows of his
pilgrimage, and has entered that world of which it is said, "there shall be no
night there." Contemplate for a moment, some of the attributes of this day of
glory.
It will be a day of perfect knowledge. When it is said that there will be no
night in heaven, it is equivalent to the assertion, that there will be no
intellectual darkness in heaven; consequently there will be perfect intellectual
light. It is said that we shall then 'know even as also we are known.' The entire
history of God's government will then be spread out before the glorified saint,
luminous in its own unveiled and yet undazzling brightness. The mysteries of
providence, and the yet profounder mysteries of grace, which obscured much
of the glory of that government, will then be unfolded to the wonder and
admiration of the adoring mind. The misconceptions we had formed, the
mistakes we had made, the discrepancies we had imagined, the difficulties that
impeded us, the prophecies that bewildered us, the parables that baffled us,
the controversies that agitated us, all, all will now be cleared up; the day has
broken, and the shadows have fled forever. O blessed day of perfected
knowledge, which will then give me reason to see, that the way along which
my God is now leading me through a world of shadows, is a right way; and
that where I most trembled, there I had most reason to stand firm; and that
where I most yielded to fear, there I had the greatest ground for confidence;
and that where my heart was the most collapsed with grief, there it had the
greatest reason to awaken its strings to the most joyous melody.

It will be a day of perfect freedom from all sorrow. It must be so, since it is
written that "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be
no more death neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more
pain; for the former things are passed away." What a cluster of sweet hopes is
here! What a collection of bright beams throwing, in focal power, their
splendor over that cloudless day. Child of solitude and sorrow! sick ones dear
to Christ! bereaved mourners! hear you these precious words, and let music
break from your lips! God will dry your tears! We have told you how the
mother comforts her sorrowing one. See how God will comfort his. "Will God
himself wipe my tears away?" Yes, child of grief, there will be no more
weeping then, for—O ecstatic thought!—"God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes." O kind and condescending Father! And "there shall be no more
death." No more rending asunder of affection's close and tender ties; no more
separations from the hearts we love; no more blinded windows, nor coffins,
nor shrouds, nor plumed hearse, nor funeral procession, nor opened graves,
nor sealed sepulchers, nor "dust to dust, and ashes to ashes;" the mourners no
more go about the streets, for death is now swallowed up in victory! "Neither
sorrow nor crying." Grief cannot find existence or place in an atmosphere of
such bliss. Not a cloud floats athwart that verdant landscape, nor casts a
shadow over the deep tranquility of that sun-light scene. No frustrated plans,
no bitter disappointments, no withered hopes, no corroding cares, there
mingle with the deep sea of bliss, now pouring its tide of joyousness over the
soul. "Neither shall there be any more pain." Children of suffering! hear you
this. There will be no more pain racking the frame, torturing the limbs, and
sending its influence through the system, until every nerve and fiber quivers
with an indescribable agony. "The former things are passed away."

It will be a day of perfect freedom from sin. Ah! this, methinks, will be the
brightest and the sweetest of all the joys of heaven. It does not yet fully appear
what we shall be; "but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him as he is." The Canaanite will no more dwell in the
land. Inbred corruption will be done away; the conflict within us will have
ceased; no evil heart will betray into inconsistencies and sorrows, not a cloud
of guilt will tarnish the unsullied purity of the soul. O assure me that there
will be no more night of sin in heaven, and you have presented to my eye such
a picture of its bliss, as tints the clouds of my dreary pilgrimage with the first
dawn of its golden beams, and inspires my heart with yearnings to be there.
You holy ones of God! weeping, mourning over indwelling and outbreaking
sin, the last sigh you heave will be a glad adieu to pollution,—to be tormented
with it no more, to be freed from it forever. "I shall be satisfied, when I awake
with your likeness." This is heaven indeed.

And when does this day begin to break, and the shadows to flee? Go, and
stand by the side of that expiring believer in Jesus—the day-break of glory is
dawning upon his soul! He is nearing heaven; he will soon be there. Before
long he will be nestling in the bosom of Jesus. In a few hours, perhaps
moments, and O! what wonders, what glories, what bliss will burst upon his
emancipated spirit. See, how he struggles to be free. Hark, how he exclaims to
the loved ones who cling to him, and who gladly would detain him a little
longer here,—"Let me go, for the day breaks!" O blessed day now opening
upon his view, as shadow after shadow is dispersed, revealing the wall of
sapphire, and the gate of pearl, and the jasper throne, and him who sits upon
it, of the New Jerusalem, all inviting and beckoning him away.

But the noon-tide splendor of this day of glory will be at the second coming of
our Lord in majesty and great power, to gather together his elect, and
consummate the bliss of his church. "He shall come to be glorified in his
saints, and to be admired in all those who believe." Precious in the sight of the
Lord as is the death of his saints, and blissful to the saints themselves, as will
be the time of their departure, yet not our death, but the Redeemer's glorious
appearing, is the hope set before us in the Scriptures. "Looking for that
blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the Great God and our Savior
Jesus Christ." Death, in its mildest form, is terrible to look at. Gild it, paint it
with vermilion as you may, it is a ghastly object. We shrink from dying. Faith
in Jesus can indeed bear the heart upon its towering pinion above the fear and
humiliation of death, yet the dreadful accompaniments of the final hour will at
times crowd upon the view, and cause the Christian soldier to quake, and
tremble, and misgive. But not so is the contemplation of the coming of the
Lord. O how animating the thought! O how glorious the prospect! O how
sanctifying the hope! We have been speaking to you much of night, and there
is a sense in which this creation, since the sun of its holiness set amid clouds
and darkness, has seen no day. But the day is breaking, the morning is
coming—"the day of the Lord is at hand." The 'signs of the times' all indicate
the approach of great events. The forces are gathering, the field is clearing for
the last and great battle. But what is the grand event, of which all others are
but the heralds and precursors? It is the personal appearing of the Son of
Man. He is coming to receive the kingdom,—to gather his elect from the four
winds of heaven,—to quicken the sanctified dead, and to translate the holy
living,—to reign forever with his church upon a new earth and beneath a new
heaven, wherein will dwell righteousness. Suffering Christian! look rather to
this blessed hope of the perfect day, than to the gloomy passage of the dark
valley. "I will come again," says your gracious Lord, "and receive you to
myself, that where I am, there you may be also." Let our hearts respond,
"Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly."

And where shall we resort until then? We will follow the footsteps of the
church. Listen to her words: "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away,
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense." The
Lord has fragrant places of safety and repose for his people until he comes to
fetch them to glory. What a "mountain of myrrh" is Jesus,—in whom we may
abide, to whom in all lowering clouds we may repair, "until the day break and
the shadows flee away." "God has anointed him with the oil of gladness above
his fellows. All his garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia." Closer
and closer let us cling to Christ—this precious "mountain of myrrh," whose
"name is as ointment poured forth" to the Lord's faint and weary ones—until
we see him face to face. Let us long for his appearing, let us invite him now to
our hearts, in the language of the church: "Until the day break, and the
shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be you like a roe or a young deer
upon the mountains of Bether." And O! how fragrant are those "hills of
frankincense," which the Lord has provided for his people, in the means of
grace, to which he invites, and where he meets and communes with them
"until the day break and the shadows flee away." Such is the place of secret
prayer—the place of social prayer—the place of public prayer, where the
incense of devotion and love ascends, so precious, so cheering and
strengthening to the weary. And what is the ministration of the truth, and
what is the word of God, but the "hills of frankincense" to which we are
privileged to betake ourselves until our Lord comes to us, or until we go to
him. To these fragrant hills of safety and repose let us constantly repair; "Not
forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but
exhorting one another: and so much the more, as you see the day
approaching."

"The night is wearing fast away,

A streak of light is dawning,—
Sweet harbinger of that bright day,
The fair Millennial morning.

"Gloomy and dark the night has been,

And long the way, and dreary;
And sad the weeping saints are seen,
And faint, and worn, and weary.

"You mourning pilgrims! cease your tears,

And hush each sigh of sorrow;
The light of that bright morn appears,
The long Sabbatic morrow.

"Lift up your heads—behold from far

A flood of splendor coming!
It is the bright and Morning Star
In living luster beaming.
"He comes—the Bridegroom promised long—
Go forth with joy to meet him;
And raise the new and nuptial song,
In cheerful strains to greet him.

"Adorn yourself, the feast prepare,

While bridal strains are swelling;
He comes, with you all joys to share,
The new earth his blessed dwelling."
"Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away; I will get to the mountain of
myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense."