Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/C
CARES.
Anxious care rests upon a basis of heathen worldly-mindedness and of heathen misunderstanding of the character of God.
God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.
Despatch necessities; life hath a load
Which must be carried on—and safely may;
Yet keep these cares without thee; let the heart
Be God's alone; and choose the better part.
He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God; He hath bidden me; they cannot burden Him.
He who climbs above the cares of this world, and turns his face to his God, has found the sunny side of life. The world's side of the hill is chill and freezing to a spiritual mind; but the Lord's presence gives a warmth of joy which turns winter into summer.
I met a brother who, describing a friend of his, said he was like a man who had dropped a bottle, and broken it, and put all the pieces in his bosom, where they were cutting him perpetually.
Why art thou troubled and anxious about many things? One thing is needful—to love Him and to sit attentively at His feet.
—Fenelon.
Care that is entered once into the breast,
Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
I have no cares, O blessed Will!
For all my cares are Thine;
I live in triumph, Lord, for Thou
Hast made Thy triumph mine.
CHARACTER.
When the captain throws out his sheet-anchor, and the ship "rides at anchor," as it is called, there is a great strain on every link of that chain; and if one bad link breaks, off goes the anchor, and the ship is driven before the winds, and may be destroyed. Now, our character is very much like the chain; one bad piece vitiates and spoils it. So we must have a pure character.
Modern engineers, after having erected a viaduct, insist upon subjecting it to a severe strain by a formal trial trip, before allowing it to be opened for public traffic; and it would almost seem that God, in employing moral agents for the carrying out of His purposes, secures that they shall be tested by some dreadful ordeal, before He fully commits to them the work which He wishes them to perform.
A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble.
Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us.
—Humboldt.
Whatever capacities there may be for enjoyment or for suffering in this strange being of ours, and God only knows what they are, they will be drawn out wholly in accordance with character.
Men and brethren, a simple trust in God is the most essential ingredient in moral sublimity of character.
Man can have strength of character only as he is capable of controlling his faculties; of choosing a rational end; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity against all the might of external nature.
The materials of the first temple were made ready in solitude. Those of the last also must be shaped in retirement; in the silence of the heart; in the quietness of home; in the practice of unostentatious duty.
There never has been a great and beautiful character, which has not become so by filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed of God.
Character is made up of small duties faithfully performed—of self-denials, of self-sacrifices, of kindly acts of love and duty.
I have learned by experience that no man's character can be eventually injured but by his own acts.
A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.
Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choice of good or evil we have made through life.
Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words, and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture, or the blending notes of music, which constitute the man.
A man's character is like a fence—it cannot be strengthened by whitewash.
CHARITY.
Charity—gently to hear, kindly to judge.
Charity, like the sun, brightens every object on which it shines.
Charity is that rational and constant affection, which makes us sacrifice ourselves to the human race, as if we were united with it, so as to form one individual, partaking equally in its adversity and prosperity.
Why should not our solemn duties, and our hastening end, render us so united, that personal contention would be impossible, in a general sympathy quickened by the breath of a forbearing and pitying charity?
If thou neglectest thy love to thy neighbor, in vain thou professest thy love to God; for by thy love to God, the love to thy neighbor is begotten, and by the love to thy neighbor, thy love to God is nourished.
A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.
We may not substitute charity for godliness; but there is room for the Divine love in the heart which has been touched by the human.
An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.
Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this—love tolerating intolerance; charity covering, as with a vail, even the sin of the lack of charity.
There is no dearth of charity in the world in giving, but there is comparatively little exercised in thinking and speaking.
I have more confidence in the charity which begins in the home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the worldwide philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into egotism.
Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own.
—Fenelon.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right—as God gives us to see the right—let us strive on to finish the work we are in.
CHEERFULNESS.
Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous, a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright.
Cheerful looks make every dish a feast.
Sweetness of spirit and sunshine is famous for dispelling fears and difficulties; patience is a mighty help to the burden-bearer.
The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
The soul that perpetually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.
You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?
If good people would but make their goodness agreeable, and smile instead of frowning in their virtue, how many would they win to the good cause!
I praise Thee while my days go on;
I love Thee while my days go on!
Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost,
I thank Thee while my days go on.
An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with.
—Fuller.
A scrip on my back, and a staff in my hand,
I march on in haste through an enemy's land;
The road may be rough, but it cannot be long;
And I'll smooth it with hope, and I'll cheer it with song.
CHILDREN.
Jesus was the first great teacher of men who showed a genuine sympathy for childhood. When He said "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," it was a revelation.
Children have more need of models than of critics.
God has given you your child, that the sight of him, from time to time, might remind you of His goodness, and induce you to praise Him with filial reverence.
Train them to virtue; habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit. Make them consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful knowledge. Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones.
As in the Master's spirit you take into your arms the little ones, His own everlasting arms will encircle them and you. He will pity both their and your simplicity; and as in unseen presence He comes again, His blessing will breathe upon you.
Bring your little children to the Saviour. Place them in His arms. Devote them to His service. Born in His camp, let them wear from the first His colors. Taking advantage of timely opportunities, and with all tenderness of spirit, seek to endear them to the Friend of Sinners, the Good Shepherd of the lambs, the loving Guardian of the little children. And not only teach them, but govern them. And in order to govern them, govern yourselves.
Never despair of a child. The one you weep the most for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys.
Precious Saviour! come in spirit, and lay Thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls, and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf.
We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?
Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.
We are but children, the things that we do
Are as sports of a babe to the Infinite view,
That sees all our weakness, and pities it too.
And oh! when aweary, may we be so blest
As to sink, like an innocent child, to our rest,
And feel ourselves clasped to the Infinite breast.
I never hear parents exclaim impatiently, "Children, you must not make so much noise," that I do not think how soon the time may come when, beside the vacant seat, those parents would give all the world, could they hear once more the ringing laughter which once so disturbed them.
Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.
Johnny is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed as children are wont to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put off the love of this present world, and all things superfluous beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down.
When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder. If we receive news that a hundred thousand dollars had been left them by some one dying, we should be thrown into an ecstasy of rejoicing; but when they have gone home to God, we stand, and mourn, and pine, and wonder at the mystery of Providence.
The dying boy said: "Father, don't you weep for me; when I get to heaven I will go straight to Jesus and tell Him that ever since I can remember you have tried to lead me to Him." I would rather have my children say that of me after I am gone; or if they die before me, I would rather they should take that message to the Master than to have a monument over me reaching to the skies.
How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary
Knowing her dearer self safe, sheltered, warm?
How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,
Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?
How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,
Our God forgot, our holy saints defied;
But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,
And thrust those little angel hands aside?
Think of your child, then, not as dead, but as living; not as a flower that has withered, but as one that is transplanted, and touched by a Divine hand, is blooming in richer colors and sweeter shades than those of earth.
—Hooker.
Better that the light cloud should fade away into heaven with the morning breath, than travail through the weary day to gather in darkness, and in storm.
—Bulwer.
Ye have lost a child—nay, she is not lost to you, who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before; like unto a star, which going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.
The glorified spirit of the infant is as a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime.
Dearest wife, let us go on and faint not; something of ours is in heaven besides the flesh of our exalted Saviour, and we go on after our own.
CHOICE.
You must make your choice whether to hold on to some thing which cannot save you, or let go, and fall into the hands of the Lord.
But for us there are moments, O, how solemn, when destiny trembles in the balance, and the preponderance of either scale is by our own choice.
Choose you this day whom ye shall serve.
—Bible.
CHRIST.
Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness, and light, and love, and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths on which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fullness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power; Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption—Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears, to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, while the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God.
The "wise men" were journeying to the manger—we to the throne. They to see a babe—we to look upon the King in His beauty. They to kneel and worship—we to sit with Him on His throne. That trembling star shone for them through the darkness of the night, lighting their way—Jesus is always with us, our star of hope; and the pathway is never dark where He leads; for He giveth "songs in the night."
Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.
—Herder.
The incarnation of God is a necessity of human nature. If we really and truly have a Father, we must be able to clasp His feet in our penitence, and to lean on His breast in our weary sorrowfulness.
Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what we want, the answer to every longing—the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I feel that one reason why many real Christians do not go on their way rejoicing is, that they deify the humanity of Christ. (They study the deity of the Saviour before they look to His humanity.)
Christ's whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness—the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God—one long campaign in which the "temptation" stands out as the first great battle and victory.
But if there has been on this earth no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convictions of our own meanness and all suspicions of other's littleness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christianity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we cannot feel Him as a Saviour.
As human voice and instrument blend in one harmony, as human soul and body blend in each act of feeling, thought, or speech, so, as far as we can know, divinity and humanity act together in the thought and heart and act of the one Christ.
Christ was placed midmost in the world's history; and in that central position, He towers like some vast mountain to heaven—the farther slope stretching backward toward the creation, the hither slope toward the consummation of all things. The ages before look to Him with prophetic gaze; the ages since behold Him by historic faith; by both He is seen in common as the brightness of the Father's glory, and the unspeakable gift of God to the race.
We believe that to Christ belongs creative power—that "without Him was not any thing made which was made." We believe that from Him came all life at first. In Him life was as in its deep source. He is the fountain of life. We believe that as no being comes into existence without His creative power, so none continues to exist without His sustaining energy. We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence, and that the centre of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.
When has the world seen a phenomenon like this?—a lonely uninstructed youth, coming from amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct from His age, and from every thing around Him, than a Plato would be rising up in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of His life and doctrine.
He stands alone in unapproachable grandeur. Nineteen centuries roll away, and His character so lives that He inspires millions of men with impassioned love. Other men may seem to be children of their surroundings; He became what He was despite His surroundings, and is the only one who can say in truth and holiness, "Do as I have done." He, the ideal, the perfect one of our race, appears in an age when such an ideal could not have been developed in act—could not have been conceived in thought. In the theory of development the perfection of humanity is the final result of man's history ages hence. Christ therefore is the great miracle which more than any other establishes the fact of miracles. Christ Himself is proof of His own miracles.
—Reynolds.
The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God.
Christ's divinity accounts for His exaltation to the right hand of God, justifies the worship of angels and the confidence of mankind. It makes clear His right to the throne of the universe, and enables the mind to understand why He is exalted in providence, in grace, and in judgment. It is the unifying truth that harmonizes all other teachings of Christianity, and renders the entire system symmetrical and complete.
Christ was either the grandest, guiltiest of impostors, by a marvelous and most subtle refinement of wickedness, or He was God manifest in the flesh.
Newton supposed that all matter attracted other matter inversely according to the square of the distance; and the hypothesis was found to account for the whole movements of the heavenly bodies; which all became verifications of what Newton supposed to be the law of the solar system. Adopt the hypothesis that Jesus was what He is represented, and the whole of the books and the history becomes a verification.
If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity.
Whatever Jesus is, the glorious Godhead is; and to have fellowship with the Son is to have fellowship with the Father. To know the love of Christ is to be filled with all the fullness of God.
The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
Christ pitied because He loved, because He saw through all the wretchedness, and darkness, and bondage of evil; that there was in every human soul a possibility of repentance, of restoration; a germ of good, which, however stifled and overlaid, yet was capable of recovery, of health, of freedom, of perfection.
In His love and in His pity He redeemed them.
—Bible.
Poor shepherdless sheep! it was His delight, as the Good Shepherd, to lead them to rich pastures; and as they sat and stood around Him, they forgot their bodily wants in the beauty and power of His words.
The absence of sentimentalism in Christ's relations with men is what makes His tenderness so exquisitely touching.
From the moment of His self-dedication, when He threw His cares away, and went forth not knowing where to lay His head, the whole energy which others spend on interests of their own was poured into His human and Divine affections, and filled His life with an enthusiasm resistless and unique. However quiet His words, it is impossible not to feel the tender depths from which they come.
The life of Christ concerns Him who, being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.
Great occasions rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all, leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character, that He is just as perfect, exhibits just as great a spirit in little trials as in great ones.
No other fame can be compared with that of Jesus. He has a place in the human heart, that no one who ever lived has in any measure rivaled. No name is pronounced with a tone of such love and veneration. All other laurels wither before His. His are ever kept fresh with tears of gratitude.
Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance; and His system, unlike all other systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly beneficent, and—most marvelous of all—went to break all bonds of body and soul, and to cast down every temporal and every spiritual tyranny.
Jesus Christ was born in a stable; He was obliged to fly into Egypt; thirty years of His life were spent in a workshop; He suffered hunger, thirst, and weariness; He was poor, despised, and miserable; He taught the doctrines of heaven, and no one would listen. The great and the wise persecuted and took Him, subjected Him to frightful torments, treated Him as a slave, and put Him to death between two malefactors, having preferred to give liberty to a robber, rather than to suffer Him to escape. Such was the life which our Lord chose; while we are horrified at any kind of humiliation, and cannot bear the slightest appearance of contempt.
—Fenelon.
It is the grandeur of Christ's character which constitutes the chief power of His ministry, not His miracles or teachings apart from His character. The greatest truth of the gospel is Christ Himself—a human body become the organ of the Divine nature, and revealing, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of God.
That image or rather that Person, so human, yet so entirely Divine, has a power to fill the imagination, to arrest the affections, to deepen and purify the conscience, which nothing else in the world has.
The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrow and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.
In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice, we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it, we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.
This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness, hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish; but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good;—these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.
Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
—Bible.
He came, bringing with Him the knowledge that God is a Being of infinite goodness; that the service required of mankind is not a service of form or ceremony, but a service of obedience.
Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God—who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!
I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden."
Whoever would fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, must endeavor to conform his life wholly to the life of Christ.
Oh, wonderful teacher! Oh, favored disciples! Oh, famous school—that built no marble halls, and collected no grand library, but turned all life into opportunity; made houses and streets and seaside and mountain-tops, places of discipline and recitation and delight! Oh, blest example—shining this day on the pages of history—our example, our dream, our desire!
Christ's method is divine. His words have the charm of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of a God; the softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force of the lightning rending the tower. His parables are like groups of matchless statuary; His prayers like an organ peal floating round the world and down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and plains into rich and varied melody, in which all devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self-evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all nature and life become vocal with theology.
Then, too, His patience—reaching on and on in its long-suffering amplitude, waiting and never weary, hopeful and never despairing of conquering the soul,—no wonder the "patience of Christ" became the apostolic formulary of moral loveliness. What a power was in it! Here is a nature made suspicious by manifold deceits, stranded on the shoals of doubt, desponding, obstinate, wedded to sin. Does the Master crush it by imperious authority, exasperate it by taunts, fling it aside as a cumberer of the ground? Ah, give it time to recover, opportunities to know itself, nurse it by gentleness, gain its confidence, find the secret of its weakness and sorrow! Do not despair! It may bear fruit next year. Oh, this infinite patience of Jesus, how it rebukes our cynical criticisms and passionate haste! How it bids us take note of temperaments, troubles, habits, provocations, prejudices, in our judgments of men!
How free from every thing like art were the reasonings and language of Christ.
From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same—majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle.
You never get to the end of Christ's words. There is something in them always behind. They pass into proverbs—they pass into laws—they pass into doctrines—they pass into consolations; but they never pass away, and, after all the use that is made of them, they are still not exhausted.
Certainly, no revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ.
Think of the majesty of that moment in this dying world's history, when Jesus Christ declared that to the Christian death was only a sleep. Outside of that small dwelling in Capernaum, a great race of men rushed and toiled as they harassed continents and seas; mighty events marshaled themselves into annals and pageants. What was inside? In one inconspicuous chamber of a now forgotten house, man's Redeemer, unobserved, martyred man's final enemy. There Immanuel subdued death forever.
What Jesus spoke was Truth; the way He spoke was gracious. He spoke the truth in love. God is love, and the Son of God spoke lovingly.
Christ is the chief object proposed to the sinner in the New Testament. The eye that sweeps round the whole circle of Divine truth must rest in Him as the centre.
Jesus Christ, the embodiment of truth and love, has explained the Scriptures by fulfilling them. So when the soul has passed into God, the word is fulfilled in the soul, as it was in Christ. O Love! thou art thyself the pure, naked, simple truth, which is expressed, not by me, but by thyself, through me.
In darkness there is no choice. It is light that enables us to see the difference between things; and it is Christ that gives us light.
—Guesses at Truth.
Christ came not to talk about a beautiful light, but to be that light—not to speculate about virtue, but to be virtue.
The parables, as they are called, are the wisdom of Jesus applied to the daily life of man.
They take inadequate views of Christ's prophetic character, who think Jesus came only to utter discourses, parables, and prayers. Suppose all He ever said to be found in the writings of Jewish rabbis and heathen philosophers, His great function would still be an orginal one, to show us the Father.
Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body—and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands—that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary.
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
—Bible.
The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.
A large portion of Christ's miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will He not do for our children's souls what He did for the bodies of the ruler's daughter, and the dead youth at Nain?
Our Lord's miracles were all essential parts of His one consistent life. They were wrought as evidences not only of His power, but of His mercy. They were throughout moral in their character, and spiritual in the ends contemplated by them. They were in fact embodiments of His whole character, exemplars of His whole teaching, emblems of His whole mission.
All Christ's public acts were consecrated by prayer,—His baptism, His transfiguration, His miracles, His agony, His death. He breathed away His spirit in prayer. "His last breath," says Philip Henry, "was praying breath."
Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration; and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only.
Christ illustrates the purport of life as He descends from His transfiguration to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly brightness for the crown of thorns.
Not only do we witness on the Holy Mount the installation of the royal lawgiver, but of the great high-priest. It is a grand valedictory service in which He is re-ordained to duty—as the banners are blessed before the army marches to the field. And the voice speaks from heaven as a sovereign gives audience to a chosen commander, and cheers him with the encouragement of royal favor. With what reverence, brethren, should we, sinners, look upon the scene! As we see Him standing alone upon the mountain—fresh from His ordination of glory—calm and kingly in His heaven-imparted strength; and then as we see Him, with firm step, treading the dark avenue which, through desertion, agony, insult, abandonment, terminates in His death upon the cross—surely our distrust should vanish, and in reliance on such a champion we should have "joy in believing." Surely our indignation against the vile sin which made all this suffering necessary should be roused within us. Surely our hearts should bound with a fervor of devotion and gratitude which the obedience of a lifetime can only inadequately express.
All the virtues which appeared in Christ shone brightest in the close of His life, under the trials He then met. Eminent virtue always shows brightest in the fire. Pure gold shows its purity chiefly in the furnace. It was chiefly under those trials which Christ endured in the close of His life, that His love to God, His honor of God's majesty, His regard to the honor of His law, His spirit of obedience, His humility, contempt of the world, His patience, meekness, and spirit of forgiveness towards men, appeared. Indeed, every thing that Christ did to work out redemption for us appears mainly in the close of His life. Here mainly is His satisfaction for sin, and here chiefly is His merit of eternal life for sinners, and here chiefly appears the brightness of His example which He has set us for imitation.
As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side through all His manifestations of Himself, there were the two aspects: "He showed Himself froward" (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a Divine deliverer.
Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.
And I think, dear friends, if we carried with us more distinctly than we do that one simple thought that in all human joys, in all the apparently self-forgetting tenderness, of that Lord, who had a heart for every sorrow, and an ear for every complaint, and a hand open as day and full of melting charity for every need—that in every moment of that life in the boyhood, in the dawning manhood, in the maturity of His growing power—there was always present one black shadow, toward which He ever went straight with the consent of His will and the clearest eye, we should understand something more of how the life as well as the death was a sacrifice for us sinful men.
It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a "Christ within us, the hope of glory."
God's beloved Son, leaving the echoes of His cries upon the mountains and the traces of His weary feet upon the streets, shedding His tears over the tombs and His blood upon Golgotha, associating His life with our homes, and His corpse with our sepulchres, shows us how we, too, may be sons in the humblest vale of life, and sure of sympathy in heaven amid the deepest wrongs and sorrows of earth.
The study of every thing that stands connected with the death of Christ, whether it be in the types of the ceremonial law, the predictions of the prophets, the narratives of the Gospels, the doctrines of the epistles, or the sublime vision of the Apocalypse, this is the food of the soul, the manna from heaven, the bread of life. This is "meat indeed" and "drink indeed."
The whole history of Israel, its ritual and its government, is explicable only as it is typical of the spiritual Israel, of the sacrifice on Calvary, of the precious blood which alone can wash away sin.
All other great men are valued for their lives; He, above all, for His death, around which mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, God and man are reconciled; for the cross is the magnet which sends the electric current through the telegraph between earth and heaven, and makes both Testaments thrill, through the ages of the past and future, with living, harmonious, and saving truth.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
—Bible.
Other men have said, "If I could only live, I would establish and perpetuate an empire." This Christ of Galilee says, "My death shall do it." Other martyrs have died in simple fidelity to truth. This martyr dies that He may make His truth mighty over all hearts. He was a man; but was He only a man?
It was in His parting sorrow—that Jesus asked His disciples to remember Him; and never was entreaty of affection answered so; for ever since has His name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin.
When the Father would give men the light of the knowledge of His glory, how does He proceed? To what does He turn men's gaze? Not to His mighty works; not to creative or providential wonders; not to geological or astronomical facts; not to the data on which Paley and Bell and other admirable writers build up their argument from design; not to the still greater wonder of mind, but to "the face of Jesus Christ," that face that was more marred than any man's; that endured the ruffian blows; down which the blood drops trickled; that looked down on a mocking crowd from an ignominious cross.
Christ's sacrifice stands in glorious proportions with the work to be done. Nothing else or less would suffice. It is a work supernatural, transacted in the plane of nature; and what but such a work could restore the broken order of the soul under evil?
"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end." Often had they been faithless; and now, while addressing them, He knows that they will all in a few hours forsake Him. Yet He trusts them; He commits His cause to their keeping. And we must love as He loved.
When Jesus knew that it was not possible for the cup to pass from Him, with love to God He held it fast, and with love to man He drank it all.
As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but let that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly conquered than a sorrow which we avoid.
He planted His cross in the midst of the mad and roaring current of selfishness, aggravated to malignity, and uttered from it the mighty cry of expiring love. And the waters heard Him, and from that moment they began to be refluent about His cross. From that moment, a current deeper and broader and mightier began to set heavenward; and it will continue to be deeper and broader and mightier till its glad waters shall encompass the earth, and toss themselves as the ocean. And not alone did earth hear the cry. It pierced the regions of immensity. Heaven heard it, and hell heard it, and the remotest star shall hear it, testifying to the love of God in His unspeakable gift, and to the supremacy of that blessedness of giving which could be reached only through death—the death of the cross.
I entreat you to devote one solemn hour of thought to a crucified Saviour—a Saviour expiring in the bitterest agony. Think of the cross, the nails, the open wounds, the anguish of His soul. Think how the Son of God became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that you might live forever. Think as you lie down upon your bed to rest, how your Saviour was lifted up from the earth to die. Think amid your plans and anticipations of future gaiety, what the redemption of your soul has cost, and how the dying Saviour would wish you to act. His wounds plead that you will live for better things.
Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought of Christ upon His cross. That tells us how much He has been through, how much He endured, how much He conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God?
O, let us understand that the power of Christianity lies not in a hazy indefiniteness, not in shadowy forms, not so much even in definite truths and doctrines, but in the truth and the doctrine. There is but one Christ crucified. All the gathered might of the infinite God is in that word.
My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.
—Watts.
The last business of Christ's life was the saving of a poor penitent thief.
But now, the sounds of infancy, always nearest the heart, and sure to come to the lips in our deepest emotion, returned in His anguish; and in words which He had learned at His mother's knee, His heart uttered its last wail—"Eloi! Eloi! lama sabachthani?" "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?"
But no sympathy reached His convulsed spirit. He was alone; alone, enduring the curse for us; alone, "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and exhausting the fierceness of eternal justice; alone, without succor from man; alone, without one strengthening whisper from angel; above all, alone, without one ray from His Father's countenance. And that expiring cry, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" was the bitter, dreary, dismal, piercing wail of a soul utterly deserted—wrapped, shrouded in essential unmitigated desolation.
He was Himself forsaken that none of His children might ever need to utter His cry of loneliness.
In agony unknown He bleeds away His life; in terrible throes He exhausts His soul. "Eloi! Eloi! lama sabachthani?" And then see! they pierce His side, and forthwith runneth out blood and water! This is the shedding of blood, the terrible pouring out of blood, without which, for you and the whole human race, there is no remission.
A moment more, and all was over. The cloud had passed as suddenly as it rose. Far and wide, over the vanquished throngs of His enemies, with a loud voice, as if uttering His shout of eternal victory before entering into His glory, He cried, "It is finished!" Then, more gently, came the words, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." A moment more, and there arose a great cry, as of mortal agony; the head fell. He was dead.
In this awfully stupendous manner, at which Reason stands aghast, and Faith herself is half confounded, was the grace of God to man at length manifested.
Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of Thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections, we may be buried with Him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for His merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
—Book of Common Prayer.
If Socrates died like a sage, Jesus died like a God.
—Rousseau.
It was not till Jesus had cried, "It is finished," and from His riven side the soldier's spear had fetched the blood and water; it was not till then, that the fountain sealed of Incarnate Love became the fountain opened of Redeeming merit, and that the Siloah began to flow, which ever since has flowed adown the oracles of God.
The death of the Son of God is a single and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; of infinite value and price, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.
—Synod of Dort.
The sufferings and death of Jesus Christ are a substitution for the endless punishment of all who truly believe on Him.
—Adams.
I have always considered the atonement to be characteristic of the gospel, as a system of religion. Strip it of that doctrine, and you reduce it to a scheme of morality, excellent indeed, and such as the world never before saw; but to man in the present state of his faculties, absolutely impracticable.
By Thine hour of dire despair;
By Thine agony of prayer;
By the cross, the nail, the thorn,
Piercing spear, and torturing scorn;
By the gloom that veiled the skies
O'er the dreadful sacrifice;
Listen to our humble cry,
Hear our solemn Litany.
The world cannot bury Christ. The earth is not deep enough for His tomb, the clouds are not wide enough for His winding-sheet; He ascends into the heavens, but the heavens cannot contain Him. He still lives—in the church which burns unconsumed with His love; in the truth that reflects His image; in the hearts which burn as He talks with them by the way.
Twice had the sun gone down on the earth, and all as yet was quiet at the sepulchre; Death held his sceptre o'er the Son of God; still and silent the hours passed on; the guards stood by their posts; the rays of midnight moon gleamed on their helmets and on their spears; the enemies of Christ exulted in their success; the hearts of His friends were sunk in despondency and sorrow; while the spirits of glory waited with anxious suspense to behold the event—wondering at the depth of the ways of God. At length, the morning star, arising in the east, announced the approach of light; the third day began to dawn on the world, when on a sudden the earth trembled to its centre, and the powers of heaven were shaken; an angel of God descended; the guards shrunk back from the terror of his presence, and fell prostrate on the ground. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment was white as snow; he rolled the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and sat on it. But who is this that cometh from the tomb, with dyed garments from the bed of death? He that is glorious in His appearance, walking in the greatness of strength? It is thy Prince, O Zion! Christian, it is your Lord! He hath trodden the wine-press alone; He hath stained His raiment with blood; but now as the first-born from the womb of nature, He meets the morning of His resurrection. He arises, a conqueror from the grave; He returns with blessings from the world of spirits; He brings salvation to the sons of men. Never did the returning sun usher in a day so glorious! It was the jubilee of the universe!
Step by step, He had raised their conceptions of Him nearer the unspeakable grandeur of His true nature and work. At first the Teacher, He had, after a time, by gradual disclosures, revealed Himself as the Son of God veiled in the form of man; and, now, since His crucifixion and resurrection, He had taught them to see in Him the Messiah, exalted to immortal and Divine majesty, as the conqueror of Death and the Lord of all.
In His discourses, His miracles, His parables, His sufferings, His resurrection, He gradually raises the pedestal of His humanity before the world, but under a cover, until the shaft reaches from the grave to the heavens, when He lifts the curtain, and displays the figure of a man on a throne, for the worship of the universe; and clothing His church with His own power, He authorizes it to baptize and to preach remission of sins in His own name.
Having made an expiation for sins, He is set down on God's right hand for ever. There is no more that even Immanuel can do. This is Love's extremest effort, God's last and greatest gift, God's own sacrifice. Can there be any escape for those who neglect so great salvation?
My Saviour! fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my clumsy hand has drawn of a Divine life, with the fullness of Thy perfect picture. I feel the beauty I cannot realize; robe me in Thine unutterable purity.
Christ whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true, the only light,
Sun of Righteousness, arise,
Triumph o'er the shades of night;
Day-spring from on high, be near,
Day-star in my heart appear.
—Toplady.
Jesus Christ is not hurried; He calmly rules the storm, and holds the helm of this world in His hand, and it will not drift away from the course designated by the infinite authority and power of God.
The hoary centuries are full of Him; the echoes of His sweet voice are heard to-day; His love has perfumed the past eighteen hundred years, and He lives to-day, as the Head of His church; He lives to-day, the object of the warmest adoration, the most passionate love, for whom millions would die this very hour. Empires have fallen, thrones have crumbled; but Jesus lives, His empire extending every day, His throne gaining new trophies of His grace.
It was the custom of the Roman emperors, at their triumphal entrance, to cast new coins among the multitudes; so doth Christ, in His triumphal ascension into heaven, throw the greatest gifts for the good of men that were ever given.
And what is the joy of Christ? The joy and delight which springs forever in His great heart, from feeling that He is forever doing good; from loving all, and living for all; from knowing that if not all, yet millions on millions are grateful to Him, and will be forever.
Brethren, it is not the thinker who is the true king of men, as we sometimes hear it proudly said. We need one who will not only show, but be the Truth; who will not only point, but open and be the Way; who will not only communicate thought, but give, because He is the Life. Not the rabbi's pulpit, nor the teacher's desk, still less the gilded chairs of earthly monarchs, least of all the tents of conquerors, are the throne of the true king. He rules from the cross.
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
—Bible.
The enthronement of Christ over the minds of men is steadily going forward. His kingdom embraces the princes in the realm of mind. It embraces the nations of highest civilization. They are all beneath the cross. It is maintained by simple authority. Other mental monarchs rule by logic; Christ's word is law—it is satisfying to His subjects. His truth in the handsof His disciples, like the bread He broke upon the mountains, is an ample supply for the millions that gather at His table.
Yes, we have throned Him in our minds and hearts—the cynosure of our wandering thoughts—the monarch of our warmest affections, hopes, desires. This we have done. And the more we meditate upon His astonishing love, His amazing sacrifice, the more we feel that if we had a thousand minds, hearts, souls, we would crown Him Lord of all. Living we will live in Him, for Him, to Him. Dying, we will clasp Him in our arms, and, with Simeon, welcome death as the consummation of bliss.
Christ is the Head of all things. Every thing lies open before His eye, every thing is sustained by His power, and every thing is disposed of by His wisdom. Not a sparrow can fall to the ground without His notice and permission. Oh, to see Jesus in all things! Oh to see every thing at the disposal of Jesus! Oh, to see that all things are directed, controlled, and overruled by Christ alone! May this calm my mind, compose my spirit, and produce holy resignation in my soul! If Jesus arranges all, sends all, directs all, overrules all, then all things must work together for good to them that love God.
Up with the banner of your new Lord, Jehovah Jesus! Raise it in firm decision, with quiet earnestness and with humble prayer; keep it with unflinching fortitude, and be ready to die rather than dishonor it.
Christ puts Himself at the head of the mystic march of the generations; and, like the mysterious angel that Joshua saw in the plain by Jericho, makes the lofty claim, "Nay, but as the captain of the Lord's host am I come up."
Jesus, still lead on,
Till our rest be won!
And although the way be cheerless,
We will follow calm and fearless;
Guide us by Thy hand
To our fatherland!
Christ sends His Spirit, not only to help, but to lead us on, so that we build better than we know. We come freely into His methods; we are made to carry out His plan. This is the guarantee of an eternal success.
Christ wants to lead men by their love, their personal love to Him, and the confidence of His personal love to them.
From behind the shadow of the still small voice—more awful than tempest or earthquake—more sure and persistent than day and night—is always sounding full of hope and strength to the weariest of us all, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
We believe that the salvation of sinners is wholly of grace; through the mediatorial offices of the Son of God; who, by the appointment of the Father, freely took upon Him our nature, yet without sin; honored the Divine law by His personal obedience, and by His death made a full atonement for sins; that having risen from the dead He is now enthroned in heaven; and uniting in His wonderful person the tenderest sympathies with Divine perfections, He is every way qualified to be a suitable, a compassionate, and an all-sufficient Saviour.
—Baptist Church Manual.
My only comfort is that I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me, that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation. And, therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth to live unto Him.
—Heidelberg Catechism.
You may be a dreadful failure. Christ is a Divine success. "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth."
Our sins are debts that none can pay but Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can testify for our sins. Christ must pay all, or we are prisoners forever.
Jesus did all the saving-work. He brought the cross to our level. Get saved by looking to Him, and then live to God.
Because many who are called by the gospel do not repent nor believe in Christ, but perish in unbelief, this does not arise from defect or insufficiency of the sacrifice offered by Christ, but from their own fault.
—Synod of Dort.
You have "done all you could" to save yourself; and yet you have accomplished nothing. Fly, then, to Christ,—to Christ, just as you are, just as unworthy—to Christ now, "while it is called to-day." Be assured you are welcomed to all His benefits.
The compassion of Christ inclines Him to save sinners,—the power of Christ enables Him to save sinners,—and the promise of Christ binds Him to save sinners.
A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my Strength and Righteousness,
My Saviour and my All.
—Watts.
Grieve not the Christ of God, who redeems us; and remember that we grieve Him most when we will not let Him pour His love upon us, but turn a sullen, unresponsive unbelief towards His pleading grace, as some glacier shuts out the sunshine from the mountain-side with its thick-ribbed ice.
On Thee alone my hope relies,
Beneath Thy cross I fall;
My Lord! my Life! my Sacrifice!
My Saviour! and my All!
I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder.
Brethren, is not this the Saviour that you need? one who can save you from the utmost depths of depravity, in the utmost corner of the earth, on the utmost inch of time? One who can save you amidst the utmost urgency of fierce temptations, and who in the uttermost extreme of exhausted nature, when heart and flesh do faint and fail, completes the work, and seals the salvation for evermore?
No glory of the Eternal One is higher than this, "Mighty to save;" no name of God is more adorable than that of "Saviour;" no place among the servants of God can be so glorious as that of an instrument of salvation.
As this brook not only washes off impurities, but overwhelms them, so that they can no longer be found, even so Thy Divine mercy, and the stream of my Saviour's blood, not only purge away, but extinguish my sins, sweeping them into the depths of the sea, where through all eternity they shall be remembered no more.
Bear in mind, it was the ark that saved Noah; it was not his righteousness; it was not his feelings; it was not his prayers. It was the ark that saved him.
You have only to cast your life-long guilt, your ungodliness, your evil thoughts and wicked words, your sinful soul itself, into this crime-canceling, sin-annihilating, soul-cleansing Fountain, in order to obliterate from God's creation your foul transgressions, and yet leave the Divine perfection fair as ever. The sin which a Saviour's blood dissolves is the only sin which, after being once committed, is totally extinguished.
Rest, weary soul!
The penalty is borne, the ransom paid,
For all thy sins full satisfaction made;
Strive not to do thyself what Christ has done,
Claim the free gift, and make the joy thine own;
No more by pangs of guilt and fear distressed,
Rest, sweetly rest.
Go to the family where darkness and suspicion and jealousy and disorder reign, and if they will but receive Christ, mark how light and confidence and order and peace spring up. Go to the regions of superstition and idolatry, and see what transformations are effected by Jesus.
Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life:—the voice of God that whispers to it: "You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet, and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you!"
Christ's voice sounds now for each of us in loving invitation; and dead in sin and hardness of heart though we be, we can listen and live. Christ Himself, my brother, sows the seed now. Do you take care that it falls not on, but in, your souls.
When a man begins to apprehend the first approach of grace, pardon, and mercy by Jesus Christ to his soul; when he is convinced of his utter unworthiness and desert of hell, and can never expect any thing from a just and holy God but damnation, how do the first dawnings of mercy melt and humble him!
Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death.
Happy those who are able in truth to say, "My Lord and my God!" Here is the true bond of union. Here is the noblest inspiration of life. Strength for work. Comfort in trouble. Hope in death. Here is what gives eternity itself its chief interest and joy. There we shall behold the King in His beauty. And when we shall see Him as He is, and shall be like Him, with what ecstasy of love and gratitude and joy shall we cry, "My Lord and my God!"
Jesus is the true manifestation of God, and He is manifested to be the regenerating power of a divine life.
O Thou Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, what Thou bearest in Thy blessed hands and feet I cannot bear; take it all away. Hide me in the depths of Thy suffering love, mold me to the image of Thy divine passion.
Christ is the great Burden bearer—the Lamb of God who beareth the sin of the world; but in order to enjoy the benefit of His interposition, I must distinctly and for myself take advantage of it. Conscious of my lost estate, I must seek a personal share in the common salvation.
Remember Thy pure word of grace,—
Remember Calvary;
Remember all Thy dying groans,
And then remember me.
—Burnham.
He who thinks he hath no need of Christ, hath too high thoughts of himself. He who thinks Christ cannot help him, hath too low thoughts of Christ.
There is truth in Jesus which is terrible, as well as truth that is soothing; terrible, for He shall be Judge as well as Saviour; and ye cannot face Him, ye cannot stand before Him, unless ye now give ear to His invitation.
The Lord Jesus Christ would have the whole world to know, that though He pardons sin, He will not protect it.
He in whose heart the law was, and who alone of all mankind was content to do it, His sacrifice alone can be the sacrifice all-sufficient in the Father's sight as the proper sacrifice of humanity; He who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, He alone can give the Spirit which enables us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He is the only High-Priest of the universe.
With guilt's defilement stained, without, within,
How may I hope Thy cleansing grace to win?
Because Thou saidst, "I have forgiven thy sin."
There is more of power to sanctify, elevate, strengthen, and cheer in the word Jesus (Jehovah-Saviour) than in all the utterances of man since the world began.
The little stone by the road-side receives dust from every passing wind. The shower has often cleansed it, but it has always become again soiled. Another stone of the same lustre lies near by, but within the brook. It is perpetually cleansed, and kept clean by the flowing waters. Clouds of dust may pass over it, but they do not reach it, and it always reflects the clear rays of the sun. All its cleansing, all its purity is in the stream not in itself.
Now it is the blood of Jesus which saves, and it is the same blood which cleanses and sanctifies; and as we had to come to Jesus to be plunged into the fountain, so we have to abide in Jesus by fellowship, to grow up into Christlikeness.
The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Beloved, you that have faith in the fountain, frequent it. Beware of two errors which are very natural and very disastrous; beware of thinking any sin too great for it; beware of thinking any sin too small.
Never be afraid to bring the transcendent mysteries of our faith, Christ's life and death and resurrection, to the help of the humblest and commonest of human wants.
Reader, if Christ is yours, and you are Christ's, is there any thing on which you may more confidently repose than that Jesus is making continual intercession for you, ever displaying the merits of His cross and precious blood, not only for the church at large, but for thee, even for sinful thee?
Christ by His intercession is able to save thee beyond the horizon and largest compass of thy thoughts, even to the utmost.
In danger Christ lashes us to Himself, as Alpine guides do when there is perilous ice to get over.
Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine—
Thy wounded hand!—until its tremblings take
Strength from Thy touch.
A man may go to heaven without health, without riches, without honors, without learning, without friends; but he can never go there without Christ.
Be sure that Christ is not behind you, but before, calling and drawing you on. This is the liberty, the beautiful liberty of Christ. Claim your glorious privilege in the name of a disciple; be no more a servant, when Christ will own you as a friend.
Jesus does not drive His followers on before, as a herd of unwilling disciples, but goes before Himself, leading them into paths that He has trod, and dangers He has met, and sacrifices He has borne Himself, calling them after Him and to be only followers.
Jesus has never slept for an hour while one of His disciples watched and prayed in agony.
Who art Thou, Lord, and why to me so wondrous kind?
Quickly the voice replies,
"I am the Shepherd, who my straying lamb would find."
Lord, what am I, that, with unceasing care,
Thou didst seek after me,—that Thou didst wait,
Wet with unhealthy dews, before my gate,
And pass the gloomy nights of winter there?
As a child walking over a slippery and dangerous path cries out, "Father, I am falling!" and has but a moment to catch his father's hand, so every believer sees hours when only the hand of Jesus comes between him and the abysses of destruction.
Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear,
It is not night if Thou be near;
Oh, may no earth-born cloud arise
To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes.
If you are really anxious to learn the way to God, He has not left Himself without a witness, nor you without a teacher. Go to the recorded Christ, and look at that history; listen to those words which survive in the Gospels. And go to the living Christ, to Him who has said, "I am the Light of the world, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And dim as may be your outset—more of night than morning in your twilight, as you follow on you shall know the Lord, and with the light that radiates from Himself, your path will shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.
Unless you live in Christ, you are dead to God.
Christ is known only by them that receive Him into their love, their faith, their deep want; known only as He is enshrined within, felt as a Divine force, breathed in the inspirations of the secret life.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. In its doctrinal largeness let it inhabit your convictions, and in its Divine lovingness let it be infused into your spirit, and let its lifesome energy inspire your character.
No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
—Bible.
Let the Bible itself dwell in you—Christ's own word in Christ's own tone—the truth as it was in Jesus—truth dissolved in love, and redolent of sanctity.
In Christ's word there is both Christ's doctrine and Christ's heart,—the fact which He announces, and the feeling with which He proclaims it; and in order to be really Biblical, in order to be completely Christian, we must unite the two. If a man wants either, just to that extent Christ's word does not dwell in him.
Thus the word reveals the Divine Essence; His incarnation makes that Life, that Love, that Light, which is eternally resident in God obvious to souls that steadily contemplate Himself. These terms Life, Love, Light—so abstract, so simple, so suggestive—meet in God; but they meet also in Jesus Christ. They do not only make Him the centre of a philosophy; they belong to the mystic language of faith more truly than to the abstract terminalogy of speculative thought. They draw hearts to Jesus; they invest Him with a higher than any intellectual beauty.
What do we know about the world unseen? What reasonings, what curiosity, what misgivings there have been concerning that impenetrable mystery! Out of this mystery and vagueness and vastness comes the human form of the Divine Redeemer. He assures us that there is an unmixed and endless life, and that all we have to do to secure it is, to trust ourselves to Him who came to declare it and to confer it.
Jesus Christ hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
The Divine Christ has died on the cross a victim for the sins of the world; what is He doing now? Did His redemptive love exhaust itself in the days of His flesh? The past has been forgiven; but has any provision been made for the future? Have we been reconciled to God by the death of His Son, but is there no salvation through His risen life?
No friend sympathizes so tenderly with his friend in affliction as does Jesus. "In all our afflictions, He is afflicted." He feels all our sorrows, wants, and burdens as His own. Whence it is that the sufferings of believers are called the sufferings of Christ.
Truth is a rock, and on that rock faith plants its foot, and feels secure. But even on the rock you cannot live long without an atmosphere, and the believer's atmosphere is love. That atmosphere, is viewless, invisible, often forgotten; still it is real, and it is vital. "The words that I speak are spirit," says the Saviour. Over and above the resting place which weary spirits have found at His feet, which guilty consciences have found in His arms, there is an afflatus gone forth from those words of His, which to inhale and be surrounded with is like entering heaven's vestibule.
Rejoice in Christ Jesus, for in Him you are complete. His righteousness is over you, His strong arm is around you; and he who puts his soul in Christ's keeping shall never perish nor come into condemnation. This is a safe place to rest in. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
The love of Christ constraineth us.
Yes, for me, for me He careth
With a brother's tender care;
Yes, with me, with me He shareth
Every burden, every fear.
My desire is that my Lord would give me broader and deeper thoughts, to feed myself with wondering at His love.
I love to think of Him in the world of light to-day, my brother; mine though angels bow before Him, and archangels veil their faces; mine though I am very far from heaven's holiness and heaven's joy; yet He is my brother, and every beating of His heart is a brother's love for me, and though high and lifted up, His arm, a brother's, is around me, and will keep me and uphold me, until He gives me a brother's welcome to His and my home in the better land.
He is not affected by our mutability; our changes do not alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and calm; when we are low, selfish, mean or dispirited, He is still the unalterable I am, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance to feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. My soul, "hope thou in God."
In our fluctuations of feeling, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.
Jesus lives! the same comforting, helping, instructing, loving Elder Brother, as when John leaned on His bosom, as when He lifted Peter up from the waves, as when He dried Mary's tears with His, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." Jesus lives! the same almighty Saviour, Guide, Intercessor, as when He ascended to glory with the broken fetters of sin and death in His pierced hands.
To multitudes of sufferers on beds of pain and languishing, Jesus has been the great physician to-day; in many a weeping circle around precious dust, He has been the Divine comforter, and the tears have almost ceased to flow as this Jesus has touched the bier. Dying lips have whispered His name, and the valley of the shadow has been illumined as with the glory from the celestial shores.
Thou our throbbing flesh hast worn;
Thou our mortal griefs hast borne;
Thou hast shed the human tear;
Jesus, Son of Mary, hear!
Lord Jesus, engrave Thou Thy name with Thine own finger upon my heart, that it may remain closed to wordly joy and worldly pleasure, self-interest, fading honor, and low revenge, and open only to Thee.
When I stand before the throne,
Dressed in beauty not my own,
When I see Thee as Thou art,
Love Thee with unsinning heart,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know—
Not till then—how much I owe.
All is loss that comes between us and Christ.
What will you do with Jesus? Do with Him did I say? O what, what will you do without Him? What, when affliction and anguish shall come upon you? what, when closing your eyelids in death? what, when appearing before the awful judgment-seat?
Every day we may see some new thing in Christ. His love hath neither brim nor bottom.
All we want in Christ, we shall find in Christ. If we want little, we shall find little. If we want much, we shall find much; but if in utter helplessness we cast our all on Christ, He will be to us the whole treasury of God.
He is wisdom for your ignorance, strength for your weakness, righteousness for your guilt, sanctification for your corruption, redemption from all the thralldom of your apostasy.
What then? For all my sins, His pardoning grace;
For all my wants and woes, His loving-kindness;
For darkest shades, the shining of God's face;
And Christ's own hand to lead me in my blindness.
When Cæsar gave one a great reward, "This," said he, "is too great a gift for me to receive;" but said Cæsar, "It is not too great a gift for me to give." So, though the least gift that Christ gives, in one sense, is too much for us to receive, yet the greatest gifts are not too great for Christ to give.
There is not a moral evil which has not its infallible antidote, nor any moral virtue which has not its spring and sustenance in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To apprehend Him with every faculty of the mind, and with every affection of the heart, and to grow daily in that apprehension, is to emerge from every thing that enthralls, to surmount all that can contaminate.
If we knew all our need, what a large want book we should require! How comforting to know that Jesus has a supply book which exactly meets our want book.
We want the vision of a calmer and simpler beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial tastes—we want the draught of a pure spring to cool the flame of our excited life; we want, in other words, the spirit of the life of Christ, simple, natural, with power to soothe and calm the feelings which it rouses; the fullness of the spirit which can never intoxicate.
Now and always as in that morning twilight on the Galilean lake Christ comes to men. Everywhere He is present, everywhere revealing Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are holden by our own fault, so that we recognize not the merciful Presence which is all around us. Now, as then, it is they who are nearest to Christ by love who see Him first.
Still Jesus joins Himself to us; still He walks with us; still He instructs us, speaking to us by His word, His providences, His Spirit; still He seeks to enter into our sorrows and trials, and to console and cheer us. But we know Him not. Our eyes are holden by unbelief. We do not press Him to abide with us. Hence He is grieved, and we are left alone in the night.
"Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world," is not an idle—not an unfulfilled promise. He is not with us merely as a thought, but as a life. He gathers us up into His own being. He floods us with it. There is inspiration here, certainty for any duty, for any endurance. The faith, Christ with me, can make the poorest and the hardest life luminous, joyous, glorious.
One thing alone my heart requires,—one gleam of living light amid the ashes and the gloom; that into my cell of humiliation the flood of Divine pity should break, and keep aglow the openings of eternal hope, and sustain the hidden strength of an everlasting love.
It is when we unbosom ourselves to Him, and confide to Him all our cares and sorrows and temptations, that He walks with us, and abides with us, and opens to us the Scriptures concerning Himself—His dignity, His suitableness, His loveliness. His truth, His tenderness, His faithfulness, revealing Himself in us; causing our hearts to burn within us—to burn with love, gratitude, devotion, courage, joy—to burn with a celestial fire, which consumes all selfishness and sin, and glows, a pure, perennial flame, upon pure, living altars.
When the storms of trial lower,
When I feel temptation's power,
In the last and darkest hour,
Jesus, Saviour, be Thou nigh.
I find my Lord Jesus cometh not in the precise way that I lay wait for Him. He hath a manner of His own. Oh, how high are His ways above my ways!
Blessed are they who, in the calm moments of retirement, of worship, of prayer, of silent waiting, have found that to "the weary and heavy laden" Christ can indeed give rest; that compared with the heavy bondage of the world or the exactions of human systems, His yoke indeed is easy, and His burden is light.
O most grateful burden, which comforts them that carry it! The burdens of earthly masters gradually wear out the strength of those who carry them; but the burden of Christ assists the bearers of it, because we carry not grace, but grace us.
Take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work.
"My burden is light," said the blessed Redeemer, a light burden indeed, which carries him that bears it. I have looked through all nature for a resemblance of this, and seem to find a shadow of it in the wings of a bird, which are indeed borne by the creature, and yet support her flight towards heaven.
The wayfaring man, Christ Jesus, has helped many and many a tired traveler home with burdens quite as heavy as yours. Often and often He goes up and down this thoroughfare of life in search of just such overladen pilgrims; and His voice is sounding forth above all the babble of the busy tongues and the clatter of the busy wheels, saying,—"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Dear Lord! in all our loneliest pains
Thou hast the largest share,
And that which is unbearable
'Tis Thine, not ours to bear.
We are weary and heavy laden, and our heavenly Father offers to carry us and our affairs in His own everlasting arms. And so far as the weariness is concerned, we consent; we consent to be carried and find rest to our souls. But "heavy laden,"—no, we cannot part with the heavy load. This responsibility, this nervousness about the absent, this household worry, this mercantile venture, this literary experiment, this invalid friend, we cannot transfer to Him who says, "Cast thy burden on the Lord," but even our bleared and sleepy eyes we open from time to time to see that it is still there, and ("O fools and slow of heart!") when we can guard it no longer, the relaxing arms are still in attitude as if they enclasped it, all unconscious that it is now better cared for elsewhere.
I see that I have too much confined my thoughts to God, and that I ought to go directly to the Saviour's arms, and that I ought to believe, abominable as my sins have been, if they have once been pardoned, they form no partition between me and the heart of Christ.
Then Jesus spoke: "Bring here thy burden,
And find in me a full release;
Bring all thy sorrows, all thy longings,
And take instead my perfect peace.
Trying to bear thy cross alone!—
Child, the mistake is all thine own."
Brethren, whatever the temptation is, our safety is not in habits of virtue. It is not in sturdy resolution and strength of character. It is not even in the timely thought of sin's consequences; but our safety is in the Saviour. Christ ever lives and ever intercedes; and it is our strength, our triumph, to rush into His arms of omnipotent protection.
I come to Thee, O Christ. Faint and perishing, defenceless and needy, with many a sin and many a fear, to Thee I turn, for Thou hast died for me, and for me Thou dost live. Be Thou my shelter and strong tower. Give me to drink of living water. Let me rest in Thee while in this weary land; and let Thy sweet love, my Brother and my Lord, be mine all on earth and the heaven of my heaven.
Well, then, Lord Jesus! I will creep if I cannot walk; I will take hold of Thy word. When I stumble, Thou wilt support me; when I fall, Thou wilt hold out Thy cross, and help me with it to rise again, until at length I reach the place where Thou art, and with all my weaknesses and wants, cast myself into Thy bosom.
Christ is a rock in a weary land, a covert from the tempest of Divine justice, receiving through the ages the snows of Divine mercy, and melting them for the green pastures and still waters of God's peaceful flock—a rock against which wicked men and devils have breathed their empty curses in vain, for eighteen hundred years.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me!
Let me hide myself in Thee
When the tempest rages,
In the Rock of Ages
I will safely hide;
Though the earth be shaking,
And all hearts be quaking,
Christ is at my side.
The sea ebbs and flows, but the rock remains unmoved.
If hope be fixed on Christ as the Rock of Ages, a rock rent, if we may use the expression, on purpose that there might be a holding-place for the anchors of a perishing world, it may well come to pass that we enjoy a calm as we journey through life, and draw near the grave.
Rock of Ages, I'm secure,
With Thy promise full and free;
Faithful, positive, and sure—
"As thy days, thy strength shall be."
Would you be free from the condemnation of the sins that are past, from the power of the temptations that are to come? Then take your stand on the Rock of Ages. Let death, let the grave, let the judgment come, the victory is Christ's and yours through Him.
Blest is my lot whate'er befall;
What can disturb me, who appall,
While, as my strength, my rock, my all,
Saviour! I cling to Thee?
To-day Christ, in a certain sense, is on trial before us all. In these living hearts, in every one to-day, there will be a judgment of some sort passed upon His sacred person.
Now let us gather into one bouquet, from the King's garden, these seven fragrant flowers: Jesus the Son of God; Jesus our sin-bearer; Jesus the giver of eternal life; Jesus the keeper of our undying souls; Jesus the hearer of our prayers; Jesus the chastener who can turn crosses into crowns; and Jesus the wonder-worker who changes us into eternal likeness unto Himself! These flowers will keep sweet till heaven dawns.
Earth, thou grain of sand on the shore of the Universe of God; thou Bethlehem, amongst the princely cities of the heavens; thou art, and remainest, the Loved One amongst ten thousand suns and worlds, the Chosen of God! Thee will He again visit, and then thou wilt prepare a throne for Him, as thou gavest Him a manger cradle; in His radiant glory wilt thou rejoice, as thou didst once drink His blood and tears, and mourn His death! On thee has the Lord a great work to complete.
—Pressel.
If I were but sure that I should live to see the coming of the Lord, it would be the joyfulest tidings in the world. O that I might see His kingdom come! It is the characteristic of His saints to love His appearing, and to look for that blessed hope. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
We beseech Thee, cut short Thy delay and tarry not; come forth out of Thy pavilion, O Thou for whom the ages wait!
CHRISTIANS.
A Christian is a man in Christ. "If any man be in Christ." A Christian is a man for Christ. "Glorify God in your body and spirit which are God's."
He that will deserve the name of a Christian must be such a man as excelleth through the knowledge of Christ and His doctrine; in modesty and righteousness of mind, in constancy of life, in virtuous fortitude, and in maintaining sincere piety toward the one and the only God, who is all in all.
—Eusebius.
Christians are called saints, for their holiness; believers, for their faith; brethern, for their love; disciples, for their knowledge.
—Fuller.
A Christian is a believer in Jesus. He believes that if he only throws his own lost and sinful soul on the Redeemer, there is in His sacrifice sufficient merit to cancel all his guilt, and in His heart sufficient love to undertake the keeping of his soul for all eternity. He believes that Jesus is a Saviour. He believes that His heart is set on His people's holiness, and that it is only by making them new creatures, pure-minded, kind-hearted, unselfish, devout, that He can fit them for a home and a life like His own, that He can fit them for the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. And believing all this he prays and labors after holiness.
It is through the multitudinous mass of living human hearts, of human acts and words of love and truth, that the Christ of the first century has become the Christ of the nineteenth.
Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man—a noble man—frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.
It was a deep true thought which the old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like.
A child of God should be a visible Beatitude, for joy and happiness, and a living Doxology, for gratitude and adoration.
The purified righteous man has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his King stamped upon him.
Ordinary human motives will appeal in vain to the ears which have heard the tones of the heavenly music; and all the pomp of life will show poor and tawdry to the sight that has gazed on the vision of the great white throne and the crystal sea.
The sum of the whole matter is this—He who is one in will and heart with God is a Christian. He who loves God is one in will and heart with Him. He who trusts Christ loves God. That is Christianity in its ultimate purpose and result. That is Christianity in its means and working forces. That is Christianity in its starting-point and foundation.
These—lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, loving forbearance—quiet, unpretending, unshowy virtues, are amongst the best means for promoting true unity in the church of God. Who is the most useful Christian? Not as a rule he who has the most transcendent genius, brilliant talents, and commanding eloquence, but he who has the most of this quiet, loving, forbearing spirit. The world may do without its Niagara, whose thundering roar and majestic rush excite the highest amazement of mankind, but it cannot spare the thousand rivulets that glide unseen and unheard every moment through the earth, imparting life, and verdure, and beauty wherever they go. And so the church may do without its men of splendid abilities, but it cannot do without its men of tender, loving, forbearing souls.
The weakest believer is a member of Christ as well as the strongest; and the weakest member of the body mystically shall not perish. Christ will cut off rotten members, but not weak members.
—Watson.
The last, best fruit that comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard; forbearance toward the unforbearing; warmth of heart toward the cold; and philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
There is nothing that will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ.
The greatness of God is the true rebuke to the littleness of men. The greatness of Christ is the true rebuke to the littleness of Christians.
A greater absurdity cannot be thought of than a morose, hard-hearted, covetous, proud, malicious Christian.
God listens for nothing so tenderly, as when His children help each other by their testimonies to His goodness and the way in which He has brought them deliverance.
Christ, in that place He hath put you, hath intrusted you with a dear pledge, which is His own glory, and hath armed you with His sword to keep the pledge, and make a good account of it to God.
The man who is satisfied, because he thinks he is safe, who feels that he has religion enough, because he thinks he has enough to save him from hell, is as ignorant of the power as he is a stranger to the consolation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful.
Let us not torment each other because we are not all alike, but believe that God knew best what He was doing in making us so different. So will the best harmony come out of seeming discords, the best affection out of differences, the best life out of struggle, and the best work will be done when each does his own work, and lets every one else do and be what God made him for.
Being in Christ, it is safe to forget the past; it is possible to be sure of the future; it is possible to be diligent in the present.
Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good citizens.
CHRISTIAN CONFLICT.
The path which leads to the mount of ascension does not lie among flowers; and he who travels it must climb the cold hillside, he must have his feet cut by the pointed rocks, he must faint in the dark valley, he must not seldom have his rest at midnight on the desert sand.
Difficulties are God's errands; and when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence,—as a compliment from God.
He that o'ercometh hath power in the nations,
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth;
Greater than anger is love that subdueth.
It is easy to say "resist;" but the command is bitter irony, unless we go on to say with the New Testament,—"Whom resist steadfast in the faith." No man, my dear brother, can stand in the slippery places where we have to go, unless he have the grasp of a higher and stronger hand to keep him up.
Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour.
Dear brethren, make your choice. Fight you must. Are you going to win or be beaten? Make your choice of the image you must bear. Whose?
There are two ways of defending a castle; one by shutting yourself up in it, and guarding every loop-hole; the other by making it an open centre of operations from which all the surrounding country may be subdued. Is not the last the truest safety? Jesus was never guarding Himself, but always invading the lives of others with His holiness. There never was such an open life as His; and yet the force with which His character and love flowed out upon the world kept back, more strongly than any granite wall of prudent caution could have done, the world from pressing in on Him. His life was like an open stream which keeps the sea from flowing up into it by the eager force with which it flows down into the sea. He was so anxious that the world should be saved that therein was His salvation from the world. He labored so to make the world pure that He never even had to try to be pure Himself.
Guided by His wisdom, strong in His strength, there may be for you struggle and suffering, the darkness and the storm. "The disciple is not above His Master." There may be weeping that shall endure for a night, but joy shall come in the morning. If the night cometh, so also the morning, "a morning without clouds," the morning of an eternal day.
The success of sainthood is the success attained by struggle and suffering and achieved by faith; a success of honor, of clean hands and pure heart, of service to man and glory to God.
Christ is the ideal of what a man should be. He has my ideal portrait, as it were, drawn out in His own thought and feeling. There is an exaltation and a grandeur for myself in the time to come, which Christ knows, and I do not; but I am following after. I am pressing up toward that thought that Christ has of what I am and ought to be; and I am determined that I will apprehend it as Christ Himself does. Not that I have it; but I will strive for it. My manhood is in the future. My life lies beyond the present.
That discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passion, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provision we can make of the goods of fortune.
—Blair.
We thank God, in this our day, for the furnace and the fire; for the good sword and the true word; for the great triumph and the little song.
Ah, my brother, it is a far harder thing, and it is a far higher proof of a thorough-going, persistent, Christian principle woven into the very texture of my soul, to go on plodding and patient, never taken by surprise by any small temptation, than to gather into myself the strength which God has given me, and, expecting some great storm to come down upon me, to stand fast, and let it rage. It is a great deal easier to die once for Christ than to live always for Him.
Brethren, are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be weak, and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of triumph now, for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which"—not shall give, but "giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
The disciples seem alone; but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when the need is sorest, and the hope least, He comes across the waves, making their surges His pavement, and using all opposition as the means of His approach; and His presence brings calmness; and immediately they are at the land.
The way is long and dreary,
The path is bleak and bare;
Our feet are worn and weary,
But we will not despair;
More weary was Thy burden,
More desolate Thy ways,
O Lamb of God, who takest
The sin of the world away,
Have mercy upon us.
CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP.
The same bond which unites believers to Christ binds them to each other. The love which is exercised towards the Head extends to the members. The union itself necessarily involves a union of affection. Those who love Christ love those who are like Him and those who are beloved by Him.
The social element is the genius of Christianity.
The golden chain of affection is binding together all who compose the goodly fellowship of the saints. Calvary rather than Sinai is the typical source of the church's inspiration; and bonds of law are being supplanted by bonds of love. Indeed, the whole host of the redeemed is marching in solid phalanx against the combined forces of ignorance and error, of depravity and sin; while, high above all the regimental standards, floats the banner of the cross, blazoned with this suggestive inscription, "Every one that loveth is born of God."
There is a mighty gulf between those who love and those who do not love God. To the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, even tenderness. It is only those who love the Lord who should find in our hearts a home.
Ye are born, all of you, to a royal birthright. Scorn not the poor, thou wealthy—his toil is nobler than thy luxury. Fret not at the rich, thou poor—his beneficence is comelier than thy murmuring. Join hands, both of you, rich and poor together, as ye toil in the brotherhood of God's great harvest-field—heirs of a double heritage—thou poor, of thy kingly labor—thou rich, of thy queenly charity—and let heaven bear witness to the bridal.
The lack of brotherhood among believers themselves has paralyzed the church in front of the skepticism and immorality of the world; but when we go back in simple faith to the one great fact of our redemption, we shall be both brought into closer fellowship with each other, and stimulated to more tender regard for the salvation of men.
The church and the world alike demand that those who profess to love the Lord should be careful to love their brethren also. It is for them to have in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity. Only so can the church realize the ideal of its Divine Founder, and foreshadow its future excellence and beauty. Only so can this spiritual structure be celestial and glorious, revealing in all its fair proportions from dome and turret, from glittering spires and airy traceries, its marvelous symmetry and oneness, while at the same time it swells from every organ pipe, and chants in every choral anthem the praises of Him whose essence is love, and whose being is characterized by unity.
Shake hands with somebody as you go out of church. The more of it the better, if it is expressive of real interest and feeling. There may be a great deal of the spirit of the gospel put into a hearty shake of the hand.
—The Presbyterian.
If there is a sentence in the creed which we cannot say together, there is nothing in Christ which we would wish to be different; and heresies of the heart are quite as dangerous, and to me as estranging, as errors in the head.
CHRISTIAN LIFE.
The Christian life is not knowing or hearing, but doing.
The only satisfactory manifestations of religious character and life are associated with the reciprocal influences of spiritual experience and aggressive activity.
No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success," and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preëminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross—was that a failure? Nay, my brethren, it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God.
Each sinner transformed into a saint is a new token of a redeeming power among men. That token declares to observers, not that there is a King in heaven, not that there is a "Father of Lights," but that there is a Saviour. And this is the testimony that the world especially needs.
It takes practice to use one's eyes, even when God has opened them. And there are some believers who never get beyond confounding a doctrinal statement of a truth with a living exemplification of that truth.
There is just now a great clamor and demand for "culture;" but it is not so much culture that is needed as discipline.
The strength that we want is not a brute, unregulated strength; the beauty that we want is no mere surface beauty; but we want a beauty on the surface of life that is from the central force of principle within, as the beauty on the cheek of health is from the central force at the heart.
The way to be strong is to act on the credit of strength being given. Strength is received in the act of obeying. When the path of duty is clear, it is want of faith to continue asking for strength, and not to act upon it.
Great talents are not, before God, a substitute for love for Himself; the possession of a profound intellect does not free any man from the obligations resting on the heart for purity and holiness; a reputation for attainments in science does not settle the question whether he is righteous before his Maker; refined manners are not, in the sight of God, a substitute for the graces of the Spirit; God does not justify man on the ground of human learning; attainments in chemistry, anatomy, geology, botany, astronomy, or skill in sculpture and painting,—these do not prepare a man to die.
Emotion, feeling—these are well enough if they feed the springs of power. Prayer, praise, preaching—these are all good and never to be dispensed with; but if the life to which they minister have no manifestation out of them, it is a failure.
Though to us—the toilers—it is night still, to Him—the Master who watcheth our labor, and to them—our fellows whose labor is done—"there is light with a clear sky." Though to us, down below, there is but the deafening roar, the shriek of discord, the wail of pain, blent in one jargon of strange sounds which have no chime; to them, above in the high, calm silence, there are heard only the striking of the hour which tells of the sure speed of time, and the voice of the joy-bells already ringing for the world's great bridal.
So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that Infinite Love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will take care of it.
The religious life is a struggle, and not a hymn.
God grant that as our horizon of duty is widened, our minds may widen with it; that as our burden is increased, our shoulders may be strengthened to bear it. God grant to us that spirit of wisdom and understanding, uprightness, and godly fear, without which, even in greatest things there is nothing; with which, even in the smallest things there is every thing.
In his soul, as in a mirror, were concentrated all the lights radiating from every point of observation—whether human or Divine—and from his soul as from a mirror, these lights were reflected back in every possible combination of beauty and sublimity.
The demand of the day is for a higher standard and style of Christian life. Every follower of Christ must represent His religion purely, loftily, impressively, before that multitude of "Bible-readers" whose only Bible is the Christian.
If a man is as passionate, malicious, resentful, sullen, moody, or morose, after his conversion as before it, what is he converted from or to?
Show me the professing Christian whose social character is as unlovely after profession as it was before, and though there may be an increase of knowledge and of some other things connected with religion, there is no progress.
Here is where a great many professed disciples of Jesus fail of being real disciples. They have regularly enlisted, have put on their uniform, and there they stand before the recruiting office, with knapsacks and blankets on their backs, with muskets at "carry," marking time to the martial music—although some of them don't do even that; and there they have stood since their enlistment, never marching a rod.
Some time ago when in a mine, looking through its dark corridors, I every now and then saw the glimmer of a moving lamp, and I could track it all through the mine. The reason was that the miner carried it on his hat,—it was a part of himself, and it showed where he went. I said, "Would that in this dark world every miner of the Master carried his lamp to show where he walks."
You may be quite sure that if little light comes from a Christian character, little light comes into it. We must have the glory sink into us before it can be reflected from us.
But let the love of Jesus become the master-principle of our hearts, and there will be no halting or irresolution; no parleying with temptation; no seeking to explain away our duty under color of deliberating to discover what it is; no looking one way and walking another; but with undivided souls, and with enthusiastic devotion, we shall do only and always the will of Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us.
In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.
Count not that thou hast lived that day, in which thou hast not lived with God.
Life, like war, is a series of mistakes; and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that; but he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.
Looking back the way we've come,
What a sight, O Lord, we see!
All the failures in ourselves,
All the love and strength in Thee.
Yet it seemed so dark before—
Would that we had trusted more!
Is thine a life of devotion, of meekness and humility, of supreme attachment to heavenly and divine things; of self-denial and of universal benevolence? If after candid examination you find reason to hope that you are one of God's dear children washed with His blood, sanctified by the Spirit, clothed with the righteousness of the Well Beloved—cherish that hope as the gift of heaven. Dismiss your fears; bind yourself to be the Lord's in an everlasting covenant; think less of yourself and more and more of the name, the cross, the glory of your Redeemer. Henceforth "let your light shine."
O Lord and Sovereign of my Life, take from me the spirit of idleness, despair, love of power, and unprofitable speaking.
—Old Russian Liturgy.
It is they who glorify, who shall enjoy Him; they who deny themselves, who shall not be denied; they who labor on earth, who shall rest in heaven; they who bear the cross, who shall wear the crown; they who seek to bless others, who shall be blessed.
The truest worship is a life;
All dreaming we resign;
We lay our offerings at Thy feet,—
Our lives, O God, are Thine!
Live for the other life. Endure as seeing Him who is invisible. Work by faith; work by hope; work by love; work by courage; work by trust; work by the sweet side of your mind; and so be like Christ, until you dwell with Him.
Bearing bravely the evils that beset us, doing cheerfully the duties that are near, trusting in God, guided by Christ, fear shall not confound us in the way, and death shall find us ready.
The Christian's life on this side and beyond the grave is essentially the same, differing only as a song which, at a certain point, changes from the minor to the major key, and thenceforth wells along with still more glorious harmonies.
All the graces of Christianity always go together. They so go together that where there is one, there are all, and where one is wanting, all are wanting. Where there is faith, there are love, and hope, and humility; and where there is love, there is also trust; and where there is a holy trust in God, there is love to God; and where there is a gracious hope, there also is a holy fear of God.
He who lives to God rests in his Redeemer's love, and is trying to get rid of his old nature—to him every sorrow, every bereavement, every pain, will come charged with blessings, and death itself will be no longer the "king of terrors," but the messenger of grace.
The death-bed testimony impresses us only as it is the outgrowth of a life. The life is the test. Triumphant living is better than triumphant dying.
O happy life! life hid with Christ in God!
So making me
At home and by the wayside and abroad,
Alone with Thee.
CHRISTIAN SERVICE.
Life passes; work is permanent. It is all going—fleeting and withering. Youth goes. Mind decays. That which is done remains. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for God, that, and only that, you are. Deeds never die.
Every day in this world has its work; and every day as it rises out of eternity keeps putting to each of us this question afresh, "What will you do before to-day has sunk into eternity and nothingness again?" And now what have we to say with respect to this strange, solemn thing—Time? That men do with it through life just what the apostles did for one precious and irreparable hour in the garden of Gethsemane—they go to sleep.
Whoever lives a noble life for Christ and God—he is one of God's workmen, working on that building of which God is the supreme Architect.
There is one thing that makes life mighty in its veriest trifles, worthy in its smallest deeds, that delivers it from monotony, that delivers it from insignificance. All will be great, nothing will be overpowering, when, living in communion with Jesus Christ, we say as He says, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me."
The simple desire and purpose to please and honor and serve the Master will save your most ordinary work from being contemptible, and will give to your greatest service a beauty and acceptableness which bulk and bigness can never give.
My Master and my Lord!
I long to do some work, some work for Thee;
I long to bring some lowly gift of love
For all Thy love to me.
The ready, earnest heart that asks, "May I do this for Thee, Lord?" not "Must I do it?" has a blessed reward moment by moment.
—Christian at Work.
Shall I grudge to spend my life for Him who did not grudge to shed His life-blood for me?
While the passion of some is to shine, of some to govern, and of others to accumulate, let one great passion alone influence our breasts, the passion which reason ratifies, which conscience approves, which Heaven inspires,—that of being and doing good.
We must be something in order to do something, but we must also do something in order to be something. The best rule, I think, is this: If we find it hard to do good, then let us try to be good. If, on the other hand, we find it hard to be good, then let us try to do good. Being leads to doing, doing leads to being. Yet below both as their common root is faith,—faith in God, in man, in ourselves, in the eternal superiority of right over wrong, truth over error, good over evil, love over all selfishness and all sin.
We are not to wait to be in preparing to be. We are not to wait to do in preparing to do, but to find in being and doing preparation for higher being and doing.
Nothing progresses more rapidly in a heart set upon doing good than an ability to be useful. They who at first are timid, shy, awkward, in such efforts, soon acquire courage, expertness, and efficiency.
There are multitudes in our congregations who are just waiting while they ought to be acting. They must work, if they would have God work in them. There can be no religion without obedience.
Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.
God works, and therefore we work; God is with us, and therefore we are with God, and stand on His side.
The Spirit never makes men the instruments of converting others until they feel that they cannot do it themselves; that their skill in argument, in persuasion, in management, avails nothing.
Learn these two things: never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here, and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand. Do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. Trust to God to weave your little thread into a web, though the patterns show it not yet.
I feel convinced that every man has given him of God much more than he has any idea of, and that he can help on the world's work more than he knows of. What we want is the single eye that will see what our work is, the humility to accept it, however lowly, the faith to do it for God, the perseverance to go on till death.
If you cannot be great, be willing to serve God in that which is small. If you cannot do great things for Him, cheerfully do little ones. If you cannot be an Aaron to serve at the altar, or a Moses to guide the tribes, consent to be "a little maid" to Naaman the Syrian, for the honor of God's prophets, or a little child, for Christ's sake, to be set by Him in the midst of the people, as an illustration of the sweetness of humility.
God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own.
God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the place where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment is truly "our Father's business." He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves, or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves.
Live as with God; and, whatever be your calling, pray for the gift that will perfectly qualify you in it.
A pure, sincere, and stable spirit is not distracted though it be employed in many works; for that it works all to the honor of God, and inwardly being still and quiet, seeks not itself in any thing it doth.
O Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free;
Tell me Thy secret; help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.
God is the best helper, but He loves to be helped. Be earnest in prayer, but do not neglect human means. You must help yourself in all manner of ways, and then the Lord will be with you.
Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand.
The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others.
Let us imitate Him who sought the mountain-tops as His refreshment after toil, but never left duties undone or sufferers unrelieved in pain. Let us imitate Him who turned from the joys of contemplation to the joys of service without a murmur when His disciples broke in on His solitude with, "All men seek Thee;" but never suffered the outward work to blunt His desire for, nor to encroach on, the hour of still communion with His Father. Lord, teach us to work; Lord, teach us to pray.
Your only safety lies in placing yourself in circumstances which will make exertion necessary, and which will secure Divine assistance. Never mind your infirmities. You have nothing to do with them. Your business is to trust, and to go forward. If you wait till the sea becomes land, you will never walk on it. You must leave the ship, and, like Peter, set your feet upon the waves, and you will find them marble.
Toil on, and in thy toil rejoice;
For toil comes rest, for exile, home;
Soon shalt thou hear the bridegroom's voice,
The midnight peal: "Behold, I come."
When four rowers are in a boat, with their backs to the bow, their simple office is to pull the oars. The steersman's office is to look ahead and work the helm. The moment that the rower turns steersman, and tries to look over his shoulder or outpull his fellow oarsman, the boat loses headway. So you and I are placed with our backs to the future. In our hands are the oars of Christian endeavor. Let God steer the boat, and let us attend to the oars.
And yet the doing is ours, not His. He inspired it, we wrought it out. He quickened, but we brought forth. His the heart-beat, but ours the hand-stroke; His the influence, ours the effluence.
Stand up from among the dead, and patiently work as one waiting for the judgment-seat of Christ.
So, my brethren, let us do our work, that others entering on it may carry it forward through after generations. Thus shall the work of the fathers become the glory of their children; and in the end, when the mystery of God shall be finished, we shall see, in its completed beauty and proportion, the great fabric into which we put our little all; and we shall rejoice at once in the skill of the Architect and the diligence of the successive builders.
Look to the end; and resolve to make the service of Christ the first object in what remains of life, without indifference to the opinion of your fellow men, but also without fear of it.
Your salvation is His business; make His service your business and delight.
The question is not merely what we can feel, but what we can do for Christ; not how many tears we can shed, but how many sins we can mortify; not what raptures we can experience, but what self-denial we can practice; not what happy frames we can enjoy, but what holy duties we can perform; not simply how much we can luxuriate at sermon or at sacrament, but how much we can exhibit of the mind of Jesus in our intercourse with our fellow men; not only how far above earth we can rise to the bliss of heaven, but how much of the love and purity of heaven we can bring down to earth; in short, not how much of rapt feeling we can indulge, but how much of religious principle we can bring to bear on our whole conduct.
"Work out your own salvation." Work, as well as believe; and in the daily practice of faithful obedience, in the daily subjugation of your own spirits to His Divine power, in the daily crucifixion of your flesh with its affections and lusts, in the daily straining after loftier heights of godliness and purer atmospheres of devotion and love,—make more thoroughly your own what you possess. Work into the substance of your souls that which you have. "Apprehend that for which you are apprehended of Christ;" and remember that not a past act of faith, but a present and continuous life of loving, faithful work in Christ, which is His and yet yours, is the holding fast the beginning of your confidence firm unto the end.
If we truly feel that the Lord liveth, before whom we stand, we shall want nothing else for our work but His smile; and we shall feel that the light of His face is all we need. That thought should deaden our love for outward things. How the things that we fever our souls by pursuing, and fret our hearts when we lose, will cease to attract! How small and vulgar the "prizes" of life, as people call them, will appear!
God's very service is wages; His ways are strewed with roses, and paved with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, and with peace that passeth understanding.
The sense that a man is serving a Higher than himself, with a service which will become ever more and more perfect freedom, evokes more profound, more humbling, more exalted emotions than any thing else in the world can do. The spirit of man is an instrument which cannot give out its deepest, finest tones, except under the immediate hand of the Divine Harmonist.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience.
—Fenelon.
The man who labors to please his neighbor for his good to edification has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. Even a feeble, but kind and tender man, will effect more than a genius, who is rough and artificial.
If the world is ever conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble and mighty, but by every member of Christ's body being a working member; doing his work; filling his own sphere; holding his own post; and saying to Jesus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
Jesus was a great worker, and His disciples must not be afraid of hard work.
A divine life is hidden in every seed we sow for Jesus. It matters not how small the seed may be, nor in what secluded part of the vineyard it may be sown—a prayer, a word, a look, a pressure of the hand—God's almighty energy is enfolded in every seed which we sow in the Master's name and for His glory.
I believe that when Paul plants and Apollos waters, God gives the increase; and I have no patience with those who throw the blame on God when it belongs to themselves.
If a man is unable to find the way to Jesus, he ought to be led. It is good work this bringing the blind to Him who alone can give them sight.
When men's hearts are melted under the preaching of the word, or by sickness, or the loss of friends, believers should be very eager to stamp the truth upon the prepared mind. Such opportunities are to be seized with holy eagerness.
We may talk of the best means of doing good; but, after all, the greatest difficulty lies in doing it in a proper spirit. Speak the truth in love, "in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves"—with the meekness and gentleness of Christ.
We serve Him most who take the most
Of His exhaustless love.
Give me a faithful heart—
Likness to Thee,
That each departing day
Henceforth may see
Some work of love begun,
Some deed of kindness done,
Some wanderer sought and won,
Something for Thee.
I rejoice that the reign of Christ is such, while it thrills the soul with emotions, and opens before the highest intellect the most boundless conceptions, we are left at the same time ready, though our hearts be thrilled, to have our hands filled for deeds of benevolence and love. The happiest moments may be the busiest moments.
Be ashamed to die until you have gained some victory for humanity.
The man who has given himself to his country loves it better; the man who has fought for his friend honors him more; the man who has labored for his community values more highly the interests he has sought to conserve; the man who has wrought and planned and endured for the accomplishment of God's plan in the world sees the greatness of it, the divinity and glory of it, and is himself more perfectly assimilated to it.
Theodore Cuyler found Mr. Moody laboring in a Mission-room in the city of Brooklyn. With him was a handful of plain people. Cuyler whispered to him, "Slow work this, is it not?" Moody looked at him and said, "Did you ever light a fire? I am lighting my fire;" and he kindled it to such good purpose that anon it blazed over two continents.
Do not mourn the past, my brother; it has given place to better times. Do not dread the coming of the future; it shall dawn in brighter and safer glory. Come, and upon the altars of the faith be anointed as the Daniels of to-day, at once the prophet and the worker—the brow bright with the shining prophecy, the hands full of earnest and of holy deeds.
Go, then, young men, where glory waits you. The field is the world. Go where the abjects wander, and gather them into the fold of the sanctuary. Go to the lazarettos where the moral lepers herd, and tell them of the healing balm. Go to the haunts of crime, and float a gospel message upon the feculent air. Go wherever there are ignorant to be instructed, timid to be cheered, and helpless to be succored, and stricken to be blessed, and erring to be reclaimed. Go wherever faith can see, or hope can breathe, or love can work, or courage can venture. Go and win the spurs of your spiritual knighthood there.
Our work, abiding, shall bring to us the endless glory with which God at last overpays the toils, even as now He overanswers the poor prayers of His laboring servants.
To-day, let us rise and go to our work. To-morrow, we shall rise and go to our reward.
Nay, be they many, be they few,
My thought but holds the end in view;
And fills each day's full measure up
With service sweet and patient hope.
CHRISTIANITY.
Christianity does not consist in a proud priesthood, a costly church, an imposing ritual, a fashionable throng, a pealing organ, loud responses to the creed, and reiterated expressions of reverence for the name of Christ; but in the spirit of filial trust in God, and ardent, impartial, overflowing love to man.
Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine as of a perfect character.
If Christianity were only a development, then Christ was not needed. If Christianity were only a scheme of morals, then the Divine incarnation was a thing superfluous.
The patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently but the unfolding of one general plan. In the first we see the folded bud; in the second the expanded leaf; in the third the blossom and the fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of time; holding on its way through all the revolutions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race; receiving new forms, but always identical in spirit; and, finally, expanding and embracing in one great brotherhood the whole family of man! Who can doubt that such a religion was from God?
Christianity was the temple that was to be eternal, and on it, as unconscious builders, men were laboring in all the ages from the creation.
In what consists the entire of Christianity but in this,—that feeling an utter incapacity to work out our own salvation, we submit our whole selves, our hearts, and our understandings, to the Divine disposal; and that, relying upon God's gracious assistance, ensured to our honest endeavors to obtain it, through the mediation of Jesus Christ, we look up to Him, and to Him alone, for safety? Nay, what is the very notion of religion, but this humble reliance upon God?
The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these other, men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after man.
Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice.
No, there is nothing on the face of the earth that can, for a moment, bear a comparison with Christianity as a religion for man. Upon this the hope of the race hangs. From the very first, it took its position, as the pillar of fire, to lead the race onward. The intelligence and power of the race are with those who have embraced it; and now, if this, instead of proving indeed a pillar of fire from God, should be found but a delusive meteor, then nothing will be left to the race but to go back to a darkness that may be felt, and to a worse than Egyptian bondage.
Christianity is no mere scheme of doctrine or of ethical practice, but is instead a kind of miracle, a power out of nature and above, descending into it; a historically supernatural movement on the world, that is visibly entered into it, and organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus Christ.
Christianity is, above all other religions ever known, a religion of sacrifice. It is a religion founded on the greatest of all sacrifices, the sacrifice of the Incarnation, culminating in the sacrifice on Calvary.
The whole of Christianity is comprised in three things—to believe, to love, and to obey Jesus. These are things, however, which we must be learning all our life.
Christianity may produce agitation, anger, tumult as at Ephesus; but the diffusion of the pure gospel of Christ, and the establishment of the institutions of honesty and virtue, at whatever cost, is a blessing to mankind.
Christianity depends finally on consciousness and experience. From other departments of the mind she may retire at times or seem to, but never from this. Sitting here, if allowed to, on the throne of the soul, she occasionally walks into the other rooms and sets them in order; and accustomed to her presence, sooner or later the soul finds every department flooded with her light.
Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any. Nothing is visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes. Standing within all is clear and denned; every ray of light reveals an army of unspeakable splendors.
Christianity is perfect, men are imperfect. Now a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle. Christianity, therefore, is not the work of man. If Christianity is not the work of man, it can have come from none but God. If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it except by revelation. Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion.
The substance of all realities is in this religion of Jesus Christ; but it can be real only to those who will do His will.
Christendom, as an effect, must be accounted for. It is too large for a mortal cause.
When I see how fragmentary the structure of religious knowledge was left by nature, when I see how inadequate all the labors of man had proved for its completion,—and when I look at the glorious and completed dome reared by Christianity, I cannot but feel that other than human hands have been employed in its structure.
Go to Dahomey, Ashantee, Caffraria, Malaisia,—anywhere; search out the rudest people on earth; draw a picture of its vices and cruelties, make it as black as you can, and we will parallel it by pictures of Greece under Pericles and of Rome under Cicero.
Here is Christianity. Whence came it? What is it? It is a force in the world, a prodigious force. It has revolutionized society. It has lifted man out of himself. It has changed the face of the world. There it lies, imbedded in more than eighteen centuries of human history; and history of no mean sort, the best record of the race.
Christianity, Christ, heaven, hell, the judgment, sin, holiness. God,—these, and whether they be true or false, and our personal relations to them, whether they be right or wrong, are things to know about, not to be doubting or guessing about.
Since the revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. The knowledge which shone only by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over many lands into "the huts where poor men lie"—and thoughts are familiar there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the human being in Christian countries has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even when he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that religion was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime expression, "The Brotherhood of Man."
If Christianity has really come from heaven, it must renew the whole life of man; it must govern the life of nations no less than that of individuals; it must control a Christian when acting in his public and political capacity as completely as when he is engaged in the duties which belong to him as a member of a family circle.
Christianity has found its triumphs and shown its fruits in every nation and tribe upon the globe; and its results have been in every case the same. Virtue, social order, prosperity, blessedness, the elevation and improvement, in all respects, of the human life, are the uniform and exclusive inheritance of those who receive the gospel.
The entrance of Thy words giveth light.
If ever Christianity appears in its power, it is when it erects its trophies upon the tomb; when it takes up its votaries where the world leaves them; and fills the breast with immortal hope in dying moments.
The greatest, strongest, mightiest plea for the church of God in the world is the existence of the Spirit of God in its midst, and the works of the Spirit of God are the true evidences of Christianity. They say miracles are withdrawn, but the Holy Spirit is the standing miracle of the church of God to-day.
The strong argument for the truth of Christianity is the true Christian; the man filled with the Spirit of Christ. The best proof of Christ's resurrection is a living church, which itself is walking in a new life, and drawing life from Him who hath overcome death.
Religions which depend upon arguments are failures. A religion, to be aggressive, must be experimental; men must be something and do something by means of it, which would be otherwise impossible; then they become both rhetoric and logic—persuasion and proof.
I have been young, but now am old. I have spent a whole life-time in battling against infidelity with the weapons of apologetic science; but I have become ever more and more convinced that the way to the heart does not lie through the head; and that the only way to the conversion of the head lies through a converted heart which already tastes the living fruits of the gospel.
Give us more and more of real Christianity, and we shall need less of its evidences.
Act upon the supposition that Christ is a Divine Teacher, and you will soon have a demonstration of its truth.
I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.
Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.
Christians are continually tempted to do what all controversy solicits them to do; namely, to argue; as if their business was to establish, in the light of the understanding, certain conclusions to which every rational person must assent. But this is to put the main point, the attractive action of God Himself, out of the question. If the end of God be what we hold it to be, to bring human souls to Himself, then the means He actually employs must be living and spiritual. They are likely to be infinitely various and subtle; but they will deal principally with the conscience and the affections.
The real difficulty with thousands in the present day is not that Christianity has been found wanting, but that it has never been seriously tried.
Personal Christianity is not a creed, however orthodox; not a ritualism, however Scriptural; not a profession, however outwardly consistent; not a service, however seemingly useful; but is Christ in man.
When Christianity is received, it stimulates the faculties, and calls forth new ideas, new motives, and new sentiments. It has been the mother of all modern education.
We say then, that Christianity is adapted to the intellect, because its spirit coincides with that of true philosophy; because it removes the incubus of sensuality and low vice; because of the place it gives to truth; because it demands free inquiry; because its mighty truths and systems are brought before the mind in the same way as the truths and systems of nature; because it solves higher problems than nature can; and because it is so communicated as to be adapted to every mind.
Christianity excludes malignity, subdues selfishness, regulates the passions, subordinates the appetites, quickens the intellect, exalts the affections. It promotes industry, honesty, truth, purity, kindness. It humbles the proud, exalts the lowly, upholds law, favors liberty, is essential to it, and would unite men in one great brotherhood. It is the breath of life to social and civil well-being here, and spreads the azure of that heaven into whose unfathomed depths the eye of faith loves to look.
There is no inevitable connection between Christianity and cynicism. Truth is not a salad, is it, that you must always dress it with vinegar?
Christianity teaches us to moderate our passions; to temper our affections toward all things below; to be thankful for the possession, and patient under loss, whenever He who gave shall see fit to take away.
Other sciences may strengthen certain faculties of the soul; some the intellect, some the imagination, some the memory; but Christianity strengthens the soul itself.
We are blessed with a faith, which calls into action the whole intellectual man; which prescribes a reasonable service; which challenges the investigation of its evidences; and which, in the doctrine of immortality, invests the mind of man with a portion of the dignity of Divine intelligence.
Christ does not dress up a moral picture, and ask you to observe its beauty. He only tells you how to live; and the most beautiful characters the world has ever seen, have been those who received and lived these precepts without once conceiving their beauty.
It awes by the majesty of its truths, it agitates by the force of its compunctions, it penetrates the heart by the tenderness of its appeals, and it casts over the abyss of thought, the shadow of its eternal grandeur.
Christianity alone inspires and guides progress; for the progress of man is movement toward God, and movement toward God will ensure a gradual unfolding of all that exalts and adorns man.
The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations—there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole,—an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself—is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations.
We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power.
Outside of Christianity there have been grand spectacles of activity and force, brilliant phenomena of genius and virtue, generous attempts at reform, learned philosophical systems, and beautiful mythological poems, but no real profound or fruitful regeneration of humanity and society. Jesus Christ from His cross accomplishes what erewhile in Asia and Europe, princes and philosophers, the powerful of the earth, and sages, attempted without success. He changes the moral and the social state of the world. He pours into the souls of men new enlightenment and new powers. For all classes, for all human conditions He prepares destinies before His advent unknown. He liberates them at the same time that He lays down rules for their guidance; He quickens them and stills them. He places the Divine law and human liberty face to face, and yet still in harmony. He offers an effectual remedy for the evil which weighs upon humanity; to sin He opens the path of salvation, to unhappiness, the door of hope.
—Guizot.
Look back to the cross, and the disciples gazing on it in terror from afar, and then look around on the nations that are influenced by the faith that there centres—and note the change! Then take these elements, established in history, and calculate the orbit Christianity is to fill.
There is no social life outside of Christendom.
While Christianity is speaking in languages more numerous, by tongues more eloquent, in nations more populous than ever before; marshaling better troops, with richer harmony; shrinking from no foe, rising triumphant from every conflict; shaking down the towers of old philosophies that exalt themselves against God; making the steam-press rush under the demand for her Scriptures, and the steam-horse groan under the weight of her charities; emancipating the enslaved, civilizing the lawless, refining literature, inspiring poetry; sending forth art and science no longer clad in soft raiment to linger in king's palaces, but as hardy prophets of God to make earth bud and blossom as the rose; giving God-like breadth and freedom and energy to the civilization that bears its name, elevating savage islands into civilized states, leading forth Christian martyrs from the mountains of Madagascar, turning the clubs of cannibals into the railings of the altars before which Fiji savages call upon Jesus; repeating the Pentecost, "by many an ancient river and many a palmy plain;" thundering at the seats of ancient paganism; sailing all waters, cabling all oceans, scaling all mountains in the march of its might, and ever enlarging the diameter of those circles of light which it has kindled on earth, and which will soon meet in a universal illumination,—you call it a failure! A little more such failure, and we shall have, over all the globe, the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Christianity must live and triumph as a system of reform, because it goes to the roots of things, and, because, by so doing it proves itself to be divinely and eternally true.
CHRISTMAS.
The church-bells of innumerable sects are all chime-bells to-day, ringing in sweet accordance throughout many lands, and awaking a great joy in the heart of our common humanity.
The soul of John must have been pervaded by eternal, child-like, Christmas joys.
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
'Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial fire of charity in the heart.
It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.
—Dickens.
CHURCH.
God has made a covenant with His people, has given Himself for their portion, His Son for their price, His Spirit for their guide in the way, His earth for their accommodation by the way, His angels for their guard, the powers of darkness and death for their spoil, everlasting glory for their crown.
The everlasting covenant which God has made with Jesus, and through Jesus with all His beloved people, individually, is a strong ground of consolation amidst the tremblings of human hope, the fluctuations of creature things, and the instability of all that earth calls good.
So, from generation to generation, the spiritual church is rising upwards toward its perfection; and, though one after another the workmen pass away, the fabric remains, and the great Master-builder carries on the undertaking. Be it ours to build in our portion in a solid and substantial manner, so that they who come after us may be at once thankful for our thoroughness, and inspired by our example.
A strong church is made up of well-ordered families, where intelligent, Christian parents bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, where the home of the week has its counterpart in the home of the Sabbath, where the hopes and joys of the living, and the blessed memories of the dead bind to the Lord and His church, where young men and maidens are glad when it is said to them, "Let us go unto the house of the Lord," where the tranquillity, and purity, and holy peace, the light and the love, form to the opening minds of the children a type and prophecy of the eternal Sabbath and the heaven above.
I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the Cross, the Cross—God's hammer, God's fire.
One day of good preaching is no match for six days of inconsistent practice. God will never honor His church with complete success until it completely honors Him.
Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold.
We must reinstate Jesus in the rightful place which belongs to Him in the church; or the church will soon be driven into the wilderness.
What if every Christian would say: "Lord, I want a revival. Let it begin in me. Give me the earnestness, faith, and tenderness that I am looking for in others. Make me such a devoted worker as I think my minister or brother or sister ought to be. Let the revival begin in me, and begin now. 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?'"
—The Congregationalist.
If the Church would have her face shine, she must go up into the mount, and be alone with God. If she would have her courts of worship resound with eucharistic praises, she must open her eyes, and see humanity lying lame at the temple gates, and heal it in the miraculous name of Jesus.
I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember you stand in somebody else's way; you are a tree bearing no fruit, standing where another fruitful tree might grow.
Congregations must justify their existence. If they only bring people together to be "very much pleased," why, the Lecture Bureaus will contract for all that. "Did you worship? Were you edified? Did the Lord speak to you? Did you speak to Him? Do you mean more seriously to be pure, honest, upright, generous, manly, holy, from what you did and heard to-day?" These are the questions which the best part of mankind feel to be proper, and to which we must have affirmative replies.
The one injurious and fatal fact of our present church work is the barrier between the churches and the poorest classes. The first thing for us to do is to demolish this barrier. The impression is abroad among the poor that they are not wanted in the churches. This impression is either correct or incorrect. If it is correct, then there is no missionary work, for us who are pastors, half so urgent as the conversion of our congregations to Christianity. If it is incorrect, we are still guilty before God in that we have allowed such an impression to go abroad; and we are bound to address ourselves, at once and with all diligence, to the business of convincing the poor people that they are wanted, and will be made welcome in the churches.
Let the church come to God in the strength of a perfect weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-like confidence, and then, either she has no strength, and has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite. Then and thus, will she stretch out the rod over the seas of difficulty that lie before her, and the waters shall divide, and she shall pass through, and sing the song of deliverance.
The health of a church depends not merely on the creed which it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members.
Do you recall the laughter of the Philistines at the helpless Sampson? You can hear the echo of that laughter to-day, as the church, shorn of her strength by her own sin, is an object of ridicule to the world, who cry in derision, "Where is your boasted triumph and your Millennial glory?"
There is nothing more pitiable than a soulless, sapless, shriveled church, seeking to thrive in a worldly atmosphere, rooted in barren professions, bearing no fruit, and maintaining only the semblance of existence; such a church cannot long survive.
How long must the church live before it will learn that strength is won by action, and success by work, and that all this immeasurable feeding without action and work is a positive damage to it—that it is the procurer of spiritual obesity, gout, and debility.
A lazy, indolent church tends toward unbelief; an earnest, busy church, in hand-to-hand conflict with sin and misery, grows stronger in faith.
I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation.
Doubts about the fundamentals of the gospel exist in certain churches, I am told, to a large extent. My dear friends, where there is a warm-hearted church, you do not hear of them. I never saw a fly light on a red-hot plate.
What is the average type of a counterfeit church? A hammock, attached on one side to the cross, and, on the other, held and swung to and fro by the forefinger of Mammon; its freight of nominal Christians elegantly moaning meanwhile over the evils of the times, and not at ease unless fanned by eloquence and music, and sprinkled by social adulations into perfumed, unheroic slumber.
I never yet have known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord's people were divided.
Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve the purity of it.
Antedating our history, possessing and illumining the hearts of the founders of liberty in our free land, and constantly exerting the soul-equalizing and soul-elevating principles of the gospel of Christ as they fall from Sabbath to Sabbath on the masses of the people, the Christian church stands before all men as the pillar and ground of civil liberty in the world.
The church may go through her dark ages, but Christ is with her in the midnight; she may pass through her fiery furnace, but Christ is in the midst of the flame with her.
Persecution has not crushed it, power has not beaten it back, time has not abated its force, and, what is most wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its friends have not shaken its stability.
Any church which forsakes the regular and uniform for the periodical and spasmodic service of God, is doomed to decay; any church which relies for its spiritual strength and growth entirely upon seasons of "revival," will very soon have no genuine revivals to rely on. Our holy God will not conform His blessings to man's moods and moral caprice. If a church is declining, it may require a "revival" to restore it; but what need was there of its declining?
And this is the mission of the church—not civilization, but salvation—not better laws, purer legislation, social elevation, human equality, and liberty, but first, the "kingdom of God and His righteousness;" regenerated hearts, and all other things will follow.
In the true, original, catholic, evangelical religion of Jesus Christ, and in this alone, all the divided religions of Christendom find their union, their repose, their support. Find out His mind, His character, His will; and in His greatness we shall rise above our littlenesses; in His strength we shall lose our weakness; in His peace we shall forget our discord.
One family—we dwell in Him,
One church above, beneath,
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.
The church itself has got to go outside of its own borders and carry the gospel to every creature, or it is no church of Christ; and any mutual improvement club which thinks that by reading its Shakspeare, or by acting its pretty tableaux, or by having this or that little reading from Spenser and from Chaucer, it is going to lift itself up into any higher order of culture or life, is wholly mistaken, unless as an essential part of its duty, it goes out into the world, finds those that are falling down, and lifts them up to the majesty of freemen, who are sons of God.
CHURCH (SANCTUARY).
They who would grow in grace, must love the habitation of God's house. It is those that are planted in the courts of the Lord who shall flourish, and not those that are occasionally there.
When I go to the house of God I do not want amusement; I want the doctrine which is according to godliness. I want to hear the remedy against the harassing of my guilt and the disorder of my affections. I want to be led from weariness and disappointment to that goodness which filleth the hungry soul. I want to have light upon the mystery of Providence; to be taught how the judgments of the Lord are right; how I shall be prepared for duty and for trial; how I may fear God all the days of my life, and close them in peace.
It is better to have a plain, substantial building, with no extravagance about it, but without a debt, than to have the most splendid specimen of Gothic architecture that is overlaid by a mortgage.
We have houses of God built in defiance of the laws of God. On the walls of one of these monstrosities I saw this most appropriate motto: "This is the house of God; how dreadful is this place!"
COMING TO CHRIST.
It is not to come in any particular way, or with any particular experience, but to arise and come to your Father, and say unto Him, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; make me as one of Thy hired servants."
When you do what the poor weary dove did—when you just betake yourself to the one only ark for safety, the infinite Love will put forth His hand, and draw you in! Into union with Christ! Into renewing grace and supporting strength! Into peace! Oh! wondrous peace; oh! sweet, satisfying peace; oh! peace of God that passeth understanding!
"No man can come to Christ except the Father draw him." If he comes asking, that proves he comes drawn.
No obstacle can close the kingdom of heaven against him who desires to enter it.
No, there are no long stages of preparation through which you must pass; all things are now ready; there is nothing to hinder you from becoming a Christian this very hour. And, if any of you have been trying to make yourself better until you are weary and discouraged in the work, all you have to do is to put it into stronger hands.
Our very unworthiness is our highest preparation for coming to Christ. A starving man can stretch out his hand, and receive the food that is offered to him, just as well as the man who is only a little hungry; and the greatest sinner can take of the water of life, just as well as the man who can say of all the commandments of the Decalogue, "All these have I kept from my youth up."
You are not to come to Christ because you are qualified, but that you may be qualified with whatever you want; and the best qualification you can bring is a deep sense that you have no worth or excellency at all in you.
Come, come to Him who made thy heart;
Come weary and oppressed;
To come to Jesus is thy part;
His part, to give thee rest.
Christ died for the ungodly. And if you turn to Him at this moment with an honest heart, and receive Him simply as your Saviour and your God, I have the authority of His word for telling you that He will in no wise cast out.
And, oh, the blessing of "exceeding joy," after following in vain—after inquiring of the great men and learning nothing—of the religious men and finding little—to see the star at last resting over the place where "the young child" lies—after groping the way alone, to see the star stand still—to find that religion is a thing far simpler than we thought—that God is near us—that to kneel and adore is the noblest posture of the soul.
No man ever sought Christ with a heart to find Him who did not find Him.
If I ask Him to receive me,
Will He say me nay?
Not till earth, and not till heaven
Pass away.
Take the lost sinner's place, and claim the lost sinner's Saviour.
If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether.
When a man goes thirsty to the well, his thirst is not allayed by merely going there. On the contrary, it is increased by every step he goes. It is by what he draws out of the well that his thirst is satisfied. And just so it is not by the mere bodily exercise of waiting upon ordinances that you will ever come to peace, but by tasting of Jesus in the ordinances, whose flesh is meat indeed, and His blood drink indeed.
I saw from that saying, "He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst," that believing and coming was all one; and that he that came, that is, that ran out in his heart and affections after salvation by Christ, he indeed believed in Christ. Then the water stood in mine eyes, and I asked further, "But, Lord, may such a great sinner as I am, be indeed accepted of Thee, and be saved by Thee?" and I heard Him say, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." Then I said, "But how, Lord, must I consider of Thee in my coming to Thee, that my faith may be placed aright upon Thee?" Then He said, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." "He is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." "He died for our sins, and rose again for our justification." "He loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood." "He is Mediator between God and us." "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." From all which I gathered, that I must look for righteousness in His person, and for satisfaction for my sins by His blood; that what He did in obedience to His Father's law, and in submitting to the penalty thereof, was not for Himself, but for him that will accept it for his salvation, and be thankful.
You must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick that Christ hath put away uncured.
We are to come to Christ. This is the primal duty. The doctrines are but highways that lead to Him. But when we come to Christ we must receive Him as our Saviour.
I know whom I have believed.
—Bible.
What right has a man to ask Jesus to forgive him, when his heart is still burning with hatred or festering with grudges against a fellow-creature? Confession, to be of any avail, must let go of its hold on the sin confessed.
Return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.
—Bible.
CONFESSING CHRIST.
There cannot be a secret Christian. Grace is like ointment hid in the hand; it betrayeth itself. If you truly feel the sweetness of the cross of Christ, you will be constrained to confess Christ before men.
You are not so good a Christian when you are neglecting a plain duty as when you are performing it. And joining the church is a plain duty for all who mean to be Christians.
A love to Christ which is so cowardly and selfish that it is unwilling to proclaim by a public confession its faith in Him who hung before all the world crucified for sinners, is a love which is hardly worth the name.
If you were good enough, there would be no need of confessing Christ at all. It is just because you are not good enough, that Christ says to you, "Follow me." He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It is not the perfect people whom He wants in His church, but those who have a deep sense of their own imperfection, and who believe that His strength is made perfect in weakness.
What we want, above all things, in this age is heartiness and holy simplicity; men who justify the holy impulse of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artificial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the sham pretences of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they whom God will make His witnesses in all ages. They dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What God puts in them, that they accept; and when He puts a song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and therefore stand for Him outwardly. They endure hardships. They fight a fight. And these are the souls, my brethren, who will stand before God accepted.
CONSCIENCE.
Conscience is God's vicegerent in the soul.
—Buchan.
It is quite certain that, if from childhood men were to begin to follow the first intimations of conscience, honestly to obey them and carry them out into act, the power of conscience would be so strengthened and improved within them, that it would soon become, what it evidently is intended to be, "a connecting principle between the creature and the Creator."
Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
Every one of us, whatever his speculative opinions, knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.
There is in man a conscience which outlives the sensations, resolutions, and emotions of the hour, and rises above them all.
We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.
—Pascal.
A good conscience is the palace of Christ; the temple of the Holy Ghost; the paradise of delight; the standing Sabbath of the saints.
Trust that man in nothing, who has not a conscience in every thing.
Be fearful only of thyself, and stand in awe of none more than thine own conscience.
—Burton.
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
There is no evil which we cannot face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded.
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
—Calvin.
An old historian says about the Roman armies that marched through a country, burning and destroying every living thing, "They make a solitude, and they call it peace." And so men do with their consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them, somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful, like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they say, "It is peace;" and the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You may almost attain to that.
CONSECRATION.
Take me, O my Father, take me!
Take me, save me, through Thy Son;
That which Thou wouldst have me, make me,
Let Thy will in me be done.
Long from Thee my footsteps straying,
Thorny proved the way I trod;
Weary come I now, and praying—
Take me to Thy love, my God!
See that you receive Christ with all your heart. As there is nothing in Christ that may be refused, so there is nothing in you from which He must be excluded.
If you want to live in this world, doing the duty of life, knowing the blessings of it, doing your work heartily, and yet not absorbed by it, remember that the one power whereby you can so act is, that all shall be consecrated to Christ, and done for His sake.
God consecrates us with His Spirit; whom He adopts, He anoints; whom He makes sons, He makes saints; He doth not only give them a new name, but a new nature. God turns the wolf into a lamb; He makes the heart humble and gracious; He works such a change as if another soul did dwell in the same body.
Teach us, Master, how to give
All we have and are to Thee;
Grant us, Saviour, while we live,
Wholly, only Thine to be.
Live, as it were, on trust. All that is in you, all that you are, is only loaned to you; make use of it according to the will of Him who lends it; but never regard it for a moment as your own.
—Fenelon.
Seek to make life henceforth a consecrated thing; that so, when the sunset is nearing, with its murky vapors and lowering skies, the very clouds of sorrow may be fringed with golden light. Thus will the song in the house of your pilgrimage be always the truest harmony. It will be composed of no jarring, discordant notes; but with all its varied tones will form one sustained, life-long melody; dropped for a moment in death, only to be resumed with the angels, and blended with the everlasting cadences of your Father's house.
Ah, my friends, it is not only from the study walls of pastors, but from the walls of every shop, every counting-room, and every hall of justice and legislation, that the countenance of the all-holy Jesus is looking down, and saying, "Do all for me."
Living or dying, Lord,
I ask but to be Thine;
My life in Thee, Thy life in me,
Makes heaven forever mine.
CONTEMPT.
The spirit of contempt is the true spirit of Antichrist; for no other is more directly opposed to Christ.
Christ saw much in this world to weep over, and much to pray over; but He saw nothing in it to look upon with contempt.
There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.
Nothing is so contemptible as habitual contempt. It is impossible to remain long under its control without being dwarfed by its influence.
Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-righteous being. The one is all contempt; the other all pity.
Contempt leaves a deeper scar than anger.
CONTENTMENT.
Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.
—Socrates.
True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.
We cannot be young twice; we cannot turn upon our steps, and go back to gather the garlands we gathered ten years ago. And, therefore, with a gaze over on the cross upon the distant hills, and a remembrance always of the shadow land that lies beyond, let us endeavor to be contented with small things, and to make ourselves happy in the pleasantness of simple pleasures.
My God, give me neither poverty nor riches; but whatsoever it may be Thy will to give, give me with it a heart which knows humbly to acquiesce in what is Thy will.
Come calm content serene and sweet,
O gently guide my pilgrim feet
To find thy hermit cell.
I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.
—Bible.
CONTROVERSY.
When men differ in any matter of belief, let them meet each other manfully.
No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
It is humbling to mankind to contemplate men capable of grasping eternal truths, fencing and debating in trivialities, like gladiators fighting with flies.
Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.
CONVERSION.
Conversion is the act of joining our hands to the pierced hand of the crucified Saviour. The new life begins with the taking of Christ's hand, and His taking hold, in infinite love, of our weak hands.
A man to be converted has to give up his will, his ways, and his thoughts.
The time when I was converted was when religion became no longer a duty, but a pleasure.
In every sound convert the judgment is brought to approve of the laws and ways of Christ, and subscribe to them as most righteous and reasonable; the desire of the heart is to know the whole mind of Christ; the free and resolved choice of the heart is determined for the ways of Christ, before all the pleasures of sin, and prosperities of the world; it is the daily care of his life to walk with God.
Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?
—Bible.
Conversion is not, as some suppose, a violent opening of the heart by grace, in which will, reason, and judgment are all ignored or crushed. The reason is not blinded, but enlightened; and the whole man is made to act with a glorious liberty which it never knew till it fell under the restraints of grace.
My observation continues to confirm me more and more in the opinion, that to experience religion is to experience the truth of the great doctrines of Divine grace.
Conversion by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual illumination of the soul. God's grace lights up the dark heart. And when a man has once been kindled at the cross of Christ, he is bound to shine.
This is always the way in which the reality of Christian conversion evidences itself. It makes the selfish man charitable; the churlish, liberal; and implants in the soul, which hitherto has cared only for the things belonging to himself, a disposition to seek also the things of others.
The evidence of our acceptance in the Beloved rises in proportion to our love, to our repentance, to our humility, to our faith, to our self-denial, to our delight in duty. Other evidence than this the Bible knows not—God has not given.
"Follow me!" The publican "rose up." This implies immediate action. It was now or never with him. So you must act with prompt obedience. He did the first thing Jesus bade him do. Are you willing to do as much? If not, you are deciding against Christ, and that means death.
Every man or woman who turns to Christ must bear in mind that they are breaking with their old master, and enlisting under a new leader. Conversion is a revolutionary process.
You cannot find, I believe, a case in the Bible where a man is converted without God's calling in some human agency—using some human instrument.
CONVICTION.
No man ever truly believed, who was not first made sensible of unbelief.
True conviction of sin—how difficult it is, when its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disorders by so many outward charms and attractions.
It is no certain evidence, that because the conscience feels the weight of sin, the heart is humbled on account of it; that because the conscience approves of the rectitude of the Divine justice, the heart bows to the Divine sovereignty. The most powerful conviction of sin, therefore, is not conclusive evidence of Christian character.
To remember that once we were near the salvation of Christ, so near that our right hand might have touched and taken it, and after all that hand was withheld; this is a memory which will enhance remorse forever.
COURAGE.
My dear friend, venture to take the wind on your face for Christ.
In the whole range of earthly experience, no quality is more attractive and ennobling than moral courage. Like that mountain of rock which towers aloft in the Irish Sea, the man possessed of this principle is unmoved by the swelling surges which fret and fume at his feet. And yet, unlike that same Ailsa Craig, he is sensitive beyond measure to every adverse influence—battling against it, and triumphing over it by a power which proceeds from God's throne, and pervades his entire being.
Be courageous. Be independent. Only remember where the true courage and independence come from.
What we want is men with a little courage to stand up for Christ. When Christianity wakes up, and every child that belongs to the Lord is willing to speak for Him, is willing to work for Him, and, if need be, willing to die for Him, then Christianity will advance, and we shall see the work of the Lord prosper.
Consult the honor of religion more, and your personal safety less. Is it for the honor of religion (think you) that Christians should be as timorous as hares to start at every sound?
To do an evil action is base; to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks every thing.
—Plutarch.
There is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her.
The best hearts are ever the bravest.
This is the way to cultivate courage: First, by standing firm on some conscientious principle, some law of duty. Next, by being faithful to truth and right on small occasions and common events. Third, by trusting in God for help and power.
Conscience in the soul is the root of all true courage. If a man would be brave, let him learn to obey his conscience.
Whenever you do what is holy, be of good cheer, knowing that God Himself takes part with rightful courage.
—Menander.
COVETOUSNESS.
Of covetousness, we may truly say that it makes both the Alpha and Omega in the devil's alphabet, and that it is the first vice in corrupt nature which moves, and the last which dies.
—South.
The covetous man is like a camel with a great hunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made higher and broader, or he will hardly get in.
The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world.
—South.
The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them.
The only sovereign remedy is to give Christ the pre-eminence in our hearts; for then we shall undervalue all temporal things in comparison of Him.
—Fisher's Catechism.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
CRITICISM.
Grant me patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.
Criticism is not religion, and by no process can it be substituted for it. It is not the critic's eye, but the child's heart, that most truly discerns the countenance that looks out from the pages of the gospel.
Why will you be always sallying out to break lances with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride?
An over-readiness to criticise or to depreciate a minister of Christ is proof of a lack of devotion to Christ.
How many people would like to get up in a social prayer-meeting to say a few words for Christ, but there is such a cold spirit of criticism in the church that they dare not do it.
With pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critic on the last.
CROSS BEARING.
Taking up one's cross, my dear, means simply that you are to go the road which you see to be the straight one; carrying whatever you find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly as you can; without making faces, or calling people to come and look at you. Above all, you are neither to load, nor unload yourself, nor cut your cross to your own liking.
A cross borne in simplicity, without the interference of self-love to augment it, is only half a cross. Suffering in this simplicity of love, we are not only happy in spite of the cross, but because of it; for love is pleased in suffering for the Well Beloved, and the cross which forms us into His image is a consoling bond of love.
—Fenelon.
And now my cross is all supported,—
Part on my Lord, and part on me;
But as He is so much the stronger,
He seems to bear it—I go free.
To deny one's self, to take up the cross, denotes something immeasurably grander than self-imposed penance or rigid conformity to a Divine statute. It is the surrender of self to an ennobling work, an absolute subordination of personal advantages and of personal pleasures for the sake of truth and the welfare of others, and a willing acceptance of every disability which their interests may entail.
Losses and crosses are heavy to bear; but when our hearts are right with God, it is wonderful how easy the yoke becomes.
To do Thy holy will;
To bear Thy cross;
To trust Thy mercy still,
In pain or loss;
Poor gifts are these to bring,
Dear Lord, to Thee,
Who hast done every thing
For me!
If Jesus bore the cross, and died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it up for Him?
We must bear our crosses; self is the greatest of them all. If we die in part every day of our lives, we shall have but little to do on the last. O how utterly will these little daily deaths destroy the power of the final dying!
—Fenelon.
All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of "virtue" is that straightness of back.
Thou, Everlasting Strength, hast set Thyself forth to bear our burdens. May we bear Thy cross, and bearing that, find there is nothing else to bear; and touching that cross, find that instead of taking away our strength, it adds thereto. Give us faith for darkness, for trouble, for sorrow, for bereavement, for disappointment; give us a faith that will abide though the earth itself should pass away—a faith for living, a faith for dying.
Dear Lord, forgive my sinful, foolish fears
And give me daily, strengthening grace, I pray,
And one thing more I ask with humble tears,
Take not my cross away!
There is an immeasurable distance between submission to the cross and acceptance of it.
Weak Christians are afraid of the shadow of the cross.
The cross is not only imposed upon the saints as their burden, but bequeathed unto them as their legacy. It is given unto them as an honor and privilege.
Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it.
How soon would faith freeze without a cross!
CROSS OF CHRIST.
In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.
The cross is the centre of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.
And how high is Christ's cross? As high as the highest heaven, and the throne of God, and the bosom of the Father—that bosom out of which forever proceed all created things. Ay, as high as the highest heaven! for—if you will receive it—when Christ hung upon the cross, heaven came down on earth, and earth ascended into heaven.
There under the cross is the sinner's sanctuary—there, my friend, is the place for you and me. The first smiling look we shall get from God will be when looking unto Jesus; and the first time that we shall experience the alacrity of a lightened conscience, the relief and elasticity of the great life-burden lifted off, will be when we have laid our sins on the Lamb of God.
On the cross of Christ relying,
Through His death redeemed from dying,
By His favor fortified;
When my mortal frame is perished,
Let my spirit then be cherished
And in heaven be glorified.
Nothing but the cross of Christ can so startle the spiritual nature from its torpor, as to make it an effectual counterpoise to the debasing and sensual tendencies of the race. Favored by temperament and education, individuals may measurably escape; but if the race is to triumph in the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, between the lower propensities and the higher nature, they must, as Constantine is said to have done, see the cross, and on it the motto, "In hoc signo vinces." By this sign we conquer.
At the foot of the cross, in all humility and in all adoration, we have learned at once the depth and the height of human nature; we have learned to think all wisdom but foolishness for the knowledge of Christ; all purity but sin, unwashed by His atonement; all hope in earth, of all hopes the most miserable, but in the faith of His most blessed resurrection; content to bear the struggles of life, at His command; and submitting to the grave, with a consciousness that it can sting no more.
When to the cross I turn my eyes,
And rest on Calvary,
O Lamb of God, my sacrifice,
I must remember Thee.
My friends, there is one spot on earth where the fear of Death, of Sin, and of Judgment, need never trouble us, the only safe spot on earth where the sinner can stand—Calvary.
He who tears down the cross, what is there left to lift him to heaven? The church claiming to be a Christian church is false to the title, if she make the cross of Christ of none effect.
Lord, as to Thy dear cross we flee
And pray to be forgiven,
So let Thy life our pattern be,
And form our souls for heaven.
O, cross of my bleeding Lord, may I meditate on thee more, may I feel thee more, may I resolve to know nothing but thee.