“We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence and that the center of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.”
I find, then, in this part of the story three thoughts,--First,
they only see aright who see Christ in everything. Secondly, they only
see Christ who love Him. Lastly, they only love Him who know that He
loves them,
I. First then, they only see aright who see Christ in everything.
This word of John's, 'It is the Lord!'--ought to be the conviction with
the light of which we go out to the examination of all events, and to
the consideration of all the circumstances of our daily life. We
believe that unto Christ is given 'all power in heaven and upon earth.'
We believe that to Him belongs creative power--that 'without Him was
not anything 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 He allots to all men their natural
characters and their circumstances. 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. In the light of such
convictions, I take it, every man that calls himself a Christian ought
to go out to meet life and to study all events. Let me try, then, to
put before you, very briefly, one or two of the provinces in which we
are to take this conviction as the keynote to all our knowledge.
No man will understand the world aright, to begin with, who cannot say
about all creation, 'It is the Lord!' Nature is but the veil of the
invisible and ascended Lord: and if we would pierce to the deepest
foundations of all being, we cannot stop until we get down to the
living power of Christ our Saviour and the Creator of the world, by
whom all things were made, and whose will pouring out into this great
universe, is the sustaining principle and the true force which keeps it
from nothingness and from quick decay.
Why, what did Christ work all His miracles upon earth for? Not solely
to give us a testimony that the Father had sent Him; not solely to make
us listen to His words as a Teacher sent from God; not solely as proof
of His Messiahship,--but besides all these purposes there was surely
this other, that for once He would unveil to us the true Author of all
things, and the true Foundation of all being.
“Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.”
First, there underlies this prophecy a very sad but a very true
conception of human life.
The three classes of promises have correlative with them three phases
of man's condition, three diverse aspects of his need and misery. The
'covert' and the 'hiding-place' imply tempest, storm, and danger; the
'river of water' implies drought and thirst; 'the shadow of a great
rock' implies lassitude and languor, fatigue and weariness. The view of
life that arises from the combination of these three bears upon its
front the signature of truth in the very fact that it is a sad view.
For, I suppose, notwithstanding all that we may say concerning the
beauty and the blessedness scattered broadcast round about us;
notwithstanding that we believe, and hold as for our lives the happy
'faith that all which we behold is full of blessing,' it needs but a
very short experience of this life, and but a superficial examination
of our own histories and our own hearts, in order to come to the
conclusion that the world is full of strange and terrible sadness, that
every life has dark tracts and long stretches of sombre tint, and that
no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light
and flings no shadows on the canvas. There is no depth in a Chinese
picture, because there is no shade. It is the wrinkles and marks of
tear and wear that make the expression in a _man's_ portrait. 'Life's
sternest painter "is" its best.' The gloomy thoughts which are charged
against Scripture are the true thoughts about man and the world as man
has made it. Not, indeed, that life needs to be so, but that by reason
of our own evil and departure from God there have come in as a
disturbing element the retributive consequences of our own godlessness,
and these have made danger where else were safety, thirst where else
were rivers of water, and weariness and lassitude where else were
strength and bounding hope.
So then, look for a moment at these three points that come out of my
text, in order to lay the foundation for subsequent considerations.
We live a life defenceless and exposed to many a storm and tempest. I
need but remind you of the adverse circumstances--the wild winds that
go sweeping across the flat level, the biting blasts that come down
from the snow-clad mountains of destiny that lie round the low plain
upon which we live.
“In heaven after ages of ages of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, It doth not yet appear what we shall be.”
Therefore eternity will be needful in order that redeemed
souls may absorb all of God which He can give or they can take. The
process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to the possible
approaches of the human spirit to the divine, and none to the exuberant
abundance of the beauty and glory which God will give to His child.
Therefore we shall live for ever: and for ever show forth His praise and
blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. We cannot die
till we have exhausted God. Till we comprehend all His nature in our
thoughts, and reflect all His beauty in our character; till we have
attained all the bliss that we can think, and received all the good that
we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach towards, and God
is left behind: we 'shall not die, but live, and declare the works of
the Lord.'
Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to Him, that His fulness
may fill your emptiness. So on earth we shall be delivered from hopes
which mock and wishes that are never fulfilled. So in heaven, after
'ages of ages' of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave
of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, 'It doth not yet appear
what we shall be.'
THE CALLING AND THE KINGDOM
'I beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye
are called.'--Eph. iv. 1.
'They shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.'--Rev.
iii. 4.
The estimate formed of a centurion by the elders of the Jews was, 'He is
worthy for whom Thou shouldst do this' and in contrast therewith the
estimate formed by himself was, 'I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come
under my roof.' From these two statements we deduce the thought that
merit has no place in the Christian's salvation, but all is to be traced
to undeserved, gracious love. But that principle, true and all-important
as it is, like every other great truth, may be exaggerated, and may be
so isolated as to become untrue and a source of much evil. And so I
desire to turn to the other side of the shield, and to emphasise the
place that worthiness has in the Christian life, and its personal
results both here and hereafter. To say that character has nothing to do
with blessedness is untrue, both to conscience and to the Christian
revelation; and however we trace all things to grace, we must also
remember that we get what we have fitted ourselves for.
“Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.”
And so we
can look upon that ending of life, and say, 'It is a very small
thing; it only cuts off the fringes of my life, it does not touch
_me_ at all' It only plays round about the husk, and does not
get at the core. It only strips off the circumferential mortality,
but the soul rises up untouched by it, and shakes the bands of death
from off its immortal arms, and flutters the stain of death from
off its budding wings, and rises fuller of life _because of
death_, and mightier in its vitality in the very act of
submitting the body to the law, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt
thou return.'
Touching but a part of the being, and touching that but for a
moment, death is no state, it is an act. It is not a condition, it
is a transition. Men speak about life as 'a narrow neck of land,
betwixt two unbounded seas': they had better speak about death as
that. It is an isthmus, narrow and almost impalpable, on which, for
one brief instant, the soul poises itself; whilst behind it there
lies the inland lake of past being, and before it the shoreless
ocean of future life, all lighted with the glory of God, and making
music as it breaks even upon these dark, rough rocks. Death is but a
passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a
door on its inner side. We roll the stone to its mouth and come
away, thinking that we have left them there till the Resurrection.
But when the outer access to earth is fast closed, the inner portal
that opens on heaven is set wide, and God says to His child, 'Come,
enter into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee ... until the
indignation be overpast!' Death is a superficial thing, and a
transitory thing--a darkness that is caused by the light, and a
darkness that ends in the light--a trifle, if you measure it by
duration; a trifle if you measure it by depth. The death of the mortal
is the emancipation and the life of the immortal. Then, brethren, we
may go with the words of my text, and look upon every green hillock
below which any that are dear to us are lying, and say to ourselves,
'Not _here_--God be thanked, no--not here: living, and not dead;
_yonder_, with the Master!' Oh, we think far too much of the grave,
and far too little of the throne and the glory! We are far too much
the creatures of sense; and the accompaniments of dissolution and
departure fill up our hearts and our eyes.
“Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures will”
“If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.”
“Mans course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city.”
“All that this world knows of living lies in giving - and more giving; He that keeps, be sure he loses -Friendship grows by what it uses.”
“In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts which He also gave us. A man who has not learned to say, No --who is not resolved that he will take Gods way, in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery choice that woos him aside--will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies.”
“Our blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret our duties”
The Gospel is not a mere message of deliverance, but a canon of conduct; it is not a theology to be accepted, but it is ethics to be lived. It is not to be believed only, but it is to be taken into life as a guide.
He who makes his needs known to God gains for immediate answer the peace of God which passeth understanding, and can wait God’s time for the rest.
No wise forward look can ignore the possibility of many sorrows and the certainty of some. Hope has ever something of dread in her eyes. The road will not be always bright and smooth, but will sometimes plunge down into grim cations, where no sunbeams reach. But even that anticipation may be calm. Thou art with me is enough. He who guides into the gorge will guide through it. It is not a cul de sac, shut in with precipices, at the far end; but it opens out on shining tablelands, where there is greener pasture.
Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.
Self-preservation is not a man’s first duty: flight is his last. Better and wiser and infinitely nobler to stand a mark for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and to stop at our post though we fall there, better infinitely to toil on, even when toil seems vain, than cowardly to keep a whole skin at the cost of a wounded conscience or despairingly to fling up work, because the ground is hard and the growth of the seed imperceptible. Prudent advices, when the prudence is only inspired by sense, are generally foolish.
love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures will
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.
