FIFTY TWO

 

 

SELECTED POEMS

 

 

WITH

 

 

QUOTATIONS

 

 

 

-------

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

The Teacher

 

 

Lord, who am I to teach the way

To little children day by day,

So prone myself to go astray?

 

 

I teach them knowledge, but I know

How faint they flicker and how low

The candles of my knowledge glow.

 

 

I teach them power to will and do,

But only now to learn anew

My own great weakness through and through.

 

 

I teach them love for all mankind

And all God’s creatures, but I find

My love comes lagging far behind.

 

 

Lord, if their guide I still must be,

Oh let the little children see

A teacher leaning hard on Thee.

 

 

-------

 

 

The Godhead of our Lord is vital to the Deity and Atonement.  Dr. Horton,” a man once said to him, “I cannot believe that a man who died eighteen hundred years ago could put away my sin.”  Nor can I,” Dr. Horton replied; “but I can and do believe that the Son of God did.”  The Expiator must he a man, because a sacrifice must be in the nature that sinned; but He must be more than a man, or He could be a substitute for only one other. A deaf and dumb boy wrote on his slate to his teacher:-I do not see how Jesus Christ alone should be able to die for all men.” The teacher was puzzled.  She then went out of the room, and came back with an apron full of dead leaves; took off a diamond ring from her finger; and weighted the leaves against the diamond.  The boy’s face lit up.  He then wrote on his slate:-I see it now: Jesus is a diamond worth more than all the leaves of a dead world.”  He only could gather into His breast the spear-points of all sin whose breast was infinite.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

2

 

 

This tragic plaint, cut by Dr. Robert Speer from a Madras journal and written by a Hindu, is the heart-cry of the whole sad, tired, disillusioned world:-

 

 

HEART-WEARINESS

 

 

Weary are we of empty creeds,

Of deafening calls to fruitless deeds;

Weary of priests who cannot pray,

Of guides who show no man the way;

 

 

Weary of rights wise men condemn,

Of worship linked with lust and shame;

Weary of custom blind enthroned,

Of conscience trampled, God disowned;

 

 

Weary of men in sections cleft,

Hindu life of love bereft;

Woman debased, no more a queen,

Nor knowing what she once hath been;

 

 

Weary of babbling about birth,

And of the mockery men call mirth;

Weary of life not understood,

A Babel, not a brotherhood;

 

 

Weary of Kali Yuga years,

Freighted with chaos, darkness, fears.

Life is an ill, the world is wide,

And we are weary: who shall guide?

 

 

-------

 

 

Sun Yat-sen, Wu Ting-fang, and Admiral Chen were present at a meeting addressed by Dr. Sherwood Eddy.  At the close, Admiral Chen took out a pencil to sign a decision card.  Before he could do so, Wu Ting-fang leaned over and persuaded him to wait.  He fixed to see Dr. Eddy for decision at eleven next morning.  Before they left the building Admiral Chen was shot dead, and Dr. Eady stood by his coffin at eleven the following morning.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

3

 

 

The Christian’s cry, even when equally sorely pressed, how different! as voiced by Mr. Samuel H. Wilkinson in lines written in 1914:-

 

 

Weak is my will, weak is my word;

Hope is there none for me,

Save in the strength Thou dost afford

To those that trust in Thee.

 

 

All, all has failed, that I call mine,

And all is failing still;

No strength I trust but Strength Divine

To hold me in Thy will.

 

 

My soul when lifted up, is nigh

To danger and to fall,

I dare not strive, I will not cry,

I need Thee: that is all.

 

 

Thou art my Saviour, tender, strong,

Thy face 0 Lord I seek,

For by Thy strength I’m borne along

Thoweakest of the weak.

 

 

-------

 

 

Our Lord’s principle that a tree is known by its fruit is true of doctrines, as well as of men.  The idea of the Millennium,” says Dr. David Smith, “Is nothing more than an old Jewish fancy.  It was mere allegory; and while its perversion was excusable in the ignorance of the Middle Ages, it is deplorable that at this late day of grace and radiant vision should be so abused by coarse and stupid obscurantists.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

4

 

 

THE FATAL LINE

 

 

There is a line by us unseen

That crosses every path -

The hidden boundary between

God’s patience and His wrath.

 

 

To pass that limit is to die -

To die as if by stealth;

It does not quench the beaming eye,

Nor pale the glow of health.

 

 

The conscience may be still at ease,

The spirits light and gay;

That which is pleasing still may please,

And care be thrust away.

 

 

But on that forehead God has set

Indelibly a mark,

(Unseen by man, for man, as yet,

Is blind and in the dark).

 

 

Indeed, the doom’d one’s path below

May bloom as Eden bloom’d;

He did not, does not, will not know,

Or feel, that he is doom’d.

 

 

He feels, perchance, that all is well,

And every fear is calm’d;

He lives, he dies, he wakes in Hell -

Not only doom’d, but damn,d.

 

 

Oh where is that mysterious bourn

By which our path is cross’d,

Beyond which God Himself hath sworn

That he who goes is lost ?

 

 

- DR. ALEXANDER.

 

 

-------

 

 

God’s kingdom is not in the world by accident, but is deliberately embedded in the very granite of its foundations; so that the Judge says to the Sheep, “Inherit the kingdom prepared for YOU FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD” (Matt. 25: 34) - that is, built when the world was built.  When God made the world, He hid in it, buried in it, embedded in its archean rocks, the glorious coming Kingdom of Messiah.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

5

 

 

THE POTTER AND THE CLAY

 

 

Here in Thy hands I lay

My worthless, broken clay;

Re-mould to Thy design,

And in Thy way.

 

 

Alas, such clay as mine

Can even Thy fires refine,

Thy furnace re-create,

And render Thine?

 

 

Yet place upon the wheel

My yielded clay, and steel

My will to bear Thy stroke,

Receive Thy seal.

 

 

Then breathe therein and fill

My vessel frail, until

Only Thy life appear,

Thy mind, Thy will.

 

 

O Loveliness inwrought,

O Wonder past all thought,

That Thou shouldst glorify

A thing of naught.

 

 

Shapely and set in gold,

Fashion’d by Love untold,

Nothing shall henceforth mar

This heavenly mould!

 

 

-------

 

 

For so is expressed the glory of God.  We have this treasure” - the light of the knowledge of the glory of God – “in EARTHEN VESSELS, that the exceeding greatness of the power” - the shaping of the amorphous clay – “may be of God, and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. 4: 7).  A frail body, a fallible judgment, un imperfect testimony, a sin-soiled character, a harassed life: nevertheless “a dying may sign the deed of incalculable value”. (Cecil).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

6

 

 

DEAR TO GOD

 

 

Oh, that when Christians meet and part

These words were grav’n on every heart -

They’re dear to God!

However wilful and unwise,

We’d look on them with reverent eyes

As dear to God:

0 wonder! to the eternal One

Dear as His own beloved Son;

Dearer to Jesus than His Blood;

Dear, as the Spirit’s fix’d abode -

Yes, dear to God!

 

 

When tempted to give pain for pain,

How would this thought our words restrain –

They’re dear to God;

When truth compels us to contend,

What love with all our strife should blend

They’re dear to God:

When, they would shun the pilgrim’s lot

For this vain world - forsake them not,

But win them back with love and prayer;

They never can be happy there,

If dear to God.

 

 

Oh, how return a brother’s blow? -

The heart whose harshness wounds thee so

Is dear to God.

Oh, who beneath the Cross can stand,

And then from one hold back the hand

Dear to our God?

How with rough words can we conflict,

Knowing each pang our words inflict

Touches the Heart once pierced for us?

The hearts we wring and torture thus

Are dear to God.

 

 

For is there here no strength in love -

The love that knits in joy above

All dear to God?

Shall we then be so near, so dear,

And be estranged and cold, while here

All dear to God?

By the same woes and toils opprest,

We lean upon one faithful Breast;

We hasten to the same repose:

How bear, or do enough, for those

So dear to God?

 

 

-------

 

 

A Maori in New Zealand was once seen, at the Lord’s Supper, to withdraw to the back of the church, and then to resume his seat at the front.  Asked afterwards to explain his action, he said:-When I came to the Communion I did not know by whom I should have to sit.  I instantly saw it was the man who had drunk the father’s blood, and whose life I had vowed to take.  But as I withdrew a voice seemed to say to me, - ‘By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another’; and as I sat down on the back seat, there appeared before my eyes a Man hanging on a Cross, and saying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’  I then came forward again, and we took together the Supper of the Lord.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

7

 

 

CHERITH

 

 

Beloved, should the brook run dry

And should no visible supply

Gladden thine eyes, then wait to see

God work a miracle for thee:

Thou canst not want, for God has said

He will supply His own with bread.

His word is sure.  Creative power

Will work for thee from hour to hour,

And thou, with all Faith’s, Host, shalt prove

God’s Hand of power, God’s Heart of love.

 

 

-------

 

 

So we cheer each other on as, to panting breast and trembling limbs, the goal rises on the horizon.  Bishop Wordsworth beautifully suggests that from the Greek word here for ‘prize,’ we get, through the Latin and Italian, our word ‘Bravo’: so we love to cheer each drawn, white, dusty face, and together seek the Bravo the returning Lord.  The last lap used to be called ‘the sob’: no cross-country winner ever breasts the tape without bleeding feet,

Carry me over the long, last mile,

Man of Nazareth, Christ for me!

 

I have finished the stadium,” Paul cries at last, when the two hundred yards had vanished under the victorious feet; “henceforth there is laid up for me THE CROWN” (2 Tim. 4: 8); or in the dying words of Payson, - “The battle is fought! The battle is fought! The victory is won for ever!

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

8

 

 

MORE THAN CONQUERORS

 

 

I ask Thee, Lord, not for smooth paths, and free

From life’s rough turns – made easy for my feet,

For such I know - from what I know of Thee –

Would not be meet.

 

 

Thy journey through this world

Was not a rosied way, the briar and thorn

Were always there for Thee, and gibes were hurl’d

To bruise Thy tender heart.  I am not born

To have an easier path to Thy abode,

Than that Thy love didst face for me

For debts I owed.

 

 

Nay, Lord, my Saviour, give me eyes to see

The blood-stain’d pathway Thou hast blazed for me,

And as I gaze, fit Thou my laggard feet

Into Thy footprints, thereby making sweet

With fellowship of Thy own presence all the way,

A glory-path to blissful Realms of Day.

 

 

Thus following Thee along life’s rugged road,

My burdens on Thy shoulder, I shall own

That Thou who bearest all my heaviest load,

Hath lifted me to triumphs of Thy Throne,

And maybe ere I reach Thy heavenly Home

Thy voice may challenge me, “Behold, I come!”

 

 

- H. H. BROWNLOW

 

 

-------

 

 

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy.”  There is a power in love and joy that is irresistible.  You can stand argument, and you can stand scolding.  The more you are argued with the more you can argue back and show you are right; but you can’t argue with a man who does not speak, but only lives.  Such was the man whose soul was burning with the living fire of the love of God, and who was glad and rejoiced every day of the week.  I won’t say, I can’t say, I don’t yet know, how much that man did for me.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

9

 

 

OUR HOME

 

 

Help us to find an angel bless’d

In every stranger, friend, and guest,

O make the home and make the host

A hostel of the Holy Ghost -

 

 

A place of healing after toil

Where kindly words are wine and oil, -

An inn beside the steep hill-road

Where heartease steals away the load.

 

 

And as the hearthstone pure and bright

So kindle Thou our hearts each night:

And may the rose upon the pane

Turn some dark pathway bright again.

 

 

May more than human nearness span

The gulf there is ’twixt man and man;

May more than casual interest link

The suns that rise to those that sink.

 

 

-------

 

 

Unbelief is wont to court God’s commandments too severe; but let each child implicitly obey, and at the same time translate the command into a pledge, or promise, and he will find good reason for thanking God for His commandments.  When he is told “That which is gone out of thy lips, thou shalt keep and perform” (Deut. 23: 23), he may thereby be perfectly assured that what has gone out of God’s lips He will unfailingly keep and perform.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

10

 

 

BURIED

 

 

BARGARET E. BARBER

 

 

Buried?  Yes, but it is seed

From which Continents may feed;

Millions may yet bless the day

When that seed was laid away.

 

 

Buried! hidden! out of sight!

Dwelling in the deepest night;

Losing, underneath the sod,

Everything, except its God.

 

 

Buried, unremember’d lost -

So thinks man: but all the cost

God has counted to display

Life abundant one glad day.

 

 

Art thou buried?  God’s pure seed?

Doth thy heart in silence bleed?

Change thy singing into song,

Thus alone can harvests come.

 

 

-------

 

 

It would be well for those who are at ease in Zion in these self-pleasing days, those who have imbibed the comfortable doctrine - so acceptable to the flesh - that ‘grace’ discharges us from all obligation to keep the commandments of God, and that obedience is ‘legality,’ - to ponder the teaching and example of the apostle Paul.  He was the great preacher of the Gospel of grace, and the great teacher of the doctrine of grace.  But the grace which he knew and preached, and taught and lived, did not foster laxity of conduct, self-indulgence, worldliness, and indifference to the purposes of God for His people; but just the reverse.  His daily course was like the behaviour of an athlete striving for the mastery, or running with but one thing in mind - the ‘prize’.  And he kept under his body (literally, buffeting it), bringing it into complete subjection (allowing no self-indulgences), ‘lest,’ says he, ‘that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’

 

 

What possibilities of shame and loss do these words put plainly before our eyes!  They are well calculated to awaken careless and indifferent saints.  But they, for the most part, have no wish to hear the sharp and solemn warnings which God, in His faithfulness, has given them in many passages of Scripture.  Hence those needed warnings are often passed on to others - to the ‘Jews,’ to ‘mere professors,’ or perhaps to ‘the tribulation saints.’  It is, however, impossible to deal thus with the Scripture last quoted, for Paul says, lest I myself should be a castaway.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

11

 

 

AFTERWARD

 

 

Had all my tears been sinless, could I know

What my Lord means by His ‘made white as snow’?

If all my days were tearless, could I say,

In His fair land He wipes all tears away’?

If I were never weary, could I keep

Close to my heart – ‘He gives His loved ones sleep’?

Were no graves mine, might I not come to deem

The life eternal but a baseless dream?

My sorrow, yea, my tears, my weariness,

Even my graves shall be His way to bless:

I call them ills; yet they can surely be

Nothing but good that brings my Lord to me.

 

 

-------

 

 

Happy, beyond the black belt of deepening iniquity, and beyond the tempestuous darkness of coming judgment, there lies - in the fair Millennial day-spring - a reconciled North and South moving in blessing about the eternal pivot of the Holy Land.  In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of mine hands, and Israel mine inheritance” (Isa. 19: 24).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

12

 

 

With eager knife that oft has sliced

At Gentile gloss or Jewish fable,

Before the crowd you lay the Christ

Upon the Lecture Table.

 

 

From bondage to the old beliefs

You say our rescue must begin -

But I - want refuge from my griefs,

And saving from my sin.

 

 

The strong, the easy, and the glad

Hang, blandly listening, on your word,

But I am sick, and I am sad,

And I need Thee, O Lord.

 

 

-------

 

 

God so loved that He gave His only Begotten Son”; it is not only impartation, it is impartation even to the limit of utter sacrifice.

 

 

And what is the ministry of such wonderful love?  He washed us from our sins.”  Love seeks our redemption from the bondage of all that is unlovely.  Our souls are in servitude to sin.  We are like birds which have been caught in birdlime, and whose wings and feet are glued in bonds which they cannot escape.  And God’s love washes the lime away, not bits of it, but all of it, until we can rejoice in the glorious liberty of the children of God.  And this is done, I say, by love at its uttermost, even in its own blood.

 

 

But love not only cleanses us, it raises us.  It makes us “kings”; it crowns us with the grace of self-mastery, conveying to us sovereign rights over our own powers, and it names us lords of circumstance and destiny.  And love makes us “princes.”  Ours is the prerogative - [i.e., ‘a peculiar privilege shared by no other: a right arising out of one’s rank, position, or nature.’] - of intimacy with God, the right to enter into the holy place, the blessed privilege of being able to go in and out and find pasture.

 

 

I know thy works:” not thy standing, nor thy profession, nor thy denomination, nor thy fellowship; but thine actions, and thine alone.  Our race is won or lost alone; no hand allowed at our back but Christ’s.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

13

 

 

Bride of the Lamb, awake! awake!

Why sleep for sorrow now?

The HOPE of glory, Christ, is thine,

A child of glory thou.

 

 

His bright return is surely near,

All shall confess Him yet!

The Lord in splendour shall appear

By way of Olivet.

 

 

Then weep no more – ’tis all thine own -

His crown, His joy divine;

And, sweeter than all beside,

He, He Himself is thine.

 

 

-------

 

 

This growing emphasis of the Apostle on the personal element in his expectation accords with the way our blessed Lord presents Himself as the Hope of His disciples’ hearts.  For even when at the supper table on the night of the betrayal He tells them of the place He was about to prepare for them in the Father’s House, he adds “I will come again and receive you unto Myself” (John 14: 3).  So it is the personal presentation of Himself as the Root and Offspring of David - [i.e., a Messianic title, pointing to the coming Millennial Kingdom of Messiah: His promised inheritance upon this sin-cursed earth (Psa. 2)] - the bright and morning Star (Rev. 22: 16) that provokes the response of the succeeding verse “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.”  We need to lay this to heart, for there is an attractive power about a Person that no combination of circumstances can approach.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

14

 

 

DIVINE SEVERITY

 

 

CREATOR of my soul’s unrest,

Disturber of my meagre joys,

Whose arrows have laid bare my breast,

And robb’d me of my equipoise;

 

 

Draw closer still, and overthrow

My every step that errs from Thee,

And smite with blow that follows blow,

Till Thou hast quite dismember’d me.

 

 

And I - like him of Penuel -

Crippl’d of my own strength, arise;

Not Jacob now, but Israel,

Stripp’d of all meanness and disguise.

 

 

Then shall I know that Thou art God,

Dispenser of all chastening grace,

When Thou shalt spare nor sword, nor rod,

To draw me to Thy close embrace.

 

 

Past finding out are all Thy ways;

And lo, Thy works are very great;

Thy Spirit quickeneth and slays,

Destroys – that it [He] may re-create.

 

 

Destroy then!  Leave me no trace,

Of that which severeth from Thee,

Until I see Thee face to face

In Thy Divine Severity!

 

 

-------

 

 

Now is the time of the principles of the kingdom, of the reception of those doctrines on which it will be ultimately founded, and of the exercise of those tempers in which its glory will principally consist.  But these principles are not now actually supreme in power and rule; nay, they are despised and trampled upon by the world, and even by many of the professed [regenerate] followers of Jesus.  No power is put forth on God’s part to compel all to adopt them, or else to be themselves cut off.  But this must and will be the case when the kingdom is fully come.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

15

 

 

BELIEVING AND BELOVED

 

 

While carried in a chair on an itinerating tour,” says the writer of these lines, a lady missionary of twenty years’ experience in China, “I was reading I and II Timothy, and came across words I had never noticed before – ‘brethren, believing and beloved.’  Hence these lines.”

 

 

Let poets speak of ‘East and West,’

Of ‘sundering seas’ and ‘lives enisled’:

Our hands have stretched across the golf,

We’ve gazed on men who’ve stood the test -

Brethren – believing and beloved.

 

 

We,ve travell’d far from home and kind,

’Mid crowds who gave no countersign:

Then sudden at a word have flash’d,

Brethren – believing and beloved.

 

 

This bond knows nought of clime or race;

Ignores the barriers learning makes;

Cancels the rules of class and caste;

And binds together, saved by grace,

Brethren – believing and beloved.

 

 

They welcomed me, the unknown guest,

With looks so kind and ways so fair,

So glad I’d reach’d their far-off home -

I felt the kingship, and was blest

Of Brethren – believing and beloved.

 

 

Happy now when there dawns the day

Wherein we meet, not now to part,

With comrades of the fleeting hours:

How through our hearts will the chime –

Brethrenbeholding and beloved.

 

 

- E. J. HARRISON.

 

 

-------

 

 

When once the bell rang before his lecture to his students was finished, he exclaimed:-Depend upon it, the Millennium will come in one day with a hammer smash.”  Mr. Thomas Waugh thus summarizes admirably:-  All through the New Testament nearly every exhortation to purity of walk, to fidelity in stewardship, and to sincerity in toil, is bound up with, and is based upon, the Lord’s Coming.  So far from tending to ‘cut the nerve of effort,’ this hope is the grand incentive to holy walk and watchfulness and to enthusiasm in holy toil.  So far from meaning only a little morbid comfort, or unnecessary luxury of contemplation, this is one of the most urgently practical truths in the Word of God.  When understood and yielded to, there are no powers that influence our present so mightily as ‘the powers of the age to come.’  Led by such masters in church history as Neander and Harnack, nearly all students of this subject agree that the premillennial coming of our Lord was the hope of the Christian Church almost to the close of the third century.  It is significant, too, to find that this hope was the brightest and clearest when the worship and life of the church were the purest, and only began to wane when she neared her great relapse.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

16

 

 

THE GLORY OF LIFE IS BRIGHTEST

 

 

The glory of life is brightest

When the glory of Self is dim,

And they have most compelled me

Who most have pointed to Him.

 

 

They have held me, stirred me, swayed me,

I have hung on their every word,

Till I fain would rise and follow

Not them, not them, but their Lord.

 

 

-------

 

 

They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”  We may well ask God to raise up able and devoted ministers of the New Testament in these last days to preach the Word; to be instant in season and out of season; to reprove, rebuke, exhort; to hold fast the form of sound words, and at the same time to look for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing - [the appearing of the glory,” R.V.] - of the Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

17

 

 

THE NIGHT LIES DARK UPON THE EARTH

 

 

The night lies dark upon the earth -

And we have light;

So many have to grope their way -

And we have sight.

 

 

One path is theirs and ours

Of sin and care;

But we - are borne along,

And they - their burdens bear.

 

 

Foot-sore, heart-weary they

Upon their way,

Mute in their sorrow, while -

We kneel and pray.

 

 

 Of those times

Glad are they of a stone

On which to rest,

While we - lie pillow’d on

The Father’s breast.

 

 

-------

 

 

God never fails any child of His who by God’s grace sets his heart to meet for God’s glory alone every divinely-ordained condition.  He is faithful that promised.”  PROVE ME NOW HEREWITH.”

 

 

There is a question I would like to ask those people who, in spite of His own promise, and in spite of the signs of these times, still deny that the Son of Man will return with power and great glory to establish His Kingdom upon the earth.  The question is this.  Do you WANT this Man to reign over the world?  If you do not, there is no more to be said.  If you do want Him to reign, then begin to search the Scriptures which testify of Him.  Pray for understanding, for the wisdom of God, which makes foolish the poor wisdom of this world.

 

 

Reader, I entreat, “Do not cast from you your confident Hope, for it will receive a VAST REWARD.  For you stand in need of patient endurance so that, as the result of having done the Will of God, you may receive the promised blessing.  For there is still but a short time, and then THE COMING ONE WILL COME AND WILL NOT DELAY” (Weymouth’s translation of Hebrews 10: 35, 37).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

18

 

 

ONE IS TAKEN

 

 

Boldly The Trump of God blares its brief warning;

Saints that have long slept spring up from the clay,

Past is death’s reign, and the glorious Morning

Star now announceth the nearness of day.

Rapt from the housetop, the field, or from slumbers,

Sunder’d from dearest ones close alongside,

Clouds of the watchful saints rise in the number –

Chosen, called, faithful,’ and now ‘glorified.’

 

 

Into His Presence they enter with singing;

Him Whom they loved when unseen, now they see;

Prostrate they fall, whilst His praises outringing

Fill every heart with Divine ecstasy;

Never again to be sever’d asunder –

Him through Eternity’s Ages to know

As their soul’s Bridegroom; with increasing wonder

Into His Likeness Supernal to grow.

 

 

Blessed partakers in this consummation!

Throughout life’s race they did eager contend,

Aye pressing on in ‘the hope of salvation,’

On toward the Mark for the Prize’ at the end.

 

 

Lord! grant us grace, through Thy Spirit of Power,

Constant to dwell in Thee through life’s short day,

With ‘fear and trembling,’ until its last hour,

Steadfastly watching in prayer, that we may

Truly ‘prevail to escape’ the dread sadness

Taking the dwellers on earth as a thief,

And, in that time of redemption and gladness,

Stand in His Presence “with joynot with grief.”

 

 

- JOHN  A.  MAC MILLAN

 

 

-------

 

 

The fact that those who really love the Lord more than all else will be suddenly delivered from the appalling woes of the end, seems to be a secret, as it were, between Himself and those of His people who live in the last times.  For, so far as we are aware, none but Himself has divulged it.  He reveals it with His Own mouth in Luke 21: 36, and in Rev. 3: 10; while the more detailed notice of it in Rev. 14. occurs in the Book which was peculiarly His Own.  His Evangelists and Apostles, who were to pass away long before His return, seem to have made no distinct mention of the secret.  His Church upon earth lived through the weary centuries without discovering it; and it is only in recent times that the light of the Spirit has been thrown upon it.  Have we not here a solemn warning, that the time for its fulfilment is at hand?

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

19

 

 

THE SECOND COMING

 

 

The watch of faith and prayer He set,

We keep it then, we keep it yet.

At midnight, crow of cock, or noon,

He cometh sure, He cometh soon.

 

 

He comes to chasten, not destroy,

To purge the earth from sin’s alloy.

At last, at last shall all confess

His mercy as His righteousness

 

 

The dead shall live, the sick be whole,

The scarlet sin be white as wool;

No discord mar below, above,

The music of eternal love!

 

 

Sound, welcome trump, the last alarm!

Lord God of hosts, make bare Thine arm,

Fulfil this day of long desire,

Make sweet and clean the world with fire!

 

 

- WHITTIER

 

 

-------

 

 

I delight in the belief of the Personal Reign of our Blessed Lord on [this] earth.  There is no remedy for all this mass of misery but in His Return.  Belief in the Second Coming has been a moving principle of my life; I have not spent one conscious hour during the past forty years without being influenced by the hope of the Lord’s Return.

 

 

The prophets foretold Him glorified on the earth; reigning at Jerusalem, worshipped by angels, served by kings adored by the nations.

 

(1.) “Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and Jerusalem, and before His ancients (elders) gloriously:” Isa. 24: 23.

 

(2.) “Every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles:” Zech. 14: 16.

 

(3.) “And thou, 0 tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee it shall come, even the first dominion, the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem:” Mic. 4: 8; compare Acts 1: 6.

 

(4.) “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”  “Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him:” Ps. 72: 8, 11.

 

On such prophecies the Jewish mind fastened.  These it expected to be fulfilled, the moment Messiah appeared.  Hence, when Jesus appeared in meekness, and without regal power, the nation rejected Him.  But were these the only passages that spoke of Messiah?  Nay, there were others that, as unequivocally, foretold His humiliation.

 

(1.) “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.  I hid not my face from shame and spitting:” Isa. 1: 6.

 

(2.) “Then I said I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain, yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God:” Isa. 49: 4.

 

(3.) “Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship:” Isa. 49: 7.

 

(4.) “They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn:” Zech. 12: 10.

 

Now, as the Jews could not see how to reconcile both these classes of passages, they took the set which pleased them best, and rejected the opposite series.  Hence, with minds blinded by prejudice, - a prejudice which refused to receive the entire compass of God’s testimony,* they understood not the clearest assertions of the Saviour respecting His approaching sufferings.*

 

[* In a similar fashion, A-Millennialist Christians today refuse to accept the mass of prophetic Scriptures which testify of our Lord’s coming millennial glory upon this earth!]

 

Then He took unto Him the twelve, and said unto them, ‘Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.  For He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated and spitted on.  And they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death and the third day He shall rise again.’ AND THEY UNDERSTOOD NONE, OF THESE THINGS and this saying was hid from them neither knew they the things which were spoken:” Luke 18: 31-34.

 

*       *       *

 

 

20

 

 

NOT DESOLATE

 

 

None of them that trust in Thee shall be desolate:” Psalm 34: 22.

 

 

Not desolate, though friends I love may fail;

Not desolate, though ills I fear’d prevailed;

Not desolate, though all my earthly store

Hath dwindled, with no strength to gather more;

Not desolate, for by mydwindling brook

I, like Elijah, for deliverance look!

For hath Elijah’s God not said to me

That none who trust in Him shall desolate be?

 

 

Since Thou hast promised Lord, I will not fear,

I know Thou wilt not leave me, Saviour dear;

No ill can be too great for me to bear -

No loneliness appal - which Thou wilt share;

No need so great that Thou canst meet it not;

No moment come when I shall be forgot.

Since I Thy promise have, to Thee I flee,

For none who trust in Thee shall desolate be.

 

 

- ANNA McCLURE

 

 

-------

 

 

You may say: Ever since I began to testify to Satan’s defeat at Calvary, and to pray against him, he has been attacking me.  That is because he sees the prize before you.  He is attacking those who will judge the fallen angels if they obtain the prize of the throne.  Will you not then hold fast your crown?  How are you to do it?  Just with a steady, unswerving aim to BE TRUE TO CHRIST, AND TO THE LIGHT HE HAS GIVEN YOU at all costs.  Say to yourself, “The Lord is training me for the throne.”  Say again and again: “GREATER IS HE THAT IS IN ME than he that is in the world.”  Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take thy crown.”  For every bit of the conflict there will be the gain.  So Paul said, “The sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

21

 

 

In the crimson of the morning,

In the whiteness of the noon,

In the amber glory of the day’s retreat,

In the midnight robed in darkness,

Or the gleaming of the moon,

I listen for the coming of His feet.

 

 

Down the minister aisles of splendour,

From betwixt the cherubim,

Through the wond’ring throng with movements strong and sweet,

Sounds His victory-tread approaching

With a movement far and dim -

The music of His coming feet.

 

 

Sandall’d not with sheen of silver,

Girdled not with woven gold,

Weighted not with shimmering gems and odours sweet,

But white-winge’d and shod with glory

In the Tabor light of old -

The glory of the coming of His feet.

 

 

He is coming, O my spirit,

With His everlasting peace,

With His blessedness immortal and complete;

He is coming O my spirit,

And His coming brings release.

I am waiting for the coming of His feet!

 

 

-------

 

 

Our whole summons to perpetual watchfulness, based as it is by our Lord (Luke 12: 40) on the fact that it will be a date which we have not calculated, collapses ipso facto with the discovery of the date.  For the Lord Jesus says that we neither know the day nor the hour, and for that reason must watch perpetually: the discovery of the date, therefore, is either the overthrow of His truthfulness, or else it is pure illusion; and in any case it destroys the Divine intent - our vigilance - in the withheld fact, and vitiates the whole moral attitude commanded by our Lord.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

22

 

 

What time the evening shadows fall

Around the Church on earth,

When darker forms of doubt appal

And new false lights have birth;

 

 

Then closer should her faithful band

The Truth together hold,

Hell’s last devices to withstand

And safely guard her Fold.

 

 

-------

 

 

It was the time that was coming, which enabled our Lord to bear the years of apparent trivialities followed by fearful suffering: it was for the joy that was before Him that He endured the cross, despising shame (Heb. 12: 2).  And, as might be expected, no small part of the teaching of the Lord Jesus was devoted to trying to make His disciples realize what the coming day would mean, so that they too might live in the light of the [millennial] glory that shall be revealed.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

23

 

 

TOWARD THE DAWN

 

 

My feet are torn

With the rough climbing of the upward way,

Yet my soul lingers not, for surely Day

And its glad glories bids me not to stay,

E’en though my feet can boast of many a thorn;

The Call comes urgently - each step newborn -

Away!  Away!  TOWARD THE DAWN.

 

 

My hands grow sore,

Missing some other grip to aid me on,

And I wish mutely that the night were gone;

Since former fellowships of Earth that shone

Have left me: yet the urge grows more:

A Voice I hear - I am not left forlorn -

Light gleams ahead!  TOWARD THE DAWN.

 

 

My heart is faint:

As up I climb, though tears and stones bedew,

I do believe the prospect lies in view,

For what GOD promises must aye be true:

And burnt are all my goods through Earth’s distraint,

Heat but enriches the ungather’d corn:

I struggle on, TOWARD THE DAWN.

 

 

My spirit sings!

The mists are melting now, the clouds recede,

Love-songs are healing wounds that used to bleed;

Methinks I soon on Heavenly Bread shall feed,

And to my faltering steps are given wings;

Now am I of my speechless grievings shorn,

He comes!  I rise TOWARD THE DAWN.

 

 

- H. H. BROWNLOW

 

 

-------

 

 

General Gordon, when satisfied with the site of Calvary, conjectured that there must be a tomb near, for, “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new tomb wherein was man never yet laid.”  General Gordon conjectured that in the garden adjoining Golgotha a tomb might possibly be found.  On digging about five feet below the surface he was delighted to find the entrance to a tomb which fulfils all the conditions of the Gospel narrative, and renders intelligible the circumstances of our Lord’s burial:” (G. E. Franklin, F.R.G.S.).  A rock-hewn seat at the head, and another at the foot, of the grooved corpse-bed - seats where the Angels sat (John 20: 12) - startlingly confirm the sepulchre’s identity, which would require to be large enough (as this is) for a group of women, together with two angels (Luke 23: 55), to be able to stand naturally within it.  No mortal remains have ever been found in this tomb, which has thus never seen corruption.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

24

 

 

LORD SHOW ME

 

 

 

Lord, when I am weary with toiling,

And burdensome seem Thy commands,

If my load should lead to complaining,

Lord, show me Thy Hands -

Thy nail-pierced Hands, Thy cross-torn Hands,

My Saviour, show me Thy Hands.

 

 

Christ, if ever my footsteps falter,

And I be prepared for retreat,

If desert or thorn cause lamenting,

Lord, show me Thy Feet -

The bleeding Feet - Thy nail-scarr’d Feet -

My Jesus, show me Thy Feet.

 

 

O God, dare I show Thee

My hands and my feet?

 

 

- BENTON THOBURN BRADLEY

 

 

-------

 

 

I sometimes wonder whether the frightful words we read in the Bible about God blinding men’s eyes and dulling their ears have not come true in this generation in respect to the men who should be shepherds of our souls.  For they are certainly failing to convert sinners.  The great question seems to be – “Are there any sinners?”  To judge by sermons, we are all sure of Heaven.  And yet the man in the street does not seem to believe in this easy and broad way which according to the preachers, leads us into life.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

25

 

 

Revive us Lord, for we are those who weep;

Cisterns are empty, hopes have dwindled low;

Our harps are silent: nations lie asleep,

And thine own people love to have it so:

Few only of Thy tired believers wait

Mutely in prayer, that winter may be past;

And as Thy Covenant Word - compassionate -

Speaks through the testing bitterness and blast,

Oh bid us re-attune our harps and sing -

Revive us now, O God, and send Thy Spring!

 

 - H. H. BROWNLOW.

 

 

-------

 

 

A preacher is a leader of men.  His influence may be more far-reaching than he realizes.  His inconsistencies, deficiencies, weaknesses, and spiritual deformities reappear in his followers with that fatal certainty which strikes grief to the heart of the father who sees his dread disease reappearing in his children.  Many and varied are the sins which the preacher must avoid if he would be a good example.  We can mention only a few.  He must avoid complicity with the evil of the world-system in every respect, particularly in the world’s amusements.  A preacher who fails to be separate from such worldliness as dancing, card-playing, and theatre-going, is not a godly example.  The preacher must avoid being united together in a common purpose with those who know not Christ.  He must avoid the money-loving, popularity-hunting, man-pleasing motives which are the cancers eating at the vitals of many a minister to-day.  Sins that beset the pathway of God’s minister like a legion of demons are laziness, cowardice, impatience, despondency, selfishness, dishonesty, autocracy, pride, discontent, meanness, and a host of others.  As Robert Baxter said:-One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

26

 

 

It fortifies my soul to know

That, though I perish, truth is so;

That, howsoever I stray and range,

Whate’er I do, Thou does not change.

I steadier step when I recall

That, if I slip, Thou doest not fall.

 

 

-------

 

 

The infinite resources stored in Jehovah are much more than self-sufficing, self-supporting: He is the fountain of power, and a fountain that is never stayed: to give strength is an essential part of Deity as to possess strength.  To him that hath no might” - the infinitely weak things of the world: patience gone, endurance gone, perseverance gone; our own definition of ourselves in many a midnight hour - “he INCREASETH STRENGTH.”

 

 

Paul says to the Galatian Christians:-Ye were running well; who did hinder you that ye should not OBEY THE TRUTH?” (Gal. 5: 7).  Unflagging obedience is swift racing; and the golden promise is that as the God-contact creates obedience, so the obedience creates the crown.  Therefore Paul says in his own sunset:-I have finished the [race] course: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown” (2 Tim. 4: 7).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

27

 

 

WITHDRAWN

 

 

The Master was standing beside me

As I wearily conn’d my task,

And I had no answer to give Him

To the questions that He might ask:

But my heart-throbs were still’d in a moment

By the tender look on His face,

As He wisper’d – “My child, move lower;

Let another take thy place.”

 

 

Not out of the class, dear Master,

Not away from my work and Thee!”

He smiled as He tenderly answer’d

Thou’lt be nearer, My child, to Me:

Thou hast stood awhile with the teachers,

Thou hast tried the truth to impart;

My child, there are deeper lessons:

Come and learn them with Me apart.”

 

 

So the hum of the distant voices

No longer falls on my ear,

But the words that drop from the Master

I am bending my soul to hear;

And I care not although another

Is filling my vacant place,

For my heart is hush’d and quiet

As I gaze on the Master’s face.

 

 

Tis a lower place” – yes, but only

As low as the Master’s feet;

And few are the books that are needed,

But the lessons are strangely sweet:

So, loving, and trusting, and hoping

I am learning to do His will,

For the Master’s most wonderful lesson

Is ever “to wait and be still.”*

 

 

-  LILLIE D. NUTTALL.

 

 

It is evident that the ‘first resurrection’ is one of privilege and blessing: ‘blessed and holy’ are these.  Among them are the martyrs of Smyrna and Laodicea, and probably the overcomers of the other churches.  Of course they include those who win the crowns.  They appear from other passages to be an elect, chosen, company - chosen for reward.  In fact inheritance in the Kingdom of heaven during the Millennium is held out as an incentive to holiness of life and faithfulness of service.  The phrase ‘the first resurrection’ seems to denote its privilege, in contrast to the second post-millennial ‘resurrection’ of judgment, rather than identity of time; for we know that there are two and probably three or even more companies who must participate in it.  There is the ‘out-resurrection from among the dead,’ which the Apostle hoped to share (Phil. 3: 11).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

28

 

 

SOME DAY AND IT MAY BE THIS

 

 

Some day will be the last

For the toiling and the trying,

For the weeping and the dying –

In a moment all is past! Some day, such as this,

In a moment the skiers sunder!

In a moment caught up yonder!

Oh, the rapture and the wonder –

We are with the Lord in bliss!

 

 

Some day will be the last

For the Church’s long affliction,

Striving for earth’s benediction,

Mourning for her Lord’s rejection –

In a moment all is past!

Some day, such a day as this,

Suddenly the Lord descending,

Victory His steps attending,

Suddenly the conflict ending –

Share we His triumphant bliss!

 

 

Some day will be the last!

Keep us, Lord, from idly throwing

Hours away, so quickly going;

Let us use each moment, knowing

Sunset shadows lengthen fast.

Some day - and it may be this -

In a moment work is ended;

No more marr’d, and no more mended;

Past the time for work intended -

Wheels and whir of labour cease!

 

 

- ELIZABETH PADFIELD.

 

 

-------

 

 

TRUST

 

 

You must not be discouraged at the slowness of recovery.  Look up to Him who giveth liberally for faith to be resigned to His Divine will, and trust Him for that measure of health which will most glorify Him, and advance to the greatest extent your own real happiness.  We are sometimes suffered to be in a state of perplexity that our faith may be tried and grow stronger.  See if you cannot spend a short time after dark in looking out of your window into space, and meditating upon heaven, with all its joys unspeakable and full of glory. … ‘All things work together for good’ to God’s children.  Try to look up and be cheerful, and not desponding.  Trust our kindly Heavenly Father, and by the eye of faith see that all things are right for your best interests.  The clouds come, pass over us, and are followed by bright sunshine; so in God’s moral dealings with us, He permits us to have trouble awhile.  But let us even in the most trying dispensations of His Providence, be cheered by the brightness which is a little ahead.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

29

 

 

PRAYER

 

 

Hast thou within a care so deep

It chases from thine eyelids sleep?

To thy Redeemer take that care,

And change anxiety to prayer.

 

 

Hast thou a hope with which thy heart

Would almost feel it death to part?

Entreat thy God that hope to crown,

Or give thee strength to lay it down.

 

 

Hast thou a friend whose image dear

May prove an idol worshipp’d here?

Implore the Lord that naught may be

A shadow between heaven and thee.

 

 

Whate’er the care which breaks the rest,

Whate’er the wish that swells the breast,

Spread before God that wish, that care,

And change anxiety to prayer.

 

 

-------

 

 

It has been generally taught that, whereas eternal life is a “free gift” (Rom. 6: 23), i.e., free of conditions, as well as of purchase-price, rewards in the Kingdom may be lost and must be won.  It is no more than an extension of the undeniable principle that the millennial kingdom is itself a reward and that attaining it is subject to the same rule.  And by as much as the reward is made more magnificent the incentive to attain to it by grace becomes the more regnant, and the pursuit of holiness the more urgent.  The Christian athlete will cry: Not that I have already obtained (the prize), or am already made perfect; but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3: 12).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

30

 

 

SCRIPTURE LIGHT

 

 

See that thou make all things according to the pattern that was shewed thee.  (Heb. 8: 5).

 

 

The day was drawing to a close,

Yet o’er the task I bent my head;

The seam was long, the time was short,

My needle still must ply the thread.

Go, fetch the light,” a kind voice said;

The day is done, the night draws near.”

But faster still the needle plied,

The bidding sweet I would not hear.

At last ’twas finish’d and I rose

And folded neat the dainty work,

So satisfied and glad perchance

That I my duty had not shirk’d.

But when the searching light next day

Reveal’d my stitches gaping wide,

With nought of evenness or grace,

My wretched heart lost all its pride.

Ah, had I only brought the Light

To help me with the weary seam!

The gentle Monitor’s sweet voice

Came to me only like a dream.

 

 

-------

 

 

The unseen originators of this [See Acts 13: 6-8; 2 Tim. 2: 11, 12, 18] scheme will be evil spirits; the human agents will be the false prophets whom they inspire; and the parties who give heed to them will abandon the Christian faith.  As Ahab gave heed to his false prophets, inspired by a lying spirit, so will it be with these.  God will send them strong delusion to believe the lie, that they all might be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness;” 2 Tim. 2: 11, 12.  These latter-day resisters of the truth are compared to the sourcerers, Jannes and Jambres, who by the miraculous aid of demons opposed Moses and Aaron: 2 Tim. 3: 8.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

31

 

 

MARANATHA

 

 

Hark, what a sound, and too divine of hearing,

Stirs on the earth and trembles in the air!

It is the thunder of the Lord’s appearing;

Is it the music of His people’s prayer?

Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices

Shout to the saints, and to the deaf and dumb:

Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices -

Glad in His coming who hath sworn “I come.”

 

 

-------

 

 

Much unfulfilled prophecy remains before He comes with His saints, but none before He comes for them.  Therefore “become” - so the Greek - “ye also ready.”  One known sin undropt, one known command unobeyed, one known truth unbelieved, one part of the life unknowingly unyielded, and the perfection of our readiness stands in jeopardy. 

 

Unbeliever, the last shadows are falling across the world, and therefore across your life; yet you are still utterly unready.  But “there is time” - as Napoleon said, on the news of a great defeat - “to win a victory before the sun goes down.”  Your coming Judge is your present Saviour; “BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND THOU SHALT BE SAVED.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

32

 

 

THE ROYAL PRIESTHOOD

 

 

The race of God’s anointed priests shall never pass away;

Before His glorious Face they stand, and serve Him night and day:

Though reason raves, and unbelief flows on, a mighty flood,

They are, and shall be, till the end; the hidden priests of God.

 

 

His chosen souls, their earthly dross consumed in sacred fire,

To God’s own heart their hearts ascend in flame of deep desire:

The increase of their worship fills His Temple’s holiest place;

Their song with wonder fills the heavens, the glad new song of grace.

 

 

- TER STEEGEN.

 

 

-------

 

 

AN OVERCOMER

 

 

On her wedding-day my brother Henry gave his bride two rings, one smooth and the other rough, and said, “Such will be your wedding life; but rough or smooth, you may be an overcomer.”

 

 

Three months later she stood by her dying husband, and, looking up through her tears, said, “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee better than I love him.”

 

 

Four years passed, and in a distant Chinese Mission Station she sat making her death-shirt for her little son, who lay across her knees, and as her tears fell on the face of the dead child, she looked up and said, “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee better than I love my little boy.”

 

 

Two years later she lay dying in her uncle’s house at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, and as her sister bent over, saying, “You are now going, and in a few moments you will see Henry and your little boy,” she whispered, “Jesus first,” and died.  So the rough ring became a triply crown.

 

 

- GEORGE WILLIAMS.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

33

 

 

THE PRAYER MEETING

 

 

There were only two or three of us, who came to the place of prayer;

Came in the teeth of a driving storm, but for that we did not care,

Since our hymns of praise had risen, and our earnest prayers were said,

The Master Himself was present there, and gave us the living bread.

 

 

We know His look on our leader’s face, so rapt and glad and free;

We felt His touch when our heads were bow’d, we heard His ‘Come to Me.’

Nobody saw Him lift the hatch, and none unbarr’d the door,

But ‘peace’ was His token to every heart, and how could we ask for more?

 

 

Each of us felt the load of sin from the weary shoulder fall;

Each dropp’d the load of care, and the grief that was like a pall;

And over our spirits a blessed calm swept in from the jasper sea,

And strength was ours for toil and strife in the days that were thence to be.

 

 

It was only a handful gather’d in to the little place of prayer,

Outside were struggling, and pain, and sin, but the Lord Himself was there;

He came to redeem the pledge He gave - wherever His loved ones be.

To stand Himself in the midst of them, though they count but two or three.

 

 

And forth we fared in the bitter rain, but our hearts had grown so warm;

It seem’d like the pelting of summer flowers, and not the crush of the storm;

‘’Twas a time of the dearest privilege, of the Lord’s right hand,’ we said,

As we thought how Jesus Himself had come to feed us with living bread.

 

 

-------

 

 

TIMES OF DARKNESS

 

 

To every Christian there come seasons of darkness, when it seems that God is far away and He has hid His face from us; when it is difficult to pray; when the springs of joy fail and the lamp of hope burns low; when the remembrance of our miserable failure overshadows the soul and we feel that we can only be outcasts.  I do not say that it ever has to be or ought to be so; nevertheless it is sometimes.  Those are also times of spiritual danger.  The adversary will be whispering, “What is the use?” and “Do as you like - why stickle at this or that - it makes no difference anyway.”

 

 

Well, what can be done about it?  The best remedy is to go right on - without joy, without enthusiasm, without hope, if need be, without feeling or satisfaction - go on with the thing you know to be right, though for a time you see not a particle of use for it - do good, read, pray, give, obey, show kindness for Jesus’ sake, refuse temptation.  Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that obeyeth the voice of his servant?  He that walketh in darkness, and hath no light, let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and rely upon his God(Isa. 50: 10).  When the skies clear up again (and they will likely clear soon) the fact that you have stood fast through the season of darkness will bring you a peculiarly rich reward of peace and joy and confidence for the days to come.

 

 

- R. H. BOLL.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

34

 

 

AFFLICTED

 

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them and carried them all the days of old, (Isaiah 63: 9, R.V.).

 

 

Heart that is low,

Jesus was so,

Tell Him your woe!

 

 

Deep as despair,

Lone in your care,

He’s with you there.

 

 

Hearing your cries,

O’er you He sighs,

Tears in His eyes.

 

 

Weeping with you,

He shares it, too,

Helping you through.

 

 

Held by Him near,

Is He not dear?

Tell Him your fear.

 

 

He’ll not forsake,

He feels heartbreak,

Whisper your ache.

 

 

-------

 

 

Come,” says Paul the aged (2 Tim. 4: 13), “for I am lonely; bring the cloak, for I am old and cold; bring the books, for my mind is hungry; but, oh, if all these fail send the parchments!”  Especially the parchments!  Life’s supremacies must always conquer and claim their own at the last.  Under circumstances almost exactly similar Paul’s great translator, William Tyndale, was lying in his damp cell at Vilvorde awaiting the fatal stroke which set his spirit free a few weeks later.  And, as in Paul’s case, winter was coming on.  Bring me,” he writes, “a warmer cap, something to patch my leggings, a woollen shirt, and, above all, my Hebrew Bible.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

35

 

 

CLOTHED WITH CHRIST

 

[By His imputed righteousness]

 

 

Pass’d from me, on to another, all my mass’d iniquity;

I am free!  Behold it gather round the Lamb of Calvary:

Now no more earth’s filthy garments cling tenaciously to me,

I am clad in change of garment, clothed with Christ I hence shall be.

 

 

Clothed by God who first unrobed me;

Wash’d me clean from native stains

In the Blood with which He bought me,

Drain’d from pure Victim’s veins:

Draped I am the whitest linen, in the Righteousness of God,

Him who was from the beginning – veil’d by Him, my perfect Lord.

 

 

None more gloriously apparell’d, than caparison’d with Christ:

One poor sinner, God has laurell’d with the crown of [eternal] Life unpriced;

Vanish’d in a wealth of glory all the shadows of the past,

Melted by Love’s rubied story, sin’s dun cloud, a life o’ercast!

 

 

Across through my Kingly Pleader, panoplied with Him alone,

He, my true Commander, Leader, brings me to Thy very Throne:

There the airs of heaven shall hallow; through the dim soul-cloisters move;

Touch all life, and make it mellow with the essence of Thy love.

 

 

- MARGARET E. BIRKETT

 

 

-------

 

 

BEYOND

 

 

The Son of God has said:-The hour is coming in which all that are in the tombs shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done ill, unto the resurrection of judgment” (John 5: 28).  Which destiny will be yours beyond the tomb?  In the Middle Ages, when noblemen employed fools, or jesters, to amuse them, a certain man gave his valuable cane to his fool and told him that when he could find a greater fool he should bring it back to him.  In due time the nobleman came to die and said farewell to his jester.  Where is your Lordship going?” asked the fool.  I am going to another world,” was the reply.  And when shall you return?”  Oh, I am never to return.”  No” said the fool; “then has your Lordship made any preparation for the journey?”  Alas, I have not.”  Then take back your cane,” said the man, “for never could there be folly so great as that! 

 

 

[How many regenerate believers leave this world believing in only one general resurrection of the dead when they can read in the Holy Scriptures of two!  The “First Resurrection” for the “blessed and holy,” at the beginning of Messiah’s Millennium - “they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years” (Rev. 20: 4); and the other Resurrection for “the rest of the dead” (ver. 5) at its end, when “death and hades gave up the dead which were in them” (ver. 13): and “if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire:” (ver. 15).]

 

 

Distinguished saints were chosen, as examples of earth’s future kings, for the Transfiguration, which was a designed forecast of the Kingdom (Matt. 16: 28; 17: 1) - Elijah from among the living, and Moses from among the dead; and our Lord had already defined who would reign:-They that are accounted worthy to attain to that age, and the resurrection which is out of the dead:’ (Luke 20: 35).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

36

 

 

THE KINGDOM

 

 

Our earthen vessels break;

The world itself grows old;

But Christ our precious dust will take

And freshly mould:

He’ll give these bodies vile

A fashion like His own;

He’ll bid the whole creation smile,

And hush its groan.

 

 

To Him our weakness clings

Through tribulation sore,

And seeks the covert of His wings

Till all be o’er;

And when we’ve run the race,

And fought the faithful fight,

We’ll see Him face to face

With saints in light.

 

 

-------

 

 

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”  Aye, and the coming day will be the time of “the manifestation of the righteous judgment of God.”

 

 

The key to the whole question is – … CHRIST REMOVING HIS [OBEDIENT] SAINTS MUST PRECEDE THE DAY OF WRATH.  This is a matter, not of arbitrary arrangement, but of moral fitness.  The approved of Christ are not to undergo God’s wrath sent on apostates.  The Church’s message of grace to the world cannot coexist with the Day of vengeance, “cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to lay earth desolate, and to destroy sinners out of it.”  It were not seemly and truthful, that ambassadors owned by God, wooing men with words of peace, should be left to the time of God’s war against Apostates.  As soon as the Day of national refusal of Christ is set in, the Church’s standing is set aside, and her message of mercy recalled.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

37

 

 

Oh no!  I dare not turn away,

As you would have me do;

I dare not leave God’s House to-day

To go to meeting too.

 

 

In Church God always waits, I know,

To hear His people’s prayer;

But in the place that you go to

His presence is not there.

 

 

God’s Priest in Church for God doth stand,

And when the prayers begin,

The Lord will give me at His hand

Forgiveness of my sin!

 

 

Do not the Holy Scriptures show, -

(We know the story well)

Why Korah once, and Dathan, too,

Went down alive to hell?

 

 

And Saul’s sad end might make us wise

Whom God in anger slew,

Because he offered sacrifice

Which only priests might do.

 

 

-------

 

 

THE REJOINDER

 

 

This supposes that buildings of brick and mortar are ‘God’s house,’ while Scripture tells us, that the Most High is not dwelling in houses made with hands (Acts 7: 48).  His house now is a spiritual one, made up of living stones, and [regenerate] believers are a “holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2: 4-10).  The clergyman trusted that he was an atoning priest, capably of drawing nearer to God, because he was a consecrated ‘priest’ according to the Prayer Book; and was considered to be so by the law of England.  But he was no more towards God, unless he were a believer, consecrated by the blood of Christ.  And then he was no more a priest than any other believer.  God consecrated Aaron to be His priest, and owned his priesthood: but the Lord does not own the Prayer Book and its consecration, as His.  So that, whosoever lifts himself up as an atoning priest like Aaron, is guilty of the very sin of Korah.  Believers now are only Levites, servants of God.  And it was the Levite’s attempt to take the place of the sacrificing and atoning priest, which God visited in wrath.  Whoever regards himself, and acts, as an atoning priest, now that Christ has, once for all, brought in forgiveness; and not only brought peace with God, but brought us into favour with God, is guilty of Korah’s sin!  For he is setting aside the completed work of a greater than Aaron.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

38

 

 

BECAUSE THE KING PUTETH HIS TRUST IN THEE

 

 

The God of battles give to thee

Hearts whiter than the foam

On the tossing crest of the azure sea,

That rounds thine island home.

 

 

And, firm within, mayst thou defy

The storms’ recurring shocks,

With faith more clear than summer sky

And stronger than the rocks.

 

 

And it may be that thou alone

Wilt one day rise and claim

That thou, on thine imperial throne,

Hast not denied His Name.

 

 

-------

 

 

TO ESCAPE AND REIGN

 

 

We cannot escape the suffering if we are to share His Throne and His Reign over the earth - “if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2: 12).  He has chosen us to stand with Him in these last and terrible days.

 

 

The first raptured are restricted to the “watchful” and “praying-always” Christians (Luke 21: 36).  This will be a small number of saints, because there are comparatively few of all the great mass of believers who “watch and pray always” that they “may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass.”

 

 

There must be a particular value in the time of Crisis in the understanding of God’s word of prophecy.  And it is not as though such only knew what is coming - that alone would be of small value - but that thereby they shall be “able to escape the things that shall come to pass and stand before the Son of man.” (Luke 21: 36.)  For, “ye brethren,” says Paul, “are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” (1 Thess. 5: 4-10.)  There is a particular advantage in this, that we should not be taken unaware.  The latter is the destined fate of the world and the disobedient Christians (Rev. 3: 3.)  But blessed are those whom the Lord finds watching.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

39

 

 

MY SHEPHERD

 

 

The God of love my Shepherd is,

And He that doth me feed;

While He is mine and I am His,

What can I want or need?

 

 

He leads me to the tender grass,

Where I both feed and rest;

Then to the streams that gently pass:

In both I have the best.

 

 

Or if I stray, He doth convert,

And bring my mind in frame;

And all this, not for my desert,

But for His holy Name.

 

 

Yea, in death’s shady black abode

Well may I walk, not fear;

For Thou art with me, and Thy rod

To guide, Thy staff to bear.

 

 

Surely Thy sweet and wondrous love

Shall measure all my days;

And as it never shall remove,

So neither shall my praise.

 

 

- GEORGE HERBERT,  A.D. 1593-1632.

 

 

-------

 

 

RETURN

 

 

The Lord is coming [back here to reign]!  The Word testifies it; the [Holy] Spirit has spoken it; holy men have written it; the Church has been looking for it; the Saints to-day are longing for it; the redeemed in glory wait for it; the Devil and all the evil spirits know it to be a fact, that Jesus is coming again.  Only the Churches [today] do not seem to know it.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

40

 

 

I KNOW NOT WHY

 

 

I know not now why doubts and cares

Should dim my faith by haunting fears;

I know not why when needing rest

My heart remains still sore opprest;

I know not now when seeking aid

The answer is so long delay’d;

I know not now why burning tears

My heart should harass through the years.

 

 

I know not why life should be

A school of discipline for me;

I know not now why grief and pain

Should check one’s course and should remain:

I know not now why sore distress

The heart should fill with weariness;

I know not now why He should show

On me such marvellous grace below:

All this some day I’ll understand

When I have reached the Better Land.

 

 

- DORIS GOREHAM.

 

 

-------

 

 

A CHALLENGE

 

 

Ye say, we do not understand the speech of strange nations.  What?  Shall the Kings of the earth find interpreters for their embassies to foreign lands and shall the King of kings find none?  Ye are anxious as to your support.  Know ye not that the holy Paul earned his living with the same hands which he after laid upon his converts?  Ye say, that no miracles stand at your disposal as they did at that of the apostles.  But the mightiest miracles are a holy life, a heroic patience, an unshakable love, and that certain hope of final victory in gentleness which wins the wildest heathen.  Ye shrink from dangers, but the princes of this world find soldiers in thousands willing to lay down their lives and shall the Prince of life wait in vain?

 

 

- ERASMUS

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

41

 

 

A LITTLE SANCTUARY

 

 

A little sanctuary, a shelter’d spot,

Where hunted fugitives for refuge flee;

Home of the quiet heart, where fear is not –

Be this, my Lord, to me.

 

 

Without, the madness of a world in arms,

Within, a little world from tumult free,

Its silence shatter’d not by war’s alarms -

This art Thou, Lord, to me.

 

 

O Thou Who art my rest, my joy, my peace,

Teach this sad world what Thou hast taught to me -

How healing comes, and song, and glad release,

At home, O Lord, in Thee.

 

 

- FRANK J. EXLEY.

 

 

-------

 

 

REST

 

 

The sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the rest which full identification with Christ brings.  I am no longer anxious about anything as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine.  It makes no matter where He places me or how.  That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient.  It matters little to my servant whether I send him to buy a few pennies’ worth of things, or the most expensive articles.  In either case he looks to me for the money.  So if God place me in great perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength?  And His resources are mine, for He is mine and is with me and dwells in me. – HUDSON TAYLOR.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

42

 

 

ON A ROYAL MARTYR’S CROWN

 

 

Earth’s crown, thus at my feet, I can disdain

Which heave is, and at the best, but vain.

But now a crown of thorns I gladly greet;

Sharp is this crown, but not so sharp as sweet.

The crown of glory that I yonder see

Is full of bliss and of eternity.

 

 

- SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

 

 

-------

 

 

Isaiah – perhaps the greatest of all the prophets – sums up our consequent practical lesson:-Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?”  We are to turn from man to God, from earth to heaven, from Antichrist to Christ.  Cease to trust in man’s power - so limited and collapsible, failing the world in its extremest need: cease to trust in man’s knowledge - his ‘facts’ are constantly proved to be not facts, and his theories go bankrupt: cease to trust in man’s character - those we have most trusted can most fail us: cease to trust in man’s example - his footsteps are always on slippery ice.  We must ‘ceaseeven from the Church - the regenerate man - when he departs from the Word of God.  Seventeen years later Jehovah, through Micah, repeated this prophecy nearly word for word, to stamp it on the human mind and heart; yet so grave is the unwatchfulness for the King and His Kingdom that the chief commentators, without exception, change the perfectly simple and obvious language of a coming [Millennial] Kingdom into the triumphs of a Church converting the world.  Instead of the Church proclaiming the coming Kingdom as (what it is) the Prize of our Calling, the golden reward of the overcomer, any literal Kingdom [upon this earth] at all is (by the Church as a whole) totally denied, or even derided.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

43

 

 

THINK

 

 

Oh think!  To step on shore, and that shore His Kingdom!

To take hold of a hand, and that God’s Hand!

To breathe new air, and feel it Celestial air!

To be invigorated, and know it Immortality!

Oh think!  To pass from the storm and the tempest

To one unknown calm!

To wake up, and be with Christ in Glory!

 

 

-------

 

 

The impression is sometimes given, whether intentionally or not, that the Church immediately succeeding the Apostles did not believe in a coming literal Kingdom of Christ on [this] earth, lasting for a thousand years; and therefore the admissions made by scholars who are utter disbelievers in the truth of the Millennium [Rev. 20: 4] are exceptionally valuable.

 

 

Dr. C. A.  Beckwith writing the article on the Millennium in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia - a literal ‘millenniumwhich he himself totally denies - says:- “In the first centuries millennial teaching formed a constant, though not an unquestioned, part of the Church’s doctrine, until a radical change in external circumstances and attitude forced it into a position of heresy.  It is found in the orthodox writers of the post-apostolic age, in the epistle of Barnabas (XV), and in fragments of Papias (in Irenaeus, Haer., V. xxxiii).  Echoes of it are to be found also in the first epistle of Clement (i. 3), in the Shepherd of Hermas (3) in the Didache (x., xvi.), in the epistle of Clement, the Apocalypse of Peter.  Irenaeus (Haer. V., xxxii), like Papias, founded his belief in it on the words of those who had been taught by the Apostles themselves.  With the Reformation began the second period of the history of millennialism.  The interest in Scripture and the belief that the Apocalypse contained in type the whole history of God’s kingdom on earth, caused men to seek in it the explanation of the signs of troubled times.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

44

 

 

TRUTH SHALL RETIRE

 

 

Bestuck with slanderous darts, and works of faith

Rarely be found; so shall the world go on,

To good malignant, to bad men begun,

Under her own weight groaning, till the day

Appear, of reparation of the just,

And vengeance to the wicked, at return

Of Him - thy Saviour and thy Lord.

 

 

Thus bad and good their several warnings give

Of His approach, whom few may see and live;

Faith’s ear, with awful, still delight,

Counts them like minute-bells at night,

Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn,

While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne.

 

 

But what are Heaven’s alarms to hearts that cower

In wilful slumber, deep’ning every hour,

That draw their curtains closer round

The nearer swells the trumpet’s sound?

Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die,

Touch us with chast’ning hand, and make us feel Thee nigh!

 

 

- Keble

 

 

-------

 

 

All through the New Testament the coming of the Lord is spoken of as an event that may occur at any day.  From this alone, I know that we have no right to expect a millennium first.  It is useless to tell me that it is only a providential, spiritual, figurative coming that is to occur before the millennium.  Providentially, and spiritually, Christ is already here.  Wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is.  He is now and ever at work in His providence, controlling, arranging, overruling, moving everything; and His Spirit is given to every man [i.e., to every obedient disciple (Acts 5: 32)] to profit withal.  Figuratively, He comes every day.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

45

 

 

FURLOUGH

 

* Written by a missionary to China at home on furlough.

 

 

Let me go back!  I am homesick

For the land of my love and toil,

Though I thrill at the sight of my native hills,

The touch of my native soil.

Thank God for the dear home country,

Unconquer’d and free and grand,

But the far-off shores of the East to me

Are the shores of the promised land.

 

 

No longer young, I know it,

And batter’d and worn and grey,

I bear in my body the marks that tell

Of many a toil-fill’d day;

But there’s a while before me,

Till the hour of the sun to set;

My heart is eager to forward go,

And work for the Master yet.

 

 

My brain is dazed and wearied

With the new world’s stress and strife,

With the race for money and place and power,

And the whirl of the nation’s life.

Let me go back!  Such pleasures

And pains are not for me;

But oh, a share in the harvest home

In the lands beyond the sea!

 

 

For there are many chosen people,

And that is my place to fill,

To spend the last of my life and strength

In doing my Master’s will.

Let me go back!  Tis nothing

To suffer and do and dare,

For the Lord has faithfully kept His word,

He is with me everywhere.

 

 

- MARY E. BOYER.

 

 

-------

 

 

A SILENT MESSANGER

 

 

A young man, careless and indifferent in matters of religion, sauntered one day in his walk into an old graveyard near Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in the land of Evangeline, and seeing a fallen gravestone he overturned it out of curiosity.  And there he read at the foot, engraved in the stone, a verse of four lines that took such hold upon him, and so clearly explained to him the way of salvation, that they were the means of his conversion.  And from that day, nearly fifty years before, he had, by God’s grace as a result of those four lines, led a consecrated life for Christ.  The lines were:-

 

 

In peace let me resign my breath,

And Thy salvation see;

My sins deserve eternal death,

But Jesus died for me.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

46

 

 

I DO IT UNTO THEE

 

 

Lord of all the pots and pans and things; since I’ve no time to be

A saint by doing lovely things or watching late with Thee,

Of dreaming in the dawn light, or storming heaven’s gates,

Make me a saint by getting meals, and washing up the plates.

 

 

Although I must have Martha’s hands, I have a Mary mind;

And when I black the boots and shoes, Thy sandals, Lord, I find.

I think of how they trod the earth, each time I scrub the floor;

Accept this meditation, Lord, I haven’t time for more.

 

 

Warm all the kitchen with Thy love and light it with Thy peace;

Forgive me all my worrying and make all grumbling cease.

Thou too didst love to give men food, in room or by the sea,

Accept this service that I do - I do it unto Thee.*

 

 

* These lines were written by a girl of nineteen in domestic service.

 

 

-------

 

 

The Lord discloses a great peril at our doors.  It is possible for a disciple - by cleverness or eloquence or learning or wealth or social prestige or administrative ability - by gifts which in themselves are not sins, to climb to the high seats in the Church, and even in the world, under the honest conviction that the Church’s judgment is God’s; only to discover that the higher seats in [the coming] Glory are reserved for higher virtues.  What will actually happen, and on an enormous scale, is this – “Then shall he begin with shame to take the lower place.”

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

47

 

 

A BRANCH

 

 

I’m only a fragile Branch,

I live by a life not mine,

For the sap that flows through my tendrils small

Is the life-blood of the Vine.

 

 

Dost thou ask how I abide?

How this life I can maintain?

I am bound to the Vine by life’s strong band

And I only need remain.

 

 

Where first my life was given,

In the spot where I am set,

Upborne and upheld as the days go by

By the Stem which bears me yet.

 

 

I bask in the sun’s bright beams,

Which with sweetness fill my fruit,

Yet I own not the clusters hanging there,

For they all come from the Root.

 

 

O struggle not to ‘abide,’

Nor labour to ‘bring forth fruit’;

But let Jesus unite thee to Himself,

As the Vine-Branch to the Root.

 

 

So simple, so deep, so strong

That union with Him shall be:

His life shall forever replace thine own,

And His love shall flow through thee.

 

 

For His Spirit’s fruit is love,

And love shall thy life become,

And for evermore on His heart of love,

Thy spirit shall have her home.

 

 

- FREDA HANBURY ALLEN.

 

 

-------

 

 

The Saviour … unveils, not mere present death (as in verse 2), but judgment beyond death.  If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burning.”  That the first two verbs are in the past, and the last three in the present seems to show that our Lord is speaking as though from the view-point of the Judgment Seat.  There seems to be a distinction between the barren and the withered bough.  (1) “He [the Husbandman] taketh it away,” for only He has the power of death mysterious, inexplicable; (2) “they [the excommunicating Church, of the judgment Angels, or both] gather and cast”: as the incestuous brother was to be handed over to Satan, “that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5: 5); or as the unforgiving servant is handed “to the tormentors” (Matt. 18: 34), until the debt is paid.  Once more the facts around us exactly correspond.  The want of ‘abidingproduces sin for which the branch is ‘cast out’: withering follows: that is, all prayer ceases; conscious fellowship with Christ ends; the very expression of a Christian dies out of the face; the branch becomes utterly aloof from all fellow-branches.  In the barren branch fruit does not occur: in the withered branch fruit is impossible.  To this dread utterance of the Lord, more dread for us than anything that ever fell from His lips, there is one blessed restriction, and a restriction never stated of the lost.  It is crucially important to observe that the only occasion on which Christ ever threatens a [regenerate] believer, directly and in literal language, with Hell (Matt. 5: 22) - and that only contingently, “in danger of the Gehenna of fire,” and only for the gravest sin, namely, denouncing a brother-believer as ‘moreh’ - is most remarkably the unique passage that forever limits a believer’s punishment.  In no case is it eternal Gehenna.  Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, TILL THOU HAVE PAID THE LAST FARTHING” (Matt. 5: 26).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

48

 

 

THE MIDNIGHT WRESTLE

 

 

Come, O Thou Traveller unknown,

Whom still I hold, but cannot see!

My company before is gone,

And I am left alone with Thee;

With Thee all night I mean to stay,

And wrestle till the break of day.

 

 

I need not tell Thee who I am,

My misery and sin declare;

Thyself hast called me by my name;

Look on Thy hands, and read it there:

But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou?

Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.

 

 

In vain Thou strugglest to get free;

I never will unloose my hold!

Art Thou the Man that died for me?

The secret of Thy love unfold:

Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,

Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.

 

 

I know Thee, Saviour, who Thou art,

Jesus, the feeble sinner’s Friend;

Nor wilt Thou with the night depart,

But stay and love me to the end;

Thy mercies never shall remove;

The nature and Thy name is Love.

 

 

Contented now upon my thigh

I halt, till life’s short journey end;

All helplessness, all weakness, I

On Thee alone for strength depend,

Nor have I power from Thee to move;

Thy nature and Thy name is Love.

 

 

- CHARLES WESLEY.

 

 

-------

 

 

So now the Jehovah Angel sets His seal on the victorious wrestler.  And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob” – ‘supplanter,’ layer of snares; for the old unsanctity has died in the midnight wrestle - [so the birthright lies beyond the grave, for only Jacob’s dead bones ever entered the Holy Land (Gen. 47: 30): he (together with all other overcomers) must rise to inherit the Birthright.  And ye shall see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God” (Matt. 13: 11)] – “but Israel” – ‘a prince with God’; a joint royalty, a God-crowned, God-associated king; and so enthroned when Christ is enthroned.  This peerage of the loftiest creation the Angel attributes, not to the gift of God through grace, but directly to the midnight wrestle: “thy name shall be called Israel, for thou hast striven and hast PREVAILED.”  The last runner first brests the tape; and it is expressly in relation to the [Millennial] Kingdom that our Lord states the principle.  They shall come from east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God; and behold, THERE ARE LAST WHICH SHALL BE FIRST” (Luke 13: 29). … “To him that overcometh” – the victorious wrestler – “I” – the Jehovah Angel (Christ) who renamed Jacob – “will give A NEW NAME WRITTEN” (Rev. 2: 17).  “There is time to win a victory,” cried Napoleon, “before the sun goes down”; and the quintessence of Jacob’s life-story in his sudden and final victory at the age of ninety-seven.  The very last can be the very first.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

49

 

 

HEARTBREAK LAND

 

This heart-cry of Israel, which we reproduce from the Jewish Missionary Magazine and which originally appeared in the Herald-Tribune of New York,

is a pathetic transcript of the returning Jew, with Christ in his mind, but without Christ in his heart

 

 

There is no peace [now] in Palestine:

Dominion of the Prince of Peace;

The land of honey and of wine,

Of olives and the silver fleece.

 

 

Jerusalem the Golden blest” -

Ah, so we sing the lively psalm! -

Where for the weary is [now] no rest,

And for the crucified no calm.

 

 

Where shall the exile lay his head?

Even the fox has found a place.

Must we still bleed?  Have we not bled?

Need we new thorns to crown His face?

 

 

Shall our perpetual pettiness

Discover Him?  Shall our eyes see,

Beyond our little No and Yes,

The final triumph of the Tree?

 

 

The holy water in the well -

Is it not sweet to Gentile?  Jew?

And shall the thirsting Infidel

Not find the water holy too?

 

 

Must the old bitter feuds offend

His ears?  How long shall Israel call?

When shall the heartbreak know an end?

Our heartbreak at the Wailing Wall!

 

 

 

- JOSEPH AUSLANDER.

 

 

-------

 

 

THY KINGDOM COME.”

 

 

I have gathered them [Israel] unto their own land; and I will leave none of them any more” among the nations (Ezek. 39: 28).

 

In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.  In THAT DAY shall Israel be the third in Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land” (Isa. 19: 23).  Isaiah foretells the day when Zion shall say:-  The place is too strait for me: give me place that I may dwell” (Isa. 49: 20).

 

 

Why do we not plead for it every time we hear the clock strike?  The Lord Himself,” in the words of Canon Simpson, “would never have bidden us pray,Thy Kingdom come,’ if those seasons, which no man knows, were so irrevocably fixed that our efforts could not hasten, or our sins retard, the wheels of His chariot.”  If the Jewish disciple, by praying that his flight may not be on the Sabbath or in winter (Matt. 24: 20), can so modify the date of that flight as to change not only the day of the week but even the season of the year, much more is it in the power of the Church to “HASTEN the coming of the DAY of God” (2 Pet. 3: 12, marg.).

 

 

It is the last prayer of the last Apostle of the Lamb: the whole canon of inspiration closes with a direct appeal to Christ to come.  There may be many years of hard work before the consummation, but the signs are to me so encouraging that I would not be unbelieving if I saw the wing of the apocalyptic angel spread for its last triumphant flight in this day’s sunset.  O you [prophetically] dead Churches, wake up!  O Christ, descend!  Scarred temple, take the crown!  Bruised hand, take the sceptre!  Wounded foot, step the throne!  Thine is the Kingdom!” (Dr. Talmage).  It is John’s last prayer, and happy shall we be if, falling asleep, it is the last prayer upon our lips also.

 

 

Surely I come quickly,” says Sir Robert Anderson, “are Christ’s last recorded words, but their fulfilment awaits the response of His people, ‘Amen; come, Lord Jesus.’  There is not a Church in Christendom that would corporately pray that prayer to-day.”  Foreseeing this, how impressive it is that the Holy Spirit immediately adds: “And he that heareth - he who has the hearing ear because he has the overcoming life – “let him say, Come.”  IT IS A PRAYER PUT UPON OUR LIPS BY DIVINE COMMAND; that is, when corporate praying fails, infinitely more urgent becomes the individual prayer; and even if the corporate prayer continues, God is not content unless each adds his own ‘Come.’  Therefore every interpretation of prophecy which excludes this prayer as wrong or inappropriate or inopportune is self-condemned; every argument which silences it blocks the praying of the Holy Ghost through us; and every shrinking from it in our own heart is a work of the flesh.  Hardly had our Lord reached the threshold of the House of the Father than He shouted back, Surely I come quickly; nor does the Church enter into the rapture of her hopes until she brings herself to respond, ‘Amen; even so, come, Lord Jesus’” (Dr. Seiss).

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

50

 

 

TWO MOTHERS

 

 

I too, have rocked my little one.

Oh, he was fair!

Yes, fairer than the fairest sun,

And like its rays through amber spun

His sun-bright hair

Still I can see it shine and shine.”

 

 

His ways were ever darling ways” -

And Mary smiled –

So sift, so clinging!  Glad relays

Of love were all his precious days.

My little child!

My infinite star!  My music fled!”

Even so was mine,” the woman said.

 

 

Then whispered Mary: “Tell me, thou,

Of thine.”  And she:

Oh, mine was rosy as a bough

Blooming with roses sent, somehow,

To bloom for me!

His balmy fingers left a thrill

Within my breast that warms me still!”

 

 

Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour,

And said - when Mary questioned, knowing not;

Who are thou, mother of so sweet a flower?” –

I am the mother of Iscariot.”

 

 

- AGNES LEE.

 

 

-------

 

 

What a warning flare is this story of one of the Master’s men - a flare whose warning none of us dare disregard.  If we do, it is at our peril.  For unhappily there is nothing very exceptional in a divided heart, on the part of those who profess the faith of Christ.  Judas only did what many another [Christian] does – and seems to get away with.  For how many give Christ less than the whole of their lives?  How many have a love which contests His?  In the bright light of reality how many are self-revealed as the slaves of this world [age], and its tinsel baubles and its deceiving riches?  How many are actually robbing the Master whom they acclaim as Judas did?

 

 

When one sees what some titular Christians - [i.e. what some regenerate believers ‘having the title without the duties of an office’] - will do for money and its equivalents; how they will sell their good name; how they will lie; how they will deny their loyalties; how they will outrage the honour of the Christian Church; how they will pilfer from the bag (not [always] by taking but by withholding), spending more on a single item of self-interest than their total givings to God’s work in a year, more on entertainments and self-indulgence, on unnecessary adornment and attire than on the cause of God (so much so, indeed, as to make it impossible for them to give proportionately, not to say adequately, to the work of the Gospel); how they will content themselves to be in debt to God for unpaid tithes, a debt they never intend to discharge - for the idea of giving away a “tithe” they deride as absurd quixotism (whereas it isn’t good Judaism, much less Christianity, to give God less!) - when one sees this (and one does not see it on every hand) one knows only too unmistakably that some [of the Lord’s redeemed] people are flirting with spiritual disaster, as Judas did!  That they’re trifling with Christ and [the salvation of] their own soul [1 Pet. 1: 9]!  That they’re at the old Judas game of trying to make the best of both worlds!  The game in which conscience is opposed by expediency, and choices are made between gain and godliness, and destinies are determined.  For:

 

Still as of old, men by themselves are priced.

For thirty pieces Judas sold himself - not Christ!

 

 

- STUART HOLDEN, The Master And His Men, pp. 85, 86.

 

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

51

 

 

Hear my prayer, O Heavenly Father,

Ere I lay me down to sleep;

Bid Thy angels, pure and holy,

Round my bed their vigil keep.

 

 

My sins are heavy, But Thy mercy

For outweighs them, every one;

Down before Thy cross I cast them,

Trusting in Thy help alone.

 

 

Keep me through the night of peril,

Underneath its boundless shade;

Take me to Thy rest, I pray Thee,

When my pilgrimage is made.

 

 

None shall measure out Thy patience

By the span of human thought;

None shall bound the tender mercies

Which Thy holy Son has brought.

 

 

Pardon all my past transgressions,

Give me strength for days to come;

Guide and guard me with Thy blessing

Till Thy angels bid me come.

 

 

The poem [above] is the only hymn that Dickens is known to have written.  It appeared in the Christmas number of Household Words for 1856.  [He] declared that although the words were supposed to be spoken by a child, they expressed his own personal feeling and belief.

 

 

-------

 

 

There is a particular oppressor referred to in the tenth Psalm (ver. 18), who is described as The Man of the Earth, and who meets his fate in the great judgment time.  According to the uniform patristic application of this Psalm, the reference must be to one or the other of these Beasts; but as the first Beast is distinguished as the Beast from the Sea, and the second as the Beast from the Earth, this Man of the Earth must be the second Beast, if either.  If so, his particular and emphatic characterization as “the Man of the Earth” so early as the days of David must mean something special and particular.  The apparition to the Witch of Endor came upout of the earth” (1 Sam. 28: 13).  It came from the spirit-world [of “Sheol” Gk. “Hades], usually conceived of in the Scriptures as located under, or in the interior of the earth.  Hence this Beast, as to his personality, is a man from the underworld returned again to the activities of this world, either by Satanic resurrection, or by some form of obsession, something after the manner of the first Beast, who may be identified as the Emperor Nero.  This would harmonize with the fact that neither of these Beasts dies: each goes down alive into the lake of fire ([Rev.] chap. 19: 20). Even in the ordinary course of things, either heaven or hell, God or the Devil, spirits from above or spirits from beneath, are always in the background of all the spiritual and supernatural activities upon earth; and very much more potent will be the putting forth of Hell in those last times, when everything pertaining to heaven is largely withdrawn, and all that remains in the earth is mostly abandoned for the time to the rule of the infernal powers.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

52

 

 

A MARTYR ON A MARTYR

 

These lines, which we are permitted to publish, were written by Miss E. J. Harrison, who, with Miss E. Nettleton,

was beheaded last September [1930] by Communists in Fukien.

 

 

Angel-faced and lion-hearted,

See Christ’s servant stand;

Fill’d with Grace he saw the vision,

Not the howling band:

Saw the Lord and saw His [coming] glory,

Not the hurling stones;

Heard His voice and not the gnashings,

Answer’d not with moans.

Like His Master, soft he pleaded,

O forgive this sin” –

Then the heavens, already open’d,

Let the Martyr in.

 

 

Fell asleeptho’ crowds were raging,

Working deadliest harm:

Fell asleep”, in happiest resting,

On his Master’s arm.

 

 

-------

 

 

The call will be no longer, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heave laden;’ for the weariness and the burdens that have been cast upon Jesus will be at an end forever.  It will be, ‘Come ye blessed!’  Not ‘blessed’ then for the first time, but ‘ye’ whose position already is [and will be] that of ‘the blessed of the Lord.’  Every one who comes to Jesus takes [and can take] that glorious position, and possess all its manifold privileges. You shall be among the blessed ones who stand in their lot at the end of the days. Made kings and priests unto God by Him who loved you and washed you from your sins in His own blood; and then the King will call you to ‘inherit the kingdom.’  For ‘by faith in Christ Jesus’ (which is the same thing, in other words, as coming to Christ), you are ‘the children of God.’  And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;’ [IF SO BE THAT WE SUFFER WITH HIM, THAT WE MAY BE ALSO GLORIFIED WITH HIM, (Rom. 8: 17b, R.V.)].  He will make you inherit the throne of His glory, and grant you to sit with Him on His throne, for ‘it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

 

 

This is indeed the consummation of the Royal Invitation, - the King on the throne of His glory inviting YOU to come AND REIGN WITH HIM!

 

 

And ‘this same Jesussays to you to-day, ‘Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.’

 

 

Still shall the keyword ringing, echo the same sweet ‘Come!’

Come’ with the blessed myriads, safe in the Father’s home;

Come!’ for the toil is over; ‘come!’ for the feast is spread;

Come!’for the crown of glory waits for the weary head.

 

 

- FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL.  From The Royal Invitation: Daily Thoughts on the Coming of Christ, pp. 126-128.

 

 

-------