FIFTY TWO
SELECTED POEMS
WITH
QUOTATIONS
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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
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
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
Tho’ weakest 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
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
*
* *
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
*
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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
“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!”
*
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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
*
* *
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
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
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 –
Brethren – beholding and beloved.
- E. J.
-------
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” (
*
* *
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 –
‘
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 joy … not
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!
-
-------
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
(1.) “Then the moon shall be confounded,
and the sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in
(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
(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
* *
*
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 my ‘dwindling 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
*
* *
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
* *
*
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?
-
-------
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
* *
*
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;
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
* *
*
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
-
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. –
*
* *
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 ‘cease’ even 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
Dr. C. A. Beckwith writing the article on the Millennium in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia - a literal ‘millennium’
which
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
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 ‘abiding’
produces 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
*
* *
49
This heart-cry of
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
Dominion
of the Prince of Peace;
The land of honey and of wine,
Of olives and the silver fleece.
“
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
When
shall the heartbreak know an end?
Our
heartbreak at the Wailing Wall!
- JOSEPH
AUSLANDER.
-------
“THY KINGDOM COME.”
“I have gathered them [
“In that day there shall be a highway out of
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.
* *
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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.
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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
up “out 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
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 asleep” tho’ crowds were raging,
Working deadliest harm:
“Fell asleep”, in
happiest resting,
On his Master’s arm.
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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 Jesus’ says 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.
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