_THE SECRET WALK WITH GOD_ (ii).
_He that would to others give
Let him take from Jesus still;
They who deepest in Him live
Flow furthest at His will._
I resume the rich subject of Secret Devotion, Secret Communion with God.
Not that I wish to enter in detail on either the theory or the practice
of prayer in secret; as I have attempted to do already in a little book
which I may venture here to mention, _Secret Prayer_. My aim at present,
as I talk to my younger Brethren in the Ministry, is far rather to lay
all possible stress on the vital importance of the habit, however it may
prove best in individual experience to order it in practice. "As a man
thinketh in his heart, so is he" [Prov. xxiii. 7.]; and as a life
worketh in its heart, so is it. And the heart of a Christian Minister's
life is the man's Secret Communion with God.
Let us Clergymen take as one of our mottoes that deeply suggestive word
of the Lord by Malachi, where the ideal Levi is depicted: "_He walked
with Me_ in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity."
[Mal. ii. 6.]
THE LORD'S EXAMPLE.
Remember with what a heavenly brightness that principle was glorified in
the recorded life on earth of "the great Shepherd of the sheep," [SN:
Heb. xiii. 20.] who in this also "left us an example, that we should
follow His steps." [1 Pet. ii. 22.] Never did man walk more genuinely
with men than the Son of Man, whether it was among the needy and wistful
crowds in streets or on hill-sides, or at the dinner-table of the
Pharisee, or in the homes of Nazareth, Cana, and Bethany. No Christian
was ever so "practical" as Jesus Christ. No disciple ever so directly
and sympathetically "served his own generation by the will of God" [Acts
xiii. 36.] as did the blessed Master. But all the while "His soul dwelt
apart" in the Father's presence, and there continually rested and was
refreshed, [John iv. 32, 34.] and there found the "meat" in the strength
of which He travelled that great pilgrimage by way of the Cross to the
Throne. Jesus Christ, our Exemplar as well as our Life, did indeed live
behind His work, behind His ministry, behind His ministerial character,
in the region of a Filial Communion in which His Father was His all in
all for peace and joy, His law of action and His eternal secret of life.
And observe, this habitual communion in the midst of active service did
not at all supersede in His blessed experience the stated and definite
work of worship and petition before and after the busy hours of service.
"He was alone, praying" [John vi. 57.]; "He continued all night in
prayer to God"; and at last, "He was withdrawn from them about a stone's
cast, and kneeled down and prayed." [Luke ix. 18; vi. 12; xxii. 41.]
All this is not only matter for wondering notice, as we read our New
Testament. It is example, it is model. The Head is thus showing His
members the way, the only way, to maintain a life among men and for men
which shall be full of good for them, because itself ever filled with
the life and presence of God.
TESTIMONY OF LUCIUS VON MACHTHOLF.
From a leaflet which came long ago into my hands, I quote the experience
of a German Christian, eminently successful in spiritual work; a
passage which will illustrate and bring home my appeal in this whole
matter:--
"When Lucius von Machtholf was asked how he carried on religious
intercourse with individuals, he wrote:--'I know no other tactics than
_first of all to be heartily satisfied with my God_, even if He should
favour me with no sensible visible blessing in my vocation. Also to
remember that preaching and conversation are not so much _my_ work as
the outcome of the love and joy of the Holy Ghost in my heart, and,
afterwards, on my lips. Further, that I must never depend upon any
previous fervour or prayers of mine, but upon God's mercy and Christ's
dearly-purchased rights and holy intercession; and cherishing a burning
love to Christ and to souls, I must constantly seek for wisdom and
gentleness.... Finally, I would guard myself from imagining that I know
beforehand what I should say, but go to Christ for every good word I
have to speak, even to a child, and submit myself to the Holy Spirit, as
the Searcher of hearts, who, knowing the individuals I have to do with,
will guide and teach me when, where, and how to speak.
"'Be always following, never going before. It were better to be sick in
a tent under a burning sun, and Jesus sitting at the tent door, than to
be enchanting a thousand listeners where Jesus was not. Be as a
day-labourer only in God's harvest-field, ready to be first among the
reapers in the tall corn, or just to sit and sharpen another's sickle.
Have an eye to God's honour, and have no honour of your own to have an
eye to. Lay it in the dust and leave it there. Never let your inner life
get low in your search for the lives of others.'"
I dare to say that this quotation contains no mere "counsels of
perfection," but principles which are indispensable for the Minister of
Jesus Christ who would be not only reputable, popular, and in the
superficial sense of the word successful, but--what his dear Master
would have him be for His work. And the blessed spirit it suggests and
exemplifies is a thing which cometh not in "but by prayer" and by at
least such fasting as takes the shape of a most watchful secret
self-discipline. When von Machtholf speaks of "never depending on
previous prayers" it is obvious what he means; not that prayer should
not precede work, but that nothing should satisfy the worker short of a
living and present trust in a living and present Lord. But that trust is
the very thing which is developed, and prepared, and matured, in the
life of genuine secret intercourse, in which the Lord is dealt with as
man dealeth with his friend, and gazed upon and (I may reverently say)
studied in His revealed Character, till the disciple does indeed "know
_whom_ he has believed," "who He is that he should believe on Him." "My
soul shall be satisfied ... when I remember Thee, when I meditate on
Thee, in the night watches," [2 Tim. i. 12; John ix. 36; Ps. lxiii. 5,
6.] aye, and in the Morning Watch also.
URGENT PRESENT NEED TO MAINTAIN SECRET DEVOTION.
I know not how to get away from this subject; not only because of its
intense connexion with the most blissful experiences of the believing
soul, but because of its unspeakably important bearing on the work of
the Ministry, the Ministry of our own time and of my reader's own
generation. Never was there a period when the cry for enterprize and
practical energy was louder; and God knows there is occasion enough for
the cry, and for the answering resolve. But never was there a time when
the need was greater to distinguish true from false secrets of energy,
and to be content with nothing short of the deepest and most divine as
our ultimate secret. Do you not well know what I mean? Is there not far
and wide in the "Christian world"--I do not speak now of the exterior
regions of avowed scepticism or indifference--a tendency to merge the
whole idea of religion in that of philanthropic benevolence, and thereby
to draw inevitably the idea of philanthropy downward in the end into its
least noble manifestations? Is it not a fashionable thing to regard the
Christian Ministry, for example, as a useful and ready mechanism with
which to work out the social and sanitary amelioration of the lives of
the multitude, and so to take him to be the best qualified Clergyman who
is, perhaps, the most "muscular" of Christians, or the cleverest at the
invention or superintendence of recreations on a large scale, or the
quickest student and exponent of the principles or theories of political
economy, or possibly of socialistic enterprize? But all this may leave
entirely out the very life-blood of what the New Testament means by the
Gospel of the grace of God; and in many, many cases it does entirely
leave it out.
*"NATURALISM" IN CHRISTIAN WORK.
A conception of "Church work" is widely entertained, and thought to be
adequate, out of which is practically dropped all the mystery, and all
the mercy; above all, the work and message of the atoning Cross and the
dying Lamb; and the need of the sovereign grace of the Holy Ghost to
begin and carry out the Regeneration of the soul; and the depth of our
Fall; and the offered greatness and splendour of our New Creation; and
"that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ." [Tit. ii. 13.] It is just one wave of the great
anti-supernatural tide of our time. Christian work is viewed as much as
possible as man's work for man in this present world, under the example,
doubtless, of the beneficent life of our Lord, but not under the shadow
of Calvary, nor in the light of Pentecost, nor in the definite prospect
of an immortality of holy glory.
HOW TO COUNTERACT IT.
To counteract this tendency, and to do so _in the right way_, is one of
the very noblest tasks set before the younger Clergy of the English
Church in our time. It is for them, under God, in a pre-eminent degree,
to find out the secret, and then to live it out, how to be at once the
perfectly genuine _man_, devoted to the service of men, carrying what he
is and what he believes into the actual surroundings of modern life, not
allowing illusions and poetic day-dreams to come between him and facts;
and also the convinced, unwavering, spiritual _Christian_, conversant
with his own soul, and with his living Lord and Saviour, and with that
sacred, unalterable written Word which that Saviour put into His
people's hands, never to be taken out of them. Nothing is more wanted at
present in the sphere of "Church life and work," unless I am greatly
mistaken, than a generation of young Clergymen (soon to be seniors) who
shall conspicuously combine the best forms of practicality with an
unmistakable chastened personal spirituality which is seen to be "the
pulse of" their busy "machine." And if the spirituality is to be indeed
genuine (away with it if it is anything but genuine to the centre), if
it is to be quite different on the one hand from a thing of artificial
phrases, and on the other from merely formulated and regulated
devoutness, I am deeply sure that its only secret and preservative is a
fully-maintained secret walk with God.
"GOD, I THANK THEE."
"I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." [SN:
Rev. iii. 17.] Such was the thought and word of the Laodicean long ago.
Is it not in effect the thought, if not the word, of not a few hard
workers and energetic enterprizers now? "What do I want with the dialect
of 'Christian experience'? What have I, with all these irons in the
fire, and a strong hammer and a strong hand with which to strike them,
what have I to do with 'old-world faiths' about sin and salvation, about
grace and conversion, about pardon and justification? What have I so
pressingly to do with much prayer, save in the form of much work? God, I
thank Thee that I am a worker; let it be for others to dive into
spiritual secrets, if it is good for them to do so."
"THOU KNOWEST NOT."
I would not overdraw the picture. And the words I have put into a
possible mouth are words which, if I heard, I hope I should hear with
every wish to judge them fairly and to see where any truth lay in them.
But none the less I am sure that those words not unjustly represent a
type of thought widely prevalent among even ministerial workers, and
that it is a type of thought pregnant with disaster for Christian work.
"Thou knowest not that thou art poor"; "I counsel thee, to buy of Me";
"I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the
door I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me." [Rev. iii.
17, 18, 20.] So said Jesus Christ to the Laodicean. And though it may
seem paradoxical to compare a man involved in the rush of modern "Church
work" with the Laodicean, the comparison may not be always far astray,
nor the words of the Lord in Rev. iii. 18 out of place accordingly. To
be "neither cold nor hot" towards _Him_ is all too possible for us,
alas, even when "the irons in the fire" are most numerous, and even when
they are being most briskly hammered.
TO KNOW CHRIST IS INDISPENSABLE.
So let us listen, making a pause to do so. Perhaps just now the knock
may be audible, and certain articulate sounds may come from outside,
saying that a PERSON waits for readmission to HIS place in our busy,
multifarious life, and that HE can be content with nothing short of
heart-intimacy with us, and that we, if we would not forsake our own
mercy, must be content with nothing short of heart-intimacy with HIM.
"I counsel thee to _buy_ of Me." Let us do it; let us pay over, at His
feet, our poor fancied wealth of self's energies and undertakings (as
regards our own good opinion of them), receiving from Him the heavenly
"gold" of His own glorious grace and peace, and the "white robe" of a
living and loving conformity to His likeness, and the "eye-salve" of His
illumination, in which we see things as He sees them. It is better, as
von Machtholf says it is, to have Him within the heart's chamber, at
once as Guest and as Host, in that blessed inter-communion, than to be
apparently the most successful of organizers or of toilers, strong in
ourselves, but without the secret of the Presence of the Lord.
It is scarcely needful, I trust, to explain what I do _not_ mean. My
very last intention is to speak slightingly of devoted work and
self-sacrificing endeavours, whether or no they take the line which most
approves itself to me. A _fainÈant_ in the English Ministry to-day is
something worse than even a cumberer of the ground; he is, I dare to
say, like a upas upon it, blighting where he throws his shadow, so
conspicuous and so deadly must be the example of such a life in the
Minister of such a Gospel. But what I mean, again and again, is this,
that the days demand, along with a thoroughgoing while prudent
practicality, more and more also of a profound reality of spiritual
knowledge of the Lord in those who labour in His Name. With the growing
stress of our time we _must_ have not less but more of this, in those
who are called to meet that stress. This is vital, if we would not be
stifled and succumb as Christians altogether.
So this is my plea, dear Brother in the Ministry, now making your first
essays in some great city parish, or wherever it may be: cultivate, as
for your life, secret intercourse with God.
BIBLE STUDY.
And with this view, I now say specially, cultivate such intercourse
_laying His holy Word open before you_. I spoke in the previous Chapter
of the Bible spread open by the evening lamp, the Bible marked with
signs of diligent search. With all my heart I mean to press that
thought. It will be best to reserve for another Chapter certain
suggestions on methods of Bible study. But I may, and I will at once,
offer a few words on the subject in general. It is a subject which lies
near my heart, and of the urgent importance of which I am very sure.
THE ORDINATION CHARGE.
Above all then I would entreat you to be a Bible student _at whatever
cost of other religious reading_. It is a very common thing to
substitute, practically, for the Bible a little library of _livres de
piÈtÈ_, as the French would call them, small "good books." Not very long
ago, in the course of an ordination examination, I came across an
instructive instance. In answer to a question in a "Pastoral Paper" for
candidates for Priest's Orders, a thoughtful young Clergyman stated
incidentally that he used every day with great profit certain devotional
books, and that about twice a week he took for definite meditation and
prayer a passage from the Gospels. It struck me that here was a strange
and sad inversion of the right order of proportion; devotional books
daily, and the New Testament (in any sense of earnest meditative study)
about twice a week! Very different, I thought, is the view and teaching
of the Church of England in this matter of the spiritual reading of her
Ministers. What does the Church say, through the Bishop, when the Deacon
is ordained Presbyter? "Seeing that you cannot by any other means
compass the doing of so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of
man, but with doctrine and exhortation taken out of the Holy Scriptures,
and with a life agreeable to the same; consider how studious ye ought to
be in reading and learning the Scriptures.... We have good hope that you
will continually pray to God the Father, by the mediation of our only
Saviour Jesus Christ, for the heavenly assistance of the Holy Ghost;
that, by daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures, ye may wax riper
and stronger in your Ministry."
And I need not go about to prove that the Church does not mean such
daily "reading and weighing" to wait till the young man is actually
ordained Priest. We should scarcely have had the First Homily of the
First Book written, if such had been her mind. Have you ever read over
that "Voice of the Church"?
M. HENRI LASSERRE ON DEVOTIONAL READING.
A remarkable confirmation of my present contention comes to us from an
unexpected quarter. I refer to the Preface prefixed by that ardent Roman
Catholic, M. Henri Lasserre, to his remarkable French translation of the
Four Gospels, the book which, December 4, 1886, received the cordial
benediction of Leo XIII., but within a twelvemonth, such is "the power
behind the Pope," was placed on the _Index Expurgatorius_. Probably such
passages as the following had much to do with this strange and sudden
self-reversal of the judgment of the Vatican.
"A timid school," after the crisis of the Reformation, which finds, of
course, little favour with M. Lasserre, and on which, very unjustly, he
lays much of the blame of the practical prohibition of the Bible within
"the Catholic Church," "a timid school tended thenceforth to strike from
the hands of believers the divine Book which makes the foundation of
our faith, and laboured to substitute for it by degrees a pious
literature, intended to furnish hearts and minds with a nourishment
suited to their weakness, a diet without danger. Some of these books, we
own without hesitation, are excellent in themselves, and have
contributed to the sanctification of many souls. However, this is the
exception. In the majority of these works, where, alas, the sugar of
devotion takes the place of the salt of wisdom, the eternal truths and
the genuine teachings of the Gospel were soon diluted, and, as it were,
lost in strange waters.... One and all, the better specimens and the
deplorable (_les lamentables_) alike, they are another thing altogether,
yes, absolutely another thing, than the Gospel, whose apostolic mission
they have noiselessly usurped by an invasion insensible, I had almost
called it clandestine.... The general ignorance of the Gospels has been
the one cause in France, these twenty years, of the success of the
scandalous romance which appeared under the title of _La Vie de JÈsus_.
Among a people moderately familiar with the narratives of St Matthew,
St Mark, St Luke, and St John ... there would have been no need to
refute it. Every one would have seen, without assistance, its flagrant
falsifications, its gross sophisms, its absolute emptiness. This
deep-seated and complex evil, this enervation of the Christian spirit,
this _anÊmia_ (_cette anÈmie_) of so many among us, are an object of
sorrowful anxiety (_prÈoccupation_) for the Catholic thinker" (pp. x,
xxv).
CURRENT NEGLECT OF SCRIPTURE.
For the Protestant thinker too, within a Church which has now for
centuries, in every possible official way, pressed home the reading of
the Bible upon her every member, and of course upon her every Minister,
there is material for similar anxieties, _mutatis mutandis_. Bible
study, such as our Lord and the Apostles enjoined and encouraged, is not
on the increase amongst us, to say the least of it; certainly the
ignorance of the blessed Book even among candidates for holy Orders is
sometimes, is not seldom, very great indeed. Nay more, there is
sometimes, however rarely as yet, an ominous disposition even in
clerical circles to shelve the Bible. Quite lately I heard, on excellent
authority, that a certain large Clerical Society, revising its rules,
deliberately decided that the meetings shall _not_ in future be begun
with the reading of Scripture. My friend and Brother, do not swim even
on the edges of such a current. Swim with all your might, in your
Master's might, against it.
READ IT FOR YOUR OWN NEEDS.
Then lastly I put in my plea, as I sought to do when we were considering
the matter of secret prayer, for such a secret study of the Word of God
as shall be _unprofessional, unclerical, and simply Christian_. Resolve
to "read, mark, and inwardly digest" so that not now the flock but the
shepherd, that is to say you, "may embrace and ever hold fast the
blessed hope of everlasting life." It will be all the better for the
flock. Forget sometimes, in the name of Jesus Christ, the pulpit, the
mission-room, the Bible-class; open the Bible as simply as if you were
on Crusoe's island, and were destined to live and die there, alone with
God. You will be all the fresher, all the more sympathetic and to the
point, when you do come to speak to the listening people about the Book.
The discoveries which we make in it for our own souls are just the
things which we cannot help reporting so as to interest and attract our
brethren; as least, that is the sure tendency of things.
BRIDGES AND WITSIUS ON BIBLE STUDY.
Let me write out a slightly abbreviated extract from a golden book,
unhappily no longer in print, _The Christian Ministry_, by that diligent
student, loving and laborious Pastor, and heavenly-minded man, the
remembrance of whom shines on me like a ray reflected from the Chief
Shepherd's face, the late Rev. Charles Bridges.[2]
[2] He died at Hinton Martell, in Dorset, 1869.
"The maxim, _Bonus textuarius est bonus theologus_, marks a grand
ministerial qualification--'mighty in the Scriptures.' The importance of
this is beautifully expressed by Witsius: 'Let the theologian ascend
from the lower school of natural study to the higher department of
Scripture, and sitting at the feet of God as his teacher, learn from His
mouth the hidden mysteries of salvation, _which eye hath not seen nor
ear heard, which none of the princes of this world knew_; which the most
accurate reason cannot search out; which the heavenly chorus of angels,
though always beholding the face of God, _desire to look into_. In the
hidden book of Scripture, and nowhere else, are opened the secrets of
the most sacred wisdom. Let the theologian delight in these sacred
Oracles; let him exercise himself in them day and night; let him
meditate in them; let him live in them; let him draw all his wisdom from
them; let him compare all his thoughts with them; let him embrace
nothing in religion which he does not find there. The attentive study of
the Scriptures has a sort of constraining power. It fills the mind with
the most splendid form of heavenly truth. It soothes the mind with an
inexpressible sweetness; it satisfies the sacred hunger and thirst for
knowledge; ... it imprints its own testimony so firmly on the mind, that
the believing soul rests on it with the same security as if it had been
carried up into the third heaven and heard it from God's own mouth; it
touches all the affections, and breathes the sweetest fragrance of
holiness upon the pious reader, even though he may not perhaps
comprehend the full extent of his reading.... We ought to draw our views
of divine truths immediately from the Scriptures themselves, and to
make no other use of human writings than as indices marking those chief
points of theology from which we may be instructed in the mind of the
Lord'" (pp. 79, 80, ed. 1830).
* * * * *
RIDLEY IN THE ORCHARD.
"In thy Orchard, Pembroke Hall," wrote Nicholas Ridley within a few days
of his fiery martyrdom, "(the wals, buts, and trees, if they could
speake, would beare me witnes), I learned without booke almost all
Paules epistles, yea, and I weene all the Canonicall epistles, save only
the Apocalyps. Of which study, although in time a great part did depart
from me, yet the sweete smell thereof I trust I shall cary with me into
heaven; for the profite thereof I thinke I have felt in all my lyfe tyme
ever after."
And so shall it be with us also, if we go and do likewise in our "lyfe
tyme," our period, not at present of martyrdom but, God knoweth it, of
need.