and cheer to the Christian. I appeal to your experience, faithful
fellow-disciples. How many times, when it has perhaps been a great
effort to go to church, has not the very stillness of the place fallen
like balm on your tired nerves, so that your few minutes of mental
prayer have made you able to realize that you are indeed in the
presence of Him who has said, "When two or three are gathered together,
there am I in the midst of them"! (Matt. xviii. 20.) How often has the
Psalter or the lesson contained the very words you needed! How often
has the sermon or address been just what you wanted, and the whole
service sent you home strengthened and cheerful to take up the burden
of the week or the day! Then there is the crown of all our services—the
Holy Communion. We "do not feel like going," perhaps. We have had but
little time for preparation. There has been much in the week to harass
and perplex us. Perhaps some slip or fall has clouded our experience,
and burdened our conscience. But we know our duty, and at least we can
obey. We carry our burden, whatever it may be, into the presence of the
symbols of our Lord's dying love; perhaps to the very altar rail; but
when we rise from our knees, we find we have left it there.
Isa. lxv. 2 Cor. 1.
_FIFTH FRIDAY IN LENT._
_THE GREAT CONSOLER._
"THE Comforter which is the Holy Ghost." The third Person of the
ever-blessed Trinity does not disdain to take the title and office of
our consoler, as well as that of our teacher and guide. He does not
disdain to enter the lowest dwelling which is open to receive Him, nor
to hold communion with the youngest and feeblest who seek His aid. It
is He who opens our heart to understand the Scriptures, who directs
us to the very word we need, who shows us, in some passage we have
read a hundred times, a new meaning which we never saw before. It is
He who inspires our prayers, and He, when our hearts are too burdened
for words, makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered. (Rom. viii. 26.) How are we to obtain the help of this Divine
Comforter? First, by asking for it. That is one of the prayers certain
to be answered, whatever is refused. "If ye, then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him"! (St. Luke xi. 18.)
The very greatest gift of all is never refused to the poorest suppliant.
Then, when we have invited our guest, we must make our house ready to
receive Him. We must open the door and be on the watch for Him. We must
remember, too, that He will never share a divided throne. If we are
entertaining any impure or unworthy guests—if we have set up any idols
there—if there is within any chamber of imagery where we pay secret
worship, as did the elders of Israel whom Ezekiel saw in his vision
(Ezek. viii. 7), the guests must be turned out, the idols overthrown,
the secret chamber opened to the light of God's day, before the Spirit
of purity will make our heart His shrine. He Himself will purify His
own temple if we consent thereto, but we must be willing, and we must
have no reserves from Him.
Again, we must be willing to obey His godly motions, as the collect
has it, and that with a prompt and willing obedience. This is not
always easy or agreeable. One of His offices is to convince of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment to come. He does not always prophecy
smooth things, by any means, nor does he always apply sweet balms. On
the contrary, He is a kind but stern surgeon, who wounds to heal, and
gives bitter tonics instead of soothing syrups. It is not altogether
pleasant to be told that some favorite habit is a sinful indulgence;
that some yielding to the customs of society is conformity to the
world; some laxity of doctrine, on which we have perhaps prided
ourselves as showing our liberality, is a cowardly surrender of
God's truth. Nevertheless must the Heavenly monitor be obeyed, and
that promptly. Otherwise His voice will grow fainter and fainter and
fainter, till it ceases to be heard at all. Nay, it is possible to
drive away the Heavenly visitor altogether, and then woe unto us. We
had better lose every earthly friend than to be forsaken of the Holy
Spirit.
It is to be feared that many Christians do not realize as they ought
the blessed fact of the real literal indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
They read in the Bible such words as these: "He dwelleth with you, and
shall be in you." (St. John xiv. 17.) "We have received not the spirit
of the world, but the Spirit which is of God." (1 Cor. ii. 12.) They
feel as if it were a kind of presumption to take these promises to
themselves—as if the real presumption did not lie in doubting, instead
of believing God's word. They read such words as these: "The spirit
itself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of
God." (Rom. viii. 16.) Yet they feel no assurance of their adoption,
but go through life, as it were, with a rope round their necks instead
of walking freely as God's children should, for "where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty." (1 Cor. iii. 17.)
But some one says: "I should be only too glad to obtain this blessed
assurance of salvation, but I do not know how. What is the way?" The
way is as plain as are all God's ways in things of practical importance
to us. You have but to put out your hand and take what is freely
offered you.
A vessel sailing to Brazil once saw a barque flying a signal of
distress, and bearing down on her, asked what was the matter. "For
God's sake, give us water! we have not had a drop for three days," was
the cry from the distressed vessel. The answer was instant. "Let down
your bucket and draw it up, man! You are in the mouth of the Amazon."
These poor creatures had been dying of thirst for three days, though
they were sailing on the greatest stream of fresh water in the world,
because they had lost their reckoning and did not know where they
were. So it too often is with the disciple. He walks in the midst of
unnumbered blessings. The stream of living water flows at his side;
the tree of Life grows beside it; yet he is hungry and thirsty, just
because he will not take the things which are freely offered of God.
"If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established." (Isa.
vii. 9.)
Ps. lxiii. Gal. v.
_FIFTH SATURDAY IN LENT._
_THE USE OF COMFORT._
"SURELY there can be no question about that!" I hear some one say.
"The use of comfort is to make people comfortable." That is one
use, no doubt, but not the only nor the principal one. It is to be
feared, however, that many sincerely devout people take this view of
the matter. In spiritual as in worldly matters we are prone to think
far too much of our own enjoyment. Some good people, indeed, measure
their spiritual condition by their enjoyment. If they are happy, they
think all is well with them. This is not always a safe test. We may be
glorying in a very mistaken estimate of our own spiritual condition, as
did the Corinthian Church, when St. Paul wrote them. "Your glorying is
not good." They were mightily puffed up in their own esteem, while they
were tolerating among them the vilest sins, such as even the idolatrous
Gentiles were ashamed of. (1 Cor. v. 1-8.)
The use of comfort is to strengthen us for the work which God gives us
to do. "The God of all comfort comforteth us in all our tribulation,"
writes St. Paul; and why? "That we may be able to comfort them which
are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted
of God." (2 Cor. i. 3, 4.) We are comforted that we may be able to
console others, just as we are taught in order that we may teach others.
Dear fellow-sufferer, if in your sick-room your Lord has sent you a
blessing, cannot you contrive to send that blessing on to some other
sufferer? He has sent you, let us say, a cheering message by a book
or paper. Can you not pass it on to some one else? He has given you a
cheering thought. Can you not give a friend or attendant the benefit
of it? Some one brings you a pattern for embroidery or knitting. It
will do you all the more good if you use it to make a Christmas gift
for some other invalid who does not enjoy as many pretty things as
yourself. A lady of my acquaintance once received from a wealthy and
generous friend a box of very fine forced strawberries. She sent a
part of them to an old lady in a charitable institution, whose failing
appetite could hardly be tempted to take food at all. The sight of a
dish of strawberries in March was such a wonder that it led her to
eat quite a good meal; and a year afterwards she spoke with delight
of "those beautiful berries your mother sent me." I mention this as a
specimen of the way a kindness may be passed on. I believe that act of
thoughtful kindness prolonged for several years a useful life.
There are those who carry an atmosphere of comfort with them wherever
they go. They may not be very brilliant or very accomplished, but every
one is glad to see them. They have something pleasant to say. Such a
person does not tell a rheumatic patient of her grandmother who was
unable to feed herself for years, or suggest to one suffering from a
surgical operation that people in such circumstances almost always go
into a decline. (I have known of these very things being done more than
once.) I once suffered for several months from the effects of a cat's
bite, and I suppose that more than half the people to whom the story
was told said, "I should think you would be afraid of hydrophobia!"
With a nervous or apprehensive person the effect might have been
serious. Oh how many heartaches and tears would be saved to invalids,
if those who visit them would try to think of something pleasant and
cheering to say!
God sends us comfort, not that we may sit down and selfishly, enjoy it,
but that we may be strengthened for the work which is still before us,
whether that work be active doing, or patient suffering, or quietly
waiting on His will. Comfort is not an end, but a means, and it is much
more likely to last if we use it in this way, than if we sit idly down
to enjoy it. The Lord gives to all his children blessed seasons of rest
and enjoyment. As the twenty-third Psalm says, He makes them to lie
down in green pastures, and feedeth them by still waters. But He does
not always keep us there. He sets before them many a hill to climb,
many a dark valley to pass through, before we reach the land of Beulah,
and the Celestial city. But the Holy Ghost, which is the comforter,
will always abide with us, and we can truly say "In the multitude of
sorrows which I had in my heart, Thy comforts have refreshed my soul."
(Ps. xciv. 19.)
Ps. xxxvii. Heb. xii.
_FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT._
_THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD._
IT has been said, and I think truly, that almost any government is
better than none. A good government is an unspeakable blessing—not
always appreciated, I fear, by those who have never lived under any
other. Think for a moment what it is to dwell under a rule where every
one's rights are safe; where no one can be punished, except openly,
and by due process of law; where every poor man's house is his castle;
where, amid the excitement of a hotly contested election, women and
children walk the streets in absolute safety: and then contrast this
state of things with one in which no man, great or small, feels himself
secure; where any man or woman may be torn from home and friends and
thrown into prison or sent into life-long exile, with no chance of
redress, and knowing that the nearest and dearest friends are utterly
ignorant of the fate of husband or wife, father or mother. It seems to
me a pity that those who complain so bitterly of the few abuses of a
good and free government, should not for a little while try the tender
mercies of a bad one.
The best government, however, being as it is the work of man, is liable
to imperfection in its constitution, or abuse in its administration.
How happy, then, is he who lives under a ruler who can and will do
no wrong. Such a ruler is the Lord our Governor. The best of earthly
governments can only legislate for classes, and even beneficent laws
often bear hardly on individuals; but God's rule is that of a father,
who sees in each person not only a subject, but a child; who knows the
needs of each one better than himself, and who grudges His children no
innocent pleasure. Is it any wonder that the Church teaches us to pray
for the rule of such a sovereign as a blessing?
In translating this collect from the Latin original, the reformers
have substituted the words "Thy people" for "Thy family," thinking,
probably, that the word corresponded better with the idea of
government. But, after all, a family needs a stable and just government
as much as a state, and it is as a family that the Lord rules his
people. The state lays down an inflexible rule, to which every citizen
is expected to conform; but a wise parent does not act in this way. She
studies the disposition of each child, and has a different system for
each one, corresponding to its temperament and needs. So it is with
God's government. To Him there are no "masses." He does not drive His
flock like a mercenary drover, but "He calleth His own sheep by name
and leadeth them out." (St. John x. 3.) He is to each one what He is
to no other. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden
manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name
written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." (Rev. ii.
17.)
The state punishes offenses against the laws with rigid severity, and
very rightly. The security of the honest citizen demands such action.
But it has no thanks and no praise for the obedient and loyal subject.
He has but done what was expected of him. The loyal subject of God's
government, on the contrary, has the satisfaction of knowing that his
ruler sees his obedience, and is gratified with it. Like Enoch, he has
this testimony, that he has pleased God. God notes the first effort
of a little child as well as the crowning sacrifice of an Abraham,
and rewards the poor negro Sunday-school teacher, trying in imperfect
English to tell the little he knows about God and the Bible to some
one more ignorant than himself, as He does a St. Paul preaching to the
polished Athenians on Mars Hill. Surely there must be, to the believer,
wonderful joy and strength in the thought that what he does gives
pleas—to his Heavenly Father.
There is no escaping from the government of God. A man who is
dissatisfied with the rule of the United States, or who by crime
or misdemeanor has brought himself within reach of its penalties,
may go and live somewhere else; but there is no getting out of this
universe, which God rules in every corner. Neither can he escape by
denying God's authority, or making light of His claims. The earthly
commonwealth admits no such excuse; much less the Heavenly. The man
may rebel furiously. He may wish that it were possible even to pull
down the great Ruler from His throne. It makes no difference. He has no
choice but to submit at last, but he "has" the choice as to whether his
submission shall be that of the criminal on his way to the scaffold, or
the glad obedience of the loving child who has full confidence in his
father's justice and love.
Ps. xcvii. Phil. i.
_FIFTH MONDAY IN LENT._
_CÆSAR'S HOUSEHOLD._
THE Lord's government, as we have seen, is that of a parent, in that
He legislates, not for masses, but for individuals; and His object,
in all that He does and leaves undone, is to make His children better
and in the long run happier. The views and plans of the wisest parent
are necessarily bounded by a very limited horizon, but the Lord sees
the lives of His children from their first beginning—not indeed to the
end, for there is no end, but to the farthest reach of eternity—and
He legislates for them in "the whole of their duration," as President
Edwards has it. It is perhaps for this reason, speaking with reverence,
that Christians often find themselves in about the last places they
themselves would have chosen as likely to conduce to growth in grace.
We are apt to fret at this, and to think we could do somewhere else.
We think if we could only attend such and such a church, or live in
some other place, or attend such and such classes, we could do so much
better; and, very possibly, we neglect the work that God has given us
for something which is not our work at all.
There is a passage in the Epistle to the Philippians which at first
sight may appear to mean very little, but which seems to me very
suggestive. St. Paul, writing from his prison at Rome to the church at
Philippi, says, "All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of
Cæsar's household." (Phil. iv. 22.)
Surely this was a very strange place in which to look for saints—about
the last place, humanly speaking, in which we should be likely to find
them. The Cæsar was Nero—a name which has become a synonym for lust,
cruelty, and rampant folly of every kind; and his court was just what
we should expect the court of such an emperor to be. It was the very
central resort of informers, men and women practiced in every namable
and un-namable wickedness of that vile age. One would as soon have
looked for the bliss of Paradise in the foulest Pool of Dante's hell,
as for saints in such a household, especially when the profession of
the Christian faith involved no little danger to liberty and life. The
persecution of Christians had not at that time reached the height to
which it attained afterwards; nevertheless, every Christian was looked
upon with suspicion and contempt. Their great teacher and apostle was a
prisoner, chained night and day to a soldier who watched him, and his
imprisonment was more than likely to end in an ignominious death. Yet,
in spite of these opposing circumstances, there were saints in Cæsar's
household, and, it would seem, not a few.
It seems to me that we may all learn a good lesson from this short
passage. We are so apt to lay our shortcomings to the account
of circumstances, which is, in fact, laying them at the door of
Providence. "If I were not so much engrossed in business," says John.
"If I had not so many family cares," says Jane, "I might do some Church
work." "There is no pleasure in going to church and Bible class here,"
says another. "If I only lived in the city! We cannot expect to do
much in a place like this," I heard a Christian man say. "If we had a
first-class preacher and a good quartette choir we might do something."
As if the gift of the Holy Spirit depended on a fine preacher and a
fine choir! But we do more than this: we lay upon circumstances the
blame of our own heart sins. We should not be irritable and fretful,
only that there is so much to annoy us. We should not make unkind
remarks and tell scandalous stories about our neighbors, only that
every one does so; and so on to the end of the chapter.
No Christian will deny, if asked the question out and out, that
his Father in Heaven has ordered, or at the least permitted, the
circumstances of his life. Say that we are placed in a country parish,
where there is little or no enthusiasm for any good cause, and where
most of the parishioners think they have done their duty nobly
when they have helped to keep their pastor on the outside verge of
starvation, instead of the inside. Well, He places us there because He
has work for us there—some work which no one could do so well as you or
I. Let us try to find out what that work is, and to do it faithfully.
We shall grow in grace ourselves, and no one can do that without
benefiting others.
Or He has put one of His chosen ones in a place where he has no
Christian sympathy—perhaps among unbelievers and scoffers. Take
courage. Bad as they may be, they are probably saints themselves,
compared to the men and women with whom they of Cæsar's household were
brought in daily contact. You may have good work to do among them.
A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. When the Rev. Mr. Lowder
entered the district of St. Peter's, in the east of London, there were
not a dozen Christian men in the parish. He was hooted and pelted in
the street, and on one occasion a ring of his friends had to fight for
his life against a howling mob of ruffians. Every other house was a
house of ill-fame; when he died, after twenty-three years' service,
there was not one such to be found in the parish; and by the streets
where he had been stoned and all but murdered, he was carried to his
burial through throngs of weeping men and women, hundreds of whom
walked miles to see him laid in the grave.
A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. But, then, the leaven must
be living and warm. Frozen yeast is no good, as every housewife knows.
"I got my father and mother to come to church last Sunday," said a
dear little child with sparkling eyes. "It was so nice!" He had been
laboring for that result for months. He would have been one of the
saints in Cæsar's household. And I have no doubt that those saints
found there, were of a pretty robust and earnest description. "They"
would hardly have stayed away from the gathering in St. Paul's cabin on
the first day of the week because they had not the latest fashion in
gown or sandal, or even to hear the court poet recite his ode, or to
learn the last news from Gaul or Britain. (2 Kings v.; 1 Peter ii.)
A part of this chapter was printed in the "Kalendar."
_FIFTH TUESDAY IN LENT._
_THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD._
AS has been noticed before, the reformers, in translating this collect
from the original Latin, saw fit to render the word that is to say,
household or family, by "people," thinking probably that the word
corresponded better to the idea of government. It is perhaps difficult
to see the aptness of the change, since, as has been observed, a family
certainly needs governing quite as much as a state.
In three other places is the Church of God spoken of as a family.
In the collect for Good Friday we beseech God to behold "this His
family." In that for the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, we ask Him "to
keep His Church and household in His true religion;" and again, on the
twenty-second Sunday after Trinity, we beg Him to keep His household,
the Church, in continual godliness. The great Church catholic, then, is
to be thought of, not only as God's kingdom, but as His family. It is
under this latter aspect that I wish now to consider it.
A family is not "a fortuitous concourse of atoms." It consists of
a number of members, either related by blood or united by a common
purpose. Now the very idea of a member is that of a part of some
organization differentiated or set apart for some office for which
it is specially fitted by structure or position, or both. The very
simplest living creature—the very germ cell from which the lowest
seaweed is produced—has its parts so distinguished, and the higher we
rise in the scale, the more striking are the differences. The family is
an organism, and it follows that every member of the same has his own
"vocation and ministry," which nobody can fulfill as well as himself.
"The Lord has chosen him." (1 Chron. xxviii. 10.) He has appointed his
place and set his task before him. Surely this is a great honor.
The great trouble is that the member thus appointed does not see his
work, and he does not see it, for the most part, because he will not.
Perhaps he thinks his appointed task too humble. He thinks it beneath
his capacity. He is too often like a certain little girl who was set by
her mother to watch that the bread did not run over, but who thought it
would be much finer to run the sewing machine. The result may easily be
imagined. A woman who wished to undertake some Church work was invited
to begin by taking a class from the infant room. She declined, saying
that she would feel herself to be throwing away her time teaching such
ignorant little ones. She was allowed to try a class of grown-up girls.
She soon found out her mistake. She complained that the girls were
always asking questions and making remarks, and at last she threw up
the work in disgust, and there was the end of her aspirations after
Church work. If she could only have had something congenial, she said,
it would have been different.
Another church-member was fired with enthusiasm on hearing an eloquent
missionary sermon. She only wished that she could go out to Africa.
That would, indeed, be worth while. But when it was suggested that she
might give of an abundant wardrobe to help fill a missionary box, she
rejected the idea with some tartness. She did not take so much pains
with her things, to give them to a common negro preacher's wife!