_MY ELDER BROTHER_
HEBREWS ii. 9-18.
And doth my Lord call me one of His brethren? Let me leisurely think upon
it, until my very soul moves amid my affairs in noble and hallowed
dignity. If I steadily remember "who I am," it will assuredly transfigure
"what I am." I lose the sense of my high kinship, and then I am quite
content to be "sent into the fields to feed swine."
And my elder Brother came to "destroy the works of the devil." That is the
entire ministry of destruction. Nothing beautiful does He destroy, nothing
winsome: only the insidious presences which are the foes of these things.
He will destroy only the pestiferous microbes which ravage the vital peace
of the soul. Our Lord is the enemy of the deadly, and therefore of "him
that had the power of death--that is, the devil!"
And in this holy ministry of destruction He can defend my soul as "one who
knows," Himself "having been tempted." He knows the subtlety of the devil,
and where the soul is most perilously exposed, and He is therefore "able
to succour them that are tempted."