help their fellows, this is a prime requisite, that the would-be
helper should come down to the level of those whom he desires to
aid. If we wish to teach, we must stoop to think the scholar's
thoughts. The master who has forgotten his boyhood will have poor
success. If we would lead to purer emotions, we must try to enter
into the lower feelings which we labor to elevate. It is of no use
to stand at the mouth of the alleys we wish to cleanse, with our
skirts daintily gathered about us, and smelling-bottle in hand, to
preach homilies on the virtue of cleanliness. We must go in among
the filth, and handle it, if we want to have it cleared away. The
degraded must feel that we do not shrink from them, or we shall do
them no good. The leper, shunned by all, and ashamed of himself
because everybody loathes him, hungers in his hovel for the grasp of
a hand that does not care for defilement, if it can bring cleansing.
Even in regard to common material helps the principle holds good.
We are too apt to cast our doles to the poor like the bones to
a dog, and then to wonder at what we are pleased to think men's
ingratitude. A benefit may be so conferred as to hurt more than a
blow; and we cannot be surprized if so-called charity which is given
with contempt and a sense of superiority, should be received with
a scowl, and chafe a man's spirit like a fetter. Such gifts bless
neither him who gives nor him who takes. We must put our hearts
into them, if we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like
our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we would bless or
help them. The despair and opprobrium of our modern civilization,
the gulf growing wider and deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between
Belgravia and Whitechapel, the mournful failure of legalized help,
and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening ignorance,
the animal sensuousness, the utter heathenism that lives in every
town of England, within a stone's throw of Christian houses, and
near enough to hear the sound of public worship, will yield to
nothing but that sadly forgotten law which enjoins personal contact
with the sinful and the suffering, as one chief condition of raising
them from the black mire in which they welter.
The effect of much well-meant Christian effort is simply to
irritate. People are very quick to catch delicate intonations which
reveal a secret sense, "how much better, wiser, more devout I am
than these people!" and wherever a trace of that appears in our
work, the good of it is apt to be marred. We all know how hackneyed
the charge of spiritual pride and Pharisaic self-complacency is,
and, thank God, how unjust it often is. But averse as men may be to
the truths which humble, and willing as they may be to assume that
the very effort to present these to others on our parts implies a
claim which mortifies, we may at least learn from the threadbare
calumny, what strikes men about our position, and what rouses their
antaganism to us. It is allowable to be taught by our enemies,
especially when it is such a lesson as this, that we must carefully
divest our evangelistic work of apparent pretensions to superiority,
and take our stand by the side of those to whom we speak. We cannot
lecture men into the love of Christ. We can but win them to it by
showing Christ's love to them; and not the least important element
in that process is the exhibition of our own love. We have a gospel
to speak of which the very heart is, that the Son of God stooped
to become one with the lowliest and most sinful; and how can that
gospel be spoken with power unless we, too, stoop like Him?
We have to echo the invitation, "Learn of me, for I am lowly in
heart"; and how can such divine words flow from lips into which like
grace has not been poured? Our theme is a Savior who shrunk from no
sinner, who gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid
His hand on pollution, and His heart, full of God and of love, on
hearts reeking with sin; and how can our message correspond with our
theme if, even in delivering it, we are saying to ourselves, "The
temple of the Lord are we: this people which knoweth not the law is
curst"? Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in
this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with those
whom we would gather into Christ, by actual familiarity with their
condition, and by identification of ourselves in feeling with them,
after the example of that greatest of Christian teachers who became
"all things to all men, that by all means he might gain some";
after the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear Lord
who, being highest, descended to the lowest, and in the days of His
humiliation was not content with speaking words of power from afar,
nor abhorred the contact of mortality and disease and loathsome
corruption; but laid His hands upon death, and it lived; upon
sickness, and it was whole; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as
the flesh of a little child.
The same principle might be further applied to our Christian work,
as affecting the form in which we should present the truth. The
sympathetic identification of ourselves with those to whom we try to
carry the gospel will certainly make us wise to know how to shape
our message. Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate
the light. Thinking their thoughts, and having in some measure
succeeded, by force of sheer community of feeling, in having as it
were got inside their minds, we shall unconsciously, and without
effort, be led to such aspects of Christ's all-comprehensive truth
as they most need. There will be no shooting over people's heads,
if we love them well enough to understand them. There will be no
toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their actual
condition and temptations clear before us. There will be no flinging
fossil doctrines at them from a height, as if Christ's blest gospel
were, in another than the literal sense, "a stone of offense," if
we have taken our place on their level. And without such sympathy,
these and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly
vitiate much of our Christian effort.
We have here the true healing power and the consciousness of
wielding it set forth in the Lord's authoritative word.
All the rest of His action was either the spontaneous expression of
His true participation in human sorrow, or a merciful veiling of His
glory that sense-bound eyes might see it the better. But the word
was the utterance of His will, and that was omnipotent. The hand
laid on the sick, the blind or the deaf was not even the channel of
His power. The bare putting forth of His energy was all-sufficient.
In these we see the loving, pitying man. In this blazes forth, yet
more loving, yet more compassionate, the effulgence of manifest God.
Therefore so often do we read the very syllables with which His
"voice then shook the earth," vibrating through all the framework of
the material universe. Therefore do the gospels bid us listen when
He rebukes the fever, and it departs; when He says to the demons,
"Go," and they go; when one word louder in its human articulation
than the howling wind hushes the surges; when "Talitha cumi" brings
back the fair young spirit from dreary wanderings among the shades
of death. Therefore was it a height of faith not found in Israel
when the Gentile soldier, whose training had taught him the power of
absolute authority, as heathenism had driven him to long for a man
who would speak with the imperial sway of a god, recognized in His
voice an all-commanding power. From of old, the very signature of
divinity has been declared to be "He spake, and it was done"; and
He, the breath of whose lips could set in motion material changes,
is that eternal Word, by whom all things were made.
What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion sounds in that
imperative from His autocratic lips! It is spoken in deaf ears, but
He knows that it will be heard. He speaks as the fontal source,
not as the recipient channel of healing. He anticipates no delay,
no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertainty in the curt
command. He is sure that He has power, and He is sure that the power
is His own.
There is no analogy here between us and Him. Alone, fronting the
whole race of man, He stands--utterer of a word which none can say
after Him, possessor of unshared might, and of His fulness do we all
receive. But even from that divine authority and solitary sovereign
consciousness we may gather lessons not altogether aside from the
purpose of our meeting here to-day. Of His fulness we have received,
and the power of the word on His lips may teach us that of His
word, even on ours, as the victorious certainty with which He spake
His will of healing may remind us of the confidence with which it
becomes us to proclaim His name.
His will was almighty then. Is it less mighty or less loving now?
Does it not gather all the world in the sweep of its mighty purpose
of mercy? His voice pierced then into the dull cold ear of death,
and has it become weaker since? His word spoken by Him was enough
to banish the foul spirits that run riot, swine-like, in the garden
of God in man's soul, trampling down and eating up its flowers and
fruitage; is the word spoken of Him less potent to cast them out?
Were not all the mighty deeds which He wrought by the breath of
His lips on men's bodies prophecies of the yet mightier which His
Will of love, and the utterance of that Will by stammering lips,
may work on men's souls. Let us not in our faint-heartedness number
up our failures, the deaf that will not hear, the dumb that will
not speak, His praise; nor unbelievingly say Christ's own word was
mighty, but the word concerning Christ is weak on our lips. Not so;
our lips are unclean, and our words are weak, but His word--the
utterance of His loving will that men should be saved--is what it
always was and always will be. We have it, brethren, to proclaim.
Did our Master countenance the faithless contrast between the living
force of His word when He dwelt on earth, and the feebleness of it
as He speaks through His servant? If He did, what did He mean when
He said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto
the Father"?
CROSBY
THE PREPARED WORM
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Howard Crosby, Presbyterian divine, was born in New York City in
1826, educated at New York University, graduating in 1851, was
professor of Greek at that institution until 1859, when he was
elected to the same chair in Rutgers College. He was pastor of the
First Presbyterian Church of New Brunswick, N. J., for the two
years ending in 1863, when he assumed charge of the Fourth Avenue
Presbyterian Church, New York. From 1870 to 1881 he was chancellor
of the University of New York. His activities in the cause of
social reform were conspicuous and he exercized his influence in
organizing the Society for the Prevention of Crime over which he
presided for some years. His energies were also directed against
the illegal liquor trade. As a scholar he was prominent among the
American revisers of the New Testament and edited a new edition of
the "_Oedipus Tyrannus_" of Sophocles. He died in 1891.
CROSBY
1826-1891
THE PREPARED WORM[3]
[3] Copyright, 1884, _The Homiletic Review_, New York.
_But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and
it smote the gourd that it withered._--Jonah iv., 7.
Just when Jonah had felt the delight of the shadowing foliage and
had begun to promise himself a most comfortable retreat against
an Assyrian sun, the broad-leaved gourd withered. The morning had
arrived and the heat was becoming more intense, when the glad
shelter was removed, and the prophet's head was smitten with the
scorching rays. "It is better for me to die than live," exclaimed
the fainting Jonah. And what caused this calamity? A worm. And is
that all? No! God prepared the worm. The worm was under orders
from heaven, and while he, doubtless, ate into the gourd, with a
good appetite, following the bent of his natural constitution,
nevertheless he was acting in direct obedience to God. God prepared
the worm. And yet in the sixth verse we read that God prepared the
gourd. This is the record. "And the Lord God prepared a gourd and
made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his
head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceedingly glad
of the gourd." And then follows immediately: "But God prepared a
worm, when the morning rose the next day, and he smote the gourd
that it withered." Does God, then, build up in order to destroy?
And does He give comfort to His creatures in order to torment them
by its removal? So reasons the carnal heart, ready to complain,
and looking on all God's conduct in its superficial aspect, its
own selfish and sensuous advantage being the criterion of all its
judgments. It is an easy counsel of Satan, when we are fainting
by a withered gourd. "Curse God and die," the selfish soul is all
ripe for such advice,--desperation is more inviting than faith. And
there are but few Jobs who can resist the appeal to discontent and
anger, in the face of Satan and wife combined, for when the natural
depravity of our own hearts is supported by the entreaties of our
nearest and dearest friends, hell's heaviest engine is brought
against us. "I do well to be angry, even unto death," is the usual
style in which we greet the afflictive providence of God. But a
faith like Job's, that learns the lesson which the sorrow teaches,
is rewarded, as was Job's, by the presence and communion of God, and
by a satisfaction with His holy and righteous will.
Let us endeavor to understand some of the facts connected with our
afflictions, as disclosed by the Word of God, in order that we may
be prepared to follow Job rather than Jonah.
I. In the first place, God is the author of affliction. "Affliction
cometh not forth out of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out
of the ground." God asserts most positively in His Word, that all
the losses in the world are sent by Him. He calls them chastisements
from His fatherly hand. "I make peace and create evil," saith the
Lord. This is not evil in the sense of wickedness. God does not
create wickedness--but it is evil in the sense of affliction and
trouble, the opposite of peace in the contrasted clause, "I make
peace and create evil." That is, God is the author equally of
prosperity and adversity to His creatures. If it were not so, we
should have to imagine certain powers in God's universe not subject
to His almighty control, which would be an absurdity. "Shall there
be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?" It is in this
sense of God's hand in adversity that the psalmist cries, "Thou, O
God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us as silver is tried; thou
broughtest us into the net, thou laidest affliction upon our loins";
and again, "Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me
with all thy waves." God may send affliction by permitting Satan to
afflict, but still God is the author of the affliction. He could
prevent it, but He permits it. Indeed, it is, perhaps, true that all
our losses and injuries in this world are Satan's inflictions, that
this ever-active spirit of evil is constantly using the agencies of
the natural world for our harm and destruction, and we are preserved
simply by the interposing and restraining providence of God. When
Satan wished to afflict Job, he sought and gained permission of
the Lord. Job's calamities were clearly Satan's blows, and yet Job
addresses God, "Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so
that I am a burden to myself?" So, again, the diseased woman, who
heard our Savior's healing words on the Sabbath day and was cured,
is described by the same divine Physician (whose diagnosis cannot
be questioned) as one whom Satan had bound for eighteen years.
Under such examples, I cannot believe we err in attributing all
our sicknesses and pains of body to the permitted agency of our
arch-adversary.
They are tokens of his power over our race, for he is the prince
of this world, and it is only in God that we find protection from
his cruel scepter. God suffers us to feel his inflictions in order
to remove our affections from the world and to place them more
devotedly upon our Heavenly Father. God is thus most truly the
author of affliction, whatever may be the agencies He uses in the
course of His providence.
II. He uses the natural laws of the world as His agents in
afflicting. These laws may be thus used permissively by Satan in
other ways than in sickness or not, but the text shows us clearly
that God so uses them. "God prepared a worm." There is a world of
instruction in that brief statement. It infinitely transcends the
science of the naturalist. Bring the most learned explorers of
nature together to this gourd of Jonah, and show them this little
worm creeping toward the thick stalk. Let them see it move its many
feet and flexible body till it reaches the goal of its instinct. Now
it uses its gnawing jaws upon the woody fibre; deeper and deeper
it pierces the stem; now it reaches the innermost pith, and again
returns upon its course. The current of the gourd's life is marred;
the leaves droop, and its shelter is gone. Now, ye scientific men,
what made that gourd wither? Hear them philosophize. Yon worm is
a caterpillar, whose appropriate food is the _ricinus communis_,
this very gourd with its palmate leaves and red-tinted flower. The
worm has merely followed the impulses of its nature in seeking that
tree-like plant, and the equally natural result of its feeding upon
the stalk has been the failure of the tree's nourishment, and with
the failure the foliage has, of course, withered. Well, is that
all science can say? Yes, all. It is little more than that a horse
is a horse. It explains nothing but the most proximate causes.
It classifies facts, and then leaves us gaping into the abyss of
causation as ignorant as ever. Four words from the Bible carry
us back to the ultimate cause, the first mover in this gourd's
withering. Science talks of laws, but these four words go behind all
laws to the Maker of laws, to Him in whose hands are all things.
"God prepared a worm." What! says science; drag God in to explain
anything? Nay, God drags all in to effect His plans. He has made all
things, however great, however small, for Himself. And these things
which you call laws are only the methods of His activity, and these
methods He has formed for the very ends which He accomplishes by
them. The worm which crawls to Jonah's gourd was created by God to
destroy that plant, and the law of that worm's movement was ordained
for that destruction, as well as for all else which it accomplishes.
The mind is satisfied when it finds a mind, a purpose, a plan in
every event which it observes, and the pious heart is rejoiced to
know that it is a Father's mind and purpose and plan which directs
every movement, even to the crawling of a worm. "God prepared a
gourd--God prepared a worm"; no accident brought the gourd there;
no accident brought the worm there. God stood in a like relation to
both. He sent the gourd, through nature, to comfort Jonah. He sent
the worm, through nature, to trouble Jonah. Nature is a forlorn
object to study unless we find it a mirror to reflect God. It is
only as we see it, the result of His handiwork and His instrument
in governing His creatures, that nature has a glory. Then it is
ennobled; then it has a meaning that no mere naturalist can fathom,
but which renders valuable the researches of science with its
classifications.
III. God is just in afflicting us. If we look at God simply as the
Maker and Owner of His creatures, we could easily deduce His right
to afflict. "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine
own?" says the Creator; and he must be a daring soul who disputes
the force of this question. "Shall the thing formed say to him that
formed it, 'Why hast thou made me thus?'" But we are not left to
this view of God's right to afflict. God has entered into covenant
with us. He has said, "Do ye according to my commandments, and ye
shall live." This was the purport of His very first communication
to our race in Adam. It treated of obedience and reward, of
disobedience and punishment. And what is the record of our race
since? Have we obeyed or have we disobeyed? Is there the slightest
claim in us for the reward? Is there not the most complete demand
for the punishment? What sin in the whole catalog of sin has been
omitted by man? Enmity to man and God, pride, ingratitude, and
rebellion have marked the history of mankind. And are you and
I exceptions? Look at our years of worldliness, years of sinful
affections, years of opposition to the Word and Spirit, years of
selfishness, and then let us confess our full participation in the
general depravity. We are unclean in our natures and by practise,
and so, under the covenant which our Maker was pleased to form for
us, we can only deserve punishment.
Do we then complain in affliction? Surely, if God would be just in
casting us down to hell for our rebellion and disobedience, He is
just in laying upon us our earthly afflictions. Shall the Jonah, who
ran away from the Lord's commandment, and afterward flung His anger
in the face of His God, shall such an one feel that God is unjust in
preparing a worm to destroy his gourd? By what arithmetic is such a
balance cast? It becomes us, rather, to take up the words of David
and cry, "I acknowledge my transgression; and my sin is ever before
me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy
sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be
clear when thou judgest."
IV. God afflicts us in His love. With all Jonah's sins against
God, it was not to punish him that God prepared a worm. God is
long-suffering and withholds punishment in His desire that all men
may come to repentance. If punishment were God's aim in affliction,
our afflictions would be infinitely greater than they are, for
punishment would be apportioned to desert, and our desert is eternal
condemnation; God's aim in affliction is our restoration, our
improvement. By it He shakes us off from our dependence upon a world
which, however it might please us for the moment, would cheat us
sadly in the end. By it He reminds us of Himself as our source of
strength and happiness, and then brings us to the unfailing fountain
of peace, which our earthly prosperity would hide from our eyes. By
it He teaches us to aspire to higher spiritual attainment, to grow
in grace, to cultivate a more heavenly disposition of mind and heart.
These are the uses of adversity. Christians who have come through
scenes of trial, and whose thankful declaration is, "It was good for
me to be afflicted," certify to these blest results. They tell us
that they believe nothing else but the severe losses they sustained
could have freed them from the fascinations of the world--nothing
else could have made holy things so delightful to their soul. Now,
such an experience is not the result of God's anger but of God's
love. However harsh the voice of God may seem to us, it is yet a
Father's voice, with a Father's heart behind it. It is, therefore,
meant not to drive us away to seek a hiding corner, but to bring us
directly to Himself. The same love which sent the affliction will
receive the afflicted. God prepares gourds, and God prepares worms;
and He uses each to build up faith and holiness in the human heart.
In earnest seeking after God, in complete consecration to His holy
will and service, is to be found the surest avoidance of the worm.
If we can learn our lesson without the worm, the worm will not
be sent to gnaw our gourd to ruins. The nearer our life to Jesus
the more free shall we be from the sting of affliction. Had Jonah
been an obedient and submissive prophet his gourd would not have
withered. But alas! Jonah and ourselves need correction to keep our
faces heavenward. Forgetfulness and indulgence plant their weeds in
our Lord's garden, and they must be rooted up by force. It is for
our own good, and it is infinite love which decrees it.
Now note some inferences from the subject under consideration.