[_July 6._]
It is true that the task which God lays upon us all is the same—the
unceasing surrender of their own wishes to the higher aims which he
successively sets before them. But with men of passionate temperament and
selfish habits, who are therefore at every turn exposed by circumstances
to violent temptation, their natural wishes are, for the most part, so
obviously sinful that, though the struggle of renouncing them may be
hard, the duty of doing so is clear and pressing. And when such turn to
God, their falls in attempting the Christian walk are often frequent
enough, or at least their battles with temptation severe enough, to
teach them the evil and weakness of their own heart. With men, on the
other hand, of calm, pure and affectionate disposition, and trained in
conscientious habits, so many of their wishes are for things harmless,
or even good in themselves, that it is less easy to see why and how they
are to be given up. Such men, just, kindly, and finding much of their
own happiness in that of others, live, for the most part, in harmonious
relations with those around them, and have little to disturb their
consciences beyond the fear of falling short in the path of duty on
which they have already entered. But they are exposed to many perils,
more insidious, because less startling, than those which beset their
more fiercely tempted brethren. They are in danger of depending too much
on the respect and love which others so readily yield them; of valuing
themselves on a purity which, if ever one of struggle, has come to be
one of taste; of prizing intellectual clearness above moral insight and
vigor; of mistaking the pleasure they feel in the performance of duty,
for real submission to the will of God; and above all, of shrinking from
new truths which would, for the time, confuse their belief, and break up
the calm symmetry of their lives.
* * * * *
For … different natures require and receive a very different discipline
from God. Sometimes it is by outward affliction that God speaks to souls,
thus sinking into the lethargy of formalism; and the loss of friends,
or health, or influence suddenly seems to cut off, as it were, half the
means of serving him, and to rouse long-forgotten temptations to rise
up against his will. Sometimes, on the other hand, he speaks to them
inwardly, by opening their eyes to heights of holiness which they had
never before steadily contemplated. They now suddenly perceive that
many of the fancied duties which have till now occupied their lives and
satisfied their consciences, have long ceased to be duties, and have
come to be mere habits or pleasures; and that while they have been thus
living in self love, unseen and unrepented of, they might have been
coming to the knowledge of the higher obligations to which they have been
so blind, but which were all implied in their first belief if they had
but continued to read it with a single eye.—_From Susanna Winkworth, in
“Tauler’s Life and Times.”_
[_July 13._]
Especially, too, if they be distracted and disheartened (as such are wont
to be) by the sin and confusion of the world; by the amount of God’s
work which still remains undone, and by their own seeming incapacity
to do it, they will take heart from the history of John Tauler and his
fellows, who, in a far darker and more confused time than the present,
found a work to do and strength to do it; who, the more they retired
into the recesses of their own inner life, found there that fully to
know themselves was to know all men, and to have a message for all
men; and who by their unceasing labors of love proved that the highest
spiritual attainments, instead of shutting a man up in lazy and Pharisaic
self-contemplation, drive him forth to work as his Master worked before
him, among the poor, the suffering, and the fallen.
Let such take heart, and toil on in faith at the duty which lies nearest
to them. Five hundred years have passed since Tauler and his fellows did
their simple work, and looked for no fruit from it, but the saving of one
here and there from the nether pit. That was enough for which to labor;
but without knowing it, they did more than that. Their work lives, and
will live forever, though in forms from which they would have perhaps
shrunk had they foreseen them. Let all such therefore take heart. They
may know their own weakness; but they know not the power of God in them.
They may think sadly that they are only palliating the outward symptoms
of social and moral disease; but God may be striking, by some unconscious
chance blow of theirs, at a sort of evil which they never suspected. They
may mourn over the failure of some seemingly useful plan of their own;
but God may be, by their influence, sowing the seed of some plan of his
own, of which they little dream. For every good deed comes from God. His
is the idea, his the inspiration, and his its fulfillment in time; and
therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the everlasting life of
God himself. And as the acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,”
and life after its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak, but
shade for many a herd; food for countless animals, and last, the gallant
ship itself, and the materials of every use to which nature or art can
put it and its descendants after it throughout all time; so does every
good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of
other good, which may and will grow and multiply forever, in the genial
light of him whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit
will forever quicken it, with that life of which he is the giver and the
Lord.—_From Rev. Charles Kingsley, in “Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.”_
[_July 20._]
It astonishes all thought to observe the minuteness of God’s government,
and of the natural and common processes which he carries on from day
to day. His dominions are spread out, system above system, filling all
height and latitude, but he is never lost in the magnificent. He descends
to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe in the smallest
things. He carries on a process of growth in every tree and flower and
living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization, and works
the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate all for eye or
instrument to trace. He articulates the members and impels the instincts
of every living mote that shines in the sunbeam. As when we ascend toward
the distant and the vast, so when we descend toward the minute, we see
his attention acuminated and his skill concentrated on his object;
and the last discernible particle dies out of our sight with the same
divine glory on it, as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirt of the
universe.
* * * * *
The works of Christ are, if possible, a still brighter illustration of
the same truth. Notwithstanding the vast stretch and compass of the work
of redemption, it is a work of the most humble detail in its style of
execution. The Savior could have preached a sermon on the mount every
morning. Each night he could have stilled the sea, before his astonished
disciples, and shown the conscious waves lulling into peace under his
feet. He could have transfigured himself before Pilate and the astonished
multitudes of the temple. He could have made visible ascensions in the
noon of every day, and revealed his form standing in the sun, like the
angel of the apocalypse. But this was not his mind. The incidents of
which his work is principally made up, are, humanly speaking, very humble
and unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the world was never able,
in any degree, to approach the Savior, in the lowliness of his manner and
his attention to humble things. His teachings were in retired places,
and his illustrations drawn from ordinary affairs. If the finger of faith
touched him in the crowd, he knew the touch and distinguished also the
faith. He reproved the ambitious housewifery of an humble woman. After
he had healed a poor being, blind from his birth—a work transcending
all but divine power—he returned and sought him out, as the most humble
Sabbath-school teacher might have done; and when he had found him, cast
out and persecuted by men, he taught him privately the highest secrets
of his Messiahship. When the world around hung darkened in sympathy with
his cross, and the earth was shaking with inward amazement, he himself
was remembering his mother, and discharging the filial cares of a good
son. And when he burst the bars of death, its first and final conqueror,
he folded the linen clothes and the napkin, and laid them in order apart,
showing that in the greatest things he had a set purpose also concerning
the smallest. And thus, when perfectly scanned, the work of Christ’s
redemption, like the material universe, is seen to be a vast orb of
glory, wrought up out of finished particles.—_Horace Bushnell._
[_July 27._]
He who would sympathize must be content to be tried and tempted. There is
a hard and boisterous rudeness in our hearts by nature, which requires
to be softened down. We pass by suffering gaily, carelessly; not in
cruelty, but unfeelingly, because we do not know what suffering is. We
wound men by our looks and our abrupt expressions without intending
it, because we have not been taught the delicacy, and the tact, and
the gentleness, which can only be learned by the wounding of our own
sensibilities. There is a haughty feeling of uprightness which has
never been on the verge of falling, that requires humbling. There is an
inability to enter into difficulties of thought which marks the mind to
which all things have been presented superficially, and which has never
experienced the horror of feeling the ice of doubt crashing beneath the
feet. Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation; if you would
partake of the priestly gift of sympathy; if you would pour something
beyond commonplace consolation into a tempted heart; if you would pass
through the intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact which never
inflicts pain; if to that most acute of human ailments, mental doubt, you
are ever to give effectual succor—you must be content to pay the price of
the costly education. Like him, you must suffer—being tempted.
But remember it is being tempted in all points, _yet without sin_, that
makes sympathy real, manly, perfect, instead of a mere sentimental
tenderness. Sin will teach you to _feel_ for trials. It will not enable
you to judge them; nor to help them in time of need with any certainty.
* * * * *
Lastly, it is this same human sympathy which qualifies Christ for
judgment. It is written that the Father hath committed all judgment to
him, _because_ he is the Son of Man.
* * * * *
The sympathy of Christ is a comforting subject. It is, besides, a
tremendous subject; for on sympathy the awards of heaven will be built.…
A sympathy for that which is pure implies a repulsion of that which is
impure. Hatred of evil is in proportion to the strength of love for good.
To love intensely good is to hate intensely evil.… Win the mind of Christ
now, or else his sympathy for human nature will not save you from, but
only insure, a recoil of abhorrence at last.—_F. W. Robertson._
* * * * *
Hast thou not learned what thou art often told,
A truth still sacred and believed of old,
That no success attends on spears and swords
Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord’s?—_Cowper._