III. The way by which these contrasts can be reconciled, and this
likeness secured.
'They that wait upon the Lord'--that is the whole secret. What does
waiting on the Lord include? Let me put it in three brief exhortations.
Keep near Him; keep still; expect. If I stray away from Him, I cannot
expect His power to come to me. If I fling myself about, in vain
impatience, struggling, resisting providences, shirking duties,
perturbing my soul, I cannot expect that the peace which brings
strength, or the strength which brings peace, will come to me. It must
be a windless sea that mirrors the sunshine and the blue, and the
troubled heart has not God's strength in it. If I do not expect to get
anything from Him, He will not give me anything; not because He will
not, but because He cannot. Take the old Psalmist's words, 'I have
quieted myself as a weaned child,' and nestle on the great bosom, and
its warmth, its fragrance, its serenity will be granted to you. Keep
hold of God's hand in expectation, in submission, in close union, and
the contact will communicate something of His own power. 'In quietness
and in confidence shall be your strength.' The bitter contrasts may all
be harmonised, and the miraculous assimilation of humanity to divinity
may, in growing measure according to our faith, be realised in us. And
though we must still bear the limitations of our present corporeal
condition, and though life's tasks must still oftentimes be felt by us
as toils, and life's burdens as too burdensome for our feeble
shoulders, yet we shall be held up. 'As thy day so shall thy strength
be,' and at last, when we mount up further than eagle's wings have ever
soared, and look down upon the stars that are 'rolled together as a
scroll,' we shall through eternal ages 'run and not be weary' and 'walk
and not faint.'