'Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall
utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and
not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.'--ISAIAH xl. 30, 31.
I remember a sunset at sea, where the bosom of each wavelet that
fronted the west was aglow with fiery gold, and the back of each turned
eastward was cold green; so that, looking on the one hand all was
glory, and on the other all was sober melancholy. So differently does
life look to you young people and to us older ones. Every man must buy
his own experience for himself, and no preaching nor talking will ever
make you see life as we see it. It is neither possible nor desirable
that you should; but it is both possible and most desirable that you
should open your eyes to plain, grave facts, which do not at all depend
on our way of looking at things, and that if they be ascertainable, as
they are, you should let them shape your lives.
Here are a couple of facts in my text which I ask you to look steadily
in the face, and to take account of them, because, if you do so now, it
may save you an immense deal of disappointment and sorrow in the days
that are to come. You have the priceless prerogative still in your
hands of determining what that future is to be; but you will never use
that power rightly if you are guided by illusions, or if, unguided by
anything but inclination, you let things drift, and do as you like.
So, then, my object is simply to deal with these two forecasts which my
text presents; the one a dreary certainty of weariness and decay, the
other a blessed possibility of inexhaustible and incorruptible strength
and youth, and on the contrast to build as earnest an appeal to you as
I can make.
I. Now, then, look at the first fact here, that of the dreary certainty
of weariness and decay.
I do not need to spend much time in talking about that. It is one of
the commonplaces which are so familiar that they have lost all power of
impression, and can only be rescued from their trivial insignificance
by being brought into immediate connection with our own experience. If,
instead of the toothless generality, 'the youths shall faint and be
weary,' I could get you young people to say, '_I--I_ shall faint and be
weary, and, as sure as I am living, I shall lose what makes to me the
very joy of life at this moment,' I should not have preached in vain.
Of course the words of my text point to the plain fact that all created
and physical life, by the very law of its being, in the act of living
tends to death; and by the very operation of its strength tends to
exhaustion. There are three stages in every creature's life--that of
growth, that of equilibrium, that of decay. You are in the first. If
you live, it is as certain as fate that you will come to the second and
the third. _Your_ 'eyes will grow dim,' _your_ 'natural force' will be
'abated,' _your_ body will become a burden, _your_ years that are full
of buoyancy will be changed for years of heaviness and weariness,
strength will decay, 'and the young men'--that is _you_--'shall utterly
fall.'
And the text points also to another fact, that, long before your
natural life shall have begun to tend towards decay, hard work and
occasional sorrows and responsibilities and burdens of all sorts will
very often make you wearied and ready to faint. In your early days you
dream of life as a kind of enchanted garden, full of all manner of
delights; and you stand at the threshold with eager eyes and
outstretched hands. Ah! dear young friend, long before you have
traversed the length of one of its walks, you will often have been sick
and tired of the whole thing, and weary of what is laid upon you.
My text points to another fact, as certain as gravitation, that the
faintness and weariness and decay of the bodily strength will be
accompanied with a parallel change in your feelings. We are drawn
onward by hopes, and when we get them fulfilled we find that they are
disappointing. Custom, which weighs upon us 'heavy as frost, and deep
almost as life,' takes the edge off everything that is delightsome,
though it does not so completely take away the pain of things that are
burdensome and painful. Men travel from a tinted morning into the sober
light of common day, and with failing faculties and shattered illusions
and dissipated hopes, and powers bending under the long monotony of
middle life, most of them live. Now all that is the veriest threadbare
morality, and I dare say while I have been speaking, some of you have
been thinking that I am repeating platitudes that every old woman could
preach. So I am. That is to say, I am trying to put into feeble words
the universal human experience. That is your experience, and what I
want to get you to think about now is that, as sure as you are living
and rejoicing in your youth and strength, this is the fate that is
awaiting you--'the youths shall faint and be weary, and shall utterly
fall.'
Well, then, one question: Do you not think that, if that is so, it
would be as well to face it? Do you not think that a wise man would
take account of all the elements in forecasting his life and would
shape his conduct accordingly? If there be something certain to come,
it is a very questionable piece of wisdom to make that the thing which
we are most unwilling to think about. I do not want to be a kill-joy; I
do not want to take anything out of the happy buoyancy of youth. I
would say, as even that cynical, bitter Ecclesiastes says, 'Rejoice, O
young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of
thy youth.' By all means; only take all the facts into account, and if
you have joys which shrivel up at the touch of this thought, then the
sooner you get rid of such joys the better. If your gladness depends
upon your forcibly shutting your eyes to what is inevitably certain to
come about, do you not think that you are living in a fool's paradise
that you had better get out of as soon as possible? There is the fact.
Will you be a wise and brave man and front it, and settle how you are
going to deal with it, or will you let it hang there on your horizon, a
thunder-cloud that you do not like to look at, and that you are all the
more unwilling to entertain the thought of, because you are so sure
that it will burst in storm? Lay this, then, to heart, though it is a
dreary certainty, that weariness and decay are sure to be your fate.
II. Now turn, in the next place, to the blessed opposite possibility of
inexhaustible and immortal strength. 'They that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.' The
life of nature tends inevitably downward, but there may be another life
within the life of nature, which shall have the opposite motion, and
tend as certainly upwards. 'The youths shall faint and be
weary'--whether they be Christians or not, the law of decay and fatigue
will act upon them; but there may be that within each of us, if we
will, which shall resist that law, and have no proclivity whatsoever to
extinction in its blaze, to death in its life, to weariness in its
effort, and shall be replenished and not exhausted by expenditure.
'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,' and, in all
forms of motion possible to a creature they shall expatiate and never
tire. So let us look on this blessed possibility a little more closely.
Note, then, how to get at it. 'They that wait upon the Lord' is Old
Testament dialect for what in New Testament phraseology is meant by
'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.' For the notion expressed here by
'waiting' is that of expectant dependence, and the New Testament
'faith' is the very same in its attitude of expectant dependence, while
the object of the Old Testament 'waiting,' Jehovah, is identical with
the object of the New Testament faith, which fastens on God manifest in
the flesh, the Man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, I am not diverting the language of my text from its true
meaning, but simply opening its depth, when I say that the condition of
the inflow of this unwearied and immortal life into our poor, fainting,
dying humanity is simply the trust in Jesus Christ the Redeemer of our
souls. True, the revelation has advanced; the contents of that which we
grasp are more developed and articulate, blessed be God! True, we know
more about Jehovah, when we see Him in Jesus Christ, than Isaiah did.
True, we have to trust in Him as dying on the Cross for our salvation
and as the pattern and example in His humanity of all nobleness and
beauty of life for young or old, but the Christ is the 'same yesterday,
and to-day, and for ever.' And the faith that knit the furthest back of
the saints of old to the Jehovah, whom they dimly knew, is in essence
identical with the faith that binds my poor sinful heart to the Christ
that died and that lives for my redemption and salvation. So, dear
brethren, here is the simple old message for each of you, young or old.
No matter where we stand on the course of life, there may come into our
hearts a Divine Indweller, who laughs at weariness and knows nothing of
decay; and He will come if, as sinful men, we turn ourselves to that
dear Lord, who fainted and was weary many a time in His humanity, and
who now lives, the 'strong Son of God, immortal love,' to make us
partakers in His immortality and His strength. The way, then, by which
we get this divine gift is by faith in Jesus Christ, which is the
expansion, as it was the root, of trust in Jehovah.
Further, what is this strength that we thus get, if we will, by faith?
It is the true entrance into our souls of a divine life. God in His Son
will come to us, according to His own gracious and profound promise:
'If any man open the door I will enter in.' He will come into our
hearts and abide there. He will give to us a life derived from, and
therefore, kindred with, His own. And in that connection it is very
striking to notice how the prophet, in the context, reiterates these
two words, _'fainteth_ not, neither is _weary._' He begins by speaking
of 'God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who fainteth
not, neither is weary.' He passes on to speak of His gift of power to
the faint. He returns to the contrast between the Creator's
incorruptible strength and the fleeting power of the strongest and
youngest. And then he crowns all with the thought that the same
characteristics will mark them in whom the unwearied God dwells, as
mark Him. We too, like Him, if we have Christ in our hearts by faith,
will share, in some fashion and degree, in His wondrous prerogative of
unwearied strength.
So, brethren, here is the promise. God will give Himself to you, and in
the very heart of your decaying nature will plant the seed of an
immortal being which shall, like His own, shake off fatigue from the
limbs, and never tend to dissolution or an end. The life of nature dies
by living; the life of grace, which may belong to us all, lives by
living, and lives evermore thereby. And so that life is continuous and
progressive, with no tendency to decay, nor term to its being. 'The
path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more,'
until it riseth to the zenith of the noontide of the day. Each of you,
looking forward to the certain ebbing away of creatural power, to the
certain changes that will pass upon you, may say, 'I know that I shall
have to leave behind me my present youthful strength, my unworn
freshness, my buoyancy, my confidence, my wonder, my hope; but I shall
carry my Christ; and in Him I shall possess the secret of an immortal
youth.'
The oldest angels are the youngest. The longer men live in fellowship
with Christ, the stronger do they grow. And though our lives, whether
we are Christians or no, are necessarily subject to the common laws of
mortality, we may carry all that is worth preserving of the earliest
stages into the latest; and when grey hairs are upon us, and we are
living next door to our graves, we may still have the enthusiasm, the
energy, and above all, the boundless hopefulness that made the gladness
and the spring of our long-buried youth. 'They shall still bring forth
fruit in old age.' 'The youths shall faint and be weary, but they that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.'
There is one more point to touch, and then I have done, and that is the
manner in which this immortal strength is exercised. The latter clauses
of my text give us, so to speak, three forms of motion. 'They shall
mount up with wings as eagles.' Some good commentators find in this a
parallel to the words in the 103rd Psalm, 'My youth is renewed like the
eagle's,' and propose to translate it in this fashion, 'They shall cast
their plumage like the eagle.' But it seems much more in accordance
with the context and the language to adopt substantially the reading of
our English version here, or to make the slight change, 'They shall
lift up their wings as the eagle,' implying, of course, the steady
upward flight towards the light of heaven.
So, then, there are three forms of unwearied strength lying ready for
you, young men and women, to take for your very own if you like:
strength to soar, strength to run, strength to walk.
There is strength to soar. Old men generally shed their wings, and can
only manage to crawl. They have done with romance. Enthusiasms are
dead. Sometimes they cynically smile at their own past selves and their
dreams. And it is a bad sign when an old man does that. But for the
most part they are content, unless they have got Christ in their
hearts, to keep along the low levels, and their soaring days are done.
But if you and I have Jesus Christ for the life of our spirits, as
certainly as fire sends its shooting tongues upwards, so certainly
shall we rise above the sorrows and sins and cares of this 'dim spot
which men call earth,' and find an ampler field for buoyant motion high
up in communion with God. Strength to soar means the gracious power of
bringing all heaven into our grasp, and setting our affections on
things above. As the night falls, and joys become fewer and life
sterner, and hopes become rarer and more doubtful, it is something to
feel that, however straitened may be the ground below, there is plenty
of room above, and that, though we are strangers upon earth, we can
lift our thoughts yonder. If there be darkness here, still we can
'outsoar the shadow of our night,' and live close to the sun in
fellowship with God. Dear brethren, life on earth were too wretched
unless it were possible to 'mount up with wings as eagles.'
Again, you may have strength to run--that is to say, there is power
waiting for you for all the great crises of your lives which call for
special, though it may be brief, exertion. Such crises will come to
each of you, in sorrow, work, difficulty, hard conflicts. Moments will
be sprung upon you without warning, in which you will feel that years
hang on the issue of an instant. Great tasks will be clashed down
before you unexpectedly which will demand the gathering together of all
your power. And there is only one way to be ready for such times as
these, and that is to live waiting on the Lord, near Christ, with Him
in your hearts, and then nothing will come that will be too hard for
you. However rough the road, and however severe the struggle, and
however swift the pace, you will be able to keep it up. Though it may
be with panting lungs and a throbbing heart, and dim eyes and quivering
muscles, yet if you wait on the Lord you will run and not be weary. You
will be masters of the crises.
Strength to walk may be yours--that is to say, patient power for
persistent pursuit of weary, monotonous duty. That is the hardest, and
so it is named last. Many a man finds it easy, under the pressure of
strong excitement, and for a moment or two, to keep up a swift pace,
who finds it very difficult to keep steadily at unexciting work. And
yet there is nothing to be done except by doggedly plodding along the
dusty road of trivial duties, unhelped by excitement and unwearied by
monotony. Only one thing will conquer the disgust at the wearisome
round of mill-horse tasks which, sooner or later, seizes all godless
men, and that is to bring the great principles of the gospel to bear on
them, and to do them in the might and for the sake of the dear Lord.
'They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk' along life's common
way in cheerful godliness, 'and they shall not faint.'
Dear friends, life to us all is, and must be, full of sorrow and of
effort. Constant work and frequent sorrows wear us all out, and bring
us many a time to the verge of fainting. I beseech you to begin right,
and not to add to the other occasions for weariness that of having to
retrace, with remorseful heart and ashamed feet, the paths of evil on
which you have run. Begin right, which is to say, begin with Christ and
take Him for inspiration, for pattern, for guide, for companion. 'Run
with patience the race set before you, looking unto Jesus the author of
your faith, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.'
And if you have Him in your hearts, then, however your creatural power
may grow weary, yet because He is with you, 'your shoes shall be iron
and brass, and as your days so shall your strength be,' and you may
lift up in your turn the glad, triumphant acknowledgment: 'For this
cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, our inward man
is renewed day by day.'
God bless you all and make that your experience!
CHRIST THE ARRESTER OF INCIPIENT EVIL AND THE NOURISHER OF INCIPIENT
GOOD
'A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not
quench.... He shall not fail nor be discouraged.'--ISAIAH xlii. 3, 4.
The two metaphors which we have in the former part of these words are
not altogether parallel. 'A bruised reed' has suffered an injury which,
however, is neither complete nor irreparable. 'Smoking flax,' on the
other hand--by which, of course, is meant flax used as a wick in an
old-fashioned oil lamp--is partially lit. In the one a process has been
begun which, if continued, ends in destruction; in the other, a process
has been begun which, if continued, ends in a bright flame. So the one
metaphor may refer to the beginnings of evil which may still be
averted, and the other the beginnings of incipient and incomplete good.
If we keep this distinction in mind, the words of our text gain
wonderfully in comprehensiveness.
Then again, it is to be noticed that in the last words of our text,
which are separated from the former by a clause which we omit, we have
an echo of these metaphors. The word translated 'fail' is the same as
that rendered in the previous verse 'smoking,' or 'dimly burning'; and
the word 'discouraged' is the same as that rendered in the previous
verse 'bruised.' So then, this 'Servant of the Lord,' who is not to
break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax, is fitted for His
work, because He Himself has no share in the evils which He would heal,
and none in the weaknesses which He would strengthen. His perfect
manhood knows no flaws nor bruises; His complete goodness is capable of
and needs no increase. Neither outward force nor inward weakness can
hinder His power to heal and bless; therefore His work can never cease
till it has attained its ultimate purpose. 'He shall not fail nor be
discouraged'; shall neither be broken by outward violence, nor shall
the flame of His fading energy burn faint until He hath 'set judgment
in the earth,' and crowned His purposes with complete success.
We have, then, here set before us three significant representations of
the servant of the Lord, which may well commend Him to our confidence
and our love. I shall not spend any time in answering the question: Of
whom speaketh the prophet this? The answer is plain for us. He speaks
of the personal Servant of the Lord, and the personal Servant of the
Lord is Jesus Christ our Saviour. I ask you then to come with me while
I deal, as simply as may be, with these three ideas that lie before us
in this great prophecy.
I. Consider then, first, the representation of the Servant of the Lord
as the arrester of incipient ruin.
'He shall not break the bruised reed.' Here is the picture--a slender
bulrush, growing by the margin of some tarn or pond; its sides crushed
and dented in by some outward power, a gust of wind, a sudden blow, the
foot of a passing animal. The head is hanging by a thread, but it is
not yet snapped or broken off from the stem.
But, blessed be God! there emerges from the metaphor not only the
solemn thought of the bruises by sin that all men bear, but the other
blessed one, that there is no man so bruised as that he is broken; none
so injured as that restoration is impossible, no depravity so total but
that it may be healed, none so far off but that he may be brought nigh.
On no man has sin fastened its venomous claws so deeply but that these
may be wrenched away. In none of us has the virus so gone through our
veins but that it is capable of being expelled. The reeds are all
bruised, the reeds are none of them broken. And so my text comes with
its great triumphant hopefulness, and gathers into one mass as capable
of restoration the most abject, the most worthless, the most ignorant,
the most sensuous, the most godless, the most Christ-hating of the
race. Jesus looks on all the tremendous bulk of a world's sins with the
confidence that He can move that mountain and cast it into the depths
of the sea.
There is a man in Paris that says he has found a cure for that horrible
disease of hydrophobia, and who therefore regards the poor sufferers of
whom others despair as not beyond the reach of hope. Christ looks upon
a world of men smitten with madness, and in whose breasts awful poison
is working, with the calm confidence that He carries in His hand an
elixir, one drop of which inoculated into the veins of the furious
patient will save him from death, and make him whole. 'The blood of
Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' 'He will not break,' and that
means He will restore, 'the bruised reed.' There are no hopeless
outcasts. None of you are beyond the reach of a Saviour's love, a
Saviour's blood, a Saviour's healing.
But then the words in my text may be taken in a somewhat narrower
sense, applying more particularly to a class. In accordance with other
metaphors of Scripture, we may think of 'the bruised reed' as
expressive of the condition of men whose hearts have been crushed by
the consciousness of their sins. 'The broken and the contrite heart,'
bruised and pulverised, as it were, by a sense of evil, may be typified
for us by this bruised reed. And then from the words of my text there
emerges the great and blessed hope that such a heart, wholesomely
removed from its self-complacent fancy of soundness, shall certainly be
healed and bound up by His tender hand. Did you ever see a gardener
dealing with some plant, a spray of which may have been wounded? How
delicately and tenderly the big, clumsy hand busies itself about the
tiny spray, and by stays and bandages brings it into an erect position,
and then gives it water and loving care. Just so does Jesus Christ deal
with the conscious and sensitive heart of a man who has begun to find
out how bad he is, and has been driven away from all his foolish
confidence. Christ comes to such an one and restores him, and just
because he is crushed deals with him gently, pouring in His
consolation. Wheresoever there is a touch of penitence, there is
present a restoring Christ.
And the words may be looked at from yet another point of view. We may
think of them as representing to us the merciful dealing of the Master
with the spirits which are beaten and bruised, sore and wounded, by
sorrows and calamities; to whom the Christ comes in all the tenderness
of His gentleness, and lays a hand upon them--the only hand in all the
universe that can touch a bleeding heart without hurting it.
Brother and sister suffering from any sorrow, and bleeding from any
wound, there is a balm and a physician. There is one hand that will
never be laid with blundering kindness or with harshness upon our sore
hearts, but whose touch will be healing, and whose presence will be
peace.
The Christ who knows our sins and sorrows will not break the bruised
reed. The whole race of man may be represented in that parable that
came from His own lips, as fallen among thieves that have robbed him
and wounded him and left him bruised, but, blessed be God! only 'half
dead'; sorely wounded, indeed, but not so sorely but that he may be
restored. And there comes One with the wine and the oil, and pours them
into the wounds. 'The bruised reed shall He not break.'
II. Now, in the next place, look at the completing thought that is
here, in the second clause, which represents Christ as the fosterer of
incipient and imperfect good.
'The dimly-burning wick He shall not quench.' A process, as I have
said, is begun in the smoking flax, which only needs to be carried on
to lead to a brilliant flame. That represents for us not the beginnings
of a not irreparable evil, but the commencement of very dim and
imperfect good. Now, then, who are represented by this 'smoking flax'?
You will not misunderstand me, nor think that I am contradicting what I
have already been saying, if I claim for this second metaphor as wide a
universality as the former, and say that in all men, just because the
process of evil and the wounds from it are not so deep and complete as
that restoration is impossible, therefore is there something in their
nature which corresponds to this dim flame that needs to be fostered in
order to blaze brightly abroad. There is no man out of hell but has in
him something that needs but to be brought to sovereign power in his
life in order to make him a light in the world. You have consciences at
the least; you have convictions, you know you have, which if you
followed them out would make Christians of you straight away. You have
aspirations after good, desires, some of you, after purity and
nobleness of living, which only need to be raised to the height and the
dominance in your lives which they ought to possess, in order to
revolutionise your whole course. There is a spark in every man which,
fanned and cared for, will change him from darkness into light. Fanned
and cared for it needs to be, and fanned and cared for it can only be
by a divine power coming down upon it from without. This second
metaphor of my text, as truly as the other, belongs to every soul of
man upon the earth. He from whom all sparks and light have died out is
not a man but a devil. And for all of us the exhortation comes: 'Thou
hast a voice within testifying to God and to duty'; listen to it and
care for it.
Then again, dear brethren, in a narrower way, the words may be applied
to a class. There are some of us who have in us a little spark, as we
believe, of a divine life, the faint beginnings of a Christian
character. We call ourselves Christ's disciples. We are; but oh! how
dimly the flax burns. They say that where there is smoke there is fire.
There is a great deal more smoke than fire in the most of Christian
people in this generation, and if it were not for such thoughts as this
of my text about that dear Christ who will not lay a hasty hand upon
some little tremulous spark, and by one rash movement extinguish it for
ever, there would be but small hope for a great many of us.
Whether, then, the dimly-burning wick be taken to symbolise the
lingering remains of a better nature which still abides with all sinful
men, yet capable of redemption, or whether it be taken to mean the low
and imperfect and inconsistent and feeble Christianity of us professing
Christians, the words of my text are equally blessed and equally true.
Christ will neither despise, nor so bring down His hand upon it as to
extinguish, the feeblest spark. Look at His life on earth, think how He
bore with those blundering, foolish, selfish disciples of His; how
patient the divine Teacher was with their slow learning of His meaning
and catching of His character. Remember how, when a man came to Him
with a very imperfect goodness, the Evangelist tells us that Jesus,
beholding him, loved him. And take out of these blessed stories this
great hope, that howsoever small men 'despise the day of small things,'
the Greatest does not; and howsoever men may say 'Such a little spark
can never be kindled into flame, the fire is out, you may as well let
it alone,' He never says that, but by patient teaching and fostering
and continual care and wise treatment will nourish and nurture it until
it leaps into a blaze.
How do you make 'smoking flax' burn? You give it oil, you give it air,
and you take away the charred portions. And Christ will give you, in
your feebleness, the oil of His Spirit, that you may burn brightly as
one of the candlesticks in His Temple; and He will let air in, and
sometimes take away the charred portions by the wise discipline of
sorrow and trial, in order that the smoking flax may become a shining
light. But by whatsoever means He may work, be sure of this, that He
will neither despise nor neglect the feeblest inclination of good after
Him, but will nourish it to perfection and to beauty.
The reason why so many Christian men's Christian light is so fuliginous
and dim is just that they keep away from Jesus Christ. 'Abide in Me and
I in you.' 'As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide
in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.' How can the Temple
lamps burn bright unless the Priest of the Temple tends them? Keep near
Him that His hand may nourish your smoking dimness into a pure flame,
leaping heavenward and illuminating your lives.
III. And now, lastly, we have here the representation of the servant of
the Lord's exemption from human evil and weakness, as the foundation of
His restoring and fostering work.
'He shall not burn dimly nor be broken till He hath set judgment in the
earth.' There are no bruises in this reed; that is to say, Christ's
manhood is free from all scars and wounds of evil or of sin. There is
no dimness in this light, that is to say, Christ's character is
perfect, His goodness needs no increase. There is no trace of effort in
His holiness, no growth manifest in His God-likeness, from the
beginning to the end. There is no outward violence that can be brought
to bear upon Him that will stay Him in His purpose. There is no inward
failure of strength in Him that may lead us to fear that His work shall
not be completed. And because of these things, because of His perfect
exemption from human infirmity, because in Him was no sin. He is
manifested to take away our sins. Because in Him there was goodness
incapable of increase, being perfect from the beginning, therefore He
is manifested to make us participants of His own unalterable and
infinite goodness and purity. Because no outward violence, no inward
weakness, can ever stay His course, nor make Him abandon His purpose,
therefore His gospel looks upon the world with boundless hopefulness,
with calm triumph; will not hear of there being any outcast and
irreclaimable classes; declares it to be a blasphemy against God and
Christ to say that any men or any nations are incapable of receiving
the gospel and of being redeemed by it, and comes with supreme love and
a calm consciousness of infinite power to you, my brother, in your
deepest darkness, in your moods most removed from God and purity, and
insures you that it will heal you, and will raise all that in you is
feeble to its own strength. Every man may pray to that strong Christ
who fails not nor is discouraged--
'What in me is dark
Illumine; what is low, raise and support,'
in the confidence that He will hear and answer. If you do that you will
not do it in vain, but His gentle hand laid upon you will heal the
bruises that sin has made. Out of your weakness, as of 'a reed shaken
with the wind,' the Restorer will make a pillar of marble in the Temple
of His God. And out of your smoking dimness and wavering light, a spark
at the best, almost buried in the thick smoke that accompanies it, the
fostering Christ will make a brightness which shall flame as the
perfect light that 'shineth more and more unto the noontide of the day.'