My heart is disquieted within me. Tearfulness and trembling are come
upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me.--Ps. lv. 4.
Thou hast proved and visited my heart in the night season--Ps. xvii.
3.
Nevertheless though I am sometimes afraid, yet put I my trust in
Thee.--Ps. lv. 3.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is
the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?--Ps. xxvii. 1.
I sought the Lord and He heard me and delivered me from all my
fear.--Ps. xxxiv. 4.
Who is there who has not at times said to himself--"God is so holy, so
pure and glorious; while I am so unjust, and unclean, and mean! and God
is so great and powerful; while I am so small and weak! What shall I do?
Does not God hate and despise me? Will He not take from me all I love
best? Will He not hurl me into endless torment when I die? How can I
escape from Him? Wretched man that I am, I cannot escape from Him! How
then can I turn away His hate? How can I make Him change His mind? How
can I soothe and appease Him? What shall I do to escape Him?"
Did you ever have such thoughts? And did you ever find those thoughts,
that slavish terror of God's wrath, that dread of hell make you better
men? I never did. Unless you go beyond them--as far beyond them as
heaven is beyond hell, as far above them as a free son is above a
miserable crouching slave, they will do you more harm than good. This
spirit of bondage, this slavish terror, instead of bringing us nearer to
God, only drives us farther from Him. It does not make us hate what is
wrong, it only makes us dread the punishment of it.
How then shall we escape the terror and misery of an evil conscience, and
rise out of our sins? Believe the warrant of your baptism. Your baptism
says to you--"God is your Father, He does not hate you though you be the
greatest sinner on earth. He loves you, for you are His child, and He
willeth not the death of a sinner, but that all should come and be saved.
He hateth nothing that He has made." This is the message of your
baptism--that you are God's child, and that God's will and wish is that
you should grow up to become His son, to serve Him lovingly, trustingly,
manfully; and that He can and will give you the power to do so; ay, He
has given you the power already, _if_ you will but claim and use it. But
you must claim and use it, because you are meant not merely to be God's
wilful, ignorant, selfish child, obeying Him from fear of the rod, but to
be His willing, loving, loyal son.
_National Sermons_.
God is not a tyrant who must be appeased with gifts, or a task-master who
must be satisfied with the labour of his slaves. He is a Father, who
loves His children, who gives and loveth to give, who gives to all
freely, and upbraideth not. He truly willeth not the death of a sinner,
but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live. His will is
a good will, and howsoever much men's sin and folly may resist it, and
seem for a time to mar it, yet He is too great and good to owe any man,
even the worst, the smallest spite or grudge. Patiently, nobly,
magnanimously, God waits--waits for the man who is a fool, to find out
his folly; waits for the heart which has tried to find pleasure in
everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to
come back to Him, that fountain of all wholesome pleasure, that
well-spring of all life fit for a man to live. When the fool finds out
his folly; when the wilful man gives up his wilfulness; when the rebel
submits himself to law; when the son comes back to his father's
house--there is no sternness, no upbraiding, no revenge; but the
everlasting and boundless love of God wells forth again as ever. The
Creator has condescended to wait for His creature, because what He wanted
was not His creature's fear, but His creature's love; not his
lip-obedience, but his heart; because He wanted him not to come back as a
trembling slave to his master, but as a son who has found out at last
what a father he has left him, when all beside has played him false. Let
him come back thus, to find all is forgiven; and to hear the Father say,
"This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."
_Discipline and other Sermons_.
When the tempest comes; when affliction, fear, anxiety, shame come, then
the Cross of Christ begins to mean something to us. For then in our
misery and confusion we look up to heaven and ask, Is there any One in
heaven who understands all this? Does God understand my trouble? Does
God feel for my trouble? Does God care for my trouble? Does God know
what trouble means? Or must I fight the battle of life alone, without
sympathy or help from God, who made me and has put me here? Then, does
the Cross of Christ bring a message to our heart such as no other thing
or being on earth can bring. For it says to us, God does understand thee
utterly; for Christ understands thee. Christ feels for thee; Christ
feels with thee; Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee.
Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. He, the
Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He
might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity and help thee to
endure, and bring thee safe through all to victory and peace.
_Westminster Sermons_.
Though we, happily, no longer believe in the terror by night, which of
old was thought to come from witches, ghosts, demons, yet there is a
terror by night in which we must believe, for it comes to us from God,
and should be listened to as the voice of God, even that terror about our
own sinfulness, folly, weakness, which comes to us in dreams and
sleepless nights. We may learn from these night fancies and night
thoughts; for they are often God's message to us, calling us to
repentance and amendment of life. They are often God's Book of Judgment,
wherein our sins are written, which God is setting before us, and showing
us the things we have done. God sends dreams to men which enable them to
look back, and recollect things past, which they had forgot only too
easily; and these humble and penitential dreams are God's warning that
(as the Article says) the infection of nature doth remain even in those
who are regenerate, and that nothing but the continual help of God's
Spirit will keep us from falling back or falling away.
_Discipline and other Sermons_.
The religion of terror is the most superficial of all religions. God's
arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though
deep, as they do to the Calvinists, because they do not involve His moral
character. Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as
justice, remember that His essence is love, and the thunder cloud will
blaze with dewy gold, full of soft rain and pure light. All the deep
things of God are bright, for God is light.
_Letters and Memories_.
I am not, and will not (please God to help me, as He has hitherto) be
anxious about anything. Why should we weary out the little life we have
left in us, when He has promised to care for us, and make us renew our
youth, and heap us with everything that is good for us?
And as for our difficulties. Has it not been fulfilled in them--As thy
day so shall thy strength be? Have they not been God's sending? God's
way of preventing the cup of bliss being over sweet? and consider, have
they not been blessed lessons? Have we not had in all things with the
temptation a way to escape? So out of evil God brings good; or rather
out of necessity He brings strength. The highest spiritual training is
contained in the most paltry physical accidents; and the meanest actual
want may be the means of calling into actual life the possible but
sleeping embryo of the very noblest faculties.
This is a great mystery; but we are animals, in time and space; and by
time and space, and our animal natures, are we educated. Therefore let
us be only patient, patient; and let God our Father teach His own lesson,
His own way. Let us try to learn it well, and learn it quickly; but do
not let us fancy that He will ring the school bell, and send us to play
before our lesson is learnt.
_Letters and Memories_.
In all the events of life pray, pray take what God does _not_ send as
_not_ good for us, and trust Him to send us what is good. Remember all
these things are right, and come with a reason, and a purpose, and a
meaning; and he who grumbles at them believeth not (for the time being at
least) in the Living God.
Ah! do not fancy that I am not often perplexed--"Cast down, yet not in
despair." No; Christ reigns, as Luther used to say--and therefore I will
not fear, "though the mountains be removed (and I with them) and cast
into the midst of the sea."
_Letters and Memories_.
All these anxieties will be good for you. They all go to the making of a
man--calling out that God-dependence in him which is the only true self-
dependence, the only true strength. Well said old Hezekiah, "Lord, by
all _these_ things men live (by trouble, sorrow, sickness), and in these
things is the life of the spirit."
_MS. Letters_.
Our Lord said, "Take no thought for the morrow; the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof." Matt. vi. 34. And do we not find that our Lord's words are
true? Who are the people who get through most work in their lives, with
the least wear and tear? Are they the anxious people? Those who imagine
to themselves possible misfortunes, and ask continually, What if this
happened, or if that? How should I be able to get through such and such
a trouble? Far, far from it. Let us not waste the strength which God
has given us for to-day in vain fears or vain dreams about to-morrow. To-
day is quite full enough of anxiety and care. Sufficient for the day is
the evil thereof, and sufficient for the day is the good thereof. To-day,
and to-morrow too, may end very differently from what we _hope_. Yes.
But they may end very differently from what we _fear_. Look not too far
ahead, lest you see what is coming before you are ready for the sight. If
we foresaw the troubles that are coming, perhaps it would break our
hearts; and if we foresaw the happiness which is coming, perhaps it would
turn our heads. Let us not meddle with the future but refrain our souls
and keep them low, like little children, content with the day's food, and
the day's schooling, and the day's play-hours, sure that the Divine
Master knows all that is right, and how to train us, and whither to lead
us, though we know not, and need not know, save this, that the path by
which He is leading each of us--if we will but obey and follow, step by
step--leads up to Everlasting Life.
_All Saints-Day Sermons_.