Of course, obviously--and I need not say more than a word about
that--we find it so in regard to the outward blessings that are poured
into our lives. We are taught, if the translation of the New Testament
is correct, to ask, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' and to let
to-morrow alone. Life comes to us pulsation by pulsation, breath by
breath, by reason of the continual operation, in the material world, of
the present God's present giving. He does not start us, at the
beginning of our days, with a fund of physical vitality upon which we
thereafter draw, but moment by moment He opens His hand, and lets life
and breath and all things flow out to us moment by moment, for no
creature would live for an instant except for the present working of a
present God. If we only realised how the slow pulsation of the minutes
is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how everything
that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of the
continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after
ripple of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn,
and fuller of God than, alas! it is.
But the true region in which we may best find illustrations of this
principle in reference to God's gifts is the region of the spiritual
and moral bestowments which He in His love pours upon us. He does not
flood us with them: He filters them drop by drop, for great and good
reasons. I only mention three various forms of this one great thought.
God gives us gifts adapted to the moment. 'The matter of a day,' the
thing fitted for the instant, comes. In deepest reality, all is one
gift, for in truth what God gives to us is Himself; or, if you like to
put it so, His grace. That little word 'grace' is like a small window
that opens out on to a great landscape, for it gathers up into one
encyclopaediacal expression the whole infinite variety of beneficences
and bestowments which come showering down upon us. That one gift is, as
the Apostle puts it in one of his eloquent epithets, 'the _manifold_
grace of God,' which word in the original is even more rich and
picturesque, because it means the 'many-variegated' grace--like some
rich piece of embroidery glowing with all manner of dyes and gold. So
the one gift comes to us manifold, rich in its adaptation to, and its
exquisite fitness for, the needs of the moment. The Rabbis had a
tradition that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man just
what each man needed or wished most. It Is as though in some imperial
city on a day of rejoicing, one found a fountain in the market-place
pouring out, according to the wish of the people, various costly wines
and refreshing drinks, God's gift comes to us with like variety--the
'matter of a day in its day.'
God never gives us the wrong medicine. In whatever variety of
circumstances we stand, that one infinitely simple and yet infinitely
complex gift contains what we specially want at the moment. Am I
struggling? He extends a hand to steady me. Am I fighting? He is my
'sword and shield, my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my
high tower.' Am I anxious? He comes into my heart, and brings with Him
a great peace, and all waves cease to toss and smooth themselves into a
level plain. Am I glad? He comes to heighten the gladness by some touch
of holier joy. Am I perplexed in mind? If I look to Him, 'His coming
shall be as the morning,' and illumination will be granted. Am I
treading a lonely path? There is One by my side who will neither
change, nor fail, nor die. Whatever any man needs, at the moment that
he needs it, that one great Gift will supply 'the matter of a day in
its day.'
God gives punctually. Many of us may have sometimes sent Christmas
presents to India or Australia some weeks before. Some will arrive in
time and some will be too late. God's gifts never reach us before the
day, and they never come after the day. 'The Lord shall help her, and
that right early,' said the grand psalm. What the Psalmist was thinking
about was, I suppose, that miraculous intervention when the army of
Sennacherib was smitten in a night. Timid and faithless souls in
Jerusalem, as they looked over the walls and saw the encircling lines
of the fierce foes drawing closer and closer round the doomed city,
must have said, 'Our Lord delayeth His coming,' and could not stand the
test of their faith and patience, involved in God's apparent
indifference to the need of His people. To-morrow the assault is to be
delivered. To-night
'The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed';
and the would-be assailants, when that to-morrow dawned, were lying
stiff and stark in their tents. God's help comes, not too soon, lest we
should not know the blessedness of trusting in the dark; and not too
late, lest we should know the misery of trusting in vain.
Peter is lying in prison. Herod intends, after the Passover, to bring
him out to the people. The scaffolding is ready. The first watch of the
night passes, and the second. If once it is fairly light, escape is
impossible. But in the grey dawn the angel touches the sleeper. He
wakes while his guards sleep. There is no need for hurry. He who has
God for his Deliverer has no occasion to 'go out with haste.' So, with
strange and majestic leisureliness, the escaping prisoner is bid to put
on his shoes and gird himself. No doubt, he cast many a scrutinising
glance at the four sleeping legionaries whom a heedless movement might
have wakened. When all is ready, he is led forth through all the wards,
each being a separate peril, and all made safe to him. The first gate
opens, and the second gate opens, and the iron gate that leads into the
city opens, and quietly he and the angel go down the street. It is
light enough for him to see his way to the house where the brethren are
assembled. He gets safe behind Mary's door before it is light enough
for the gaolers to discover his absence, and for the pursuers to be
started in their search. The Lord did help him, and that right early--'
the matter of a day in its day,'
We shall find, if we leave our times in His hand, that the old simple
faith has still a talismanic power to quiet us. His time is best, so be
patient, and be trustful in your patience.
Again, God gives gifts enough, and not more than enough. He serves out
our rations for spirit as for body, as they do on shipboard, where the
sailors have to take their pots and plates to the galley every day and
for each meal, and get enough to help them over the moment's hunger.
The manna fell morning by morning. 'He that gathered much had nothing
over, he that gathered little had no lack.' So all the variety of our
changeful conditions, besides its purpose of disciplining ourselves and
of making character, has also the purpose of affording a theatre for
the display, if I may use such cold language--or rather let me say
affording an opportunity for the bestowment--of the infinitely varied,
exquisitely adapted, punctual, and sufficient grace of God.
II. But now, secondly, a word about the text as containing a precept
for our action.
Let me put what I have to say in three plain sentences.
First, take short views of the future. Of course, we have to look
ahead, and in reference to many things to take prudent forecasts, but
how many of us there are who weaken ourselves and spoil to-day by being
'over-exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils'! It is a great
piece of practical philosophy, and I am sure that it has much to do
with our getting the best out of the present moment, that we should
either take very short or very long views of the future. Either
'Let the unknown to-morrow
Bring with it what it may,'
or look beyond the last of the days into the unseen light of an
unsetting sun. If I must anticipate, let me anticipate the ultimate,
the changeless, the certain; and let me not condemn my faculty of
picturing that which is to come, to look along the low ranges of
earthly life, and torture myself by imagining all the possibilities of
evil of which my condition admits, as being turned into certainties
to-morrow. Take 'the matter of a day _in_ its day.' 'Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof.' Let us make the minute what it ought to
be, then God will make the whole what it ought to be.
Again I say, let us fill each day with discharged duties. If you and I
do not do the matter of the day in its day, the chances are that no
to-morrow will afford an opportunity of doing it. So there will come
upon us all, if we are unfaithful to this portioning out of tasks to
times, that burden of an irrevocable past, and of the omitted duties
that will stand reproving and condemning before us, whensoever we turn
our eyes to them. 'It might have been, and it is not'; does a sadder
speech than that fall from human lips? Brethren, the day, though it is
short, is elastic; and no one knows how much of discharged service and
accomplished work and fulfilled responsibilities can be crammed into
its hours, until he has earnestly tried to fill each moment with the
task which belongs to the moment. 'The sluggard will not plough by
reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest and have
nothing.' If our day is not filled full of work, some to-morrow will be
filled full, in retrospect, of thorns and stings. Life is short; 'the
night cometh when no man can work.' 'I must work the works of Him that
sent me while it is day.'
Lastly, I would say, keep open a continual communion with God, that day
by day you may get what day by day you need. There are hosts of people
who call themselves, and, in some kind of surface way, are, Christian
people, who seem to think that they get all that they need of the grace
of God in a lump, at the beginning of their Christian career, and who
are living upon past communications and the memory of these, and are
forgetting that they can no more live and be nourished upon past gifts
of God's grace than upon the dinner that they ate this day last year.
We must hang continually upon Him, if we are continually to receive
from His hand. No past blessing will avail for present use.
Dear friends, the purpose of this principle, which I have been trying
to illustrate in God's way of dealing with us, is that we shall be
content to be continually dependent, and consciously as well as
continually dependent, upon Him. In the measure in which we keep our
hearts open for the perpetual influx of His grace, in that measure
shall we be ready for each day as it comes; for its trials and its
joys, for its possibilities and its duties.
This, too, must be remembered--that the days bolted together make
months; and the months, years; and the years, life; and that life as a
whole is 'a day'; and that there is a 'matter' of that day which can
only be done in its day. Oh that none of us may be the subjects of that
sad wail from a Saviour's heart and a Saviour's lips, which lamented,
'If thou hadst known, at least, in this thy day, the things that belong
to thy peace; but now'--the night has come, and the darkness of the
night, and--'they are hid from thine eyes!'