YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
HERVEY D. LELAND, YALE 1885
Gift of
JAMES R. JOY, YALE 1885

ABIDING HELP FOR
CHANGING DAYS

What Thou shalt to-day provide
Let me, as a child, receive ;
What to-morrow may betide
Calmly to Thy wisdom leave :
'Tis enough that Thou wilt care ;
Why should I the burden bear ?
John Newton.

ABIDING HELP FOR
CHANGING DAYS
QUIET HEART-MUSINGS FOR DEVOTIONAL HOURS

REV. G. H. KNIGHT
AUTHOR OF
"THE MASTER'S QUESTIONS TO HIS DISCIPLES," " IN THE SECRET
OP HIS PRESENCE," " DIVINE UPLTFTINGS," "PULL ALLEGIANCE,"
"IN THE CLOUDY AND. DARK DAY," ETC.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

Printed by Hazell, Watson 6- Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

PREFATORY NOTE
' I AHE purpose of this book is purely devo-
-*¦ tional. It is intended as a help in that
.private fellowship with God to which most earnest
Christians delight to devote a portion of the
morning hours before the pressure of the day
begins. As the Contents' pages will indicate, its key
note is "To-day"; and ranging, as it does,
over many of the changes, both joyous and sad,
which any day may suddenly bring, it is meant
to strengthen the faith and courage of the
Christian heart amid the constant vicissitudes
of life.
It is concerned, not with these outward changes
themselves, but with the varying experiences of
the soul as affected by them, and is designed as

vi PREFATORY NOTE
a help to the maintaining of a firm and steady
trustfulness in a Father's love, and to the forti
fying of the heart against the ever-present temp
tations to despondency on the one hand and to
unfaithfulness on the other.
It is chiefly consolatory and uplifting; but, if
occasionally heart-searching too, it may be none
the less helpful and profitable on that account.

Garelochhead, 1912.

CONTENTS

i
PACE
BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD . . 3

II
MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY ... II
III
MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY . . . 19
IV
GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY ... 27

GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY . . 35
vii

CONTENTS

VI PAGE
A DAY OF PROSPERITY .... 43

VII
A DAY OF ADVERSITY . . . . 51
VIII
A DAY OF RETROSPECT .... 59
IX
DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS . . 67
X
A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN . . 75
XI
A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION ... 83

CONTENTS

XII PAGE
THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING CHRIST 91

XIII
A DAY OF SMALL THINGS ... 99
XIV
A DAY OF TROUBLE .... I07
XV
A FESTAL DAY  115
XVI
A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY . . . 123
XVII
"GO, WORK TO-DAY " .... I31
b

CONTENTS

XVIII PAGE

THE EVIL DAY

• 139

XIX
THE HOLY DAY  x47
XX
THE DAY OF DEATH . • • • *55
XXI
"TO-DAY IN PARADISE" .... 163

BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD

My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O Lord ; in the
morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up,
Ps. v. 3.
He wakeneth me morning by morning ; He wakeneth
mine ear to hear, as they that are taught, — Isa. 1. 4 (R.V.).
In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning
thou hast the dew of thy youth, — Ps, ex, 3,

BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD
TO all true lovers of nature the morning hour
is the sweetest and most invigorating of
all hours in the day. To all lovers of God it
ought to be not only the sweetest, but the sacredest
as well. If it is good for the soul to take an
early hold of God in youth, which is the morning
hour of life, it must be equally good to renew
and intensify that hold in the morning of every
day, as life goes on. That quaint and wise old
poet, Henry Vaughan, counsels me to " serve God
before the world," to remember him who " pre
vailed by wrestling ere the sun did shine," and
reminds me that, as " the manna was not good
after sun-rising," so " prayer should dawn with
the day." And does not God Himself claim from
me, as His due, not only the best of everything,
but the first of everything as well ?
He asked from Israel the firstlings of their
cattle, the first fleece of their sheep, the first
sheaf of their corn, the first-fruits of theirvines and
3

4 BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD
olives and figs : should I not give Him the first
moments of my day ? The man of Israel was
taught to begin each day by an offering on the
altar : should not my altar-fire be kindled before
my busy day begins ?
There is a blessing in this ; for I cannot but
remember how often the morning hour was
specially signalised by wonderful displays of the
power and grace and goodness of the Lord to
waiting souls.
It was in the early morning that angel-hands
drew Lot away from the approaching judgment-
fire that consumed the cities of the plain. It
was" in the early morning that Pharaoh's host
was drowned in the Red Sea, and Israel was
delivered from death. It was in the morning of
each day that the manna fell from heaven upon
the camp. It was very early in the morning that
Moses was called up into the mount to hear the
proclamation of God's matchless and enduring
Name : and it was early in the morning that he
built an altar under the hill, where God sealed
His covenant with His people, and they their
covenant with Him. It was in the morning light
that Jordan was safely crossed on foot. It was
when Elisha's servant had risen very early in the
morning that he had that wonderful vision of
God's protecting care, " the mountain full of
horses and chariots of fire." It was in the early

BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD 5
morning that Jesus came to His storm-tossed
disciples on the lake ; in the early morning that
He rose from the tomb, and appeared to the
weeping Mary ; in the early morning that He
hailed the disheartened fishermen in their boat,
and showed them where to get a richer haul than
they had ever had before. How it would enrich
and gladden me if some of my morning hours
brought my great Lord as near to me, and me as
near to Him !
But it is sad to think how often I make the
urgency of business, or my weariness of body
and mind, an excuse for curtailing within the
narrowest space, or neglecting altogether, my
morning intercourse with God ! I can even per
suade myself that to keep sacred a special time
for private devotion savours of formalism, and
thus I neglect a plain duty on the plea of avoiding
a dangerous Pharisaism ; or I tell myself that it
is better to leave my praying till I have a more
pressing sense of need. Sometimes I may let an
inconvenient situation for prayer, the want of a
place secret enough and far enough removed from
disturbance, excuse me from it. Sometimes social
or family prayer is thought to absolve me from
the duty of private prayer. Sometimes it is
postponed from the want of what I call a right
spiritual tone ; discomposure of mind through
a world of cares preventing me from getting the

6 BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD
stillness of soul required for communion with God.
Sometimes, too, I am hindered from it by the
sense of recent sin, the guilt of which, lying on
my conscience, whispers to me that the prayer of
such a heart as mine would be only a mockery
of God.
The great obstacle, however, is the tendency to
look upon prayer more as a cold duty than as
a blessed privilege and joy, a direct and simple-
hearted talk with a loving Father in heaven, able
to help and waiting to help whenever a cry for
help reaches His listening ear. If I only realised
more fully the heart of my Father, to unburden
my own heart to Him would be my greatest joy.
As my love to Him grows, my love of prayer will
grow, in ever-new delightfulness, along with it.
As I continue musing the fire will burn, till I
would not miss that fellowship with Him for all
the world.
Such a morning hour of prayer will be a calming
hour, sending me forth hopefully to meet the
most dispiriting day ; a strengthening hour,
bracing me to bear up under the burdens of the
most toilsome day ; a sanctifying hour, enabling
me to vanquish the subtle temptations of the
day ; and even a transfiguring hour, making my
whole soul so radiant with the beauty of holiness
that my very face would shine as did the face of
Moses when he came down from God's presence

BEGINNING THE DAY WITH GOD 7
on the mount. The little grandchild of a saintly
man of God, recently called to his rest, one day
said, " I think grandpa must go into heaven every
night ; he always comes down in the morning
with such a happy face." Could any of my
household say that of me ?
It is only by expectant waiting before the
Throne that I can be imbued with the sacred
fire — and that fire is a beautifying fire, for it
consumes my dross, till I reflect, as in a mirror,
the glory of the Lord whose fire it is, and am
changed into something of His image ; and,
coming forth, I bear with me some tokens of the
holiness of the place where I have been. If, as
the 110th Psalm has it, " the beauties of holiness
come from the womb of the morning," I may well
prize the morning hour of intercourse with
heaven. The whole day thereafter will be a
witness to the refreshing influence of " the dew
of its youth."

MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY

As thy days, so shall thy strength be.— Deut. xxxiii. 25.

II
MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY
THIS is a very old promise now ; but it has
the freshness of the morning on it still.
It comes to me as a bird-song comes in spring
from some leafless tree, bidding me be of good
cheer for day is breaking in the east. It sings
me into new courage and new hope. It breathes
out over me the very peace of God. It is a promise
that has cheered thousands of the heavy-hearted
in all the ages past, and it still is a message of
comfort for every fainting spirit. Let me take
it as meant for me to-day.
It implies that my days will not be all alike,
that there will be constant alternations of bright
ness and gloom, of joy and sorrow, of disquietude
and peace. It also implies that the strength of
one day will not suffice for another. I am really
weaker than I know. I have no reserves of my
own stored up for all emergencies. If brought
unexpectedly into some trying position, where I
have to decide, or act, or speak, or write, at once,

12 MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY
with no time for calm deliberation or careful
thought, how quickly is any conceit I may have
of my own wisdom or courage dispelled ! But
the promise of my Lord is that, however varied
the experiences of my successive days may be,
I shall always get sufficient strength to meet
them with directly from Himself.
Yet, great as the promise is, there is a limita
tion in it too, a limitation both merciful and
kind. He does not say to me, " As thy desires
so shall thy strength be." I might ruin every
thing if I had even the holy desires of my heart
granted to me just in the way I wish, and much
more if the desires are not holy, but merely worldly
and selfish ones. I might have too much even
of God's best things for present use, and a large
supply in advance might go to waste by minister
ing to self-sufficiency and pride. Even the
heaven-sent manna corrupted if kept over beyond
the day. I long for greater power to serve God
with, and larger opportunities for the service,
and say, " If I only had the eloquence and grace
and genius of a man like Paul, what great things
I might do for God!" Yes, but being probably
deficient in Paul's humility, I might take the
glory of the high service to myself. If He does
not mean me to do anything great, but only to
labour on faithfully in humbler and quieter ways,
the strength for great things will not be given.

MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY 13
Again, it is not " as thy fears, so shall thy
strength be." He does make provision for all
real emergencies, but not for difficulties which I
conjure up, in imagination and distrust, before
they come : and one of the best correctives of this
foreboding spirit would be to sit down and recall
how often I have fretted myself about difficulties
that either never came, or, when they did come,
proved to be greatly less than I feared they
would be.
And yet, it is a most elastic promise. It adapts
itself to all the needs of any day, however dark.
It is like the fabled tent which could either
shelter a single soldier or expand till it covered
a whole army, just as required. I think with joy
how many trustful hearts have proved its truth.
I think of Job, who had to meet in one short day
such a succession of terrible disasters as few have
encountered during twenty years. There came
a messenger who said, " The oxen were plowing
and the asses feeding beside them, and the Sabeans
fell upon them and took them away" ; and Job
had strength to bear it. While that messenger
was still speaking, another came and said, " The
fire of God has fallen from heaven and burned up
the sheep and the servants, and consumed them " ;
and Job had strength to bear that too. A third
messenger comes immediately to tell him that
the Chaldeans had carried away all his camels;

14 MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY
and a fourth, on the heels of the third, with the
news that a whirlwind had wrecked the house of
his eldest son and that his ten children were
lying dead beneath the ruins ; but even that Job
could calmly hear. The calamity had been growing
every hour, and no alleviation of it could he
see ; but his strength to bear the smiting had
been growing too, and at last the crushed and
wounded and lonely sufferer raised his weeping
face to heaven, and said, with perfect trust, " The
Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed
be the name of the Lord."
I think, too, of Paul's heart-moving catalogue
of the troubles that accumulated on him as life
went on : " Thrice was I beaten with rods, once
was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night
and a day have I been in the deep ; in perils of
waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from mine
own countrymen, in perils from the heathen, in
perils in the wilderness, in the city, and on the sea;
in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold
and nakedness." His whole life was little more
than one long pain ; but he could say, " I can do
all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me."
And then I think that, if God were to call for a
like testimony to-day, tens of thousands of His
suffering ones would gladly rise and give it; and, as
they recounted the losses they had to face, the hard

MY STRENGTH FOR TO-DAY 15
struggles they had to make, the home-emptyings
they had to endure, and remembered how, some
times to their surprise, they had been lifted up,
and carried through, would say, with tearful
faces, perhaps, but with thankful hearts, " Yes,
it was always true — as my days, my God-sent
strength has been."
In this assurance I, too, would rest and work.
" I will go in the strength of the Lord God."
" The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song."
" The Lord will give strength to His people ; The
Lord will bless His people with peace."

MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY

Give us this day our daily bread. — Matt. vi. n.
And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of
the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.
2 Kings xxv. 30.
Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, lest when
thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses
and dwelt therein, when thy herds and thy flocks multiply,
and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou
hast is multiplied, thine heart be lifted up . . . and thou say
in thine heart, My pow er and the might of my hand have
gotten me this wealth : but thou shalt remember the Lord
thy God, for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth,
Deut. viii. 11-18.
Give me neither poverty nor riches ; feed me with the
food that is needful for me : lest I be full, and deny Thee,
and say, Who is the Lord ? or lest I be poor and steal, and
use profanely the name of my God, — Prov. xxx. 8, 9 (R.V.),

Ill
MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY
I SEE in the King of Babylon's kindness to his
prisoner Jehoiachin a faint but real illustra
tion of my God's generosity to me. He is " the
King of love," and when He pities me, and speaks
kindly to me, and lifts me out of the dungeon
where I was lying without hope, and changes
my prison garments, His royal bounty provides
for my daily need, and secures me against the fear
of want. I am thenceforward a guest of the great
King, and He gives me ' ' a daily rate for every
day, all the days of my life." I dare not ask for
more than what He is pleased to give ; but what
He gives is always enough. It is all I really need.
And I am not merely His guest. I am infinitely
more. I am His child. It is a Father's hand
that feeds me with a Father's love : and so I can
look up to Him and say, " My Father, who art
in heaven, give me this day my daily bread " ;
and then trust Him to do it.
19

20 MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY
But do I always trust Him so ? It is strange
and sad that I sometimes feel it easier to trust
Him for eternity than for time, easier to trust
Him with the care of my soul than with the care
of my body. But why should I say, " What shall
I eat and drink, wherewithal shall I be clothed ? "
if my ' ' Father knoweth that I have need of these
things," and promises to give them ? If He
freely gave me His beloved Son for my salvation,
how much more will He freely give me all needed
for my sustenance ? Having given me His
greatest gift, will He deny me the less ? Just to
say to myself, " The Lord of providence is my
Father who is in heaven," will still all my fears.
Even if, like that beloved Son of His, I should
for a season be hungry in a desert place, I will be
sure to find, like Him, some angels ministering
to me there.
But He wants me to feel my utter dependence
on Himself, and to tell Him that I do ; and so He
puts into my lips the prayer, " Give me this day
my daily bread." It is not only the poor that
need so to pray. The richest man on earth must
learn to say it too, for beggar and millionaire
are alike dependent upon Him.
If I ever imagine that I am indebted for my
daily bread just to my own industry and sagacity
and thrift, the skill of my hand, or the cleverness
of my brain, how easily might God leave me to

MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY 21
find out, to my shame, that, for these things which
I proudly call my own, I am dependent solely
upon Him ! Let me be smitten with sudden
disease, let my vaunted sagacity fail me for one
hour, let storm or lightning, fire or flood turn all
my possessions into a pile of ruins, how quickly
might any one of these things sweep away half a
lifetime's gains ! How slow I am to realise that
it is God alone who " giveth me power to get
wealth" ! And He alone who can keep that wealth
in safety, after it has been got ! How often do
my investments prove delusions, and my secu
rities turn out to be insecurities after all ! There
is really nothing that can secure me but the bless
ing of my God ; and therefore I must always
pray, " Give me my daily bread." I would cer
tainly be safer, and probably I would be happier,
if I add to that the wise prayer of Agur, ' ' Give
me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the
food that is needful for me " : for both in poverty
and in riches hidden dangers lie. How much is
really needful to me I would leave to the loving
decision of a wiser Judge ; but what a new sweet
ness I might taste in my daily bread if I took
it as a daily mercy from a Father's hand ! Living
trustfully upon Him for one day at a time, life's
unwieldy loads of care would be carved into
manageable portions, none of them too heavy
for the jaded shoulders to bear. I would walk

22 MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY
at liberty, "casting all my care on Him who
daily careth for me."
I would remember the widow of Zarephath's
barrel of meal that lasted all through the famine
days. It was never full, but it was never empty
either. There was a handful in the evening and
a handful in the morning, and a handful at noon,
but never two handfuls at the same time. Her
store was small, but it was always just " sufficient
for the day." My God has promised me, too,
enough to carry me on, but never more than just
enough. " A daily rate for every day " is all He
promises, but that much He does promise. Can
I not trust Him as the Zarephath widow did ?
It is surely best for me to have only a little ready
money in the house and hand, and to have my
really large property in the safe keeping of the
Great Banker, who says, " I will not fail thee nor
forsake thee; be strong and of a good courage."
But this calm trustfulness in the care of God
must not encourage reckless indolence. I must
not " eat the bread of idleness " because God has
promised to provide. The old rule still holds
good : " If any man will not work, neither let him
eat." God provides for me just by teaching me
and strengthening me to provide for myself.
My own energies are His gift, and I must use
them faithfully.
Neither will such trustfulness allow me to gain

MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY 23
a livelihood by sinful means. I remember the
woe pronounced on the man who " builds his
house by unrighteousness and his chambers by
wrong": and therefore I must ask my con
science what it has to say, and God what He
has to say about the business I am pursuing to
day or planning for to-morrow. Is it one on which
His approving smile can rest, on which His en
riching blessing can be expected to come ? I
dare not mock the Holy One to whom I pray
by seeking to gain my daily bread by what is
virtually theft and fraud — by trading upon
other men's credulity, or by fattening on the
depraved appetites and vices of the world. I
must have absolutely clean hands and a pure
heart, and a conscience void of offence, if I am
to feel myself in the care of Him who is a
"righteous Father," who loveth righteousness,
but whose face is set against them that do evil.
And if I honestly pray for daily bread, I must
not call by that name the luxuries that would
only feed my pride and minister to my love of
ostentatious display. Can I ever lift up my face
trustfully to a Father in heaven, while in the
secret worship of my heart Mammon is my God ?
Was not Agur right therefore to put before his
prayer for needful bread that other prayer that
proved the trustful sincerity of his heart-desires,
" Remove from me vanity and lies" ? Let me

24 MY PROVISION FOR TO-DAY
do the same, and then go on in quiet confidence
that my God shall supply all my need. For the
best thing about the " daily rate" is this, that
it is for " all the days of my life." If I take my
daily provision as coming from a Father's hand,
it will really be to me what Christ called it, "bread
from heaven " ; and the manna will not cease
to fall till I have reached my Canaan at the end of
the pilgrim way : thereafter and for ever I will
eat before the Lord my God of the " old corn of
the land."

GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY

Send me good speed this day. — Gen. xxiv. 12.
Prosper, I pray Thee, Thy servant this day. — Neh. i. 11.
For Thy name's sake, lead me and guide me. — Ps. xxxi. 3.
I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way that thou
shalt go ; I will guide thee with Mine eye. — Ps. xxxii. 8.
Mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the Lord : in Thee is my
trust. — Ps, cxli, 8.

IV
GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY
DO I sufficiently realise my daily need of
having God to be the ruler of my life as well
as the Saviour of my soul ? Forgetting this, I
lose many a deep draught of peace, and miss the
joy of tracing His guiding love in the smallest
things as well as in the great. Do I daily feel the
need of consulting Him about my outgoings and
incomings, about all my purposes, about all my
plans ? Surely if it is a fatal mistake to shut
God out of my heart, it must be equally fatal to
shut Him out of my life.
He wants to rule me ; and He will rule me,
whether I choose His ruling or not. If I refuse
to let Him rule me with a gentle hand, He will
rule me with a stern one. H my proud self-will
compels Him to restrain my foolish feet from
rushing into self-destruction, He will be forced to
put many iron bars across my way. I may
madly dash myself against the bars ; but that is
all that I can do. The bars I cannot break.
27

28 GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY
But He would rather take a gentler way : and
so He offers to walk beside me so closely that I
shall always be within hearing of His voice, to
" lead me in the paths of righteousness," to
" make darkness light to me," to " guide my feet
into the way of peace."
My need of guidance on my life-way is seen in
two undeniable facts. The first is that I am so
blind that I cannot see the safe path, when many
different paths are opening out before me ; and the
second that I am so self-willed and self-sure, that
I will not take the safe path even when it is shown.
God will always lead me right if I am willing to
be led ; but how seldom do I feel the need of
being led in matters which I foolishly think I
can manage perfectly myself !
In any great and unexpected crisis, in any
mind-confusing perplexity, I do feel the need of
God, but not in the small and trivial things of
daily routine. I rise from sleep strong and
buoyant, to take up my accustomed work, and go
forth singing to my familiar tasks in the business
or in the home ; but how seldom do I begin the
day by saying to God, " I know that I may easily
fall into mistakes and sin to-day ; hold Thou me
up"! And yet, how often has a long train of events,
solouring the whole life to its latest hour, been
set in motion by some trivial, unforeseen, un-

GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY 29
expected, accidental occurrence on a day that
seemed just like any other day, having no special
significance attaching to it or danger lurking
in it ! A few words spoken, a hasty bargain
made, a casual introduction on the street, a slight
accident, the missing of a train or an appoint
ment, the going or not going to a certain house,
the answering or not answering a letter, the
acceptance or non-acceptance of some business
or social or domestic proposal — small things like
these have often changed the whole complexion of
a life, and made the memory of the day on which
they happened either a life-long joy or a life
long regret.
It was, apparently, a matter of no moment
whether Jacob should send Joseph or a servant
to inquire about his other sons at Dothan ; and
yet, out of the fact that Joseph was sent came
such wonderful events as the world has seldom
seen. It was a very trifling matter that the
asses of Kish went a-missing one day — no doubt
they had strayed fifty times before — but Saul's
going after them that day gave Israel a king.
Ruth's " happening" to glean in a field belong
ing to Boaz, when she might have gone any
where else, made her an ancestress of Jesus
Christ. And my utter incompetence to foresee
what issues may be lying hid in the simplest
events of the most ordinary day may well

30 GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY
show me the need of asking God to guide my
every step.
It is not always that I do this even in my
prayers ! In words of trustfulness I say, " Thy
way, not mine, O Lord, in things both great and
small." With much apparent piety I say, " Lead
Thou me on " ; and then I proceed to take my
own way quite irrespective of my prayers. Such
prayers are useless. They are rather appeals
to God to prosper my own way than a calm sur
render to His. When, after choosing my own
way, I find it hard, I only pray that He would
make it soft, and if He does not do so, I immedi
ately complain that He does not answer prayer !
O wayward, foolish heart of mine, would it not
be far safer and happier for thee to give up thine
own management, and put it wholly into the
hands of Him who says, " I will instruct thee in
the way that thou shalt go ; I will guide thee
with Mine eye" ?
That is the gentle method of His love ; and, if
I know how to let it act, it will often be more
effective than any other could be.
Of all bodily organs the most expressive is the
eye. I can read in the eye of a friend far more
than he utters with the tongue. It is the most ac
curate of all the heart's dial-plates. It can express
joy or grief, entreaty or reproof, approval or dis
like. Parents and children, or brothers and

GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY 31
sisters, living in the same home, can hold con
versations with each other, even in the presence
of strangers, by the language of the eye. Small
signs pass between them thus which a stranger
neither sees nor understands. And just so, those
who live in close intercourse with God learn to
read what may be called the glances of His eye,
small indications of His will which strangers to
heart-fellowship with Him cannot read at all.
If living in constant sympathy with God, I will
not need " bit or bridle" to keep me right. I
will not need even a definite command. The
very thought that He is looking down at me will
be enough. But, to see that eye-glance, I my
self must be always looking up. How can He
" guide me with His eye " unless I am watching
that eye ? His voice may make me hear, and
His hand may make me feel, whether I am
looking or not ; but His eye can do nothing for
me unless I am watching its glance. Having
this, however, I need almost nothing more.
I need not envy the men of old who could get
intimations of the heavenly will through the
Urim and Thummim on the breastplate of their
High Priest — that sparkling row of gems that
were either irradiated with mystic light or left
clouded and dark. I have only to keep an eye
on God in simple, single-hearted faith, and His
loving glance will meet me, shining in approval

32 GOD'S EYE MY GUIDE TO-DAY
or clouded in warning, but always ' ' leading me
in the way that I should go." I have only to
keep my conscience, heart, and will sensitive
to the impression of that eye, as the photographic
plate is sensitive to the light that falls upon it —
I have only to free my heart from the bias of per
sonal desires, and from all subservience to the
judgments of men, and keep looking up, in child
like appeal, to the Wise Love that never mis
takes ; and then I will be sure to see the eye of
God raying out its guiding light, and be able to
hear in it a voice which says, ' ' This is the way,
walk thou in it, and thou shalt find rest to thy
soul." I would learn to keep up this attitude not only
as each day begins, but all throughout its hours,
saying, " On Thee do I wait all the day," " As
the eyes of servants look upon the hand of their
masters, so do mine eyes wait on Thee, O Thou
that dwellest in the heavens."
An open heart, an open conscience, an open ear,
and an open eye will give me all I need.

GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY

Stand still, and see the salvation of God, which He will
show you to-day. — Exod. xiv. 13.
A very present help in time of trouble. — Ps, xlvi. 1.
Fear not, I will help thee. — Isa. xli. 10, 13, 14.
I the Lord will hold thy right hand, saying to thee. Fear
not. — Isa. xli. 13.
I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of soldiers and
horsemen to help us, because we had spoken to the king,
saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that
seek Him. — Ezra viii. 22.

V
GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY
I NEED more than guidance if my life is to
be safe ; more even than renewals of in
ward strength : I need an outward Guardian
and Defender too. I need not only the eye of
my God as a daily guide, but also the hand of
my God as a daily help. How can I secure this ?
Two things must combine : that God should use
for me His hand of power, and that I should give
to Him my hand of trust. At the beginning,
therefore, of every day I would say, " O Thou
that savest by Thy right hand them that put
their trust in Thee, be Thou my helper this day ' ' :
and then, all the day through, I will hear Him say,
" I the Lord will hold thy right hand, saying,
Fear not, I will help thee."
The hand of my God is an almighty hand ;
but, even better than that, it is a Father's hand.
" By strength of hand the Lord brought thee
out," said Moses at the Red Sea. There was the
almighty hand. But God Himself put it more
35

36 GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY
lovingly when He said, " / took you by the hand
to lead you out." There was the fatherly hand.
It was just how a father would sustain and en
courage a timid and weary child. Why do I not
believe that that same fatherly hand will sus
tain and work for me ? When I am hemmed in
with difficulties and can by no efforts of my own
get free, that is just the hour in which God says to
me, " Is the Lord's hand shortened that it cannot
save ? Stand still and see the salvation of God,
which He will show you to-day."
In reading what men like Moses, and Samuel,
and David, and Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, and
Ezra have said of the wonders of God's saving
hand, I see that some of the finest bursts of
praise the Bible contains were praise for deliver
ances wrought by an Invisible Arm, where the
arm of man was powerless altogether. What a
grand ring of holy exultation in the song of Moses:
" Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in
power : the enemy said, My hand shall destroy
them ; Thou didst stretch out Thy hand, and
they sank like lead in the mighty waters " ! What
a jubilant tone in David's song : " Now know I
that God saveth His anointed : He will hear
him from His holy heaven with the saving strength
of His right hand" ;, and in Ezra's witness that
" the hand of our God is for good upon all them
that seek Him " ! What a joyous summing up

GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY 37
of a long life-experience in David's praiseful words:
" Thou hast given me the shield of Thy salvation,
and Thy right hand hath holden me up " !
The right hand is the helping, holding, defend
ing, working, giving hand. Protected, sheltered,
kept, and blessed by that good hand of the Lord
upon me, I am safe. How much I lose by not
realising God's power to help, as well as His love !
There is nothing which He more continually pre
sents to me as a ground of trust than His omni
potence to save. Omnipotence is God's highway
in Providence as well as in Grace. " A God doing
wonders " is one of His most significant names.
No word of His ever suggests that a time may
come where His resources have run so low and
His exchequer is so empty that He is not able to
answer a prayer for help. He is always saying,
" You are soon at the end of your resources, but
I am never at the end of Mine." Do I realise this
when I pray ? Theoretically I do ; it is part of
my undoubted creed. But, practically, is not the
poor, limited power of some friend on earth a
greater reality to me than the power of my Father
in heaven ? In any difficulty, is not my first
thought how to get help from some kindly human
heart and hand ? and is it not true that, only
when that fails, I go to the Infinite God as my last
resource ? If half the time spent in worrying
over my difficulties and seeking earthly aid— aid

38 GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY
often sought in vain, or grudgingly given if given
at all — were spent in going direct to my Father
in heaven, I would sooner get relief.
Would that I could learn to be always putting
my hand of trust into His hand of power ! I did
that once when, to me, a drowning sinner, He
held out His hand and said, " Grasp, and live."
The hour of my new birth was just the hour in
which I put my hand of faith into the pierced
hand of the Crucified : and my new life there
after is stronfton]y if I say and feel, " Lord, I can
not follow Sroe fori: a single day unless Thy hand
is still grasping mine." Like the powerless bar
of iron which, when magnetised by contact with
the strong electric current, can sustain the
heaviest weight, all my strength must come to
me from this blessed, unseen contact between
my weak hand and His almighty one. Only if I
fail to keep the contact close will my strength
fail too.
What a security for me it is to read those
words of the Good Shepherd regarding His sheep :
" none shall pluck them out of My hand " !
There are foes in plenty ready to steal them, or
kill them by driving them down slippery places
where they are sure to fall. Sore trial is one of
these ; great prosperity may be another ; sudden
temptation may be a third. Can my poor grasp
on Him save me then ? Yes, absolutely ; but

GOD'S HAND MY GUARD TO-DAY 39
only because, corresponding to that grasp of mine
on Him, is His mightier grasp of me.
He does not mean that I will never, in self-will
or heedlessness, play the fool, and so fall and hurt
myself. He does not say that I will never pet
tishly put aside the hand that would restrain me,
or even strike that hand angrily When it would
wound me a little for the saving of me ; but He
does mean that, while I abide trustfully in these
almighty arms, they will never let me go.
A wonderful assurance this for my faith to rest
upon, a most blessed encouragement to what
must be my daily prayer : " Lord, I am weak ;
undertake for me " ; " Hold Thou me up and I
shall be safe."
And when my deliverance comes, the glory of
it will be His, and not mine. The keynote of my
praise will be, " This is the Lord's doing, and it
is marvellous in mine eyes."

A DAY OF PROSPERITY

In the day of prosperity be joyful. — Eccles. vii. 14.
If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the
afflicted soul . . . the Lord shall guide thee continually, and
satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones ; and
thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of
water whose waters fail not. — Isa. lviii. 10, 11,

VI
A DAY OF PROSPERITY
SO then my loving God sympathises with my
joys as well as with my griefs. He does
not grudge me the happinesses of life, for it is He
Himself who is the giver of them all. I am not
called to be a sour ascetic, though I must often
deny myself in the lower things for the sake of the
higher. Though always a pilgrim through the
world to the Celestial City, I need not jour
ney thither in funeral dress. It is not against
" using " the world that I am warned, but only
against " abusing " it to my hurt: and I need
not fight shy of all its pleasant things, when my
gracious Lord says, " All things are yours."
I must not shrink from life's duties. I dare
not despise its dangers, I cannot escape its
sorrows, but I need not abjure its joys. I am
certainly to feel that " a man's life consisteth not
in the abundance of the things which he possesses,"
but I need not therefore put away all gladness
with a self -torturing hand. I may possess the
43

44 A DAY OF PROSPERITY
world, if only I do not let the world possess me,
and if I learn to hold its treasures so lightly that
parting from them will not be irremediable pain.
If " all things are mine because I am Christ's,
and Christ is God's," then this world is, to me, my
Father's world, and I can enjoy it as a child of His
to whom it all belongs. If it is not mine to reward
me (for God does not always pay righteousness
with earthly coin), it is mine to help, and cheer,
and train me, and so to bless me in the highest
way. Men who are estranged from God live upon
His world on mere sufferance. They are only
tolerated on it meanwhile, but it is destined even
tually for the men of faith, and will be given to
them when the day of its final emancipation comes.
This world's possessions in the hands of ungodly
men are only stolen property ; but, in the hands
of the children of God, are theirs by a nobler
title than the charters of kings.
And therefore when, at any time, my Father
crowns me with His goodness, increases my sub
stance, makes the lines to fall to me in pleasant
places, and pours the oil of joy upon my head, I
need not regard His gifts with shy suspicion as
if they could not be lawfully enjoyed by Christian
men, or could not be consecrated to the noblest
ends. I can take any or all of the Lord's gifts
thankfully, and say, " This is my Father's love to

A DAY OF PROSPERITY 45
me " ; for His love sweetens as well as sanctifies all
my earthly comforts, and the " nether springs "
are all the richer to me because rills from the
" upper springs " are always falling into them.
I can, easily enough, make God's earthly gifts
sad hindrances to my soul's highest life. They
may do for me only what they did for the young
ruler who almost cast in his lot with Christ,
but " went away sorrowful, for he had great
possessions." But God means them to do quite
the reverse of this — to draw me to Him, not to drive
me away. He means them to raise within my
thankful heart a new song of daily praise, to give
me new disclosures of the exceeding riches of His
grace, and new visions of the far-transcending
blessings He is keeping in reserve for me when
this short life is done, and to excite in me a new
consecration of all I have to Him. His earthly
mercies ought to be to me, what the stones of
Bethel were to Jacob, when he saw that wondrous
dream-ladder on which the angels of love were
going up and coming down ; and thereafter vowed
a vow : " Of all that Thou givest me I will surely
give a tenth to Thee."
For the world is not really mine till I have paid
the royal dues for the use of it, till my thankful
ness for it has taken a practical shape. Like
Israel, I may not use the harvest for myself till
I have laid the first-fruits upon the altar. Indeed

46 A DAY OF PROSPERITY
it is only that part of my possessions which is
consecrated to the Lord that keeps the rest
from becoming a rust and canker to my soul. It
is only when I can honestly say, " I have brought
away the hallowed things out of my house, and
have given them to the stranger and the fatherless
and the widow, according to Thy commandment,"
that I can reap the fulfilment of the promise :
" Thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which
the Lord hath given unto thee and unto thine
house." But when, from my own daily bread, I have
given their portion to the hungry, and from my
God-filled purse what the work of my Lord de
mands, then, crowned with all the sweetness of
His Divine blessing, I can enjoy the rest. My
Master, Christ Himself, has said, " Give alms of
the things which ye possess, and behold, all things
are clean unto you." I would make my thanks
giving and my liberality go ever hand in hand, and
so let my chief joy in the day of prosperity be the
joy of doing good to others thereby. Have I yet
learned the way to secure the blessing of the
Lord upon my wealth, whatever it may be ?
" Honour the Lord with thy substance," He says,
" and with the first-fruits of all thine increase :
so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy
presses shall burst out with new wine " ; but
He also says : " If ye will not hear, and if ye will

A DAY OF PROSPERITY 47
not lay it to heart to give glory unto My name,
I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your
blessings." My soul, do thou in this, as in all things else,
give God His rightful place, and put Him first.
Instead of saying in the day of prosperity, " Now
I have more to use for my own enjoyment,"
do thou rather say, " Now I have more to give
away to my poor brethren at my side, and to
the work of my gracious Lord." "The liberal
soul deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things
it shall stand."
We lose what on ourselves we spend,
We have, as treasure without end,
Whatever, Lord, to Thee we lend,
Who givest all.

A DAY OF ADVERSITY

In the day of adversity consider. — Eccl. vii. 14.
If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is
small. — Prov. xxiv. 10.
Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me. — Job x. 2.

VII
A DAY OF ADVERSITY
MY "day of prosperity" may soon be clouded
over or followed unexpectedly by a " day
of adversity," crushing down my joyousness,
and darkening me with disappointment and care.
If that be so to-day, let me take it as God's
reminder that I cannot arrange my life to my
own liking, nor by any effort secure myself in
settled peace. " My times are in His hand," not
in mine ; and the wise Preacher would have me
consider that adversity as well as prosperity may
be in God's plan for me : that He has '* set the one
over against the other," and that J must learn to
say of the darkness, " This also cometh forth from
the Lord of hosts."
My first look, in any day of adversity, must be
an upward look, like that of the sorely tried
patriarch of Uz, who said — not, " The Lord gave,
and the Sabeans have taken away," nor "The
Lord gave and the whirlwind hath taken away,"
but — " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
51

52 A DAY OF ADVERSITY
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." I
must remember what Jonah forgot, that if it is
the Lord who prepares for me some sheltering
gourd of which I am " exceeding glad," it is the
same Lord who " prepares the worm " to wither
the gourd : and I " do not well to be angry " with
Him for that, as Jonah was.
Yet how constantly I am inclined to consider
every other aspect of the adversity except this !
to think of it as brought on by my own imprudence
and folly, or by the wrong-doing of others, instead
of looking at it as being a discipline by which God
would train me to a loftier faith, a more sub
missive patience, and a deeper trust. Perhaps I
had been too proud in my day of prosperity,
thinking it merely the reward of my own industry
and sagacity, and wholly forgetting that it was
the Lord who " gave me power to get wealth " ;
or, if wealth came to me unexpectedly as a legacy,
I had been saying to myself, " This will put an end
now, and for all days to come, to my worries and
fears of want ; " — and God, by smiting my proud
self-satisfaction, was saying to me, " Thou fool ! "
If this be not so, I must still consider my day
of adversity as a great testing-day, in which I
am to prbve the reality of my profession of depen
dence and trust. Even Satan could see that a day
of adversity is a testing-day, when he said of Job,
" Thou hast made a hedge about him and about

A DAY OF ADVERSITY 53
his house, and his substance is increased in the
land ; but put forth Thine hand and touch all that
he hath, and he will curse Thee to Thy face."
Can I stand a testing such as that ?
It is easy enough for me to walk with God
when His comforts gladden me at every step,
when His loving hand smooths away all rough
places in my path, and when He brightens my
darkness with His light of fire. But when all
visible comforts go, how soon do I discover that
what I called my faith was only a happy con
tentment with happy circumstances, and not
trust in Him at all ! His reason, therefore, for
letting the day of adversity come may be to test
whether I can so realise His love as to trust Him
in the storm as well as in the calm.
I constantly see this testing process going on
in others ; a day of adversity bringing out to
view the radical difference between a worldly
heart, out of tune with God, and a Christian heart
at one with Him. I see one man taking his
troubles bitterly and unsubmissively, dreading
them as they seem to approach, running from
them as they pursue him, trying every means of
escape from them, and, when overtaken by them,
simply borne down and crushed. They fret his
temper, and provoke the bitter anger of his heart.
He complains sentimentally, or curses profanely.
There is no looking up to God, and no looking

54 A DAY OF ADVERSITY
into himself ; no faith or patience either with
God or men. All is dull, dark, comfortless pain.
I see another (a Spirit-taught and Spirit-saricti-
fied man) suffering equally, or even more, but by
meek submission turning his trials into victories,
and drawing peace from pain. He takes the
trouble so patiently that, in the taking, it seems
to lose half its weight. He can bear to be dis
appointed in his plans because he knows God's
plans are best. He is crucified to the world
because the world is already crucified to him.
The burden of his disappointment he has trans
ferred to the Everlasting Arms. He can take
calmly the spoiling of his earthly goods, because
his real treasure is on high. His heart is stayed
on God. The only riches he really loves are the
unloseable riches of heaven ; and so he is " kept
in perfect peace." I would pray that this faith
may be in me when a day of adversity comes as
a testing-day to me.
That is a most instructive item in the auto
biography of King David, " I said, in my pros
perity, 'I shall never be moved.'" After a
chequered life of hardship and trial, he was on the
throne, and fondly fancied all his troubles gone ;
but he never made a greater mistake. The very
deepest sorrows, and sins too, of his life came
after that. He had worse troubles when king
than he had ever had when a hunted fugitive ;

A DAY OF ADVERSITY 55
and so he had to correct from bitter experience his
hasty self -congratulation, and add, " Thou didst
hide Thy face, and I was troubled." Am I
making David's mistake ? What if a day of
adversity, upsetting all my calculations, should
be God's sharp way of reproving my self-sufficiency
and my forgetfulness of Him ?
It may shame me to discover, in this way, that
I had been deceiving myself when I imagined I
was giving God the praise for my prosperity, and
trusting only in Him to keep it safe — for, all the
time, I had been calculating on my own sagacity
far more than on His love. And if, even still,
when my own strenuous labour has amassed a
competence, I am looking far ahead, and con
gratulating myself on my safe investments, and
saying, " Soul, take thine ease, for no sudden
calamity can lay thee low," I may need some very
sharp reminder that I can never see farther than
a single day, that I hold all my comforts only at
the good pleasure of my God, and that I must
learn to say from the heart, " Thou only makest
me to dwell safely."
Let me remind myself that all my happy
anticipations of rest in days to come, all my
visions of a peaceful afternoon of life and a calm
evening hour, must be subject to the gracious
will of Him in whose keeping alone all these things
lie.

56 A DAY OF ADVERSITY
Awise writer has said, "When a Christian carries
too many topsails, God is very apt to send a gale
of wind that strips off the canvas." My safety
is in lowliness of mind, and simple trust for this
day, and for to-morrow, and for all the days to
come.

A DAY OF RETROSPECT

I do remember my faults this day. — Gen. xli. 9.
Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God
led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee
and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart.
Deut. viii. 2.
Let us arise and go up to Bethel ; and I will make there
an altar unto God who answered me in the day of my distress,
and was with me in the way which I went. — Gen. xxxv. 3.

VIII
A DAY OF RETROSPECT
A DAY comes to me now and then which
forces me to look backward along the vista
of retreating years. It may be a birthday, or a
marriage day, or a new year's day, or an anni
versary of some special kind ; and it becomes to
me emphatically a day of retrospect : " I re
member the days of old." I think of lost happi
ness that once was mine before some sad breach
was made in my home, of the happy voices that I
will hear no more on earth, of the smiles that now
only God and the angels see ; and, even amid the
greetings of friends to-day, there is a sadness of
heart that no touch of human hand or tone of
human kindliness can cheer.
It may be that I look back also to my lost
spiritual joys, the happy days of my " first love "
to Jesus Christ, when I counted all but loss for Him,
when His peace filled me to the full, and His joy
made me strong ; when I was consecrated far
more completely than now to His service and
59

60 A DAY OF RETROSPECT
will ; and when, with His light shining on me, I
could tread the earth with a heavenly step.
Thinking of these days, I may be saying —
Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord ?
Where is the fervour of my spirit, my sensitive
ness of conscience, my unworldliness of feeling,
my delight in fellowship with God, my hunger
for spiritual food, my joy in prayer ? Are these
all gone ? " Woe is unto me, for the day goeth
away, and the shadows of the evening are
stretched out." Assuredly I may " remember
my faults this day."
I think, too, of the record God has kept of all
my past life. What a record of my actual sins
that must be, and what a filling up, too, of blanks
in my own record of my life — duties omitted,
opportunities let slip, vows unpaid, convictions
disregarded, high resolves cast to the winds,
chastenings unimproved, talents unused, grace
received in vain ! How dreadful it would be for
me to see that record even for an hour ! A
perusal of it would cover me with shame. If He
were to begin reading it to me, I would hide my
face, and entreat Him to " speak no more to me,
lest I die."
There is only one thing that can make the
thought of being confronted with it bearable —

A DAY OF RETROSPECT 61
the blessed hope of seeing drawn across every
page the deep red line that shows every item
blotted out by the blood of my atoning Christ,
the red mark that will mean to my thankful heart,
" Forgiven long ago."
But I must remember more than my sorrows
and my sins. I must recall the wonderful mercies
of my God, and " forget not all His benefits." I
must count my blessings as well as my trials, and
see how these have always outnumbered all my
griefs, and have been heaped upon me in spite
of all my sins. He has all along' been " crowning
me with lovingkindness and tender mercies," and
all " for His own name's sake," not for mine ;
but it is not even a thousandth part of His mercy
that I have ever seen, or ever will see, till it
flashes out upon me in the light of heaven.
If He were to recount all that He has been
doing for me in the years that are gone, while I
thought He was doing nothing for me at all, my
life would seem a long golden chain of mercy, one
golden link clasping another, and each day
lengthening the chain. " It is not God's anger
at my sins," said a good man once, " that crushes
me ; it is the exceeding goodness of my God that
breaks my heart." I will therefore sing of His
mercy every day, mercy that every day afresh
forgives my sins, mercy that every day disappoints
my fears, mercy that has turned my sorrows into

62 A DAY OF RETROSPECT
blessings and my darkness into light. If God
were not " rich in mercy " He never could have
done all this to me. If He were not rich in mercy,
I would have exhausted His mercy long ago. A
catalogue of my sins would make me blush with
shame ; but a catalogue of His mercies would make
me cover my head in utter confusion of face.
Let me ask myself to-day what return I am
making now for mercies so many and so great.
Am I learning the lessons of the past ? Does my
retrospect of it lead me to trust myself less, and
to trust God more ? to love the world less, and to
labour more for " the meat that endureth unto
everlasting life " ? God has been breaking some
cords that bound me too tightly to joys below :
have I only been weaving new ones to take the
place of the old ? He has been sundering some of
the roots that fastened too deeply upon earthly
things : have I only been pushing out new fibres
to grasp them again ? I see that I have some
times asked bread from the world, and it has
given me a stone ; am I still hoping that somehow
it will be able to do the miracle of turning stones
into satisfying loaves ? Am I still, in spite of all
past failures, expecting to get grapes from the
world's thorns, and figs from its thistles ? I
have settled many questions that caused me
doubt in days gone by : am I still leaving un
settled the great question, " What shall it profit

A DAY OF RETROSPECT 63
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul " ?
Can I bless God to-day for all the trying things
of the past? They were "grievous" once;
has the " afterward " now come when they are
" yielding the peaceable fruit of righteousness "
because I have been " exercised thereby " ?
Have past earthly losses only made me seek more
eagerly the treasures that I cannot lose, and
the bereavements of the past only made me
readier for that world where " they die no more " ?
These will be salutary self-questionings if they
lead me to a deeper thankfulness as I " remember
the years of the right hand of the Most High " ;
to a deeper penitence as I remember how sadly I
have failed, while God has failed me never ; and
to a holier resolve to use more faithfully for Him
the days that still may lie in front.

DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS

Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not
what a day may bring forth. — Prov. xxvii. I.
I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul. — i Sam. xxvii. i .
From this day will I bless you. — Hag. ii. 19.
He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth
with Him. — Dan. ii. 22.

IX
DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS
IN looking forward to-day to the weeks and
months and years to come, with what eyes
am I looking ? with eyes of bright anticipation ?
or of calm confidence ? or of apprehension and
fear ? Let me begin, at least, by looking up : for
my first thought must be that I cannot calculate
on having any days to come ; and, even if I could,
cannot by any efforts ensure that they shall be
days of prosperity and peace. If I cannot cal
culate on a to-morrow at all, still less can I say
" it shall be as this day, only much more abun
dant." Whether my head is full of dazzling plans,
and my heart thrills as I paint bright visions of
joy ; or whether I am gloomily anticipating only
sorrow, disaster, and wreck, there may be utter
folly in both of these outlooks. My fears may be
falsified ; my day-dreams may never be realised.
If I am to-day planning for the future, let me
ask myself very honestly what place in my plans
I am giving to God. Am I giving Him the first
67

68 DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS
word in the making of them, or only the last ?
I see clearly where my own comfort would come
in, and I propose to work steadily for that ; but
where do God's approval, God's honour, God's
blessing come in ? Is He to be my architect,
or am I proposing to build, by my own skill, a
temple to my own glory, whatever becomes of
His ? Am I laying out my life as a beautiful
garden, forgetting to put a sepulchre in it, and
planting only flowers that will quickly die ? — none
that, by transplantation, will live for evermore ?
If I discover, from an absolutely honest answer
to such self-questionings, that there is a glaring
inconsistency between my own ambitions and
God's demands, have I courage enough and god
liness enough to alter all my plans at once, so
that God may be supreme ? to cast myself down
at His feet and say, " 0 my Lord, I will make a new
plan here and now, and its motto shall be, ' Thy
glory first of all ' " ?
Very forcibly does the apostle James remind
me of how I ought to feel about all this. Go to
now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow — (but
what if I should be struck down by sudden illness,
or by the hand of death ?) — I will go into such
a city — (but what if the train by which I propose
to travel meets with fatal disaster on the way,
or the vessel in which I propose to sail is, in mid-
ocean, wrapt in flame ?) — and continue there

DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS 69
a year, and buy and sell, and get gain — (but what
if, before a month of the year is gone, I am sent
on a longer journey by the gate of death ?). What
need of always putting into my plans the saving
clause " If the Lord will, " and giving to God
His rightful place — the place of supreme direction
and supreme control !
My outlook, however, may be of an opposite
kind : not a too confident, but a too despondent
one, a dire foreboding of coming ills the shadow
of whose gloomy approach makes me tremble and
fear. But if I am a child of the Father in heaven
who pledges Himself to care for me, why should
I not look forward with the largest trust and
hopefulness instead of apprehension and dismay ?
Trials of many sorts may come ; but only my
own perversity will make them calamities. Why
should I see hovering over me only black-winged
birds of prey ? may I not expect to be cheered by
bright-hued birds of song ? I may certainly
weave garments of sackcloth for myself and wear
.them weeping if I will ; but why may I not calcu
late on the God of Love weaving. for me, with the
golden threads of His mercy, many beautiful gar
ments of praise ? If it is a Father's hand that
leads me, will He give me nothing but a weary
desert to march through ? will He not also give
me sweet restful days beneath the shadow of
fig-tree and vine ? Let me trust and not be

70 DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS
afraid ; for He hath said, " I will in no wise fail
thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee."
Surely the dismal forebodings that often oppress
the hearts of the children of the Highest are
wholly unworthy of the name they bear. I
see a young minstrel playing on his harp
before an insane king, and that king three times
flinging a javelin at the young man's head. I
would think him in fearful jeopardy ; and he
thought so himself, for " he said in his heart, I
shall one day perish by the hand of Saul." And
yet, had he but realised it, he was perfectly
safe. Saul could not kill him, do what he might.
And why ? Because there had been sprinkled
upon his forehead a few drops of holy oil. Samuel
had, in the Lord's name, anointed him to be
king ; and the Lord's promise and purpose
would have absolutely failed if one of Saul's
javelins had hit. The poor threatened youth
feared the worst. " Truly there is but a step
between me and death ! " he cried. But that
step was the step of a throne ! and so he lived to
write that magnificent psalm, at the head of
which he wrote, " A song in the day that the
Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his
enemies, and out of the hand of Saul."
I too, if a child of God, have been anointed to
a kingdom with His holy oil, the oil of consecra
tion and of preservation as well. Why should

DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS 71
I fear ? Does He not say, " Even to your old age
I am He, and unto hoar hairs I will carry you " ?
Underneath me continually are the strong,
tender, unwearied arms of my faithful God. He
takes me up, weary and worn, in the arms of His
love and power, and never lays me down. If I
suffer, I suffer in His arms. If I die, I die in His
arms. Oh it is safe travelling, and sweet besides,
to be carried all the way to heaven in the arms
of my God ! No wonder if I feel all my burdens
light, for He carries both me and my burdens too.
Let me remember that one glory of my God is
this, that He " cannot lie " — and therefore feel as
the wise old Rabbi felt who smiled as he walked
over the ruins of Jerusalem, and, being asked by
a weeping brother who walked beside him how
he could smile when looking at such a scene, re
plied : " I smile because I see how true and faithful
the God of Israel is. He said, ' I will destroy
Jerusalem,' and I see He has done it ; but He also
said, ' I will rebuild Jerusalem, ' and I know He
will, for He will not suffer His faithfulness to fail."
That was a beautiful saying of Daniel's to the
King of Babylon, " He knoweth what is in the
darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him." I
may take it as true regarding the darkness that
envelops my future as well as the darkness that
surrounds my present. I stand, sometimes,
in absolute perplexity before it. It is like a great

72 DAY-DREAMS AND FOREBODINGS
fog-bank that I cannot pierce, and I dread what
it conceals. But " He knoweth what is in that
darkness," what unimagined mercies are lying in
it, what wonderful blessings it is keeping in re
serve : and when the light that dwells with Him
at last shines out on me, as it is sure to do, it will
shame my foolish fears.
Meanwhile, His message to my distracted heart
is an all-sufficient one : " Who is among you that
feareth the Lord, and obeyeth the voice of His
servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light ?
let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay
upon his God."
My outlook can depress me only if it does not
go far enough. " I know the thoughts that I
think towards you, thoughts of peace, and not of
evil, to give you an expected end." That is God's
outlook into the future ; and it should be mine
too.

A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN

I am troubled ; I am bowed down greatly ; I go mourning
all the day long. — Days of affliction have taken hold upon
me. — Ps. xxxviii. 6 ; Job. xxx. 16.
O Lord, my refuge in the day of affliction. — Jer. xvi. 19.
I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of
the grave : I am deprived of the residue of my years  O
Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the
life of my spirit : so wilt Thou recover me, and make me to
live. — Isa. xxxviii. 10, 16.
The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing :
Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness. — Ps. xli. 3.

X
A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN
HERE I lie to-day on a bed of weakness and
pain, shut out from the world, and shut in
with myself in weary unrest. But let me think
that I am also shut in here with God. He may
have brought me thus low, in order to get nearer
to my heart ; and I may be sure He has many
things to say to me on my bed of sickness that I
would hardly listen to anywhere else.
What has produced this sickness is of less
importance than what He means me to get out of
it. It may be my own foolishness or my own
sin that is laying me low. It may be that I am
only reaping the fruit of long-unheeded transgres
sions. It may be that it is the result of some
inherited weakness ; or it may be only the con
sequence of some unexpected and unpreventable
accident for which I am in no wise to blame.
But has not God something to do with it, and to
accomplish by it, for. all that ?
Even if He should be saying, " Thine own
75

76 A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN
wickedness shall correct thee ; know therefore and
see that it is an evil thing and a bitter that thou
hast forsaken Me," may it not still be His merciful
way of working repentance in me and bringing
me to a better mind ? Even though I can dis
cover no reason for it in any sin of mine, and so
there be nothing penal in it at all, may not my
Father in heaven, who understands me better than
I understand myself, see some gracious necessity
for it which my own eyes cannot see ? May it
not be a real act of love, this laying me aside,
that I may learn more of myself and of Him, and
so be more fitted afterwards for serving Him ?
He gets glory out of me, not merely by making
me a branch of the Vine, but by making me a
very fruitful branch ; and, to ensure larger fruit,
He must cut away what would hinder my fruit-
bearing. To an undiscerning eye the cutting
away of the wood may seem only a ruthless muti
lation, destroying the beauty of the branch,
and apparently spoiling it beyond remedy ; but the
Gardener knows better, knows that the mutila
tion means more abundant fruit. The knife-cut
may be a painful thing to me, but the Vine-dresser
may be trusted always to apply it where it is re
quired, and never to apply it unless it be required.
How much there is, even in real disciples, that
needs to be cut away they themselves do not
always or often know ; and so the application of

A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN 77
the knife comes on them as a great surprise . They
say, like Job, " Thou art become cruel unto me,
with Thy strong hand Thou opposest Thyself to
me." And God does not always explain His
reason for it at the time. He leaves that to be
discovered afterwards in the greater usefulness of
the life that has been wounded, and the greater
holiness of the heart that has been made to bleed.
He never prunes branches that are dead. The
knife that cuts these cuts them away. The
stroke on them is a penal stroke, a stroke of
judgment. It is only the really living ones that
are already bearing some fruit that He prunes, to
make them " bear more fruit " ; and so His
pruning-kmie proves that He sees in the branch
a real life. He is too wise to waste His care upon
dry and withered branches that can bear no
thing, and too loving not to prune the living ones,
that they may bear more abundantly. God's
chastenings, therefore, are real blessings to His
children's souls. His gracious love turns the
" spears " of affliction into divine " pruning-
hooks." There is a great tendency, even in living Chris
tians, to be satisfied with far less spiritual fruit
than satisfies Christ ; and there is in all of them
much that is offensive to Christ's eye though by
no means offensive to their own. They never
know how much required to be cut away till they

78 A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN
have passed through the painful process, and
come out of it stronger and holier than they were
before. There is a deep meaning, and deep com
fort too, in the words, " No chastening for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous ;
nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable
fruit of righteousness in them that are exercised
thereby." Affliction of itself does not do any
good. The natural effect of it is only rebellion,
murmuring, discontent, and a thousand other
evil things ; but the supernatural effect of it is
" righteousness and peace." To kiss the hand
that smites is not nature ; it is something higher
far : it is grace.
When pain does what it is meant to do — not to
harden the heart, but to soften it — then out of the
softened heart there spring love, sympathy,
patience, trust, and all the other blessed fruits
of the Spirit, making it a veritable garden of the
Lord. And thus, as some one has said, " Faith
pulls the black mask from the face of trouble,
and discovers behind it an angel." The good of
affliction generally comes after we are out of it.
Sometimes, indeed, God gives us the gold and
jewels even before we leave our Egypt, so that
we can march out of the house of bondage
carrying our riches with us ; but it is only " after
wards " that we discover what glorious use the
Lord will find for them, when what we once

A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN 79
valued only for ourselves is devoted to His service,
and used by Him for the glorifying of His name.
Perhaps in my busy days I sometimes longed
for quieter hours. Here, then, the Lord is giving
me a time of seclusion that I may have more
intercourse with Him. He is calling me " apart
into a desert place that I may rest awhile," and
have Him to teach me there the things of His
kingdom. But he may be laying me aside for
another purpose too : that I may " commune
with my own heart on my bed and be still," till
I can say, " In the multitude of my thoughts
within me, Thy comforts delight my soul."
Let me be thankful if, on my sick-bed, my con
science speaks to me more loudly than it used to
do in my days of health. That will be a token
for good, just as the tingling of a frost-bitten limb
is the sign of returning life. He may show me
how many duties have been left undischarged,
how many failures have marred my obedience,
how many an idol I have allowed to stand in my
heart-temple where He alone should have all my
worship and all my trust. And when He begins
the work of temple-cleansing and idol-breaking,
my most favourite idol will be the first He dashes
down. Am I heartily willing that He should ?
Then Samson's riddle will be solved, and I will
see how " out of the eater comes forth meat, and
out of the strong, sweetness."

80 A DAY OF SICKNESS AND PAIN
Perhaps, in my busy days, I longed for more
leisure to do good to other souls. God may now
be giving me that, that I may pray more fervently
for all that need my prayers ; and the sight of
my patience and meek submission may itself
become a means of grace to all beside me. God
may be teaching me how I can serve Him in the
darkness as much as in the light, by my silence
as well as by my speech. Does it not comfort me
to realise that here, more than anywhere else, I
can, in my darkened chamber, when the door is
shut, speak freely to my Father who turns to me
His listening ear ?
For all these reasons, and many more, I may
believe that —
Deep in the heart of pain God's hand has set
A hidden rest and bliss.
Take as His gift the pain ; the gift brings yet
A truer happiness.

A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION

Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day ? — Gen, xl. 7.

XI
A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION
IF I am wearing that sad look on my face
to-day I may hardly be able to explain it,
even to myself. It is not caused by disturbing
dreams, as in the case of Pharaoh's servants ;
neither is it the result of any great calamity.
There is just a vague feeling of depression. Every
thing seems out of joint. Gloom is enwrapping
my spirit. " The day is made dark with night,
and the morning is turned into the shadow of
death." If I am a worker for God in any good
cause, a sense of failure becomes keen ; and I
begin to fear that, not my happiness only, but my
usefulness as well, is gone. Just in proportion to
the loftiness of my ideals is the depth to which I
sink when I see that they are not, and fear they
never will be, realised.
But, whatever be the exciting cause, the gloom
and heavy-heartedness are grim realities, and
they are paralysing too. They not only rob me
of comfort, but threaten to wreck my faith as well.
83

84 A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION
Can I rise out of this gloom into the sunshine
again ?
Such depression may, oftener than I think,
have a purely physical root. Ill-health, too heavy
a strain upon my strength, too long-continued
and reckless expenditure of nervous force, neglect
of diet, even a spell of bad weather, may often
explain the gloom. If it is true that the mind
rules the body, it is also true that the body rules
the mind. It may seem something humiliating
to be at the mercy of my animal organism ; and
so I talk about the hiding of God's countenance,
and the fiery darts of the wicked one, when pro
bably all I need is a rest, with change of air and
scene, and a good tonic. Even a spiritual Chris
tian may forget that, since his body is meant to
be a temple of the Holy Ghost, to keep that body
in health is a religious duty quite as imperative
as prayer and communion with God.
When God proceeded to cure His servant
Elijah of the severe fit of spiritual depression
that made him rush away into the wilderness and
long for death, He first of all recruited the wasted
strength by a miraculous meal ; and then, but
not till then, He spoke his words of cheer to the
wounded heart. There are many cases of
spiritual depression which can be better overcome
by the advice of a good physician than by the
reasonings of the best theologian.

86 A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION
If I can remember days when I felt as if soaring
into the blue, with a song as sweet and jubilant
as the lark's ; days when I was " strong in spirit,"
full of joy in my redeeming Christ, His love glow
ing within my heart, His Word like the wood to
which Jonathan came, " and behold, the honey
dropped," and it was sweet to my taste — and if,
now, the sky is overcast, my song is hushed, and
God, who once seemed so very near,seems far away,
I may well ask myself what has produced this
doleful change. Has it been due to my yielding
to some definite and easily discoverable sin, the
sin of an envious or malicious tongue, the sin of a
grasping and covetous heart, the sin of a closed
and niggardly hand, the sin of a too world-loving
and pleasure-loving life ? Has it been due to
restraint of prayer ? to neglect of feeding on the
Word ? to coldness of devotion ? to some subtle
self-seeking in efforts that were professedly for
the glory of God ? How, then, can I wonder if
my joy is gone ? Let me get quickly back to my
old attitude of humble prayerfulness and hungry
feeding on the rich food of God's great love, and
I will soon get back to my old gladness, and sing
my old songs once more.
If I am to-day, like Pharaoh's servants in a
dungeon of misery, looking sad, and feeling what
I look, let me think how a far nobler prisoner once
made the dungeon of Philippi ring with praises

A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION 87
all the night through, and in the morning sent for
the magistrates to bring him out. He could
charge them with a false imprisonment ; and so
may I charge my tormenting jailers to-day. I
will not stay in my dungeon an hour longer than I
need ; and when I go out of the prison-doors I
will sing, " My soul is escaped as a bird from the
snare of the fowler " ; and my parting word to
my tormentor will be this : " Rejoice not over me,
O mine enemy. When I fall I shall rise again ;
when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light
unto me . ' ' The best answer to all the questionings
of my mind, to every perturbation of heart, to
every weakness of the flesh, to every hurricane
of temptation, to every storm of doubt, is in
one all-comprehensive, all-sufficient monosyllable :
God. Looking up to Him, all depression flies.
" They looked unto Him and were radiant ; and
their faces were not ashamed." The solar look
makes sunbeams on the face.

A DAY OF HEART-DEPRESSION 85
But spiritual depression has often a spiritual
cause. It may spring out of a low state of the
spiritual health, a weakening of the soul's vitality
through sin or through neglect. It is precisely
then that the tempter comes with his subtle
suggestions that I had better give everything up —
my work, my struggles, and my faith too. His
plan to destroy me is just what Ahithophel's
clever plan to destroy David was : " I will come
upon him when he is weary and weak-handed,
and I will make him afraid."
If I let my spiritual life " run down," if I am
content to live upon a very meagre soul diet, and
keep out of touch with God by having far too
little communion with Him, even though appar
ently working for Him, I cannot meet discourage
ments with the vigour of a strong and braced-up
faith. If I have just enough of faith to see my
failures, but not enough to grasp the hand of my
all-sufficient Lord ; just enough to awaken my
conscience, but not enough to bring me reconcilia
tion-peace ; just enough to make me shun the
pleasures of sin, but not enough to flood my heart
with diviner joys ; just enough to keep me in
bare life, but not enough to give me " life more
abundant," life overcoming and strong, it need
not surprise me that days of dejection should
come, to shake me out of my lethargy and make
me " arise and gird myself " again.

THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING
CHRIST

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for
ever. — Heb. xiii. 8,
This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have
seen Him go into heaven. — Acts i. ii.
I am the Lord, I change not : therefore ye sons of Jacob
are not consumed. — Mai. iii. 6.
Follow thou Me, — John xxi. 22,
Be ye followers of God, as dear children. — Eph. v. i.

XII
THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING
CHRIST
LIVING in a changing world, and often sorely
disappointed in friends that once were
kind, but have now forsaken me, or once were my
stay but now are unable to help, I cling to the
thought that I have one Friend who changes
not. I have proved His love, and power too, in
the past, and I dare not doubt them now. He
remains beside me every day, and always meets
my changing need. All that He was to me
" yesterday " He is ready to be to me " to-day " ;
and all that He was yesterday and is to-day He
will be to me to-morrow, and to the very end.
This is an infinitely consoling thought : let me
take it in.
One great glory of my Christian faith is that I
have not to do with a dead Christ, but with a
Christ who is living still, and who is to all disciples
to-day just what He was to disciples who saw
and heard Him twenty centuries ago ; His
91

92 THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING CHRIST
biography is not the biography of one who sleeps
now, and has slept for ages, in a Syrian tomb ;
but the biography of an earthly life that is con
tinued in the heavens, the life of a divine Re
deemer who is " alive for evermore," the same
in love and power as once He was, the unchanged
and unchangeable One.
The sinful to-day find Him the same Forgiver
as of old ; the ignorant find Him the same
Teacher, the sorrowful the same Comforter, the
despairing the same Deliverer, as He ever was.
And what He is to-day, the same He will be
found to be when heaven comes. Every disciple,
" seeing Him as He is," will recognise at once the
" same Jesus " who loved him, and whom he
loved, long before.
One of the marvellous sayings of that Christ
to His disciples in the upper room was this : " As
the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you."
Now the Father's love to Jesus — who can fathom
that ? It was lo've without beginning, love
without measure, love without change, and love
without end. And so it might well be ; but how
can that love be just an illustration of His love
to me ? Whether as a Babe in Bethlehem, or a
Youth in Nazareth, or a Wrestler in the desert, or
a Teacher at Capernaum, or a Sufferer in Gethse-
mane, or a Sacrifice on the hill of shame, He was
ever the same to His Father : a perfectly holy,

THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING CHRIST 93
perfectly obedient, perfectly trustful and there
fore perfectly beloved Son. There never was one
hour of His earthly life in which the Father looking
down at Him, could not say, " This is My Beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased." But how
should that all-perfect One say of me " so have I
loved you " ? I cannot fathom grace like that.
Yet there the words stand, and they comfort me ;
for they take me out of myself, and throw me
into the strong embrace of " the everlasting
arms," and I feel sure that, whether wounding
me or healing me, whether showing me my sins
or revealing to me His grace, whether leading me
along a sunlit path or leaving me, for a season,
under lowering clouds, His love is flowing on like
some strong river, the same in winter's cold as in
summer's heat, the same in the dark night as at
brilliant noon, too deep to freeze, too full ever to
run dry.
A strong and broad foundation is laid here for
my settled peace. My feelings may often com
pletely change towards some whom once I loved.
I am disappointed in them. They have wounded
me in ways I could not have anticipated. I loved
them at their best, and never imagined they
would ever be less than that. But the glory of
Christ's love is that it fastened on me when I was
at my worst. I can never be more unworthy of
that love than I was when it enfolded me, dead in

94 THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING CHRIST
sin. If, knowing as He did all that I would be
in after-years (and He did know that) He set His
love upon me, then, having begun by "loving me
freely," He can go on loving me freely to the end.
The love He surrounds me with is " everlasting
love " ; the life He gives me is " everlasting life " :
the new name He writes on me is an " everlasting
name." And what return shall I make for unchanging
love like this ? Let me determine to be ever
" the same " to Him, in love and in obedience
too. When I look at Jesus in His earthly life
He gives me the impression of One who, in the
motive and aim of His life, was ever the same.
Wherever I get even a passing glimpse of Him,
on lonely mountain-top or on the busy street,
on dusty highway or on stormy lake, in a house of
mourning or in the house of prayer, by sunlight
in the field, by moonlight in the garden, or by
lamplight in the upper room, I see One who was
always living with one aim — to do and bear the
will of His Father who had sent Him. He stands
forth uncondemned under the severest of all tests
— an inspection all round, in public, in private,
and in secret too. The halo was round His head,
but its radiance went down to His feet.
How sadly my own life differs from His in this !
I am full of inconsistency and change. I have my
higher and my lower levels. One day full of high

THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING CHRIST 95
aspirations, sinking into lethargy and coldness
the next ; steadfast as Smyrna one day, lukewarm
as Laodicea the next. I am sometimes righteous
even to scrupulosity, but not sufficiently devout ;
again, I am devout in secret, but in practical
matters hard ; or I am overflowing with charity,
but defective in zeal for righteousness.
I would seek, therefore, for a more uniform
loyalty to my Lord, a more thoroughgoing
obedience to Him as my Example. I would have
my whole life-attitude to Him to be like the
attitude of the compass-needle to the magnetic
pole. Wherever placed, wherever carried, wher
ever seen, by day or night, on land or sea, in what
soever hemisphere it is, and even when it is unseen,
because shut up in a box under lock and key, it
always points steadily in one direction. So
would I have my whole life point always steadily
to the one Centre of all my hope and of all my
power. I must not let the world steal from Him the love
that should be His ; and I would not that others
should despise my Master because in me, His
disciple, they see so little resembling Him. What
have I, then, as a disciple, to do with the follies
and frivolities of the world that crucified my
Lord and is daily crucifying Him afresh ? How
can I be quite at home in Vanity Fair, and still
be a pilgrim to the celestial city ? How shall it

96 THE UNCHANGED AND UNCHANGING CHRIST
be seen that my heart beats true to Him, if my
life does not point to Him as well ? and how can
I hope to enjoy for myself the sweet assurance
that He is all for me, unless I show Him practically,
openly, gladly, that I am all for Him ? Be mine
the motto, as it is His : " Ever the same."

A DAY OF SMALL THINGS

Who hath despised the day of small things ? — Zech. iv. 10.
He appointed the courses of the priests to their service,
and of the Levites to their charge, and the porters also to
their courses before the ga*e, as the duty of the day required.
2 Chrcm. viii. 14.
The matter of the day in its day. — Ezra iii. 4 (margin).
There are diversities of gifts, and there are differences of
administration ; but all these worketh the one and the self
same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.
1 Cor. xii. 4, 5, 11.

XIII
A DAY OF SMALL THINGS
MY gracious God encourages me here. I
must not despise small beginnings of good.
They may have surprisingly great endings yet.
But He rebukes me, too, for despising small oppor
tunities, small duties, small gifts, and small sins.
His question is an incentive to persevering
diligence in good ; and it is also a caution against
carelessness, unfaithfulness, and unwatchfulness in
the small matters of personal religion and of my
daily life.
In the inward region of soul-experience I may
need to be reminded that perseverance in well
doing is essential to growth in Christian character.
I cannot expect to become a ripe Christian all at
once. I have to " grow in grace " by patient
soul-culture, getting small victories over small sins,
and reaching full strength by small and gradual
transformations : and I need not despair if the
process be somewhat slow. 99

loo A DAY OF SMALL THINGS
I may take courage, too, if, when engaged in
any work for God, I am oppressed by feeling
that my labour is in vain. The most successful
workers for God have always been those that
knew how to serve in small and simple ways.
One simple sentence brought Peter and John to
follow Christ ; one sentence converted the jailer
of Philippi; one poor monk flooded all Europe
with Reformation light. Nearly all revivals
have been started by one man or woman burning
with a desire to save. One glowing ember can
kindle a mighty fire.
My " day of small things " may, however,
mean something else than either of these. It
may be a day of small duties, of insignificant
cares, of petty, trivial occupations, with a
hundred small pin-pricks of trial to temper and
patience all through : a day of small nothings,
a day that makes me long, like a caged bird, to be
free. I do want to serve my Lord ; but what kind
of service can I render when so cramped and cabined
and confined ? I want larger room, more leisure,
and less toil. What is that but saying, " I would
gladly serve my Master if He only gave me higher
work to do " ? I would like to serve as a priest in
the holy place ; even a Levite's place would do ;
but as a mere porter at the gate ? No, that is
too low a place for me to do anything in ! And
yet, was it not a king who once longed to be even

A DAY OF SMALL THINGS 101
" a door-keeper in the house of God " ? and is it
not God's choice of my place, rather than my
own choice, that is to rule ? If I ever think I
would serve Him better somewhere else, I am
only deceiving myself. A bad servant would be
a bad master ; a bad day-labourer would only
make a bad king.
Archbishop Trench was right when he said :
Thou cam'st not to "thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee ;
And if thou there small scope for action see,
Do not, for this, give room to discontent.
I am not to be fretting, therefore, under a sense
of inferiority, and neglecting present duty because
waiting for some higher duty to be offered me.
I am to "do the matter of the day, in its day,
as the duty of the day requires " ; and thus to
sanctify and ennoble the whole round of my
small and uncongenial things. Small duties
must always make up the largest part of life.
Scarcely once in a year does anything remarkable
come to most men to be done ; but let me steadily
refuse to think that it is only in great and con
spicuous services that I can glorify my Master;
and that, therefore, the great bulk of my days may
be regarded as a sort of neutral ground — ground
that the devil, certainly, must not profane, but
ground for which God has no use. I am expected

102 A DAY OF SMALL THINGS
to be faithful in those things that are least ; and
it may positively require less devotion to Christ
to die as a martyr for Him than just to keep on
showing a steady light of godliness in the ordinary
affairs of any common day, maintaining an un
ruffled temper amid the small frictions of business
or of the home, restraining the tongue and sweet- .
ening the looks when tempted to a passionate
burst of anger, willing to do the humblest offices
of love even where my motives are misunderstood
and misconstrued. There could not be a finer
sphere than this in which to bring honour to my
Master's name, who was the lowliest as well as
the most faithful of all servants God ever had on
earth, and who, when He " took a towel and
girded Himself" and wiped therewith the feet
that His own hands had washed, made that poor
garment far outshine the purple robe that covered
Caesar's limbs.
Let me also make sure that I am not " despising
a day of small things " if I refuse to use for God
the very ordinary gifts He has endowed me with.
The " one talent " He has given me to trade with
for Him — am I burying it in the earth because it
seems to me too poor to do much with ? I have
some capability which I could consecrate — a
musical voice, deft fingers, an artistic eye and
hand, a clever brain. Is false modesty, or false
shame, or a lazy love of personal ease preventing

A DAY OF SMALL THINGS 103
me from laying it at the feet of Christ ? Am I
keeping only for myself what it would gladden
Him to see me give to Him ? Do I think of the
many to whom the gift would be as a " cup of cold
water " refreshing a weary spirit and strengthen
ing a feeble hand ?
Yet once again, let me take God's question as a
caution against despising the danger of small
sins, which may lead on to " great transgressions."
There is not a great criminal on earth — thief,
swindler, or drunkard, as the case may be — whose
downward career did not begin by careless yielding
to small temptations : and the sins by which the
Spirit of God is grieved away, and my soul is
weakened, are generally born of thoughtless un-
watchfulness rather than of wilful rebellion. I
may be watchful enough in my specially religious
hours ; but if I leave God greatly out of my
thoughts in ordinary and common hours I leave
open a wide door for temptation to come in, and,
ere I know, my unguarded heart may yield to the
assault. Unfaithful for a day in resisting small
sins, I may soon be powerless to conquer greater
ones. Let small flakes of snow fall incessantly
on a railway track, they will soon pile up a
drift which the strongest engine will be unable
to pierce. And I may therefore be a great
sinner in small things. Small irritabilities of
temper, small meannesses of act, small untruths

104 A DAY OF SMALL THINGS
in speech, small jealousies and spites, small
neglects of kindnesses that I might do — these
are the " little foxes that spoil the vines," and
the vines themselves will soon cease to bear
any fruit.

A DAY OF TROUBLE

A day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity
from the Lord God of hosts. — Isa. xxii. 5.
A day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of contumely.
Isa. xxxvii. 3 (R.V.).
Call upon Me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee, and
thou shalt glorify Me. — Ps. 1. 15.
In the day of trouble I will call upon Thee ; for Thou wilt
answer me. — Ps. lxxxvi. 7.
The Lord is good, a Stronghold in the day of trouble ; and
He knoweth them that trust in Him. — Nahum i. 7.

XIV
A DAY OF TROUBLE
SOMETIMES a day comes that can be fitly
described, in Joel's words, as " a day of
darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and
thick darkness." The trouble is not at a distance,
but very close at hand. It is not an imaginary
trouble, but a very real one ; not a vaguely-felt
uneasiness, or an intangible phantom, but an
actual and unmistakable thing; — a sickness
threatening death to myself or to some one very
dear ; the loss of property, meaning possible
starvation ; or a sudden blighting of all my
prospects of earthly happiness. And this, re
acting on the mind, makes me say, " I am so
troubled that I cannot speak " ; " I go mourning
all the day long" ; " I am brought very low."
" When I would comfort myself against sorrow,
my heart is faint within me." " O Lord, I am
oppressed; undertake forme."
Let me remind my sad heart that no strange
thing has happened to me in this. If I am walk-
107

108 A DAY OF TROUBLE,
ing in the valley of trembling, the path is one
that has been trodden by many another pilgrim
of God. I feel lonely, but I am not alone : and,
as I look at the footmarks left by sufferers before
me, I see that they all point in one direction.
There are no marks of backward steps. They are
upward only, and show that the pilgrims have
got out of the valley at last, and entered the
Everlasting Peace.
I see the footprints of Moses here, of Elijah,
of David, of Jeremiah, and of Paul ; and I see,
too, the footprints of One greater still. The holy
Christ Himself passed through this valley of
death-shade. None knew it better than He.
His whole earthly life was trouble that might
well have bewildered Him and made Him despair,
had He been only such a man as I ; and there came
to Him one awful " day of trouble," in the early
morning of which He cried, " My soul is exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death," and in the afternoon
of which His agony was intensified a thousand
fold as on the cross He said, " My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " But there was
glorious victory for Him ere the day was done.
Gethsemane and Calvary were only the way to
the Throne.
The experience of my great Lord does comfort
me ; but I may perhaps find more homely com
fort from the experience of a sinner like myself.

A DAY OF TROUBLE 109
I will think, therefore, of the words of that old
king of Israel, whose joyous harp-songs have
encouraged thousands of despairing hearts. He
tells me of a day when he fainted under his life-
troubles. All was dark. Fair-weather friends
had deserted him ; trusted men had deceived
him ; scornful lips were mocking his trust in God.
Look where he would, there was nothing but a
black horizon. Looking back, there was only
the memory of vanished joys ; looking around,
only the laughter of triumphant foes ; looking
within, only a weary, fainting spirit ; looking
forward, only new troubles looming in the distance,
" deep calling unto deep," as if one wave already
surging over him was beckoning to another behind
it to come and overwhelm him outright ; even
when he looked up, God seemed to be leaving
him to perish, and he wailed out, " All Thy waves
and billows are gone over me."
Perhaps I may recognise my own photograph
here. How, then, did that sorely troubled man
get free ? Seeing that he could do nothing to alter
his circumstances, he set about the one thing he
could do — to alter his own feelings regarding these
circumstances. First, he reminded himself that
God was still " the God of his life," as loving and
as able, and as pledged to help him, as He ever
was. Next, he told himself that there was, un
seen by him as yet, a bright light behind the

no A DAY OF TROUBLE
clouds, making him certain that a brighter day
would dawn. He knew not when, nor how, nor
where, but somehow and somewhere " the Lord
would command His lovingkindness " to show
itself again.
Then, farther, he asked God to tell him if there
was any special reason for this sore trouble :
" Why hast Thou forgotten me ? why go I mourn
ing ? Is this a chastisement for some forgotten
or harboured sin ? if so, I will honestly put it
away." And lastly, apparently finding that this
was not the case, he simply rolled over the whole
burden of his distracted heart upon the Love
that had never failed him yet, and left it there.
" O my soul, why art thou cast down ? hope
thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the
health of His countenance."
Oftener, perhaps, than I think, I might get
relief from my disquietudes by searching till I
find an honest answer to that question, " Why art
thou cast down ? ' ' Not , ' ' Why am I in trouble ? ' '
but, " Why am I letting this trouble fret me and
dispirit me as it does ? " Am I loving my worldly
ease too much ? am I so rigidly bound to earthly
prosperity that any shaking of it throws me off
my balance and upsets my faith ? Am I for
getting the need of the heart-discipline that comes
through the disappointments of life ? Am I
allowing this trouble to come between me and God,

A DAY OF TROUBLE in
to part me from Him instead of drawing me closer
to Him ?
Heart-searchings like these will be good for me,
if they bring me to know myself. But there are
other questions that demand an answer too :
not my questionings of myself, but God's ques
tionings of me. It is good to commune with my
own heart in the darkness and be still, but it is
better to listen to His voice as He asks tenderly
and lovingly such questions as these : " Should it
be according to thy mind ? " " Doest thou well
to be angry ? " " Wilt thou condemn Me that
thou mayest be righteous ? " " Where is your
faith ? " Would I say to God what I say to
myself, or say to my friends, about the troubles
of life ? No child of His would dare to look up
to his Father in heaven, and tell Him to His face
that He has been cruelly severe. What I would
not venture to say to Him I ought never even to
whisper to myself.
Let me turn, rather, to His own wealth of love,
and cast myself on that, till He speaks peace.
One of Paul's beautiful names for God is, " the
God of all comfort," " God, who comforteth
them that are cast down " ; and that is His
own description of Himself, " I, even I, am
He that comforteth you." " The God of all
comfort " — what a blessed name for Him who, in
His majestic glory, is ruling earth and heaven !

112 A DAY OF TROUBLE
A most condescending God ! a most tender
hearted God !
In that inspiring psalm, the 103rd, I read :
" Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord
pitieth them that fear Him " ; and in Isaiah, the
most evangelical of all the prophets, I read : " As
one whom his mother comforteth, so will I com
fort you." The great God in heaven a Father and
a Mother to His children upon earth ! Oh the
wonder of it ! but, oh, the grace of it as well !

A FESTAL DAY

And when the days of their feasting were gone about, Job
sent and sanctified them, and offered burnt-offerings accord
ing to the number of them all : for Job said, It may be that
my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Job i. 5.
A day of feasting and gladness, and a good day, and of
sending portions one to another, and of gifts to the poor.
Esther ix. 19, 22.
When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends
nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbours;
lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made
thee : but when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the
maimed, the lame, and the blind ; and thou shalt be blessed,
for they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recom
pensed at the resurrection of the just. — Luke xiv, 12-14.

XV
A FESTAL DAY
HOW to sanctify life's social hours is often a
difficult problem for a Christian heart ;
so difficult that many a Christian would renounce
them altogether. But that is not God's way for
me. It was not my Master's way, who lived as an
example to me.
There is some danger in a feast-day, as there
is danger everywhere : the danger of forgetting
God, of being conformed to the world, of cowardly
refusing to confess my Lord before my fellow-men ;
sometimes the danger of ostentation, extrava
gance, emulation, pride in dress, in speech, or in
the appointments of the festivity, a foolish heap
ing up of luxuries for the mere sake of display.
Job recognised the dangers of a feast-day, when
he prayed and offered sacrifices for his sons,
saying, " It may be that they have sinned, and
cursed God in their hearts " ; and if I need grace
from Heaven to brighten my sorrows I need quite
as much to sanctify my joys.

1:6 A FESTAL DAY
But I need not abjure the joys because of the
danger lurking in them. Far more difficult than
the hermit's seclusion from the world is the Chris
tian's sojourn in it ; but it is far nobler too. There
is " a time to laugh," as well as " a time to weep."
Feasts have their use in smoothing away the
roughnesses of life, promoting its kindly courtesies,
removing misunderstandings, and drawing heart
closer to heart.
God would not have us to fence off some small
portions of life as sacred enclosures where no
profane foot may tread, and leave all the rest of
life like an uncared-for wilderness, where the
world and the devil and the flesh may riot as they
please. He wants us to consecrate all life, so
that men shall recognise in Him a Master whose
presence makes every sorrow less bitter and every
joy more sweet.
The Lord Jesus was no ascetic like the Baptist,
but a brotherly, human-hearted Friend, who
first " manifested forth His glory "at a simple
village-feast — the glory of a Divine Love that could
sympathise with the difficulties of a distressed
housekeeper, and also with the joys of the guests.
He did not (as some disciples would do) turn that
festival into a religious meeting. He sanctified
it, but did not change its character. Even with
Him, the holy One, in its midst, it remained a
social gathering, full of happy congratulations

A FESTAL DAY 117
and innocent mirth. He who was characteristic
ally the Man of Sorrows began His ministry by
showing Himself the Lord of joy.
There is a deep lesson here for me. Why
should I think of Christ as needful for me only
in a day of sharp distress ? or of fellowship with
Him as meant only for hours of pain ? To take
Him to my festivities will not damp my joy, but
rather enhance it. It will not rob the home of
its mirthfulness or the heart of its gladness. He
will not frown upon the smiles of the child,
or on the laughter of the man. I need His
presence in my hours of unbending as much as
in my hours of strain. I need to invite Him to
my feasts as much as to my funerals, for sorrow
forces God upon my thoughts ; but when laughter,
like a sun-flash, is brightening my face, He is only
too easily forgot, and even the most innocent of
earthly enjoyments stands in danger of degenerat
ing into an occasion of sin.
It is sad to see many who call themselves fol
lowers of Christ leaving their discipleship as well
as their cloaks outside the door of the chamber
where the feast is spread. There are feasts where
religion in any form will not be tolerated for a
moment : and there are others where a Christian,
if he goes to them, is sorely tempted to hide his
colours, and be ashamed to honour his Lord and
Master, as his conscience tells him he ought to do.

n8 A FESTAL DAY
And there is always the danger of being drawn
into unkind and ungenerous talk about others,
and into displays of wit at the expense of a neigh
bour's good name. There is the danger, too, of
letting the hilarity of a social gathering disincline
and unfit the heart for any fellowship with God
in prayer when the feast is done. Let me " watch
and be sober" in all my joys.
But, with all my watchings against evil, let me
mingle some positive strivings after good. Let me
seek guidance beforehand that I may be able,
in a kind and gentle way, to drop here and there
a word for my Master in heaven. Now and then
I may be called upon by my loyalty to Him to
express emphatic dissent from some unchristian
remark, to show my keen disapproval of un
charitable censoriousness, to rebuke by silence
or a frown some flippant irreverence of speech.
But can I not do more than this ? Can I not
seize an opportunity to interest those beside me
in some case of deep distress, some noble but
languishing charity, some work for God in a far-
off land which is sorely in need of help ? Might
I not, too, seize a quiet moment of intimate talk
to win to the side of Christ some undecided,
half-hearted, or backsliding soul ? A few words
thus lovingly and prayerfully spoken have often
been fraught with untold blessing to a fellow-
guest. Might I not be oftener on the outlook

A FESTAL DAY 119
for such a way of turning a festal gathering into
an unexpected means of grace ?
But if I am not a guest at the feast, but the
giver of it, let me not forget that, however good
such a feast may be, there is something finer and
better still. " When thou makest a feast," said
Jesus, " call not thy friends, nor thy brethren,
nor thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours, lest
they also bid thee again, and a recompense be
made thee : but call the poor, the maimed, the
halt, the blind ; and thou shalt be blessed : for
they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be
recompensed at the resurrection of the just."
If even half of the wealth too often lavished
on great feast-givings by Christian men were
spent rather in this more Christ-like way, how
greatly enlarged would the blessing be that
enriches the giver's soul ! If I am pained, as I
often may be, to see and read of the extravagant
luxury and self-indulgence of the age, more
money being spent on a single private entertain
ment than would suffice to feed thousands of the
starving poor, or to scatter the Word of Life among
millions of the perishing heathen in some distant
land, I would make my own example, at least, a
closer imitation of my Lord's.

A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY

They said unto Him, Rabbi, where dwellest Thou ? He
saith unto them. Come and see ! They came and saw where
He dwelt, and abode with Him that day. — John i. 38, 39.
To-day I must abide at thy house. — Luke xix. 5.

XVI
A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY
IT must have been a wonderful time for the
first two disciples when they were with the
Lord Jesus in the home where He abode. Where
it was, or whose it was, no record tells. A very
humble home it must have been ; but to them it
was more glorious than any palace of a king.
We know not the length of that interview, nor how
the conversation of the quiet hours went on ; but
the result of it we know. They went back saying,
" We have found the Messias, who is called
Christ " ; and out of it there came not only their
own discipleship, but also the discipleship of thou
sands more. The outcome of that afternoon was
thousands of converted souls, thousands of trans
formed lives, thousands of heroic deaths, and
thousands of songs in heaven.
I think of this, and see what even one short day
or hour with Christ may do. I am blessed if only
seeking Christ, and doubly blest when I find Him
whom I seek ; but thrice blest if I am often at
123

124 A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY
home with Christ, speaking to Him without fear,
listening to Him without weariness, and feeling
the holy joy of His companionship irradiating all
my heart.
But an even more wonderful day was that in
which Zaccheus heard the seeking Saviour say,
" To-day I must abide at thy house." Zaccheus
was now the host, and Christ the guest. Thinking
of that, I ask myself, " If He should send me a
message that He will visit my house to-day, how
would I reply ? " Would I say, " I pray thee
have me excused " ? Would I say, " Lord, I am
too busy to-day ; when I have a more convenient
season, I will send for Thee " ? or would I wel
come His coming with great delight, and " receive
Him joyfully," as Zaccheus did ? Would I say,
" Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come
under my roof ; but if Thou comest I will gladly
open wide the door, that Thou mayest sup with
me, and I with Thee " ?
Yet let me think again. That visit of Jesus to
the house of Zaccheus was to be one of gracious
love ; but what if He proposes to come to mine
on a visit of inspection only, to see what my life
really is when I think myself alone ? If, without
announcing a visit beforehand, He should stand
in my house as suddenly and as mysteriously as
He stood in the upper room among the disciples
when the doors were shut, how would I feel ?

A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY 125
Would I be covered with shame as I saw His eye
noting things that never made me ashamed before ?
What would He think or say of the lavish self-
indulgence shown in the arrangements of my
home as contrasted with my niggardly givings to
His service and His cause ? What would He
think of some of the pictures on my walls, or
some of the books on my table or shelves ? If
I saw Him entering the door, would my first im
pulse be to close hastily some open desk, or turn
the key in some private cabinet, thus trying to
hide from His eye what I never hide from my
own ? Would I feel ready to do what the guilty
pair in Eden did when they heard the voice of the
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the
day — to hide myself, *' ashamed before Him at
His coming ? "
It is a testing question : Could I bear that my
Lord, if coming suddenly to me any day, should
find me in any mood of mind, in any company,
at any employment, in any form of self-indulgence,
at any questionable amusement, poring over any
kind of book, that would cause me to feel even a
momentary shame in His holy presence, and to
wish for even a moment's delay till I got over
my nervous flutter and confusion, and could
summon courage to give Him a welcome, unem
barrassed and unabashed ?
Then let me remember that He is paying me

126 A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY
such a visit every day. Unseen, He is scru
tinising my life every hour. And if it is a great
question, " What do I think of Christ ? " it is
a far greater one, " What does Christ think of
me ? " I cannot escape the eye that is " like a
flame of fire." Let me live so as not to wish to
escape it.
But if I am ready to welcome Him, what blessed
hours I might spend with Him, when, in the seclu
sion and freedom and intimacy of home-converse
with Him, I bring to Him my doubts and fears,
my troubles and my strivings, my repentances and
my aspirations, my perplexities, and my griefs !
How, heartened and strengthened, I would go
out next day to my appointed work ! I would go,
saying to myself every hour, " The Lord has ap
peared to me, and has given me His peace " ; and
I would carry about with me so unmistakably
the fragrance of His presence that others would
" take knowledge of me that I had been with
Jesus," and would perhaps be won to seek a like
blessing for themselves.
Even without having actually had such a visit,
I can imagine the joy of having it. I can imagine
the tenderness with which He would bind up the
wounds of a broken heart ; the condescending
kindness with which He would enter into my
feelings of sorrow and regret ; the sympathy with
which He would listen to the story of my tempta-

A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY 127
tions, remembering how " He Himself suffered
being tempted " ; the joy with which He would
hear my expressions of love and indebtedness to
Him. But what would the reality of such an interview
be ? I would surely say of it, " It was a true
report I heard of Thee, but the half had not
been told me ; that day was to me like heaven
begun." Well, this joyous home-converse with Christ
is my privilege as often as I will : and it is not a
mere flying visit now and then that He offers me.
He says, " I must abide at thy house " ; and I need
this constant fellowship if my life is to be strong
and pure and glad. The " must " is on His
side, for He knows that this alone will keep
me true to Him. "Whoever else may abide
in thy house, I must ; there must always be
room and welcome for Me." And the " must "
is on my side too. I cannot do without His
presence every hour. My constant prayer must
be, " Abide with me"; for, " without Thee I
cannot live " is just as true as that " without
Thee I cannot die."
Oh what a soothing as well as sanctifying effect
this abiding with me would have upon my soul !
It might possibly change the whole ambitions of
my life, but it would certainly change the whole
atmosphere of my life, change it from strain and

128 A VISIT FROM CHRIST TO-DAY
stress into calmness and rest. My heart would
then become like a still mountain lake, sheltered
by forests, and shut in by hills. I would first
breathe in, and then breathe out, the very Peace
of God.

"GO, WORK TO-DAY"

Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. — Matt. xxi. 28.
Who then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto
the Lord ? — 1 Chron. xxix. 5.
Gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.
Rom. xii. 6.
Why abodest thou among the sheep-folds, to hear the
bleatings of the flocks ? — Judg. v. 16.
Curse ye Meroz, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof,
because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help
of the Lord against the mighty, — Judg. v, 23.

XVII
"GO, WORK TO-DAY"
THIS is how my Lord speaks to many self-
centred souls. It may be that I need to
hear Him speak so to me, if I am keeping back
from Him some service which it is my duty, and
ought to be my joy, to give. I must have a
little talk to-day with my soul about this, for
Christ's parable may be a picture of myself. Let
me seriously ask if I am doing anything definitely
and distinctly for the service of my Lord.
I may be showing all faithfulness in my own
secular work, and in that way honouring Him ;
but when He asks me for something more than
that, some sacrifice of my own personal interests
and ease, some gift out of my own store, some
direct and positive consecration of time and
talent to the far higher work of saving others, of
purifying and uplifting the sin-stained mass around
me, of spreading wider the knowledge of His name,
do I selfishly or lazily refuse ? Am I dreaming
about it, but not doing it ? am I promising Him
131

132 "GO, WORK TO-DAY"
to do it to-morrow, but not to-day ? am I coldly
criticising the work of others while I stand idly
looking on ? Am I even " beating my fellow-
servants " because they will not take my way of
doing things, and, all the time, doing nothing
myself ?
It is certainly serving God when I let the light
of my godliness shine out in the daily routine of
business and of the home, keeping myself un
spotted from the world, steering a safe, consistent,
God-honouring course through the manifold temp
tations of ordinary life, through the entanglements
of business, through the allurements of pleasure,
through the petty provocations and worries of
household cares. But something more than this
is demanded from me if I am to show myself a
fervent disciple of a self-sacrificing Lord. I am
not to consider my whole duty discharged when
I see to the keeping of my own soul pure, and
give no occasion to the enemy to speak reproach
fully of me. I am called to care for the souls of
others too, and to go to the help of the Lord against
the mighty foes of His kingdom on the earth.
What if my refusal of the call should bring on me
the condemnation of Reuben, who let his brethren
fight while he himself was selfishly " abiding
beside his sheep-folds, listening to the bleatings of
his sheep " ? What if I am exposing myself to the
curse on Meroz, too ?

*' GO, WORK TO-DAY " 133
There is a vast variety of work lying open to my
choice : a place waiting for every kind of talent
or endowment to fill. If there is a place where a
Paul may plant and an Apollos may water, there
is also a place where an Aquila and Priscilla may
privately instruct ; a place for Dorcas to clothe
the shivering poor ; for Andronicus and Junia
to hearten some greater sufferers than themselves ;
for Tryphena and Tryphosa and the beloved
Persis to do unblazoned acts of love as "succourers
of many " ; and all of these are " fellow-labourers
with God." I may choose any work for which
aptitude has been given me. If my question to
God is, " Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to
do ? " His answer is, " Give what thou hast, only
remember that, if thou hast need of Christ, Christ
has need of thee."
Am I excusing myself from any service of Christ
by the plea that my gifts and talents are too
small ? Then let me remind myself that, when
the gifts of Israel were asked for the building of
the Tabernacle in the wilderness, some furnished
the gold and silver and precious stones, some the
wood, some the goats'-skins, the hair and the
wool, some the fine linen, some the spices for
incense, and some the oil for the light ; but all
were equally prized. Some of these offerings were
more costly than others, and some would occupy
a more distinguished position than others ; but all

134 "GO, WORK TO-DAY"
were equally required, and all equally accepted
by the Lord. Whoever was " willing to conse
crate his service to the Lord," though he could
bring only a few grains of spice, was commended
as heartily as he who could offer his gold.
Whatever I am by nature I am to consecrate
when I am renewed by grace. Conversion does
not alter my character so much as transform it
and turn the force of it into a nobler channel.
It is like the refitting of an old ship, giving to the
same hull a new owner, a new Captain, a new
cargo, and a new use. All my old talents and old
energies and old endowments are meant to be
carried over into the service of a new Master, when
I become a saved and regenerated soul. " Whose I
am " is the first motto of my new life ; and " whom
I serve " should be the second. Any talent I have
for literature or music or art, any gift of persuasive
speech, of wise organisation, or of business acumen
may be, and must be, consecrated to the service
of Him who has redeemed me. Any one of these
may be like the " colt " I have kept for my own
private use ; but I must not keep it " tied at the
door " when the message comes " The Lord hath
need of it." I honour Christ by giving it. He
honours me by using it. And perhaps it may be
the means of lifting Him a little higher for the
crowd to see, and then join in the joyful cry,
" Hosanna to the Son of David."

"GO, WORK TO-DAY" 135
Small though my service may be, the great Lord
may speak as kindly about it as He did about
the poor widow's two mites and Mary's small
vial of fragrant perfume : for, though the noble
rich may make a noble offering, the Lord looks
more at the love of the giver than at the cost of
the gift, and at last He will make far more of
the services rendered by His disciples than they
themselves ever did, answering their astonished
" When ? " by His gracious words, " Inasmuch as
ye did it to the least of these My brethren, ye did
it unto Me."
Meanwhile, if I do not in some definite way
work for Christ in His vineyard, I am seriously
weakening, not only my own joy, but my own
spiritual vigour too. I am doing a wrong to
Christ, and I am also doing a wrong to myself.
If I am like a spider, living in the midst of my own
net and caring only for what it may catch for my
self, let me get out of this self-life into the nobler
one of self-denial for my Master, Christ. If I ever
excuse myself from active service on the plea
that I need all my spare time for private com
munion with God, this neglect of duty on the
plea of spirituality is as absurd as it would be for
a soldier, when ordered to march, to decline to
do it on pretence that he could not keep up love
and reverence for his general unless he lay lurk
ing about his tent. The prayer-chamber is the

136 "GO, WORK TO-DAY"
soul's refectory. Devout meditation is its food ;
but, as I do not live to eat but eat to live, I do not
live to pray, but pray that I may more rightly
and more strenuously live. I have only to re
member how my Lord served for me, and serves
me every day, to see how I must every day be
serving Him.

THE EVIL DAY

Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be
able to withstand in the evil day. — Eph. vi. 13.
Sell me this day thy birthright. — Gen. xxv. 31.
Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. — Josh. xxiv. 15.
No man can serve two masters. ... Ye cannot serve God
and mammon. — Matt. vi. 24.
In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted. He is
able to succour them that are tempted. — Heb. ii. 18.

XVIII
THE EVIL DAY
THIS evil day is not necessarily a day of out.
ward " trouble," though it may be so. It
is rather a " day of temptation " ; and such a
day may come to me quite unexpectedly, with no
premonitory signal of its approach. I am, no
doubt, exposed to temptation of some kind every
day : and my tempters are not always human
friends — they may be also superhuman foes.
Paul, lifting for a moment a corner of the curtain
that hides the invisible world, shows me that my
foes are not only " flesh and blood," but the
" principalities and powers " of evil, shooting
fiery darts of evil suggestion into my soul : and
he warns me that my fight with these will not be
like a combat at long range, but a close " wrest
ling," where entwining arms will seem to hold
me in a relentless grip.
But there are some days when temptation is
more persuasive than on others, appeals more
strongly to my self-interest or self-indulgence,
139

140 THE EVIL DAY
comes more disguised under the appearance of
good, and finds me in a mood of mind more open
to a successful attack. Such a day will generally
be one in which I find myself in some outward
difficulty, from which there is suggested an
immediate but sinful way of escape ; or in some
inward depression, leaving quite undefended the
weak spots in the citadel of my soul — weak spots
which the watchful enemy is quick to seize.
In my best moments, when my spiritual tem
perature is high, I can easily rise above suggestions
to sin. The temptation is killed almost as soon
as it is born. I am kept safe by my close and
lofty fellowship with diviner things. But when
my spiritual thermometer is nearly at freezing
point, temptation overpowers me almost at once.
The temptation may be the same, each day ; but
I am not the same. I am changed in my circum
stances, or in my mood, or even in my health ;
and I fall an easy prey.
I may be in some tight corner in my worldly
affairs, and, just then, a plausible proposal is made
to me by which I can get free. It has undoubtedly
a look of fraud and deceit ; but I tell my con
science that it will be, at the worst, only a very
small and temporary departure from the narrow
way of uprightness, and that any harm done by
that can easily be repaired. I am tempted to sell
my birthright for a mess of pottage ; and, under

THE EVIL DAY 141
the stress of hunger, I cast my uprightness
away. But I cannot sin myself out of a difficulty.
The sin will only lead to greater difficulty and
greater sin. Abraham tried this way of escape
from difficulty ; so did Isaac ; so did David ; so
did Jonah ; so did Peter ; but every one of them
most miserably failed. John Bunyan reminds me
that there are two easy ways of getting round
the Hill Difficulty, but the name of the one is
Danger, and of the other Destruction, and that
the only right and safe way is straight up to the
top. The " evil day " may have another temptation
too, especially if I am discouraged and depressed
— a temptation to doubt, to unbelief, and even to
despair. This has led many to a suicide's grave :
and there may be such a thing as soul-suicide
too. Every time of temptation is a critical time.
It meets me sometimes in the midst of my business
activity, sometimes in my hours of social relaxa
tion, and sometimes in my private hours of idle
ness or moodiness, when I am quite alone ; and
these last are often the most dangerous times of
all ; but in all of them I must recognise that
temptation, even to a small sin, is a crucial test of
the reality of my faith. God seems to be saying,
" No man can serve two masters," " Choose thou
this day whom thou wilt serve " ; and my answer

142 THE EVIL DAY
to the challenge will show what I really am.
It is a day when, as Christ said to Peter, " Satan
desires to have me that he may sift me as wheat " ;
and God, by allowing this, has the same end in
view ; only, Satan sifts me to get rid of the grain,
God sifts me to get rid of the chaff. God wants
thereby to make me pure, Satan wants to get me
to sin. But, though Satan tempts me, he can do
no more than tempt : he cannot force me to yield.
He could not cast Christ down from the temple-
pinnacle: he could only say, "Cast Thyself down."
If I yield, I need not throw blame on him, as Eve
did, saying, " The serpent beguiled me, and I did
eat." The sin is my own sin, be the tempter who
he may.
How, then, am I to escape in the evil day ?
I must meet temptation clothed from head to
foot in the " armour of God " ; girt with truth
that knows no deceit or guile ; wearing a breast
plate of righteousness that will make no league
with sin, even for an hour ; strengthened by the
shoes of readiness that grip the firm ground of
Gospel peace ; covering myself with the shield of
faith, realising the constant presence of the Holy
One, and the power of the Almighty One, who is
watching the issue of the fight ; defended, too, by
the helmet of salvation, that I may fight as one
redeemed in order to overcome ; using the sword
of the Spirit, the written Word, as Christ Himself

THE EVIL DAY 143
did — a sword that never loses its keen edge ; and
adding to all these a prayerfulness that never
wearies and a watchfulness that never fails.
I must put on God's armour, not my own. My
self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-esteem, self-
righteousness will utterly fail me in the stress.
And I must put on the " whole armour of God."
I need it all, for I never know from what point the
attack on my steadfast uprightness may come.
Let it comfort me to remember, in this as in
all else, the experience and the example of my
Lord Himself, who was " in all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin " — not in all cir
cumstances as we are, but in all points of that
human nature which is ours. To every sense, and
every emotion, and every faculty to which tempta
tion appeals in assaulting me, it appealed in as
saulting Him. He was tried by hope, by fear,
by ambition, by grief, by shame, just as I. I
have temptations in public — so had He ; tempta
tions in private — so had He ; temptations that
assail the senses — so had He ; temptations that
assail the mind — so had He ; temptations that
assail the heart — so had He. No part of His hu
man nature was left unattacked ; but He always
overcame — and why ? Just because He was
clothed in this divine armour from head to foot,
and was ready at any moment to use it all. His
soul was the abode of Truth, the home of Faith,

144 THE EVIL DAY
the dwelling-place of the Word, the sanctuary of
unceasing Prayer.
And, by His rich grace, He can make me a
conqueror like Himself. If the one great attitude
of my soul is a " looking unto Jesus," the Captain
of my Salvation, who puts His own victorious
Life into me, and keeps me in faithful obedience,
as He always was, to the will of my Father in
heaven, I too will be able to " withstand in the
evil day, and having done all to stand," secure,
accepted, and rewarded too.

THE HOLY DAY

10

Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. — Exod. xx. 8.
Ye shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My Sanctuary :
I am the Lord. — Lev. xix. 30,
The Lord's Day- Rev, i. 10.

XIX
THE HOLY DAY
IT is out of God's large-hearted love that the
gift of this day comes. The command to
keep holy one day out of every week has, like all
His commandments, a blessing underneath it.
This quiet resting-day in the midst of worldly
care and toil ought to be to me the Day of days,
the happiest, as well as the holiest, of all the seven.
Even as a day of physical rest from labour it is
sweet. As a day of spiritual uplifting it is beyond
all price. Its sacred leisure lets me rise nearer
to God, and both soul and life are wonderfully
strengthened thereby. It is one of the very oldest
of all religious institutions, a relic of Eden itself.
The first morning that ever dawned on man was
the morning of a Sabbath Day. God's seventh day,
it was man's first ; and it has been an unmixed
blessing ever since where it has been kept as
a sacred thing ; a blessing to the wearied frame,
a blessing to the jaded mind, a blessing to the
care-encumbered spirit, a blessing to the too-often
neglected soul. *47

148 THE HOLY DAY
Well does George Herbert sing :
O day most calm, most bright,
The couch of time, care's balm and bay,
The week were dark but for thy light ;
Thy torch doth show the way.
And Henry Vaughan, too, calls Sabbath Days
" Bright shadows of true Rest ; some shoots of
bliss," " heaven once a week," " transplanted
Paradise," " a gleam of glory after six days'
showers." Surely I ought to prize and sanctify
this holy day far more than I do, and learn to
hail joyfully its weekly dawn, and say :
Cares of earth aside be thrown,
This day given to Heaven alone.
To me, as a Christian, it should be doubly
precious, for it reminds me every week of my
risen Lord. It is " the Lord's Day," a standing
witness to the finished work of Redeeming Love,
as the seventh day had been a memorial of the
finished work of Creative Power. I get very near
to my Lord on His own day, and this invigorates
me for all the days that follow it. Heart-fellow
ship with Him makes me stronger, happier, purer
than I otherwise could be. It lifts me above the
down-drag of my earthly concerns, and helps me
to fight with greater courage and larger hope
against an ensnaring world. As I company with
Christ, the new life of the risen Conqueror stirs

THE HOLY DAY 149
within me, and I learn to feel the power of His
resurrection in myself. As I think of all that His
resurrection means, what it brings of present
peace, what it implies of future glory, I know
something of the thrill of joy that was in the
angel's words, "He is not here : for He is risen,
as He said."
I prize the day of rest, too, because it brings
me into closer fellowship with others who are
worshipping the same risen Lord. I prize its
sanctuary gatherings for prayer and praise : and
I need these fellowships for the intensifying of that
devotional spirit which is the very life-blood of
all true religion. I rejoice in private communion
with God, but I need public communion too.
These different forms of the one communion
cannot safely be disjoined. They stand or fall
together ; they are sure to be either equally loved
or equally rejected. Whoever cleaves to the one
will not despise the other.
Assuredly there are joys to be felt in secret com
munion with God which cannot be experienced
in public ordinances, and no spiritual life can
possibly be a thriving one if the sanctuary is
the only place where the heart seeks intercourse
with heaven. But there are degrees of soul-
quickening and soul-inspiration to be found in
the sanctuary that cannot be found at riome.
Earnest hearts have felt this, all the ages through

T5o THE HOLY DAY
David's night-watches in the caves of Engedi
gave him many a meeting with his God that was
wonderfully uplifting and sweet ; and yet what
pathetic longings he had for the courts of the
Lord's house, and what pathetic lamentations
over his enforced banishment from them ! "One
thing have I desired of the Lord; . . . that I
might dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days
of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and
to inquire in His temple." A true love for the
sanctuary has been an unfailing characteristic
of all God-seeking souls.
Of the three specially sacred spots of earth,
the home in which I dwell, the graveyard in which
my kindred lie, and the sanctuary where with my
living brethren I worship God, the most sacred
is the last. It is the common confessional of
broken hearts, the common incense-altar of pray
ing souls, the common shrine of devotion, the
common table where God's children eat of the
same heavenly bread. And there is sometimes an
added sacredness attaching to it as having been
the heart-home of generations gone, a place where
tender memories gather, a whispering gallery
where the sweet voices of the sainted dead are
still heard as in a dream ; a place where the very
walls seem to echo back the name of the Christ
who was the consolation and the hope of those
that are now within the veil. Marriages have

THE HOLY DAY i51
been celebrated there, when Christ was the
Bridegroom of the heart. Funerals, too, have been
there, solemn yet glad, for they were the burials
of sin and of despair. Thousands of faith's pil
grims have found there, and thousands are finding
still, a green oasis in the desert of life ; the tree
that bears its twelve manner of fruits, and whose
leaves are for the healing of the nations ; the river
of life that keeps on flowing pure and full for every
thirsty lip. How many thousands are saying still,
" Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house,
the place where Thine honour dwelleth." I would
seek to say so too.
But let me be honest with myself. Am I al
ways using God's holy day for its highest ends ?
If I prize it and use it aright myself, am I making
it easy for others to do so too ? In all the ar
rangements of my home, and in all my intercourse
with friends, I would seek grace to show in an
unmistakable way that, " as for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord." I ought to range myself
more decidedly and more openly on the side of
those to whom the sanctity of God's day is very
dear. I deplore the growing secularisation of the
day ; let me see to it that my own practice does
not give the lie to my professions. I must watch
my every act lest I be encouraging or quietly
conniving at, in others, that desecration of the day
which I deplore. I am commanded to love my

152 THE HOLY DAY
neighbour as myself — can I be doing that if the
Sabbath rest of my neighbour is not as dear to
me as my own ?
It might almost be a sufficient test of my fitness
for " the rest that remaineth " to ask what
my feelings really are regarding God's divine
rest-day here.

THE DAY OF DEATH

A good name is better than precious ointment, and the
day of death than the day of one's birth. — Eccl. vii. i„
To depart and to be with Christ is very far better.
Phil, i, 23 (R,V.)
Prepare to meet thy God. — Amos iv. 12.
Now is the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of
salvation. — 2 Cor, vi, 2,

XX
THE DAY OF DEATH
THE statement that the day of death is better
than the day of birth is a good test of the
reader of it. Only a spiritually-minded heart
will agree with it. A worldly heart will read it
with an open or secret denial of its truth. All
will admit that to have the character embalmed
in a noble memory is better than to have the body
embalmed in costly spices ; but very few will
believe that the death-day can be better than
the birth-day was. The sick, worn out with
wasting disease, the old, whose whole life has
been a long, hard struggle with misfortune, the
sorrow-stricken, who would fain be done with the
endless losses and bereavements and griefs of life,
may believe it ; but the young, the strong, the
prosperous, the happy-hearted cannot. " Death
better than birth ? Welcoming death ? " they
will say ; " what do you mean ? If we had our
choice, we would never die at all."
And yet, for a Christian, this may (by the grace
155

156 THE DAY OF DEATH
of God) be emphatically true. For one whose faith
in God is steadfast, whose hope in God is firm,
whose fellowship with God has been joyous even
here, who has liked to honour Him and longs
to honour Him still more, death will do far more
than life ever did. It will usher him into a nobler
sphere, for nobler work, with nobler powers, and
more satisfying joys.
. Even a Christian may have that shrinking from
death which springs from the thought of how it
will affect others dear to him, may so shrink from
the prospect of leaving loved ones sorrowful and
perhaps unprovided for, that, if it were the
Lord's will, he would rather stay. That is not a
want of spirituality ; for even the best of Chris
tians may need some resignation to death, although
the fear of it is wholly taken away. But, if I
am truly Christ's, I ought to have more gladness
than resignation in the thought of its coming
near. If I really believe what I profess to believe
about the blessedness of the world of light
and love beyond, and also about the absolute
safety of the passage into it, assured to all who
commit the keeping of their souls to the Christ
who died on very purpose to bring them into
it, I will listen to the sounding of the death-hour,
not with calmness only, but with a triumphant
hope. Very unexpectedly the summons may come to

THE DAY OF DEATH 157
me to lay down my tools and leave my work un
finished, and go from it though still feeling able for
much more. How would I take such a summons
if it came to-day ? It would test the reality of my
faith and hope just to ask myself, " Supposing
it were certain that this will be my last day here,
winding up and ending all my life-work, whether
the work of serving God or of serving myself, could
I stand calmly face to face with the God whom I
must meet on the other side ? With my eye on
Christ's atoning cross, and also on His glorious
Throne, could I calmly say, ' I know whom I have
believed,' ' To depart is to be with Him, which is
far better ' " ? A faith which cannot do this for me
is not worth much. I need a faith sufficient to
live with ; but I need also a faith sufficient to die
with : and that is the supreme test of its real
worth. This is the heritage only of one who is daily
living in fellowship with things unseen, in whom
the Spirit of peace is an established and welcomed
guest. It cannot belong to one who begins to
seek peace with God only when the shadows of
the evening are lengthening out, and tries, in
panic, to hallow the last poor fragments of a
wasted life, on the chance that that may save him
from the eternal loss of all. The end of life will
be the safe conclusion of a voyage, only if that
voyage has all along been made with Christ at the

158 THE DAY OF DEATH
helm. Let me look seriously, therefore, at the
foundations of my hope.
My days are passing swiftly on. Friend after
friend goes from my side, reminding me that I
must follow soon. Am I letting these reminders
be lost upon me ? Am I still living for time as
though time were never to end, and for eternity
as though it were never to begin ? I may, per
haps, have arranged already where my grave
shall be, and yet have never seriously faced the
question where I myself shall be when the grave
has closed over my clay ; whether I shall then
have awaked in God's likeness, or been con
signed to prison, awaiting my sentence of doom.
Am I risking everything on the mere chance of a
favourable verdict ? Am I trusting to a sudden
transformation by death into meetnessfor heaven?
Alas ! death performs no such work. Renewal
must be here, or it will be nowhere. Life here
and life hereafter are not two, but one. Death is
not a transformation of the soul, but only a
revelation of what its real character is. The body
is only the covering of the soul ; when the cover
ing is removed, the soul is seen as it really has
been. How, then, would I appear if that revela
tion were made to-day ?
The want of this prudent forecasting of the
death-hour deprives life of one of its most steady
ing elements. Tossed as all are on a sea of pas-

THE DAY OF DEATH 159
sions, ambitions, temptations, and cares, there is
nothing more needed than ballasting. We run
after follies, are dazzled by illusions, and tend to
get capsized by gusts of temptation, we therefore
need greatly something to steady us and show
the real value of our life-pursuits ; and one great
steadying power is a wise forecasting of the end.
We are ever putting the chief emphasis on the
wrong things, on the trifling things instead of on
the great, on the secondary instead of the essen
tial, on the temporary instead of the eternal. If
I am doing this let me ask myself whether I could
possibly be so inflamed with poor ambitions, so
grovelling in the race for riches, so frivolous in
the pursuit of pleasure if I thought how all this
will look to me on the edge of the grave, and, still
more, in the light of the world beyond.
Very solemnly am I reminded that I have
" once to die, and after that the judgment."
There are many things I can pass through more
than once, and a failure at one time may be
rectified at another ; but death is not one of
these. It comes as a finality, ending all possi
bilities of rectifying mistakes. I cannot return to
do in a better way what I have mismanaged in
the past. This passing life is emphatically the
one " day of salvation." When the death-hour
strikes, the sentence is, " Let him that is filthy be
filthy still, and let him that is holy be holy still."

160 THE DAY OF DEATH
Death is the end of opportunities, not a new
chance ; and it is so, that " the living may lay it
to heart." I would seek to lay it to my heart
to-day.

TO-DAY IN PARADISE"

n

To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. — Luke xxiii. 43,

XXI
"TO-DAY IN PARADISE"
IT was assuredly the most wonderful of all
days to the dying brigand when he heard the
Crucified One at his side say, " To-day shalt thou
be with Me in Paradise." Almost his last hour
had come ; and marvellous was the grace that
could speak to such a sinner as he had been of an
immediate entrance into blessedness and peace.
No eye but Christ's saw the faith of that peni
tent heart. Dim-sighted and poor though it was,
it was real — real enough to save ; for he recog
nised in that hour, as no one else in all the world
did, the Crucified Nazarene to be the very Christ
of God. I can imagine a gleam of joy shining
out, for a moment, on the Great Sufferer's face as
He looked on that trophy of His redeeming grace,
and a ring of joy in His voice as He promised to
the penitent " exceeding abundantly above all
that he could ask or think," and made that cross
on Calvary an absolving judgment-seat, from
163

1 64 " TO-DAY IN PARADISE "
which He gave to a dying sinner life everlasting
with Himself.
But I like to think that he was not the only one
who has heard the same words from the same
Redeemer's lips. They have come, all down the
ages, as His last consolation to weary and sin-
burdened souls. Thousands upon thousands have
heard them, and believed them, and experienced
their truth. I can imagine no greater blessedness
than that I, too, may hear them in my dying
hour. They show me two things at least : first, that
wherever and whatever Paradise may be, it is a
state of holy blessedness : and, secondly, that
entrance into it will not be postponed to some
far-distant time, but will follow immediately after
death. I know almost nothing definitely of what
Paradise will be ; but it will be companionship
with Christ : and wherever He is, there must be
blessedness, and holiness as well.
In all that Christ saw fit to reveal of the life
beyond there is a marked reserve as to details.
According to the fine saying of Archbishop
Fenelon : " This King was too accustomed to the
splendours of His Palace to be always speaking
about them." Bare hints, mysterious metaphors,
suggestive emblems are all that He has given me.
Even those glowing descriptions of a heavenly
city such as the book of Revelation contains leave

"TO-DAY IN PARADISE" 165
me in bewildered doubt as to what the reality
foreshadowed by them will be.
'Tis misty all, both sight and sound ;
I only know 'tis fair and sweet ;
'Tis wandering on enchanted ground
With dizzy brow and tottering feet.
The pictures are meant not for the reason, but
for the imagination. They are like the illustra
tions in a child's book, which speak to the child -
heart more forcibly than the letter-press can do,
and are meant as a stimulus to that faith which
is the only thing I can live by here, till I " no
longer see through a glass darkly, but face to
face." And, as I look upon them, I remind my
self of the ancient words : " Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man, the things which God hath pre
pared for them that love Him."
Perhaps it would not be safe for me to have
more than this. Though destined for what far
transcends this present earth, I am designed for
this earth meanwhile : and life here is meant
to be a probation-life, a life of humble service, of
patient endurance, of commonplace duties filling
all the days. But if my vision were full of the
dazzling splendours of immortality, if I could
look every day within the veil, and recognise the
spirits of the perfected in their emancipated power

1,66 "TO-DAY IN PARADISE"
for happy service, would not my present life look
so poor and mean that I would have no patience
for its sufferings and no heart for its duties either ?
Like those animals whose eyes are suited only for
the twilight, and are blinded by the glare of day,
I might be blinded by the lustre of the glory
beyond, and so become unfitted for walking amid
the shadows here. There may be more love than
I know in the arrangement that " it doth not yet
appear what we shall be."
And yet I must not let the blessed hope of the
perfected life go entirely out of view. It is an
infinitely consoling hope, for it concerns far more
than my release from suffering and toil ; it speaks
of a more attractive thing by far — my eternal
release from sin ; of standing not merely un-
reproved, but " unreprovable in His sight " ; not
merely with my faults concealed, but " without
fault before the throne of God," absolutely
" without spot, or blemish, or any such thing."
When it is said " there shall enter therein nothing
that defileth," that is not so much a decree of
exclusion as a note of blessedness, and without
that last touch the picture of the New Jerusalem
would be felt to be incomplete.
What earnest heart does not know the anguish
of long and weary struggling against lusts which
it has learned to hate, against old habits which
it has learned to scorn but which hold it in

"TO-DAY IN. PARADISE" 167
bondage still, against base emotions and thoughts
which it would strangle to death if it could, but
which seem far more likely to strangle it ? What,
then, will the hour of emancipation be, when the
conflict is for ever past, and the soul is pure as
Christ Himself ! That is the supreme attraction
of the life beyond, that freer, nobler, purer, larger
life that Christ has promised to them that follow
Him. Surely this, as well as greater power for
service, must have been in the mind of Paul when
he rejoiced to say " the time of my departure is
at hand." For the word he uses signifies the
loosing of a ship from the narrow harbour that it
may go out on its voyage to the open sea. % What
the unrestricted and health-giving ocean is, com
pared with the narrow space of a fever-laden port,
the heavenly life will be, as compared with my
poor life now. The common Christian idea of
the heavenly condition is that it is an eternal
harbour of rest, after the stormy buffetings of
life : and that is, in one sense, entirely Scriptural
and true. But Paul's idea here is an even nobler
one than that. Death brings not rest alone, but
wide emancipation. And into that blessed and
holy life of far-reaching power Christ Himself will
conduct me at the end. I go at His call ; but
I go in His company too. The first Friend of my
soul will be my last Friend as well.
As life goes on I am always narrowing the

168 "TO-DAY IN PARADISE"
circle of my friends. Many go and leave me ;
but, apart from that, I seem to wish my friend
ships to be fewer but closer with the lessening
years. It is only the most intimate that I care to
see ; till at last, there is only One, and I have to
take my last journey with that One alone. But
He is enough ; and He tells me He will be with
me then. " To-day with Me in Paradise," I hear
Him say.
I would seek to be not only ready for hearing
that message, but eager to hear it ; but ought I
not to ask myself if my daily walk and conver
sation would suggest to any around me that this
is so ? Am I " declaring plainly " that I seek
this ? Am I " labouring to enter into that
rest " ? I ought not to be able to bear the thought
of leaving loved ones behind without any glad
certainty regarding my lot beyond. Am I, then,
so spiritually-minded and so unmistakably
living by faith upon the Son of God, that if I were
to die to-day, they would be perfectly assured
that the words of Jesus to the dying thief had
also been addressed to me ?

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