Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth.
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF THE
BOOK OF PROVERBS.
BY THE
REV. WILLIAM ARNOT,
ST. PETER’S FREE CHURCH, GLASGOW.
Second Series.
Vol. 2
LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
MDCCCLVIII.
1858
TO THE READER.
WHILE, as a series of practical comments upon texts selected
from a Book of Scripture, the two volumes now published
constitute one whole; yet, from the nature of the sub-
jects, and the manner in which they have been treated,
each is complete in itself, and independent of the other.
For the sake of those who may see this volume first, or
this volume only, the explanatory note which was pre-
fixed to the former volume is reprinted here:—
These Illustrations of the Proverbs are not critical, continuous,
exhaustive. The comments, in imitation of the text, are intended to
be brief, practical, miscellaneous, isolated. The reader may, however,
perceive a principle of unity running through the whole, if he take
his stand at the outset on the writer's view-point—a desire to lay the
Christian System along the surface of common life, without removing
it from its foundations in the doctrines of Grace. The authority of
the instructions must be divine: the form transparently human.
Although the lessons should, with a pliant familiarity, lay themselves
along the line of men's thoughts and actions, they will work no deli-
verance, unless redeeming love be everywhere the power to press
them in. On the other hand, although evangelical doctrine be con-
sistently maintained throughout, the teaching will come short of its
purpose unless it go right into every crevice of a corrupt heart, and
perseveringly double every turn of a crooked path. Without "the
love wherewith He loved us" as our motive power, we cannot reach
vi TO THE READER.
for healing any of the deeper ailments of the world: but having such
a power within our reach, we should not leave it dangling in the air;
we should bring it down, and make it bear on every sorrow that
afflicts, and every sin that defiles humanity. The two extremes to
be avoided are, abstract, unpractical speculation, and shallow, power-
less, heathen morality; the one a soul without a body, the other a
body without a soul—the one a ghost, the other a carcass. The aim
is, to be doctrinal without losing our hold of earth, and practical
without losing our hold of heaven.
Most certain it is that if the Church at any period, or any portion
of the Church, has fallen into either of these extremes, it has been
her own fault; for the Bible, her standard, is clear from both impu-
tations. Christ is its subject and its substance. His word is like
Himself. It is of heaven, but it lays itself closely around the life
of men. Such is the Bible; and such, in their own place and mea-
sure, should our expositions of it be.
Had our object been a critical exposition of the Book, it would
have been our duty to devote the larger share of our attention to the
more difficult parts. But our aim from first to last has been more to
apply the obvious than to elucidate the obscure, and the selection of
texts has been determined accordingly. As there is diversity of gifts,
there should be division of labour. While scientific inquirers re-exa-
mine the joints of the machine, and demonstrate anew the principles
of its construction, it may not be amiss that a workman should set
the machine a-going, and try its effects on the affairs of life.
W. A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE ALL-SEEING 9
II. A WHOLESOME TONGUE 23
III. MIRTH A MEDICINE 30
IV. TASTES DIFFER 37
V. HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR 46
VI. THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY’S PEACE 51
VII. THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE 59
VIII. MERCY AND TRUTH 68
IX. PROVIDENCE 74
X. WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH 88
XL THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT 93
XII. THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE 99
XIII. THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS 104
XIV. FRIENDSHIP 116
XV. THE BIAS ON THE SIDE OF SELF 126
XVI. A WIFE 131
XVII. ANGER 142
XVIII. A POOR MAN IS BETTER THAN A LIAR 147
XIX. THE DECEITFULNESS OF STRONG DRINK 152
XX. THE SLUGGARD SHALL COME TO WANT 164
XXI. WISDOM MODEST, FOLLY OBTRUSIVE 170
XXII. TWO WITNESSES—THE HEARING EAR/THE SEEING EYE 175
XXIII. BUYERS AND SELLERS 187
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
XXIV. A GOOD NAME 195
XXV. THE RICH AND THE POOR MEET TOGETHER 200
XXVI. HIDING-PLACES FOR THE PRUDENT 205
XXVII. EDUCATION 209
XXVIII. THE BONDAGE OF THE BORROWER 228
XXIX. CONVENIENT FOOD 237
XXX. THE RIGHTS OF MAN 244
XXXI. A FAITHFUL FATHER 256
XXXII. THE PROSPERITY OF THE WICKED 268
XXXIII. A BROTHER'S KEEPER 273
XXXIV. PIETY AND PATRIOTISM 282
XXIV. THE SLUGGARD’S GARDEN 290
XXXVI. MONARCHS—UNDER GOD AND OVER MAN 296
XXXVII. A FAITHFUL MESSENGER 303
XXVIII. THE FIRE THAT MELTS AN ENEMY 309
XXXIX. A TIME TO FROWN AND A TIME TO SMILE 317
XL. COLD WATERS TO THE THIRSTY SOUL 323
XLI. AN IMPURE APPETITE SEEKS IMPURE FOOD 328
XLII. NOW, OR TO-MORROW 333
XLIII. THE COUNTENANCE OF A FRIEND 342
XLIV. CONSCIENCE 348
XLV. SIN COVERED AND SIN CONFESSED 353
XLVI. THE FEAR OF MAN BRINGETH A SNARE 366
XLVII. PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 379
XLVIII. LEMUEL AND HIS MOTHER 392
XLIX. A HEROINE 397
L. FAITH AND OBEDIENCE—WORK AND REST 407
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF THE
BOOK OF PROVERBS.
I.
THE ALL-SEEING.
"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Hell
and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of
the children of men?"—PROVERBS xv. 3, 11.
THE omniscience of God is usually considered a funda-
mental doctrine of natural religion. Nobody denies it.
Infidelity in this department is acted, not spoken. Specu-
lative unbelievers are wont, in a free and easy way, to
set down at least a very large proportion of the existing
Christian profession to the credit of hypocrisy. Hypo-
crite is a disreputable name, and most men would rather
impute it to a neighbour than acknowledge it their own:
but it is one thing to repudiate the word, and another to
be exempt from the thing which it signifies. That weed
seems to grow as freely on the soil of natural religion as
in the profession of Christian faith. A man may be a
10 THE ALL-SEEING.
hypocrite although he abjures the Bible. Most of those
who reject a written revelation profess to learn from the
volume of creation that a just God is everywhere pre-
sent, beholding the evil and the good; but what disciple
of Nature lives consistently with even his own short
creed?
The doctrine of the divine omniscience, although owned
and argued for by men's lips, is neglected or resisted in
their lives. The unholy do not like to have a holy Eye
ever open over them, whatever their profession may be.
If fallen men, apart from the one Mediator, say or think
that the presence of God is pleasant to them, it is because
they have radically mistaken either their own character
or his. They have either falsely lifted up their own
attainments, or falsely dragged down the standard of the
Judge.
Atheism is the inner spirit of all the guilty, until they
be reconciled through the blood of the cross. All image
worship, whether heathen or Romish, is Atheism incarnate.
The idol is a body which men, at Satan's bidding, prepare
for their own enmity against God. The gods many and
lords many that thickly strew the path of humanity over
time, are the product ever and anon thrown off by the
desperate wriggle of the guilty to escape from the look
of an all-seeing Eye, and so be permitted to do their deeds
in congenial darkness. When spiders stretched their webs
across the eylids of Jupiter, notwithstanding all the efforts
that Greek sculpture had put forth to make the image
awful, the human worshipper would hide, without scruple,
in his heart the thoughts which he did not wish his deity
THE ALL-SEEING. 11
to know. It was even an express tenet of the heathen
superstitions that the authority of the gods was partial
and local. One who was dreadful on the hills might be
safely despised in the valleys. In this feature, as in all
others, the Popish idolatry, imitative rather than inven-
tive, follows the rut in which the ancient current ran.
Particular countries and classes of persons are assigned to
particular saints. With puerile perseverance, the whole
surface of the earth and the whole course of the year
have been mapped and appropriated, so that you cannot
plant a pin point either in time or space without touch-
ing the territory of some Romish god or goddess. In
this way the ignorant devotee practically escapes from
the conviction of an omniscient Witness. "Divide and
conquer" is the maxim of the enemy when he tries to
deaden or destroy that sense of divine inspection which
seems to spring native in the human mind When he
cannot persuade a man that there is no such witness, he
persuades him, as the next best, that there are a thousand.
When a man will not profess to have no god, the same
end is accomplished by giving him many.
We sometimes feel and express surprise that rational
beings should degrade themselves by worshipping blind,
dumb idols, which their own hands have made; but it is
precisely because the idols are blind and dumb that men
are willing to worship them. A god or a saint that
should really cast the glance of a pure eye into the con-
science of the worshipper would not long be held in
repute. The grass would grow again round that idol's
shrine. A seeing god would not do: the idolater wants
12 THE ALL-SEEING.
a blind one. The first cause of idolatry is a desire in an
impure heart to escape from the look of the living God,
and none but a dead image would serve the turn.
From history and experience it appears that idolaters
prefer to have an image that looks like life, provided
always that it be not living. A real omniscience they
will not endure; but a mimic omniscience pleases the
fancy, and rocks the conscience into a sounder sleep. In
the present generation the Romish craftsmen have tasked
their ingenuity to make the eyes of their pictured saints
move upon the canvass. The eyeball of a certain saint
rolled, or seemed to roll, in its dusky colouring within
the dimly-lighted aisle, and great was the effect on the
devotions of the multitude. In places where Protestant
truth has not shorn their superstition of its grosser out-
growths, the procession of the Fete Dieu is garnished
with a huge goggle eye, carried aloft upon a pole, moved
in its socket by strings and pulleys, and ticketed "The
Omniscient." This becomes an object of great attraction
in the crowd. In one aspect it is more childish than
any child's play; but in another aspect a melancholy
seriousness pervades it. This hideous mimicry of omni-
science is an elaborate effort to weave a veil under which
an unclean conscience may comfortably hide from the eye
of God. After all the darkening and distorting effects of
sin, there lies in the deep of a human soul an appetite
for the knowledge of God, which, when it can do no
more, stirs now and then, and troubles the man. It is
the art of Antichrist to lie on the watch for that blind
hunger when first it begins to stir, and throw into its
THE ALL-SEEING. 13
opening mouth heaps of swine-food husks, to gorge and
lay it, lest it should seek and get the bread of life.
This is the grosser method, which grosser natures adopt
to destroy within themselves the sense of divine omni-
science. There is another way running off in an opposite
direction,—more refined, indeed, but equally atheistic,
more manly, but not more godly, than the crowded Pan-
theon of ancient or modern Rome. This other road to rest
is Pantheism. If there is speculation in an age, it becomes
restive under the thick clay of image-worship. There is a
spirit which will not endure a material idol, and yet is not
the spirit of God. Dagon falls, and the philosophers make
sport of his dishonoured stump. Instead of making a little
ugly idol for themselves, they adopt a great and glorious one
made to their hands. God, they say, is the soul of Nature;
and Nature therefore is the only god whom they desire or
need. Sea, earth, air,—flowers, trees, and living crea-
tures, including man, —the creatures in the aggregate,—
the universe is God. In this way they contrive to heal
over the wound which the sense of an omniscient Eye
makes in an unclean conscience. It is the personality of
God that stings the flesh of the alienated. It is easier
to deal with Nature in her majestic movements than with
the Self of the Holy One. Nature heaves in the sea, and
sighs in the wind, and blossoms in the flowers, and bleats
on the pastures. Nature glides gently round in her
gigantic orbit, and stoops not to notice the thoughts and
words of a human being. He may live as he lists, al-
though Nature is there. Philosophy compels him to reject
the paltry, tangible, local gods of all the superstitions.
14 THE ALL-SEEING.
Reason constrains him to own the universality of the
Creator's presence. The problem in his mind is, how to
conceive of the Lord's eyes being in every place, and yet
indifferent to sin. In order to accomplish this, the per-
sonal, with its pungency, must be discharged from the
idea of God. This done, the great idol, though more
sublime, is not a whit more troublesome than the little
one. The creature, whether great or small, whether God's
hand-work or man's, cannot be a god to an intelligent,
immortal human soul. Neither the idolater's stock nor
the philosopher's universe has an eye to follow a trans-
gressor into those Chambers where he commits his abomi-
nations in the dark; but in every place "our God is a
consuming fire" upon a sin-stained conscience. The dark-
ness and the light are both alike to him (Ps. cxxxix 12).
"In every place" our hearts and lives are open in the
sight of Him with, whom we have to do. The proposi-
tion is absolutely universal. We must beware, however,
lest that feature of the word which should make it power-
ful only render it to us indefinite and meaningless. Man's
fickle mind treats universal truths that come from heaven
as the eye treats the visible heaven itself. At a distance
from the observer all around, the blue canopy seems to
descend and lean upon the earth, but where he stands it is
far above, out of his sight. It touches not him at all; and
when he goes forward to the line where now it seems to
touch other men, he finds it still far above, and the point
which applies to this lower world is as distant as ever.
Heavenly truth, like heaven, seems to touch all the world
around, but not his own immediate sphere, or himself, its
THE ALL-SEEING. 15
centre. The grandest truths are practically lost in this
way when they are left whole. We must rightly divide
the word, and let the bits come into every crook of our
own character. Besides the assent to general truth, there
must be specific personal application. A man may own
omniscience, and yet live without God in the world.
The house of prayer is one important place on earth,
and the eyes of the Lord are there when the great con-
gregation has assembled, and the solemn worship has begun.
He seeth not as man seeth. Thoughts are visible to Him.
Oh! what sights these pure eyes behold in that place!
If our eyes could see them, a scream of surprise would
rend the air. "Son of man, hast thou seen what the
ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man
in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The Lord
seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth" (Ezek.
viii. 12). Take your place beside a hive of bees in a
summer day at noon, and watch the busy traffickers.
The outward-bound brush quickly past the heavy-laden
incomers in the narrow passage. They flow like two
opposite streams of water in the same channel, without
impeding each other's motions. Every one is in haste:
none tarries for a neighbour. Such a hive is a human
heart, and the swarm of winged thoughts which harbour
there maintain an intercourse with all the world in con-
stant circulation, while the man sits among the worship-
pers still, and upright, and steady, as a bee-hive upon its
pedestal. The thoughts that issue from their home in
that human heart, bold like robbers in the dark, over-
leap the fences of holiness, suck at will every flower that
16 THE ALL-SEEING.
they reckon sweet, and return to deposit their gatherings
in the owner's cup. The eyes of the Lord are there,
beholding the evil.
The family is His own work, and He does not desert
it. His eyes are open there, to see how father and
mother entwine authority and love, a twofold cord, at
once to curb the children's waywardness and lead them
in the paths of peace; how children obey their parents
in the Lord; how a sister employs that gentleness
whereby God has made woman great, to soothe and win
the robuster brother; how a brother proffers the arm that
the Almighty has made strong, a support for a mother
or a sister in her weakness to lean upon; how masters
become fathers to their servants, and servants lighten
their labour by infusing into its dull heavy body the
inspiring soul of love. In the family, the place where
all these bonds unite, and all these relations circulate,
are the eyes of the Lord its Maker: let all its members
"walk as seeing Him who is invisible."
In the street, in the counting-house, in the shop, in
the factory, these eyes ever are. God does not forget
and forsake a man when he rises from his knees and
plunges into business; the man, therefore, should not
then and there forget and forsake God.
In the tavern, when its doors are shut and its table
spread,—when the light is brilliant and the laugh loud,—
when the cup circulates and the head swims,—in that
place are the eyes of the Lord, and they are like a flame
of fire. It would be a salutary though a painful experi-
ence, if the eyes of these time-killers were opened but for
THE ALL-SEEING. 17
a moment to meet the look of their omniscient Witness,
before he become their almighty Judge.
But the eyes of the Lord are bent on this world, to
behold the good as well as the evil that grows there. Is
there any place among pits thorns and thistles which bears
fruit pleasant to the eyes of its Maker? Yes; there are
fields which he cultivates (1 Cor. iii. 9), and trees which
he plants (Isa. v. 3). On these places his eye rests
with complacency, beholding the growth of his own
grace. One of the places that attract the Redeemer's
eye is a shady avenue where a youth saunters alone on
a summer eve, communing with his own heart, grieving
over its detected backslidings, and breathing a prayer
for reconciliation and renewing. That angular recess in
the ivy-covered rock, dark in daylight by the thickness
of the leafy shade,—that is a place to which the Lord's
eye turns intent; for thither, when the fire burned, the
penitent turned aside unseen; and there he "wept and
made supplication, and prevailed," nor parted from the
place, nor let the Angel of the Covenant go, until he had
gotten a whole Saviour for his soul, and surrendered his
whole soul to the Saviour. This tree of righteousness is
the planting of the Lord. By its freshness and fruitful-
ness he is glorified. The new creation is at least as lovely
in the Creator's eye as the old one was before it was
marred by sin. In that ransomed captive the Redeemer
"shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied."
"Hell and destruction are before the Lord; how much
more then the hearts of the children of men?" This
terrible truth these hearts secretly know, and their despe-
18 THE ALL-SEEING.
rate writhings to shake it off show how much they dis-
like it. The Romish confessional is one of the most
pregnant facts in the whole history of man. It is a
monument and measure of the guilty creature's enmity
against God. We know authoritatively from their own
books what Rome expects her priests to do in the con-
fessional, and history gives some glimpses of what they
actually do. We have felt the glow of indignation in
our breast as we learned how the confessor fastens like
a home-leech on his victim, and how the victim, like a
charmed bird, abandons itself to the tyrant's will. We
have heard how a full-aged unmarried man explores at
will the half-formed thoughts that flutter in the bosom of
a maid, and rudely rakes up the secrets that lie the deep-
est in the memory of a matron. We have wondered at
the blindness and stupidity of our common nature, in
permitting a man, not more holy than his neighbours, to
stand in the place of God to a brother's soul. There is
cause for grief, but not ground for surprise. The pheno-
menon proceeds in the way of natural law. It is the
common, well understood process of compounding for the
security of the whole, by the voluntary surrender of a
part. The confessional is a kind of insurance office, where
periodical exposure of the heart to a man is the premium
paid for fancied impunity in hiding that heart altogether
from the deeper scrutiny of the all-seeing God. Popish
transgressors have no particular delight in confession for
its own sake. Confession to the priest is felt and dreaded
as an evil. The devout often need spurring to make
them come. And when they come, it is on the principle
THE ALL-SEEING. 19
of submitting to the less evil in order to escape the
greater.
The incoming of the Heart Searcher is feared and loathed,
like a deadly and contagious disease. A quack comes up,
and by dint of bold profession, persuades the trembler
that voluntary inoculation with the same disease in a
milder form will secure exemption from the terrible reality.
The guilty, although he does not like to have his con-
science searched,—because he does not like to have his
conscience searched, submits to the searching of his con-
science. The pretending penitent accepts the scrutiny by
a man, in the hope of escaping thereby the scrutiny of
God. The impudent empiric tells his patient that if he
submit to inoculation, the small-pox will never come.
Behold "the human nature of the question;" behold the
philosophy of the confessional.
It is in principle the old question of the heathen,—
"Shall I give the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul?" (Mic. vi. 7.) It is not, however, the fruit of the
body that is offered, for they do not make their children
pass through the fire to Moloch now; the spiritual chas-
tity of the soul is laid down as the price of impunity for
sin. God made the human soul for himself. It is vilest
prostitution to abandon it to the authoritative search of
a sinful man. Yet this unnatural sacrifice is made, this
galling yoke is worn, in the vain hope of shutting out the
eyes of the Lord from one place of his own world.
But what fearful dilemma have we here? The Holiest
changeth not when He comes a visitant to a human
heart. He is the same there that he is in the highest
20 THE ALL-SEEING.
heaven. He cannot look upon sin; and how can a
human heart welcome Him into its secret chambers?
How can the blazing fire welcome in the quenching
water. It is easy to commit to memory the seemly
prayer of an ancient penitent, "Search me, O God, and
know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts" (Ps.
cxxxix. 23). The dead letters, worn smooth by frequent
use, may drop freely from callous lips, leaving no sense
of scalding on the conscience; and yet, truth of God
though they are, they may be turned into a lie in the
act of utterance. The prayer is not true, although it is
borrowed from the Bible, if the suppliant invite the All-
seeing in, and yet would give a thousand worlds, if he
had them, to keep him out for ever.
Christ has declared the difficulty, and solved it: "I am
the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me" (John xiv. 6). When the Son has
made a sinner free, he is free indeed. The dear child, par-
doned and reconciled, loves and longs for the Father's pre-
sence. What! is there neither spot nor wrinkle now upon
the man, that he dares to challenge inspection by the
Omniscient, and to offer his heart as Jehovah's dwelling-
place? He is not yet so pure; and well he knows it.
The groan is bursting yet from his broken heart: "O
wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" (Rom. vii. 24.) Many stains defile
him yet; but he loathes them now, and longs to be free.
The difference between an unconverted and a converted
man is not that the one has sins and the other has none;
but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against
THE ALL-SEEING. 21
a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled
God against his hated sins. He is out with his former
friends, and in with his former adversary. Conversion is a
turning, and it is one turning only, but it produces simul-
taneously and necessarily two distinct effects. Whereas
his face was to his sins and his back to God, his face is
now to God and his back toward his sins. This one
turning, with its twofold result, is in Christ the Mediator,
and through the work of the Spirit.
As long as God is my enemy, I am his. I have no
more power to change that condition than the polished
surface has to refrain from reflecting the sunlight that
falls upon it. It is God's love, from the face of Jesus
shining into my dark heart, that makes my heart open,
and delight to be his dwelling-place. The eye of the just
Avenger I cannot endure to be in this place of sin; but the
eye of the compassionate Physician I shall gladly admit
into this place of disease, for he came from heaven to
earth that he might heal such sin-sick souls as mine.
When a disciple desires to be searched by the living God,
he does not thereby intimate that there are no sins in him
to be discovered: he intimates rather that his foes are so
many and so lively, that nothing can subdue them except
the presence and power of God.
22 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
II.
A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
"A wholesome tongue is a tree of life."—xv. 4.
NOT a silent tongue: mere abstinence from evil is not
good. The beasts that perish speak no guile; what do
ye more than they? The tongue of man is a talent given
by God, and the commandment, “Occupy till I come,” is
deeply graven in its wondrous structure. He who hides
his talent in the earth is counted wicked and slothful.
The servant vainly pleads that it was not employed for
evil: the Master righteously condemns because it was not
employed for good. Idleness is evil under the adminis-
tration of God.—Not a smooth tongue: it may be soft
on the surface, while the poison of asps lies cherished
underneath. "The mouth of a strange woman is smoother
than oil." A serpent licks his victim all over before he
swallows it. Smoothness is not an equivalent for truth.
—Not a voluble tongue: that active member may labour
much to little purpose. It may revolve with the rapidity
and steadiness of manufacturing machinery, throwing off
from morning till night a continuous web of wordage, and
yet not add one grain to the stock of human wisdom by
the imposing bulk of its weightless product.—Not a sharp
tongue: some instruments are made keen-edged for the
purpose of wounding. "There is that speaketh like the
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 23
piercings of a sword", (Prov. xii. 18). The wrath of man
worketh not the righteousness of God. A great apostle
used sharpness, and so did his Lord before him; but un-
less we partake of their spirit, we cannot safely imitate
their plan. He would need to have a loving heart and
a steady hand who ventures to cut with a sharp tongue
into the quick of a brother's nature.—Not even a true
tongue: truth is the foundation of all good in speech,
but it is the foundation only. Wanting truth, there is
only evil; but even with it there may be little of good.
Truth is necessary, but not enough. The true tongue
must also be wholesome.
Before anything can be wholesome in its effects on
others, it must be whole in itself. The tongue must be
itself in health before it can diffuse a healthful influence
around. But our tongue, as an instrument of moral
agency, is diseased. It is in the human constitution the
chief outgate from the heart, and the heart of the fallen
is not in health. The scripture of the Old Testament
quoted by Paul in the New, declares, with memorable
pungency, that it is corrupt and corrupting: "Their
throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they
have used deceit" (Rom. iii. 13). Government, watch-
ing over the health of the nation, will not permit a grave
to lie open. Because there is putridity in its heart, its
mouth must be closed. The throat of a grave, if left
open, would breathe forth pestilence. Alas! the moral
disease is pouring out moral infection, and no government
can stay the plague. Every corrupt heart is generating
the poison, and every unwholesome tongue is a vent for
24 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
its escape. The air is tainted. Men both give out and
draw in corruption like breath.
Parents who wisely love their children greatly dread
unwholesome tongues. Sometimes they are in great
straits as to the path of duty. They cannot take the
young out of the world, and yet they are afraid to send
them into it. When a father hears a torrent of polluting
words from a foul tongue on the street, or in a public
conveyance, and returns home to look upon his little boy,
ignorant as yet of full-grown wickedness, he could almost
wish that his child were deaf, and so shielded on one side
from the great adversary's onset. If the wish were law-
ful, you would be inclined to say, Let his ear be open to the
song of birds and the murmur of streams, to the rushing
of the winds and the roll of the thunder; but let him not
hear the voice of man until he hear it new in the kingdom
of the Father—until it burst forth wholesome from the
ranks of the redeemed round the throne, where they vie
with the unfallen in praising the same Lord.
But this cannot be. We and our children are in the
world, and the world teems with evil. In particular, it
is like a lazar-house because of unwholesome tongues.
Hear from the Apostle James a faithful description of the
danger: "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity:
it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course
of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. It is an
unruly evil, full of deadly poison" (James iii. 6, 8). One
would think that parents, in view of such a pestilence
abounding, would not be in haste to "bring out" their
children at a tender age into the region of infection.
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 25
True love would rather shield them as long as possible
from the inevitable contact, and in the meantime move
heaven and earth to have the shield of faith interposed
between the tender conscience of the child and the fiery
darts of the wicked one.
Dogs licked the sores of Lazarus as he lay at the rich
man's gate, and the poor cripple reaped a benefit from
their kindness. The dumb brute has a wholesome tongue,
and an instinct that prompts him to use it. Would that
his master's tongue were as soft, and its touch as sooth-
ing! The best things, corrupted and misapplied, become
the most mischievous. Our tongue is fearfully and won-
derfully made! Great is its capacity for hurt or for heal-
ing. If it were attuned to the praise of God, it would be
a medicine for the sufferings of men. If Christians were
like Christ, they would be more happy and more useful.
He spake as never man spike. When men had sunk
helpless in a deadly disease, "He sent his word and healed
them." For a wounded spirit there is no medicine like
love-drops distilling from a wholesome tongue: even
where they fail to heal, the wound, they will soothe the
sufferer, and so lighten his pain. A high place in the
sight of God and man has the physician who remains on
the battle-field after the conquering host has passed on,
tending indiscriminately wounded friends and wounded
foes; or who plies his task in a plague-stricken city,
entering every house where a chalk-mark on the door in-
dicates that the infection is within. His is an honourable
work. Angels, eyeing him as they pass, might envy him
the work which he has got in the service of the common
26 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
Lord. But every one of us might attain a rank as high,
and do a work as beneficent. If broken limbs lie not in
our way, broken spirits abound in our neighbourhood.
Sick hearts are rife on the edges of our daily walk.
Although we lack the skill necessary to cure a bodily
ailment, we may all exercise the art of healing on diseases
that are more deeply set. A loving heart and a whole-
some tongue are a sufficient apparatus; and the instincts
of a renewed nature should be ever ready to apply them
in the time and place of need.
The tongue, when it is whole and wholesome, "is a
tree of life." In a former chapter (x. 11) the similitude
employed was a well; but whether the manner of the
diffusion be like a well sending forth its streams, or like
a tree scattering its ripened fruit, the influence diffused
from a good man is "life." The product which issues
by the tongue from a renewed heart is healthful in its
character, and it spreads as seed spreads. In autumn from
the plant on which it grew. "Winged words" have
fluttered about in poetry and prose through all the lan-
guages of the civilized world from old Homer's day till
now. The permanence and prevalence of the expression
prove that it embodies a recognised truth. Words have
wings indeed, but they are the wings of seeds rather than
of birds or butterflies. We are all accustomed to observe
in autumn multitudes of diminutive seeds, each balanced
on its own tiny wing, floating past on the breeze. Some
of these have fallen from useful plants, and some from
hurtful weeds; but the impartial wind bears the good
and the evil alike forward to their destiny. Some plants
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 27
are prolific almost beyond the reach of arithmetic or of
imagination. These countless multitudes are scattered
indiscriminately over all the land. Words are like these
seeds, in their varied character, their measureless multi-
tude, and their winged speed. They drop off in incon-
ceivable numbers: they fly far: they are widely spread.
It is of deep importance that they should in their nature
be good, and not evil. The tongue is a prolific tree;
it concerns the whole community that it should be a
tree of life, and not of death. Considering the in-
fluence of our words on the world, what manner of
persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and
godliness!
In modern times the art of printing has given wings
to human words in a measure that seems to vie even
with the fecundity of nature. The quantity thus carried
is such as to baffle all our powers of description or con-
ception. But in the department of art, as in that of
nature, there is great variety in the character of the seed,
and a terrible impartiality in the law of diffusion. When
the evil seed is permitted to grow, the wings are at hand
to carry it across the world. It is the part of those who
love their kind, and desire to see this sin-cursed earth
become a paradise again, to keep down the growth of
noxious seed, and cultivate the better kinds. The quan-
tity of vain and hurted words that are flying across the
world on printed pages is enough to make us tremble for
the coming generation. But to stand and tremble in
presence of the danger is neither useful nor manful.
When we hear of unwholesome words being sent week
28 A WHOLESOME TONGUE.
after week by the ton-weight to the principal reservoirs
in the large cities, and thence by various channels distri-
buted over all the land, we should indeed be aroused to
take the measure of the crisis, but not lose heart or hand
at the discovery of its magnitude. Christians should take
heart and hope. We have words and wings for them as
well as those who are against us. We have precious
seed in our hands, and a world to spread it on. Our
Father in heaven expects us to labour on his field. We
have a good Master and pleasant work. In the labour of
laying the words on these pages we are cheered by the
thought that we are in the very act of attaching wings
to the living seed of saving truth, that it may be cast on
the winds at a venture, and borne way, under the direc-
tion of an all-wise Providence, to some needy, desert
place. As we frame these sentences, we are like a humble
artisan in his work-shop, fashioning wings for the word of
righteousness. We are encouraged to pray, as they pass
from our hands, that on these wings that word may be
borne far beyond our sight, and that it may drop, in
Indian jungle, or Australian mine, or American backwood,
on some lone exile, and find entrance into the weary
broken heart which at home in prosperity had been
always hard and closed.
Ye who love the Lord and the brethren, wing the seed
and give it to the wind. It is God's gift, and is in his
keeping. When it goes out of your sight, plead with
Him who employs the winds as his angels to guide it to
some bare but broken ground. While you pray for the
fruitfulness of what has already been scattered, work to
A WHOLESOME TONGUE. 29
scatter more. This or that may prosper; perhaps this
and that too. The very mountain tops shall wave yet
like Lebanon with a harvest from the seed of "whole-
some words." The earth shall yet be full of the know-
ledge of the Lord. The sowers may well wipe their tears
away as they go forth, for they shall one day return
rejoicing, "bringing their sheaves with them." The
Lord gave the word,—the Lord is the Word; great
should be the company of them that publish it (Ps.
lxviii). After all, the shortest and surest method of kill-
ing and casting out the mischievous weeds that infest a
field, is to get the field covered from side to side with a
closely growing crop of precious grain. Wholesome words
are the true antidote to the unwholesome. When the
enemy sows tares, Christ's servants have only one way of
effectually counter-working him, and that is by sowing
wheat. The best way of eradicating error is to publish
and practise truth.
30 MIRTH A MEDICINE.
III.
MIRTH A MEDICINE.
"A
merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance:
but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken."—xv. 18.
"Hoariness in the heart of man maketh it stoop:
but a good word maketh it glad."—xii. 25.
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine:
but a broken spirit drieth the bones."—xvii. 22.
THE emotions that thrill in the heart mark themselves in
legible lines on the countenance. This is a feature in the
constitution of man, and a useful feature it is. The
wisdom of our Maker may be seen in the degree of its
development. If there had been more of it or less, the
processes of human life could not have gone on so well.
If the hopes and, fears that alternate in the soul were as
completely hidden from the view of an observer as the
action of the vital organs within the body, the intercourse
between man and man would be far less kindly than it
now is. How blank would the aspect of the world be if
no image of a man's thought could ever be seen glancing
in his countenance! Our walk through life would be
like a solitary march through a gallery of statues,—as cold
as marble, and not nearly so beautiful. On the other
hand, if all the meaning of the soul could be read in the
countenance, the inconvenience would be so great as to
bring the machinery of life almost to a stand still.
Society could not go on if either all the mind's thoughts
MIRTH A MEDICINE 31
or none were legible on the countenance. That medium
which actually exists in the present constitution of hu-
manity is obviously the best. You halve some power of
concealing your emotions, and your neighbour has some
power of observing them. He who made us has done all
things well.
Great purposes in providence are served by this ar-
rangement. If the veil which hangs between the outer
world and our hearts' emotions were altogether opaque,
we would be too much isolated from our neighbours: if
it were perfectly translucent, we would be too much in
their power. The soul within is a burning light, some-
times bright and sometimes lurid: the countenance is a
semitransparent shade, through which the cast and colour-
ing of the inner thought can be seen, but not its articulate
details. A happy heart beaming through a guileless coun-
tenance is the best style of beauty. It is pleasant to look
upon in the spring-time, and does not wither in the winter
of age.
But joy in the heart can do more than make the aspect
winsome. Besides enlivening a dull countenance, it heals
a diseased nature. It “doeth good like a medicine;”
whereas its opposite, "a broken spirit, drieth the bones."
All who have watched the experience of themselves and
their neighbours will acknowledge this in all its breadth
as a practical truth. I know nothing equal to cheerful
and even mirthful conversation for restoring the tone of
mind and body when both have been overdone. Some
great and good men, on whom very heavy cares and toils
have been laid, manifest a constitutional tendency to relax
32 MIRTH A MEDICINE.
into mirth when, their work is over. Narrow minds de-
nounce the incongruity: large hearts own God's goodness
in the fact and rejoice in the wise provision, made for
prolonging useful lives. Mirth, after exhaustive toil,
is one of nature's instinctive efforts to heal the part
which has been racked or bruised. You cannot too
sternly reprobate a frivolous life; but if the life be earnest
for God and man, with here and there a layer of mirthful-
ness protruding, a soft bedding to receive heavy cares
which otherwise would crush the spirit, to snarl against
spurts of mirth may be the easy and useless occupation
of a small man, who cannot take in at one view the
whole circumference of a larger one.
But it is as medicine, and not as food, that mirth is use-
ful to man. As well might the wild ass live and fatten by
snuffing up the north wind, as a man's character become
solid if merriment is its chief or only aliment. To live
on it as daily bread, will produce a hollow heart and a
useless history. But that which is worthless as food
may be precious as medicine. Administered in proper
quantities and at proper times, it will make the staple of
solid seriousness more productive of actual good.
Even a dull observer may see wisdom and goodness
in the habitual cheerfulness of the young. There is a
time to laugh, and childhood is eminently that time. A
sad, sombre spirit in a child, is both the effect and the
cause of disease. Mirth in large quantities is needful
as a medicine for the ailments of childhood, and our Maker
has placed an abundant supply of it in their nature, with
a tendency to draw it day by day for use.
MIRTH A MEDICINE. 33
But some persons and some classes are all too ready
to acknowledge the virtue of mirth as a medicine. There
are quacks who take it up and vaunt its universal effi-
cacy. In ignorance or bad faith they apply it in cases
where it may kill, but cannot cure. Recognising the
law that a broken spirit drieth the bones, these practi-
tioners, when conviction of sin burns like fire in the
patient's conscience, would deliberately pour in a stream
of mirth to quench it. With equal zeal they prescribe
the same medicine as a preventive, lest the wasting body
should be still more enfeebled by an inroad of serious-
ness upon the soul. They will quietly push a novel
beneath the pillow on which the too beauteous cheek of
consumptipn lies. They will search the sick-room round,
and carry off bodily The Saints' Rest, or A Call to the
Unconverted, lest these books should arouse a slumber-
ing soul, and so shake too roughly its frail tenement. In
their own way they adapt and apply the maxim, "A
merry heart doeth good like a medicine."
It is true that to maintain the patient's cheerfulness
hastens the patient's cure. A bright hope within will
sometimes do more to restore the wasted strength than
all the prescriptions of the physician. A light heart we
acknowledge, is itself a potent medicine, and lends effec-
tual aid in co-operation with other cures. If the resto-
ration of the body's health were our only care, we would
not examine scrupulously either the kind or the quantity
of joyfulness that friends might infuse into a fainting
heart. But while the healing of the body is a great
thing, a greater lies beside it. For the chance of con-
34 MIRTH A MEDICINE.
tributing to a corporeal cure, I would not cheat an immor-
tal soul, as it fluttered on the verge of eternity. Is it
true—yea or nay—that before death mercy is offered,
and after it judgment is fixed? Is it true that Christ is
the way to eternal life, and that there is no other? If
it is, to divert a human soul from looking unto Jesus
when the last sands of life are running, is the unkindest
act which man can do to man. If you were Atheists
and Materialists,—if you believed in no God and no here-
after,—there would be at least a melancholy consistency
in occupying life's last hours with trifles, that the spirit,
burdened with a decaying body, should have no other
weight to bear; but it is both cruel and stupid for those
who bear Christ's name to blindfold, at the very exodus
of life, a brother's soul, in order to catch a chance of
temporary benefit to his body.
Nor is this all. This effort to banish care does not
always succeed. Through all these coverings the terrors
of the Lord may burst in, and agitate the soul all the
more fiercely, that you have tried so long to keep them
out. When bodily pains or convictions of conscience rise
to the full, your frivolous pleasures are driven away like
smoke before the wind. A merry heart is a medicine
for his ailment! Granted; but who shall give him a
merry heart? Who shall give the guilty a merry heart
when God is drawing near to judgment, and sin is lying
heavy on his soul? If you could introduce the peace of
God which passeth all understanding, it would keep his
heart and mind; but no inferior consolation can meet thy
case. Will any one dare to say that in nature's extremity
MIRTH A MEDICINE. 35
those who neglect Christ are happier at heart than those
who trust in his love?
When a human heart is stooping and breaking beneath
the heavy load of suffering and sin, "a good word maketh
it glad." But if the man is dying, to assure him he will
soon be better, is not a good word. If the man is in sin
and under condemnation, to assure him his sins are trivial
and his Judge indulgent, is not a good word. A good
word will gladden the grieved heart, but where shall it
be found? Hark! the Man of Sorrows lets it drop
like dew from his own lips—"Peace I leave with you,
my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give
I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let
it be afraid" (John xiv. 27). Happy are they who
have such a comforter in the time of need. David, like
Abraham, saw his Lord's day afar off, and was glad. The
presence of his Redeemer kindled a gladness in his heart
which took the torment out of even dying pains: Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me" (Ps. xxiii.)
True Christians have two advantages over the men of
the world: they are happier now, and safer at last.
There is more gladness put by a gracious God in a be-
lieving heart, than all that the worldly know even when
their corn and wine abound the most. It would be a
great attainment for themselves, and a great means of
good to others, if the disciples of Christ in our day could
let the hope which cheers their hearts also shine in their
faces. If the joy of the Lord, which really is a Chris-
tian's strength within, should sit habitually as a beauty
36 MIRTH A MEDICINE.
on his countenance, his talent would be better occupied
now, and his entrance more abundant at the last. When
Stephen's short but quick career was coming to a close,—
when the seventy elders had taken their places on the
judgment-seat, full of enmity against the name of Jesus,
—when the baser sort of the persecutors, at the in-
stigation of their leaders, had dragged him violently
into the council-hall,—when perjured witnesses, taking
their cue from the keen and cruel eye of Saul, de-
clared in concert that he was a habitual blasphemer of
holy things,—when the meek martyr saw and felt from
many signs that through a boisterous passage he must
quickly go to another judgment—his heart did not lose
its hopefulness, and his countenance did not fall. At
that moment, when the crisis of his fate had come, the
joy that played about his heart shone through: "All
that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his
face as it had been the face of an angel." Perhaps that
heaven-like brightness held some of the spectators, and
would not let them go until it led them into the arms of
Stephen's Saviour. We have known a case in which the
gleam of joy on a departing disciple's face feathered the
arrow of divine truth, and sent it home with saving
power to a heart that had hitherto kept its iron point at
bay. If Christians could get living hope lighted within,
and let it beam like sun-light all the day through an open
countenance, their lives would be more legible as epistles
of Christ, and more effectual to win souls.
TASTES DIFFER. 37
IV.
TASTES DIFFER.
"The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but the mouth
of fools feedeth on foolishness. Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wis-
dom.” —xv. 14, 21.
“It is joy to the just to do judgment.” —xxi.15.
TASTES differ widely, and so therefore do enjoyments,
Water is the element of one creature, and air the element
of another. The same material is to this poison, and to
that food. Each species differs in nature from all others,
and nature will have her own way.
Among men, viewed in their spiritual relations, there
is a similar variety of tastes and pleasures. There is first
the grand generic difference between the old man and the
new. The change of nature is radical, and the change of
appetite consequently complete. "What things were
gain to me, these I count loss." So true was the ob-
servation of the heathen as to the effect of the gospel
preached by the apostles. The world to Saul of Tarsus
was turned upside down, from the moment that he met
the Lord in the way, and as a lost sinner accepted par-
don through the blood of the cross. After that moment
his tastes were not only changed; they were absolutely
reversed. What he had formerly chased as gain, he now
loathed as loss. He was a converted man; that is, a
man turned round, and his whole life rushing the other
way.
38 TASTES DIFFER.
Besides the first and chief distinction between the
dead and the living, many subordinate varieties appear,
shading imperceptibly away into each other, according as
good or evil preponderates in the character. The best way
to know a man is to observe what gives him pleasure. A
good man may once or many times be betrayed into foolish
words or deeds, but the indulgence makes him miserable.
Folly, like Ezekiel's roll, was sweet in his mouth, but left
a lasting bitterness behind. Fools feed on foolishness;
it is pleasant to their taste at the time, and they rumi-
nate with relish on it afterwards. The heart's joy in any
act of the life, supplies a surer test of character than the
act itself. Two persons of opposite spiritual tastes may
be detected for once in the same act of evil; but they do
not walk abreast in the same life-course. Sin becomes
bitter to the taste of the renewed, and he puts it away
with loathing; but the corrupt, who has never known a
change, counts the morsel sweet, and continues to roll it
under his tongue. Two young men, of nearly equal age,
and both the sons of God-fearing parents, were seen to
enter together a theatre at a late hour in a large city.
They sat together, and looked and listened with equal
attention. The one was enjoying the spectacle and the
mirth; the other was silently enduring an unspeakable
wretchedness. The name of God and the hopes of the
godly were employed there to season the otherwise vapid
mirth of the hollow-hearted crowd. One youth, through
the Saviour's sovereign grace, had, in a distant solitude,
acquired other tastes. The profanity of the play rasped,
rudely against them. He felt as if the words of the
TASTES DIFFER. 39
actors and the answering laugh of the spectators were
tearing in his flesh. He breathed freely when, with the
retiring crowd, he reached the street again. It was his
first experience of a theatre, and his last. It is a pre-
cious thing to get from the Lord, as Paul got, a new relish
and a new estimate of things. This appetite for other
joys, if exercised and kept keen, goes far to save you
from defilement, even when suddenly and occasionally
brought into contact with evil; as certain kinds of leaves
refuse to be wet, and though plunged into water come
out of it dry.
The gratification of appetite is pleasant. This law of
nature bears witness that God is good. Food and drink
are necessary to the maintenance of life. If, as a general
rule, the act of taking them were painful, the duty would
be neglected, and the race would become extinct. The
Author of our being has made the performance sure by
making it delightful. The pain of hunger is an officer of
the executive under the supreme government of Heaven,
ever on the watch, compelling living creatures to give the
body its necessary support. This beneficent law, like all
the other good things of God, is perverted by the fallen.
This truth of God is profanely turned into a lie by the
corrupt appetites of men. Appetite, and the pleasure of
indulging it, is still a great force when it is turned in the
wrong direction. That which among God's works is
mighty to save life, is in Satan's hand mighty to destroy
it. When the taste is depraved, the pleasantness of the
poison supplies a power like gravitation, silently dragging
down the slave with ever-increasing speed into the
40 TASTES DIFFER.
bottomless pit. If folly were not joy to the fool, he
might soon be induced to forsake it. Nothing will pro-
duce a new life but a new nature.
The soul has an appetite, and needs food as well as the
body. In this department too the tastes are various, and
there is a corresponding variety in the provided supply.
Fools feed on foolishness, and like it. They have no
relish for more solid food. On the other hand, "it is
joy to the just to do judgment." The Just One relished
the doing of the Father's will as his meat and drink.
Christians grow like Christ. Those who hope in his
mercy learn to fall in with his tastes. If we saw a
hungry human being turning away from the finest of the
wheat, and by choice satisfying himself with the husks
that swine do eat, we would shudder in presence of the
prodigy; we would weep over the low estate into which
one of our kind had fallen. Such a perversion of the
bodily appetite is rare—perhaps altogether unknown:
but a greater derangement of the spiritual taste is not
only possible in certain cases; it is the common condition
of men.
It is sad to think how men run to what they like,
with as little forethought and as great impetuosity as
swollen rivers rush towards the sea. In the main the
taste of the renewed leads them to the food which will
sustain and invigorate the health of the soul; but even
they need to watch and pray, lest they enter into temp-
tation. He will not be a thriving, growing Christian,
who partakes freely of joys as they come, on the right
hand on the left. Even a healthful man, if he is
TASTES DIFFER. 41
wise, will observe carefully the nature of his food, and
watch the effects of each kind. If he discovers that any
species, though pleasant at the time, hurts his health
afterwards, he will carefully abstain from the tempting
morsel. You may prove to him that it is not poison,—
that it will not take away his life: that is not enough:
if it is hurtful to his health, he will abandon it. Alas!
the children of this world are wiser in their generation
than the children of light. Men who, on the whole,
value their spiritual life the most, lightly expose its
health to injuries against which they would resolutely
defend their bodies. If a man should eat unwholesome
food from day to day, the mischief would soon become
palpable both to himself and his neighbours. He would
feel his own feebleness, and others would stare at him as
a walking skeleton. But when the spiritual life is ex-
posed to the action of a slow poison, the emaciation of
the soul is a thing not so easily felt by the patient, and
not so easily seen by his neighbours. It is written of
Ephraim in a time of spiritual decay, "Gray hairs are
here and there upon him, yet he knoweth it not" (Hos.
vii. 9). Ah! if the soul's health and sickness were visible
like those of the body, the old question, "Why art thou,
being the king's son, lean from day to day?" would be
appropriately addressed now to many of the royal family
of heaven. The answer, if truly given, would in most
cases be, They feed too much on foolishness, and do not
satisfy themselves with that which was meat and drink to
their Master in the days of his flesh.
In dealing with men for their reformation, they who
42 TASTES DIFFER.
do not begin at the beginning lose all their labour. If
you assume that human nature is already good, and only
needs to be helped forward to higher degrees of virtue,
you miss the mark, and gain nothing. You are fish-
ing with a bait for which the fishes have no taste. They
do not like it, and will not take it. The corrupt are not
naurally alarmed at their own corruption, and eager to
leap into holiness.
You may have seen living, moving things, in the rank-
est material corruption, and shuddered to think that life
of any kind should be imprisoned in such a horrid place.
The instinct of compassion for wretchedness is stirred
within you; but a second thought lays it to rest again.
These worms do not loathe that which is at once their
dwelling and their food. It is their nature: it is their
life to be there. These worms, to your taste so loath-
some, are not ashamed of their condition, and have no
desire to leave it. Although an opportunity is offered,
they do not hasten to escape into cleanness, and wipe
themselves from their filth. Such is moral corruption
and the life therein, if it is left to itself. The tenants of
the mire do not grow ashamed, or weary of it. They
have been bred in it, and it is their delight. Sinners are
not, of their own motion, weary and ashamed of sin.
They do not desire to escape out of it. Although all
intelligent beings, who are not themselves in the mire,
1ook on with inexpressible disgust, whether they be the
angels who never fell, or the saints who have been lifted
up, those who are, and have always been in it, love their
condition, and would not leave it. If in compassion for
TASTES DIFFER. 43
living creatures crawling in material filth, you should bene-
volently pick them out one by one, and lay them in clean
dry beds, you would become their tormentor by taking
them out of their element. Such, to the spiritually impure,
God’s word and messengers are felt to be. The unclean
do not hail them as deliverers. This is the most fearful
feature of our case. It is not like that of a man who has
fallen into the water, and instantly struggles to escape
with all the energy of his being. Sin is the element of
the sinful. The cure is not another place, but a new
nature.
Mahomet manifested great shrewdness in the conception
of his paradise. If he mistook the kingdom of God, he
comprehended well the appetites of men. He promises
his followers as a heaven the fullest gratification of all
their desires. But what if a foundation of eternal truth
be found lying beneath all these abominations! The
prophet’s followers have a right principle in their hands,
although, by turning it upside down, they make it the
most destructive of errors. It is true that heaven will
give unbridled scope to all the appetites of all its inmates.
There will be no crucifying of the flesh there. No man
will have his taste thwarted, or his supply stinted there.
Mahomet is right, in so far as he says that in heaven
every entrant will have all his passions gratified to the
full. The difference lies in this: they expect that hea-
ven’s joys will be made to suit human appetites; we
know that the tastes of the saved will be purified into
perfect conformity with the joys that are at God's right
hand for evermore. In heaven, indeed, there is no
44 TASTES DIFFER.
foolishness to feed upon; but there are no fools to desire
it. Heaven denies no pleasure, and yet provides nothing
impure. All the evil desires are left behind, and all the
good are gratified.
It is time that we who seek that better country should
be forgetting past attainments, and reaching forth after
newer and higher measures of holiness: "Grow in grace."
The night is far spent; the day is at hand. Be ye also
ready. There will be no crucifying of the flesh in heaven!
but that is because there will be no flesh to crucify. It
must be crucified now. The old man must be put off
with his deeds and his desires; and for this salvation
work, "now is the appointed time." Those who do not on
this side of life's boundary-line acquire a taste for holi-
ness, will not on the other side get an entrance into
heaven. "To them that look for Him, He shall appear:"
they who look now in the opposite direction shall not
then behold His face in peace.
HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR. 45
V.
HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR.
"Before honour is humility."—xv. 33.
"Pride before destruction; and an haughty spirit before a fall."—xvi. 18.
"A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in
spirit."—xxix. 23.
"IF a man strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned,
except he strive lawfully" (2 Tim. ii. 5). There is only
one way of reaching honour, and the candidates who do not
keep that way will fail. You must go to honour through
humility. This is the law—the law of God. It cannot
be changed. It has its analogies in the material creation.
Every height has its corresponding depth. As far as the
Andes pierce upward into the sky, so far do the val-
leys of the Pacific at their base go down into the heart
of the earth. If the branches of a tree rise high in the
air, its roots must penetrate to a corresponding depth in
the ground; and the necessity is reciprocal. The higher
the branches are, the deeper go the roots; and the deeper
the roots are, the higher go the branches.
This law pervades the moral administration as well as
the material works of God. The child Jesus is set for
the fall and the rising again of many in Israel: but it is
first the fall and then the rising; for "before honour is
humility." Fall they must at the feet of the Crucified,
before they can rise and reign as the children of the great
King. No cross, no crown. "Blessed are the poor in
46 HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR.
spirit for theirs is the kingdom." What are these, and
whence came they,—they, are in honour now, whatever
their origin may have been,—these that stand before the
throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and
palms in their hands? These are they which came out
of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and
made them white in the blood of the Lamb, (Rev. vii)
Like Joshua the high priest (Zech. iii.), they were clothed
with filthy garments, before they obtained that glorious
change. If the unhappy guest at the King's table (Matt
xxii.) had gone first through the valley of humilia-
tion, he would not have been cast at last into outer dark-
ness; if he had owned his own garment worthless, he
would have gotten a fit one, free, and not have been speech-
less at the incoming of the King. "Before honour is
humility:" this is the organic law of the kingdom of
heaven. The King is far from the proud, but dwells
with him that is humble and of a contrite heart.
There are two mountains in the land of Israel, equal
in height, and standing near each other, with a deep nar-
row valley between. At an interesting point in the
people's history, one of these mountains bore the curse,
and the other received the blessing (Deut xi. 26-29).
If you had stood then on Ebal, where the curse was
lying, you could not have escaped to Gerizim to enjoy
the blessing without going down to the bottom of the
intervening gorge. There was a way for the pilgrim
from the curse to the blessing, if he were willing to pass
through the valley of humiliation: but there was no flight
through the air, so as to escape the going down.
HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR. 47
These things are an allegory. All men are at first in
their own judgments on a lofty place, but the curse hangs
over the mountain of their pride. Nature's hopes are
high, but there is wrath from the Lord upon them, be-
cause they dishonour his law by expecting that it will
accept sin for righteousness. All the saved are also on
a mountain height, but God the Lord dwells among them,
and great is the peace of his children. All who have
reached this mountain have been in the deep. They
sowed in tears before they went forth rejoicing, to bear
home the sheaves.
Paul was high at first in nature's pride: "I was alive
without the law once." But the commandment came, like
a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun, and
its instant effect was to cast him down to the ground:
“When commandment came, sin revived, and I died."
He felt that he was altogether vile; he saw that he was
lost. When he had been so brought low in conviction
of sin, he was raised again in the hope of mercy. It
was necessary that he should be brought down, but it
was also necessary that he should rise again. Fear is the
way to trust, but fear is not trust. You must, indeed,
come down from the mountain that is capped with the
curse; but you must then ascend the mountain where
Jesus, transfigured and radiant with the glory of grace,
makes his ravished disciples feel it is good to be
there, and desire to dwell for ever in the light of his
countenance. It is not the going down that will make
you safe and happy. It is not the putting off, but the
putting on, that saves; and the preciousness of putting off
48 HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR.
the old man lies in this,—that it is the only way of put-
ting on Christ. Before honour is humility; but after
humility is honour. If our hearts are truly humbled,
God has pledged himself to exalt us in due season. In
proportion as we attain the contrite heart, we may count
on his gracious indwelling. If we are led by the Spirit
of the Lord down into humility, we may be assured the
next thing is honour; as we confidently anticipate that
the day will follow the night. The broken heart is the
Lord's chosen dwelling-place. When David was in the
depth (Ps. cxxx.), he waited for the Lord: how? As
those who are exposed to danger in night's darkness wait
for the morning,—keenly feeling the want of it, but con-
fidently counting that it will come. The Lord loves to
be so looked for: to them that look for him he will come,
and his coming will be like the morning. This humility
—this honour have all the saints.
It is a part of the same divine law that "a man's pride
shall bring him low." That which brings a creature far-
thest down is his own rebellious effort to exalt himsel£
It is with spirit as with matter,—the farther it shoots
upward from its own proper sphere into the heavens above,
the deeper will it sink down, and the more will it be
broken by its fall That law operated on spirit, as the
law of gravitation acted on matter, before man was made.
Among the angels that excel in strength, there was a
leap of pride in order to exalt itself, and a conse-
quent fall into the lowest depths of the pit. When these
morning stars fell from the very height of heaven, they
fell into a deep from which even the power of God pro-
HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR. 49
vides no rising. In the same way man fell. It was a
leap upward that brought us down so low. It was the
proud effort to be as gods that brought man down to the
companionship of devils. Under this eternal law the
Papacy now lies. It cannot glide gently down from its
presumptuous height, and so save itself from destruction.
It has flown too high for falling softly. It is fixed, and
that by unchanging law, that it cannot be reformed, and
must be destroyed.
This law will crush every one of us if we cross its path.
Like the other laws of God, it touches the smallest, while
it controls the greatest. An atom obeys the same im-
pulses that guide a world. Oh, how jealously should a
man watch the swellings of pride in his own breast! How,
eagerly would each desire to have his own pride purged
wholly out! Pride remaining in us will bring us down,
though we were in the highest heaven. When two
things are weighed in the opposite ends of a balance, who
can make both simultaneously descend? The crushing
of the proud is but the other side of the exaltation of the
lowly. Either pride must be cast out of me, or I must be
cast out from the company of the blessed.
The seventy-third Psalm, like the seventh chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans, is a specimen of spiritual auto-
biography. Cut out, at the crisis, a section from that
self-history of a soul: "So foolish was I and ignorant: I
was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I am continually
with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou
shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive
me to glory." Extremes meet here. The lowest and the
50 HUMILITY BEFORE HONOUR.
highest touch each other. Within the compass of a few
lines, recording one man's experience, we find a humility
which depresses him beneath the level of man, and an
honour which admits him into the presence of God. One
moment the penitent feels himself to be brutish; another,
his glad forgiven spirit rises buoyant toward the throne
like a flame of fire, or a ministering angel. These are
the footsteps of the flock. It concerns us to know that
we are on the same track; for none other conducts to
safety. It is when a man is so purged of ride as to count
himself like a "beast," that he is best prepared for the
company of a justifying God, and the spirits of just men
made perfect. They who thus put off their own righteous-
ness as filthy rags, are ready to put on Christ; and in
Him they are counted worthy. Paul kept close on the
track of the Psalmist: in one verse it is, "O wretched
man that I am!" in the next, "I thank God, through
Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. vii. 24, 25). If we get
down into the "humility" through which these ancient
disciples passed, we shall share the "honour" to which
they have been raised.
THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE. 51
VI.
THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A
FAMILY'S PEACE.
"Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble
therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and
hatred therewith. He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house."—
xv 16, 17, 27.
"Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices
with strife."—xvii. 1.
THESE are blessed words in a world of strife. They are
welcome as a well of water springing in the desert. They
drop on weary hearts like rain on the mown grass. The
gift is good. We receive it with gladness, and thank the
Giver.
The constitution of man and the law of God are fitted
into each other, like lock and key. The capability of the
subject corresponds to the rule which the Sovereign enacts.
When the creature falls in with the Creator's will, all the
machinery moves smoothly: when the creature resists, it
stands still or is riven asunder. Truth sweetens the rela-
tions of life falsehood eats like rust into their core.
When they live in love, men meet each other softly and
kindly, as the eyelids meet. Envy casts grains of sand
between the two, and under each. Every movement then
sends a shooting pain through all the body, and makes
the salt tears flow. So good are peace and love for human
52 THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY’S PEACE.
kind, that with them a family will be happy though they
have nothing else in the world; and without them miser-
able, although they have the whole world at their com-
mand.
No creature can with impunity break any of the Crea-
tor's laws. He is not a man, that he should fail to detect
or punish the transgressor. He depends not on the acti-
vity of police, or the speed of the telegraph. Sin follows
the sinner, and finds him out, and inflicts the punishment.
Sorrow comes on the heels of sin, as the echo answers to
a sound, as the rebound answers to a blow. Let a
family have abundant wealth, and all the luxuries that
wealth can buy,—a commodious house and a sumptuous
table, broad lands and a troop of attendants,—yet if
strife enters the circle, it will act like leaven in the mass,
and imbitter all their enjoyments. Being under law to
God they cannot escape. When they sin they suffer.
Strife makes them more miserable amidst all their wealth
than a loving family who have not wherewith to buy to-
morrow's food.
A dinner of herbs and a stalled ox indicate the two
extremes,—humble poverty on the one side, and pampered
luxury on the other. These brief expressions open for a
moment the doors of the cottage and of the palace that
we may obtain a glimpse of what is going on within.
Look into the dwelling on this side: it is dinner time:
the family, fresh from their labour, are seated round a
clean uncovered table; there is no meat from the stall or
the flock, no bunch of ripe grapes from the vine-yard, and
even no bread from the corn-field. Some green herbs
THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE. 53
gathered in the garden have been cooked and set down
as the meal of the household. The fare, is poor; but this
poor fate and love together make a more savoury mess
than any that ever graced a royal banquet. The people
thrive upon the precious mixture. Look into the lofty
castle on the other side at the moment when this word
throws open its doors. A rich feast is reeking in the
hall. The stalled ox is there, surrounded by a labyrinth
of kindred luxuries. A crowd of attendants must be in the
room, observing every look, and hearing every whisper.
The poor man's family dine in private; the rich man's in
public. This is one point in favour of the poor. The
servant at his master's back is a man with human feel-
ings in his breast. If he has been treated unkindly, anger
rankles in his heart, while the smile that is paid for plays
upon his countenance. If, moreover, there be jealousy
between husband and wife, rivalry between brother and
brother, in this great house, their meeting at a meal is
misery; their politeness before strangers is the encrusted
whitewash on a sepulchre's side, cracking and falling off
at every movement, and revealing the rottenness within.
When love leaves the family circle, it is no longer a piece
of God's own hand-work, and there is no security for safety
in any of its motions. Love is the element in which all
its relations were set, for softness and safety; and when
it has evaporated, nothing remains but that each member
of the house should be occupied in mounting a miserable
guard over his own interests, and against the anticipated
contact of the rest. In that dislocated house each dreads
all, and all dread each. The only distinction remain-
54 THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE.
ing is, that the one who is nearest you hurts you the
most.
But mark well, it is neither said in the Bible nor found
in experience that they are all happy families who dine
on herbs, and all unhappy who can afford to feast on a
stalled ox. Some rich families live in love, and doubly
enjoy their abundance; some poor families quarrel over
their herbs. Riches cannot secure happiness, and poverty
cannot destroy it But such is the power of love, that
with it you will be happy in the meanest estate; with-
out it, miserable in the highest. Would you know the
beginning, and the middle, and the end of this matter,—
the spring on high, the stream flowing through the chan-
nel of the covenant, and the fruitful outspread in a dis-
ciple's life below,—they are all here, and all one—Charity:
"GOD IS LOVE;" "Love is of God;" "Walk in love."
In this book the greed of gain stands side by side with
strife, as the twin troubler of a house. As a husband-
man looks on a prevailing weed that infests his garden;
as a shepherd looks on a wolf that ravages his flock, so
our Father in heaven looks on that love of money which
grievously mars the harmony of his own institute, the
family. That instrument of torture points both ways. The
miser, as we know by his name, is a torment to himself:
he is also a thorn in the flesh of those who are nearest to
him. Perhaps in our community, and in our day, more
families are troubled by a lavish expenditure, than by an
undue hoarding of money; but the prevalence of one evil
does not make another evil good. Dealing with one thing
at a time, the words give out a certain sound,—that if a
THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE. 55
man be himself a miser, he makes his house miserable.
When God has given a man one of his choicest blessings
a family; and given him, too, means sufficient for their
support; if the man intercept the flow of the Creator's
bounty, and hoard that which was given for use, he dis-
pleases the Giver, and injures the gift, as surely as if he
should impiously arrest the flow of the blood from its
central reservoir, and prevent it from circulating through
the frame. The hoarded blood would clot and stagnate
and corrupt; while the body, for want of it, would pine
away. The benefit of its circulation would be lost, and
its accumulation in one place would become an encum-
brance dangerous to life. Thus the man troubles his
house who diverts the children's daily portion into the
miser's corrupting hoard.
In my earliest years, as far back on the line of life as
memory's vision can distinctly reach, the nearest neigh-
bour of our house on the right, was an old farmer, very
religious and very rich. He had three sons and seven
daughters. Instead of employing the increase of his fields
to elevate the condition and enlarge the minds of his
numerous, winsome, and well-conditioned family, he left
them to nature, and laid up his money in the bank. The
sons and daughters all married in succession, and left him.
Thereafter, at the age of seventy-three, he married a
servant-girl of exactly the same age as his youngest
daughter. The match supplied the young people of the
district with merriment for many months. The young
woman wrought upon the old man's failing faculties, and
in order to secure the money for herself, persuaded him
56 THE MAHER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE.
that all, his children were banded in a conspiracy against
his life. He made his will under this impression, be-
queathing the bulk of his fortune to his wife; and, with a
refinement of cruelty which was certainly not his own in-
vention, devised small sums to each of his sons and
daughters,—to one five pounds, to another ten, to each a
different amount, reaching at the highest the sum of
twenty-five pounds. The sums were made to vary with
the varying shades of the children's guilt, as they were
marked on the imagination of the imbecile parent. The
old man died. The widow enjoyed her legacy unchal-
lenged. But the daughters who had got the smaller
sums went to law with their sisters who had obtained the
larger sums, in order to have them equalized. After
these miserable pittances had served to rend a whole
family asunder in hopeless feuds, the worthless money
itself was lost in law. The God of providence taught me
early, as they teach children now in schools, by a picture,
that "he who is greedy of gain troubleth his own house."
But the teaching was still more specific and guarded
and fatherly than this. At the same time the other
lesson was exhibited with equal vividness on the other
side. Our nearest neighbour on the left—in this case
half a mile distant, and in the former case a quarter—
was another old man, very religious and very drunken.
He had a light rent, a long lease, and an indulgent land-
lord. Plenty of money passed through his hands, but
none ever remained in them. He was not greedy of gain,
and yet he troubled his own house. His spendthrift and
intemperate life aggravated by his religious profession,
THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE. 57
told with fearful effect upon a band of stately and intel-
ligent sons. They were all clever, but all made ship-
wreck.
At this advanced period of my life I think still with
interest and awe on the sovereign providence that placed
me, while yet a child, in that middle space between two
evils, opposite, yet equal, and in full sight of both. The
lessons were given not in the thin profile of a single line,
but in the full breadth and varied features of large family
groups. The examples did not glance into sight and out
again like visions of the night: they remained in view
for a long series of years. I saw the beginning, and I
have lived to witness the end. In my childhood they
were sowing the seed beside me, and in manhood I saw
them reaping in tears. When God gave the law to
Moses, it was accompanied by the precise and significant
intimation, "I have written that thou mayest teach."
The same Lord continues writing still on the fleshy tables
of human hearts, and on the same condition—that the les-
son so engraved should not be a talent hid in a napkin,
but published for the benefit of all whom it may concern.
These lines, written by the Lord's own hand in the work-
ings of providence, lie in sharpest outline in the lower
strata of my memory, and are fixed like fossils in the
rock: the tide of city life rushing over them during many
successive years, instead of defacing the letters, seems
only to make the matrix more transparent, and so bring
the characters more clearly out. The possession of these
manuscripts I recognise as the obligation to exhibit them.
The man who lavishly spent his money, troubled his
58 THE MAKER AND THE BREAKER OF A FAMILY'S PEACE.
own house; so also did the man who greedily hoarded it.
Between these two extremes the path of safety lies in the
scriptural rule, "Use this world as not abusing it" (1 Cor.
vii. 31).
The house—the family is God's own work. He in-
tends that it should be a blessing to his creatures. He
framed it to be an abode of peace and love. He visits
his handwork to see whether it is fulfilling its destiny.
Let the disturber beware; an eye is on him that cannot
be deceived, a hand is over him that cannot be resisted.
Whether it be husband or wife, parent or child, master or
servant, the disturber of a house must answer to its
almighty Protector for abusing his gifts, and thwarting
his gracious designs.
"Blessed are the peace-makers: for they shall be
called the children of God." How shall we best bring peace
into a family on earth, and keep it there, until the little
stream that trickles over time be lost in the ocean of
eternity? Invite Christ into the house, and the hearts of
its inmates. "He is our peace,"—with God and with
each other. Invite Him to come in; constrain Him to
abide.
THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE. 59
VII.
THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE.
"All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the
spirits. Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be estab-
lished."—xvi. 2, 8.
THE first of these two verses tells how a man goes wrong,
and the second how he may be set right again. He is
led into error by doing what pleases himself; the rule for
recovery is to commit the works to the Lord, and see
that they are such as will please him. When we weigh
our thoughts and actions in the balances of our own
desires, we shall inevitably go astray: when we lay them
before God, and submit to his pleasure, we shall be guided
into truth and righteousness.
Such is the purport of the two verses in general;
attend now to the particulars in detail: "All the ways
of a man are clean in his own eyes." To a superficial
observer this declaration may seem inconsistent with ex-
perience; but be who wrote these words has fathomed fully
the deep things of a human spirit. As a general rule, men
do the things which they think right, and think the things
right which themselves do. Not many men do what they
think evil, and while they think it evil. The acts may be
obviously evil, but the actor persuades himself of the con-
trary, at least until they are done. There is an amazing
60 THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE.
power of self-deception in a human heart. It is deceitful
above all things. It is beyond conception cunning in
making that appear right which is felt pleasant. Some,
we confess, are so hardened that they sin in the face of
conscience, and over its neck; but for one bold, bad man,
who treads on an awakened conscience in order to reach
the gratification of his lust, there are ten cowards who
drug the watcher into slumber, that they may sin in
peace. As a general rule, it may be safely said, if you
did not think the act innocent, you would not do it; but
when you have a strong inclination to do it, you soon find
means to persuade yourself that it is innocent. After all,
the real motive power that keeps the wheels of human
life going round is this:—Men like the things that they
do, and do the things that they like. In his own eyes a
man's ways are clean. If he saw them filthy, he would
not walk in them. But when he desires to walk in a
particular way, he soon begins to count it clean, in order
that he may peacefully walk in it.
In his own eyes: Mark the meaning of these words.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked. Eyes other than
his own are witnessing all the life-course of a man. The
eyes of the Lord are in every place. He does not adopt
our inclination as the standard of right and wrong. He
will not borrow our balances to determine his own judg-
ment in that day. "The Lord weigheth the spirits." Not
a thought, not a motive, trembles in the breast which he
does not weigh; more evidently, though not more surely,
are the gross and palpable deeds of our life open before
him! He has a balance nice enough to weigh motives—
THE FALSE BALANCE DETECT BY THE TRUE. 61
the animating soul of our actions; our actions themselves
will not escape his scrutiny.
Before we proceed to any "work," we should weigh it,
while yet it is a "spirit" unembodied, in the balances
which will be used in the judgment of the great day.
Letters are charged in the post-office according to their
weight. I have written and sealed a letter consisting of
several sheets. I desire that it should pass; I think that
it will; but I know well that it will not be allowed to
pass because I desire that it should, or think that it will;
I know well it will be tested by imperial weights and
imperial laws. Before I plunge it beyond my reach,
under the control of the public authorities, I place it on
a balance which stands on the desk before me—a bal-
ance not constructed to please my desires, but honestly
adjusted to the legal standard. I weigh it there, and
check it myself by the very rules which the Govern-
ment will apply. The children of this world are wise
for their own interests. We do not shut our eyes, and
cheat ourselves as to temporal things and human govern-
ments: why should we attempt to deceive where detection
is certain and retribution complete? On the table before
you lies the very balance in which the Ruler of heaven
and earth will weigh both the body of the act and the
motive, the soul that inspires it. Weigh your purposes
in this balance before you launch them forth in action.
The man's ways are unclean, although, through a deceit-
ful heart, they are clean in his own eyes. By what means,
therefore, "shall a young man cleanse his way? By
taking heed thereto according to thy word " (Ps. cxix. 9).
62 THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE.
A most interesting practical rule is laid down as ap-
plicable to the case—"Commit thy works unto the Lord;"
and a promise follows it,—"Thy thoughts shall be estab-
lished." It is a common and a sound advice, to ask coun-
sel of the Lord before undertaking any work. Here we
have the counterpart lesson equally precious—commit the
work to the Lord, after it is done. The Hebrew idiom
gives peculiar emphasis to the precept—Roll it over on
Jehovah. Mark the beautiful reciprocity of the two,
and how they constitute a circle between them. While
the act is yet in embryo as a purpose in your mind, ask
counsel of the Lord, that it may be crushed in the birth
or embodied in righteousness. When it is embodied,
bring the work back to the Lord, and give it over into his
hands as the fruit of the thought which you besought
him to inspire; give it over into his hands as an offering
which he may accept, an instrument which he may em-
ploy. Bring the work, when it is done, to the Lord; and
what will follow?—"thy thoughts shall be established."
Bring back the actions of your life to God, one by one,
after they are done, and thereby the purposes of your
heart will be made pure and steadfast: the evil will be
chased away like smoke before the wind, and the good
will be executed in spite of all opposition; for "when a
man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies
to be at peace with him "
A boy, while his stock of experience is yet small, is
employed by his father to lend assistance in certain
mechanical operations. Pleased to think himself useful,
he bounds into the work with heart and hand; but
THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE. 63
during the process, he has many errands to his father.
At the first he runs to ask his father how he ought to
begin; and when he has done a little, he carries the
work to his father, fondly expecting approval, and ask-
ing further instructions. Oh, when will the children of
God in the regeneration experience and manifest the same
spirit of adoption which animates dear children as an
instinct of nature towards fathers of their flesh! These
two rules, following each other in a circle, would make
the outspread field of a Christian's life sunny, and green,
and fruitful, as the circling of the solar system brightens
and fertilizes the earth.
Perhaps this latter hemisphere of duty's revolving circle
is the more difficult of the two. Perhaps most professing
Christians find it easier to go to God beforehand, asking
what they should do, than to return to him afterwards
to place their work in his hands. This may in part
account for the want of answer to prayer,—at least the
want of a knowledge that prayer has been answered.
If you do not complete the circle, your message by tele-
graph will never reach its destination, and no answer will
return. We send in earnest prayer for direction. There-
after we go into the world of action. But if we do not
bring the action back to God, the circle of the suppli-
cation is not completed. The prayer does not reach the
throne; the message acknowledging it comes not back to
the suppliant's heart. To bring all the works to the Lord
would be in the character of a dear child. It would
please the Father. A young man came to his father, and
received instructions as to his employment for the day.
64 THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE.
"Go work in my vineyard," was the parent's command.
"I go, sir," was the ready answer of the son. So far,
all was well; but the deed that followed was disobedience.
The son went not to work in the father's vineyard: but
we do not learn that he came back in the evening to tell
his father what he had done. To have done so would
either have kept him right, or corrected him for doing
wrong.
But some of the works are evil, and how could you
dare to roll these over on the Lord? Ah! there lies the
power of this practical rule. If it were our fixed and
unvarying practice to bring all our works and lay them
into God's hands, we would not dare to do any except
those that he would smile upon. But others, though not
positively evil, may be of trifling importance, and the
doer may decline to bring them to the King, not because
they are impure, but because they are insignificant. The
spirit of bondage betrays itself here, and not the spirit of
adoption. They are small; they are affairs of children;
trouble not the Master. Ah! this adviser is of the earth,
earthy: he knows not the Master's mind. The Master
himself has spoken to the point: "Suffer the little chil-
dren to come unto me, and forbid them not." Be assured,
little children, whether in the natural family of man or
the spiritual family of God, act in character. There is
no hypocrisy about them. The things they bring are
little things. Children speak as children, yet He does
not beckon them away. He rebukes those who would.
He welcomes and blesses the little ones. Nay, more;
He tells us plainly that we must be like them ere we
THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE. 65
enter his kingdom. Like little children without hypo-
crisy bring all your affairs to him, and abandon those
that he would grieve to look upon. Bring to him all
the works that you do, and you will not do any that you
could not bring to him.
"When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even
his enemies to be at peace with him" (ver. 7). There is,
it seems, such a thing as pleasing God. If it could not
exist on earth, it would not be named from heaven. Even
to try this is a most valuable exercise. There would be
more sunlight in a believer's life if he could leave the dull
negative fear of judgment far behind as a motive of action,
and bound forward into the glad positive, a hopeful effort
to please God. "Without faith it is impossible to please
Him" (Heb. xi. 6); therefore with faith it is possible.
"They that are in the flesh cannot please God;" there-
fore they that are in the Spirit can. In this aspect of a
believer's course, as in all others, Jesus has left us an
example that we should follow his steps: "I do always
those things that please Him" (John viii. 29). The glad
obedience of the saved should not be thought inconsistent
with the simple trust of the sinful. A true disciple is
zealous of good works; it is a spurious faith that is jealous
of them. Those who, being justified by faith, are most
deeply conscious that their works are worthless, strive
most earnestly to do worthy works.
This, like that which enjoins obedience to parents, is a
commandment "with promise." When your ways please
God, be will make even your enemies to be at peace
with you. This is one of two principles that stand to-
66 THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE.
gether in the word, and act together in the divine
administration. Its counterpart and complement is, "If
any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he must suffer
persecution." They seem opposite, yet, like night and
day, summer and winter, they both proceed from the
same God, and work together for good to his people. It
is true that the mighty of the earth are overawed by
goodness; and it is also true that likeness to the Lord
exposes the disciple to the persecution which his Master
endured. Both are best: neither could be wanted. If
the principle that goodness exposes to persecution pre-
vailed everywhere and always, the spirit would fail before
Him and the souls which He has made. Again, if the
principle that goodness conciliates the favour of the world
prevailed everywhere and always, discipline would be done,
and the service of God would degenerate into mercenary
self-interest. If the good received only and always per-
secution for their goodness, their life could not endure,
and the generation of the righteous would become extinct:
if the good received only and alway; favour from men,
their spiritual life would be overlaid, and choked in the
thick folds of worldly prosperity. A beautiful balance
of opposites is employed to produce one grand result. It
is like the balance of antagonist forces, which keeps the
planets in their places, and maintains the harmony of the
universe. Temporal prosperity and temporal distress, the
world's friendship and its enmity, are both formidable to
the children of God. Our Father in heaven, guarding
against the danger on either side, employs the two reci-
procally to hold each other in check. Human applause
THE FALSE BALANCE DETECTED BY THE TRUE. 67
on this side is a dangerous enemy, and it is made harm-
less by the measure of persecution which the godly must
endure: on the other side, the enmity of a whole world
is a weight under which the strongest would at last suc-
cumb; but it is made harmless by the opposite law,—the
law by which true goodness conciliates favour even in an
evil world. A Christian in the world is like a human
body in the sea,—there is a tendency to sink and a ten-
dency to swim. A very small force in either direction
will turn the scale. Our Father in heaven holds the
elements of nature and the passions of men at his own
disposal. His children need not fear, for he keeps the
balance in his own hands.
68 MERCY AND TRUTH.
VIII.
MERCY AND TRUTH.
"By mercy and truth iniquity is purged:
and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil."—xvi. 6.
No object can well be more dull and meaningless than
the stained window of an ancient church, as long as you
stand without and look toward a dark interior; but when
you stand within the temple, and look through that win-
dow upon the light of heaven, the still, sweet, solemn
forms that lie in it start into life and loveliness. The
beauty was all conceived in the mind and wrought by
the hand of the ancient artist whose bones now lie moul-
dering in the surrounding church-yard; but the beauty
lies hid until the two requisites come together,—a seeing
eye within, and a shining light without. We often meet
a verse on the page of the Old Testament scriptures very
like those ancient works of art. The beauty of holiness
is in it,—put into it by the Spirit from the first; and
yet its meaning was not fully known until the Sun of
Righteousness arose, and the Israel of God, no longer
kept in the outer court, entered through the rent veil,
and, from the Holy of Holies, looked through the ancient,
record on an illumined heaven. Many hidden beauties
burst into view on the pages of the Bible, when Faith's
open eye looks through it on the face of Jesus.
One of these texts is now before us. There is more in
MERCY AND TRUTH. 69
it than met the reader's eye before Christ came. The
least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the Bap-
tist. The feeblest of the faithful after the incarnation
sees more meaning in the Bible than the eagle eye of the
mightiest prophet could discern before it. "By mercy
and truth iniquity is purged." That line of the Scrip-
tures becomes thoroughly transparent only when you hold
it up between you and Christ crucified.
The subject is the expiation of sin. The term is the
one which is employed in connection with the bloody
sacrifices. It intimates that sin is purged by the sacrifice
of a substitute. The two clauses of the verse, balanced
against each other in the usual form, seem to point to
the two great facts which constitute redemption,—pardon
and obedience. The first clause tells how the guilt of
sin is forgiven; the second, how the power of sin is sub-
dued. The first speaks of the pardon which comes down
from God to man; the second, of the obedience which
then and therefore rises up from man to God. Solomon
unites the two constituent elements of a sinner's deliver-
ance in the same order that his father experienced them:
"I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy command-
ments" (Ps. cxix. 166). It is when iniquity is purged
by free grace that men practically depart from evil.
How then is iniquity purged? By mercy and truth.
The same two things are repeatedly proclaimed as the
grand distinguishing fruit of Christ's incarnation by the
disciple that leant on his breast (John i. 14, 17). "Grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ," whether you take the
term "truth" in its most general sense, or in its specific ap-
70 MERCY AND TRUTH.
plication as the fulfilment of the types. The law, according
to the thunders of Sinai, gives one of these; and the gospel,
according to the imaginations of corrupt men, gives an-
other: but only in Christ crucified both unite. The law
from Sinai proclaims Truth without Mercy, and the unre-
newed heart desires Mercy without Truth. The one would
result in the perdition of men; the other in the dishonour
of God. Truth alone would honour God's law, but destroy
transgressors: mercy alone would shield the transgressors,
but trample on the law. If there were only truth, earth
would no longer be a place of hope: if there were only
mercy, heaven would no longer be a place of holiness.
On the one side is the just Judge; on the other the guilty
criminals. If he give them their due, there will be no
mercy: if they get from him their desire, there will be no
truth. You may get one at the expense of casting out
the guilty multitude; you may get the other at the ex-
pense of putting to shame the Holy One: but apart from
the gospel of Christ, both cannot be.
They meet in the Mediator. In Christ the fire meets
the water without drying it up: the water meets the fire
without quenching it out. Truth has its way now, and
all the desert of sin falls on Him who bears it: mercy
has its way now, and all the love of God is poured out
on those who are one with his beloved Son. Iniquity is
punished in the substitute sacrificed, and so purged from
the conscience of the redeemed. "There is now no con-
demnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." The blood
of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. This is the gospel.
There is no salvation in any other. The Scriptures from
MERCY AND TRUTH. 71
beginning to end testify of Christ. All their promises
are yea and amen in Him. We shall never discover the
meaning of "mercy and truth" until we “look unto
Jesus.” We shall never get our "iniquity purged" until
we "behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
of the world." All the power lies in the great fact, that
Christ died the just for the unjust; and all salvation
comes through the simple act, "Believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
This purging of iniquity is the first and great con-
stituent of the gospel; and the second, which is like
unto it, is, let the pardoned depart from evil. Only "by
the fear of the Lord" can this command be obeyed. In
preceding expositions we have pointed out that the fear
of the Lord means the mingled awe and confidence of a
dear child. Fear of the Lord is a very different thing
from fright at the Lord. The reverential love which
keeps you near tends to practical holiness; but the terror
which drives you to a distance permits you to wallow
there in everything that is unclean.
The fear which produces obedience is generated by
mercy and truth united in the manifested character of
God. Mercy without truth would beget presumption:
truth without mercy would beget despair. The one
manifestation would not touch the conscience of the trans-
gressor, and therefore he would not obey; the other mani-
festation would crush him so that he could not. It is by
the fear of Him who is at once a just God and a Saviour
that men depart from evil. The emotion that fills a
disciple's heart is, like the atmosphere, composed mainly
72 MERCY AND TRUTH.
of two great elements in combination. These are love
and hate. Together in due proportion they constitute
the atmosphere of heaven, and supply vital breath to be-
lievers on the earth. Love of the Saviour who forgives
his sin, and hatred of the sin that crucified his Saviour,—
these two, in one rich and well-proportioned amalgam,
make up the vital element of saints. Separated they
cannot be. To dissolve their union is to change their
essence. As well might one of the atmosphere's consti-
tuent gases sustain the life of man as one of these
emotions satisfy a saved sinner. The separation indeed
is impossible, —perhaps we should say inconceivable.
Hatred of sin is but the lower side of love to the Saviour,
and love to the Saviour is but the upper side of hatred
to sin. In the new nature there is a twofold strain or
leaning, acting constantly like an instinct, although much
impeded in its exercise,—a strain or bent of heart towards
the Lord and away from sin. They who are near to
God depart from evil; and they who really depart from
evil draw near to God. The man in the Gospel (Luke
xii. 45) "said in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming,"
and then began in his practice to "beat the men-servants
and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken."
At the two extremities stand the "Lord" and "evil;" in the
midst, this man. He cannot move nearer this side with-
out departing farther from that. If he draw near the
Lord, he will depart from evil: if he draw near to evil, he
must put the Lord far away. When a man determines
on a course of actual transgression, he puts God out of all
his thoughts: when he desires to escape the snares of
MERCY AND TRUTH. 73
Satan, he must walk closely with God. A people near
to Him is a people far from wickedness: a people far
from wickedness is a people near to Him. Absolutely
and in origin, there is none good save one, and that is
God: comparatively among men, the more godly, the
more good. In their course over a parched land, those
streams continue longest full which maintain unimpeded
their union to the fountain. Our goodness will dissipate
before temptation like the morning dew before the sun,
unless we be found in Him and getting out of His fulness.
74 PROVIDENCE.
IX.
PROVIDENCE.
"A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps."—xvi. 9.
"There are many devices in a man's heart;
nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand."—xix. 21.
THE Bible throughout teaches the providence of God in
theory, and exhibits the providence of God in fact. The
prophecies are one continuous assertion of the doctrine;
the histories one vast storehouse of its fruits. The works
are manifest; the Worker is withdrawn from view. "Thou
art a God that hidest thyself," is one of the songs in which
the trustful praise him. The clouds and darkness that
are round his throne concealed him from the wisest of
the heathen; and yet, at the cry of any Israelite indeed,
he was wont to shine forth from between the cherubim,
and make bare his holy arm as it wrought deliverance.
When a stroke of judgment was about to fall, so heavy
that its sound should echo for terror to the wicked down
through all time, the Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abra-
ham the thing that I do?" Yet, with all their philosophy,
the Athenians in Paul's day were compelled to own that
they worshipped an unknown God. The knowledge of
His ways is hid from the wise and prudent, but revealed
unto babes. "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in
thy sight." If, as to power, faith can remove mountains,
as to perception it can see through clouds. "The secret
PROVIDENCE. 75
of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will
shew them his covenant" (Ps. xxv. 14).
"God executeth his decrees in the works of creation
and providence." There are two psalms—the 104th and
105th—placed next each other in the collection, which
correspond to these two departments of the divine adminis-
tration. The one is a hymn to God in nature; the other
a hymn to God in history. In the first He appears
appointing their course to the rivers of water; in the
second, turning whithersoever He will the hearts of men.
This psalm deals with the habitation and its furniture;
that with the inhabitant and his history. These two
songs exhibit an intelligence most comprehensive and a
devotion most pure, circulating in the rustic community
of the Hebrews, at a time when the conceptions of other
nations on the same themes were grovelling and their
worship vile. Both in the history that records the act,
and the psalms that celebrate the Actor, the patriarch
Joseph appears a most vivid portrait standing out of the
canvass, and the Exodus stretches away like a landscape
lying in the light. The persons and events that occupy
that great turning-point in human history serve as speci-
mens of the government which the Most High ever exer-
cises over the children of men.
Providence is as far above us as creation. To direct
the path of a planet in the heavens, and his own steps
over time, are both and both alike beyond the power of
man. God is as much a sovereign in appointing the
bounds of my habitation now upon the earth, as in ap-
pointing the earth at the beginning to be a habitation for
76 PROVIDENCE.
living creatures. Our shoulders could not sustain the
government; we should delight to know that it rests on
His.
These two proverbs of Solomon announce in different
yet equivalent terms that the two grand constituent ele-
ments which exist and operate in the divine government
of the world, are man's free agency and Jehovah's supreme
control. When it is said that a man's heart deviseth his
way, but the Lord directeth his steps, we must not think
that the purpose of the creature is condemned as an im-
pertinence. It is an essential element of the plan. Neither
human purposes, the material on which God exercises his
sovereign control, nor the control which he exercises on
that material, could be wanted. If there were no room
for the devices of a man's heart, providence would disap-
pear, and grim Fate, the leaden creed that crushes Eastern
nations in the dust, would come in its stead. If, on the
other hand, these devices are left to fight against each
other for their objects without being subjected all to the
will of a living One, Faith flees from the earth, and the
reign of Atheism begins.
The desires of human hearts, and the efforts of human
hands, do go into the processes of providence, and consti-
tute the material on which the Almighty work. When
God made man in his own image, a new era was inaugu-
rated and a new work begun. Hitherto, in the govern-
ment of this world, the Creator had no other elements to
deal with than matter and the instincts of brutes; but
the moment that man took his place on creation, a new
and higher element was introduced into its government.
PROVIDENCE. 77
The sphere was enlarged and the principle elevated.
There was more room for the display of wisdom and
power. The will of intelligent moral beings left free,
and yet as completely controlled as matter and its laws,
makes the divine government much more glorious than
the mere management of a material universe. For God's
glory man was created, and that purpose will stand; a
glory to God man will be, willing or unwilling, fallen or
restored, throughout the course of time and at its close.
The doctrine of Scripture regarding providence neither
degrades man nor inflates him. It does not make him a
mere thing on the one hand, nor a god on the other. It
neither takes from him the attributes of humanity, nor
ascribes to him the attributes of deity. It permits him
freely to propose, but leaves the ultimate disposal in a
mightier hand.
When we seek for specimens of providential rule,—of
devices manifold in a man's heart, and the counsel of the
Lord standing accomplished either by or against them all,
the Exodus is, and ever will be, the richest mine. Let us
look at one example, and learn from it the character of
all. The cruel decree, repeated in two different forms,
devoting to death all the male infants of Israel, was one
of the blows, dealt unconsciously by the oppressor's own
hand, which went to break the captive's chain and set
him free. It was an edict that could not be executed.
Blinded by his own eagerness to achieve his object early,
Pharaoh grasped at too much, and therefore obtained no-
thing. It is in this way generally that our Father in
heaven protects the poor from the wicked devices of the
78 PROVIDENCE.
powerful. Evil is kept within bounds by being permitted
to exceed all bounds. Its excesses make it barren. As
well might Pharaoh have commanded the Nile to flow
upward. A massacre of innocents, commanded by a tyrant,
may be executed by his slaves. The babes of Bethlehem
may be slaughtered by the decree of Herod,—a stroke
against Christ in his own person; the Protestants of
France may be murdered in a night,—a stroke against
Christ in his members; but neither the Instigator of
evil nor any of his instruments can secure the execution
of a decree which permanently violates the instincts of
nature. To murder day by day and year by year con-
tinually the infants of a whole people as soon as they
are born, is impossible. God has made it so in the con-
stitution of things. By the power of Pharaoh the Nile
might be dammed up for a day, but all the power of the
world could not stem its flood for a season. So, although
the instincts of nature may be held in abeyance till the
sword has done its short work on the babes of Bethlehem
or the Huguenots of France, they gather strength, like
the river, from the impediment that crossed them, and at
the next onset will sweep all impediments away. Pha-
raoh's decree must have fallen aside as a dead letter when
a few infant corpses had been washed upon the river's
brim. In point of fact, the history contains no trace of
its existence after the childhood of Moses. It served to
prepare the way of a deliverer, and then disappeared.
God served himself of Pharaoh's cruel law, and then
crushed it by the instincts which he has planted in human
breasts. The people of Egypt were flesh and blood;
PROVIDENCE. 79
therefore the purpose of their stony-hearted ruler could
not be accomplished: they had infants of their own, and
therefore could not day by day continue to murder infants,
whose struggling limbs felt soft and warm in the exe-
cutioners' hands.
The huge machine of murder, constructed for the pur-
pose of keeping down the Hebrew population, having
been set in motion, turned round once, and stopped to
move no more; but by its one revolution, it threw a
foundling—a capacious Hebrew mind and a fervid Hebrew
heart—into the palace of the Pharaohs, to be charged
there with all the learning of Egypt, and employed in due
time as the instrument to break the oppressor's rod, and
set his suffering kindred free.
Although God's hand is in it, and all the more because
his hand is in it the history, as to its form, is intensely
human. Everywhere throughout the details, the pur-
poses of men's hearts protrude; and yet God's hand
fashions the issue for his own purposes as absolutely as
it framed the worlds of the solar system, and gave to
matter its laws. The history of ancient Israel is marked
all over with the foot-prints of the Chief Shepherd as he
led his flock, and teems with types or working plans for
the conduct of the divine government to the end of time.
Even the life of the Great Deliverer pointed now to one,
and now to another feature of the Mosaic programme, as
the needle quivers beneath the electric current. In the be-
ginning of his life on earth he went down into Egypt and
out of Egypt again God called his Son. At the close of
his ministry, when be showed the three disciples a glimpse
80 PROVIDENCE.
of his heavenly glory, Moses was his companion, and
Exodus his theme. Children understand and love that
wonderful story. It engraves itself on their memory, and
abides there even unto old age. The book is true to
nature, and true also to grace. Children never weary of
the tale; the children of God can never get enough of its
spiritual lesson.
There is literally no end to the multiplication of im-
pressions on the current history of the world, from the
types which the deep fount of sacred Scripture contains.
They are thrown off as days and years revolve, in num-
ber and variety all but infinite. The Angel is doing
wondrously; it is our part reverently to look on. "Who-
so is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall
understand the loving-kindness of the Lord (Ps. cvii. 43).
Passing over providential arrangements on a small
scale involving similar principles and leading to similar
results, numerous as reflections of sun-light from the
dancing waves, we select as an example one that in seve-
ral features bears an obvious analogy to the Exodus—the
present bondage and prospective freedom of the Negro
race in the United States of America. The process is
not yet complete, and therefore we cannot fully under-
stand what the counsel of the Lord therein may be. We
cannot yet predict all the turnings that the course of
events may take; but the issue is not doubtful. We
know that the Lord reigneth; we know also certain
great principles that run through his administration. We
wait confidently for the end of the Lord in that great
conflict. He that believeth shall not make haste.
PROVIDENCE. 81
The device of many leading politicians in the United
States has been, and is, to maintain three millions of
human beings in slavery, to be bought and sold like cattle
or any other species of property. There are, indeed, in
the laws some shreds of protection for human flesh and
blood, not accorded to other species of possessions; but
these proceed upon low grounds, and never rise to the
recognition of a brother's nature and a brother's rights.
The citizens of that country have probably an average
share of humanity in their personal character; but the
institution to which they cling chokes up the channel
through which the affections of nature ought to flow.
They make laws on the one side to prevent excessive
cruelty in the treatment of slaves, and on the other side
to forbid the dissemination of knowledge, lest it should
emancipate the mind while the body remains in bondage.
These alternate struggles this way and that way are
painful to the community that makes them, and by
no means effectual to accomplish the end desired. To
treat a man as the property of man, is to fight against
nature and against God. He who falls upon this stone
shall be broken. The nation, accordingly, is broken, is
rent asunder, by a wound that refuses to be healed.
Action and reaction are equal and opposite, as well in
morals as in physics. One person or one race cannot
hurt another, without receiving a corresponding injury
in return. If my brother and myself are standing both
together on ice, and I push him violently away from me,
I have thereby pushed myself as far in the opposite direc-
tion. I may succeed in driving my brother out of his
82 PROVIDENCE.
place, but the same effort drives me also out of mine.
The Americans are so situated with respect to their
slaves. They cannot push the Africans aside from the
best condition of humanity on the one hand, without
pushing themselves as far from the best condition of
humanity on the other. Man is not a fixture on the
earth like the everlasting hills. The ground is slippery,
and our foot-hold feeble at the best. It is not in our
power to turn aside a neighbour from his right, and
maintain our own standing and character as before. The
master depresses and degrades his slave; but in that very
act he has deeply wounded the tenderest part of his own
nature. If the oppressed race are necessarily mean, the
oppressing race are necessarily arrogant. As far as the
slave is sunk below the level into brutish insensibility,
so far the master is forced up above it into an odious
unfeeling pride. It is in vain that the potsherds of the
earth strive with their Maker. His laws are even now
silently operating to adjust these inequalities. Some
portions of their working may be already seen cropping
out upon the surface.
Slaves, stung by injuries at home, and favoured by
compassionate hearts abroad, were escaping in a strong
steady stream to a land of liberty. A gradual exodus
had begun, and the dominant power, by the instinct of
self-preservation, adopted a device to arrest it. They
passed an enactment, known as the Fugitive Slave Law,
which requires that the citizens shall aid in delivering
the fleeing African into his pursuers' hands, and imposes
severe punishment on all who shall dare to harbour him
PROVIDENCE. 83
or facilitate his escape. This, it seems, is the best device
which the powerful could employ to keep the feeble
under the yoke. But it has failed, and will fail. Like
Pharaoh's device to keep down his slaves, it contains
within itself the elements of its own dissolution. The
Legislature of the States has ventured to run counter
not only to the principles of justice, but to that which
in human breasts is a stronger thing—the instincts of
nature. Fathers and mothers in the Free States cannot
be compelled to deliver up a fugitive mother and her in-
fant to the mercy of her pursuer. There is a law which
lies underneath that shallow enactment, with power to
hold it in check for a time, and to crush it at last.
That latest effort which the slaveholding power has put
forth to secure their property has probably done more
than any other single event to weaken their tenure, and
ultimately wrench it from their grasp. The counsel of
the Lord, that shall stand, whether the adversary opposed
to it be an ancient despot or a modern democracy. The
stroke which was intended to rivet the fetters of the slave
more firmly, guided in its descent by an unseen hand, fell
upon a brittle link, and broke it through. The news-
papers announced that the cruel device had been enacted
into a law. The intelligence fell like a spark on the deep
compassion that lay pent up in a woman's heart, and kin-
dled it into a flame. The outburst was in the form of a
book, the chief instrument of power usually employed in
these later ages of the world. It is certainly true, and is
widely known, that the enactment of the Fugitive Slave
Law produced the book, and that the book caused a pano-
84 PROVIDENCE.
rama of slavery to pass before the eyes of millions in
America and Europe, inexpressibly augmenting the pub-
lic opinion of the civilized world against the whole sys-
tem, root and branch. Let no one imagine that we are
elevating little things into an undue importance. We
speak of Jehovah's counsel, and how it stands erect and
triumphant over all the devices of men. He is wont to
employ weak things to confound the mighty. Long ago
He employed the tears of a helpless child and the strong
compassion of a woman (Ex. ii. 6) as essential instru-
ments in the exodus of an injured race; and it would be
like himself if, in our day, while statesmen and armies
contend in the senate and the battle-field, he should per-
mit women who remain at home to deal the blow which
decides the victory, and distribute the resulting spoil.
"He sits King upon the floods." "All are His servants."
"Stand still and see the salvation of God."
The exodus of the New Testament, the decease which
Christ accomplished at Jerusalem, when, by the shedding
of his blood, and through a sea of wrath, he opened a way
for his redeemed to pass over, teems even more than that
of the Old Testament with studies of Providence. Caiaphas
proclaimed him the sacrificed substitute for sinning men
(John xi. 49-52), and Pilate recorded his kingly dignity
(John xix. 19). Are Caiaphas and Pilate also among the
prophets? They are, although they know it not. He
who makes the winds his messengers, and the flaming fire
his angels, can harness these untamed spirits, and yoke
them to his chariot. He makes the tongue of Caiaphas
preach the priesthood, and the pen of Pilate write the
PROVIDENCE. 85
sovereignty of Jesus. When God has a message to de-
clare, he is not limited in his choice of the angel who
shall bear it. He can compel the servants of Satan to do
his errands, without even putting off their dark cos-
tume. Their own hearts devise their ways, but the Lord
directs their steps. In pursuing their own devices, they
unconsciously become the instruments of accomplishing
the purpose of God.
"Pilate wrote a title," in Hebrew and Greek and
Latin, and fixed it aloft upon the cross. The title so com-
posed and published was, "JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE
KING OF THE JEWS." In the same spirit the governor
had already said, "Shall I crucify your King?" This
testimony from his view-point served two purposes. It
gave vent to the conviction struggling in his own mind
that the Sufferer was innocent and divine: at the same
time it afforded him the opportunity of taking vengeance
on the Jews for the blood-hound cruelty with which they
had hunted him down, and compelled him, against his own
judgment, to give up the Just One to be crucified. He
held their shame aloft to heaven, and spread it in three
languages across the world. Such is the object which
Pilate "proposes" to himself. But this man's weak vin-
dictive passion God "disposes" so, that it shall proclaim
to Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, that the crucified is the
King of Israel. Pilate's shaft was well aimed. It reached
its mark, and rankled in the bones and marrow of those
Jewish rulers. The governor, whom their policy had con-
cussed, now overreached them. They were ashamed
that a formal title, under the supreme civil authority,
86 PROVIDENCE.
should publish to the indigenous multitude in their ver-
nacular, and to strangers from the east and west in the
languages of the empire, that the Nazarene on the accursed
tree was their promised, expected King. They requested
that the writing should be changed. Pilate rejected their
request. It was now his turn to tighten the screw on the
flesh of the victim. Revenge at that moment was sweet
to his revengeful heart. "What I have written I have
written!" and he pushed them aside with contempt. He
determined to pillory these proud priests aloft upon the
place of skulls, as the subjects of the Crucified. And yet
God employed that fierce passion to print above the cross,
and publish through all time, a testimony to the royalty
of Emmanuel. Said not the Scriptures truly, "The
wrath of man shall praise Thee?"
We have been contemplating the working of Provi-
dence in those great events which have nations for their
actors, and a world for their stage. We have preferred
to exemplify a principle by the larger specimens of its
produce, as we are wont to illustrate the law of gravita-
tion by the balancing of worlds: but that law may be
seen as well in the drooping of a snow-drop, or the falling
of a leaf. And in like manner our Maker's might and
our Father's tenderness descend with us from great public
events, and follow our private, personal interests, until
they are lost to our view, but not to His, in the micro-
scopic minuteness of a hair falling off or growing gray.
In a storm at sea, when the danger pressed, and the deep
seemed ready to devour the voyagers, one man stood com-
posed and cheerful amidst the agitated throng. They
PROVIDENCE. 87
asked him eagerly why he feared not,—was he an expe-
rienced seaman, and did he see reason to expect that the
ship would ride the tempest through? No; he was not
an expert sailor, but he was a trustful Christian. He
was not sure that the ship would swim; but he knew that
its sinking could do no harm to him His answer was,
"Though I sink to-day, I shall only drop gently into the
hollow of my Father's hand, for he holds all these waters
there." The story of that disciple's faith triumphing in
a stormy sea presents a pleasant picture to those who read
it on the solid land; but if they in safety are strangers
to his faith, they will not in trouble partake of his conso-
lation. The idea is beautiful; but a human soul, in its
extremity, cannot play with a beautiful idea. If the
heart do not feel the truth firm to lean upon, the eye will
not long be satisfied with its symmetry to look at.
Strangers may speak of providence; but only the children
love it. If they would tell the truth, those who are
alienated from God in their hearts, do not like to be so
completely in His power. It is when I am satisfied with
His mercy, that I rejoice to lie in His hand.
88 WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH.
X.
WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE
WORTH.
"How
much better is it to get wisdom than gold?
and to get. understanding rather to be chosen than silver?—xvi. 16.
THE question only is written in the book; the learner is
expected to work out the answer. We, of this mercantile
community, are expert in the arithmetic of time; here is
an example to test our skill in casting up the accounts of
eternity. Deeper interests are at stake; greater care
should be taken to avoid an error, more labour willingly
expended in making the balance true. Old and young,
rich and poor, should take their places together in the
school, and, under the Master's own eye, work this preg-
nant problem out to its issue.
The question is strictly one of degree. It is not,
Whether is wisdom or gold the more precious portion for
a soul? That question was settled long ago by common
consent. All who in any sense make a profession of faith
in God, confess that wisdom is better than gold; and this
teacher plies them with another problem,—How much
better?
Two classes of persons have experience in this matter,
—those who have chosen the meaner portion, and those who
have chosen the nobler; but only the latter class are
capable of calculating the difference suggested by the
WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH. 89
text. Those who give their heart to money, understand
only the value of their own portion: those who possess
treasures in heaven, have tasted both kinds, and can
appreciate the difference between them.
When a man has made money his idol and his aim, he
may be made to feel and confess that it is a worthless
portion. He may understand well that a world full of it
cannot procure for him one night's sleep when he is in
pain,—cannot dispel the terrors of an unclean conscience,—
cannot satisfy the justice of God,—cannot open the gate
of heaven. The man, in his misery, can tell you truly and
intelligently that gold, as the chosen heritage of an im-
mortal, is worthless; but how much better heavenly wis-
dom would have been, he cannot tell, for he has never
tried it. As the man born blind cannot tell how much better
light is than his native darkness; as the slave born under
the yoke of his master cannot tell how much better liberty
is than his life-long bondage; so he who has despised the
treasures that are at God's right hand, cannot conceive
how much more precious they are to a man in his ex-
tremity than the riches that perish in the use. A man
knows both what it is to be a child and what it is to be
a man; but a child knows only what it is to be a child.
He who is now a new creature, has experience also of the
old man; but he who has not yet put off the old man, has
no experience of the new. Only those who have chosen
the better portion can intelligently compare the two.
But even these cannot compute the difference. Eye
hath not seen, ear hath not heard it. Wisdom from
above, like the love of God, passeth knowledge. Even
90 WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH.
those who are best instructed can stretch their line but
a little way into the depth. How much better is wisdom
than gold? Better by all the worth of a soul, by all the
blessedness of heaven, by all the length of eternity. But
all these expressions are only tiny lines that children fling
into the ocean to measure its depth withal. None of them
reach the ground. It is like the answer of a little child
when you ask him How far distant is that twinkling star?
It is very very far above us, he will say; but with all the
eagerness of his tone and gesture—with his outstretched
finger, and twittering lips, and glistening eye, he has not
told you how deep in the heavens that lone star lies. As
well might you expect to find out God, as find out, here
in the body, the measure of the goodness which he has
laid up for them that fear him.
In a time of war between two great maritime nations, a
ship belonging to one of them is captured on the high seas
by a ship belonging to the other. The captor, with a few
attendants, goes on board his prize, and directs the native
crew to steer for the nearest point of his country's shore.
The prize is very rich. The victors occupy themselves
wholly in collecting and counting the treasure, and arrang-
ing their several shares, abandoning the care of the ship
to her original owners. These, content with being per-
mitted to handle the helm, allow their rivals to handle
the money unmolested. After a long night, with a steady
breeze, the captured mariners quietly, at dawn, run the
ship into a harbour on their own shores. The conquerors
are in turn made captives. They lose all the gold which
they grasped too eagerly, and their liberty besides. In
WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH. 91
that case it was much better to have hold of the helm,
which directed the ship, than of the money which the
ship contained. Those who seized the money and ne-
glected the helm, lost even the money which was in their
hands. Those who neglected the money and held by the
helm, obtained the money which they neglected, and
liberty too. They arrived at home, and all their wealth
with them.
Thus they who make money their aim suffer a double
loss, and they who seek the wisdom from above secure a
double gain. The gold with which men are occupied
will profit little, if the voyage of their life be not pointed
home. If themselves are lost, their possessions are worth-
less. It is much better to get wisdom, for wisdom is
profitable to direct, and the course so directed issues in
Rest and Riches. When Christ is yours, all things are
yours, and gold among them. The gold and the silver
are His, and whether by giving them to you, or withhold-
ing them from you, he will compel these his servants to
attend upon his sons.
The ship may carry a precious cargo of this world's
goods, but the main concern of the master is not the
quantity and value of his freight. It is better to come
home empty a living man, than to be cast away in com-
pany with your riches. Alas! I think I see many men
spending their days and nights down in the hold keeping
their eyes on the coffers, permitting the vessel which
carries both themselves and their treasures to drift at the
mercy of wind and tide. Come up! come up! This is
not your rest. This is a tempestuous and dangerous sea.
92 WISDOM AND WEALTH—THEIR COMPARATIVE WORTH.
Look to the heavens for guiding light; keep your eye on
the chart and your hand on the rudder. Immortal man!
let your chief aim and effort be to pass safely through
there troubled waters and arrive at last in the better
land. As to wealth, if you carry little with you, plenty
awaits you there. "We passed through fire and water,
yet thou broughtest us to a wealthy place."
THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT. 93
XI.
THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT.
"The highway of the upright is to depart from evil:
he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul."—xvi. 17.
EVERY man has a highway of his own. It is formed, as
our forefathers formed their roads, simply by walking
often on it, and without a predetermined plan. Foresight
and wisdom might improve the moral path, as much as
they have in our day improved the material. The high-
way of the covetous is to depart from poverty and make
for wealth with all his might. In his eagerness to take
the shortest cut he often falls over a precipice, or loses
his way in a wood. The highway of the vain is to depart
from seriousness, and follow mirth on the trail of fools.
The highway of the ambitious is a toilsome scramble up
a mountain's side towards its summit, which seems in the
distance to be a paradise basking in sun-light above the
clouds, but when attained is found to be colder and barer
than the plain below. The upright has a highway too,
and it is to "depart from evil."
The upright is not an unfallen angel, but a restored
man. He has been in the miry pit, and the marks of
the fall are upon him still. Even when a sinner has
been forgiven and renewed—when he has become a new
creature in Christ, and an heir of eternal life—the power
of evil within him is not entirely subdued, the stain of
94 THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT.
evil not entirely wiped away. He hates sin now in his
heart, but he feels the yoke of it in his flesh still. His back
is turned to the bondage which he loathes, and his face to
the liberty which he loves. He hastens away from evil, and
if he looks behind him at any time, it is to measure the
distance he has already made, and quicken his pace for
the time to come. In this way the pilgrim walks un-
wearied, nor dares to rest until in dwellings of the right-
eous he hear that "melody of joy and health:" "Salva-
tion to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and unto
the Lamb" (Rev. vii. 10). Then at last he ceases to
depart from evil; for there is no more any evil to depart
from. He treads no more his chosen beaten highway,
because he is now at home.
The man who has found this highway and keeps it,
"preserveth his soul." How necessary to each other
reciprocally are doctrine and life! To sever them is to
destroy them; and to sever them is a more common error
in Christendom than most are able to perceive or willing
to confess. Doctrine, although both true and divine, is
for us only a shadow, if it be not embodied in holiness.
Nothing more effectually serves Satan's purpose in the
world than a strict creed wedded to a loose practice.
This union secures a double gain to the kingdom of dark-
ness. It keeps the man himself in bondage, and also
exposes to shame the gospel of our Lord and Saviour.
The true doctrine is necessary to salvation, because it is
the only way of reaching righteousness. The precious-
ness of revealed truth lies in this, that it teaches how we
may please God, first and primarily by the righteousness
THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT. 95
of Christ, second and subordinately by personal obedi-
ence. He who keepeth his way preserveth his soul:
conversely, he who departs from it shall perish.
There stands the word in all its simplicity and blunt-
ness: the preserving of your soul depends on the keeping
of your way. The way is obviously the life: no reader
can mistake the meaning of the term. It was not the
profession, but the "walk" of those Philippian back-
sliders that made Paul weep, and ranked them "enemies
of the cross of Christ." The Lord himself, in the sermon
on the mount, has settled this point with extraordinary
precision and minuteness (Matt. vii. 21-27), especially
in the parable of the two houses, that of the wise man
built upon a rock, and that of the foolish man built upon
the sand. He has graven as with a pen of iron, and the
point of a diamond in the rock for ever, the lesson that a
sound creed will not save a careless liver in the great
day.
To contend for a high standard of doctrine, and be
satisfied with a low standard of life, is a fatal inconsistency.
It is a "damnable heresy," whoever brings it in; for it
issues in the loss of the soul. At certain periods in the
history of the Church, and among certain communities of
professors, evangelical doctrine has prevailed, while moral-
ity has languished. This knowledge, dissociated from
obedience, is a more melancholy object of contemplation
than the actual idolatry of Athens, where the living God
was unknown; as a blighted corn field is a sadder sight
than a bare unsown moor. In the early Christian cul-
ture some fields ran waste in this way, on which much
96 THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT.
labour had been expended; and to these the reproof of
James is specially addressed: "But wilt thou know, O
vain man, that faith without works is dead?" (ii. 20.)
It is as false in philosophy as in religion to assume that
a knowledge of the way will lead those home who refuse
to walk in it.
In our day and our country, the supreme and funda-
mental importance of truth in doctrine is generally
acknowledged and inculcated in the religious education of
the people. This is both right and necessary, but it is
not enough. Why should men separate and set up as
rivals the knowing of the right way, and the walking in
the way that is right? You may as well pit against
each other the seeing eye and the shining light, some
declaring for this and some for that as the one thing
needful. Shake off prepossessions and traditions; go in
simplicity to the Bible; sit at the feet of Jesus, and
listen to the Teacher sent from God; and you will find
that a so-called right believing which does not clothe it-
self in right living, so far from being a passport to safety,
is an aggravation of guilt. "To him that knoweth to do
good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."
When a wanderer has been met, like Paul, in the way
of death, and led into the way of life, the end is not yet.
Let not him that putteth on his armour boast himself as
he that putteth it off. Those who have found the way
must keep it. There are many out-branching by-paths,
and many enticers clustering round the entrance of each.
"Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation."
"He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved."
THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT. 97
While we learn in this verse that a soul is preserved by
keeping the way, we may observe the counterpart truth
glancing from behind,—"a soul is lost by departing from
the way."
It is in the way, the conduct, the life, that the breach
occurs whereby a soul is lost, that seemed to bid fair for
the better land. It is probable that with nine out of
every ten of our people in this favoured land, the enemy
finds it easier to inject actual impurity into the life than
speculative error into the creed. Danger to the soul is
greater on the side of practice than on the side of faith.
A shaken faith, I own, leads the life astray; but also a
life going astray makes shipwreck of the faith. I do
not teach that any righteousness done by the fallen can
either please God or justify a man; but I do teach, on
the authority of the Bible, that a slipping from the way
of righteousness and purity in actual life is the main stay
of Satan's kingdom —the chief destroyer of souls. When
your conduct becomes impure, your belief will not continue
sound. It is more common in the experience of indi-
viduals, if not also in the history of the Church, to find
evangelical doctrine undermined by sinful practice, than
to find holy practice perverted by a heterodox belief. A
successful assault by the enemy on either side will ruin all,
but in the battle of life the side of conduct is weaker and
more exposed than the side of profession. If the spirits
of darkness could be heard celebrating their success, while
erroneous doctrines might, in their dreary paean, occupy the
place of Saul who slays his thousands, indulged lusts
would certainly be the David who slays his ten thousands.
98 THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT.
Young men and women! when you are in the place and
the hour of temptation, look to that apostle who had
sorely stumbled himself and therefore, when confirmed
by grace, was better fitted than others to have compas-
sion on them that are out of the way; his eyes are red
with weeping and his manly heart is breaking in his
breast: he cries with an exceeding great and bitter cry,
that should run through you like a sword in your bones:
"Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pil-
grims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the
soul" (1 Peter ii. 11).
Every one has a highway, and every one is a traveller.
The whole human race are travelling, each on his, own
chosen track, across Time and toward Eternity. Every
traveller has something very precious in his custody—
the most precious of created things—his own soul. "What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose
his soul?" You will lose it, pilgrim, if you go off the
way. The miners in the gold fields of Australia, when
they have gathered a large quantity of the dust, make
for the city with the treasure. The mine is far in the
interior. The country is wild: the bush is infested by
robbers. The miners keep the road and the day-light.
They march in company, and close by the guard sent to
protect them. They do not stray from the path among the
woods; for they bear with them a treasure which they value,
and they are determined to run no risks. Do likewise,
brother, for your treasure is of greater value, your enemies
of greater power. Keep the way, lest you lose your soul
THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE. 99
XII.
THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE.
"Understanding is a well-spring of life unto him that hath it."—xvi. 22.
THE well is deeper now than Solomon in his day was able
to penetrate, and sends forth accordingly a fuller, fresher,
more perennial stream. Then, in ancient Israel, it was much
to learn from the lips of the king all that the Spirit taught
him about understanding as a well-spring of life; but a
greater than Solomon is here teaching us, and the youngest
scholar who sits at Jesus' feet may in these high matters
be wiser than the ancients. "Whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the
water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of
water springing up into everlasting life" (John iv. 14).
Behold the lessons of David's son, expanded and completed
by David's Lord!
Understanding is a well-spring to him that hath it:
but in me dwelleth no good thing. Every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above. A rainless sky makes a
barren land. As long as the heavens are brass, the earth
will be iron. There are many living well-springs on the
earth, but the fountain-head is on high. The earth gets
all the good of the refreshing streams as much as if they
were originally its own; and yet it is indebted to the sky
for every drop that rises in its springs and flows in its
rivers. The springs are in the earth for possession and
100 THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE.
benefit, though not of the earth as their independent
source. It is thus with the understanding which becomes
a well-spring of life to men. It is in them; they possess
it, and enjoy all its preciousness: but it is not their own.
It is the gift of God. They have nothing which they
did not receive.
Two things are necessary to the opening and the flow
of well-springs—deep rendings beneath the earth's surface,
and lofty risings above it. There must be deep veins
and high mountains. The mountains draw the drops
from heaven; the rents receive, retain, and give forth the
supply. There must be corresponding heights and depths
in the life of a man ere he be charged as a well-spring
with wisdom from above. Upward to God and down-
ward into himself the exercises of his soul must alter-
nately penetrate. You must lift up your soul in the
prayer of faith, and rend your heart in the work of re-
pentance; you must ascend into heaven to bring the
blessing down, and descend into the depths to draw it up.
Extremes meet in a lively Christian. He is at once very
high and very lowly. God puts all his treasures in the
power of a soul that rises to reach the upper springs, as
the Andes intercept water in the sky sufficient to fertilize
a continent. And when the Spirit has so descended like
floods of water, the secret places of a broken heart afford
room for his indwelling, so that the grace which came at
first from God rises within the man like a springing well,
satisfying himself and refreshing his neighbours.
Enlarging the germ of thought which Solomon infolded
within the Old Testament scriptures, the Lord intimated
THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE. 101
that this well, when charged and set a flowing, springeth
up into everlasting life. There are many joys springing
from the earth, and limited to time,—joys which God
provides, and his children thankfully receive; but the
characteristic defect of all these is that those who drink
of them shall thirst again. It is recorded of Israel in the
wilderness, that they came one day to a place where were
twelve wells, and seventy palm-trees. Here, then, were
two of the pilgrims' chief wants amply supplied—shade
and water: but we learn from the history that at another
station in their journey, a few days afterwards, the
people were reduced to extremities again by thirst.
Such are all the temporary refreshments provided for pil-
grim's by the way. He who has solaced himself at these
wells to-day will thirst again to-morrow. But the well-
spring of life, the water that flowed from the Rock, will
follow the weary all their way, and refresh them most
when their thirst is greatest—in the final conflict with the
latest foe. "That Rock was Christ"
"To him that hath it," said Solomon, will understand-
ing be a well-spring. "Whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him," said Jesus, "shall never thirst."
Both the Old Testament and the New distinctly teach
that grace offered by God may only increase the condem-
nation: it is grace accepted by man that saves. There
is plenty in the fountain, for "God is love;" and yet you
may thirst again, and thirst for ever. There is plenty
falling, for in Christ our Brother, and for us, all the ful-
ness of the Godhead bodily dwells; and yet you may
thirst again, and thirst for ever. The Son of God came
102 THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE.
the Life of men, and yet many men live not. The Son
of God came the Light of the world, and yet whole nations
are sitting in darkness. "He that hath the Son hath
life." He is the wisdom of God. This wisdom is life
"to him that hath it;" but the greatness of this salvation,
and the freeness of its offer, only aggravate the guilt of
those who neglect or despise it.
Thirst and water, the appetite and its supply, are fitted
into each other like a lock and key in human art, or
the seeing eye and the shining light among the works of
God. In these pairs, either member is useless if it be
alone. However exquisite in itself one side of the double
whole may be, it is barren if it want its counterpart.
Water can no more nourish fruit alone than dust; dust can
no more nourish fruit alone than water. Let the dust be
refreshed by water,—let water saturate the dust. The
two apart were both barren: their union will be prolific.
Thirst without cater is merely pain: water without
thirst is merely waste. It is when thirst receives water,
water quenches thirst, that a substantial benefit accrues.
We should carefully observe this inexorable law of na-
ture, and learn that it reigns with all its rigour in the
spiritual sphere. Men who personally reject the gospel
seem to expect that the gospel will save them notwith-
standing. Understanding cannot be a well-spring of life
to him that hath it not. The terms are, "Whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely." Even the love
of God cannot offer more favourable terms than these, and
it remains true, that those who will not take the water
of life perish for want of it. At Jerusalem, in the days
THE WELL-SPRING OF LIFE. 103
of his flesh, on the last day of the feast, Jesus uttered a
great cry. It was a cry of fear and grief. It came from
the breaking heart of the Man of Sorrows. He feared,
as the feast days were passing, lest the time of mercy
should run out, and those lingerers be lost. He who
knew what is in man and before him, was anxious: they
who knew neither themselves nor their Judge, were con-
fident. He cried out: they kept silence. His cry was, "If
any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink" (John
vii. 37). He saw the water of life poured out and running
to waste. He saw, too, a multitude of lifeless, withered,
perishing souls. What he desired to see in them was a
thirst that would induce them to take the offered mercy.
Alas! now when the Giver cries, the needy sit silent: a time
will come when the needy will cry, and the great Giver
will refuse to answer! The loss of a soul is an exceeding
bitter thing at every stage of the process, from the begin-
ning to the close. Now there is water, but no thirst:
then there will be thirst, but no water. If these two be
not joined in the day of mercy, they will remain separate
through the night of doom. If God's cry, "Take, take!"
be left echoing unanswered in heaven, man's cry, "Give,
give!" will echo unanswered through the pit. If God's offer
be barren in time for want of man's desire, man's desire in
eternity will be barren for want of an offer to meet it
from God. To him that hath it, this wisdom from above
will be a well-spring of life;—to those who refuse it, life
will never spring at all.
104 THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS.
XIII.
THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS.
"Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man,
rather than a fool in his folly."—xvii. 12.
THE wrath of man is a dreadful thing. The mere recital
of the havoc which it has wrought on the earth would
sicken the stoutest heart. Who can calculate how many
acts of cruelty, done by man upon his fellow, have ac-
cumulated for the inquisition of the great day, since the
blood of Abel cried to heaven for vengeance against his
brother. The rage of wild beasts is short-lived, and their
power is circumscribed within narrow limits. Man has
more cause to dread his brother than all the beasts of the
forest. It is easier to meet a bear robbed of her whelps,
than a fool in his folly.
Cruelties are of different species, owing their origin to
diverse passions, and perpetrated with a view to diverse
ends. Ambition has often steeped her hands in blood.
Many sweet olive plants, especially of those that spring
round royal tables, have been nipt in the bud, lest their
growth should obstruct the path of a usurper hastening
to the throne. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say
that war perpetrates, for it consists of cruelties. It is,
rather than does, murder. Jealousy, too, leaves many
victims on its track. And Superstition, Pagan, Moham-
medan, and Popish, has lighted the fires of persecution in
THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS. 105
every land, and relieved the world of those who had
grown so like to God that the world could not endure
their presence. These, and many other species of cruelties,
have offended God and afflicted man ever since sin began;
but the cruelty specified in this text is of another kind.
It is not the cruelty of the warrior in his thirst for glory
not the cruelty of the persecutor, in his blindness think-
ing to please God by destroying men. It is the cruelty
of a fool in his folly.
Nothing so exactly answers to this description as a
drunkard in his drink Both the tree and its fruits cor-
respond precisely to Solomon's report. The proverb fully
characterizes the violence done by drunkards, and can be
applied to nothing else that is done on a large scale in
our country and our day. An instance may be found
of a fool's cruelty, apart from the influence of intoxication,
more terrible to meet than the rage of a bereaved wild
beast; but this kind is not characteristic of the nation or
the age. In the records of drunkenness, cases answering
to the description of the text are piled in heaps like the
hills. Elsewhere they are either not found at all, or
found so seldom as not sensibly to affect the general esti-
mate. We are therefore not only permitted, but com-
pelled, if we attempt an application of the proverb at all,
to gather our instances where they are to be found,—
among the fools who drive their judgment out by strong
drink.
Instances of violence in this form seem to be increasing
in number and atrocity in the present day. At all events,
it is certain that they attract the attention of statesmen
106 THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS.
and philanthropists much more now than in former times.
Day by day, as our eye runs over the loathsome list of
wife-beatings and wife-murders, by drunken husbands,
we read at the same time, in the same columns, indignant
denunciations of the dastard deeds, and peremptory de-
mands for more astringent laws to repress the growing
enormity. This species of crime, it is acknowledged on
all hands, is the fruit of drunkenness.
The public journals are never long free from the details
of some gigantic atrocity. Before one tragedy has passed
through the usual three acts in presence of the public,
another is announced, and begins to obtain its run. First,
the curtain suddenly rises and reveals a new deed of blood.
When the neighbourhood has wondered nine days at the
cruelty of a fool, the solemnities of the trial succeed.
The foreground is occupied by the public-house, and the
process whereby a number of men divest themselves at
once of the money they have toiled for and the judgment
which God has given them. Many subordinate episodes
adhere to the principal plot. Glimpses are gotten, through
doors accidentally opened in the cross-examination, of the
drunkard's naked children at home, or the coolness of the
publican in the prosecution of his business. This act
closes with the solemn answer of the jury's foreman, the
black cap of the judge, and removal of the weeping
prisoner to the cell of the condemned. The last short
act opens with the sound of carpenters' hammers in the
misty dawn, and closes soon with the dead body of the
drunkard dangling on the gallows. A thrill runs through
the crowd, and a sigh escapes from such hearts as retain
THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS. 107
some tenderness. The people return to their employment,
the newspapers chronicle the event, and it glides away on
the tide of time into the darkness of the past. But ere
these harsh echoes have died away from the ear of the
public, some other she-bear in human form meets and
mangles her helpless victim. The public is put through
the same process over again. So frequently do these
shocking barbarities pass before our eyes, that they
have, in a great measure, lost the power to shock us.
We bear of them unmoved, as things that have been, and
that will be, and that cannot be prevented. If a tenth
of the accidents, assaults, and murders, with which the
folly of drunkards is year by year desolating the land,
were produced by any other cause, the community would
rise as one man and put forth all its wisdom and might
in an effort to pluck up the evil by the root. The na-
tion bears with appalling patience the tearing out of its
own bowels by the cruel madness of the drunkard.
Not long ago the local authorities of a certain district in
India sent to the supreme government a representation that
as many as sixteen persons within the territory had perished
in one year by the bite of a small poisonous snake, and
requesting permission to set a price upon the head of the
reptile, with the view of uniting the whole population in
an effort to exterminate their subtle and deadly foe. The
government granted all their demands, and proclaimed a
liberal reward for every dead snake that should be brought
in. The people, thus encouraged by their rulers, entered
heartily into the plan, and the work was done. Ah! in
compassion for my country, I am tempted to wish that
108 THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS.
our scourge had come in the form of poisonous serpents.
Sixteen lives lost by that plague within a year, in a popu-
lation perhaps as great as ours, were sufficient to bind the
rulers and the people together in a solemn league, and
send them forth, as by the summons of the fiery cross, to
root out their destroyer. Our annual loss in the ignoble
battle is to be reckoned not by tens but by thousands, and
yet we have neither head to contrive nor heart to execute
any plan adequate to the emergency. We seem to be as
helpless as the children that mocked Elisha in the paws
of the bears that tore them.
But, great and numerous as the publicly reported atro-
cities of drunken folly are, they constitute only a small
proportion of what the nation suffers from that single
scourge. From the nature of the case and the position
of the parties, most of the cruelties, inflicted in secret,
are suffered in silence; most of the murders, done by
slow degrees, escape the notice of the judicial authorities.
To hurt a stranger once on the street brings a drunkard
into trouble; but he may hurt his own flesh and blood a
hundred times at home, and hear no reproof, except the
sighs of the helpless sufferers. When the fool kills a com-
panion outright at once, with a knife or an axe, the law
lays its strong hand upon him: but although, by blows,
and nakedness, and hunger, he wear out by inches the
life of his wife and little ones, he escapes with impunity.
From personal observation, within my own sphere, and
the testimony of others similarly situated beyond it, I
know that a great amount of crime in this form is left
unpunished, unnoticed.
THE CRUELTY OF FOOLS. 109
I have entered the house of a labouring man, at his own
earnest request, and found in it besides himself an ill-clad
wife and a sick daughter. On making inquiry regarding the
girl's health, I have heard the wife and mother, in tones that
had long lost all their softness, declare, "She is dying, and
there," pointing to her husband, "there is her murderer."
He made no effort to deny the charge, or even palliate his
guilt, for he was sober and repentant at the moment.
The appearance of the man, the house, the child, corrobo-
rated, by unmistakable symptoms, the woman's strong
indictment. It was true: the daughter was dying, and
the father was her murderer. But, fool though he was,
he did not hate his child; he did not desire her death.
When he was "in his folly," he treated her so as to waste
her life away; and he returned to his folly as often as he