7. Vessels Of A Great House

Dear friends, every one of your hearts is just such a field as this, and in it He has been plowing up the hard soil, and harrowing and pulverizing the rough clods. He has been scattering some seed broadcast into it, and He has been sowing other kinds more carefully. The teaching of this whole passage is very simple, but it is very wonderful. The subject is very common-place, but I am sure the meaning is helpful. God perhaps is threshing you today, but He is doing it with care. He may be using a stick to take the refuse matter out of your still. The cart-wheel may be going over you. Let the chaff go. It is good for nothing but to be burned. Let go all that is perishable. Don’t be afraid to trust Him. He will keep all that is precious.

He will prepare you with His own hands, and cause you to satisfy the needs of many around you, He has it in His heart to make you a blessing to the world for which He died, and in which He would have you live today like His own beloved Son. How thankful you ought to be! Beloved, are you trusting His love? Are you bringing others to know and love and enjoy Him as He has caused you to do?

"But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master’s use, and prepared unto every good work." II Timothy 2:20-21

WHAT a wonderful commentary on the artificial means of human life which civilization produces may be seen by visiting the various departments of some ancient museum. The instruments of savage life are very simple but the modern departments contain an endless variety of porcelain ware and pottery and elaborate work in metal greatly in contrast with the other. As life advances in the scale, man’s needs increase. A housekeeper has no end of needs. If you should start to furnish a house newly today, you would soon be bewildered at the endless fulness to some extent. We may be vessels to honor, I am sure of that, if not to distinction.

If we are vessels to dishonor it is because we are not fit for anything else. No mistress would use a silver vessel to hold kitchen slops. If you are used for that it is because you fill yourselves with slops. There are some people who take in the devil’s slops all the time. They are scavenger vessels, and are fit only for that. Ah! dear friends, if we use our lips as members of unrighteousness to give out nasty things, how can we think of giving them to God to carry pure water to His children? You cannot be so used unless you are a pure vessel. You would not take a nasty, dirty tin vessel to drink from if there was a clear, crystalline vessel at hand. If God is to use you, you must be ready.

There is an infinite variety in these vessels. No Christian can say to another: ‘You are not like me ; I am sorry for you.’ God is not so impoverished in resources that He must make every vessel alike. In dealing with souls I have often felt like calling some worker, after I have said all I had to say, for God so greatly blesses different instrumentalities. He has made His creatures very different, yet with a wondrous adaptation to each other and He means that all shall work together for good. The kitchen vessels are not used in the dining-room but they are not, therefore, to think themselves of no use. I don t know, which are most useful.

Some of God’s children are used in prayer, some in preaching, and some in testimony, and He sends the feet of some up garret stairs on quiet messages of cheer and help. All are for the Master’s use. I am so glad for this people God has placed me over. There is more variety among them than I have ever seen together before. I thank God even for eccentricity if it is genuine, and not put on to make the person peculiar. If it is simple and genuine and true to God, He can use it greatly. He has gathered into the church a few who have had the advantages of culture and refinement, and a few who have had very little in their surroundings that was elevating. There are some here who have known the bright side of life, and some who have known its hard side and are acquainted with trials. There are differences of race, and of character, and temperament, but all are one in Jesus Christ, and through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost the love of God can make out of this people many vessels to honor in His service.

II.

These vessels are to be cleansed vessels. ‘If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor.’ He is to be clean not only in a general way, but so clean that not a single stain remains. It is to be a thorough cleansing by blood, by water and by fire. God takes away the guilt of sin by the Atonement of Christ. Then as stains appear on our outward life, they are to be washed away by the Holy Ghost. The inner fibre of our nature can only be cleansed by fire. The evil in the heart must be burnt out.

Are you so cleansed, dear friends, not only from the grosser stains of life, but from the ten thousand little stains that come thick and fast from every-day life, the little annoyances and frets and alienations that are keeping you now from the interest in Christian work you ought to have, and from the Joy and gladness in God you might possess? Are you cleansed from the stain of old service? The water that was in your pitcher last night is not clean today. Your milk pitcher is defiled with the stains of yesterday’s milk. It must be cleansed before you put fresh liquid in. It is not clean because it is not fresh. The service of yesterday is not clean unless it is fresh.

It must be washed by blood and water and fire, and so kept sweet and clean. Do you know what it is to feel a difference in the joy of your work? Do you remember how easy it used to be to work for souls just after your conversion? Why is it that you are embarrassed to sit down now by the side of some unconverted person and try to lead them to Christ? What is the matter? You are not clean - that is the trouble. There are some stains from yesterday’s work, or from something else, on you. There is something there that needs to he burned up or washed away. And God wants to give you this perfect cleansing. You cannot grow unless the heart is kept clean.

If there is in it any petty sin, or strife, or jealousy, or envy, if you are harboring any malicious thought against another, or any spirit of unkindness even, there is uncleanness; and you do not know what crawling vermin will get into a vessel that is sour. You need to get it washed out. If God is to use you as a drinking vessel, you must be cleansed. Let the Holy Ghost wash you. Hold still in the fire that He will put you in till nothing remains in you that will burn, and until you are thoroughly purified. Then God can use you. He cannot use an unclean vessel. It would spoil all that was put in it. If your heart or lips are unclean, how can God defile the Holy Ghost by pouring Him into you? How can God defile any of His dear children by sending you to feed them or to give them water that has been soiled by coming through unclean lips? He cannot and He will not do it. Oh that you would go to the Lord this day, and know, as Isaiah did, of having a live coal laid upon your mouth, and hear the Lord saying with you, ‘Lo, this hath touched thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.’ Then could God use you as a clean vessel to refresh and bless His children.

III.

We are not only to be cleansed vessels, but empty ones also. There must be nothing stored away in us. We must be disengaged from all other and stronger claims, especially our own claims of self-interest and self-will. We are so apt to be full of something else besides God. Our own plans, our own ideas of things, our own confidence, our own strength, so fill us that we cannot be greatly used. God wants an empty vessel as well as a clean one, and one that always remains empty. He would have us feel as needy as ever. If we are conscious of our great disability, but of His great ability also, we are empty. Dear friends, are you free from all pre-occupying cares about today? Are you free for His commands and ready for His work alone? Are you an empty vessel that He can use for His own glory?

When we are really empty, He would have us filled with Himself and the Holy Spirit. It is very precious to be conscious of nothing good in ourselves, but, oh! are we also conscious of His great goodness? We may be ready to admit our own disability, but are we as ready to admit His ability? There are many Christians who can say, ‘We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves,’ but the number, I fear, is very small who can our sufficiency is of God. Dear friends, have you got such a hold of God that you can say this? Are you quite sure that He is able to provide for every want in you, or do you feel that you must supply it yourself?

Are you believing that God does now supply every lack in your heart and in your life, so that all tumbling is taken away, and you are endued with power for His service, as Elisha took the vessels and filled them before they were set aside to be used? Our Saviour at Cana ordered the water-pots to be filled to the brim. Then the water was made into wine, but not until the vessels were full. God wants His children to have always a full heart. We must have the other experience of being empty, but we must not stay there. We must get a glad, full heart, and then others will be able to drink from our abundance.

IV.

The apostle next gives us a beautiful word. We are to be meet for the master’s use. That is, we are to be set apart and sanctified. The word means hallowed. There is a great difference between being cleansed and sanctified. Cleansed means simply to be washed from actual defilement, but the other has a very different meaning. The first would make us mere negative beings with no harm in us and no great good. To be sanctified means to be actually set apart by God, as the vessels in the ancient tabernacle were, to a sacred use. Cleansing is the negative side of religion, but sanctification is the positive side. It means a whole-hearted surrender of everything to God, and it is not an unreasonable requirement. Indeed, it is our reasonable service.

It is not the sacrificial lamb tied on altar in fear and trembling, but it is Isaac springing on the altar with glad delight, saying, ‘Lo, I come ; I delight to do thy will, 0 my God.’ How many people there are who want to thus yield to God, who wish they were able to yield, but who fail to do it. The vessel must be a fully surrendered one before He can have the right to take it. The Greek word here is very strong. But for the love that comes with it, it would seem hard. The idea is that we are in the hand of a despot who has a right to dispose of us as He chooses. He controls us entirely. It is possible to do Christian work and do it as our own master; but if God’s blessing is to rest upon it greatly, it must done from a heart that is always in direct contact with and wholly under His control.

We must be able to say as Paul did, ‘Whose I am and whom I serve.’ He called it a bondslave. In a great house there can be no question about the ownership of the different vessels. In Windsor Hotel the name of the hotel is stamped on every one of them. In England the crest or monogram of the owner is burnt into every dish among the wealthy classes. God does not want any vessel in His great house that has not His monogram so burnt into it that nothing ever can get it out. You are to do His work, dear friends, not because it pleases you, but because you belong to Christ, and are altogether at His disposal. Take this thought with you as you go away this morning, ‘I must be at His disposal. I must be meet for the Master’s use.’ That is, profitable: It is the same word Paul uses of Onesimus in his epistle to Philemon. ‘Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me.’ It is an unusual word.

It does not mean the vessel is merely sanctified in itself, but God counts it worthy of whatever use He chooses to put it to. He does not want children whom He cannot use, who are not profitable to Him, who are so weak that they break if anybody leans on them. Ah, no! He wants vessels He can count on, vessels that will stand some risk, and that will repay Him for the price He has paid for them in the suffering and death of His dear Son.

He expects us to be prepared, or, more literally, ready for every good work. You know how pleasant it is in Christian service to meet with a ready worker, or a ready speaker, one we can get up off-hand and give his Master’s message without a week to prepare it in. An employer knows what a ready worker is. He somehow impresses you when you look in his face that he knows all about it, and you can tell him at once to go on with the work. Some are so slow and have so little general knowledge of the work that no one employs them willingly. A ready man is a man of value always. He is able to use right hand or left, as occasion requires. He is not one-handed.

So, dear Christian friends, God wants us always to be ready for His work, perhaps on the street at night, perhaps on the way to church, perhaps in the social meetings, perhaps at home; always ready whether we feel like it or not. He wants ready workers, ready to go out on the street and bring the lost ones into our meetings, ready to speak to any who need a helping word wherever we meet them, ready to give a testimony for Him without stopping to wonder if we dare till the opportunity is lost; ready to shoot the game on the wing without waiting for them to sit down and invite us to shoot; ready out of season as well as in, ready in rainy weather as well as fine; always ready for the Master’s use, not sometimes, but at all times. May the dear Lord make us thus ready to do His work.

How are we to become ready for the Master’s use?

First we must be sure of the salvation of our own souls. There can be no service before that is settled.

Next we must be free from trouble. God cannot use us if we are bothered about our own affairs in any degree. We must have rest of soul from all these things, and then we may be able to help somebody else love their burden.

We must have a real love for souls. Not a spasmodic emotion that cannot be depended on, but a deep, settled appreciation of the value of an immortal soul, and a careful weighing of all the difficulties that lie in the way of winning them for Christ. Then there must follow an unvarying determination to work for them in spite of every difficulty that may arise.

We must be baptized with the Holy Spirit if we are ready for the Lord’s work. There is such a thing as living constantly under the rain drops, or soft dew of the Holy Spirit every day and every night. And without this perpetual refreshing and strengthening our work will lack power.

We must have faith for the work. We must expect results. It is the determination of faith that will not take a refusal, but persistently claims a blessing on the work, that usually gets it.

We shall have great need of patience, for a great deal of the work will be done by plodding along day after day, seeing evil as well as good mixed up in the service, but not discouraged by it. Christian people never yet did a work that was worth anything but the devil tried his best to have a hand in it too. Yet the Lord would not have us beaten back by any of his devices, and so we must patiently labor on in spite of it all. We shall need to exercise much self-denial. It will be easy, romantic work, but we shall sometimes find it hard. There will be many a burden resting on the heart, and the service will often be a real labor. Paul found it so. He was in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. But how gloriously he persevered, and won grand results in spite of it all.

We shall have need of vigilance to see opportunities of service, and use them promptly or they will slip away forever.

We must be much in prayer. Our lives must be full of it if we would have power over others.

We must keep in such nearness to Christ that we shall always be ready with our testimony or word of advice, or warning, or cheer, as may be needed. One great trouble usually in evangelistic meetings is that people come to them from their work so tired that the meetings are apt to be dead and heavy at first. It takes an hour perhaps for the Christian people to get ready for work, and the whole strength of the meeting has been spent in getting them where they can help others. Oh, that they would come to the services from seasons of retirement where they have been filled with the Holy Spirit. The overflow of His presence would soon be felt by the unsaved, for they are very quickly influenced by the spiritual states of others. The work depends very much upon the condition of the Christian workers who go to it, even if they do not say a word. See to it, dear friends, that the silent influence of your presence is telling for Christ.

VI.

The last thought I want to leave with you this morning is that God wants you to be a vessel unto honor, and He will so use you if you are near enough to Him for Him to lay His hands on. If your service is to His glory, will it not also be to your honor? In passing through some great museum, how interested we are in looking at some little thing that has been, used in a glorious way. It may be the pen with which our country’s constitution was written, or it may be a cup from which, some great man drank. So I think it will be glorious in Heaven not only to see the souls that are saved, but also the persons who were used to bring them there.

We shall be glad to meet the saintly Augustine, but will we not also look with loving interest at the mother whose prayers and counsel turned him to his Lord? I don’t know but we shall be as glad to see the humble Sabbath-school teacher who spent nine months of labor and bought three suits of clothes before she finally got Robert Morris to the school, as we shall to look at the great missionary himself. The worker will be forever linked to his work. You cannot separate them. Ezra and Nehemiah labored on patiently in their obscure work in Jerusalem, but God did not forget it. And He will write the work of this coming summer in enduring tablets that will bring honor to His workers and glory to His dear Son. It is surely honor enough to be able to bring some blessings even to a humble little child, but far beyond the present blessing God will honor it. ‘He that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.’

Let us thank Him that we have still the opportunity of laboring in the harvest field. May the dear Lord make you dedicated and sanctified vessels in His great house ; may He count you profitable servants ; may He find you ready workmen always on call; may He honor you far more than He does me in the work of this summer. I am but the hand upon the dial. A faithful, loving people are the real spring of all the work. May He be able to bring glory to many of you because of the earnest, faithful, effectual work you shall do for Him this year.

8. Emblems Of Service

"The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise." Proverbs 11:30

IT has occurred to me that while we are looking at the many emblems of Christian life given in the Bible it would be well to glance at some of the emblems of service it gives also. We shall not be able to look at them all, for they are too numerous. God seems to desire to impress upon His children the great need there is of constantly scattering the truth in love, assuring them that it shall be accompanied by His divine power. And everything is called into action to shadow forth the great privilege, the responsibility, and the duty of serving Him together with Christ.

One of the great symbols God uses for the purpose is light. We are called the lights of the world, light bearers, reflectors, candlesticks, lamps. We are to be kindled ourselves, and then we will burn and give light to others. We are the only light the world has. The Lord might come down Himself and give light to the world, but He has chosen differently. He wants to send it through us, and if we don’t give it the world will not have it. We should be giving light all the time to our neighbors. God does not put a meteor in the sky to tell us when to shine. We are to be giving light all the time wherever we are, at home, in the social circle, or in our place in the church. We should feel always we may never have another opportunity for it, and so we should always be burning and shining for Him. Let our lamps always be trimmed and burning and full of the oil of the Spirit. Above all, let us be steady lights to the lost ones.

II.

Again, we are called witnesses. God wants varied voices to speak for Him, and we are simply to be echoes of what He says to us. We are to do the work Paul praises the Thessalonians for. ‘From you rounded out the word of the Lord.’ Do you know how to be a voice, dear friends? Do you know how to be an echo and simply repeat what you hear? If you cannot originate anything yourselves you can certainly repeat what you hear on the Lord’s day. I know of one dear sister who sits down and writes out the Sabbath’s sermon and sends it to some child of God who has not been able to attend the service. You can scatter the truth in this manner if you cannot help to form the printed page, and it is quite as likely to reach the hearts that need it.

Anything that does you good will help another. Christians should be like a great army of ants to carry away the spoil. You can each of you be a voice in this way if you will. I believe God’s dear children are missing opportunities all the time of giving the truth to some one else. They sit under God’s voice themselves and are refreshed and strengthened, but so many fail to go out and give it to the hungry hearts all around them. God wants you, dear friends, to be witnesses for Him. The story will never grow old. Do not be afraid to tell it out everywhere.

III.

Christians are represented as sweet odors. They are to be a sweet savor both to God and to the people they meet. This does not mean taste but smell, and the thought undoubtedly is that we are to be so saturated with Christ that every one will be conscious of it as we come near them. It is as though you had just come out of a garden of spices and were sending their sweet breath everywhere. God wants us to be distributing the light and joy and gladness of Jesus always, so that people shall be glad of our coming whether in the sick room, or the home circle, or in the church, and yet scarcely know why.

IV.

The image more frequently referred to than any other in the Bible is that of sowing seed. It is not thoughts which we are scattering, but living germs. They have life in them and need only to be put in the soil of mother earth to spring up. God has put into your hands, beloved, seed which is alive and which will bring a harvest of eternal blessings if you but sow it freely. The 126th Psalm, which we read this morning, contains a beautiful picture of sowing: ‘He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.’ There is a sweet idiom in the Hebrew of this which is lost a little in our translation: ‘He that goeth forth, going and weeping, shall doubtless come again, coming and singing.’

1. The seed is the chief feature in this precious teaching. It comes to us from the mouth of God and has the breath of His own life in it, and if it is given forth there is certainty that there shall be fruit from it to be found in eternity. We do not realize how great is the work thus given to our care. We have the secret of eternal truth, and we must give it out to others. It will be destroyed if it is not scattered. We must steep the seed in warm tears. We are to go weeping. We must be prepared for our work by a deep sympathy for the people to whom we are sent. It will not do to go into it with a cold heart. It needs a great deal of prayer and a warmth of tenderness that can come only from a loving heart that has had its own pulses quickened by contact with the great heart of God.

2. Then, too, the seed must not only be steeped, but it must be cast upon the waters. The Orientals know how to do this, and we see examples of it too in the South. In Eastern countries, Egypt particularly, the rice is sown on soil that has been flooded, and which still has the water of inundation resting on it. As the water retires it leaves the seed resting on the thick alluvial mud, where it is soon quickened into green life. The seed is not sown on the rock, nor on the sand, but on the banks of the Nile. What does this mean, dear friends? Surely it must be a picture of the preparation of the Holy Spirit before the seed is to be sown. He is typified by the water, and He must be much in the work if it is to be effectual.

Dear ones, we need much prayer, much faith in God, much dependence on the Holy Ghost if our work is to have His blessing. The seed must not be sown carelessly. But if we go to the work filled with the presence of God there must be results. Every tract given out will have something in it which the people will feel as they touch it. The divine fire which is in your hands must be communicated to others. Mr. Finney used to say that he was conscious as he went into a factory even to preach to the workmen, that there was a presence with him that was not himself at all, and more than once the foreman has had to stop work while many of the hands gave their hearts to God so much impressed were they by the presence of the Lord in their midst.

Beloved, you ought not to be able to touch a paper without causing it somehow to take something of God with it. This is not superstition. I would rather have the notices of our meetings given out by consecrated hands than a thousand paid advertisements. Cast your bread upon the waters, then, in faith, and trust Him to give it power.

3. Isaiah gives us another thought about the sowing. He says: ‘Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass.’ We are not to sow in special seasons only, when the dew and the rain are abundant, but we are to sow in all seasons; and the ox and the ass are to help in the work. God not only uses fine and polished instruments of service, but He uses the slow and the despised ones too. If you watch His work carefully you will see how greatly He honors the humble ones in it. It is a very humbling thing for the proud Christian. It ought to bow him very low in the dust before his Saviour, but it is the truth. Christ gives power alike to all who are little enough to take it.

4. After the seed is sown there comes a time of waiting before the harvest can be gathered. The work must be carefully superintended in all its parts. The young plants need to be nurtured after they have started. However important evangelistic work may be, there will be no good results from it if this other work is neglected. I have seen many good beginnings end in failure because they were not cherished as they ought to have been. This is a most important lesson to learn. There is pre-eminent necessity for pastoral work. Evangelistic work will be futile if it is not thus followed up. If I had the time for this, there is no part of my ministry I would so love to do.

I have been in it day after day for hours and hours, and found it the best part of my work. Thousands of souls are saved by the public preaching of the gospel, but there are thousands more who might be won by visiting the close quarters of the poor. I know the largest results can be obtained in this way. I wonder at the men and women who have time for this kind of work and who neglect to do it. Oh that they would rouse themselves from their listlessness and help to fulfill the vision Isaiah saw of the beautiful feet upon the mountains, bringing good tidings of good and publishing salvation and peace. Do you know what it is, dear friends, to visit tenement houses and find there, day after day, souls ready and eager to hear your words? Perhaps you could gain a half dozen before night for Jesus.

Dear uncle John Vassar understood this work thoroughly, and nothing could discourage him in it. He called at a house one day and asked for some one he expected to find there. The lady who opened the door told him no such person lived there. He had made a mistake. John Vassar did not believe in mistakes. He felt sure God had sent him to that very house. He therefore said politely, ‘Madam, may I come in a moment.’ Then in a gentle, loving way he told her of their tent service, and then of Jesus Christ. The woman was melted to tears, and probably saved. Dear friends, there are no mistakes. Everywhere you go you can find work for the Master, no matter how the adversary tries to prevent you. I long to see scores of self-denying, patient, plodding Christians seeking for souls in this way, and not discouraged by any opposition.

Don’t lose heart, don’t think of the heat, don’t look at the embarrassing nature of the work, but faithfully sow beside all waters. In the upper part of the city there are hundreds of people who could easily be gathered to our meetings if there were humble men and women who would go and bring them in. Let us have the spirit and the feet of the ox and the ass, and patiently go after them. It is not the spirited war horse that would go prancing along, but the patient ox and the stupid ass. God wants to sow beside all waters.

5. Finally there will come a time of reaping as well as of sowing. ‘Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.’

The disciples thought they must wait four months before they could gather in the grain. Dear friends, are you looking for results immediately, or are you not expecting them yet? You can reap as well as sow now. Do you remember the beautiful picture Amos gives of this? ‘The plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed.’ There are souls now that are ready to be garnered. The reaping must be done single-handed. You cannot go out with a sharp scythe and cut a great swath across the field. No! you must gather straw by straw with a little sickle. God honors that which is done by individual work. I do not know of a soul that has been saved but brings to my mind hours of patient work. We must go personally after them and gather them one by one.

Jesus speaks of His disciples as fishers of men. And I am sure fishermen can teach us some useful lessons about spiritual work. One is not to let the fishes see the meshes of the net. Don’t let them see the cold steel of your sharp hook. Bait it. Draw them to Christ. Make religion attractive to them. And let me give another word of caution. Don’t be timid in your work, but go carefully. Don’t go up to a minister of fifty years’ standing and ask him if he is a Christian, and make him smile at your want of discernment. Don’t go to some conservative Christian and talk so flippantly that he will think you rude. Take in a case intuitively, and if it is a hard one, don’t step back from it, but get the spirit of Jesus for it. Study His method of working as it is given in the 4th of John.

When He talked with the woman of Samaria, notice how He felt His way to the golden key of her heart. He first awakened her interest by talking about the well of water. Then He sought to find a sore place in her heart, and He found that she was thirsty. Then He went further. When He hinted that she had been living a bad life He did not condemn her. He did not tell her how bad she had been, but He said, gently, ‘Go, call thy husband, and come hither.’ And when she broke down before Him, He revealed to her her whole sinful heart. He had got to the point at last; and it was just as easy to reach it by six steps as by one. There is a spirit of refinement needed, dear friends, in your work. Paul does not advise us without reason to be courteous. And while it is necessary for you to break through your sensitiveness, to get a victory over your nerves, and not to be frightened at the prospect of any kind of service, it is necessary also to have Christian tact.

You can welcome all strangers in our service with graceful courtesy that will not seem intrusive. You can say how glad you are to see them, and invite them to come again. You can take out bills of invitation and give them with a word of helpful counsel, and then watch God’s impression on your heart to know how far you can go, and trust His Spirit to guide you in getting the fish into the net. Remember, no man catches fish by showing them the cold steel hook. You must not show yourself even. You must hide behind a tree so the fish cannot see you. Trust Him, beloved, to make you wise fishers of men. He will give you the wisdom you need, which is the direct gift of the Holy Ghost.

VI.

Again, we are compared to a building which is made of stone, built on a sure foundation. We are not to build of wood, hay, or stubble. Sometimes we are so anxious to get our building finished that we put stuff into it which the first touch of fire will consume. It will burn like the Belt Line of stables in our city recently, which were filled with hay and straw and all kinds of combustible material, that brought infinite suffering to the poor brutes confined there. Sometimes God lets a big fire come upon us, and it may be much of our fancied strength is gone. Be sure, dear friends, that you are building with right materials and your work will be substantial.

VII.

Another figure used to represent the Christian is a shepherd. You know the shepherd has not only the lambs to look after but the feeble sheep and the strong ones too. Each must have proper care and proper food. So in God’s fold there are children to look after, backsliders to be reclaimed, and the strong Christians to be edified and built up in the truth. The faithful shepherd will not neglect any of these.

VIII.

There is another beautiful figure of service in the book of Proverbs, perhaps the most beautiful one in the Bible: ‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.’ The marginal reading is very beautiful: ‘A word spoken upon his wheels.’ How much this suggests to the mind. You have heard of the little village maiden in Scotland who was so simply devoted to God and her humble work that her minister, Leigh Richmond, wrote a tract about her and called it The Dairyman’s Daughter. A few years after, a noble son of an aristocratic family, who was fast going to wreck through dissipation, got hold of this tract and read it one night in his room. It broke his heart completely and brought him to Christ. This was William Wilberforce, a name of love known all over the world.

There were three steps in this: There was first the village maiden, next the humble pastor, and then William Wilberforce. He soon after wrote an account of his conversion, and it came into the hands of another minister, who was half asleep himself and whose people were wholly so. He read the tract that had aroused Wilberforce, and it struck fire in him and completely woke him up, and he became the great Thomas Chalmers, who stirred up the clergy of Scotland to arise and strike off the fetters that were on them, and they organized the Free Church of Scotland, which has since been sending light all over the world. It was a little word, but how it went. It was truly on wheels. It was a living word that God inspired, and it is traveling yet. When that simple maiden gets home in heaven what a grand reception there will be for her.

I know there are very many who will be glad to shake hands with her and say ‘Thank God for you.’ That is the meaning of this text. A word on wheels will never stop. The invitation you give out tonight, the quieting word you speak to some anxious soul, the comfort you give to some trembling heart, - God hangs them on the wall in beautiful frames. They are fruits that you will yet feed upon, apples which will recompense you hereafter. You will find them again as pictures on the holy walls, gold which shall be holy treasure, apples on the holy table. They are on wheels of living power and they will go on forever.

What are the wheels on which these things go?

The first one is the word of truth. You must give the Word of God. Scatter the words of Scripture. Get tracts that are founded on the Bible, like the ‘A B C of the Gospel,’ ‘God’s Word for You,’ and give them out freely.

The second wheel is love. The word of truth must be given out, but it must come warm from your own heart. You must go to sinners and leave upon them a conviction that you feel every word you say. You must go to anxious, troubled souls with an unction from the Holy One, which they shall feel. If you are sincere in your work they will feel it. Don’t be afraid of breaking down. It won’t hurt them to see you moved. It is earnestness that moves people. What you want is the deep, tender feeling that God only can give to you.

The third wheel is faith. Don’t say you can do nothing in God’s work, and so miss your opportunities. No matter how poorly you do the work, go ahead and do it, and believe for the results. You will get according to your faith. We believe, therefore we speak. Speak from a mighty belief and you will see mighty results. You have no more right to speak without faith than I have to preach without faith. Speak, then, expecting God to bless the word.

The fourth wheel is prayer. Ask for divine power from God to do the work, and then lay it all over on Him when it is done. Bind it upon the throne, and you will find it there at last.

You will find a great contest in this matter of winning souls. The devil is on one side and you are on the other. If you are to win them from him, you need to be wise. There must be tender appeal, a winning by love. You must have a magnetic attraction because you are so full of Jesus. You must be able to place yourself on their side if you would win them. They are as capable of happiness or of woe as you or I, and they are going out to an eternal blank of woe. Think what it would be if the last five years, or the last year even, of your life were blotted out. Cut out the time since you were converted and what a blank is left.

Then think what a desolation, what an eclipse, what dreadful despair is before them. Remember what has come to you through the love of God. Are you willing they should lose it? Let all thought of the greatness of the work, of your desire of success in it, go. What if you should lose all you have gained in Christ? Think what it will be to them to lose it. Forget all sentiment about the work. Don’t think of the pretty songs, the popular style of the service, the good time we are having, the excellent meetings we are in, but let this thought burn down into your heart: that probably twenty-five people will pass carelessly out of the tent gate this summer for one who accepts Christ.

May God baptize you with a solemn sense of responsibility about it. May He bathe you in the fountain of divine love; may He fill you with the Holy Spirit, to be your power for service, and then may He send you into it. God knows how inefficient we are, that we are nothing before the mighty work we have to do, but we thank Him this morning that the power is His. If we have Him, we have all we need, and we shall be mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds of sin and Satan.

9. The Dawn, Birth And Dew

"Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning : thou hast the dew of thy youth." Psalms 110:3

THIS obscure passage of Scripture is a remarkable one in many ways. The Psalm from which it is taken is one of the chief prophetic pictures of Christ in the Old Testament. It is a Messianic Psalm of wondrous beauty. It gives us a view first of the Saviour, and then of His people. Jesus is here addressed by David, who is himself a king, as his king and lord. It is a confusing passage to those who reject the divinity of Christ in our time, as it was to the Pharisees eighteen hundred years ago, who were unable to answer the simple question: ‘How then doth David in spirit call him Lord?’

There are two Lords spoken of here. The first must undoubtedly be the Father, the other is the Son; but they are both Lord, and hence equally divine. The meaning is that the Father said unto the Son, sit thou at my right hand. The Son is represented as Lord God, equal with the Father, and bearing the same great name.

Again we see Him represented as a priest; not of the Aaronic line, but a priest of another order, that of Melchizedek - a patriarchial priest who received his commission from no people or time or race, but stood out distinct from them all as a type of Christ’s eternity. This Melchizedek met Abraham after the slaughter of the Eastern kings and blessed him in the Holy Ghost. He was, however, not only priest, but king. So Jesus fills both places also. He stands in the place of atonement, making everything right between an offended God and sinful man. He settles the question of right and wrong forever. He meets the guilty heart, and gives it comfort and rest. He washes its stains away and heals its wound. Then as a loving friend He gives sympathy and help in time of trial. He is, indeed the eternal God, but He is also the sympathizing friend, giving comfort and cleansing and spiritual help as they are needed.

We see Him also as the conqueror, going forth in battle against His enemies and slaying them in the power of His might, a mighty conqueror to whom many captives submit, and whom none can resist. He does not stop until He has obtained universal sway over all the tribes of earth. He will smite terribly in the day of His wrath, and will lift up His head in triumph over His enemies in the Millennium. Then will He deliver up the Kingdom to His Father. There is a two-fold attitude of Christ presented here. First He is sitting down in confidence and rest. Then He is marching in battle garments, and, weary, stops at the brook to drink and then lifts up his head refreshed.

II.

There are several practical views given in this Psalm of the people of God.

1. They are a subjugated, conquered people, and yet not unhappily so. ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.’ They are represented as having yielded cheerfully to their conqueror. They have given a glad surrender, and have become captives of love, which naturally follows a whole-hearted subjugation.

2. They are not only a conquered people, but they have entered into service for their Master. They are not alone in this, but are followed by the whole host of the redeemed. It is a beautiful picture, whose meaning can be gathered by looking at it a little closely. They are not conscripts torn from the captives of war merely, but they are free-will offerings, who have given themselves in willing and entire sacrifice, wholly yielded to their Lord and King, not only as slaves, but as loving, devoted servants, watching for opportunities to serve a beloved Lord. There is in them a willingness to be in His service; a gladness at the thought of being absolutely possessed by Him, and a readiness for any service or any sacrifice in His cause.

These things are characteristic of Christ’s true service and people, and anything less than that is displeasing to Him. We should not render service to our Lord because it is our duty, but it should spring from glad gratitude, and from such deep devotion to Him that nothing could tempt us from it. We become so closely united to Him that we lose our personality even. The essence of Christian holiness is the death of the believer and his life in Christ afterward. It is the fulfillment of this picture when His people give themselves fully and freely to Him and to His work. How often Christian life is tarnished and mutilated by the things that are held back from Him. What He wants is a whole-hearted surrender. He does not want a present from us to buy something from Him but a voluntary offering of loving, loyal hearts in complete and joyful sacrifice.

His people are not only to be servants, but they are to be willing to receive from Him all that He gives. This may call for many a sacrifice and many a tear. Such men only can become good soldiers, and if there is not this spirit of submission among the forces there can be no real victory. There are thousands of people today ready to follow a popular leader, who would leave him when his popularity dies. There are not so many who can stand loyally, no matter how their leader is looked upon. Shall we hesitate to surrender ourselves wholly to Him today, and shall we not realize as we say the word which makes us wholly yielded, and as we bow our heads in His presence that gladness has taken away all fear?

3. His people are to be holy and beautiful. It will become a holy offering. It will shine with holy beauty. ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in the beauties of holiness.’ This describes the array that His people shall be clothed in. Leaving for a moment the figure of conquest, the Psalmist describes the garments of His people. They are of great variety of texture and of ornament. There are the white robes of purity and the red robes of victory. They are many-colored, representing the varied harmony of Christian holiness, which has not only the stern virtues, but the gentler ones of peace and charity and tender sympathy, of hopefulness and gladness; all things, indeed, that relate to beauty of character. It is not only righteousness that God wants from us, but loveliness also. Are you wearing these beautiful robes, beloved? as you stand before Him, His conquered subject, His devoted servant, His submissive follower; have you taken from His hand your glorious garments, the beauties of holiness, and are you walking in them always?

4. They are to be born of the dawn and bathed in the dew of eternal youth.

The third picture the Psalmist gives us is also one of exquisite beauty. ‘The beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning.’ Holiness and beauty belong to the morning. The light of the glorious day is the mother of purity. So should we bound out of the morning by the power and grace of God. The morning is the time of singing and of perfume, of gladness and brightness and freshness. So God’s willing people are ever to be bright and joyous.

The morning is the time of freshness and vigor. Refreshed by the sleep of the night, the sons of men go forth to their toil in renewed strength. So God’s children, who are the children of the day, are ever to be full of exhilerant strength and vigor.

The day-time is the time of service. The children of the day are not to rest, but are to go forth to labor in the harvest-field until the evening.

Perhaps more than of anything else the day is the time of hopefulness. The dark night has passed away, and we can look into the future without fear. The children of the day are the children of hope. Life is not a sad night to them. All that has passed away, and before them lie only bright fields of light, glorious privileges of service, and marvelous possibilities of exalted Christian character and purpose. All these lie ahead of them in the fresh morning. There are plans of usefulness to be carried out for the dark world, and there are blessed prospects of spiritual growth, and of service for the dear Lord, that not even the grave itself can blight. For there are brighter prospects even beyond that, which are imperishable and can never fade away. Are you in this spirit of brightness friends? Are you going forth to your service ever hopeful and glad, as children of the day? Have you forgotten the shadows, and left them far behind you? Then, indeed, are you shining with the brightness and fullness of the morning light.

‘Thou hast the dew of Thy youth.’ This is a little different from the other thought - an added feature to it. It seems as though one could not get the freshness of the morning without having also the freshness of the dew to fertilize and cool the plants. This is born of the vapors, and comes through the air of the night and the early morning. It typifies, not only the glorious seal upon our consecration, but the daily renewing Spirit. There must come into our lives not only the rich showers of grace, but the crystal drops of dew, each day. The rain comes sometimes in heavy torrents and washes out great holes in the ground, and breaks down great trees, and does much damage. The dew is always helpful, and never injures anything.

The rain sometimes falls so quickly that the ground cannot take it in, and so it runs off and does little good. The dew is never lost. It is caught by each tiny flower-cup, and every drop is retained, although so small as to be almost imperceptible, and it passes into the structure of the plant and strengthens it. So it is with the grace of God, when it is received in this way. Day by day the soul is revived, and grows strong by absorbing the heavenly dew. Oh! it is glorious to be able day by day and moment by moment to lie upon His heart, and drink in of His very life, and grow thereby. How is it with us this morning, dear friends?

Have we given ourselves to Him as a freewill offering? Are we robed in the beauties of holiness? Have we come from the womb of the morning? Have we been drinking of the dew? Let us come out of all darkness of the night. Let us look at the breaking day. Let us breathe in the refreshing dew with which the air is full. Let us enlarge our capacity to take in this refreshment to our parched spirits. Then let us go forth as those who have sat down under His shadow with great delight, and found His fruit sweet to our taste, and carry some of this refreshment to others.

There is another view of this last clause that I often love to think of, and that is, Christ has the dew of His youth always. There is much help in this thought, for it teaches us to look to Him for freshness, to trust Him for quickening us, and so to be ever unweary in Him. He is not worn and haggard and old, but He is ever fresh as the morning and sparkling as the dew. He has something to give us today which we have never had before, and which will come fresh and sweet from His lips and refresh us like morning dew. He has always been young and He is ever ready to give us of His freshness which shall fall like dew upon our spirits. What is it we long for most in a garden, dear friends? It is sweetness, is it not?

This is true also of the spiritual garden. The dew of the morning will be followed there also by the sweet breath of flowers and song of birds. I do not mean human sweetness. That will not stand the strain of the day’s heat, but it is the sweetness and joy that is a part of our Lord. So, beloved, when you are weary, like the flowers at evening, get this spiritual refreshing from Him, and go forth as the morning with a heart glad and sweet, because you have been blown upon by the breath of God. This is only following our glorious Lord. He, too, drank of the brook in the way and so lifted up His head, and so will He enable us to go forth conquering and to conquer these times of refreshing in His blessed presence.

Oh, that you might get such a view of Him this morning as would make it impossible for little things ever to fret you again! The petty cares and silly trifles that have troubled you so much ought rather to fill you with wonder that you can think so much about them. Oh, if you have the dew of His youth shall go forth as the morning and fulfill the promise of a glorious day! What a difference it has made in life since we have seen it was possible to do this.

How easy it seems now when the little troubles come, to draw a little closer to Christ, to drink a little more of that fountain of life, to get a little nearer to that loving heart and to draw in great draughts of refreshing and strength from it. How clear it makes the brain for work. Coming to Him thus, heavy and dull and tired; how rested you become and able to spring forth again ready for work. I am so glad this morning that Christ is not tired. He is as fresh as He was years ago; He is a glorious conqueror; He is ever the victorious Christ.

Let Him take you today, and He will cause you to see in Him the invincible Leader; He will cause you to become His willing subject; He will dress you in the beauties of holiness, and He will send you forth in the morning light with the dew of His youth upon you, sparkling with the freshness drawn from Him as you have come close to His loving heart. May He thus draw us close to Him today, and fill our hearts with the comfort of His love.

10. Lights Of The World

"In the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain." Philippians 2:15-16

I want to speak to you this morning about a beautiful and simple figure in the Bible, used to symbolize Christian life and service, and that is light. I sailed down the bay last night, and as I returned, about 10 o’clock in the evening, I passed the famous light-bearer which the genius of a foreign nation has constructed and presented to this government as a pledge of good feeling, and which has been placed at the gate of our harbor. I was a good deal struck, as we passed it, by the remark of one of the passengers, who was evidently looking on it for the first time: ‘Why, that ain’t much of a light,’ he said, ‘It’s not much better than the other lights in the harbor. Yon old ship gives as good a light as that.’

I thought it would have disgusted the author if he had heard it all. It made me think, however, of the purpose of our light. This famous statue is very expensively gotten up. How great is the price Jesus has paid in redeeming us, and is the world saying we are not much of a light after all. Look at the great cathedrals of Europe, and notice the immense expense of their architecture, and choral service, and ministry. I am afraid they are not much good for giving light with it all. They are not better than that poor old woman yonder, that sad, weary saint who is shining quietly all the time for Jesus.

It is not the expensiveness of the pedestal, or the exquisite moulding of the figure - giving evidence of a high style of architecture - that is valuable in a beacon-light, but it is the amount of light it can give out. It is our object to hold light forth to guide the mariner on the stormy sea. There has been a good deal said about this beacon in our harbor, both in approval and disapproval. I don’t believe it does much honor to Christianity to emblazon it ‘Liberty Enlightening the World.’ I don’t think Liberty has enlightened New York very much, or the Old World either. If the figure had stood there with a Bible in its hand it would have done more honor to the genius and devotion of its founder.

The Khedive of Egypt once paid a visit to her Gracious Majesty, the Queen of England, who is honored all the world over as the queen of womanhood, and whose reign will probably long be known as the Augustan age in English history. She said, as she handed a Bible to her visitor: ‘This is the secret of England’s greatness.’ That is far sweeter to God than all the adulations of the greatness man’s genius. Christ is the light of the world, and we are lights only as we reflect Him. We are not to be torches that blaze off quickly and perhaps kindle incendiary fires. We are to shed light steadily that shall be uncharged with smoke and that will be sufficient for all life’s needs. We are to shine forth as lights in the world.

So let our lips and lives express

The holy gospel we profess.

So let our works and virtues shine

To prove the doctrine all divine.

I want to speak a little this morning of the figure of a Christian as a light. We are not really lights, but light reflectors. Therefore we must have light ourselves; but we must have life first, for the life is the light of men. We are living organisms reflecting the light of God. Have we got this light of life, beloved? Are we filled with purity, love, divine holiness, holy zeal, so that we can truly be lights of the world?

We shall be almost lost in looking at the world of imagery the Bible contains on this subject, and so can only select a few figures this morning.

We will pass over in our rapid reading the seven-fold lamp planted in the tabernacle, the seven lamps which took its place in the temple, and the seven golden candlesticks among which our Saviour was standing in John’s vision on Patmos. In the of book of Zechariah there is a glorious view of the seven-branched candlestick, given so beautifully nowhere else. From each of the branches a pipe runs and these meet in a bowl at the top, which is kept full of oil and so feeds the pipes. Silently and ceaselessly, but with no mechanism, the oil flows down and keeps the lamps constantly burning. Still more beautiful is the added figure that follows. Standing on each side of the lamp are two olive trees growing, and these are so connected with the reservoir that as fast as the olives ripen on the trees, before man has time to pluck them, they have distilled the oil into the bowl, and so they are constantly producing and constantly imparting oil.

Without any of man’s help whatever, the tree itself is evermore supplying the light-giving oil. It is a beautiful picture. It is as when some trees in the South Seas bear bread which the natives of those islands can feed on without the trouble of preparing it. Here it is not necessary to pour in oil. The tree feeds the reservoir itself and keeps the pipes, connected with the lamps, always supplied with it. It is a perfect picture of how Christ supplies our life, and feeds us with that which is to be shed forth to others through our various characters and relationships, colored by them in different tints. The holy Paul sheds forth clear truth. The subdued John sheds heavenly love. Every one shedding a little different view of Christ from his neighbor, just as the Four Gospels each represent a different phase of His character.

Each denomination is a separate lamp on the candlestick. They are all shedding forth Christ as the light of the world, and all their light comes from Him. The two trees on either side of the great lamp are Jesus and the Holy Ghost, and they are constantly supplying us with Divine life, one on earthly and the other on the heavenly side of life, and to us is committed this lamp of ministry. He expects us to shine for Him and represent Him to the world. Do we realize, dear friends, that we are placed here as lights, and that without us He is not willing to do anything? He needs our help in redeeming this suffering world, and crowning Him over it.

II.

John v., 35, gives us another figure of this wonderful light. It is John the Baptist. Our Saviour said of him he was a burning and a shining light. It was a remarkable testimony. It means more than the other figure which was only a shining light. This is a burning and a shining light. All light is not warm. Electric light is not. And then some light gives a great deal of warmth, but is not good for illumination. They can’t use gas in Pittsburg for lighting the houses. There is a great deal of natural gas there, and they use it for warming their dwellings and for cooking, but it will not illuminate. They are burning, but not shining lights. They are not steady, and so serve as types of some Christians who are very still, exclusive and reserved. There is a good deal of warmth down in their hearts, but it is crusted over. They have a place of useful service in the world, but they are not shining with a steady blaze. God wants both kinds. He wants people burning with love to Him and also people shining steadily for others.

III.

We will look now at a more splendid figure than either of the others, given in the book of Revelation. It is a woman, and it represents the same thing as the figure already given; that is, the Church of God. This is not oil burning on earth now; it is not even the oil and wick combined. It is far greater than either. This woman is clothed with the sun, and the moon is under her feet. She has not lamplight and gaslight, but she has got the sun itself. There is a great difference between getting the rays of the sun down here, and getting right into the sun and robing one’s self with its light and fire. This is not putting on some of Christ’s ideas and teachings; it is getting robed with Jesus Himself, being filled with His person and nature and going forth to show His excellencies to a darkened world, and so indeed giving a marvelous light.

It is one thing to get truths from the Bible, or ideas from Holy Spirit, and send them forth as light. That is only lamplight. It is another thing to have Jesus Himself within and have Him shine through us so that people who hear us speak will not think of talking about ideas or doctrines, but shall speak only of Jesus. We will thus ever be robed in the brightness of His glory. Then, too, will we have the moon under our feet. The moon stands for all other light. It stands for reason, for conscience, for sophistry, for all light that is not of this world in which so many walk. All these this woman had under her feet.

She was walking only in Christ’s nature and showing forth His teaching and His glory. She had on her head a crown of twelve stars. These were the souls that had been brought into the light by her. They were Jewels of salvation adorning her brow when her work was over. Our labors now will crown us in the hereafter as surely as we win souls for Him. Do not let us hold back from the work because we have not wisdom for it. Christ is wise always, and walking in Him and working in Him our light shall be steady and holy and our work shall gain a rich reward.

IV.

Let us now turn back to the fifth chapter of Matthew, which we read at the opening of the service.

‘Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

‘Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick: and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.’

The chief thought of this passage, the one that surmounts every other, and is, indeed, the one of surpassing importance, is not that we are to shine so that men will see us; nor that we are in any way to show forth our own goodness. There is a great difference in the way the verses are read. A printer can change the meaning of an entire paragraph by inserting a comma or emphasizing a word. We are to let our light so shine that men shall glorify our Father. They are not to see your goodness or your faithfulness, beloved. They are not to see you at all. They are to see only that radiant light of God clothes you.

You are not to speak so that men shall say: ‘What a burst of eloquence! What felicity of language! What a lovely speaker.’ But that they shall say: ‘He has made me understand my Saviour better. I think I can live nearer Him now. I want that which he has got myself.’ You are to so live that men shall not see the heights to which you have attained, nor be discouraged at the low place they are living in. But you are to be so low that they can get at your side and feel that you are human like themselves, yet so high that they will know also that you are living in God. That is what St. Paul means when he tells us that we should show forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. It is not your marvelous light, beloved. You are to show forth His excellence. You are to be samples of His work.

You are like the pegs the merchant hangs his wares on, good for nothing but to show the goods. So you are to show the excellencies not of man but of Jesus Christ. This is reflected light. There is marvelous power beauty in reflection. It opens up a whole world of study. You have seen the sun shine on something in the distance and make it look like a bit of beautiful gold, but as you have gone to pick it up out of the heap of rubbish and thought you were picking up a prize, you have found, perhaps, a bit of old broken glass which had been changed into wondrous beauty by the rays of the sun. Talk of jewelry!

When we get home we will find that He can make rubies and diamonds and all brilliant gems by a simple turn of His bright sunlight. So He can take the broken things of this life now and make them more glorious than the rainbow. He can take mists that come out of some foul marsh and gild them in a second into glorious clouds that almost dazzle you with their beauty. So will the saints appear when they are clothed with the garments of redemption and shining with the beauty of the sun in all the glory of the heavenly city.

In coming into the city recently on an evening train I was struck with the peculiar radiance of a little city we passed, which was situated on a hill and in such a position that it caught the rays of the setting sun, and every window was shining with celestial glory. It seemed like a great palace let down from heaven. Omar, the great caliph of Baghdad, hesitated to enter Damascus as he came up to it in the evening and saw it shining in this way in the evening sunlight. He said that mortals could never enter but one Paradise, and if he went into that royal city he feared he could never enter Heaven. When he got into it, however, he found it a most disgusting city in every way.

Dear friends, that is what we do. We take on His light and then reflect it. I am struck sometimes with the great light in front of a railway engine. You know what a splendid glowing, effulgent light it is, and yet it is a common light. What makes it give such a glare? It is the bright lens back of it which multiplies and reflects it a hundred-fold. From all sides of the circle light is inflected to the outside. So it will be with a little grace; it can be made to shine all around the surface. If only our natures are spherical they can give light in every direction. If some people are in the pulpit all the time they are all right.

Some are good in testimony meetings and some in the home circle. God wants light all around. We are to reflect the fullness of the Lord Jesus. It is such a help to people to find common place Christians shining, not with a marvelous light, but simply and truly for Jesus. It is such a help to hear how some man in business has been helped through his daily cares, how some woman has been helped to keep her children neat and tidy, and yet have time for Christian work. It is refreshing to hear how Christ heals little pains and heaviness and weariness; how He can make a wash-tub seem like a little Paradise, and how life has become sweet and beautiful because He has come down into it and become a part of it.

I cannot tell these things as well as you can; I can only tell what He has done for me; but Jesus needs to be reflected from every side. I am glad I have not got to shine myself. When I go to a mirror I don’t want to see the mirror, but what the mirror reflects. When God looks at you He doesn’t want to see you, but the image of Himself. When you look into a lake you don’t wish to see the muddy bottom, but the mountains and the blue sky that are above it. Beloved, let your light so shine that your Father may be glorified.

There is another feature of this light given in the first chapter of John’s gospel that we must not overlook. ‘The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.’ God has put you and me into a dark place. He does not send us at once up to heaven, but He has left us here in the midst of darkness. The light out on the bay is not lonesome, for it has something to do. It would not look well up in the city, but it is needed out there because it is dark. There are many people in the world who do not know what to do to get out of trouble. There are thousands of people all around us who don’t know anything of Jesus. They cant find Him unless you tell them how.

Shine on in the darkness then, dear friends! There is no one who can absolve you from the responsibility of this. There are very many struggling to get out of difficulty, but don’t know how. Give them the secret of getting into glorious liberty. I know how I struggled after it, groping on in blind ignorance, thinking I would die to find it. I was willing to give up everything to know it. There was plenty of light in the universe, but no one brought it to me. When at last it did come I felt like saying: ‘Is this all?’ Since then it has made Christian life so simple and so beautiful. Wasn’t it pitiful, this weary reaching out after light?

If now you go into a new circle of people and tell them of this life of rest and gladness, how you will see the wonder and perplexity begin to come upon their faces. There are very few who know how to live in this way. There are great multitudes who confess they have not got this rest and are struggling to get it. All about you there is darkness. Remember you are to shine in it. It is our great business to shine in a dark place, you here and I there. Never mind if the darkness comprehends it not. Shine on just the same. It may be that some sinking mariner, with a last gasp of despair may see the little light in your window and be saved.

Let the lower lights be burning,

Send a gleam across the wave;

Some poor weary, struggling seaman

You may rescue, you may save.

11. The Temple Of God

"Ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-builder I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall he burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." I Corinthians 3:9-17

ARCHITECTURE is one of the most ancient and valuable of human arts. It began with Cain, who built the first city, and it reached the height of its presumptuous arrogance in the builders of the tower of Babel. It has been classified according to various schools, beginning with Egypt and running up through the ages of Babylon, and Assyria, and Greece, till it reached the combination of all in Rome. In modern times we are familiar with all these various schools. Our cities are all the result of architectural design. Men have built fortunes into their houses, and have filled their lives more with the desire for expensive surroundings than they have with the true spirit of the Church.

God has used this figure throughout the Word to symbolize the Church. He Himself is the great architect, and all the principles of architecture are found in the work of His hand. You can find no one who can build a tube so perfectly as God has made the hollow tubes which support the heads of wheat; and man has found the pattern of all his work in some work of Nature. God is the architect of His own temple. He gave Moses the plan, and He never departed from that, although it was much enlarged in the temple of Solomon. All these, however, were but types of something more lasting. The temple of Solomon displayed the skill and wealth of ages. From it we get a little conception of the splendor which is to last. When we begin to compute the expense of it the figures daze us.

We can have no estimate of its value, even when we say it cost five thousand millions of dollars. The amount staggers us especially when we remember that money was worth fifty times as much then as it is now. In money, this building cost one hundred times as much as the churches of America have ever given to the Gospel in a year; more even than the Church ever contributed for the Gospel. All the money that has ever been given to build churches and support ministers and send the Gospel abroad is not nearly so much as the temple cost, and yet the precious metals were then worth many times their present value.

It has ever been the type of God’s spiritual work in the hearts of His people, and it has three symbolic meanings. It is the type of Jesus Christ; it is the type of the individual Christian; and it is the type of the Church of God. This morning we will look at it a little as the symbol of our own life and character. ‘Ye are God’s building.’ This thought runs through the New Testament. It has a very simple meaning, for a building is only a structure, and the thought is that God is erecting a structure in our life, and, through us, in the Church collectively. This morning we will refer to it in this way, and learn a few lessons for our own life from the temple itself.

Let us look for a moment at the site of the temple, and learn from this a lesson for our lives. It was erected on the spot which God had prepared. It was made memorable as the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac; and a second time by the angel who stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it. The city was saved through the intercession of David, who purchased the threshing floor of Araunah, and offered up sacrifices in the name of the Lord. So that it was the place of sacrifice, of judgment, of deliverance from wrath. As it was the place of Isaac’s sacrifice, so it was a fitting place for God to erect His oracle, through which to speak to man. God wants a site in us, dear friends, on which to build a temple. He does not ask us to build it, but He does want in us the possibilities of its erection.

He does not take the standpoint that we occupy, and the experience that we have had, and suffer us on these to build His temple. Nothing of the sort. David did not ask Araunah to build his altar; he only asked the ground for it, and he paid for that. So God asks us to give Him a place on which to build His spiritual temple, and He purchases this. Let us always remember that He has paid for it. Let God have the possibilities of your life, beloved. Do not put a brick yourself into the building which is to be reared on it, but give Him the ground. He will dig it up; He will tear down all that should not be there; He will build the temple, and beautify and glorify it. In every life there is something which will be of advantage in this work, just as the site of the temple was naturally suited to its erection.

Its precipitous sides and irregular surface were a help. As architecture added to its natural advantages, to give greater boldness and beauty to it; so, too, with you and me, the natural cliffs, and ravines, and chasms - yes, the very wrecks in our lives, may be the very places on which god wants to build His glorious temple. Let Him have it as it is. Let Him take our natural disadvantages, and so elevate them that He can suit them to the building of His glorious superstructure. They will become elements of power, if they are surrendered to God, and instruments of service to others. Give them to God as they are. It shall be the wonder of ages that where sin abounded grace could much more abound.

Remember, also, the site is to be dedicated to the building of the temple by your free consent, as Araunah consented to the work of David. In one sense it was his gift. God will not take anything from us by compulsion. We must give to Him with all our heart, even if He slay the firstborn son. As we see Abraham toiling up the hill on that strange errand at the word of God, and raising the knife to strike the death blow to all that God Himself had given, we can well believe that it was the darkest hour in his life. But in that place we see not now tears of bewilderment, nor hear the anxious cry of an only child; but we see the glorious spires, and minarets, and towers of Solomon’s temple - the Shekinah within it has made everything glorious.

This we have also experienced when the shadows of life have fallen upon us; when we are in the midst of some great test in which the sinking heart has called upon God because something so dear to us, so like our very life must be offered up as a burnt offering to Him. But we have gone on, willing to surrender all, ready to give up everything to God even without one ray of light. Remember, dear ones, this is the spot on which God will build His temple. We shall be able to look back on these days of deep heart-anguish with throb of ecstatic joy. We shall be glad that we have not held back the site from Him, but that we have given the oxen, the threshing instruments, the floor, and everything, that God might build His temple there.

Even though with tears and heartache, still we are glad it has been given, for on the site He has built a glorious temple. Have you given it freely, beloved? Have you given all He asked for? Have you held back nothing? Has He got the ground - the little bit of naked soil, and all the rocks and ravines - that He may rear up, out of what was so ugly before, a glorious temple to His praise.

II.

Let us look now for a moment at the materials of which the temple was built. There were immense stones, which were quarried at great distances from the temple; beautiful marble stones, which were polished white, and prepared before they left the ground. They were so shaped in every particular by that hand, and does not need any touch of your hammer upon it. There, again, we are so apt to make a mistake. We think that we must shape the stones of this spiritual building, and we cut them all to pieces. We go out searching for brick, which, after all, is only clay. God builds, beloved, with stones which are shipped to Joppa, and which have not been touched by one of your tools. They are all prepared to fit exactly into His plan. I like to look to Heaven and think that every detail, every plan of my life, was laid up from the beginning in Christ, and is ready at any moment to be fitted into it.

Like a house constructed in sections, and put up at a great distance from the place of its manufacture, so the stones of this spiritual building are prepared as they are needed by the grace of Christ, and are fitted into my life. This is putting on the Lord Jesus day by day, and growing up into Him in all things. We do not cut and polish the stones; He does it alone. We do not try to sanctify ourselves, but we are made holy by His indwelling grace. Let Him care for us, and polish us as He will. These were not only the stones for the foundation, but for the whole building. It is a wonderful study. They were all laid over with silver in this marvelous temple. It is intensely interesting as a type of Christ’s nature, and of His plan for us. The stones were plastered together with silver. It was a remarkable cement.

The silver was ground and mixed with the cement, and the stones were fastened together with it. This accounts for the large amount of silver that was used. Think of it! This enormous building was wholly cemented together with silver. The stones were all laid in it, and then they were covered over with it. Over these stones, thus covered and cemented with silver, there was another covering of cedar boards, so that the whole interior of the building was lined with cedar exquisitely polished and carved. There was not an inch of the plain board to be seen anywhere. The carving was of three kinds. There was open flower work; there were pomegranates, and there were palm trees. Every bit of the interior was covered with them. The flowers were open, they were not shut in, and so they were types of the open heart of faith which receives and gives forth glory.

The pomegranates were essentially seed fruit; it was the queen fruit of the East, and is a type of the infinite variety of the seed which God scatters. It is life reproducing life in endless measure. The palm tree is a type of Christian loftiness, and erect, true aim; in its own erectness and loftiness it reaches almost up to Heaven. The cedar wood also had a typical meaning. It was an enduring wood, and so typified the permanence of God’s temple.

Then, not merely were the stones covered over with cedar, but over this was another coat of pure and solid gold. This was not to hide the carving, but to bring it out, a great mass of shining magnificence. Then, too, David and Solomon had added to the temple every kind of jewel and precious stone, which almost covered it, both inside and out, so that when you looked at it, it would flash with every color of the rainbow as it glittered in the glorious sunlight or reflected the light of its seventy lamps within. Such are the materials of God’s ancient temple; stones cemented and covered over with silver; wood covered over with gold and adorned at every possible point with some flashing gem or brilliant jewel. What a beautiful structure it must have been with its spires and minerets reaching to the sky. And this superbly glorious building is God’s picture of your life and mine.

III.

We have looked at the materials of which the temple was composed; now let us look a little at their meaning. The carved stones represent the substantial basis of solid material which the Lord Jesus Christ supplies to us through the Holy Ghost, and which are shaped and fitted to our lives by the processes of trial. There can be no question about the meaning of the silver. It is the type of redemption. The redemption money of the ancient Hebrew ceremonial was always a silver shekel. Every Hebrew paid a silver half-shekel before entering the tabernacle. Every part of the stone work of our life is cemented with Christ’s blood and overlaid with it. The graces of our life and character are not seen, because they are entirely covered with the life and character of Jesus Christ and thus flash back only His glory.

The cedar is the incorruptible wood, and so is a type of the incorruptible resurrection life which we put on in Him. They must be put into the building if we want it to last. It is not our natural and fleshly life, but it is the incorruptible life of Christ. Over all the solid stone work of natural life there must ever be the cedar of Christ’s new life, shaped into the open flower work, the pomegranate and the palm by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Gold always stands for the glory of the Father as silver does for the Son. So the deific glory must be over the work of grace in the heart. God sheds His own glory over us to bring us into the likeness of His majesty and glory according to the promise Jesus left us: ‘The glory which Thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one.’

The precious stones are the work of the Holy Spirit. They have many facets or little faces which reflect the various shades and tints of the fullness of Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to thus refine and polish us that we may give out the exquisite beauty of Jesus. Altogether the whole building speaks of the glory of the Father, the redemption of the Son, the grace of the Holy Spirit and the incorruptible nature of resurrection life. Out of these God is building His glorious temple silently and noiselessly, bringing each day prepared material for it, ‘for of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace.’

IV.

We will now look at the interior of the temple. Its chief glory was what it contained. In a general way we know what was in it. There was the altar of burnt offering and the laver of redemption, typifying the death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Then there was the golden candlestick which in the temple had seventy lights, typifying Christ’s light within us. The bread typified Christ, the nourishment of our spiritual life; we feed on Him as we do on bread. The golden altar of incense is a picture of Christ’s intercession for us and in us. He is the spirit of prayer and communion, the breath of God in us and through us, and so causing the odor of love to be poured out as sweet incense, full of the wholesomeness and loveliness of our Lord.

Within the veil there was an article which was a full-length portrait of Christ Himself, the ark of the covenant. As we look at its materials we shall learn what Christ means by calling us the temple of God. All those things are in us. The temple is more beautiful for what is in it than for what is on the outside. In you is the blood of Christ the water of the Spirit, the light of Christ, the bread sufficient for all our need, the sweet breath of God, and, above all else, far transcending all else in the secret shining of His presence. Somewhere in the holy of holies of our being you will find Jesus Himself, the ark of your covenant, keeping for you the law ever bringing to you the presence that is brighter than any gold, the shining glory of God Himself. In our spirit we should have not only the glory of Jesus, but the glory of the Father.

We do not need to go to Heaven to find Him; we can find Him within us, here, in His holy temple. He dwells in the high and holy place. But, ah, beloved, He dwelleth also in human hearts which are bigger than you ever dreamed. Many look upon the heart as a kitchen from which they satisfy their needs, or as a sewer, holding only the filth of lust. God would make it a great and glorious house of many mansions the channel of the glory of glories, the spot that He had chosen for His very home. What an honor He has conferred upon us in thus making us the temples of the living God.

We will look next at the use and design of the temple. It was first to be a place of worship; then it was to be a meeting place of God’s people, where He could manifest His glorious presence; then it was meant as a place of residence. If we are the temples of the living God, there is to be in us a place of worship; a place where God shall manifest Himself; and a place of residence for Jesus personally. Its greatest meaning, of course, is to be a residence of Jesus, where He is to harmonize and control us fully, but not to hinder our individuality. This is the great secret which was hidden from ages and from generations, Christ in you, the hope of glory. All the figures end here.

It is our business, not to be something, but to have Him everything in us. Even the great temple, which was built of silver, and gold, and cedar, and precious stones, was nothing when He was gone. He said of it, Himself, behold your house is left unto you desolate. Ezekiel heard the noise of the wings of the departing Shekinah, and the voice which accompanied it: ‘Let us be depart!’ And the mighty temple was left forever without its indwelling Lord. So, dear friends, we may have all the qualities of goodness, all the glories of character, everything that can be acquired by self-denial, and discipline, and moral culture; but, if we have not Jesus Christ, we are like the deserted temple, the spoil of every conqueror. When will the Church of Christ learn that its meaning is to have Him within? There is not one of you here today but may begin it by giving Him the site to build upon, and then by taking Him as your indwelling glory.

He will bring with Him all the materials; all we want is supplied to us exceeding abundantly, above all that we can ask or think. There is a beautiful legend that a temple was once to be built to the Sun, and a prize was offered by the king for the grandest one. There were three temples built, and the architects each came to the king for his approval. The first had built of stone in which figures were carved. It was a grand, a massive structure, and he thought that no one could build a finer. The second had built of gold. It was so polished and burnished that every part of its surface reflected the glory of the sun, and the architect thought: ‘Mine is surpassing in beauty. My brother’s is beautiful in itself. Mine lifts you from the temple to the glory of the sun.

It is a superior temple of the sun, because it sheds glory on the sun itself. The third one had built his temple all of glass, and when it was finished there was not a corner of the spacious enclosure but was as light as day. Through every part of it the Sun could walk himself. This was the true temple of the Sun, because he could get in it himself whenever he pleased. I often think it is the way to have a temple to the Lord. Some people want to be a beautiful temple themselves; the world is full of them - courteous, amiable, lovely, winning people. But they are only stone-carved and made beautiful - after all.

The cathedral of Milan shines like a beautiful vision without, but within it is cold and dark. There is another class who say: ‘We want more than that,’ and so they give us external life; but it is only reflected life. They send out plenty of philosophy; you can see them shining all over the world. So many Christians show Christ only from the outside. But, oh! there is another class in whom you can see God all through. They often sit, like Mary, at the feet of Christ. They have not, perhaps, done much, but they are full of God. There is no part of their being but is full of the life and love of their divine Lord.

You feel, when you are looking at them, you are looking, perhaps, at common sort of people, but you see Jesus in them. That is the true temple, dear friends. We are to have God so dwelling in us that the world shall see Him only, and long to share in this glory and fellowship. The marvelous Sydenham palace in London was built all of glass, and it is the center of attraction in the city. It is beautiful within as well as without, for through every part of it the glorious sun sends his light unobstructed.

VI.

We are not only to be God’s temple, but we are to be builders together with God of the greater temple of the Church. We are to rescue the lost stones, and to place them in the walls of the New Jerusalem. The friends and founders of some the great cathedrals have wanted to have a distinct part in its erection, and so you find in them many windows, and altars, and tablets, which have been the gifts of great people. In this spiritual building many of us may want a memorial window, and there are many little bits of filthy glass about this city which could be picked up and cemented into such a window. We are builders together with God.

Let us be sure that our work is not of wood, and hay, and stubble; but of gold and silver, and precious stones. There are fragments of wrecks which could be picked up and become glorious, because they are built into this holy temple. One of the lighthouses on the American coast is made of timber, or pieces of timber, on which passengers have been saved. Every bit of the house from roof to basement, is made from pieces of wreck which have saved some one. It is sweet, after some hot June Sabbath or sultry day in July, in which you have perhaps been laughed at, and sincere Christian people have wondered whether you are not fanatical; or after you have been sitting through some damp evening, in which you have trusted to the grace of God to keep you from some chill and sickness - it is sweet, I say, to know that you have saved some soul.

It is sweet to have them come to you in after years, as a great fellow came to me the other day, and shook my hand until I thought he would shake me to pieces. He said: ‘Do you remember how you talked and pleaded with me years ago, and how obstinate I was as you tried to urge me to begin the New Year with Christ. You have forgotten all about it, but I shall never forget it. I was a medical student then, but I am a practicing physician now, and an elder in the Presbyterian Church.’ By and by they will come, come, and come to you, till you exclaim: ‘Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to the windows.’ God has not forgotten it.

They have become a part of the great building for eternity. You may see the apparent results and be disappointed in them, but no matter how small the fragment of glass, if it has God in it, it shall not be lost; and you will find it again in the great building up yonder. God shall write on us His new name, and we shall go no more out forever. Beloved, Jesus invites you to be the temple of God. You have cost more than five thousand millions of dollars to Him. The most ruined girl in this city, the greatest drunkard in it, is worth more than that to God. He would rather lose any of His temples on earth today than lose a human soul.

May God help us to be faithful to this great work for His name’s sake.

12. The Husbandman’s Faith

"So is the Kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and should rise night and day, and the seed should spring and rise up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately He putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." Mark 4:26’29

THIS is the only distinctive parable of this Gospel; that is, it is the only one which is contained in Mark alone. It is the pearl of all the parables from nature.

The first lesson we learn from this exquisite little sample of natural philosophy, for it is full of natural as well as spiritual wisdom, is that there is implanted a principle or germ of life in our soul. ‘So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground.’ The wisdom of the ages is trying hard to produce life and growth without seed. But all the teaching of Scripture and of nature on this point is that there can be no life without previous life to germinate and reproduce it from itself. All the experiments of science prove that nature left to itself in a passive condition will produce no life unless there is planted first a seed germ. Vessels of corn have been hermetically sealed up so that no air could reach them, and have been left for many years without any movement of life; but when they have been opened for one instant to the air, the germs of life have been immediately quickened.

Spiritual life does not start of itself but is planted from above in the heart of the sinner. God drops into us in some form, that which grows up into real life; that is the meaning of regeneration. It is the divine life principle put in the heart. The beauty of flowers and of trees goes for nothing; their object in the economy of nature is to produce seed. The delicacy of the apple and the peach is valuable, not for their flavor but for the seed that is produced. In all these natural objects the seed is clothed with pulp to protect it until the time of germination comes.

So the life of God is planted as a seed in the heart and must be truly quickened there before it will grow. It is a fact in nature that seed must be quickened by some other life before it will grow. It is a beautiful study in botany to notice the two sides of plants. The seed of one must be fertilized by the pollen of the other; there must be the blending of the two to produce fruit, and this is true also in the spiritual world. In Italy there was at one time a tree growing which had been for years unfruitful. The leaves fell off year after year, but there was no result in fruit. But the fact was observed that one year the wind, blowing in a certain direction, blew the fine pollen from a tree thirty or forty miles away, which fell over the leaves of this tree, and that year there was fruit. So it is in spiritual things.

We are dead as husks until the life of God comes to us - perhaps through some verse in the Bible which we never saw before - and the power of it suddenly kindles our whole being into a glow. We have received the principle of life, and the lifeless germ within us suddenly becomes fruitful, and develops into the embryo of spiritual life. So, in conversion and in sanctification, and all the higher forms of Christian life. The breath of God blows the life of the Holy Spirit upon us, and the seed of life eternal in the heart develops into fruitfulness.

II.

We have given here, not only the principle of life in the seed, but also the act of faith in casting the seed into the ground. The sowing of the seed is the definite starting point, but the seed should be steeped in the Holy Spirit before it is planted, and then comes a time of rest. We must remember, too, the seed is cast by man. Humanity has a ministry in this. God uses our hands to do this work. So, perhaps, today the seed is being cast into your heart; it may be by some one else, it may be by yourself. This is done in our own life when we take some promise from God’s Word for some special need. We, perhaps, have to take it in simple faith, and then go on.

It has been a definite word from a real person, and we anchor our souls to it and rest. This is a definite act of faith. It is sowing seed in the heart. It is something we can depend on and live by, because it will grow. I have known many people to become anchored to verses in this way. Perhaps it has been some promise they have heard. I remember one dear soul who heard the word given: ‘Be careful for nothing; but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’ Her faith took hold of it and she said afterward she believed it saved her from insanity.

If you can commit yourself to some such word as this: ‘God is able to make all grace abound toward you,’ or ‘My God shall supply all you need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus,’ you will find it will be made real to you whether your need is for physical healing, or for mental or spiritual trouble. There is any quantity of this seed in the Bible which has not been planted in your life yet. Just as there is plenty of seed in the barn as good as that which has been sown. If it is a planted seed you must see in it something you never saw there before, and very soon its life will become apparent, It will send its roots down and its branches up, and soon the fruit will appear. But the most important thing is: Has the seed been planted? Have you settled this thing - whatever it is that troubles you - definitely with God? If you have you will see results. You will see what God tells us will follow the committal of faith, although as yet nothing has been done but planting the seed.

2. Next comes the rest of faith. This is as necessary as the committal. After the seed was planted the man slept and rose night and day. He was not troubled about it. So, if you have fully committed your case to God, you must expect it to come out right, and must have no anxiety or care about it. The seed may not come up on the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the tenth night. Perhaps it will be the twenty-first night before it sprouts. Yet, through all these nights, the man is sleeping, with no anxiety. If you have taken the step of faith, you must leave the rest to God. This is as necessary as the first step of taking the word with a firm grasp. Now you must lie down in peace, and, no matter what comes, trust in God. This man did not lose an hour of sleep. We are often so afraid the seed will not sprout that we dig it up to see, and so kill it by our anxiety. We give it no chance for restful growth. There is no abiding assurance; no rest in Him about it, and so it comes to naught.

3. This man not only sleeps at night, but he arises day by day and goes ahead with other work as if the first were all over. He can turn to his other duties with no care about the past work. His sleep is not disturbed, neither is his labor by day. Suppose he should spend his time watching to see if this seed had sprouted; then what about the other field? He must do the same in that as he has in this; and so he goes on to another and another. It is an act of faith. Dear ones, when you planted the seed of faith in one part of your life, shall yon then stop and see if it is prospered of God? No! Go on and plant another. You must rise as well as rest, and leave the result of the work to God. It is very simple, but I don’t know any faith so great as that which throws away the seed in the grave of the soil, and, without any evidence, knows it is all right. How? By experience and confidence.

So we are sure of things in spiritual life, because we have confidence in Him. There are, then, these three stages. First, commit the matter to God, then rest about it, and then go ahead with the rest of your life-work; especially don’t stop to see if the seed is growing. Apply this thought to your own life. Have you taken God for this trouble? Are you resting about it? Are yon going on with other things? This is as true for Physical life as it is for spiritual healing, or for answers to prayer in your Christian life. You are to act, then rest, then go on to other work. Are you living this out in practical life?

III.

It is the great law of spiritual life and growth that when the seed is planted it is out of the hands of the sower. ‘The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.’ That is nature’s part in the ordinary economy of creation, and it is a type of God’s work in the economy of grace.

1. We see first the ignorance of man. The seed springs up he knows not how. It is not in any sense a matter of his knowledge. He is in a state of simple, child-like ignorance and trust. He knows that God takes care; but the process by which the growth comes, the several stages of development, he does not understand. I was reading, the other day, the stages of development in that new system they call mind cure - the most arrogant piece of folly that was ever known, and I have no wonder it has been used to confound thought. The question was asked some of the leaders in this system why the answers to prayer in Divine healing were more instantaneous than in this way. The answer was: ‘They act by faith, we act by knowledge.

Faith is lower than knowledge. We are on a higher plane than blind faith. Faith doesn’t know. We reason things out, which is a slower process, but we come to results in a more intelligent way.’ Praise the Lord for the other way! It is a simple way. To say: ‘We know not how,’ is better than to flounder along through a mass of metaphysics, and then find out our own ignorance after all. ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’ We can’t do it, any more in the nineteenth century than Job could nearly two thousand years ago. ‘He knoweth the way He taketh,’ but the farmer don’t know how the seed that he planted grows. He knows enough to sow it, and he knows enough to trust the afterwork to nature and to nature’s God. The same thing is true in the purifying of the soul and the healing of the body. We cannot trace Him.

If we look to find His working in some one as we found it in another, we shall be disappointed. You probably found Him in conversion on just as different a way as possible from that which you expected. You, perhaps, woke up to the thought that you were a Christian, and yet hardly dared to believe it was real until you saw from God’s Word that it was so. So the deeper work in your heart has been so different from the way you looked for Him to work. You expected Him from the north and He came from the south. There is no place for our knowledge. We only know it is His word, and so we go on and grow on in the simplicity of little children.

2. The next thought is that the earth bringeth forth of itself. From this independence of nature we learn something of the sovereignty of God in His working in the life of grace. Nature works without help. So you have a part to do, and God has a part to do. If you are faithful in your part, He will be faithful in His. The earth bringeth forth of itself. All your anxious care about it will not hasten the time when the seed shall burst through the soil. It will rather hinder the work. Let God alone. In silence and in obscurity the mighty work is going on, and soon the blade will appear in sight. Man is ignorant about it. God is independent in it. Leave Him alone to do the work, and trust Him for the result. Faith keeps her eyes off all our devices, and says: ‘He knoweth the way He taketh.’

3. Then follows the law of life, which is by gradual development. There are stages of growth. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. There is a science of evolution taught in the world today which is not the Divine law of development. Science has gone so far as to pretend to trace all the stages of Divine working. But there is great danger in this, that a man should attempt to go through both worlds and put himself in the place of God. It leads to atheism and sympathy with all the modern forms of infidelity. But there is a growth in the Divine life. You will find it back in the simpler forms as well as in the higher.

It all starts in the seed, and evolution is left out, which is an endeavor to create a world out of nothing. It is like reading this parable, and leaving out the first verse. We owe much to this lesson of the seed. In an acorn you will find the whole oak, and the only quality that it needs is growth. So, the soul may be very small and weak, but it can grow. Jesus came to earth as a babe in Bethlehem, but He grew from that to be the perfect God-man. There is development in spiritual life, but there must be something to grow from, and there can be no growth until there is first some starting point. No man can grow into religion. He must be born into it, and then advance to the full stature of a man in Christ Jesus.

That is the principle of growth laid down here, and so we can well afford to be patient with ourselves. God is full of infinite, everlasting patience. He will not quench the smoking flax; He will not fear nor be discouraged. And He would have us learn to be content with the stage of development we are in if we have real life, and are ever to press on to something higher. The meaning of the stages of development is this: The blade typifies the incipient early growth of regeneration in the heart; the ear means the beginning of Christian service; and the full corn in the ear the maturity of Christian life and work. Then comes the harvest; ripe and ready for the next stage, the highest one of all.

IV.

Then comes the culminating act of faith. ‘He putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.’ He enters upon service immediately, in prompt obedience to the call of God’s providence.’ Immediately he putteth in the sickle.’ ‘We pass now from the inner to the outer side of this teaching. The Christian is now mature. He is fully ripe. He has got the grace of God, and he must turn it to account. This is the aim and outcome of all Christian life. The result of it is to be found in fruit, in service, in lasting results for God. The harvest is that which is being gathered, and in it we have ourselves opportunities of service. We are not merely to grow up in Him by steps of faith, committing ourselves wholly to Him for His grace and helping. There are to be active steps taken also. We are to do things which call for the same decision of spirit as when we put in the seed. The harvest is found in this natural life, in this every-day world. We learn three things about it:

1. It is the harvest of life, when the results of all that we have gathered will be seen. The meaning of our whole life will be made plain to us, and its outcome be made sure. As in America the time comes when the harvest of the year is either gained or lost - perhaps in a month from now every farmer in the land will be either lost or secured for a year. The amount of security will depend upon the fruit of his toil, and he needs to see that no part of it comes in too late, but that all the work is done promptly. So we need to preach most of all to ourselves today, that the outcome of all our labor shall be saved, and nothing lost.

God is ready for the harvest, and you must be ready, too. The immediately of the text has come, and there is no time for dallying. Every hour is needed to gather in the result of our life-work. We are to watch for these crisis hours of life. We shall know them if we do. They have a solemn meaning. There is a great deal in this hour to be got through with. It would crush one’s heart if we had to bear it alone. Have we got all He means us to have in it? How wise, how wide awake, how intelligent we need to be to understand His plan for our heart and life, we do not know; God knows. It is the harvest of life. God has called us to it, and we must come now or lose the fruit. Our consecration demands a bold stand from us, and we must take it or lose greatly.

It may wound the finest sensibilities of our nature - never mind. The days may be hot and long, and the work unpleasant - never mind. Immediately he putteth in the sickle. We must give respect to the call when it comes. Then is the time to take Him in consecration, and to go out in faith to work for others. The decisive stand must be taken, and from this we must never go back. There is a time in the lives of every man and woman when this thing is to be done. I have sat down beside them sometimes, and, as I felt that everything depended on that hour, such a feeling of sadness and sorrow has come over me, such a spirit of tears as I thought of the glorious possibilities that lay before them. I felt the harvest time had come, and was troubled lest my brother should not meet the Lord when He called him.

We so often let some little irritation, some annoyance, some stumbling-block hinder us in the great work of our lives. God wants you to be illustrious in your simple work; He wants you to be like the woman of Samaria, with a water-pot on your head, or a cruise of water in your hands; He wants you to be one of His glorious messengers. Then you shall shine as the stars forever and ever among those that turn many to righteousness.

2. It is the harvest of the Church. Every season has its harvest time in which we can gather great results if we are quick to catch the meaning of the time. If your souls rise up to great ideas of faith, we shall be able to look back afterwards on great results. This summer there are multitudes of souls to be redeemed, and our plans and purposes for them mean so much, if we do not allow them to dwindle into insignificance through indolence or weakness of faith. God grant that we may have understanding of the times, that we may see when the hour of harvest comes, and be ready to put in the sickle.

3. I do not know whether I can make you fully understand this; but there is also a harvest of the world. It is not only for individuals and for the Church, but it comes for the world also. There is coming a time - a last time - a crisis hour, when every land shall be open, as it never has been opened before, to every influence of the Gospel. I have every reason to believe that there are coming grand opportunities, such as the world has never seen before, for successful work in missionary countries. I think the next ten or fifteen years will see a grand harvest of the world. I have studied a good deal of the history of the last thousand years, and I have found it intensely interesting. I do not know a time in which I should so wish to have been born as the last half of the nineteenth century.

I think the next fifty years of this age are the years just before the end. I believe they are just before the time when He will come to take our work out of our hands Himself. Oh, that we could be wakened out of our dream! Oh, that we could be aroused to see what idolatry and rationalism are doing in the world, and yet how little Christianity, with all its marvelous vitality, is doing to oppose them. There are awful forces at work among us, and yet there is an amazing effort for good as well as for evil. It is necessary to make a new map of the different countries almost every six months. You would hardly know Japan today. There is no land that has been rushing on as that has been since it has had Christianity. It has been doubling its communicants every few years.

God is waking up every land, and opening every door upon earth. The world has room for ten thousand missionaries of the cross today. If the Church were to give one cent on every dollar they owned, we should have a hundred million of dollars instead of five millions, to send the Gospel to the heathen world. Within nine months twenty-two hundred young ministers in the seminaries of our land have volunteered to go to the foreign field. It is an army that would crowd this church in every corner. A few years ago you would have expected these young men to be looking for positions of easy work anywhere in our land. Now they are willing to go to Congo or the South Sea Islands. They have no choice. And yet they are the very men that five years ago were the least likely to become consecrated to this kind of work.

But, from being full of pride and high ambition, they have come today to desire this very service. I think the brethren who are already there may be standing on the shores and beckoning to our land, asking for helpers. These young men are determined to go somehow, and they have laid the responsibility on the Church to send them. They stand up before us, a body of stalwart Christians, and say: ‘Here we are; what are you going to do with us?’ And yet the Christian Church is not able to send them out. It is the harvest of the world. God is moving as we have seldom seen Him before. Let the Church arise to take her true place in this work. This land, today, is spending $600,000 in cigars; $100,000 for education; and $900,000 on whiskey, and a little driblet on the army of the Lord.

We can only speak of it in broken accents of amazement. It bewilders me and makes me wonder whether I am doing all that I can. What are we to do about it? What we do must be done quickly. The heathen will not wait. There will be a hundred thousand of them dead by tomorrow morning, and if they were to walk by you in procession they would not pass your door by that time. There would be fifty thousand children among them, and souls as sensitive as yours walking out in their winding sheets, saying: ‘No man careth for my soul.’ I never look at this picture steadily, but it seems to me that everything else must go.

I want to strengthen the hand of every brother who goes out upon this work; I want to strengthen the hands of every society that sends them forth. May God use us to do more than ever in this great work, and may He keep ever before our mind the fact that it is harvest time in our life, in the Church and in the world.

13. The Fowls And The Flowers

"Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, 0, ye of little faith. Therefore, take no thought, saying: What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek). For your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matthew 6:26-33

OUR Lord brings us this morning in this beautiful parable, perhaps the most comprehensive of all His teachings from the works of creation. The lessons it teaches are providence, faith, and single-hearted devotion to God. These great truths are taught us from the natural emblems of this parable - the fowls of the air, and the lilies of the field. Let us listen to the voices of the fowls and the flowers warbled out to us from the melodious notes of the one, or greeting us in the beautiful tints of the other. They breathe these messages of eternal truth from the life of Christ, the divine providence of God in the lives of His children, the simplicity of the Christians’ trust and faith, and the singleness of heart which He expects in His followers.

Can there be any greater truths, beloved, to which we can listen this morning? It comes as a message from Jesus Christ to the soul for the coming week Perhaps after a summer of such testing as you have seldom had before, God is talking to you. Do not fail to catch the teaching of His care, of your trust, and of the single eye He would have in you to His glory. He teaches us the lesson of providence from the fowls; of faith from the flowers; and of singleness of purpose from the closing applications of the parable.

↑ Back to top