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THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER

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THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER

15 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

(Continued from last issue)

They watch, if I do not, and are always ready to take advantages to hinder, whenever I am careless to go forward. I have an open door, and many adversaries. If I do not watch unto prayer, the world will get between me and my duty: if I do not watch in prayer, Satan will do his utmost to prevent my sweet or continued approach unto God: if I do not watch after prayer, pride, presumption, security, or negligence, will find a way into my heart. O Lord, if I were fully and constantly aware of my true situation, how could I think to do less than always to pray and not to faint!

My fallen heart is ever ready to take up with the mere performance of duty. How often have I prayed for spiritual mercies; and not considered afterwards whether God hath granted them or not! For increase of faith, wisdom, holiness, and other graces, I have asked with earnestness at the time, and then soon have forgotten what I asked for, or neglected to mark the event. Hence all the lowness of my attainments in divine things, and my overborne subjection to things earthly. And when I have requested temporal blessings, how little have I considered the hand of God in granting, or the wisdom of God in refusing them! How often have I sought the good for its own sake, instead of seeking it for God’s glory and my spiritual welfare, and thereby was ready to turn it, if granted, into an evil! How little use have I made of temporal benefits, when they have been given me, and sometimes given unexpectedly too, that I might notice God’s providence; and how ready hath my corrupt nature been to take and apply them all to itself! Surely I am as much the monument of God’s patience as of his love.

It is a matter always to be had in remembrance, that prayer should be followed up with thanksgiving, I ought to be thankful, if what I have prayed for is received; and I should be thankful also, if what I have prayed for is restrained. God is better to me than I am to myself, and he only keeps back any thing from his children, either because it is not good at all, or not good in the time and for the purpose for which they desired it. The words of a very ancient poet, rightly turned may express, in this case, the sentiment of every Christian:

The good we need, great King, bestow,
Whether we ask for it or no;
But, if for ill we blindly cry,
In mercy, Lord, that suit deny.

The practice of many saints under the Old Testament was to pray thrice a day. According to opportunity, I cannot pray too often, either in the closet, the family, or the church. There are indeed stated times for these; but one kind of prayers may be used at all times, and in every circumstance of life. The prayers of ejaculation, or of darting up the heart towards God (like that in Nehem. 11:4) in short and pathetic sentences, have a wonderful effect in them, and tend very much to keep up the soul’s communion with God, and the life of holiness in common things. Many such may be taken from the Psalms in particular. They show a sweet and healthful inclination of the soul, more perhaps than laboured expressions, or long continuance of address, which may sometimes fall into idle repetitions, or be unattended with suitable affections and fervency. O how delightfully will these aspirations often pass towards heaven from the soul! How warmly stir up the affections, and raise the mind! How strongly check the inordinate care of earthly things!

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my Strength, and my Redeemer!”

CHAPTER XX

On Singing Praises To God

The first of all earthly singers gave this as an inspired rule, “Sing ye praises with understanding.” Without spiritual understanding we can only make a noise. Unless we know how deeply we are indebted to God, and have the sweet sense of his goodness in our souls, we may please ourselves with a tune, but we yield no music to him. Some of old “chanted to the sound of the viol, and invented to themselves instruments of music,” but, at the same time, they were among those who were at ease in Zion, and who put far away the evil day, to whom woe is denounced. It is spiritual harmony which is the delight of heaven, and not outward jingle and sound; and therefore, if we are not spiritual, we can have no true notion of this delight, nor “make melody in our hearts to the Lord.” The trills of music, and the divine joys of the soul, are very different things. Worldly men have had the first, and thought them from heaven; but they continued no longer than the sound; while the peace of gracious praise is full, sublime, and abiding. We must indeed be real Christians before any of us can say with the Apostle, “I will pray with the Spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.”

I cannot but shake my head, when I hear an officer of the church calling upon the people, “to sing to the praise and glory of God”; and immediately half a dozen merry men, in a high place, shall take up the matter, and most loudly chant it away to the praise and glory of themselves. The tune, perhaps, shall be too difficult for the greater part of the congregation, who have no leisure for crotchets and quavers: and so the most delightful of all public worship shall be wrested from them, and the praises of God taken out of their mouths. It is no matter whence this custom arose; in itself it is neither holy, decent, nor useful; and therefore ought to be banished entirely from the churches of God.

When Christians sing all together in some easy tune, accommodated to the words of their praise, and not likely to take off their attention from sense to sound; then, experience show, they sing most lustily, (as the Psalmist expresses it,) and with the best good courage. The symphony of voice and the sympathy of heart may flow through the whole congregation, which is the finest music to truly serious persons, and the most acceptable to God of any in the world. To sing with grace in their hearts to the Lord, is the melody of heaven itself; and often brings a foretaste of heaven to the redeemed even here. But jingle, piping, sound, and singing, without divine accompaniment, are grating, discordant, jarring harshness with God, and vapid lifeless insipidity to the souls of his people.

I am no enemy to music as a human art; but let all things be in their place. The pleasures of the ear are not the gracious acts of God’s Spirit in the soul; but the effect of vibrated matter from an outward sense. This may be indulged as perhaps an innocent and ingenious amusement; but what have our amusements to do with solemn and sacred adorations of God? Would not this be carnal, and after the modes of the world, and not after Christ? Surely no believer will venture to call any thing spiritual, which doth not proceed from, or accord with the Spirit of life, or tend to “mortify the old man with his affections and lusts.”

Neither sounds of air, nor words of sense alone, however excellent can please God. “He is a Spirit, and they who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth”; for such he seeketh. It is easy to do many, if not all, religious acts with a very carnal heart; but to be truly religious, or to walk and act in our spirits with God,—this hath always been too hard “for flesh and blood,” and can only be performed by that grace which giveth life and power to every renewed mind.

Lord, help me, I beseech thee, thus to laud and adore thee! Give me a lively sense of thy mercy to my soul; and then my soul shall offer up her gracious returns of lively praise. Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou requirest not, for no outward thing, even of thine own appointment, when not inwardly understood, can please thee; the music of my voice, without the incense or breathings of my soul, thou wilt not accept. O assist me, then, to praise thee aright; for, without thee, I can do nothing. Thou alone givest occasion to praise; and thou also givest the Spirit of praise to use the occasion. Vouchsafe both unto me. Then shall I one day join the great “assembly of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven,” and sing, with joy unspeakable and full of glory, that ever-new song, “Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb! Amen. Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

CHAPTER XXI

A Christian, In Losing His Life, Saves It

Christ, hath said, “Whoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”

In doing this the Christian must die daily. He is crucified with Christ in the flesh, that he may live with Christ in the Spirit. His mortal body is brought into subjection to the rule of grace; and grace mortifies that body, by crucifying its affections and lusts.

These words are easy and plain: but, alas! how few do know them! To die of self is the most painful thing to flesh and blood that can be. To be stripped of all conceited Worth, to renounce a man’s own righteousness as well as his sins, to give up in earnest his own will and way, to live in an emptied frame of mind simply upon Christ for strength, wisdom, grace, and salvation, to desire nothing but what may please him, to be contented with the trials he sends because they are his, to have a heart carried above the world, not to fear man against God; to bear, to believe, to hope, to endure all things as the best, and to maintain a firm view of eternal glory: all this is losing a man’s own carnal life, and saving the life of his soul in Christ Jesus. The Christian who hath this in him may say with the Apostle, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

At first sight, this kind of life appears gloomy and dreadful; but when once truly tasted, it is sweet and pleasant to the soul. It grows less difficult and painful, as the carnal life is more and more subdued. The life of the flesh can only indulge some poor, base, and vexatious gratifications in earthly and perishing things; but the renewed life of the Spirit consists in righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Ghost, which cannot be lost, and which never can cloy. The enjoyment of this renders the Christian, in proportion to his enjoyment, a steady man, unshaken or unsubdued by the disorders and distresses of the world, and cleaving the faster to God when they come. A worldly man is often terrified to his wit’s end, or to death, where a real Christian can be calm and resigned. He hath learned the value of all life in Christ; and he knows that what is really worth his anxiety can never be lost. In throwing all upon God, he finds the fears and terrors of his weak and corrupt flesh abated, and he gains strength and liveliness in his soul. The Captain of his salvation gives him a tranquillity of courage, which the bravest human heart cannot put on. Women of delicate tenderness, by this gracious gift, have frequently met the king of terrors himself, with a soberness of triumph, unknown to mortal heroes.

These mortal heroes, indeed, may have ventured upon death, despising life and all its enjoyments; but all the while were evidently concerned for their vain glory, and the useless perpetuity of a name. The particular distinction of the Christian hero is, that he not only can meet death as a vanquished foe, but also can look down upon the infamy of the world with a noble scorn, valuing it and all mere reptuation among worms, as trifling pageantry or idle pride. He can live and die in secret, which none of these ostentatious mortals can either endure or dare to do.

No man can live truly by his own power, but only by power from on high. The christian, therefore, is daily looking unto Jesus, his head of life, for the maintenance and support of every grace. If Christ withdraw his hand, he must fall; for, in himself, the strongest, the wisest, the holiest Christian, is confusion and wickedness, weakness and nothing. He feels himself void of all good, and flies to Jesus, therefore, to obtain it. When he doth not enjoy his Saviour, he cannot enjoy himself. But when he hath him, he hath more than all things; because he hath him who made and possesses them all.

They who are great, and love to be great, in outward things, have commonly but little of this essential life within them. When the soul hath no feast within, it gads abroad for delight, and will put up with mean and carnal trash, unsuitable to its proper nature, rather than have nothing. Outward pomp and carnal show, even in religion, commonly proclaim an inward emptiness and want.

There is a carnal knowledge of spiritual things, which the Apostle calls a “knowing Christ after the flesh,” and which is very different from the divine knowledge of those things. The Apostles appear to have had chiefly, if not only, the former till the day of Pentecost when they fully “re”ceived power from on high.” They indeed loved Christ, and sincerely followed him before; but their love and knowledge of the Saviour had in it a large mixture of flesh and corruption. Hence, they were astonished to hear of his sufferings and death, and their own humiliation; when, it is plain enough, they expected great temporal advancement and honour for themselves, and a glorious temporal kingdom for him. Even after his resurrection, like the Jews at large, they thought of a “kingdom to be restored unto Israel:” but, when the true kingdom came into their hearts, we hear no more of these carnal expectations, but of a joyful readiness to suffer persecution and death for their Lord, and to go somewhere else, instead of this world, fully to enjoy him.

So, among us called Christians, there is this carnal knowledge of Christ, consisting in outward profession and a natural understanding of the truths of the gospel, which is also mixed sometimes with degrees of grace and spiritual life. But persons in this state are much in outward things, are great outwardly, talk of religion outwardly, and of its great advancements by great human helps in the world.

They are strong in their animal passions, carry these into religious matters, make a vast noise and agitation among men, are great rulers if possible, seek to carry all church affairs in their own way, and in short, are never easy out of a bustle, and certainly never easy in it. When these people sink into themselves by getting more true life in Christ, they are found to be more and more mild, humble, patient, gentle, “not obtruding themselves into things which they have not seen, nor vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind.” Then Christ is all in all to them; and they themselves nothing at all. Then it is that they lose their own lives and find them again with great interest and sweetness in Christ.

If the love and word of Christ “dwell in us richly in all wisdom,” we shall desire to be much with Christ in our spirits, and to shut out all possible interruptions and hinderances in our communion with him. This is our great happiness, and the true life of God in the soul of man.

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Bekijk de hele uitgave van zaterdag 1 mei 1943

The Banner of Truth | 16 Pagina's

THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER

Bekijk de hele uitgave van zaterdag 1 mei 1943

The Banner of Truth | 16 Pagina's