SOME FOOTSTEPS OF CHRIST’S FLOCK

As a general rule, the living family of God in our day do not walk much in the light of His uplifted countenance. They have, indeed, their favoured moments, when, for a short time, the clouds seem to part, and gleams of sunshine to break in through the sky. In reading or hearing the Word, their hearts are sometimes melted and softened, faith raised up and drawn forth on the Lord of life and glory, whilst hope casts forth it anchor, and love mounts upward to Him who sits at the right hand of God. At such seasons their fears are removed, their doubts dispelled, their evidences brightened, their darkness, guilt, and bondage lightened and removed, and their souls make happy in the Lord. But clouds return after rain. Earthborn vapours rise from below, clouds gather from above, and the sky soon becomes almost, if not altogether, as much overcast as before. Then comes on the whole train of doubt, fear, and misgiving, relieved, indeed, by sweet rememberances of past favours and by a more steadfast cleaving to the Word of promise, but, for the most part, depressing the mind, and attended with a good deal of the spirit of bondage. In this state of mind they usually have a great many sermons preached to them. Some tell them that they ought not to doubt and fear, that by so doing they are living below their privileges, that they should believe in Christ and take God at His word, that these doubts and fears are very dishonouring to God, that they should not indulge in them nor make a religion out of them, but should rejoice in the Lord in the full assurance of faith. Such preachers, like Job’s friends, are partly right and partly wrong. It is wrong to doubt and fear after the Lord has blessed the soul with a sense of His mercy and love. These doubts and fears should not be encouraged, or set up as evidences; they do dishonour God and rob the soul. All this is quite true. But can these kind friends tell them how to get rid of these doubts and fears in such a way as shall ease the conscience, remove darkness from the mind, and satisfy them with the smiles of God the witness of a sprinkled and peaceful conscience? Alas! no. Here they fail, and are, therefore, as miserable comforters as ever Job’s friends were. The faith which they would have them exercise is a mere natural, notional faith, and the confidence to which they would urge them is mere presumption. Such a faith as they teach, preach, and, we suppose, possess, or they would not press it so on others, is a faith that does nothing for its possessor. It does not work by love, nor purify the heart, nor overcome the world, nor triumph over death and hell, nor bring into the soul atoning blood, dying love, or pardoning mercy. It leaves the soul just where it found it, and does it as much good as the priest and Levite did the Samaritan who had fallen among thieves, and lay in the road, stripped, wounded, and half dead.

We no more hold with unbelief, doubts and fears, darkenss and bondage, than these men do; for we know that they are our greatest hindrances, and the worst of thieves and robbers. If a man has a disease or a complaint which sticks to him closer than the collar of his coat, if it troubles him night and day, if it makes his life a burden, if he expects to carry it to his grave, does he love it, does he enjoy it, does he make health and strength out of it? Say, “Yes” or “No,” ye afflicted ones in body. Is it not the same with doubts, fears, and unbelief? They are our soul disease, our inward complaint; and to make our religion out of them would be like making health out of a disordered liver, a consumptive constitution, a paralysed limb, an asthmatic complaint, or a nervous affliction. Now, suppose that our doctor, when we sought his advice upon any one of these or similar afflictions, should say, “Be well; be well; don’t be ill, don’t be ill; shake off your complaint. Only believe you are well, and you will be well.” “Ah, but,” replies the patient, “I am no better by believing I am well when every feeling, every pain, every suffering in my poor body tells me how ill I am. I am only deceiving myself by believing I am well when I am really ill; and you must be very ignorant both of my complaint and my symptoms not to see how ill I am, and I fear you are equally ignorant of the right remedy.” We leave to the judgment of our readers the application of the figure to the physicians of no value, who prescribe for the complaint of the family of God.

But because these miserable physicians understand neither malady or remedy, is there no cure? “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Does not the Lord Himself say, “I am the Lord that healeth thee”? How blessedly does the Psalmist speak: “Who healeth all thy diseases”? And what a gracious promise is that: “For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord; because they called thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after” (Jer. 30, 17). But what is the remedy? Is it not the very thing which we have laid down as one of the great objects of life — an enjoyment of the goodness, mercy, and love of God in our own soul, under sense of pardoned sin, and a full and free acceptance of the Beloved? What but some breaking in of the light of His countenance, and some discovery and manifestation of the love and mercy of God can dispel the darkness of our mind, thaw the hardness of our heart, remove guilt from our conscience, and, animating us with new life, brings us out of that deadness of soul which seems one of our worst complaints? Here we see the wisdom of God in allowing His people to be so buffeted by sin and Satan, so plagued and worried by temptations, so exercised by unbelief, infidelity, enmity, jealousy, doubt, and fear, so shut up and fast bound by chains, often of their own making. “Hast thou not procured this to thyself?” Is it not that they may despair of all other salvation but God’s salvation, and find no remedy for sin but in the blood and righteousness of the Son of God? Is it not that they may enjoy no rest, peace, or comfort but what the Lord Himself is pleased to give; and thus be experimentally taught the necessity of ever looking to Him, and hanging upon Him for a smile from His face, a word from His lips, a touch from His hand, a manifestation of His presence, and some intimation of His favour?

Those who look thus to the Lord, under the strong pressure of inward exercise of soul, will not look in vain. Some turn in providence, most unexpected and yet most suitable and acceptable, will sometimes make them feel, if not say, “I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me;” and this intimation of the Lord’s remembrance of them will melt their hearts into a persuasion of His favour towards them. Sometimes they will be favoured with a special season in prayer, when, viewing by faith the glorious Mediator on His throne of grace, and drawing strength and virture out of His fulness, they come forth with free and holy liberty into the light of such a day as the sweet Psalmist of Israel describes — “A morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds’ (2 Sam. 24, 4).

Sometimes in reading the Word in private, light breaks upon its contents; authority and power, majesty and glory seem stamped upon it as the Word of the living God; faith is raised up and drawn forth upon the gracious truth revealed in that special portion of it, so as to embrace it in love, and thus become mixed with it; and this enlarges, comforts, and sensibly edifies and profits the soul. Sometimes, without any particular application of the Word, or any special light on or life from any passage, there flows into the soul a peculiar sense of the divine reality of the truths of the Gospel and the mysteries of our most holy faith. Their weight, their importance, their eternal and imperishable nature, their purity and holiness, and contrasted with this sinful world and the worse sinfulness of our own wretched nature, their sweetness and blessedness, their suitability to our wants and woes, the glorious wisdom of God shining forth in them, and especially His grace, mercy and truth in the Person and work of the Mediator, are brought into the heart with a peculiar weight and power. In this way God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shines into the heart, to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4, 6). And what is the effect? The spirituality of mind which such divine impressions communicate, the earnest prayers which they produce, the heavenly affections which they kindle, and the blessed lift which they give us out of darkness, deadness, and earthly mindedness, are all so many convincing testimonies of the reality and power of a religion which comes from God. This is not a building on the sand, for it brings the soul into, and lays it upon, cements it to, and gives it vital union with the Rock. To build on doubts and fears, on conviction and sin, on deadness and coldness, darkness, barrenness, guilt, and bondage, is to build upon the sand and almost worse than sand, for it is to build upon a bog. The very reason why “the Lord trieth the righteous,” and why He suffers them to be tempted with unbelief and every other form of evil, is to beat them off the sand and the bog, and make them embrace the Rock for want of a shelter. That ministry, therefore, which would encourage a religion built upon doubts and fears would be to preach unbelief as the way instead of faith, put infirmities in the place of blessings, make a knowledge of sin as clear a testamony of interest in Christ, as a knowledge of salvation, and elevate guilt, bondage, darkness, and condemnation into the room of pardon, deliverance, love, joy, peace, and every other fruit of the Spirit.

But is there no other effect of those visitations which preserve the spirit? Do they not produce an earnest desire to live to the praise, honour, and glory of God, which we have laid down as the second great object of a Christian’s life? It is “the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, which teacheth us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.” It is because “we are not our own, but are bought with a price,” that we are to glorify God in our body, and in our spirit, which are His.

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