Angels in White: Messages of Comfort

A well-known and distinguished preacher of the last generation, addressing a body of American students, on one occasion, towards the end of his career, made the remark, “If I had to live my life over again, I would make my ministry a more comforting ministry.” The need of comfort is as great as ever, perhaps greater, and some attempt has been made in the following pages to meet that need. The articles were not all written at one time; indeed, they cover a period of nearly thirty years, so it will be seen that the writer’s attention has been directed, again and again, to the same subject. These contributions to an ever-present problem reflect to some extent his own experience. They are far from being mere essays.

Perhaps the justification for such a book is found in the following words of another:

“The people who are worn and burdened by sorrow, by temptation, by sin and by fear are everywhere. I venture to say they constitute the majority of mankind. At one time or another we all find ourselves enrolled in their ranks, and the real test of a religion, of its value and worth, is this: Can it do anything for the weary? Can it minister to the diseased mind? Can it bind up the broken in heart?”

It is hoped that the following pages, as far as Christianity is concerned, may help in some measure to answer these questions in the affirmative. And to this the writer out of his own personal experience — in company, he is sure, with a vast multitude that no man can number — desires to add his — and their — Amen.

Will the reader excuse any occasional repetition he may discover, due to the long period covered by the articles? They reflect, too, in many instances, the tragic period of World War I. Not a few were written during that time of unexampled suffering and sacrifice.

“Dost Thou not care?” — the cry of the human heart.

“He careth for you” — the divine answer.

Care: a little word of only four letters, yet how weighty! Its pressure at times is almost intolerable. Everybody is more or less affected by it, for probably there is nothing on the face of the earth more common than care. It is seen in the merchant’s face; it furrows the cheek of the widow; it sits upon the forehead of the great; it dogs the steps and hovers around the bed of kings, for we are assured, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Men of all classes and conditions are victims of care. It calls upon all alike and has a habit of making itself at home, though never welcomed. Indeed, try as we will to get rid of this unwelcome visitor, it clings to us as if it were the best of friends.

Go where you will you find it. There is not a continent or country or town that is free from its presence; every village and house knows something of its dark shadows. Is there an individual you could meet, who has come to any years at all, who could truthfully say, “Care and I are unknown to each other”? It has a habit of creeping in everywhere. Sometimes it will present itself on the most festive occasions, and it has been known to cast its shadow even over a marriage scene. Almost every day is marked by it, the day of death not always being exempt, as though care were the first thing we carry and the last thing we lay down. How can we escape from it? No barriers can keep it out. Bolts and bars are useless here, for if you lock the door it will creep through the keyhole, and if you succeed in turning it out of the front door it will find its way around to the back. It seems as all-pervading and penetrating as the atmosphere. As well attempt to exclude the air as to exclude care.

Yet although everybody is thus more or less familiar with this painful malady, how few seem to know the real cure. Many and various are the methods adopted to escape from its clutches, but they are not often very successful. Some think wealth can buy it off, but an increase of money often means that the sources of care are only multiplied. Others try pleasure, but how often the weight comes back, with something added, when the pleasure is over! “Do you not know I am dying of melancholy?” wrote Madame de Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV, a woman who had the opportunity, if anybody ever had, of seeing and enjoying life. Some try work as a remedy; this is good as far as it goes, but it is not enough. Not a few try to banish it with the wine cup or some other form of indulgence.

The reason none of these is successful is because they all lose sight of the cause. Care has a cause, and unless we find out what that is and deal with it, we are never likely to be successful in our struggle with what it has produced.

Care is the result of the present condition of the world, and the present condition of the world is the result of a wrong attitude towards its Maker. The evil thing called care flows from want of harmony with the Author of our being. Sin introduced the element of distrust; man became alienated from his Maker and, as a consequence, has lost the sense of His goodness and protection, and the baneful effect is care, with all its gloom, unhappiness and unrest.

What seems, then, to account for all the care in the world is that the human heart has lost the sense of God’s care. When Martha uttered that pitiful complaint in the ears of Christ as He sat in her house at Bethany, “Dost Thou not care?” she was not only voicing her own sentiment, but that of the entire human race. Is not this more or less the cry of every heart at some time or other, though not uttered perhaps with all the distinctness with which Martha uttered it? Oh, how often the uplifted eyes and heart have spoken thus to God, even if the words never escaped the lips! How much there seems in the course events are allowed to take, whether in general or in regard to each of us in particular, to confirm the suspicion that God does not, after all, care what becomes of us or how things turn out! As if, after all, there was no one to look after the world! Nurses there may be to look after babies and parents to provide for children and policemen for general protection, but as to the deepest concerns of life, grown men and women seem left to themselves. And so the majority of suffering, toiling humanity, perhaps, is quite ready to adopt the language of the elder sister of Bethany, “Dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” This is the cry that seems to burst from the heart of one sensible of being wronged. Have not our own hearts sometimes told us that Martha is not alone here?

“Dost Thou not care?” This striking utterance reveals two things — man has lost the sense of God’s care, yet from his inmost soul he calls out for somebody to care for him.

Is there any response to this appeal, sometimes expressed, sometimes only mute? Is there anyone to respond to those who are:

“Infants crying in the night,
Infants crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry?”

And will the response be satisfactory? These are the questions that we have to answer, and, in doing so, to intimate what is the true and all-sufficient cure for care, for care has a cure, and we must now proceed to show wherein it lies.

The cure really lies in the discovery that there is a Being, all powerful and beneficent, who makes those who trust Him the object of His care.

Over against the human cry, “Dost Thou not care?” that goes up from generation to generation and always has gone up, we may place the divine answer, “He careth for you.” Let us put these two statements side by side, the one the human utterance, the other the divine, and take a good look at them:

“Dost Thou not care?” (Luke 10:40) —
the cry of the human heart;
“He careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7) —
the divine answer.

The one seems to come as direct from the heart of God to man as the other goes from the heart of man to God.

This divine answer contains within itself the unfailing cure for care. Rightly understood and believed, it becomes at once the universal remedy for a universal disease. Perhaps some reading these lines may be tempted to think that only when the grave closes over them will any relief be obtained from the particular form of care that oppresses them. This is, after all, a mistake, for He who tells us that He cares invites us at the same time to cast all our care upon Him.

What a profound truth this is that God cares! It shows that He is not unmindful nor indifferent, and where shall we find it better enforced or more fully exemplified than in the parable that immediately precedes, and is intended to accompany, the story of Martha?

Have you ever read and pondered that wonderful parable recorded in Luke 10 about the man who fell among thieves? After wounding him and taking away all he possessed, they left him half dead by the roadside. The priest and Levite passed by, but the most they did was to look upon him and leave him as he was. At length came a Samaritan, and he went to him and bound up his wounds. And more than that, we read, he “set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” But even this was not the limit of his goodness. The words (addressed to the host) that fell upon the astonished ears of the heretofore benighted traveller were these: “Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.”

It will be seen at once that the story illustrates far more than how forgiveness of sins is to be obtained. The guilt of the sinner is implied, no doubt, for the man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho: from the place of blessing — Jerusalem means the vision of peace — to the place of the curse. With one stroke the moral tendency of the race is exposed! But one comes along who can reverse all this. He brings the oil and the wine, the balm of Gilead. Man is a prey to enemies, but here is a friend. But there is more. A threefold need on the part of the man is met by a threefold action on the part of the Good Samaritan. The man is wounded, he is weak and he is in want. His wounds are bound up, oil and wine being poured in. This meets the first need. The second is met by his friend placing him upon his own beast. The third, by bringing him to the inn and taking care of him. This last is the climax of the parable.

If, however, we are refusing to recognize our true condition and our need of Christ and His work, if we think that by our own efforts and goodness we are going to merit heaven and have no need of One to “come where we were” and take our place, then freedom from care can never be ours in the truest sense, for the simple reason that the parable we are considering loses all its meaning, if we are not wounded and strengthless and in need of a Friend to care for us from first to last. Outside of Christ we can never know what God can be to us. And it is just this, what God is to the one who obeys Him and therefore trusts wholly in Christ, that enables the believer to rise above all care.

The man by the roadside might have borne his fate with stolid indifference and succumbed at last without a murmur, but he never would have known how much another could care for him. And so, today, are there not those who assume an attitude of indifference in regard both to their present need and the future? They try to shut their eyes, and in a measure they may succeed, but they miss one thing — they never can know, while in that attitude, what God is waiting to be to them, how much and how well He can care for them, or what the ministry of Christ means.

It is just at this point the striking connection with Martha’s history comes into view. She said to the Lord, “Dost Thou not care?” Could the man in the inn have addressed such words to the Samaritan? Had he not heard the injunction, “Take care of him”? Had Martha known the teaching of that parable, could she have ever used the words she did? Can we, who profess to believe that Christ was really drawing a picture of Himself, ever question His care? Is not the whole parable of the Good Samaritan just an answer to this touching appeal of Martha’s? And in the light of this fact, the story Christ tells assumes a meaning wonderful and grand in the extreme. For does it not assure us that there is One who cares and that the deepest cry of the human heart has been anticipated? There is One who thinks of us and is capable of providing for our every need.

Another point in connection with Martha’s utterance is anticipated by the parable. She felt her loneliness. “Dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” Alone and uncared for! This is what she felt at that moment, and hers is not an isolated case.

Deep down in the innermost recesses of every human spirit the same thing is felt, until the truth is known that God cares. Man has lost God, and he is bound to feel alone until God is met with again. He is to be met with in the person of the One who portrayed Himself as the Good Samaritan. “A certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.” The underlying truth here is that God is ever seeking man, and seeking him in order to help. For it is as true that God has lost man as it is that man has lost God. Man without God! It is an anomaly, since God made man and gave him all his powers, moral as well as physical. Try as he will, man cannot get on without his Maker, any more than he can get on without his fellow-man. Martha’s utterance therefore expresses the truth, however much we may try to disguise it. A feeling of loneliness and neglect will steal over us some time or other, and it is just this feeling of loneliness and neglect that is the fruitful source of all care. Life is too great for us alone, its strain too severe, its demands more than we can meet, and the final issue too wonderful and far reaching for any of us unaided.

It is just this which helps us to see how marvelously the teaching of Christ fits into the existing state of things, for does not the parable present to us a picture of absolute loneliness and neglect, and introduce to our notice one who relieved both? Who could be more lonely and uncared for than the man who fell among thieves? They stripped him; they wounded him; they left him. Especially must he have felt his loneliness when others came near and, having looked on him, passed by on the other side. Yet, who could be less alone or better cared for afterwards? Taken to the inn and left in the charge of the host, nothing was to be lacking. “Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.” If only we would believe that this represents God and that He is perfectly willing to pay as much attention to everyone who will allow Him, could we have any care?

No doubt we are ready to say: It seems too good to be true. Is there One so great, so mighty, willing to take care of me? There is only one answer: He is willing and He is able. Then perhaps the question will become intensely personal: Will He do it for me? I have no claim upon such kindness. Neither had the man by the roadside any claim upon the Samaritan, except that necessity always has a claim upon love. And this is the whole point. God is now acting from Himself, according to the dictates of His own love. It is not law now, but grace, and the parable is intended to show us the difference. Under law, God demanded that which He had a right to ask for — our love. Under grace, He is showing us what we could not demand and did not deserve — His love. We did not love God with all His perfection. He is demonstrating now the fact that He can love us in spite of our imperfection. The action of the Good Samaritan was all of grace. This is how God would deal with us. How slow we are to understand it! Martha did not understand it, and consequently she was careful and troubled about many things. Within her own little sphere she thought she had to look after everything, as though there was no one at the head of affairs and no one to look after men and women. She was doing her best, but she was not at rest. She represents not a few, who, while desiring to please God and to serve Him, have not learned how great a pleasure it is for Him to serve them and that His service must precede theirs. The difference between Martha and Mary — the one cumbered, the other at rest at the feet of Jesus — was mainly the difference between the man by the roadside and the man in the inn. The man by the roadside might well have said to the priest and the Levite, “Do you not care that I am left alone?” The man in the inn could not have said so to the Samaritan. We could not imagine such a thing. We can imagine him sitting at the feet of his benefactor, looking up into his face, and perhaps wondering in his mind, Is there anything I can do for him when I become strong enough? Christ does not ask us for one bit of service until we know from personal experience how He has served us. It is a striking fact that although the wounded man had received so much kindness and was to receive more, he is not asked by his benefactor to do one single thing in return.

Have we learned the threefold lesson of this parable? Have we made the acquaintance of One who can remove our guilt, give us strength and relieve our care? In the words of the parable, “He bound up his wounds”; “he set him on his own beast”; “he brought him to an inn.” If so, shall we not have less care? God would not have us bear our cares any more than He would have us bear our sins. “Casting all your care upon Him,” He says, “for He careth for you.” Does not this one verse of Scripture meet the twofold need, that of being lonely and uncared for, expressed in Martha’s appeal, “Dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” “Casting all your care upon Him” — this meets the loneliness — “for He careth for you” — this meets the care. We have Him, whoever else may go, and He cares.

“Never alone and always cared for” describes the happy condition of the man in the inn while he waited to see the face of his friend. It may be and ought to be the experience of those who wait to see His face.

The Peace Which Passes All Understanding

There is the authoritative command of God to His people not to be careful. “Be careful for nothing; but in everything 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” (Phil. 4:6-7). It is hardly necessary to explain that when God tells us to be careful for nothing, He does not mean we are to be careless. But He positively forbids us to be worried and anxious, and it becomes a sin, grieving to the Holy Spirit, when we are. This verse promises us that we may exchange all our care for His peace.

How, then, is the great blessing of this verse to become ours — the peace of God keeping our hearts and minds?

In the first place, we must accept it as a direct command from God not to be careful. And as soon as we find ourselves becoming anxious, we must say to ourselves, “This is dishonoring to God; I am disobeying Him; He has told me I am not to be anxious.” Sometimes this may seem easy, but the test lies in that word “nothing.” There are some matters about which we think it the correct and proper thing to worry. But God says there is nothing. Can we believe Him? Nothing, in heaven or earth, in the church or the world, in your private life or business life, nothing as to yourself or anybody else, even your nearest and dearest, nothing as to the past, present or future about which you are to worry. And yet we are so accustomed to do it that we live in a chronic state of worry, and we have become so accustomed to the burden that sometimes we awake with a start to find how really anxious we are getting.

Instead of worrying, we are told what we are to do: “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Tell God all about it. Have you never found relief when you could tell a friend what you were passing through? Well, God invites you to make a friend of Him. He can be better than any earthly friend, for many reasons. He is never weighted with care Himself, and our earthly friends often are; He is always at hand, and earthly friends cannot be; He is always ready to listen and can impart to us His own peace, which others cannot do. Moreover, we can tell to Him what we could not breathe into any human ear, for He says, “In everything by prayer.” The same God that made the mammoth and the mote will pay attention alike to our smallest as well as our greatest concerns.

The prayer is to be with “supplication” and “thanksgiving.” We can go again and again to God about the same thing and be as importunate as we like. At the same time, do not let us omit to mingle our thanksgivings with it all, for while there may be much to ask Him to give and take away, yet, if sufficiently observant, we shall find many blessings to count and very much demanding our praise. And this will bring us to the very verge of that marvelous blessing contained in the verse following. Here God does not promise to do what we ask, nor does He undertake to alter our circumstances, but something better is offered us, even His peace, that passes all understanding, to keep our hearts and minds. God’s own peace, this becomes ours — a thing that has never been disturbed by anything that has happened, nor can be by anything that may yet happen. What shocks and rude alarms there have been since the earliest dawn of creation — Satan’s fall, the first sin, the angels that left their own habitation, the fall of man — and yet through it all God’s peace remained unshaken. And He who could be undisturbed by all this offers to “garrison” your heart and mind, that you may be able to meet all that shall come across your own little life. Yes, He offers nothing less to the trusting and thankful heart than His own peace. It is wonderful to think of such a peace being anywhere, when around us on every hand are the traces of care, but up there in the heart of God is peace, and if it is wonderful that He has it, it is not less wonderful that He gives it. It can be imparted, and the blessed God is willing to do this, so that poor, troubled, burdened human hearts may be sharers of God’s own prerogative.

Have we tasted this peace yet? Why should we not? Why should we allow unbelief to bar the door of our hearts, with care inside and peace outside? Let us, in obedience to God, refuse to give care a place any longer — it is not the lawful tenant of our hearts — but, telling God everything, admit His peace. Then our hearts and minds will be garrisoned, because care is sure to assault us again, and this may disturb us if we become occupied with the battering ram, but it can never disturb God’s peace. Instead of being occupied with the enemy at the gate, rather let us be occupied with Christ Jesus, for it says this peace “shall keep [or garrison] your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” It is most important that we should be engaged with Him — for this reason that our care not infrequently is the consequence of some failure on our own part, and, consequently, sensitive, conscientious souls fix their eye upon their own delinquencies and become disqualified for enjoying this peace of which we are speaking. Of course, if the believer has sinned, that sin must be confessed and communion restored. We could not for a moment imagine the peace of God filling the heart of anyone who is pursuing a path of disobedience. But, on the other hand, it is to be noticed that in the verse before us it says nothing as to this peace becoming ours because of anything we have either done or not done. It is “through Christ Jesus.” Let us think of Him. He is altogether pleasing to God. He was the obedient One — obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and nothing was ever more glorifying to God. And that cross has, as it were, shut you out of God’s sight altogether as to what you have done and what you are, and left only Christ in all His perfection between you and God. And so the peace of God, which passes all understanding, reaches us through a perfect medium and does not have to find its way through our imperfections, or possibly it would be turned back long before it came to our hearts at all. Christ Himself is the living link between your heart and God’s.

By comparing what has been now said with what went before, it will be seen how we are advancing. Our first real deliverance from care is when we hear the words, “Take care of him” (Luke 10:35), and know that they are meant for us. Then we are to become possessed of a peace which passes all understanding. But there is one step more, one statement in God’s Word which completes the subject and seems to leave nothing unsaid. We refer to those words in 1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.” In this last clause is found the unfailing cure for all care.

Oh, has anyone else ever stood before you and said, “Give me your care”? Many have come, it may be, and asked for your friendship or your society or your entertainment or for some benefit, but did any want your care? No; they would not like you to bring your care into their company. “Come with a bright face,” they say; “make us happy with your sparkling wit and lively conversation.” But here is One who asks for your company in order to relieve you of your care. He does not even say, “Cast your care away,” but He invites you to cast it upon Him. Could anything be more calculated to touch us? And He says “all” your care. It is not even that He promises to help us to bear it. This word carries us infinitely beyond that. Often we try to bear our cares and ask God, as it were, to carry us and our cares. We are like the man of Ganton, of whom we read, that he was riding to market with a sack of flour, when suddenly he was filled with remorse at the weight his horse had to carry, so, without getting off, he lifted the sack upon his own back. Foolish man, to add to his own burden without lightening that of his horse! And are we any wiser when we keep the burden that we might cast upon God, and instead of riding to heaven without a featherweight of care, we go heavily laden?

Rather, let us be like another man of whom we have heard. His wife had a little business, and she was at one time anxious and disturbed because it seemed likely that someone else in the same line was about to open a shop close by. “What would become of their trade?” “What a loss it would be to them!” were the thoughts that filled her mind and often found expression in conversation with her husband. He, however, remained calm. Why should he be otherwise? Had not God told him to be careful for nothing? But, seeing his wife’s trouble, he said to her one day, “My dear, leave all the worrying to me.” “There’ll be none of it done then” was the reply.

“Casting all your care upon Him.” Do you know the One who says this? In the same epistle there is a verse that precedes the one we are considering and must precede it, too, in our own experience. It is found in 1 Peter 3:18: “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” This deals with the sin question, which must be dealt with before the care question. But the latter is not overlooked, for what we are invited to do when we are brought to God is to cast all our care upon Him. If God has laid your sins upon Christ, you may lay all your care upon God. And the reason is given why we may: “He careth for you.” Christ once suffered for your sins and bore them, and He now wants you to let Him bear your care.

Here, then, is the answer to the unbelief that thinks God allows the world to drift on and has left it to take care of itself. This is as untrue as every other lie of which Satan is the source. Those words “He careth” and that invitation to “cast all our care upon Him” come to us with the very stamp of truth. It would be fiendish to mock us with such words. Ah, mockery cannot coin such words as those. They tell their own tale, that behind them there is a heart we may well trust.

They are words, too, that appeal to all, for who does not know care? The other day, having to wait outside a West End office, we had the opportunity of watching the faces of people in a crowded London thoroughfare. Hundreds passed us, among them different classes and creeds and nationalities, but in one respect they were all alike — there was more or less of care depicted in every countenance. Their cares were not alike, yet there was one remedy for all. How many knew that they might have the peace of God, which passes all understanding? How many could look up and say, “He cares for me”?

“Seeth two angels in white” (John 20:12).

Care may press very heavily upon some because of a sense of failure in a trying and responsible post. Or there may be some secret in your life you cannot communicate to anyone — the skeleton in the cupboard. Or some great disappointment has befallen you, and you are inclined to let these blighted hopes darken the remainder of your own life and that of others. It may be you are suffering from the sin and disgrace of those near and dear to you, and truly this brings enough care to weigh down the stoutest heart. Care will often arise, too, from the thought of what might have been. This reflection will sometimes cause the bitterest pang. Let it be said at once that all regrets of this kind are useless. In many such cases it is impossible to tell what might have been the issue, even if a different course had been adopted, and even if you could tell, yet, being done, you cannot alter it. Our advice is, Get forgiveness from God or man, or both, if necessary, and make the best use of present opportunities.

Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God o’erhead.

Forgetting the things that are behind, reach forth unto those things that are before and press toward the mark.

Some people are always worrying as to whether they have done the right thing. As soon as they have acted, they begin to wish they had acted differently. Such people require to learn that it perhaps does not matter so very much after all. Let us learn to leave things with God. He can make them fit in in a wonderful way, and He makes all things work together for good to them that love Him.

There is the care, too, that arises from persecution, from opposition, or from being misunderstood. The anxiety this brings is known only to those who have passed through the ordeal. The injustice, apart from every other consideration, is sufficiently galling, and when, as is almost invariably the case, your efforts to put things right only increase your difficulties, the situation becomes well-nigh unbearable. But if you are persuaded of the justness of your cause and that God is on your side, you may safely leave your character, as well as your comfort, in His hands. He will use all to teach you many a needed lesson, to fit you for nobler ends, and at last “will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday.”

Whatever your care, remember there is one all-sufficient remedy. It is found, as we have tried to show, in first of all obeying the injunction, “Be careful for nothing,” and then accepting in their full meaning those blessed words, “Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.” Instead of being careful, we are to rejoice in the Lord, because He has control of every matter. All power is in His hands. “Be not afraid.” Twice the Lord Jesus uttered these reassuring words to His disciples and under very different circumstances: once when they were in a ship on the sea “tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary,” and once when three of His disciples were with Him on the mount surrounded by the glories of the transfiguration. What a wide field is covered by these two events! The one has to do with everything that is around you, the other with everything that is above you. Are you tossed on life’s tempestuous sea, experiencing how much there is contrary to you? Jesus says, “Be not afraid.” Is it a question of the coming glories and your fitness for them? The same voice utters the same words. You may feel that while you have become accustomed to this scene, with its troubles and trials, you are very unaccustomed to such a scene as that on Mount Tabor. But notice, the Lord Jesus was as much at home in the one as in the other, and He would make us at home. What a wondrous Person the Saviour is! He can make us feel at ease amid divine glories, and equally at ease amid all the circumstances of the path that leads to them. “Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.” If but we see Him, care will vanish. He is enough for us as to things temporal and enough for us as to things eternal (see Matthew 14 and 17).

We may well be happy with such a One to care for us. “He careth for you.” Again we ask: Have you realized that the order which was given about the man in the inn (Luke 10) — “Take care of him” — has been given about you? Let us wake up to the fact that we have Someone to care for us. Why is a babe so happy though so helpless? Because it is the best-cared-for person in the house. Its cry brings immediate aid; its wants are always attended to. Would that we were content to be the Creator’s babes! Are we anything more in the presence of the vast universe that stretches all around us and of Him who made it? Are there no arms to enfold, no hands to uplift, no bosom to shelter us? Thank God, there are for all those who become as little children.

It will assist us to rise above all our care if we are looking in the right direction. We catch the impress of what we behold. “They looked unto Him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.” During some very costly wars in which England was engaged more than a hundred years ago, it is said that while the then Prime Minister was always elated, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the contrary, was always depressed. The former looked only at the trophies of the war, the latter only at the expense.

Where are we looking? and what do we look for? Upon the answer to these two questions very much of our happiness depends. We often look for that which is bound to bring us disappointment, but if we look as Scripture directs us, we shall be more than satisfied. “Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time ... unto salvation.” “Looking for that blessed hope.” “From whence also we look for the Saviour” (Heb. 9:28; Titus 2:13; Phil. 3:20).

We wrong both God and ourselves by being anxious, in four ways at least. (1) The cares of this life choke the Word, and we become unfruitful. (2) They rob us of the peace and happiness we should otherwise enjoy. (3) The effect upon others is bad, and we lose opportunities of being useful, for how can we speak to others of God’s goodness unless we ourselves are in the conscious enjoyment of it? (4) It casts a reflection upon the character and ways of God.

Whenever, then, we are tempted to despond, let us repeat to ourselves those consoling words of the psalmist: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

And yet, though we have written so much, there are some who will put down the book resolved to hug their care as much as ever. Your case is so different from that of anyone else. It is so unique and exceptional that even God cannot meet it. Dare you turn to Him and tell Him so? Rather, see whether it is not some secret pride that leads you to carry your care, in order that you may draw attention to yourself.

Ah, how you mistake God, and what blessing you are losing! If only you would accept all that has come upon you as from Him and see that He can turn it all to good account! Over many a life God sits as a weaver at the loom. All the threads seem so tangled and to move in opposite directions, but they are all moving according to His will, because all the threads are in His hand, and He is working out a wondrous pattern. In Persia, we are told, some carpets take a hundred years to make, and they are worked in the dark so that the colors may not be affected by the light. Is not this how God works? He brings us into the dark, blotting out sometimes the very light of our earthly life or bringing black clouds across the sky. But it all has a purpose.

“The other day a gentleman was asked by an artist friend to come and see a painting just finished. Much to his surprise, he was shown into a dark room and left there. After about fifteen minutes his friend came and took him up to the studio to see the picture, which was greatly admired. Before he left, the artist said, ‘I suppose you thought it odd to be left in that dark room so long?’ ‘Yes,’ the visitor said, ‘I did.’ ‘Well,’ his friend replied, ‘I knew that if you came into my studio with the glare of the street in your eyes, you could not appreciate the fine coloring of the picture, so I left you in the dark room until the glare had worn out of your eyes.’” And God leaves us in many a dark room here below, but it is only a preparation for what is coming. One day we shall be invited “upstairs,” and we shall no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face. In the meantime, let us wait and trust.

While we do so, we may shed many tears, perhaps, but of these we need not be ashamed. Tears are the prisms into which the light of heaven often shines and becomes broken up that we may see its beauty. Mary Magdalene saw more through her tears than either of the apostles Peter and John. They went to the sepulchre, but went home again with no angelic vision. “But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.” That is what Mary saw — angels in white. Before her was the dark tomb, emptied of all she loved best, but it was just there the “angels in white” appeared. And they are always to be seen, if only we have eyes to see them — “angels in white,” filling the darkest place on earth — the sepulchre — “angels in white” where all seems most dead and desolate. Have you a grave beside which you weep, the burial-place of some loved one, or where some fond ambition or desire lies entombed? Try to see the “angels in white.” They are there, always there, if only we look for them. And your very cares may become “angels” leading you nearer to the risen Lord.

But you must be seeking Jesus, and if you see the “angels in white,” your Lord will not be far off. The moment Mary had answered their question, “she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing,” and one word from Him changed all her sorrow into joy.

What do these “angels in white” say to us? What they said to Mary: “Why weepest thou?” They bid us dry our tears. They tell us that hope is not dead, that victory is secured. The angels we refer to were sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. At either end of the mercy-seat that rested upon the ark, of old, there was a cherubim — so at either end of the sepulchre, here, there is an angel. The true ark of the covenant had passed through the waters of death, and the glorious resurrection morning had dawned. The “angels in white” put to us the question, “Why weepest thou?” and they may well do so. They tell us that for the believer judgment has been borne, the sting of death has been taken away, and the One who has done all this for us is alive again and calls us His brethren, and we can call His God our God and His Father our Father.

If we see that the cares of this life may become celestial benedictions, will they not sit more lightly upon us? The foundations of the New Jerusalem are garnished with all manner of precious stones. As precious stones have become purified by the pangs and throes of earth, may they not represent God’s answers to all the sorrows felt by His people on the homeward journey? The sorrows of earth will become the gems of glory. “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Every suffering that Christian martyrs ever bore, every sorrow rightly felt by saints of God, under the hand of their Father, is helping to produce those stones that shall ere long flash in the light of the Lord God Almighty.

If we have to shed tears now, there is a time coming when they will all be wiped away. It is said that God will do this. Will you have any to be removed by such a hand? Do not think it hard that you have to shed them now. Think of what it will be for God to wipe them away! An aged Christian once wrote, “If I had not been called to pass through this trouble and shed these tears, I should have missed the softness of the hand that wiped them away.” God has numbered the hairs of our head, and He, and no other, will wipe away our tears. Oh, the gladness of that moment, for when God has wiped them away, they will never come again! Our sins are gone forever, because He has put them away, and our tears will go too, someday, for the same reason, never to return.

Need we then be careful and troubled about many things when there is a God who bids us cast our care upon Him and tells us that He cares for us? Let us trust Him. There is a time coming when every riddle will be solved, when infidelity shall forever be a nightmare of the past, and faith shall reach its pinnacle of triumph, when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord and become one vast temple to His praise, and then the one universal note of adoring worship upon every lip will surely be this: “As for God, His way is perfect.”

O Lord, how happy should we be,
If we could cast each care on Thee,
If we from self could rest,
And feel at heart that One above,
In perfect wisdom, perfect love,
Is working for the best.

The Lord Jesus once spoke of the “cares of this life.” He knew all about them and how very real they are. One great object of His coming into the world was to teach men how to get free from those cares. He taught them by precept and example to trust God.

What are some of the “cares of this life”? There is, first of all, the care connected with its maintenance. How to make both ends meet, we may depend upon it, presses very heavily upon not a few. The husband does not know, perhaps, how long he may keep his situation. His health is failing, his income barely sufficient, and with a growing family expenses necessarily increase. Or, worse still, he is actually out of work.

Take another case. There is a widow with a number of young children dependent upon her. Work is uncertain, at the best hard, and the entire responsibility of the family devolves upon her. Is it possible under such circumstances to be free from care? We answer with unhesitating certainty, Yes. God has given us an object lesson as to this which is before our eyes every day. Christ drew our attention to it. The birds have neither storehouse nor barn, yet they sing as blithely as if all the world were theirs. How are they fed? “God feedeth them” is the divine explanation.

The prayer the Lord taught His disciples is in harmony with this: “Give us this day our daily bread.” If the kind of life indicated here is accepted, it is possible to be free from care even in the poorest circumstances.

Are we not led back once more to the lesson of Luke 10, “Take care of him”? If you are a child of God, however low down the ladder, however trodden upon and tried, however heavy the burden you are called to bear — you have to take the lesson of the Good Samaritan home to yourself and realize that God has given orders for you to be taken care of.

What does that guarantee but the very friendship of God? And if we can go to Him for all we want — no matter how great the want — we need have no care. We have said that the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to teach men to trust God. Was anyone ever so poor as He, or so tried? And remember, He had been rich. Possibly the greatest care comes not to those who have been poor and remain poor, but to those who have known better days. The lesson Christ came to teach has therefore a special application to them, for He had been rich and became poor (2 Cor. 8:9). If we wish to know how poor He became and how much He was tried, we have only to read Psalm 22. He was “a reproach of men,” “despised of the people,” laughed to scorn. Great and small, high and low were against Him. His most intimate followers forsook Him. But there was one thing that wrung His heart more than all this: He was forsaken of God when made sin for us. And yet running all through the psalm there is a tone of unshaken trust. How wonderful, amid such abandonment, to hear not a murmur escaping those lips! Never for a moment did faith waver, though He was brought into the dust of death. And it is that One who says to us, in the midst of all our cares, that not one sparrow is forgotten before God, in order to remind us that we never can be, and then He adds words which had remained unspoken since the beginning of the world by either philosopher or poet: “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?” (Luke 12:7,22-24).

We are bound, of course, to use all proper means. But it will generally be found that it is not what we can do that brings the care, but what we cannot do. And it is just here we have to trust in God, simply resting in the words, “Your Father knoweth.” “If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?” Do all you can do, but never be troubled about what you cannot do.

And then let us remember that a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses. It is astonishing, when we are put to the test, how little of real happiness depends upon things or circumstances. Christ had no money and sometimes not where to lay His head, and yet He could speak of His peace and His joy. Someone who had resided in South Africa said the happy people were the Kaffirs with only a simple hut and a blanket, and whose entire possessions would sell for 2s. 6d., and not the men who were making fortunes over diamonds and gold mines.

Ill health is often another fruitful source of care. Your very success in life may depend upon good health, and that seems denied. Or you may have others depending upon you, and you are feeling less and less equal to the strain. Perhaps few things are more trying than to feel unequal, physically and mentally, to the demands of your calling, and yet to be obliged to face them day after day. Under such circumstances everything is apt to become draped in black. All we look at is in varying shades of Indian ink. Heaven’s blue is forgotten, and cold, gray mist envelops everything. The thistledown, lighter than a feather, seems to our distorted imagination a ton weight. All this may be purely physical, and there is the physical side of getting free from care as well as the spiritual, for man is body as well as soul and spirit. To pay due attention to each is one of the great problems of life. But the very remembrance that your feeling of depression has no real cause in circumstances, but only in some transitory condition of your body, will enable you to arise and shake yourself free from it. There is one text, too, which has often been like a sheet-anchor under pressure of this kind: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the [trial] also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Another cause of care is the habit of anticipating trouble and meeting difficulties halfway. How much arises from this mischievous foreboding! It would serve a useful purpose if we kept a record for a month of things that might have happened, but which never did happen. It would turn out something like this:

1. Received letter from landlord that the house you rent is to be sold. A gentleman calls to look over it and says he thinks he will become a purchaser and, if so, would come and live in it himself. You immediately become anxious as to where you will find another house to suit you as well, and mentally you go through all the discomfort of a move.

Result, after some weeks of anxiety: House did not find a purchaser at the auction, and you are left undisturbed.

2. Your boy comes home from school with a badly bruised nose; some other boy has pushed him down. For some hours you are in great anxiety as to whether the bone is broken and his face will be disfigured for life.

Result: The bone is not broken. J — is just as good-looking as ever.

3. Your letter to a friend has not been answered. As no reply comes, your anxiety increases.

Result: The answer did come, but through an extraordinary occurrence never reached you. When found, it proved that all anxiety respecting it was pure waste of time.

4. An act is done, or a word spoken, which seems to indicate unkindness on the part of one from whom you expected better things. You spend hours in considering what it can mean and how it is to be met, and, perhaps, in smarting under a sense of gross injustice. Circumstances transpire afterwards which show that the word was never meant for you, nor had the act the significance you gave it.

Each one of us could add indefinitely to the list, and we should never exhaust the number of matters about which we trouble ourselves, and all to no purpose. Are they not occurring almost every hour? Might not many of us bear the same testimony as the man who put up on his office wall the words, “The greatest troubles of my life have been those which never came.”

Once we overheard a conversation that passed between two Christians, which we shall not easily forget. One was aged and had been prosperous, but in the decline of life misfortune overtook him through the dishonesty of another. We can see him now as he stood in the doorway, his shining face set off by an abundance of white hair. As they parted, his friend said to him, quoting from Psalm 34, “Well, remember, ‘This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.’” “Ah,” he said (and they were the last words we ever heard him utter), “He has done a greater thing for me than that: He has delivered me from all my fears” (see the same psalm, verse 4).

Yes, it is surely a greater thing to be delivered from all our fears than saved out of all our troubles. It is those fears that cast such a dark cloud over many a life. And yet how often they are groundless fears! But if trouble actually does come and the trial is upon us, then let us remember the words of the psalm already quoted: “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.” He cried just as if he had fallen into some pit or was being washed out to sea. And this is just how we must cry to God in our trouble.

In this connection there are three verses we might do well to keep in mind.

“What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.”

“I will trust and not be afraid.”

“Trust in Him at all times.”

In regard to anticipating troubles, we once visited an old Christian suffering from a wasting disease, who expected, in the ordinary course of things, to last some three or four months longer and gradually to grow weaker and weaker until life ebbed away. This was a great trial to him, for he was a widower, living in the house of his daughter, a widow, and he seemed hardly able to bear the thought of the burden that his prolonged illness and consequent helplessness would be to her. Seeing his trouble, we knelt down and asked God that His child might be spared the many days of weariness that seemed to be between him and his longed-for release. The answer came more promptly than either of us could have expected. Instead of three months of weary waiting, there remained not three hours. We saw him at twelve. At two o’clock the same day his spirit was absent from the body and present with the Lord. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. 6:34). Here is our warrant for living, as someone has said, within the compass of twenty-four hours. And this is one secret of how to be free from care.

“Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me” (Psa. 50:15).

It has been said that man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. So then we may be quite sure a text such as this appeals to a great many. It presents to us four points, each of which is worthy of consideration. First, “The day of trouble.” Second, what we are to do in it: “Call upon Me.” Third, what God will do in answer to our call: “I will deliver thee.” Fourth, the end God has in view: “Thou shalt glorify Me.”

Let us notice, first, how comprehensive is the statement, “The day of trouble.” It is not any particular trouble that is mentioned. This is a great comfort, for if any special kind had been referred to, it might not have been ours. Troubles are so varied, and the thing that is troubling you at the present moment may be altogether unknown to others. Indeed, someone may be reading these lines who is ready to say, “Surely no one else has endured what I am now called to pass through.” Even so, the text applies in your case, for does it not say, “The day of trouble,” without specifying what may be its nature? “Call upon Me in the day of trouble.”

There is the trouble of ill health. How many wish they had never seen this day! Time was when they could go where they would and do what they would. Like Peter, “Thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest.” But now all that is changed. Nights of pain and days of weariness are a matter of constant experience. It is the day of trouble. Lately we called to see one who, though once a very strong man, injured his spine and is paralyzed. He frequently suffers intense pain and for years has been confined to bed. This verse has been his comfort: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” Often it is said by those similarly placed that they cannot understand why God leaves them here. This is the explanation: “Thou shalt glorify Me.” No one can preach such a powerful sermon as a bedridden saint. Without uttering a word, he or she may be a living sermon on patience, fortitude and joy in the midst of suffering, setting forth the way in which the grace of Christ can enable them to endure. How is it to be done? “Call upon Me ... I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” Not deliver thee perhaps from the infirmity, but a greater deliverance — from being under the power of it.

Some time ago, in the neighborhood in which we live, a man who owned a motorcycle with sidecar took his wife out into the country on the weekly half holiday. On the road they were run into by a heavy motor lorry, and his leg was smashed so badly that when taken to the hospital the doctors said they had seen nothing like it since the war. But he was a Christian, and lying in bed he preached his sermon. His peace and quietness, his happy face, told their tale.

But there are other troubles — troubles which arise from poverty, or loss of property, or, what is far worse, some loved one; trouble in connection with business and a thousand other things; trouble brought upon ourselves by our own failure, or what is even a darker trouble sometimes, through the sin and failure of others. Thank God, it is all included in “the day of trouble”—the anxious parent solicitous about the welfare of a child; the individual who finds life a long-continued struggle; the tempted, the tried, the down-trodden and the oppressed are all referred to here: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.”

But we surely need not enlarge upon this. “The day of trouble” is familiar to most of us in some form or other; we rather need to pay attention to the precious injunction with which the verse commences, “Call upon Me.” What an immense relief to be able to speak to anyone about our trouble, and especially when that One is able to succor as well as sympathize.

It does not say how many times we are to call. Simply, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble.” A call does, however, imply earnestness. It is not, “Speak to Me.” We may sometimes speak to God as though we hardly meant what we said. But here it is more vehement: “Call upon Me,” as though we were in real earnest to make God hear. The psalmist says, “In the day when I cried, Thou answeredst me.” When a child in danger or fright calls to its parent, it does not speak as though nothing was the matter. Now while God knows everything and can hear even a whisper and read even our thoughts, yet His direction here is, “Call upon Me.” If you have called many times before and not yet been delivered, still continue calling. Deliverance will surely come in some form or other, and in the meantime the blessing to your own soul will be immense. You will learn more of God, for it says, “Call upon Me” — upon God Himself.

“I will deliver thee.” “I will,” not “I may,” not “perhaps.” It is definite, certain: “I will deliver thee.” Mark, it does not say when. We often fix a time; it must be immediately, and so we get disappointed. It does not say how. We would like deliverance brought about in a way of our own, and because it does not appear to be coming in our way, we are tempted to rebel. Nor does it say what form the deliverance will take. We have already made up our minds, perhaps, what form we would prefer, but it may be God has something better for us. Let us leave the form of the deliverance — the how and when — all to Him, resting only in the certainty of the fact, “I will deliver thee.”

There may be reasons why deliverance is delayed. God has other aims in connection with your life beside the immediate deliverance you are seeking. And He sees how He can in the end use the waiting time to achieve those ends. Lord Roberts could have relieved Mafeking weeks before he did if that had been his sole aim. But he wanted that relief to work in with and subserve his other plans, his greater plans, and so that beleaguered town had to wait many a weary week. But at last deliverance came, and it came on the very day that had been mentioned. And who can imagine the joy of the delivered? So it may be you waited, not only days and weeks, but months or even years, and you are still waiting. Sometimes you are almost tempted to think God has forgotten you, but remember that like the English commander-in-chief, God is not to be hurried. He has His eye upon the whole of your life — yea, upon eternity, and God wants everything to work in for eternity.

“There with what joy reviewing
Past conflicts, dangers, fears;
Thy hand our foes subduing,
And drying all our tears;
Our hearts with rapture burning,
The path we shall retrace,
Where now our souls are learning
The riches of Thy grace.”

May we learn then to take a larger view of life and not to be occupied too exclusively with one point. The hour of our deliverance is fixed. It may take the form of actual deliverance, or it may come in the form of such an abundance of grace that, like the Apostle Paul, we shall be enabled to take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. In either case, may we remember these words, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.”

Yes, there is more than mere deliverance in view. “Thou shalt glorify Me.” When the commander-in-chief delivered Mafeking, he not only wanted them to be saved from being any longer harassed and ill fed, but that it might serve some larger end. It is not otherwise when God effects deliverance for us. It is to come about in such a way that He shall be glorified, not only in the deliverance itself, but afterwards. How blessed! We thought ourselves almost neglected, as though God had completely withdrawn His former loving-kindness, and we seemed like so much flotsam on the ocean of time. But now deliverance has come, and we learn the amazing fact from the very lips of the One we thought had left us to drift hither and thither: “Thou shalt glorify Me.”

Can we desire anything more than this? When we discover that God is working in and through our life, is it not complete? Is the day of trouble a mistake if it leads to the glory of God? When we see the end, can we regret the way which led to that end? Not only was it not a mistake, it was a necessity. And that “day of trouble” is encircled with a threefold cord for the Christian: “Call upon Me,” “I will deliver thee” and “thou shalt glorify Me.” That threefold cord is God Himself.

The day of trouble may lead some to call upon God who have never done so before. May such learn how true it is: “In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord, and He heard me.”

Many of God’s brightest saints have known full well the meaning of “the day of trouble”: Abraham, when he had to cast out Ishmael and when called upon to offer up Isaac; Joseph, when hated by his brethren and sold to the Midianites, who took him down into Egypt, where he became a servant, “whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: until the time that his word came: the word of the Lord tried him”; Moses, when rejected and obliged to flee. But they were all delivered, and God was glorified. And it was not otherwise with David. Think of him at Ziklag on that day when he and his men found it burned with fire and their wives and children carried away. The people, too, spoke of stoning him — and this coming upon the top of all he had been suffering for years at the hands of Saul. Surely never did a mere man suffer more acute anguish than David at that moment. But we read he “encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” Yes, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” This was eminently true in his case, for he was delivered, and shortly after he ascended the throne — one day to be stoned; the next, we might say, crowned. Such are the vicissitudes of God’s people.

Reference might be made to Elijah, to Paul, and many others in a similar connection, but most wonderful of all is it to think that the Lord Jesus was not exempt from “the day of trouble.” One of the most reassuring and comforting truths is this that the Son of God Himself was acquainted with grief and that He passed through a darker day than we can ever know, with unshaken trust and confidence in God. Of Him it is written, “He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” It is not the human family alone which knows what sorrow and suffering mean; God has taken His part in these in the person of His Son, and in a deeper way than any of us can know.

Can anything be sweeter to the heart that knows God than this: “Thou shalt glorify Me”? Who would have supposed “the day of trouble” could have yielded such rich fruit? There are many men, and women too, on earth today who would not be what they are but for “the day of trouble.” It may seem a dark foreground to the picture, but God’s pictures have glorious backgrounds. What a cluster of jewels does this verse contain, and “the day of trouble” is like some dark stone in the center that makes the others shine brighter. “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones” (Isa. 54:1112). In this way God will be glorified.

“Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.”

It has been well said,

“We learn in suffering what we teach in song,”

and though only a very few can teach in song, yet it is true of us all that our songs are the fruit of our sufferings. The children of Israel would never have sung with such triumph on the shores of the Red Sea but for their previous experience. The furnace of affliction, the recollection of the taskmasters’ lash, tuned their voices as nothing else could. Indeed, ever since the entrance of sin into the world, nothing has been produced apart from toil and travail. The word to the woman was, “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,” and to the man, “In sorrow shalt thou eat ... all the days of thy life.” And the mystery wrapped up in that one word “sorrow” runs through all the ages and through all human experience.

It is sometimes said the angels never sing. Why this is may be difficult to explain, but as a matter of fact we are never told that they do. We read that at creation “all the sons of God shouted for joy”; at the birth of Jesus they said, “Glory to God in the highest”; in Revelation 5 it is recorded that the number of angels “was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” But only of the redeemed it says, “They sung a new song.” To account for this difference two reasons may be suggested. One is that the angels are not the subjects of redemption, and the first and last songs in Scripture are both connected with redemption. The other is that they have never had the varied experience that belongs to a redeemed sinner, and, as far as we know, they have never suffered. Of those only who have come out of great tribulation is it written that they “stand on the sea of glass ... and they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” (Rev. 15:23).

It is this varied experience which an instrument of ten strings suggests. To produce the finest music, more than one string is necessary, and if God is to have the best music from us, we must have more than one string to our instrument. Music is what God is seeking to get from us, and all His dealings, however painful, are only to make it more rich and full. Just as in an ordinary instrument there must be the bass and treble or there would not be perfect harmony, so God brings the darker shades into our life, as well as the sunshine, in order that the deeper tones may not be lacking — in other words, that there may be more strings to the instrument.

There is one string every Christian should possess—that is salvation. The first music God ever had from the children of Israel was when He had delivered them from their enemies (see Exodus 15). If anyone says, “Well, I am a Christian, but I have never sung like that,” it is because you have imperfectly understood the gospel. If you are looking at your doings and what you are and how often you fail as a Christian, it is not to be wondered at if such a song has never come from your lips. The song is all about what the Lord has done. And when you see that He has delivered you from your sins and enemies and brought you to Himself, by the work of Christ, then you will for the first time really sing to God. You will have one string to your instrument.

“One string there is of sweetest tone,
Reserved for sinners saved by grace;
’Tis sacred to one class alone,
And touched by one peculiar race.”

But God wants us to have others. He wants us to praise Him with an instrument of ten strings. At the end of Romans 4 and beginning of chapter 5 we see how we are brought to God. The past is all settled; we have peace. As to the present, we stand in the highest favor with God. As to the future, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Then the Apostle says, “Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also.” Here is a wonderful thing: to be able to glory in tribulations — to glory, or boast, in the very thing we most dislike. Well, it is these very tribulations that produce some of the finest music from the saints of God. If you have learned to glory in tribulations, you have got another string or two to your instrument, perhaps several, because tribulations are so varied. Look at Paul and Silas in prison, their backs laid open with stripes, their feet fast in the stocks, their dungeon dark and unwholesome; yet at midnight they prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. What sounds to fill such a place, and at such a time!

Do we know anything of this? Are you passing through tribulation in some form or other? It seems a rough pathway to it, perhaps, but it is that you may sing, that God may (to speak figuratively) add another string, and thus get music from you such as He has never had before. Perhaps you say, “How can I glory in tribulations? It seems so impossible.” One way is by seeing that they can benefit you as nothing else can. The Apostle does not say, “We glory in tribulations also,” without indicating the method by which it is reached. “Knowing,” he says, “that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” And another thing we notice is that these tribulations stand in direct relation with the love of God —the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. This is the climax of the passage. He knew what tribulation could do for him, and so he gloried in it. And more than that, he knew that the One who sent the tribulation loved him perfectly. These two things, the conviction that tribulations are only a blessing in disguise and that it must be so because the One who permits it all loves us, will enable the weakest saint to glory in them.

Yes, it is the “knowing” what tribulation can work and the “knowing” the love which is behind it all, that enables us to praise God. As the psalmist says, “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O most High: to show forth Thy loving-kindness in the morning, and Thy faithfulness every night, upon an instrument of ten strings.” And if God is allowing sorrow after sorrow to enter into your life, and calamities one after another to come upon you “just as if they watched and waited, scanning one another’s motions, when the first descends the others follow” — He is only adding the strings, which are really your own experience of how He has delivered you and brought you to Himself, of how He loves you, of how He makes all things work together for your good, that thus the music may become more varied and possess greater harmony.

The history of Hezekiah presents a fine instance of this very thing. The message comes to him, “Thou shalt die, and not live,” and he turned his face to the wall and wept sore. He afterwards describes his experience at this time. It seemed as though God would make an end of him. “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter,” he says. “I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward.” But at last he comes to this: “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.” It is a blessed thing when we turn to the Lord in perfect helplessness and ask Him to help us. And to what did it all lead? At the end, after all the bitter experience he describes, he is able to say, “Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption,” and again, “The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day. ... Therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord” (Isa. 38). He can speak of stringed instruments, for the simple reason that he knows God as he never knew Him before. Was it not worth the pain?

Habakkuk is another example of the same thing. He learns that though everything goes, God remains. “Although the fig tree shall not blossom ... and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength.” And he closes thus: “To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.” Very few of us, it may be, have this string — to have nothing and no one but God, and find Him all-sufficient, so that we can rejoice in the darkest day. This is a very fine string to have on the instrument: “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.”

When they brought the algum trees to King Solomon, we read that he used them for two very different purposes — to make “terraces [stairs] ... and harps and psalteries for singers” (2 Chron. 9:1011). In one case, the wood was to be trodden underfoot; in the other, it formed part of a musical instrument. There is a moral order in this as well as a lesson. The more we allow self to be trodden underfoot, the more we shall be in a state to produce music for God. Nine-tenths of our difficulties and troubles arise from the fact that in some form or other we have self before us instead of God. We are full of self-pity, or injured pride. May we be content to lie low in order that others may ascend! And if we are satisfied to be stairs, He will make us also stringed instruments.

Have you ever watched a musician and seen how he tightens the strings before commencing to play? Sometimes he turns and turns until the strings seem as though they would snap. It is to get the right tone. The musician knows what he is about. And does not God, though He may be dealing with you in much the same way and putting a great strain upon you? Yes, even though, like the Apostle, you may seem pressed out of measure, yet He knows how much we can bear. And He knows the effect the pressure will produce. The music will be all the sweeter.

The other day we watched a man making sweets. In the pot was a thermometer, and we wondered what that had to do with it. On inquiry, we learned that a certain heat was necessary, and unless that was registered the man knew his work would be marred. God wants sweetness in His saints, and so He heats the furnace. Trouble and affliction always have one of two effects: they either sour or sweeten. In the one case, the sorrow has been endured away from God; in the other, with God.

As we close this article, we are reminded that the century itself is drawing to a close. We should be insensible indeed were we unmoved by such a reflection. Neither time nor space will allow us to comment at length upon it here, but at least this question may be asked in connection with our present theme: How shall we spend the closing days of the old century and the opening of the new? Shall it be in praise? As we survey the past, with all its joys and sorrows, can we not see that God has been stringing the instruments that shall praise Him eternally? May we not begin now and say:

“Praise shall employ these tongues of ours,
Till we with all the saints above
Extol his name with nobler powers,
And see the ocean of His love;
Then while we look, and wondering gaze,
We’ll fill the heavens with endless praise.”

“As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” (Isa. 66:13).

“Blessed be God ... the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort” (2 Cor. 1:3).

In the above quotations from the Old and New Testaments, we have God presented to us in the same character, namely, as a Comforter. In the one case, it is as a mother; in the other, as a father. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” “Blessed be God ... the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.”

Our very first view of God is in the character of a mother. In that sublime opening to the Bible in which the earth is seen without form and darkness upon the face of the deep, the Spirit of God is described as moving — brooding like a mother bird — upon the face of the waters. So God still broods over many a wrecked and darkened life. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”

A mother! Does not all that is tenderest and best gather around that name? Do you not see the gentle form bending over the child, the young man, or the grown-up daughter when pain, grief or disappointment has come? What concern, what sympathy, what love blend in the voice, in every movement, in every touch! And God says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” He who made the mother — He who gave the pity and solicitude of a mother’s heart — He from whom came all that was ever found in the loveliest, tenderest, holiest mother that ever lived — He says that the comfort He will give is “as one whom his mother comforteth.” Oh! what a God! Someone has said that the heart of God is the mother of all mothers.

The words of our text are found in the prophecy of Isaiah, and they come at the very close of that wonderful evangel. What a close! God bending over the bowed form of repentant Israel — Israel His son, His firstborn. In the opening chapter, the awful sin of Israel is depicted in the most glaring colors, and no words were too strong in which to paint it, but in the end, after all the sin and the folly and the needed discipline, God has His wayward child, as it were, in His arms, and He comforts. The opening of chapter 40 begins thus: “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” And in the same chapter we learn who this God is that comforts and feeds His flock like a shepherd and gathers the lambs with His arm. “Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. ... To whom then will ye liken Me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by names by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power; not one faileth.” It is this One, and no one less, who comforts as a mother.

A Mother’s Way of Comforting

And how does a mother comfort? In three different ways at least. Her child has been disappointed, or injured, or some treasure has been lost or broken, and the mother takes the child in her arms and presses it to her heart. It may be no word is spoken. The sorrow is too deep for words, and words too poor, at present, to soothe. And so the only thing is to draw the child as close to her as she can and make it feel that the grief is understood and shared, and that while something the child had set its heart upon has been taken away, a mother’s love remains, which is better than all. And so with God. “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” He overshadows us with His presence; He makes us lean upon His arm; He allows us to find a place upon His bosom; He hides us near His heart. Here, again, no word is spoken either by Him or us. He only makes us conscious that He is near: We are in His presence, until we realize that He covers us “with His feathers, and under His wings” we can trust, and that we “lodge under the shadow of the Almighty.” When the Father ran and fell on the prodigal’s neck and kissed him (Luke 15), no word is recorded as having been spoken by him while in that attitude. It was an action which no words could enforce. It was the silence of love (see Zephaniah 3:17, margin). In the silent presence of God the heart often finds its first and deepest comfort, until at last we can exclaim, “Thou art my hiding place, Thou shalt preserve me from trouble, Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.”

“A Christian lady not long ago dreamed a dream which was not a dream, but a fact. She saw herself as surrounded with God — encircled above, beneath and all around, as with a blaze of light. Brilliance inconceivable made a pavilion for her, and while she stood in the midst of the glory, she saw all her cares and her troubles and her temptations and her sins wandering about outside the wall of light, unable to reach her. Unless that light itself should open and make a way for them, she was serenely secure, although she could see the perils which else would destroy her. Is not the Lord a wall of fire round about us, and the glory in the midst? Is it not written, ‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty’? Evil shall not come near to him who is near to God.”

Can we not say, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me”?

A Mother’s Second Way of Comforting

When the child is in a measure pacified and ready to listen, the mother has a second method of comfort. She talks to it or sings it some lullaby. Perhaps the child falls, at length, into a calm sleep and wakes up forgetting all its sorrow. This is how God comforts. Are there any more comforting words than those in the Bible? This feature, alone, gives it a superiority over every other book that was ever written. Think of David’s psalms. Think of certain passages in Paul’s epistles. Study the closing chapters of Isaiah. Have not myriads been comforted by such utterances as these? And why? Because, although they came through men, they are not of men. They are of God. Often some text of Scripture has illuminated the darkness that has shrouded the soul. Only God could speak such words. They can calm the most troubled heart, give relief to the most perplexed mind, can rouse the drooping spirit, and rally us again to the conflict with evil and adversity. To one, as he faced one of the blackest days man can know, there came, as distinctly as any human voice could have uttered them, these words: “Who turneth the shadow of death into the morning.” “Into the morning”! The beginning of a new day and of new things; the shadow of death gone with the night: a morning without clouds. Who has not had such experience? There is not a sinner under the sun that is beyond the comfort of God’s Word!

Think of some of the passages in Isaiah from chapter 40 (to which we have already referred and which opens with, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people”) and onward.

Here is one: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness” (ch. 41:10).

Here is another: “I, even I, am He that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass” (ch. 51:12).

Again: “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires” (ch. 54:11). “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.” “The Lord shall guide thee continually.”

One part of the mission of Christ is described in chapter 61:23: “To comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”

Once more: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee” (ch. 43:2).

Yes, of Him who “telleth the number of the stars” it is said, “He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.” And His method of doing it is by His Word. Is it any wonder the Apostle Paul writes, “That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope”? or that the Holy Spirit Himself should be called the Comforter?

To how many of the tried children of God have such passages as we have quoted come with peculiar sweetness and power in seasons of distress? How many could testify to the uplifting power of some text in moments of peril or in some sorrow! Yes, God comforts by His Word. Here is one instance from the personal experience of the late C. H. Spurgeon. We will give it in his own words: “Many years ago, when this great congregation first met in the Surrey Music Hall and the terrible accident occurred (through a false alarm of fire), when many persons were either killed or wounded in the panic, I did my best to hold the people together till I heard that some were dead, and then I broke down like a man stunned, and for a fortnight or so I had little reason left. I felt so broken in heart that I thought I should never be able to face a congregation again, and I went down to a friend’s house a few miles away, to be very quiet and still. I was walking around his garden, and I well remember the spot, and even the time, when this passage came to me: ‘Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour,’ and this thought came into my mind at once: ‘You are only a soldier in the great King’s army, and you may die in a ditch, but it does not matter what becomes of you as long as your King is exalted. He — He is glorious. God hath highly exalted Him! And so I just thought, ‘He is exalted; what matters it about me?’ and in a moment my reason was perfectly restored. I was as clear as possible. I went into the house, had family prayer, and came back to preach to my congregation ... restored only by having looked to Jesus and having seen that He was glorious.”

The Third Method of Comfort

A mother has a third method of comfort: She comforts by presenting some fresh object to the child: some new toy to replace the broken one, or a promise of some special treat. Does not God comfort in a similar way? “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” God comforts often by outward things, by bringing us into new circumstances, by granting us some peculiar mercy, by some special providential dealings.

We have already quoted some words of the Apostle Paul from 2 Corinthians 1, showing that he knew what it meant to be comforted of God. In chapter 7:56 of the same epistle he makes a further statement to this effect: “When we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” Here was a providential dealing on God’s part: a circumstance by which God comforted His tried and harassed servant. From an earlier statement we learn that the Apostle had gone to Troas to meet with Titus and had not seen him. “I had no rest in my spirit,” he says, “because I found not Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia.” And there, as we have seen, his flesh had no rest; “without were fightings, within were fears.” So anxious was he about the Corinthians, his spiritual children — so eager for Titus to come and bring some news as to the effect of his letter upon them — that, to use his own words, he was “troubled on every side.” But God knew all that His child was passing through, and He also knew all about His other children at Corinth, and He knew where Titus was, and the whole time, unknown to His faithful servant, He was working in such a way as to bring the fullest comfort and joy to the heart of the one so sorely cast down.

“And though His comfort stay,
His help be slowly wrought,
As though He turned away,
As though He loved thee not;
And though thou sink awhile
In darkness and in pain,
As though He would not smile
Or show thee light again:
He will not always chide,
But when the hope seems least,
If still thy faith abide,
Then shalt thou be released;
And when thy trust is proved,
The grief that harmed thee not
Shall wholly be removed,
Thy full deliverance wrought.”

Who would have thought that a man of such intellectual powers and iron purpose as the Apostle of the Gentiles needed comfort? Ah, even he could be cast down. Therefore do not be surprised if you are the same. Remember that the God of all comfort “comforteth those that are cast down.” A well-known professor once said, not long before he died, to one of his dearest friends, “What people need most is comfort.” Yes, if we could look into people’s hearts and get beneath the external indifference they often assume, that is what we should find. All their intellectual greatness and culture, all their wealth and influence, all their philosophy and activity are not enough, and the reason is that most people have feelings, and this world is a very trying world on that account. There are a few people who seem to have no feelings, and they neither want comfort nor can they give it, but most of us have feelings, and there is much that happens in this rough-and-tumble world to lacerate them. Is not God, then, the very One we need — the “God of all comfort”?

Someone who knew God in this character and what it was to trust Him once said, “During the last two years, though I have said little about them, I have had many a crevice open up before me. The ice has seemed to split asunder, and I have looked down into the blue depths. ... It is a glorious thing to have a big trouble, a great Atlantic billow, that takes you off your feet and sweeps you right out to sea and lets you sink down into the depths, into old ocean’s lowest caverns, till you get to the foundation of the mountains and there see God, and then come up again to tell what a great God He is and how graciously He delivers His people.”

Let us then carry all our cares to Him and bring away the comfort. Is there a tired, harassed, disappointed soul reading these lines? Turn to the God of all comfort. Just let Him do His blessed work. Just let the sense of His presence steal into your soul — a calm, still, mellowed light of unutterable peace. Listen for His voice: He can breathe words of comfort such as no mother ever spoke. Be on the lookout for some unexpected mercy. The God who gave Christ for your sins, who allowed His own and only Son to suffer in your stead, is He who can give you all the comfort you need just at this present moment. Bring every cause of dis-comfort and trial to Him.

“The little sharp vexations,
And the briars that catch and fret,
Why not take them to the Helper
Who never failed us yet?
“Tell Him about the heartache,
And tell Him the longing, too;
Tell Him the baffled purpose,
When we scarce know what to do;
“Then, leaving all our weakness,
With the One divinely strong,
Forget that we bore the burden,
And carry away the song.”

Yes, God knows all our trials: and more, He knows just how they affect us. He knows our feelings. He who guides the eagle in its flight and makes a way for the lightning — He also marks the sparrow’s fall and numbers the hairs of our heads and knows everything we feel and how we feel it and is able to comfort us. He knows likewise how to correct our feelings, for we often feel wrongly about things, and He uses all for our discipline and highest good. Often we have to challenge ourselves as to this — to ask ourselves, Am I feeling rightly about all this that has been allowed to happen? Do my feelings arise simply from pride or mortification, because my will has been crossed or my hopes disappointed? As someone has finely said, “What disturbs us in this world is not trouble, but our opposition to trouble. The true source of all that frets and irritates and wears away our lives is not in the external things but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things.” Oh that we could be more like the one of whom it was said, “He sold a bit of tea and staggered along the road on the hot June days afflicted with a serious malady, and he prayed as if he had a fortune of £10,000 a year and were the best-off man in the world.”

Three Kinds of Sorrow

Just as there are three kinds of comfort, so there are three special sorts of trial. (1) There is that which is known only to yourself and to God. (2) There is the trial you are able to tell to others. (3) There is the kind which everybody can see.

We find all three mentioned in Exodus 3:7, where God refers to the sufferings of His people in the land of Egypt. “I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them.”

1. Which particular form of trial is yours at the present moment? Is it one which everybody can see? Is it some serious illness? Has death come to your household, and are the blinds drawn? Or is it some commercial disaster? Well, remember this: God sees it. “He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” “I have surely seen the affliction of My people.” And is He not the same as ever? Will He not do for you what He did for His people long ago? “I am come down to deliver them.” As surely as Christ of old touched the hand of Peter’s wife’s mother and the fever left her, as certainly as He brought comfort to the bereaved home at Bethany, as effectually as He fed the hungry multitude by multiplying the loaves and fishes, so surely can He comfort you, and, if deliverance is necessary, in due time deliver you, if you trust Him.

2. There are trials which are not so patent to everybody, but we can speak of them, at all events to a select few, if to no more. What a comfort to be able to speak to God — to think He will listen and be the most attentive and sympathetic listener of all. We can surely do that which the children of Israel did in Egypt. “They cried, and their cry came up unto God.” And in due time we hear God saying to Moses, “I have heard their cry.” God was planning their deliverance long before they knew it. If they had only known what God was saying to Moses, would they not have been comforted? But we do know. Shall we not say to ourselves, then, “God has already given attention to my cry; some word of command has already gone forth for my deliverance; some special mercy will be vouchsafed, or some word is to be spoken which will tune my heart to sing His praise”?

3. But there is the third trial — that which no one sees, no one knows, and you cannot talk about, or if to some extent it can be seen and known, no one can know all that you feel about it. Is there anything to meet this? The dull aching pain at the heart, the sorrow that has gone right down deep into the very soul with a weight like lead, which nobody seems able to touch, is there any alleviation for this? Yes. There is balm in Gilead. There is a physician there. The God of all comfort says, “I know their sorrows.” He not only sees, He not only hears, He knows. How often you have sighed, when no one was near, with a sigh too deep for words. God heard; God knew even what you yourself could not express. “The children of Israel sighed by reason of their bondage.” And what was the divine answer? “I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them.” “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”

Thus we see there is not a single trial or sorrow or discouragement which does not come within the scope of God’s comfort. It is remarkable how many shades of meaning this word “comfort” contains within itself. The Hebrew and Greek words, with their roots, involve the ideas of sympathy, strengthening, refreshment, to encourage or make bold, to be near, to solace, to put in good spirits, to stand by your side and speak to you. When God is declared to be the God of all comfort, think how much it means. He enters into all your feelings, for He sighs with you; when prostrate with grief, He strengthens you; if weary with constant anxiety, He refreshes you; if you are timid, He makes you bold; if friends forsake, He Himself comes near to you; if depressed and downcast, He can solace you in your dreariness and put you in good spirits; above all, if enemies multiply, He will stand by your side and speak to you. The word “comfort” includes all this. There was one, a man of like passions with ourselves, who passed through every phase of anxiety and trial, and he never found this comfort fail him. He never found himself in a situation or in an extremity where this comfort could not reach him. Hear what he says: “The God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” And having known what it was to be comforted of God, he is able to say, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”

To Be Able to Comfort Others

Some words just quoted indicate another aspect of the subject of the utmost importance. “That we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.” Let us never forget it: God comforts us that we may comfort others. The comfort of God reaches us oftentimes through human channels. The whole comfort of the Bible reaches us, in one sense, by that means. And those inspired penmen, such as David and Isaiah and Paul, had to pass through the greatest stress and privation in order that God’s comfort might flow through them to others. Job, in his distress, found little solace from his three friends, and he at last exclaimed, “Miserable comforters are ye all.” It was because they had never passed “through the mill” themselves that they knew not how to comfort. If we know, let us not hold it back. Very often we should find our own sorrows grow less if we sought to pour the wine of consolation into the troubled heart of another.

It was the blind and brokenhearted George Matheson who wrote that hymn, “O Love that wilt not let me go.” In early manhood, when full of promise, God took away his sight, and at the same time he lost an earthly love, which perhaps affected him still more. And so he wrote, “O Love that wilt not let me go.” That hymn has comforted thousands. We mention one remarkable incident in connection with it, and then close. It happened at an English service on the continent where people had met from all quarters, either on holidays or for other reasons. We give the account in almost the identical words of an eyewitness. After speaking of the uneventful character of the first part of the service, the narrator thus proceeds: “While the minister was reading the first verse (of the above hymn — a gentleman in the audience had specially asked for it), I noticed a man of perhaps fifty change seats with the organist.

“We stood and sang:

“O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be!”

“Was the change in me or in my environment? I cannot tell. The lost chord seemed to have been found. ... The organist seemed in the third heaven. He sang and played and carried us on irresistibly. ... We reached the second verse:

“O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be!”

“I could not fail to notice the deep emotion of a lady close by, for she stood in the next pew in front. She had ceased to sing; her trembling was manifest. The music was like the sound of many waters. The third verse was reached:

“O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.”

“With a strange suddenness the lady in front fell on her knees ... and the husband bowed in prayer at his wife’s side. The sight was beautiful and there were many wet eyes near where I stood. But what of the organist? Down his furrowed face tears made their way. Bending over the keys, he poured out his very soul. Of time and space he seemed ignorant.

“When we reached the last verse, I, for one, wished blind Matheson had provided us with more. And yet we might not have been able to bear it.

“O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.”

“When the congregation rose to disperse, several went forward to thank the organist. In the group were several Americans, and one said to him, his face still bathed in tear marks, ‘We knew your wife.’ The answer was a quiet smile, followed by a quick retirement ... . Two years before, his wife lay dying. ... She had asked him to sing to her, as she entered the valley of the shadow of death, ‘O Love that wilt not let me go.’ He did so, but he had not ventured to sing it again until that memorable morning. Ah, that was a sufficient explanation; sorrow had wrought the power.”

Yes, we can only comfort others with the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25).

If we are to understand the full force of this passage and the richness of the promise it contains, we must remind ourselves of the terrible effect of a plague of locusts in the East. It will be remembered that one of the ten plagues of Egypt took this form. It is thus described in Exodus 10:14-15: “The locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they ... for they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”

In the most graphic language, the prophet Joel depicts the devastation wrought by these insects. He tells us, “The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. ... They shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks. ... They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining” (Joel 2:3-10).

Other descriptions tell us that they come as “thick as snowflakes, darkening the sky, the rustling of whose wings is as the sound of a broad river. Their ceaselessly moving jaws make a noise comparable to a spreading flame or to chariots in battle, and in a few hours cornfields are reduced to bare stalks or even to stubble. Two hundred thousand millions of them were destroyed at one time in Cyprus alone.”

Yet, in the face of this terrible scourge, and in the presence of bare fields and ruined harvest, God says, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.” Does not the extent of the calamity only make the promise more wonderful and more welcome?

May we not derive some comfort from this promise for ourselves, even though living in a country where this spoiler is a stranger? Are there not locusts of another sort? In other words, are not human lives often laid bare — does there not come, from one cause or another, what seems often like irreparable loss? Years of sorrow, sickness or some form of suffering, when life seems stripped of all that it once promised us; barren patches, produced by our own failure or the failure of others; a wilderness stretching across our life, which the memory can never recall without a pang or a shudder? If our experience is anything akin to this, is there not a wonderful comfort contained in the promise, “I will restore the years that the locust hath eaten”?

Sorrow

1. Some sorrow may have darkened your life. Just as we have seen that the sun and moon and stars may be darkened by a swarm of locusts, so it seems as if the sun would never shine again for you — at least, not in the same way as before. But God can make you forget that you were ever sad. “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.” Have you not been nursing your sorrow and brooding over it, instead of seeing that out of the eater may come forth meat, and that even tribulation may become a thing to glory in and produce hope instead of despair, when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart?

Your sorrow may be caused by disappointment in someone you love. The locusts have come up upon your married life. The field from which you expected such a rich harvest of happiness is almost bare. You look back, perhaps, over years of emptiness, years devoid of that which you coveted most. You expected to be made much of, you anticipated that every attention would be paid to your wishes, you hoped that everything would be laid at your feet, and you thought of all you would give in return. But the locusts have come, and they seem to have left very little. Can you trust God to restore these years? Will you not take this promise home to your own heart and count upon the One who made it?

Or the sorrow may be over a son or daughter. He promised so well. There was a time when he obeyed your will and sought to please you. He had gifts, but they have been squandered. He has spent his all, but has not yet returned to you. You are silent about him now. Once you loved to talk of him. But think of what God can do: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”

Financial Trouble

2. You may have met with misfortune in financial matters. In temporal affairs life seems to be something of a desert compared with what it was. The locusts have left little of those luxuries and comforts you once thought essential to your happiness. You have moved to a smaller house, been compelled to abolish your carriage and dismiss some of your servants. Not only this, but some of your friends have vanished with these appurtenances. They only hung on to your fine house and carriage, and while they professed to love you, when in possession of these, they somehow have forgotten your existence now. All this is very painful. Where are you to turn? To Him whom you may have been inclined to forget in your prosperity, but who has never forgotten you. And if He does not see fit to give you back these earthly possessions you once prized so much and have lost, He can in a higher and better way “restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.” He wants you to understand how very, very small a part of real happiness depends upon external things, for the world can never, never give peace; the more people possess of it the more anxiety they often have, and He wants you to possess that which He alone is able to give — “the peace which passeth all understanding” — that peace of which Christ spoke when He said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

Bereavement

3. “The years that the locust hath eaten.” Is it through bereavement in your case? Is it husband, wife, son or daughter, lover or friend who has been taken from you? Whoever it may be, you feel that life is dreary; it has lost its zest; things fail to interest you as once they did. You think of what the locusts have eaten. Can God restore these years? Some reading these lines may remember the story, told by Washington Irving in his sketchbook, of a young Irish girl whose lover was an Irish patriot who, during the troubles in Ireland, was tried, condemned and executed on a charge of treason. From this blow the young woman never recovered. “The most delicate and cherishing attentions,” we are told, “were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief and wean her from the tragic story of her love. But it was all in vain. There are some strokes of calamity which scathe and scorch the soul — which penetrate to the vital seat of happiness — and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. Nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow but hopeless decline, and at length sank into the grave, the victim of a broken heart.”

Such is the sad account. How true it is, “The sorrow of this world worketh death.” How differently it might have turned out had there been anyone near to lead her to the true source of peace and rest. She needed an object greater and better and more satisfying than the one she had lost. This God alone can supply. But this He has supplied — it is Christ. The One who promises rest to those who come to Him, who has said, “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life,” and whose words to a once empty-hearted woman still remain to do for us what they did for her: “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.” If He is once known, however sore the heart may be, it can be solaced; however broken, it can be healed; however empty, it can be filled. He knows, alas! the poor human heart may refuse this comfort, may prefer the human object and what appeals to nature, and may pine and die under the loss it has sustained, preferring to nurse its grief, but this, after all, if called by its right name, is only another form of human depravity, for it makes the creature an object superior to the Creator. But this does not alter the fact that Christ is enough, though everything else be taken from us. He is worthy of our heart’s affections, and He can entwine them around Himself, if only the heart is willing, even though these affections may have been nipped and blasted. To refuse to be comforted may be as sinful as open rebellion against the providence of God. It supposes that He is not enough.

Probably few men suffered more from bereavement than Jacob. And yet Jacob’s last days were his best days. The years that the locust had eaten were restored to him. He not only once more looked upon Joseph, but he was a witness of his glory. He stood before Pharaoh and blessed him. And when we come across him among the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, the one record of him is connected with these last days: “By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.” A blesser and a worshipper! All the vicissitudes, the trials, the bereavements past, the pilgrim, who has encountered so many bitter experiences, is yet happy. He knows God and his heart overflows with gratitude and praise. How convincing that God can restore the years that the locust has eaten!

Away From God

4. “The years that the locust hath eaten” sometimes take another form. They are years spent away from God in the pursuit of worldly pleasure and self-gratification. How empty it leaves the heart, especially if Christ has been once known. The wail of Naomi on her return from the land of Moab has often gone up since: “I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.” Yes, the novel and the newspaper are no substitutes for the Bible; the play and the dance cannot replace communion with God; the friendship of the world is a poor exchange for the companionship of Christ. Yet how many have tried it. Professing Christians have virtually given up their profession and launched out on an unknown sea, without chart or compass. Is it any wonder the fields are bare? Is it any wonder there are years that the locust has eaten?

God allowed the locusts to come as a judgment upon His people of old when they had departed from Him. Has He had to deal like that with you because of your waywardness and wandering? Naomi had to confess, “The Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me” (Ruth 1:21). Yet God restored the years for Naomi! The last chapter of Ruth tells us that when Obed is born, the women declare, “There is a son born to Naomi,” “for thy daughter-in-law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.”

“A lady was spending the summer in Switzerland. One day, as she climbed the mountainside, she came to a shepherd’s fold. There sat the shepherd. Around him lay his flock. Near at hand, on a pile of straw, lay a single sheep. It seemed to be in suffering. Scanning it closely, the lady saw that its leg was broken. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked. To her amazement, the shepherd answered, ‘Madam, I broke that sheep’s leg.’

“A look of pain swept over the visitor’s face. Seeing it, the shepherd went on: ‘Madam, of all the sheep in my flock, this one was most wayward. It never would obey my voice. It never would follow in the pathway in which I was leading the flock. It wandered to the verge of many a perilous cliff and dizzy abyss. And not only was it disobedient itself, but it was ever leading the other sheep of my flock astray. I had before had experience with sheep of this kind. So I broke its leg. The first day I went to it with food it tried to bite me. I let it lie alone for a couple of days. Then I went back to it. And now, it not only took the food, but licked my hand and showed every sign of submission and even affection. And now let me tell you something. When this sheep is well, as it soon will be, it will be the model sheep of my flock. No sheep will hear my voice so quickly. None will follow so closely at my side. Instead of leading its mates astray, it will now be an example and a guide for the wayward ones, leading them with itself, in the path of obedience to my call.”

Has God been dealing with you in a way somewhat similar to the shepherd with his sheep? It is because He loved you. That is why He would not leave you alone. He missed your face. He wants again to enjoy your company. And so He broke the link that was binding you to the world and its frivolities. And now, if you will only be true to Him and trust Him, He can restore the years that the locust has eaten. You will never know, perhaps, how He preserved you in your wanderings—how He followed you, though you had refused to follow Him. Those years spent away from Him and out of communion have been wasted years. Your soul was neglected and remained unnourished; spiritual joys were unknown to you; your energies were not spent in His service; your whole life received an impress of the vain world for which you lived. You lived and moved and had your being, not for God, or even for the highest part of you, but for your lower self. Happy indeed if you are beginning to find this out, if your eye is resting now upon a brighter object and you are beginning to say:

“Jesus, Thou art enough
The mind and heart to fill.”

St. Augustine

St. Augustine could look back upon the years that the locust had eaten. But how wonderfully God restored them to him. “He wrote one hundred and eighteen books, sermons, letters, tracts, notes on different parts of the Bible, and they have all been bound together in twenty immense volumes. He had not always been holy. When he became a young man, he fell into open and abominable sin, and he also turned away from the true faith. ... His mother, Monica, never ceased to pray for him. ... As for Augustine himself, he always hoped that some day or other he should repent, and he used to pray, ‘Lord, make me holy, but not now.’” How good of God not to take him at his word, and to be better to him than he ever imagined. One day, after hearing of some of the saints of earlier times, he rose from his chair and went into the garden in great agony of mind and threw himself on the ground. While in this position, “he heard a sweet voice as of a child that cried, ‘Take up and read! take up and read!’ He looked around and saw a copy of Paul’s epistles lying on the grass. He took up the book and opened at this verse: ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.’ From this moment he was changed, and then he thought it would be for the glory of God if he gave a history of his former life.” “Thus he speaks of himself: ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘to call to remembrance my past vileness and the corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. I do this for the love of Thy love, calling to mind my most evil ways, that, when I feel the bitterness of my own sin, then I may also feel how sweet Thou art.’”

Thus God made the sinner into a saint. Is there anyone reading these lines who has had the first part of Augustine’s experience — a life wasted with sin? Specters gaunt and grim rise up to greet you as you review the past. He who restored the years for St. Augustine can do this for you. The same God lives still. Even if sins as thick as locusts have disfigured your past life, He can restore the years that the locust has eaten. And thus it will not be with you as it was with Lord Byron, who wrote at the close of his days:

“My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker and the grief
Are mine alone.”

Finally, how few there are into whose life the locusts have not come at some time or other. You may have had to spend years in pain and weariness, a burden to yourself and to others. Or constant failure may have dogged your efforts as to some pursuit in life in which you have striven for success. Your expenditure of toil and, it may be, of treasure has brought you no reward. Or you may be one who has to look back over years of doubt and barren speculation. You cast off your first faith, and since then you have followed one “will o’ the wisp” after another only to find yourself in deeper darkness. One view after another has had to be abandoned, and there is nothing left for it now except an utter blank or a return to simple faith in the Bible and to a refuge in the atoning work of Christ. How cruelly the locusts of unbelief have wasted the years — years of useless thought in which you have wandered in a hopeless maze, where you have arrived at nothing and, indeed, are less assured of anything than when you set out. In all these cases, and others too numerous to mention, the promise holds good, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”

Do not ask, Can God do it? or even, How will He do it? Trust Him. At a supreme moment for the nearest followers of Christ, when He was about to be put to death and everything seemed to be giving way beneath their feet, the word He gave to them was, “Have faith in God.” The restoration of the years may not necessarily mean restoration of the thing you have lost or been deprived of, though it may. But in any case it will mean something more — some added and larger blessing. The context, in the passage we have quoted from, implies this. Here is the description of the restoration of the years for Israel: “Ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you.”

God seldom, if ever, restores in the exact form what has been lost, whether such loss has occurred through our unfaithfulness or because He has seen fit to lay it upon us. He always bestows something better. He will never restore the Eden that was. He will make the whole earth an Eden — “the desert shall blossom as the rose.” And so in your case. You must leave the manner of the restoration of the years to Him. The way to ensure it is the important matter, and that is indicated in this same second chapter of Joel. “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to Me with all your heart ... and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him.” “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”

One word in conclusion. We do not attempt here to adjust the balance between grace and truth. What has been said may raise in some minds the old question: Shall we do evil that good may come? May we not waste the years if God will restore them? Such questions suggest their own answer for those who know anything of having wasted the years, either for themselves or others, and of God’s restoring mercy. They would never advise anyone to try it. There surely never lived a farmer who would invite the locusts to come, with the thought of obtaining a better harvest after. We only desire to fix your attention upon one of the most precious of all the promises, that, however the locusts may have robbed us, whether through our own fault or through the fault of others, God can do for people now, if they repent, what He will do for Israel in a future day when they repent: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”

How many years? We are not told. Only this: “I will restore ... the years.” If not in time, yet eternity will be long enough.

“As it is written, for Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Rom. 8:36-37).

What is it to be “more than conquerors”? A mere conqueror is sometimes little better off than the vanquished, and a victory is often only next-door to defeat. France and Britain were said to have conquered in the late war, but certainly they were not more than conquerors, for they have both suffered and are still suffering to such an extent that they are but little better off than the vanquished. To be more than conquerors is not only that no enemy can do you harm, but it means you come out of the conflict a complete gainer in every way. In the passage before us the Apostle enumerates the worst of ills (ch. 8:35). He even speaks of being killed all the day long, and yet he can say, “In all these things we are more than conquerors.” Apparent defeat and disaster can be turned to our advantage through Him that loves us.

An American admiral said once, “I have fought in many engagements and been victorious in all, but I have one more enemy to encounter, and I know that when we meet I shall be defeated.” The enemy he meant was death. This is not being more than conqueror, to be defeated at last. The Apostle Paul, facing even death itself — as he faced it often — yea, speaking as one who was “killed all the day long,” could exclaim, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Through time and eternity, he knew of no enemy that could vanquish him, and he knew that out of all his tribulations he would emerge the gainer. “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment,” he could say, “worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

To what does he attribute his final and complete victory? Not to his own courage or determination or wisdom or strength — not even to his own faithfulness or holiness — though these were necessary — but to “Him that [has] loved us.” He traces it all to one source, and that source is the love of God.

Nor does the Apostle speak in the singular number, for this is a victory that properly belongs to all the redeemed. The writer is speaking from the height of God’s purpose, and of each and all, who are called according to that purpose, it may be said, as truly as was predicted of Gad, “He shall overcome at the last” (Gen. 49:19), though on the way we may, on occasion, as he was, be overcome.

How are we to reconcile the thought of a God of love with pain and suffering? Human life is full of tragedy, and the sight of it awakens in some minds very perplexing thoughts. Would it not have been greater love for God to have spared His creatures so much suffering? In other words, why did not God prevent the fall? If we think, for a moment, of the kind of creature God wanted and that He made, we shall see at once the irrelevancy of all such questions. To have made it impossible for man to fall would have made it impossible for man to be a man. The fall testifies as much to man’s greatness, as it does to the disastrous consequences of his offense.

What we want to show is that God, in His love, is seeking to turn man’s failure to good account and that even the woeful consequences of evil can be made to subserve the highest ends. The Bible never shirks this question. Some fourteen times over in this chapter, in a few verses, is suffering referred to, until almost every word in the English language that indicates some form of suffering is brought into requisition, yet, strange to say, no chapter has more to say about God’s love. The glow of love is upon it, and the climax is a very paean of exultant praise in honor of it. Love survives every ordeal and every challenge. Even the mystery of pain cannot deprive us of it.

The Bible then assumes that there is no contradiction between infinite love and a groaning creation. The two are brought face to face and are found side by side in the same passage. For this reason the chapter before us has an intense interest for that numerous throng of men and women who today are called to suffer so much anguish of body or mind, and it brings them a message of surpassing comfort. God’s love can make us “more than conquerors.”

Winning Our Spurs

A simple story from history may help to illustrate the meaning of the difficulties of life and show us why we are left to wrestle with such antagonistic forces. At the battle of Crecy, the Black Prince, who was leading the van of the English army, was very hard pressed and in danger of being worsted. Some knights rode off to his father, King Edward III, who stood on a neighboring hill watching the conflict, to ask for help. The king refused. “No,” said he, “let the young man win his spurs.” The young man did win his spurs, and with more credit to himself than if he had received the succor that was asked. God wants us to “win our spurs,” and this is why we are exposed to so much trial. If in this life there were no conflicts, nothing to overcome, no dangers to be encountered, no trials to endure, and no sorrows to feel, how could we ever become “more than conquerors”? God does not spare us these experiences, but He uses them all to produce some good effect. We might have expected to read that, because God loved us, we should be spared the calamities mentioned in verse 35 of our chapter and that no tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword should ever come nigh us. It is not so recorded, but instead we have a whole catalog of ills, to which even the believer is liable. How can we explain the mystery? God loves us too well and too wisely to shelter us from every adverse wind. We are allowed to feel the bitter blast of adversity or the numbing sense of loss or the blank caused by bereavement — we are allowed to groan and travail in pain — that in the possession of a love that is never more ours than then, we may be conquerors. God’s love arms us against every enemy and every calamity.

God’s Love Most Realized in Trial

Love does not spare us even the very worst — for the greatest ills that can come are enumerated in our chapter. Yet not any of them singly, nor all of them together, can separate us from the love of Christ, nor from the love of God, in Him. On the contrary, it is when we are undergoing these trials that love is at its best — nearest and sweetest. Those three Hebrew youths in Babylon were not spared the furnace, but Christ was nearer to them in that welter of fire than ever before. Could they have had His company amid luxury and ease as they had it amid scorching heat? Not only was there the miracle of deliverance, but theirs was the blessedness of companionship and communion. The furnace with Him was to be preferred to the highest station without Him. We can imagine what an ineffable calm would steal into the soul of Daniel when confronting the lions and what a sense of the divine presence he would have as he realized the restraining power that was upon them. That den of lions must have been to him a very holy of holies. Could he have had one experience without the other? Both Daniel and his companions were “more than conquerors” through Him that loved them. To have been spared the suffering would have been to lose the blessing and the triumph.

The other day we sat beside the bed of a sufferer, a Christian woman who had been on her back for forty years, practically, though occasionally able to be taken out in a bath chair, and this affliction was the result of the carelessness of a doctor who had come to her bedside from a dinner and was under the influence of liquor. Well might she have thought there was occasion to complain. Instead of a murmur, she said, as we rose to go, “If I were clever enough, I would like to write a book to tell what God has done for me.”

What shall be said of Stephen? It is true his life was taken, but heaven was never nearer to him than when made to feel all the force of the enemies’ malice. He saw not the gnashing of their teeth; he felt not the stones; his gaze was fixed upon the opened heaven and the glory of God and Jesus. In him we learn the meaning of being more than conqueror.

What God Did for Stephen

A young preacher, who afterwards became famous, once had a public discussion with a noted infidel. During the debate, the skeptic turned upon his youthful antagonist and said, “You say that your God is a God of love. What did He do for Stephen when he was being battered to death? Why didn’t He deliver him?” The preacher felt that the whole discussion turned upon his answer to this challenge. He silently lifted his heart to God and immediately there was given him this reply: “God did something better for Stephen than save him from the stones; He enabled him to pray for his murderers.” The skeptic was so impressed with the answer that he promised to come and hear the young man preach.

Just here lies the secret of God’s purpose: He is conforming us to the image of His Son. To Stephen belonged the inestimable privilege of following in the footsteps of his Master. And in enabling him to pray for his murderers, God made him more than conqueror, for it is character God is seeking to produce in His saints, and all that appertains to this groaning creation is being used to that end.

The Apostle Paul speaks of being “killed all the day long.” But he does not question the love of God because of this. He dwells upon it. He revels in it. Every tribulation brought a new discovery of it. His was no easy lot, though called to the highest service God could confer upon him.

“Even unto this present hour,” he says, “we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and labor, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day” (1 Cor. 4:11-13).

But his testimony is that the love of God never left him. Such confidence does this love give him that he challenges all things in earth and heaven, in time and eternity, in the present and the future, to separate him from it. A love that was sufficient, a love that was ever present, a love that made him independent of everything else — his riches in poverty, his strength in weakness, and his consolation in all grief and thrall — was a love that made him more than conqueror — for if death came, it was but the receding tide that would bear him out to the wide ocean beyond, with love on every side of him, beneath, around, above.

If there is so much in this world which seems to contradict the thought of God’s love, this chapter affords evidences of it that are unmistakable. It does not indeed ignore the other side. As we have already indicated, the same chapter which reveals the heights and depths of divine compassion reminds us also of “all our woe.” The Bible never disguises anything on that side. What confidence this imparts! The same Book which reveals the love never hides or minimizes the disaster or the difficulty. Yet it never encourages unbelief or despair. Do we ever realize how strong the Bible is? and as tender as it is strong? It has strength amazing. With unfaltering hand it traces the evil of the world and pictures it in all its varied manifestations and results, revealing the unalterable depravity of man, which will, finally, as far as he is concerned, plunge everything into apostasy and ruin, yet it never loses its grip of the end, and that end is as bright as God can make it.

The Evidences God Has Given of His Love

1. First, have we ever thought that if pain and suffering had not entered the world, we never could have known divine love, as we know it now? The test of love is, How much is it willing to bear for the sake of others? In that incomparable chapter on love (1 Cor. 13), the first thing to be said about it is, “[Love] suffereth long and is kind.” Had there been no pain and no suffering to endure, then love would have lacked an opportunity to display itself. Let us never forget that pain, and pain alone, made it possible for God fully to reveal Himself. Christ felt pain — He groaned — He suffered agony —He shed tears. Weariness, want and woe were His portion. Had no such things existed, what losers had we been! We never could have known Him as we know Him now.

2. Although “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together,” and “even we ourselves groan within ourselves,” yet we are assured that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” Estranged from Him, at enmity with Him, full of doubt and questioning, nothing works together for good, but in subjection to Him, accepting what He says as true, trusting Him, “all things work together for good.” What can love do more than achieve for us the highest and the best? “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” If we have learned the meaning of that and love Him in return, then we may believe that through everything, however dark and disappointing, however contrary to our wills things may turn out, our good is God’s constant aim. It is in a chapter which mentions the greatest ills that tells us all things work together for our good.

3. Another evidence of the love of God is the purpose He has formed concerning those who believe. That purpose is to conform us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29). This is what God has before Him, and one reason why we do not always appreciate His dealings, and sometimes give way to fretting, is because our aims and desires are so contrary to His. It is the image of His Son He wishes to see in us, and the being conformed to that image has a present application, as we have seen in the case of Stephen. There is a present process during which the conformation is proceeding, though it will not be perfected until the day of glory.

How God must love us, if nothing will satisfy Him short of having us like the One He loves best! Have we not here the very proof He Himself gives us? Do we ask for worldly ease and advantage as proofs? They are passing, and they are poor at the best, and they might deform our character, and so be proofs, not of love, but of the want of it. Here is the unmistakable proof: God will have us one day like His own Son, “glorified together.” All this is an infinitely higher proof of His love than worldly ease and enjoyment. Again we say, how He must love us if He wishes to see us like Christ!

4. But at the back of all, and above all, we have another evidence of that love. And it closes and completes the evidence, for what can be said after it?

“He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (ch. 8:32).

Do you ask for some proof that God really loves you? How would you have Him prove it? Would you ask Him to give you everything this world affords — friendship, fame, riches, pleasure? That would be no proof that He cared for you. It would cost Him nothing. Do you ask that He would create a new world and give it to you to be all your own? Would you believe then that He really loved you? It might not be for your real happiness, and — it would cost Him nothing! By a word He could create a thousand worlds and present them to you. But what would they cost Him? Nothing! And until we find that which has cost Him something, we have no proof of whether He loves, or of how much He loves.

Where shall we find this? Where shall we discover the final proof the heart craves? God Himself alone can disclose it. Blessed be His name, He has done so —“He that spared not His own Son.” The choicest and the best, the closest and the dearest, the object of His eternal love and pleasure, has been given. Had God said, “I would like to save; I am ready to do a great deal for My creatures, sinful as they are, but I must spare My Son all suffering; I cannot allow Him to enter that dark, sin-stained world, and die,” the final proof of His love would have been wanting. But “He that spared not His own Son” — this reveals all we need to know. God has given that which cost Him most to give. If we think of all the ills of humanity, let us think of this too — “He that spared not His own Son.” If it does not remove all the mystery, it awakens trust and enables us to wait until the shadows are all dispersed. What more can we ask for, or what more can God do than, in the Person of His own Son, take part in human life and taste its bitterness and woe and then be delivered up to death for us, even the death of the cross? That cross becomes a double revelation—it reveals, on the one hand, the awful character of sin and its fearful consequences, and, on the other hand, it makes known the love which, at infinite cost to itself, took the sin and bore the consequences and put them away.

Let us face all tribulation, distress and peril in the light of the cross and in the sure confidence that it brings. For the love of God to be so real to the soul, so powerful — for us to be so possessed by it — that all afflictions can be borne and so that no ills shall disturb our faith and patience is to leave us master of the situation, and even God’s love could do few things greater for us than to make us “more than conquerors.”

“And my soul despaireth not,
Loving God amid her woe;
Grief that wrings and tears the heart,
Only those who hate Him know;
Those who love Him still possess
Comfort in their worst distress.”

A Message to Mourners Concerning the Power and Sympathy of Christ (John 11)

“She goeth unto the grave to weep there” (John 11:31). “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

Today, how many possess a grave where they go to weep, or one which they can visit only in thought, for it lies far away in some foreign field.

A terrible catastrophe has befallen the human race. This has been intensified by the war, though always present since sin entered, and death by sin. Some try to be oblivious to these mysterious facts — sin and death, while others are bewildered and baffled. To such, the grave, with its mystery, remains unsolved and unsolvable. It keeps its dark secret — “man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.”

Yet the grave has witnessed one of the brightest and most glorious scenes ever depicted upon the canvas of human history. It has been the occasion of a revelation—a revelation of God — which should make us wonder and adore. Out of the eater has come forth meat, and out of the strong sweetness. For the shadows of death have been illuminated and the most terrible enemy overthrown. Sorrow has been turned into joy, and defeat into triumph.

The record of this is found in John 11 and is connected with the raising of Lazarus. The chapter begins, “Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.” In that town of Bethany there lived this family of three, and Jesus had often been welcomed within its circle. There, if anywhere, He had found a home, and, for this reason, we might have looked upon it, perhaps, as a charmed circle, yet within these very precincts death is allowed to enter and claim a victim, snatching away the only and beloved brother. Not only is sickness permitted — death even is permitted. Why did not Christ intervene? Why did He not come immediately when the tidings reached Him, “Behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick?” The sisters had sent to Him, and He had received their message. Yet He tarries. He purposely stays away.

Was He indifferent? This could not be, for we read, “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.” Yet He did not come, in spite of the appeal which had been made to Him. He tarries two days, and during those two days Lazarus dies. How strange are some of the ways of divine love! Things happen which seem to argue there is no divine love at all — only a blind, unfeeling force at the back of things. The heart seems to be crushed and broken beneath the seemingly ruthless blows which are allowed to fall, or it is turned into stone. Yet Jesus must have given evidence of His love, for the message sent is, “He whom Thou lovest is sick.” Christ then really loves, and how much meaning lies within this fact. Proofs of this had not been wanting in their case. Whatever shadows might now have fallen upon that home in Bethany, it had been brightened, in the past, by the presence of the Saviour, and many a word and look and act must have told its inmates that He loved them. Nor was it only Lazarus that He loved; all three, different as they were in temperament, had shared the same friendship. “Jesus loved Martha,” we read, “and her sister, and Lazarus.”

Yes, it was true, these sisters and their brother were the objects of His love, and He was about to give them a greater proof of it than ever. This is why He stayed away, and this is why the shadow of death was allowed to cross the threshold of that home, contradictory as, at first sight, it may all seem. He was about to prove, in a way never dreamed of, how much He loved them, and in a way which would leave them infinite gainers, for they were to see and know Him, as they had never seen and known Him before. A new and grander revelation of His glory was about to be given them.

But some there may be reading these lines who cannot say that they know Christ, or know anything about His love. To them God and Christ are but names which come up periodically at certain functions, but are nothing more than names with which to decorate certain occasions; they mean nothing to them personally. What are you to do in your sorrow and where are you to turn?

The story we are considering can answer all your questions and meet all your need. God has revealed Himself in Christ, and nowhere is that revelation more intimate, and nowhere is it more appealing, more commanding, or more arresting than in the incident before us. May we beg your careful attention while we seek to unfold its teaching.

Let us look at this history of the family of Bethany from three points of view, and we shall see in it (1) the love that permits sorrow, (2) the sympathy that shares the sorrow, and (3) the power that intervenes to deliver from it. Christ said to Martha, “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?”

The Love That Permits Sorrow

Sin, suffering and death were all permitted for a purpose. They are not evils over which God has no control and of which He can make no use. They are not simply destroyers of happiness — they serve a purpose. This is what we are so slow to realize. As soon as Lazarus was sick, the sisters sent at once to the Lord tidings of the circumstance, their one thought being that his pain and their distress might be removed. This is natural, and, from one point of view, it is legitimate. But we need to remember that the getting rid of the supposed evil is only one aspect of the case. Had Christ gone no further than to respond to their request, how much they and we would have missed, but He takes a wider view of the matter, and He would have us do the same.

When the message reaches the Lord, His immediate reply is not, “I will come; he must be healed without delay; he must not suffer another moment,” but, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” Are not these words worth pondering? “Not unto death” — “for the glory of God” — “that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” If Mary and Martha had heard such words and understood them, would they, later on, have expostulated with the Lord on His tardy arrival? Where they saw only death, Christ saw an opportunity to reveal Himself and, in so doing, manifest the very glory of God and thus achieve their highest blessing.

Does not this utterance of Christ show us the use God can make of a simple circumstance, and also show us that the more terrible the circumstance, the brighter the glory with which God can invest it? How little those bereaved sisters dreamed that a special manifestation of the glory of God would be forever connected with their family history! And yet this could never have been had not Jesus tarried those two days.

And so we read, “When [Jesus] had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was.” How well He knew what He would do! He was completely master of the situation. And how well God knows the meaning and the possible outcome of every circumstance of our lives! Yet appearances were all against Christ. Why this inexplicable delay, if Lazarus was sick and Jesus loved him and had power to do him good? Why abide two days still in the same place after receiving such tidings and from such a quarter? Why should those anxious sisters, watching by the bedside of their dying brother, be kept waiting, their hearts torn with anxiety, as hour after hour passes, and he seems to be slipping away. Yet Jesus comes not. There is the additional anxiety besides as to why He tarried. But there it is: Christ moves not one step in the direction of Bethany, nor does He send even a message! Oh, these divine pauses! these divine silences! How can we explain them?

Yet there is an explanation, and, in His own time and way, God will always give it. How little any of us understands His ways! The sisters could not understand why Christ delayed coming, and when He did go, the disciples expressed their wonder that He went. “The Jews of late sought to stone Thee,” they exclaim, “and goest Thou thither again?” Christ was misunderstood from both sides, but until the right time, not even love on His side or need on theirs would draw Him from His place. When the time to move had come, no stones would keep Him back!

“God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.”

Those “two days still in the same place” — can we understand them? They seem to argue that He does not care, and yet the sequel discloses that they were necessary. Let us remember them when God’s dealings with us are difficult of comprehension. Can we not imagine what passed in the minds of those two waiting, watching ones at Bethany? Surely it is not difficult to interpret their thoughts by what our own have been under conditions perhaps not unlike theirs. Have we not known these two days? We have prayed, and there has been no response. We may be still in “the same place” — the same place of difficulty or danger. Or worse still, during the waiting the blow we feared may have fallen, and we seem left to face the trial and bear it alone. At such times, how we are tempted to reproach God — to think Him hard and to say to ourselves, He might have done better for me.

Was there no lingering reproach in those words with which Christ was greeted when He at last reached Bethany, however politely phrased: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died”? Yet, had the Lord come sooner and had He done just what they wished, how much they would have missed! His glory would never have been seen, as now they were about to see it, nor would they have seen His tears. If they had not wept, He never would have wept with them. If Lazarus had not died, the power that raised him could not have been witnessed. Those words, “Jesus wept,” would never have been written for succeeding generations to draw comfort from, nor would those words have dropped from His lips, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Yes, there is a love which permits sorrow, and Christ made no mistake when He abode two days still in the same place. The delay did not indicate want of love. Rather, it was in the highest interests, not only of those immediately concerned, but of all mankind. These sisters were not called upon to endure that sorrow simply for their own sake, but that multitudes in all ages might receive a blessing. And does not the remembrance of this help us amid all that disturbs our own minds, lacerates our hearts, or causes us to bow our heads in shame. Someone may reply, But God brought the lost one back in their case, but my loss can never be made good. True, but God has other ways of blessing and comforting. The great point even with Martha and Mary was not in having their brother back. The supreme lesson, the supreme gain, was that the bringing of him back became the means of a fuller revelation of Christ, and of God. Death, sooner or later, came to that home in Bethany again and took one or another away, but death could never take away that vision of the Son of God. And it is just in that way God would make up to you for your loss. Your heart bleeds — ties the most endearing have been riven — but God waits to make real to you those words of Christ, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” Do you say, How? The answer is, By faith in Him — by expecting Him to reveal Himself to you. And if you see Christ, as He is to be seen, and know Him, as He is to be known, you will, presently, even thank God that your sorrow was permitted. “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?”

The Sympathy That Shares Sorrow

But there is not only the love that permits sorrow, there is also the sympathy that shares it. Christ does not leave us alone in our sorrow. The Son of God is glorified by the sympathy He manifests. He has allowed the sorrow in order that He may share it with you. And this sympathy in sorrow makes even sorrow sweet, and it will have the effect of drawing you wondrously near to Him. If love kept Him waiting in the same place for two days in order that Martha and Mary might have the fullest revelation of His glory, part of that glory would be manifested in becoming a partner in their grief. Ah, here is the reason why sorrow is allowed. Christ’s sympathy brings Him near and makes Him known. There is no call for His sympathy unless we have been stricken. The Jews sitting with Mary in the house, when she rose up hastily and went out, said, “She goeth unto the grave to weep there.” Little did they think that Jesus was going to the grave to weep there! He who had just spoken of Himself as “the resurrection, and the life” and had said, “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die,” and whose voice was presently to wake the dead, was about to mingle His tears with the mourners at the graveside. “Jesus wept.” Those tears were the inlets to His heart and the outlets of His glory, and they revealed a fountain of sympathy just such as mourners need — a fountain which has its rise in the heart of God Himself. And those tears elicited from the standers-by the comment, “Behold how He loved him.” Yes, there was no doubt about it now — He loved him. And they were about to witness all that that love would do.

The Jews were mistaken. Mary had not gone to the grave to weep there; she had gone to fall at the feet of Christ. And it makes all the difference whether we fall at His feet, or visit the grave alone; whether we are occupied with the One who declares Himself to be “the resurrection, and the life,” or with the darkness of death and the separation it entails.

Bereaved one, do you know Jesus as the sharer of your sorrow? He permitted death to come to that home in Bethany that we might see Him and know Him as otherwise would have been impossible. What gain is ours, and what glory is His, as He stands before us revealed in those tears! Can He be nearer than when He mingles His tears with ours and shares our inmost grief?

“We know Him as we could not know
Through heaven’s golden years;
We there shall see His glorious face,
But Mary saw His tears.”

With some, sorrow puts Christ at a distance. The other day, in one of our London parks, we overheard a lady unburdening her heart to a friend. Her conversation, which was in such loud tones as to compel others to hear (no doubt the result of her strong emotion), revealed the fact that the One who saves and sympathizes was unknown. She was relating how her husband had come back from the trenches shattered in health and a physical wreck, and then she declared in excited tones she would take poison, and with an oath upon her lips she swore she did not care what happened. What a difference it makes whether we know the Son of God, as revealed in the chapter before us, or whether we do not! The one great overshadowing loss — the tragedy of all tragedies in human life — is for Him to remain unknown — the One who loves with a love that can sympathize — a love that has all power at its command and is willing and eager to exercise it, if only we will believe.

The Power That Delivers From Sorrow

And this brings us to our third point, the love that delivers.

The state of the dead is, owing to the war, engaging the attention of men and women more than ever before. If some were only as much occupied with what may be known, and ought to be known, because revealed, as they are with speculating upon what never can be known in this life, because unrevealed, their spiritual prosperity and peace of mind would be greatly promoted.

This chapter which tells us so much, and leaves nothing to be desired, as a revelation of Christ and of God, and in close relation, too, with the very mystery of death, tells us nothing of the experiences of Lazarus as a departed spirit. Now, if we believe the records of this chapter at all, giving us as they do a revelation of wisdom, love and power beyond all human thought, are we not forced to the conclusion that had it been for our good, something would have been told us respecting the state of the departed? Here was just the occasion for such a revelation to be made — a revelation which some seem to think would surpass in value all others. One particular cult occupies itself with little else than to discover, if possible, the conditions of life beyond the grave, and they seek to receive communications from the departed. Surely the One who could call Lazarus back to life and unite spirit, soul and body once more knew what was beyond the veil and could have communicated it if He would. Yet He maintains absolute silence. Has He left it to twentieth century quacks to make good His omission? Are they doing what He might have done, but neglected to do? or are they attempting to discover what He, of set purpose, abstained from disclosing? May God’s people allow the impressive silence of Christ and of Scripture to teach them that nothing which is good for us to know, here and now, has been hidden from us. And therefore these unhallowed and unlawful attempts — to pry into unrevealed secrets of the spiritual world — are mischievous and deceptive to the last degree. Let it be carefully noted that this chapter, which reveals so much of the love of Christ and the power of Christ, maintains an absolute reserve as to the experiences of Lazarus during those four days.

The narrative centers, not on Lazarus, but on Christ, and it invites us, not to speculate upon the experiences of Lazarus during those four days of disembodiment, but to be engaged with the glory of One who could raise the dead, who is revealed to us as the Son of God, and whose power is exhibited just where man’s weakness is most felt. As He passes before us, we see divine love in every step of that wondrous progress. Love kept Him those two days still in the same place where He was, love made Him a mourner among mourners, and now it will lead Him to put forth His power to deliver. Can we believe that such love has deprived us of knowledge that would have been good for us to possess? The words of Tennyson possess only a sentimental interest:

“Where wert thou, brother, those four days?
There lives no record of reply,
Which, telling what it is to die,
Had surely added praise on praise.”

Scripture does tell us very plainly what it is to die, both as regards the believer and the unbeliever.

There were those who said, “Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?” Yes, He could have prevented it, but He will do something even greater and more glorious. How ready we are to ask with those Jews, Could not God do this or that? Yes, God could do many things, but we may be sure that what He chooses to do is most for our blessing and for His own glory.

Before the final word is spoken, which shall call Lazarus back to life, another glory of the Son of God is revealed — we are permitted to see Him in perfect communion with His Father. Here, again, He thinks of us, for He speaks in order that we may believe. In fact, all that is done here is in order that our faith may apprehend Him, for that is our blessing. To hear Him speak to God is to learn who He is. “Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” And then, having spoken to His Father, He speaks to Lazarus. He is in touch with and master of the whole spiritual domain. There is perfect communion Godward and perfect power manward. “When He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” These grave clothes are not without significance. They prove it was the same Lazarus, for the spirit had returned to the same body. And let us never forget that this resurrection of Lazarus is a pledge and proof of the coming resurrection of all Christ’s own.

What a combination of glories belong to the One here presented to our faith. And to discover Him is to find all the comfort we need, even if an open grave is beside us. Love, pity and power are here seen at their highest. He declared Himself to be the resurrection and the life, and He loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. He could call their brother from the grave, yet before doing so He would mingle His tears with theirs. He could say, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth,” and thus make Himself one with His disciples and with the sisters at Bethany, yet He is equally one with God and can say, “Father ... Thou hast heard Me.”

Again, we say, What a combination of glories, glories which tell us that He was indeed the Son of God. And as we see the love that permits sorrow, the love that made Him participate in it, and the love that led Him to put forth His power to deliver one of His own from the grasp of death, we may surely exclaim with Browning:

“To perceive Him has gained an abyss
where a dew drop was asked.”

To “perceive Him”! That is why this wondrous record has been given to us — to perceive Him and not to pry into mysteries that are hidden. How we can thank God that we perceive Him just where we most of all need to perceive Him — at the graveside and in the presence of death! Yes, there where our weakness and blindness are most felt and the power of sin and Satan are most seen, we meet the Son of God. If He had failed us there, He would practically have failed us everywhere. But it is just here He wins His most complete triumph, and we are permitted to see the very glory of God in place of the corruption and darkness of the tomb.

Christ challenges every one of us, as He challenged Martha. May we respond as she did, “Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”

“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew [margin, change] their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:29-31; read also, in connection with above, 1 Kings 18:36-39,46; 19:18).

The chapter from which the above words are taken is full of wonderful contrasts. God is presented to us in the completeness of His power and majesty, and yet in the most tender, gracious light conceivable. It is this combination which is so marvelous. He feeds “His flock like a shepherd,” and yet He “measured the waters in the hollow of His hand”; He gathers “the lambs with His arm, and [carries] them in His bosom,” yet He “weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance,” and “nations before Him are as nothing”; He “sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.” No wonder the question is raised, “To whom then will ye liken Me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.”

In the presence of such a God we are tempted to ask, What and where are we? Are we forgotten? Does He care? Does the God, of whom it is said, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by names by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power; not one faileth,” take any notice of us? It seems as if, just here, God anticipates our questionings and difficulties, and He would remove from our troubled, perplexed hearts all fear of being overlooked: “Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?”

How this reminds us that human hearts were the same centuries ago as they are today, for do not the foregoing words express often our own thoughts? “My way is hid from the Lord.” “Does God take notice of my case, and will He undertake my cause?” And, next, have we not here a further and more blessed illustration of the combination in God to which we have drawn attention, that He who marshals all the stars and ordains a path for each is equally familiar with “my way” and “my cause,” and, what is more, He is equally concerned about it.

And then, once more, we are reminded that “the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, there is no searching of His understanding,” and alongside of this we are told, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.”

It is this combination of qualities that the human heart finds so difficult to understand — how a God so immense that He fills all things, so great that He is above and beyond all things, and so powerful that He supports all things can accommodate Himself to creatures such as we? how He who has a universe to uphold and care for can concern Himself with our affairs? how a Being, who in one respect is so distant, can also be so near? It is difficult for us to comprehend One to whom great and little are alike, and to believe in a love which, while it embraces a universe, takes equal account of needs and sufferings which appear so small in comparison.

Yet such is God as He is presented to us in this chapter: complete in power and majesty and in possession of every attribute of which the human mind can conceive, and yet mindful of His creatures and actually making Himself the servant of their needs. His resources are endless, yet they are placed at our disposal. His promise is:

“They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

The reader will notice on reference to the margin of his Bible that the word “change” occurs as an alternative rendering of the Hebrew word translated in the text renew. The word “change,” we believe, represents the true meaning of the passage and suggests different kinds of strength: strength to “mount up with wings as eagles,” strength to “run, and not be weary,” and strength to “walk, and not faint.”

We have here a threefold experience of the Christian life — mounting up, running and walking. And the strength required for each is obtained by waiting upon the Lord. How much seems implied in that word “wait.” It means prayer, but it means more. There seems to be the added thought of waiting in order to receive something. Our Lord told His disciples to tarry in the city of Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high (Luke 24). Do we thus wait upon the Lord? tarrying in His presence — to learn His mind, to hear His message, or to receive His strength? “They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength.”

“Mount up With Wings As Eagles”

And this in order, first of all, to “mount up with wings as eagles.” God teaches His children to fly before they can walk. Man learns first to walk, next to run, and has only learned to fly very late in his career. The order is completely reversed in the passage we are considering. The reason for this will become plain, we trust, as we proceed.

Mounting up with wings suggests that the higher we rise, the wider the prospect. As you have climbed some high hill, have you not noticed how the prospect widens? Almost every few steps in the ascent opens to your view some feature of the landscape you had not noticed before — the distant and the near lie extended as a map at your feet. That which had never been seen before becomes distinct and clear.

So God would have His children mount up with wings as eagles, in order that they may survey the prospect and the vast extent of their blessings that lies open to view. As eagles! No bird flies higher. It soars aloft with unfaltering flight and with unflinching eye, gazing, it is said, upon the glorious orb of day itself. Have we risen yet on eagle’s wings? Have we taken in the full prospect of our blessing? Have we comprehended the divine purpose? God said of His people of old, “I have borne you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.”

In order to illustrate what we mean, we invite your attention to Romans 5. Five times it will be noticed in verses 920 the expression “much more” occurs.

“Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (vs. 9).

“Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (vs. 10).

“Much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many” (vs. 15).

“Much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ” (vs. 17).

“Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord” (vss. 20-21).

Now, is it not easy to see that throughout these verses we are steadily advancing — mounting up with wings as eagles? To begin with, not only are we justified by His blood, but we are saved from wrath through Him. Not only Christ’s work, but His very Person is between us and wrath. God’s judgment can no more overtake the truly penitent and believing soul than it can overtake Christ! And it is of incalculable benefit to see this, not only because of the additional assurance it gives, but because it occupies the soul with the Saviour and not merely with His salvation.

Take the next instance — how much more shall we be “saved by His life.” By Christ’s one act on the cross we are reconciled to God. He once and forever bore the judgment due to us and thus removed out of God’s sight all that was so obnoxious to Him, in order that through Christ’s finished work we might become pleasing to Him. That is what Christ’s death accomplished. But there is “much more” — how “much more being reconciled we shall be saved by His life.” That is, the One who died for us and, once for all, reconciled us now lives for us, and by His intercession He saves us all the way through. And as the result of this service which is ever going on, we have a present, daily salvation.

Verse 15 carries us still further; we are mounting higher all the time. Our attention is fixed upon the “one Man, Jesus Christ.” God’s grace to us is according to His estimate of Him. As linked with Adam, death was our portion, but we are now associated with another Man, the Head of a new race, One who is altogether what God requires, and the blessing grace bestows is commensurate with this fact.

And what is that blessing? Life. Verse 17 tells us we “shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” Verse 18 declares it to be “justification of life,” while verse 21 calls it “eternal life.” Christ the Head of a new race administers eternal life to all who are His. Each member shares the life and status of the Head. Thus we have mounted up until this illimitable life is in prospect, stretching before us and touching God’s own eternity. For who shall attempt to define or describe what eternal life is? Christ is eternal life. It is His own life and involves His own relationship with God: a life of holiness, joy and blessedness. “That eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.”

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the prospect seems to widen still further, for we are mounting higher. We look into heaven itself and learn that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places; we are permitted to gaze upon the vast inheritance which is ours, which includes nothing less than all things in heaven and earth, gathered together in one in Christ —“in whom also,” we are told, “we have obtained an inheritance” (ch. 1:3,10-11). Then in chapter 3, we have the full extent of it — the breadth and length and depth and height of all the glory that is Christ’s, in which the church will have her part, love filling all until we reach the very “fullness of God” (vss. 18-21). God’s revelation of Himself is complete, and all is seen to be perfect in love and power and glory. We have reached both the summit and the limit, which is nothing short of God’s own fullness.

Have we taken in this prospect? Have we mounted up with wings as eagles? The power for this — the capacity for it — comes from waiting upon the Lord. God would have us survey all that is ours in Christ. Before we have done this, we cannot respond to His demands or meet His requirements. The reason why so many who call themselves Christians find so little satisfaction in their Christianity — the reason their Christian life is so weak and so worldly — is because they are not in the enjoyment of what grace has bestowed upon them. They have no strength to fly, but simply flutter just above the surface of the ground. May some who read these lines come to understand that before God asks them to live the Christian life, before He demands any service, before, indeed, He expects anything from us, He asks us to wait upon Him, in order that we may receive strength to mount up with wings as eagles to survey the salvation that is ours through our Lord’s past sacrifice and present help, and then, further, to take in all that is ours in Christ in the purpose of God, one day to be actually possessed and enjoyed — but realized now by faith and by the power of His Spirit — and which is all ours as a free gift and as the fruit of what Christ suffered for us on the cross!

“Run, and Not Be Weary”

We now come to the second experience described in our text: “They that wait upon the Lord ... shall run, and not be weary.”

It is important to discern both the distinction and the connection between mounting up with wings as eagles and what it means to “run, and not be weary.” Running implies a closer touch with this present scene and our actual surroundings. It is the effort to get through to reach a certain end. But we should know nothing of that end and certainly have no desire to reach it except, first of all, we “mount up with wings as eagles.”

Apart from the first experience, the second would be impossible. When a person runs, he usually has some object before him. And herein lies the connection between mounting up and running. In mounting up we apprehend the true goal of the Christian calling, and this gives both the desire and the energy to run the race set before us. How necessary then to mount up —for the renewed spirit to soar, so to speak, into its own domain and breathe its native air! It is this that starts us on the race.

The Apostle Paul was a runner. Hear his description of himself as he writes to his beloved Philippians:

“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (ch. 3:12-14).

He had mounted up on eagle’s wings and apprehended the purpose for which Christ had laid hold of him. That was the prize and the mark. All that which God had purposed for him in Christ was the goal towards which he hastened. And he exhorts all Christians to be runners. “Wherefore,” he says, “seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the beginner and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:12, margin).

He seems to indicate two possible hindrances. First, we are exhorted to “lay aside every weight.” A runner, who is in earnest, divests himself of every encumbrance. His one object is the race and to reach the goal. But what weights we are often content to carry in the heavenly race, sometimes even adding to their number, failing to realize that things which are not sinful in themselves may yet prove weights and hindrances. The good things of this life need not necessarily prove a hindrance. It is a question of the affections — of where our treasure is — of knowing that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15). Would that we regarded everything more from the point of view of whether it will be a help or a hindrance in the heavenly race!

The fact is that the whole scene through which we are passing is characterized by sin, and it besets us on every side, just as water does a swimmer. And exactly as he must make his way through this foreign element or else he will sink, so we must ever keep in mind those words of the prophet Micah, “Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted” (ch. 2:10).

What need, then, is there to wait upon the Lord? “They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength ... they shall run, and not be weary.” Has not many a one grown weary in the race? Heaven was more in their thoughts when they were first converted than now. They have settled down and given up the race. This may be due either to want of waiting upon the Lord or to neglect of the admonition to lay aside every weight, or it may be due to both. In any case, the cure is to mount up on wings as eagles. Thus we should breathe a purer atmosphere and the heart would become attached to a fairer prospect. This is an experience which needs to be constantly renewed—indeed, if we are to be in spiritual health, it must be enjoyed continually. Thus invigorated, progress would be sure and constant.

“Walk, and Not Faint”

We now reach the last phase — “they shall walk, and not faint.” This is by no means easy. Indeed, it is more difficult to walk than either to fly or to run. To go slow is sometimes harder and tries us more than to go fast. There is not the exhilaration which attaches to flying and running, for walking may mean monotony, and monotony may become a grievous burden.

Some years ago, an editor of a very popular weekly religious journal invited his readers to confide to him what they considered to be their greatest trial in life. To his surprise, he discovered that to a very large number the monotony of life was their heaviest burden. As one correspondent put it, “I rise every morning at the same hour, I catch the same train, I see the same faces, I do the same work, and I return home at the same time.” This may not be felt in a similar degree today, but there must be still a great many people to whom life is very monotonous. They may sometimes feel ready to faint. Here is the remedy: “They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength” — fresh strength shall be given day by day — it shall be as regular as the duties are regular — and the promise is, “They shall walk, and not faint.”

Walking seems to connect us more with “the daily round, the common task” — the everyday life of household duties and business routine, and it has to do with the matters that are nearest to us — our earthly life, with its responsibilities and relationships and in connection with which there is sometimes a sameness which grows tedious, and we are tested almost beyond endurance. Just here the promise of our text meets us: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; ... they shall walk, and not faint.”

We referred at the beginning to certain passages in 1 Kings which bring under our notice three incidents in the life of Elijah. And we did so for this reason, that we believe they illustrate the very experiences we have been dwelling upon. Elijah on Mount Carmel mounts up, as it were, with eagle’s wings. He is carried beyond himself. He sees only God and God’s purpose concerning His people. He builds the altar of twelve stones, “according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob,” and he remembers those words spoken by Jehovah long before: “Israel shall be thy name.” He rears the “altar in the name of Jehovah.” For the moment, he seems to forget all the failure and the apostasy, and he remembers only the truth as it concerns God and His people. In answer to his prayer, the fire of the Lord descends, the sacrifice is consumed, the prophets of Baal are slain, and the hearts of the people are turned back again. We can only stand amazed at the sight of one man accomplishing so much. The secret of it all is that for many days he had been waiting in secret upon the Lord, first by the brook Cherith and afterwards in the widow’s house, and thus he had received strength to mount up with wings as eagles.

Next, we see that he can run and not be weary. “The hand of the Lord was on Elijah; and he girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel.” This was an exercise of strength of another kind, but he proves equal to the emergency. Is it not wonderful to think that, whatever be the demands we have to meet and however heavy our responsibilities, if the hand of the Lord is only upon us, we can, in the language of the Apostle Paul, “do all things through Christ who gives us strength”?

Daniel describes something of this when he beheld that great vision beside the river Hiddekel. “There remained no strength in me,” he says, “and behold, an hand touched me.” “Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me.”

Nor was the Apostle John’s experience in Patmos otherwise. “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not.” And this experience which was Elijah’s and Daniel’s and John’s may be ours. “They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength.” However weak we may be in ourselves, if His hand of power is laid upon us, if only we become conscious of His touch, we shall be strengthened.

But there was a third experience through which Elijah was to pass. He is called upon to walk and not faint.

“Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.”

Is this the same man whom we have seen on the mountaintop victorious over the hosts of Baal, confronted by 450 priests and a nation halting between two opinions, and yet unafraid and triumphant over all his opponents?

What has wrought the change, and wrought it so quickly? It seems but a moment ago he was running before Ahab. Now he is in the wilderness sitting dispirited and alone under a juniper tree.

No doubt a great deal was due to the force of reaction—physical, mental and spiritual, for how closely these composite parts of our being are allied! And who that has known anything of spiritual exaltation and triumph has not also known something of the reverse? Never are we more exposed to the assaults of the enemy or more liable to be betrayed by the inherent weakness of our own nature than after attaining some unusual spiritual elevation. And never do we need so much to wait upon the Lord for a renewal of strength as at such times. The Apostle James reminds us that Elijah was subject to like passions as we are. And we need this reminder, for many of his experiences were so extraordinary that we are in danger of forgetting it. But this fact is surely borne home upon us as we behold him now fleeing at the threat of a woman and lying dejected and well nigh despairing under the juniper tree.

As we see him in this situation, do we not see that, after all, he is very much like ourselves? On the mountaintop he is beyond us, and he outstrips us altogether as he runs before Ahab, but the man subject to fear —the man who wants to be alone — the man tired and dispirited and wishing to die: Here we may see something that reminds us that he was indeed subject to like passions as we are. The juniper tree has become, for all time, a symbol of the very mood in which we now behold him.

But the important question for us is, What will God be to him now? Will the God who upheld him in a supreme crisis in Israel’s history — who answered by fire, in response to His servant’s appeal — will He take any notice of him under the juniper tree? or will He treat with contempt such weakness as he is now exhibiting and leave him to himself? Far otherwise. The gentleness and compassion of God become manifest, and to see Him taking account of His servant’s weakness reveals Him in a wondrous light.

“As he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.” God had sent His wearied servant to sleep. In his overwrought condition, sleep was his greatest need, but it is precisely under such conditions that sleep is often wooed in vain. Are we ever astonished at the miracle of sleep? Are we ever half grateful enough for it? Sleep is of such common occurrence and in health its comings and goings are so regular —it steals upon our senses so softly, asking nothing in return — that we are apt to forget how much we owe to it and to lose sight of the miracle that accompanies so regularly our lying down. No scientific man can really explain what sleep is.

We have said that God sent His tired servant to sleep, and surely never did mother soothe her fretful child to rest with more gentleness. And if God sends him to sleep, God will also be the One to awaken him, and He does it by an angel’s touch. What must an angel’s touch be like? Someone has beautifully described their ministry thus:

“Love is God’s minister, and His own love is the model minister. From the love of God which is in them, the angels long to be our ‘ministering servants.’ They wait upon us in pure love and are not hindered from serving us because we do not appreciate their service. It is no grief to them that we do not know the kind offices which they fulfill, for the love of God is their motive, and the same love is their reward. Though we seldom think of them and never thank them, if they can only serve us, they have delight enough.”

This scene is more difficult of comprehension than that enacted on Mount Carmel, and further, to see the Eternal moving amid the shadows of time is more wonderful than to see Him amid His own splendor. To contemplate the Ruler of the universe strengthening the weak hands and confirming the feeble knees is harder to understand than that He should create a world; to know He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities moves us more than any tale of His greatness. His tenderness is more appealing than His power.

Do not such ministry and care as we see bestowed upon Elijah afford us a revelation of God which even the scene on Mount Carmel lacks? What God did for His servant in the desert, prostrated with weariness and alone, seems, in a way, more wonderful than what He did for him on Carmel. The lesson is the same here as in Isaiah 40. The God of the heavens and the stars, the God of the ocean and the land, before whom all nations are as nothing, is the same God who gives power to the faint and takes account of the need of every one of His people.

“In the desert God will teach thee,
What the God that thou hast found,
Patient, gracious, powerful, holy,
All His grace shall there abound.
“On to Canaan’s rest still wending,
E’en thy wants and woes shall bring,
Suited grace from high descending,
Thou shalt taste of mercy’s spring.
“Though thy way be long and dreary,
Eagle strength He’ll still renew:
Garments fresh and foot unweary,
Tell how God hath brought thee through.”

The words spoken to Elijah apply to us: “The journey is too great for thee.” Are any who read these lines very conscious of this at the present moment? Is your present mood a desponding one? Are you sitting under the juniper tree? Remember you have to do with the same God who ministered to Elijah:

“Though thy way be long and dreary,
Eagle strength He’ll still renew.”

It is still true:

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

And Elijah “went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.”

“O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit” (Isa. 38:16).

“By these things men live.” By what things? Was Hezekiah thinking of his royal estate or of the splendor of his reign? Did his mind dwell upon his achievements or his greatness, or upon the fact that in the early days of his career he had been successful in shaking off the yoke of the king of Assyria? Did he refer to all or any of these when he uttered the exclamation, “By these things men live”? No, it was none of these, nor was it to the pleasures and pastimes which are always available to one in his position.

To what, then, did he refer? He actually referred to that which men dread most and avoid, if they possibly can. As we read down from verse 9 to verse 14 of the above chapter, we find a condition described which, above all others, we should think undesirable. His life had been in the balance; in fact, the sentence had gone forth, “Thou shalt die, and not live.” And his misery had been great at the thought of being “deprived of the residue of his years.” Nor was it merely “pining sickness,” that which affected the body; there had been a distress of soul of the most intense description. It was as though God would make an end of him. “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter,” he says. “I did mourn as a dove.” Could there be much deeper anguish of spirit than is portrayed in such words? Yet it is to these very things he refers when he says, “By these things men live”; “in all these things is the life of my spirit.”

The relation of his experience begins with this pregnant utterance: “The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness.” “The writing!” Apart from ordinary correspondence, do we ever write unless we have been deeply moved, or, at least, do we ever write to very much purpose? Perhaps the strongest evidence as to the real nature of the exercise Hezekiah had passed through is the fact that when it was over he takes up his pen to write. It is “the writing” we do well to note, not “the message of Hezekiah.” The king, amid all the affairs of state, turns author and gives to the world for all time this fragment of autobiography. Another thing to be noted is that the writing was after he had recovered. It is only as we look back upon God’s discipline and survey it as a whole that we can understand and discern its purpose and the need for it.

All this is convincing proof as to the impression made, but it also reveals the character of the man and establishes the fact that heavy affliction, all this commotion of spirit, had left behind a peculiar and ineffaceable blessing. So definite, so real, so abiding was it, that he could tabulate the results — he could record the gain. Had he been another kind of man, he would have said when the sickness was over and the trouble had passed, “Let me forget it; let me have my fill of pleasure, until these bitter memories are wiped out and the sadness and sickness are scarcely remembered.” Instead of that, he realizes that the pain had not been without a purpose. He is assured of the recompense. The bitterness of soul he speaks of has left behind it a sweetness and a psalm — song has replaced sighing —and it is a new song, one which he had never sung in the days of his brightest prosperity. “By these things men live” — this is his refrain — “and in all these things is the life of my spirit.” For the first time he knew what it meant really to live.

Do you know anything of this experience? Have the clouds been dark with you? Has wasting sickness been yours? Have riches taken to themselves wings? Has anxiety, about one thing or another, pressed heavily upon you? Have you had to face want or woe? Has it been wave upon wave, tumult upon tumult? Above all, has God been dealing with you, until you have to say, “Day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” Is life a disappointment? Do friends fail? Are you ready to cry out, “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me”? These things are not in vain; they are not chance occurrences. They are designed, and they have a purpose. The lesson has to be learned that life is not found in externals, nor in earthly good, nor does it consist in temporal prosperity of any kind. The things by which we live are the very things we are troubled about and anxious to escape. A life of pleasure is not life at all, for “she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.”

There seems to have been a reason for Hezekiah’s sickness, in addition to that already suggested. If we turn to the history of his reign, we find that he had grievously failed. His heart had lost its trust in God. In 2 Kings 18:7 we read, “[Hezekiah] rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not.” Ahaz, his predecessor, we learn from chapter 16:79, had placed himself under tribute to the king of Assyria and confessed, “I am thy servant.” Hezekiah rebels and serves him not. But what happens in the fourteenth year? Sennacherib, king of Assyria, comes up against Judah and takes the fenced cities, and Hezekiah, instead of trusting in God, sends the following message:

“I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear. ... And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s house.”

Did this look like faith? If God had delivered him once from this foreign yoke — a yoke that was dishonoring alike to God and to His people — was He not equal to a second deliverance? Instead of expecting God to manifest His power on behalf of His people, Hezekiah seeks to buy off the king of Assyria and actually robs God of the silver found in His house and cuts off the gold from the doors of the temple in order to do so. Does it not remind us how the energy of faith may wane? and how ready we are, when such is the case, to resort to mere human expedients and to lose sight of those divine resources which are available, if only we put our trust in God?

Now this happened in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign. What is remarkable is that this is precisely the year in which Hezekiah was sick unto death. A simple calculation makes this perfectly clear. He reigned altogether twenty-nine years. From the time of his sickness until his death, we know, was fifteen years. Deduct fifteen from twenty-nine and it leaves us with fourteen. These two events, then, happened in the same year: the invasion of Sennacherib and the illness of Hezekiah.

It seems evident that Sennacherib made two invasions, and that between the two, the events and experiences of Isaiah 38 occurred, and the deliverance recorded in chapter 37 did not happen until afterward. In any case, there was an interval of some kind, and it is evident that Hezekiah’s expedient failed. The silver and the gold taken from the temple of the Lord did not suffice. God allowed Hezekiah to be stricken, and He permitted Sennacherib to press home his attack. Everything must surely have seemed very hopeless at that time. Yet, as always, our extremity is God’s opportunity. Hezekiah learns his lesson, though through very bitter experience, and, on the other hand, 185,000 of the enemy are eventually slain by the angel of the Lord. Thus God’s double promise to Hezekiah was fulfilled — the promise that He would add unto his days fifteen years, and also that contained in the words which follow: “I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city.” These gracious interventions on God’s part, along with the discipline that accompanied them, led Hezekiah to say, “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit.”

Recently, we received a letter from a bedridden child of God, who for thirty-three years has been a cripple from rheumatism and who for many years has been quite helpless. He writes of his increasing weariness and suffering, and he adds that his mother, who, for years has watched over and tended him, is now dying of cancer in the adjoining room. Such cases under various forms could be multiplied indefinitely. “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit.”

And why? How can this be? The writing of Hezekiah will explain it, for this writing, though 2,500 years old, might have been penned yesterday, so closely does it touch many of us. Suffering has not ceased with the passing of the years; rather, in some respects, it has increased. Nor, if we are truly to live, has God’s discipline become unnecessary.

As Hezekiah concludes the account of his painful experience — an experience so painful that at last he exclaims, just as if he could bear it no longer, “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me” — he puts this question to himself: “What shall I say?” Yes, what shall we say in the face of some of God’s dealings? Sometimes we are strongly tempted to break out into rebellion and, with an accusing voice, charge God with hardness or indifference. We are ready to argue our case with the Almighty as Job did and prove that the seeming penalty is undeserved or unjustly severe. “What shall I say?” The kind of answer we make to this question is of all importance. There comes an echo of this question in that great outpouring of the Apostle’s heart, as recorded in Romans 8, when he exclaims, “What shall we then say to these things?” He has been saying, “We know that all things work together for good.” And his answer to his question is: God is for us; God loves us. He falls back upon one stupendous fact: “He that spared not His own Son.” What do we say? Are we assured that the end of all is love; the aim in all, that we should have a better knowledge of it? Hezekiah reaches this conclusion, for he answers the same question in almost identical language — “Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption.” This is what he comes to see.

But before he tells us this, he has another answer to give, one of intense sweetness and reality. “He hath both spoken unto me, and Himself hath done it.” We may hear God’s voice amid the storm, or we may catch its whispers in the chamber of sickness. Does God in very deed speak to men? He does. Hezekiah knew it. Thousands and tens of thousands, both before and since his day, have had this experience likewise. It is one of the most precious experiences of the soul: awful, yet sweet. It is not only that sorrow, sickness, bereavement, blighted prospects and disappointed hopes are in themselves His voice, but it is also true, “He hath spoken unto me.” Nor can it be mistaken for another, when once that voice is recognized. At first, like young Samuel, we may fail to discern it as the Lord’s voice, but our hearts soon know it from every other. The form it may take is sometimes the words of Scripture or the lines of some spiritual song, or it may be neither of these. But whatever the form, the effect is the same. And how near it brings God. We realize that He knows our case, that He is dealing with us, and that He is at hand to help and to bless. We learn above all, as Hezekiah expresses it, that “Himself hath done it.”

Yes, it is when God enters the scene — He who has been behind all the scenes and events that, it may be, have so disturbed us — and we discover that what has happened has not been without His knowledge and that He is master of the situation and can make all work together for good — it is then, in that presence which we cannot fail to recognize, we take our shoes from off our feet and bow the head and worship.

“Midst the worlds that lean on Thee
Thou hast loving thoughts of me.”

“He hath both spoken unto me, and Himself hath done it.” And when He speaks, the heart finds rest. Resistance to the divine will ceases, the conflict is over, the restless passions of the soul subside, the storm becomes a calm and the waves thereof are still. “Himself hath done it,” and we wait for Him to explain — which the “afterward” always will explain when it yields “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.”

And Hezekiah describes this result in these words: “I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.” The present effect is that we are humbled. Henceforth we go more softly. What an apt figure of speech this is, and how well we understand it! Does it not indicate a more lowly, dependent, trustful walk with God, with less confidence in the flesh? “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” Bitterness of soul, produced by the recollection of all that has befallen us, and the need of it, alone can produce this.

But Hezekiah can lead us still further and instruct us as to what it means “to live.” “O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt Thou recover me, and make me to live.” He is going to unfold to us what it really means to live. And surely never did we need this lesson more than in this twentieth century, when the one almost universal cry is for material prosperity — less hours of work with higher wages, more pleasure and greater comfort —these are the things men are seeking on every hand today, and seeking them with both hands, as though life began and ended in the things which are tasted, seen and handled. And where all this is leading some, who once professed to know better, is told by one in the following incident:

“The whole story (of materialism) has been set in the melancholy career of Frederich Naumaun. He was once the devoted and impassioned evangelist, the preacher of the gospel of redeeming love, the teacher of the greatness of the consolations of God. His own life, enriched by his noble self-denial, was manifest in its joyous liberties. Thousands found the path by the clear flame of his holiness. But he was caught, as so many of the preachers of today are caught, by the materialism which insists on a secular well-being as the instant purpose of the preacher’s message. He slipped back into an almost prayerless worldling’s life, and at the end he was found among those who supported, by his advocacy, the most carnal and most pitiless of worldly ambitions. Like Balaam, the light of his seeing was quenched as he turned his back on the spiritual values.”

No, it is still true that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.” Hezekiah, through sickness and suffering and through bitterness of soul, had found that men live by other things than this world can offer. He learned “that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” We find that life consists in knowing God and that we only live as we live in the sense of His love. In these things is the “life of my spirit,” the only true life, for it is through the spirit we enjoy communion with God.

The writing of Hezekiah leads us to this rich and satisfying portion, for only in the love of God is true life to be found. God had, in love to his soul, delivered him from the pit of corruption. As the beams of that unmerited love — unsought for and unbought, unmeasured and unimagined — begin to enlighten and shed their warmth around us, life for the first time awakes. The heart finds its home, all the hunger of the soul is met, and every desire is satisfied. Only as we know love do we live, and the more we know of it, the more we live. “Love brings the glorious fullness in.” It puts us in touch with the very fullness of God. It is remarkable that our being filled with this fullness is linked in Ephesians 3 with the knowledge of the love of Christ.

Just what the sun is to this earth, so is the love of God to the soul. All earth’s productiveness, every harvest with its fruitfulness, all the forms and features of life it breeds and feeds are the result of the sun’s warmth. Without it this earth of ours would soon be one vast ice field, a scene of desolation and of death. Again we repeat, what the sun is to this earth, the love of God is to the soul. And surely there is no metaphor in the whole of the Scriptures more full of meaning than this: “The Lord God is a sun” (Psa. 84:11).

How Does This Love Become Known?

A process is indicated by which this consummation is reached. The secret is revealed in a very few words: “Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back.” Hezekiah speaks of this as something which God had done, and he refers to it with the utmost assurance. Here is the first step. We can only be assured of the love as we are assured of the forgiveness. The sense of the need of that forgiveness and of that divine compassion, which, at infinite cost to itself, has met the need, can alone impart to us a sense of the love. Only when God has given us His forgiveness can we be quite sure He has given us His love along with it.

And may I be sure of His forgiveness? Yes, His willingness to forgive is stamped on the very forefront of the gospel of His grace and on page after page of the inspired Word. In Luke 5 we have the account of the palsied man being brought to Jesus, and we read (vs. 20), “When He saw their faith, He said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.” And then Christ, as it were, makes this same message of forgiveness applicable to all, by declaring, “But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive sins.” “When He saw their faith.” “Faith”! This is all that is necessary—a faith which springs from a sense of sin, and true repentance toward God. Christ’s sacrifice is the alone reason, not our works or merits. Hear what Peter says: “To Him [Christ] give all the prophets witness, that through His name, whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). Hear what Paul says: “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man [Christ Jesus] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things [all sins and misdoings and omissions].” Hear what John says: “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.”

When such statements are accepted in simple, unquestioning, childlike faith, then we can say with Hezekiah, and with the same confidence and certainty with which he said it, “Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back.” God will never look upon them again. “Their sins and iniquities,” He says, “will I remember no more.” The ground and the reason for this Hezekiah does not tell us. This is the revelation of the New Testament, set forth in such words as these “Who [Christ] was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.” “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”

In learning His forgiveness and the way of it, we learn two things: God’s righteousness and God’s love. The sacrifice of Christ reveals both. Where can I see His hatred of sin more than in the fact that the death of His own Son was necessary to my forgiveness, or where is His love more fully displayed than in such a sacrifice?

But let it never be forgotten that the actual knowledge of this love came to Hezekiah through the things he suffered. His language and his thoughts — his whole estimate of things — are entirely different after his discipline from what they were before. In his misery he became aware that God was dealing with him, and he learned that it was all for his highest good. It is when He has brought us to a knowledge of ourselves that we learn how utterly He loves us — loves us because He is love, and not because of anything in us —loves us because it pleases Him to do so — and loves us enough to smite us and almost make an end of us, that He may rebuild us and fashion us according to His own liking. Ah, that is love which, fathoming all the depths and exploring all the windings of the human heart, takes the sin to itself, and making it its own, bears it and puts it all away, and leaves us convicted both of sin and weakness, yet in possession of a love which becomes the source of a new life, as well as its strength and joy forever. Have you been brought there — alone, perhaps, in your sorrow, just you and God, yet knowing that He loves you? “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit.”

Someone tells of the factory girl who said, “I think if this should be the end of all — and if all I have been born for is just to work my heart and life away in this dull place, with those millstones grinding in my ears forever, until I could scream out for them to stop and let me have a little quiet, with my mother gone and I never able to tell again how I loved her, and of all my troubles — I think if this life is the end and there is no God to wipe away all tears from all eyes, I could go mad.”

Ah, but it is not the end, and it is not all. Hezekiah’s experience may be ours. He had known what it was to mourn, for eyes to fail and heart to falter, but he can praise in the end: “The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day.” “The Lord was ready to save me.” He knew God’s salvation, and salvation always leads to singing. “Therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.” It is on this high note he ends. The climax is reached — from the pit to the house of the Lord, from distress of soul to the assurance that God loved him, and praise instead of pining sickness. Well might he say, “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt Thou recover me, and make me to live.”

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. ... Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:1, 27).

“These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

That wonderful discourse recorded for us in John 1416 begins and ends with a reference to trouble. In between, there come many references to some of the most profound truths that can occupy the human mind. Yet Christ ordained that His final utterance to His disciples ere He suffered should begin and end on the same note of comfort. This is only another instance of the perfection of all His ways. And His ways are a revelation of Himself. He knew how careworn those disciples were at that moment, He had perceived the sorrow that had captured their hearts and filled them with dread, and in His perfect love to them, and consideration, He applies the balm that would heal their wounds.

As we have suggested, this ministry of consolation reveals Himself. He reminds them of His own triumph and of the double necessity for His going away: (1) to prepare a place for them in the Father’s house, and (2) that the other Comforter might come. And the lesson we learn is just this: All comfort in affliction —in sorrow and depression and heart sickness — and all victory over it come to us through the knowledge of Him. What tragedies are constantly happening in the world for want of this knowledge! There are men and women who have nowhere to turn in their desperate need, and when the world and its pleasures fail them, they give way to despair, plunge deeper into sin, or, it may be, with their own hands, put an end to their existence.

Christ says to His own, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” And again, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Faith in Him is the great remedy. He never fails.

“Our comfort midst all grief and thrall,
Our life in death, our all in all.”

And, next, what cheer those words afford, “I have overcome.” He is greater than the world. The world had nothing to give Him. All its most tempting offers and its choicest and most coveted prizes are nothing. He turns His eyes to heaven, where He is about to receive everything from the hands of the Father, and says, “Glorify Thy Son.” It is because of this He can satisfy our poor, empty hearts. He alone is great enough to say, “Let not your heart be troubled,” and to fill the void left by the world; He alone can give peace.

Here is an account of one who had proved for himself the truth of these words of our Lord. A soldier, back from the front, gives us this interesting account of the grace of God. He says, “A short time before I was wounded, I was invited by the officers of the regiment to a supper given in honor of a soldier who had been through all the war and had done many brave deeds, but had received no reward for them. After the supper was over, one of the officers said to him, ‘You have been through all this war and have not told us a single incident in it. Now tell us what you consider the most wonderful thing you have seen in it.’ The soldier waited a minute, and then he stood up and said, ‘I was walking near my trench one day, when I saw a young soldier lying on the ground intently reading a book. I went up to him and said, “What book is that you are reading?” “My Bible,” he answered. “Oh!” I said, “I read my Bible for years, and it never did me any good; give it up, man, give it up!” He answered, “Listen to what I am reading, ‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.’” He read on to the end of the chapter. “Oh!” I said, “I have read that chapter many a time, and it never did me any good; give it up, man, give it up.” He looked at me and said, “If you knew what the Bible is to me, you would never ask me to give it up,” and, as he spoke, the light on his face was so bright, I never saw anything like it — it fairly dazzled me. I could not look at it, so I turned and walked away.

“‘Soon after, a bomb fell near the place where we had been, and when the dust had cleared away I thought I would go and see if that young soldier was safe. I found his head had been completely blown off, but I saw his Bible sticking out of his breast pocket, and here it is,’ he said, holding it up. ‘I say the most wonderful thing I have seen during the war was the light on that young soldier’s face, and, more than that, I can now say that his Saviour is my Saviour too!’”

How many there are today who need just such a word as this: “Let not your heart be troubled,” and again, “Let it not be afraid.” Some deep sorrow has come to them, or their hearts are fearful, or foes, and it may be friends are against them. Christ says, “In Me ye shall have peace.” All is allowed to drive us closer to Him. Someone has said recently, “I never see a crowded assembly of men and women but I think of the privations and disappointments, the unsatisfied hungers and unalleviated sorrows which make up their lot. How much they have suffered, how much they have lost, how frequent have been their sicknesses and bereavements, how humbling have been their defeats, how searching have been their mortifications and betrayals, how full of anxiety their outlook on life! I never sit and speak with an old man who opens out the story of his long life, but I realize again how closely sealed the book of life is to a man himself. The story told is one of hope unfulfilled, work unfinished, love baffled, trial upon trial, sorrow upon sorrow, death upon death, impoverishing and shadowing life all the way through.”

The keen blast is to drive us nearer. Many things which we thought we could ill spare may have been uprooted in the storm, but His love abides as warm and unchanging as ever, and He wants us to nestle more closely to Himself.

Once when Charles Garrett was preaching to a large congregation about the mysterious troubles that often come to the Christian man or woman, he was saying that we are not exempt from trouble, whom the Lord loves He chastens, and some converted men had more trouble after their conversion than before. He had known Christian men who were steeped in trouble — surrounded by it — trouble to the right, trouble to the left, trouble in front, trouble behind. Then an old man in the gallery, who had served God for seventy years, shouted, “Glory be to God, it’s always open at the top.”

“I love the knowledge,” wrote one, “that has come through sorrows and trials and pardoned sins of a love that has never wearied towards me and is fresher than the freshest dew of youth and mellower than the ripest tenderness of age.”

Yes, it is in the hour of some sorrow, it may be of human forsaking or of hope deferred which makes the heart sick, that that love visits us and seems to borrow sweetness from the very pangs it seeks to assuage. In such an hour these words may come: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.” In an hour of disappointment which left the heart questioning there came to one the words: “Thy love is better than wine.” They were dropped into the heart, as it were, from the very throne of light and distilled an infinite peace. The whole outlook, every feeling within and every aspect around, was changed instantly. Oh! if only we believed this more thoroughly and more constantly: “Thy love is better than wine.” Wine stands as the very symbol of earthly joy, of whatever kind, yet there is something better, and if the earthly joy is denied or removed there is this “something better” to fill its place, if only we will admit it. Do not stop short of such an experience. Even if your most cherished object has been removed and the light of your life seems to have gone out, if disappointment seems to dog your steps, your schemes to fail, and your labors to bring no reward, learn to bow your head and say, “Thy love is better than wine.”

We were told the other day of a man who had been through a lot of trouble. He waited fifteen years before he was able (for family reasons) to marry the woman he had set his affections upon. After some months of happiness together, she died in giving birth to their first child. His sister-in-law came to keep house, and one morning she was found dead in bed. One son died in the war, and another is grievously afflicted, and now he has just lost his second wife. But he wrote to someone saying how God had prepared him in such a loving, tender way for these trials, and he adds that they had been the means by which he had learned God’s gentleness. “Thy gentleness hath made me great.”

Are you troubled and afraid because of failure or sin? Christ is sufficient even in days of despair. His blood can wipe out the past. He can give peace. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” If only you are contrite and believing, He can do the rest. Do you feel your weakness? He says, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome.” Here is the testimony of one who found deliverance: “At a certain religious meeting those present were invited to testify what had been the source and secret of their best blessings. One after another bore witness, until an unknown woman rose up and spoke in a voice of pathetic passion: ‘You have told us what has blessed you most. I will tell you what has blessed me most, the shame and disgrace that followed my great sin. I was young and proud and careless; I loved pleasure only. I sinned, and I lost everything and everybody. But I gained a broken and contrite heart. The shame and the disgrace were what I needed, and I thank God they came.’ At the end of the day multitudes will confess, ‘It was good for me that I suffered; it was good that I was ashamed. Before I was afflicted, I went astray: but now have I kept Thy Word.’ Those who sit down in God’s kingdom come not only from the east and the west, but from the north and the south. His fire and hail and snow and stormy wind, not less than His sun and stars and fruitful seasons, conspire to speed the pilgrims along the road. He sends forth His angels, even the angels of agony and sorrow and remorse, who gather His elect from the four winds and compel them to come in.”

Our Lord was going away from His disciples when He uttered the words we are dwelling upon. Blank despair filled their hearts. When we consider how much He had been to them, we can easily understand how the prospect of His absence filled them with an unutterable sense of loss. Yet it was in these circumstances He uttered the words, “Let not your heart be troubled.” They were not to be afraid even in the presence of what seemed like utter desolation. And before His discourse closed, He went even as far as to say, “Be of good cheer.” Not only was He withdrawing His presence from them, but He was leaving them in the midst of a hostile world. Yet He would be even nearer to them than before and more able to help. His own Spirit would be their Teacher, Guide and Comforter.

Are you worried because of apparently conflicting duties, or because the step you feel you ought to take threatens to involve you in a sacrifice which seems too great and too heavy to bear? Listen to the following account of one who went through this experience, and “let not your heart be troubled.”

“I went one night to a nearby city to hear an address on consecration. No special message came to me from it. But as the speaker kneeled to pray, he dropped this sentence, ‘O Lord, Thou knowest we can trust the Man that died for us.’ And that was my message. I rose and walked down the street to take the train. As I walked I pondered deeply all that consecration might mean to my life, and — I was afraid. And then, above the noise and clatter of the street traffic, came to me the message, ‘You can trust the Man that died for you.’ I got into the train to ride homeward. As I rode I thought of the changes, the sacrifices and the disappointments which consecration might mean to me, and — I was afraid. And then again, above the roar of the train and the hubbub of voices came this message, ‘You can trust the Man that died for you.’ I reached home and sought my room. There upon my knees I saw my past life. I had been a Christian and a Sunday school superintendent for years, but had never definitely yielded my life to God. Yet as I thought of the darling plans which might be baffled, of the cherished hopes to be surrendered, and the chosen profession which I might be called upon to abandon — I was afraid. And then, for the last time, with a rush of convicting power, came again to my innermost heart that searching message: ‘My child, my child, you can trust the Man that died for you. If you cannot trust Him, whom can you trust?’ And that settled it for me.”

There may be someone reading these lines whose earthly prospects are blighted through ill health. Few trials can be more severe or more testing. But Christ’s words apply equally in these conditions, as the following incident will show. It is a true story of a fair but delicate girl, who had become engaged to be married:

“At first she seemed to be in good health, but anxious symptoms appeared, and gradually it became evident that there was no real recovery for her. At the first approach of danger, she naturally recoiled from the thought of death and steadfastly determined that she would recover. She refused to consent to any delay being made in the preparations for her wedding, while she strove to impress upon those around her her own rose-colored hopes of recovery. So her wedding dress was altered to suit her wasting form, and her devoted family allowed no note of alarm to reach her ears. But long before this time, she had admitted me into the deep confidence of her heart, and I remembered our mutual agreement: ‘Whichever of us is to be the one to pass away first shall be told by the other, when she knows that the time is drawing near.’ At last it became necessary to carry out this compact. It was hard to meet her smiling welcome, while being the bearer of the heavy tidings. Little was said, but she soon understood the sad purport of a few words, and she turned away her sweet face as if in displeasure. A silence followed, and in the stillness both hearts were communing with their God. Then her little white hand clasped mine, and with a few gentle tears, she said, ‘All is peace. My strong will is now on the side of the will of my God — and I know that God is love.’ Thenceforward the love of the Saviour, whom she had before known and trusted, took the first place in her heart, even above the dearest of earthly ties, and her peace was deep as a river. A little while later, passing by death as one unnoticed, seeing only the face of Him who is the resurrection and the life, she calmly fell asleep, to awake in His likeness.”

“Let not your heart be troubled.” Christ speaks such words as no one else can utter them. They apply to all who believe in Him, and they cover every circumstance. We may repeat them as good advice to those we seek to comfort and encourage, but such may turn to us and say, “You do not know all. It is impossible for anyone to know what I am feeling.” But from the lips of the One who first uttered them, these words, “Let not your heart be troubled,” and, “Be of good cheer,” come as something more than good advice —they come with authority and with full knowledge of our utmost need. From Him such words are a command, and they are a specific. They are not vain words. He is great enough to utter them, for He who utters them is Master of all situations and all circumstances, and “all things serve His might.” He who orders and controls nature and by His word stilled the stormy wind and the raging of the waves can also heal the brokenhearted and give deliverance to the captive, and He can and He does release the human spirit from its trouble and fear and inspire it with new strength and courage.

Does hope seem dead and buried? Does the outlook on life seem dreary? Have its flowers and fruits, the presence of which gave you much happiness, disappeared? Remember the words, “Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies.”

“When the ground in London was cleared of the old buildings to make the New Kingsway, it lay for a year exposed to the light and air. A strange sight drew naturalists to the ruins. In some cases the soil had not felt the touch of spring since the day when the Romans sailed up the Thames and beached upon its strand. When the sunlight poured its life upon this uncovered soil, a host of flowers sprang up. Some were unknown in England. They were plants the Romans had brought with them. Hidden away in the darkness, lying dormant under the mass of bricks and mortar, they seemed to have died. But under the new conditions, obeying the law of life, they escaped from death and blossomed into a new beauty.”

So may it be with every life, however crushed and bruised by sorrow, however blighted by sin. It needs only to be laid open to the breath of God’s Spirit, the sunshine of His love, and the healing atmosphere of His grace in Christ Jesus, and a new life, with new possibilities and new beauties, will arise, however desolate at present the scene may appear.

“Thus ever on through life we find
To trust, O Lord, is best;
Who serve Thee with a quiet mind
Find in Thy service rest;
Their outward troubles may not cease,
But this their joy will be:
‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace
Whose mind is stayed on Thee.’”

“Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?” (Luke 24:38).

This question was addressed to a few men and women assembled under very peculiar circumstances, and in the midst of a great crisis. It was no new question even then, for trouble had troubled people long before, and the same question might have been asked all down through the ages, as it can be today. But it gathers new significance from the Questioner. The fact that it is Christ who asks, “Why are ye troubled?” lends an additional importance to this ever-present and ever-pressing question.

Why are ye troubled? Might not that question be addressed to everyone at some time or other? Is it not of universal application? Scarcely is it ever an irrelevant question to any of us. The other day, a revolution occurred in Russia which overthrew the existing regime and deprived the Tsar of his power and position. When he was informed of what had happened, he is said to have thanked God. And why? It is reported that a little more than a month before, when one of his ministers commiserated him on his tired appearance, he exclaimed, “Yes, I have long been sick and tired of everything.”

“Sick and tired of everything!” And yet he was, perhaps, the wealthiest and most absolute monarch in the world, possessing so many estates that some of the houses he owns he has never slept in, and with stables full of horses he has never used!

Nor was the Tsar alone in his weariness. Many others, possessing all that this world can give, are sick and tired. The world cannot give peace; it cannot shelter us from trouble; our hearts are a prey to a disorder for which there is no panacea anywhere, except in Him who said, “In Me ye shall have peace.”

But let us change the emphasis: “Why are ye troubled?” What particular form does it take in your case? Trouble assumes some terrible forms today, and there are sufferers who think there is no relief. A mother wrote to us, the other day, with respect to the loss of her only son, a fine, promising young man, killed at the front: “Many thanks for your kind letters of sympathy and books. We have received a most terrible blow in the loss of our darling boy, and life will never be the same for us again. I suppose time will heal our wounds, but nothing anyone can say seems to bring any comfort, because it cannot bring dear _____ back to us.”

Now, Christ does not say to such, “Why are ye troubled?” as though He did not expect them to feel their loss. Those to whom He originally addressed His question, as a matter of fact, had no need to be troubled, but He knows equally well that many have abundant cause to feel almost crushed by the weight of their sorrow. Trials are of various kinds, and some go very deep. We cannot deal with all of them like those British tars, who were saved from the “Laurentic” some time ago, did with theirs. She was sunk by a mine during last winter, in extremely cold weather, and the sailors lost all their belongings, besides being exposed to extreme hardship. A relief expedition was organized, and the men were brought to a large hall. “A piano was in the room when the men arrived, and although dripping wet, hungry and cold, one of the sailors went over to the instrument and commenced to play ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.’” Now this is the world’s way, and it is one way of meeting certain troubles: to make the least of them and to smile. There is a danger sometimes of magnifying our trials through self-consciousness and self-absorption. But as we have said, there are trials which go deep and which no earthly music can charm and no smiles can alleviate. They seem fixed, tied like a heavy weight to the heart. And yet we ought, if we are believers in Christ, to be able to smile in them, and in spite of them, and not be like that English king of whom it is said that when the news came of his son having been drowned at sea, he never smiled again. That mother, from whose letter we have quoted, may indeed never find life the same again, but the reason she did not find any comfort is explained in her own words: “Nothing anyone can say can bring dear _____ back to us.” She was occupied with the loss, instead of looking to God to bring gain out of the loss. There may be others who regard their losses or bereavements from that standpoint. Things can never be what they once were, and therefore they refuse to be comforted. Is not this to look at things too exclusively from one point of view? Is a lifelong feud to be kept up between us and God? Is what He has permitted to be allowed to darken our whole life and sever us from the only source of real help? Are we thus to miss the lesson which sorrow is designed to teach and be deprived of the blessing which grief, even of such a poignant nature, can yield?

The following sweet story comes from the trenches: “A boy who had seen his brother’s body broken before his eyes,” wrote a chaplain at the front in the summer of 1915, after his brigade had been through an absolute inferno, “crept back into his dugout and fixed a little drawing on its wall. He drew a cross and a sunrise and wrote the simple inscription, ‘God is love.’” A cross and a sunrise! The cross, the symbol of love, and the sunrise behind it telling us there is no darkness to the soul that trusts, and that all will yet be well. If only we entered more into the meaning of these words: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,” we should see that the greatest sacrifice we are called on to make is small in comparison with the one He has made, and the thought that God’s heart has sorrowed and bled for us would stop the bleeding of our own and heal the wounds, however deep.

Someone has finely said:

“It is one of the great secrets in life to make friends of our infirmities. If we fight them, they are very masterful. If we accept them, they have a strange way of leading us to surprises of compensation which the Lord has hid in His marvelous mines. I wonder how much of the later and richer revelations in the letters of the Apostle Paul might be traced to his acceptance of the thorn and to his making friends with his sore infirmity.

“And as it is with infirmity, so it is with all the forms of commonplace suffering. If we fight our sorrows, they add a cubit to their stature. Our antagonism feeds them. They suck their vigor from our resentment. And as they grow bigger in our eyes, they tend to make us bitter, and bitterness has very deadly issues. Sorrow, which is resented, assumes command of everything. On the other hand, accepted sorrow sweetens everything, for the surrendered will becomes the channel of grace.

“But the acceptance must not be an act of despair, a surrender to the hands of cold and indifferent fate. It must be an act of faith, a surrender to the gracious hands of the living God. We must accept our sorrow at His hands, and when the acceptance is made, the sorrow is transfigured. ‘If this cup may not pass from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.’ ‘There appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him.’”

But there are other forms of trouble. Someone may feel outcast and alone, or the sense of having been wronged may be eating like a canker into the life. God’s Word gives us such a picture in Hagar, long ago. She was sent away and deprived of all place and interest in Abraham’s household. She wanders off, and at length the water is spent in the bottle, and “she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.” What a dreary prospect! She might well have said, Life will never be the same to me again. She was ready to think that all was over and to give herself up to despair.

But what happens? “The angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?” The same voice was speaking to her that afterwards spoke to the disciples and said, Why are ye troubled? And so it would speak now to everyone in like circumstances. Did not the very question addressed to Hagar come as a reminder that there was One who knew all about her and felt an interest in her? Yes, there is One who knows us and knows all about us, however little we may know Him. And mark how He comforts: “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand.” As much as to say, “See, he is yours still, though you thought you were to lose him.” It was an act of faith, and God always requires an act of faith before He blesses. And do not the words, “Hold him in thine hand,” carry our minds on again to that scene in the upper room? We hear the same voice and the same language there. “Handle Me and see” are the words with which the Lord comforts the downcast hearts of His disciples.

“Hold him in thine hand”: “Handle Me and see.” Is there not a lesson here? We are afraid often to look at our troubles, and they hover like specters around and over us. If we would only grasp them and look at them intently, not only might they appear less ominous, but we should see another form behind them, and we should hear a voice speaking out of the cloud, “Handle Me and see.” As those disciples did so, their trouble ceased, and their joy knew no bounds — it was Christ! They had recovered all. Why has God allowed your grief, your loneliness, your loss? That you may find Christ. That out of the gloomy shadow He may arise as a bright reality. If you are afraid of your grief, you will be its slave and live in fear of it all your days. Grasp it, look at it, hold it in your hand, and you will find God in it, and it will yield you a blessing of which you had never dreamed.

So it was with Hagar. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation,” God says to her. “Look at him. He is not going to die and disappear, as you suppose, but instead, not only shall he live, but from him shall come a multitude of others.” “Hold him in thine hand.” What a message to every troubled heart those words contain! Already to Hagar her child was as good as dead — she saw only the specter of death. As she held him in her hands and gazed with all a mother’s love upon him, how changed the spectacle; instead of the child upon whom her heart doted dying under a shrub, she sees a great nation. Instead of the loss of one, there is the gain of many.

“Ah,” you say, “that can never happen to me. My boy is dead. He is gone from me and will never come back.” Ask, then, that God will do for you what He did for that outcast, forlorn woman of whom we are thinking: “God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.” All you need is opened eyes. He who can make even the desert yield the means of refreshment and life can turn to account your great grief and make it an eternal gain.

“From vintages of sorrow are deepest joys distilled,
And the cup outstretched for healing is oft at Marah filled:
God leads to joy through weeping; to quietness through strife;
Through yielding unto conquest; through death to endless life;
Be still! He hath enrolled thee for the kingdom and the crown;
Be silent! let Him mold thee, who calleth thee His own.”

“Be silent to God and let Him mould thee” (Psa. 37:7; author’s translation). Herein lies the great secret of suffering — it has a purpose. God has a work to do in His people — He is molding them. And suffering is the furnace to purify, the sharp edge of the chisel and the blow of the hammer which are producing the fair outline which God is seeking to produce.

“The story is told of a young and struggling sculptor in Paris, who, fired with some inward vision of beauty, set forth to embody the same in clay. By the time the beautiful figure stood complete, his resources were gone, and midwinter was upon him. The nights grew colder and colder, and his attic in the roof was little better than the open air. What would happen if the frost struck in and penetrated the plaster and split into pieces all his patient labor? A new night came on, bitterer than any before, but he had no fire and could not afford one. What was he to do? It had become a choice between him and his art. Taking off his poor coat, he wrapped it closely around the ‘sole heir of his invention,’ and so he laid down on the floor by its side. The next day they found him stiff and dead. But the warmth he had foregone had saved his statue, whose life he had put before his own.”

When we see how much a man is ready to endure in order that the image he has created may be preserved, shall we not be ready to suffer, in order that God may perfect His image in us? Supposing that young sculptor, instead of acting as he did, had in a despairing or petulant mood taken a hammer and smashed his work to pieces! Yet is not this what many in their thoughtlessness are attempting to do with God’s work? “It is God which worketh in you,” we read, “to will and to do of His good pleasure,” and we rebel against His will, or think it all a mistake, and will look at nothing but the loss and the blank, instead of trying to discover the blessing. Sorrow enhances the sweetness of life and deepens its peace:

“The half of music, I have heard men say,
Is to have grieved.”

We heard, the other day, of one who had to endure the pain and the loss of having his leg amputated. He told someone, after it was all over, He had given to him such a vision of the Lord that he was almost ready, in order to have such an experience again, to go through the ordeal once more. It has been well said that “whoso suffers most has most to give.” If only we would recognize what sorrow can do for ourselves and enable us to do for others, we should rather be ready to welcome it than repine.

“Measure thy life by loss and not by gain,
Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured out;
For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice,
And whoso suffers most has most to give.”

Do not persist in looking at your trouble as a dark specter. “Hold it in thine hand,” “handle it and see,” and you will discover it is not a specter but a friend.

Why are ye troubled? Are you waiting for some deliverance, some help, which does not come? This, too, has its lesson. God’s blessings are so good that they take time to prepare. “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.” Help did not come to Hagar until the last moment. The water was spent in the bottle, the child appeared about to die, and no prospect of deliverance seemed at hand, but all this was but the preparation of the ground before God could act. He must make room for Himself or we should not see Him. We are deprived of everything in order to see that the deliverance which comes is really His work, and thus He makes Himself seen and known.

“God the strong, God the beneficent,
God ever mindful in all strife and strait,
Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,
Till at last He puts forth might and saves.”

“Why are ye troubled?” Is it the strife of tongues? Have friends turned into foes? Have the nearest forsaken you? What comfort may be derived from some of the psalms in these situations! What a promise is contained in Psalm 31:20. “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man: Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” Again, in Psalm 27, the psalmist refers to enemies coming upon him, to a host encamping against him, and to war, but his confidence is unshaken, and he says, “My heart shall not fear.” And the reason is because he is continually living in the presence of God and desires only one thing — to behold the beauty of the Lord and to dwell in His house. “In the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion: in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me.” Yes, in “all strife and strait” we may trust God for help, even though we may have to feel the deepest distress of all: “When my father and my mother forsake me.” Will God fail us then? No. “Then the Lord will take me up” (vs. 10).

Are you troubled because people have failed you, or turned out differently from what you expected? Christ says, “Handle Me and see.” He will never give way beneath your touch. He will never fail you. The more you handle Him, the more you will discover His worth.

Or is it the dark specter of doubt which troubles you? Have you doubts as to God? Do you sometimes question His goodness and wonder if He cares? Are you inclined at times to abandon yourself to the passing world and live only for the present? Does not Christ’s question meet that, too? “Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?” Those thoughts! How they trouble you, and what a dark shadow they cast across your life! But Christ has a remedy for all this. “Handle Me, and see,” He says. “I am not insubstantial or unreal. I am flesh and bones. Handle me. I am not afraid that you should touch Me or come near to Me. I became flesh that you might know Me, and in knowing Me you might know all truth.” If only you would take firm hold of Christ, all would be well. It is because our grasp is feeble, as if all were unreal, that we find no satisfaction. Hold your doubts in your hand and look at them closely, and you will see how foolish they are. And then lay hold of Christ, and you will find how real He is, and that His cross, towering amid the gloom, makes all darkness light and solves all questions. Doubt is like the nettle and stings only when you touch it lightly; grasp it firmly and look at it in the presence of Christ, and its sting is unfelt.

The one cure for sorrow of every kind is a vision of Christ. “Handle Me, and see.” Only let your sorrow drive you to Him, and all will be well. He will “shine through the gloom,” for He who says to you, “Why are ye troubled?” had once Himself to say, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.”

Those words of old John Newton may well become a prayer upon many a lip today:

“Quiet, Lord, my froward heart;
Make me teachable and mild,
Upright, simple, free from art;
Make me as a little child —
From distrust and envy free,
Pleased with all that pleases Thee.
“What Thou shalt today provide,
Let me as a child receive;
What tomorrow may betide,
Calmly to Thy wisdom leave;
’Tis enough that Thou wilt care —
Why should I the burden bear?
“As a little child relies
On a care beyond his own,
Knows he’s neither strong nor wise,
Fears to stir a step alone —
Let me thus with Thee abide,
As my Father, Guard and Guide.”