Further Down the Stream.
“Glorious River of God’s pleasures,
Well of God’s eternal bliss,
Thirsting now no more forever,
Tread we the waste wilderness.
O for words divine to tell it,
How along that River’s brink,
Come the weak, the worn, the weary,
There the tides of joy to drink!
‘Drink abundantly, beloved.’
Speaks the Voice so sweet and still;
‘Of the life and love and sweetness
Freely come and drink your fill.’
Every longing stilled forever,
As the Face of God we see.
Whom besides have we in Heaven,
Or desire on earth but Thee?”
CHRIST’S yesterday was the accomplishment of redemption. His tomorrow is the having His Church with Himself in glory. But He is a living Christ for today.
“Where has there ever been found a single blessing, save in the hand of Christ? Could you wish for any save what He gives? Water was in the rock, but until smitten it did not give forth water: so it was with Christ. And now He is revealed to us in Heaven, as the eternal Son of God, who was smitten for us; and we can turn to Him and say, ‘There is our spring of living water; He is ours. We have eternal life in Him, as a well of water springing up within us.’
“All the way through the wilderness the water flowed, to slake their’ thirst―to refresh them―all the way, and it spoke to them of Christ. You and I get so weary in our experience of the wilderness, but Christ’s heart is never wearied; it is as freshly set on the bride, as when God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
“Whatever the mind is most fixed upon, and is ever turning to, gives its impress to the mind; if my feelings and thoughts are fixed on Christ, I get the impress of Christ. If I am ever turning to Him in His inexhaustible love, I shall get the impress of it; and if my soul then rises to Christ in that freshness of love which can say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus,’ there is His answer in all freshness, ‘Surely I come quickly.’
“He does not forget us toiling through the wilderness and the sands of the desert; He is with us all the way, and all freshness is in Him.
“If the heart turns to the heart of Christ, the heart of the Son of God, I find that heart immeasurably fuller than mine of love―there, there is always freshness of love. I may be a way worn pilgrim, there I shall find freshness―a spring of cold water, when I am fainting in the wilderness.
“Oh, that love in the heart of Christ, that knows no weariness, no dragging steps, no hanging down of the hands!
“What! this One, this smitten Rock, through which the river of life flows—this One, who knows all the secrets of the Father’s heart I do I know that He loves me? Did He die for me? I had my sins, and nothing but my sins, when He looked upon me. Could His Blood take out all their crimson dye? and is God satisfied? Will God find fault with that work as inadequate?
“It is God who looked upon me, the chief of sinners, to make me an example of the cleansing power of that Blood.
“Whenever a saint gets into close connection with Christ Himself, and sees the living streams flow down, he will have no thought of self. When I think of myself in the glory, and Christ saying, ‘That is a man whom I washed from his sins in My own blood,’ I shall not want any glory for myself but all for Him.
“Being saved is nothing to the brightness of the glory shining out of the Saviour Christ. He may have every glory, but above all is this name of Saviour; the name of the counsel of love between Him and God. We shall go into Heaven with faces radiant with glory—able to look right up because of the Cross.
“Now, the white earth-fog may rise, and seem to wrap us round, but it cannot cloud Him up there above it all. It cannot wrap Him round in the Father’s glory; and my life is hid with Christ in God.
“God knows nothing so beautiful as Christ. He would have us ever looking on Him, in whose all-perfect beauty the heart of God finds all delight. God has unveiled that Face, and let all its light shine down into our hearts; therefore we have to walk as light-bearers. That Christ with unveiled Face is a Christ whose light shines down, in order to shine out through His people.
“What sweetness there is in the thought of being used by the Lord down here to serve His purpose in giving out light; for He will have a light on the earth while He is away.
“And when He put the light in you, did He not know what the earthen vessel was? I may be a very bad reflector, but Christ says, ‘Never mind, go on, I give you the power. I know that you are nothing in yourself, and that you are in the place where it is night―but go on giving out light, soon you will be in God’s day.’
“The morning without clouds is dawning. Christ is the bright and morning star. For eighteen hundred years He has been dealing with a people down here―the night may be very dark, but the darkness does not reach up to the bright and morning star. No cloud can cover Him. Soon He will shine out.
“Does He hear you cry,’ Come, Lord Jesus’? You need not look round and wait for another, you may say it to Him. I know that failure and ruin have been the history of the Church, but there is the fact that I am part of a company which God has given to His Son, and because of that (not because of anything in me) I can be doing nothing but saying the livelong night, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come!’
“God found One who was to be the perfect measure of what sin was in His Presence. That One takes the cup of wrath from God’s hand, that Son of His love had to be treated as if the whole mass of sin was His, and the whole weight of wrath for that sin came upon Him. He had to bear it all there, alone. He may be a man of sorrows all through His life, but He has God with Him in it. Never till the Cross do we hear the cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ Not one ray of light came from Him, whilst the Son of His love was there, suffering, the Just for the unjust.
“Man tries to keep sin far away, out of God’s Presence; but Christ carried it right into His Presence. If I understand what Christ was for me on the Cross, there is no sin for me before God.”
“There must be a more simple faith in Christ as a living Person for today, not believing only in His love yesterday, tomorrow, and forever; but we need to know it as the love of the living Christ today, who is sitting at this very moment at the right hand of God in Heaven, bearing all His people on His heart, making all our cares through the wilderness His.
“How is it that people can leave their souls and their eternity with Christ, but not the things of time? Is there not light enough in Heaven to cast down brightness on the little bit of wilderness I am passing over, and to light up all that remains of the threescore years and ten down here?
“Yes, the light does shine down; the eternal life I have is a present thing; glory is future, but the life of Christ in me is light now. Eternal life flows through our souls, and as we go through the wilderness, the Holy Ghost ministers to us all that God and Christ are now.
“Oh, what a moment is it, when I know the yearning of Christ’s love, as He looks on me, saying, ‘You are espoused to Me;’ Christ wanting to have me all to Himself. A thousand affections flow from Christ’s heart to mine—does He see the pulse of thought through me beating for Him?
“The Lord knows what the hearts of His people want here—it is Himself, His own blessed Person. All their hearts’ affections are bound up in His Person; that it is which their hearts are set upon. Do you know anything of such a thing as a body, a people, affianced to Christ?
“If the marriage of the bride, the Lamb’s wife, is to be, and you and I are a part of that affianced body, do we not see that the name of bride supposes all affections on the part of Christ? He looks and sees poor feeble creatures, but they are a part of that body, and He has washed them in His Blood; He has given them the Spirit, and made them one with Himself; He will have a bride fit for God’s own dwelling-place. God forms out of poor prodigals a bride for His Son, making them the members, the flesh, and bones of His Son―the bride may have all sorts of precious jewels, but she herself is for the Lord.
“What! I, a poor thing, a leaf in the wilderness carried hither and thither, can I say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus?’
“And it is not the bride only, but the Spirit, knowing all the affections in the heart of Christ, who says, ‘Come.’
“How sweet to have Christ wanting you to say, ‘Come.’ Have you known the sweetness when in solitude, of that thought in your heart, hardly breathed in words, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come?’
“I am as sure of being His as Rebekah was of being Isaac’s, and far surer; and so are all believers who can say ‘Come.’ We are in the wilderness now; and we count by weeks and days, and the time seems long; but One up there looks upon you and says to you, ‘Surely, I come quickly.’
“And, oh, how sweet this experience of Christ’s love in this cold world! Looking up to Him, the heart is always warmed. When the Lord Jesus looks in the face of a believer, He says, I do and must love thee, but I love thee for My Father’s sake. I loved thee before the foundation of the world, because He chose thee in Me, and I must love thee to the end for His sake.’
“The Church will be where the sense of being loved by the Father, even as the Son is loved, will surpass all understanding. The Father’s house, the Father’s bosom, was to be the resting-place of the Church; nothing could satisfy that Son, but her being there where He had rested from all eternity. But we have this place of rest now—we shall never be more sons of God than we are now; else where were the force of that word, ‘Now are we the sons of God’?
“A fixed time is coming, we cannot say how soon, when the Father will say to the Son, ‘Rise up, and bring the bride up hither.’ The Lord Jesus, amid all the glory of God, has a heart large enough to think of coming to meet even me. ‘There is a poor thing, stumbling through his duties, often going wrong. I shall go and fetch him, and make him partaker of all I have.’
“It is His love, not mine. And when we are there, every saint will show forth to the eye of God, the Lord Jesus, because they will all reflect His glory.
“If an angel from heaven were to come to my bedside, and tell me that Christ loved me as a member of His own body, as Himself, should I be more certain of that love than I am? It is no delusion, but a fact, that Christ loves me, and will love me right on to the end; a thought that pressed on me thirty-five years ago―the thought of reality.
“Let it be a reality; do not let me follow a meteor. Is it, I asked, a real fact that God’s Christ is mine, and all God’s delight is in Him, and that, as He loves His Son, so, eternally, does He love me? Can you say individually, that that love, flowing from God, is filling your soul to all fullness, and is as a river flowing forth from you?”