April 22nd.
My Dear——,-Elihu did not come in too late to Job, nor before things in his soul were ready to receive the blessing. The Lord knew what the end of the Lord with Job would be, and when Job was ready for it it came. (Alas! he had not waited for it.) As in infirmity, David's words have oft been strength to me-" This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High "-so, when in the furnace like Job, have I found help in the thought of One who sits as a refiner above the furnace. (The figure says, He looks into the boiling metal until it has thrown up enough of its dross for Him to see His own face reflected in the seething metal below; then the operation is done.) So immensely are our lives below the mark as nominal Christians, that we have next to no idea of the distance at which we have walked from God; and when the soul is turned to seek His face, and Him only as our end and object, we discover with amazement how many false props we have had, and how often we have been leaning on the love and approbation of others, and not upon a Father's love alone. The prop may have been removed in one way or the other, but its removal oft discovers to us that while we had it, we enjoyed (not God's grace in lending it to us, but) its own self, as suited to us and our enjoyment. Of course if its removal be connected with failure, there is more of bitterness and self-reproach, but when we have weighed all things quietly in the presence of the Lord we find that, whatever else there may have been, He has the largest place in it, and that we can justify Him in the jealousy of His love, who, take away what He may from us, never takes away His own love. And God knows how His love of Christ, all alone, was enough for His heart all through His course down here.
It was not that Christ did not feel the absence of love in Peter, or in friends in Israel, &c., but when all else was gone, when all forsook Him and fled, He still had God left to Him; and when, anticipating the anguish of His forsaking Him, divinely perfect as He was, His purpose never wavered, His singleness of eye never varied. That was, in the fullness of it, His alone to bear. God forsook Him that He might never have to forsake us.
But, besides the fact that then and there He was forsaken in our stead (and so our guilt is gone, gone forever from us in God's presence), what a revelation is that sorrow to us both of His competency to enter into our sorrows when alone and left of all; but, too, of what alas! is terrible to flesh and blood, His purpose to perfect, and His pathway of perfecting, our hearts in practical Nazariteship. Paul in his letter, 2nd to Timothy, shows what he tasted in this way, and the last chapter shows how fully he had found the blessedness of the way, all humbling as it was.
I am told that a paper of mine, Present Testimony, towards the end of it, helps some to see what it is to say, " To me to live is Christ: " if you have-it, look at it. I am sure, if I were alone, and all hell and all earth against me, God's love in Christ, taught me by the Spirit, might well suffice to give me songs to God in the night season. I see how far Paul attained in this, in some measure. (See Acts.) But the distance at which we have got from Himself as a living person, the large development of I in each of us, the way that faith is not used if known, and that other powers than those of the Spirit rule with us, make us, when caught in the storm, ready to sink. God sees it all in us, and He sees how we want purging, and His love is faithful enough to give us trial: that purging the vessel will put us in a state to walk with Him, and be satisfied with Him alone. If God be for us (with us, in us, I might add), who against us? and if really we so walk, how He does work!
I must close. God is God, sits on high, rules all here controls all below.
Affectionately yours in the Lord, G. V. W.