Notes of a Gospel Address. Mark 5. and Solomon’s Song.
AFTER we are called, we have the wilderness to pass through, and mighty may be the difficulties and mighty the trials by the way, but we are not to count it strange nor be afraid with any amazement. Come what will in it, all our desire should be that Christ may be magnified in our bodies, whether by life or by death. Many a saint may have the desire without knowing how to glorify Christ. The Word alone enables us to form right thoughts. Christ is in every part, that Christ who is God.
The whole power of worship is in the desire that Christ may be magnified in our bodies, led by the Holy Ghost to contemplate Him in the glory, gazing up to see what He is, and led by the Holy Ghost to make good what He is. Alas! how often by circumstances we are driven away from Him. How much happier we should be if we could see things in His light, and be so occupied with Him in every circumstance as to turn everything to account that He may be magnified in our bodies. If He in wondrous goodness has poured glory down on us, shall He not shine out through us?
How the thought of one day seeing the glory of God causes the things of time and sense to wither up. He who formed man, down here as man, looking on men with the eye of God, knowing every throb of their hearts. Have you ever gone to Him and met with disappointment? ever at the wrong time? Has the heart not always audience, a ready access at all times?
In the Song of Solomon the heart has found its object, the beloved One. We get a soul who has got Christ before his eyes. One spot is always green in the heart of a saint, and the thing is to discover that spot, to strengthen and make it good: that should be our object in dealing with others. Are we occupied in speaking of Jesus? all the charm of our being being Him, and His being in everything? There is the heart’s repose; its only disquietude is seeking to get on without Him. Every right occupation begins from having Christ within. When all is right at home surely all will be well outside. What comforts the heart in all the trials by the way is thinking how soon we shall be at home. We are in the last days, and there is much for believers to suffer, but, think you He does not know it? Faith knows that wherever God brings us He can carry us through.
Turn to Mark 2. Salvation is a part, a blessed, happy part; but happier yet to know the sympathies of Jesus. How sweet to lie down and know His eye, His ear is over us; that nothing escapes His eye, nothing changes His purpose; blessing He WILL bless; every hair of the head numbered; the feeblest taken up because of needing the most guidance. A mother may forget, &c., but He never. He nurses, fondles His children; their very weakness only brings out more love; the very things we see in one another only the plea for more love from Him. The Almighty God is eyes, ears, feet to His people! Happy people to have such a God of love How many a one here can say, If He had not been on my side, I should not have been here tonight!
Oh! to know Jesus simply and heartily, then to hold by Him on our way. Epistles of Christ, read by all. What we want to know is the sympathy of the heart of God. Saved, yes! but that’s only the first drop of the ocean still to flow. My salvation opened God’s heart to me, and in the sense of this love forgetting my own salvation. Who having such a God could wish to have anything of his own? In the communication of life to you the heart of Jesus throbbed with love; there was sympathy to go out; you touched the whole divine being; virtue goes out of Him. Do you know the sympathy of Jesus to be yours? “Who touched Me?” Bring that one near, let Me see the one who used Me. Who was so gracious as to love Me? I want that one, where is she? Oh, any poor sinner here to go home and say this night that you have made Jesus happy because you have used Him! And have you who know Him, used your heaviest afflictions to make you lean with double pressure on Christ? You cannot lean too heavily; if you cannot lean He will carry you. I told you to pray; don’t you know ‘tis music in my ears? Why lose so many opportunities? What so sweet in heaven as a mortal praying upward?
Nothing but trouble here, but God in the trouble. Look at this poor woman touching Jesus. Think of God incarnate pressed in a throng, looking to behold a heart for His sympathies to go out to. “Who touched Me?” Who used Me? So His heart goes out to those who use Him. She feared and trembled, but had the hand and heart of God for her. Do you know what that is? Do you use Jesus?
J. WILLANS.