Kitabı oku: «Out of the Deep: Words for the Sorrowful», sayfa 3
III. OUT OF THE DEEP OF FEAR AND ANXIETY
My heart is disquieted within me. Tearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me.
—Ps. lv. 4.
Thou hast proved and visited my heart in the night season
—Ps. xvii. 3.
Nevertheless though I am sometimes afraid, yet put I my trust in Thee.
—Ps. lv. 3.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
—Ps. xxvii. 1.
I sought the Lord and He heard me and delivered me from all my fear.
—Ps. xxxiv. 4.
Who is there who has not at times said to himself—“God is so holy, so pure and glorious; while I am so unjust, and unclean, and mean! and God is so great and powerful; while I am so small and weak! What shall I do? Does not God hate and despise me? Will He not take from me all I love best? Will He not hurl me into endless torment when I die? How can I escape from Him? Wretched man that I am, I cannot escape from Him! How then can I turn away His hate? How can I make Him change His mind? How can I soothe and appease Him? What shall I do to escape Him?”
Did you ever have such thoughts? And did you ever find those thoughts, that slavish terror of God’s wrath, that dread of hell make you better men? I never did. Unless you go beyond them—as far beyond them as heaven is beyond hell, as far above them as a free son is above a miserable crouching slave, they will do you more harm than good. This spirit of bondage, this slavish terror, instead of bringing us nearer to God, only drives us farther from Him. It does not make us hate what is wrong, it only makes us dread the punishment of it.
How then shall we escape the terror and misery of an evil conscience, and rise out of our sins? Believe the warrant of your baptism. Your baptism says to you—“God is your Father, He does not hate you though you be the greatest sinner on earth. He loves you, for you are His child, and He willeth not the death of a sinner, but that all should come and be saved. He hateth nothing that He has made.” This is the message of your baptism—that you are God’s child, and that God’s will and wish is that you should grow up to become His son, to serve Him lovingly, trustingly, manfully; and that He can and will give you the power to do so; ay, He has given you the power already, if you will but claim and use it. But you must claim and use it, because you are meant not merely to be God’s wilful, ignorant, selfish child, obeying Him from fear of the rod, but to be His willing, loving, loyal son.
National Sermons.
God is not a tyrant who must be appeased with gifts, or a task-master who must be satisfied with the labour of his slaves. He is a Father, who loves His children, who gives and loveth to give, who gives to all freely, and upbraideth not. He truly willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live. His will is a good will, and howsoever much men’s sin and folly may resist it, and seem for a time to mar it, yet He is too great and good to owe any man, even the worst, the smallest spite or grudge. Patiently, nobly, magnanimously, God waits—waits for the man who is a fool, to find out his folly; waits for the heart which has tried to find pleasure in everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to come back to Him, that fountain of all wholesome pleasure, that well-spring of all life fit for a man to live. When the fool finds out his folly; when the wilful man gives up his wilfulness; when the rebel submits himself to law; when the son comes back to his father’s house—there is no sternness, no upbraiding, no revenge; but the everlasting and boundless love of God wells forth again as ever. The Creator has condescended to wait for His creature, because what He wanted was not His creature’s fear, but His creature’s love; not his lip-obedience, but his heart; because He wanted him not to come back as a trembling slave to his master, but as a son who has found out at last what a father he has left him, when all beside has played him false. Let him come back thus, to find all is forgiven; and to hear the Father say, “This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
Discipline and other Sermons.
When the tempest comes; when affliction, fear, anxiety, shame come, then the Cross of Christ begins to mean something to us. For then in our misery and confusion we look up to heaven and ask, Is there any One in heaven who understands all this? Does God understand my trouble? Does God feel for my trouble? Does God care for my trouble? Does God know what trouble means? Or must I fight the battle of life alone, without sympathy or help from God, who made me and has put me here? Then, does the Cross of Christ bring a message to our heart such as no other thing or being on earth can bring. For it says to us, God does understand thee utterly; for Christ understands thee. Christ feels for thee; Christ feels with thee; Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee. Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. He, the Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity and help thee to endure, and bring thee safe through all to victory and peace.
Westminster Sermons.
Though we, happily, no longer believe in the terror by night, which of old was thought to come from witches, ghosts, demons, yet there is a terror by night in which we must believe, for it comes to us from God, and should be listened to as the voice of God, even that terror about our own sinfulness, folly, weakness, which comes to us in dreams and sleepless nights. We may learn from these night fancies and night thoughts; for they are often God’s message to us, calling us to repentance and amendment of life. They are often God’s Book of Judgment, wherein our sins are written, which God is setting before us, and showing us the things we have done. God sends dreams to men which enable them to look back, and recollect things past, which they had forgot only too easily; and these humble and penitential dreams are God’s warning that (as the Article says) the infection of nature doth remain even in those who are regenerate, and that nothing but the continual help of God’s Spirit will keep us from falling back or falling away.
Discipline and other Sermons.
The religion of terror is the most superficial of all religions. God’s arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, as they do to the Calvinists, because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice, remember that His essence is love, and the thunder cloud will blaze with dewy gold, full of soft rain and pure light. All the deep things of God are bright, for God is light.
Letters and Memories.
I am not, and will not (please God to help me, as He has hitherto) be anxious about anything. Why should we weary out the little life we have left in us, when He has promised to care for us, and make us renew our youth, and heap us with everything that is good for us?
And as for our difficulties. Has it not been fulfilled in them—As thy day so shall thy strength be? Have they not been God’s sending? God’s way of preventing the cup of bliss being over sweet? and consider, have they not been blessed lessons? Have we not had in all things with the temptation a way to escape? So out of evil God brings good; or rather out of necessity He brings strength. The highest spiritual training is contained in the most paltry physical accidents; and the meanest actual want may be the means of calling into actual life the possible but sleeping embryo of the very noblest faculties.
This is a great mystery; but we are animals, in time and space; and by time and space, and our animal natures, are we educated. Therefore let us be only patient, patient; and let God our Father teach His own lesson, His own way. Let us try to learn it well, and learn it quickly; but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school bell, and send us to play before our lesson is learnt.
Letters and Memories.
In all the events of life pray, pray take what God does not send as not good for us, and trust Him to send us what is good. Remember all these things are right, and come with a reason, and a purpose, and a meaning; and he who grumbles at them believeth not (for the time being at least) in the Living God.
Ah! do not fancy that I am not often perplexed—“Cast down, yet not in despair.” No; Christ reigns, as Luther used to say—and therefore I will not fear, “though the mountains be removed (and I with them) and cast into the midst of the sea.”
Letters and Memories.
All these anxieties will be good for you. They all go to the making of a man—calling out that God-dependence in him which is the only true self-dependence, the only true strength. Well said old Hezekiah, “Lord, by all these things men live (by trouble, sorrow, sickness), and in these things is the life of the spirit.”
MS. Letters.
Our Lord said, “Take no thought for the morrow; the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Matt. vi. 34. And do we not find that our Lord’s words are true? Who are the people who get through most work in their lives, with the least wear and tear? Are they the anxious people? Those who imagine to themselves possible misfortunes, and ask continually, What if this happened, or if that? How should I be able to get through such and such a trouble? Far, far from it. Let us not waste the strength which God has given us for to-day in vain fears or vain dreams about to-morrow. To-day is quite full enough of anxiety and care. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and sufficient for the day is the good thereof. To-day, and to-morrow too, may end very differently from what we hope. Yes. But they may end very differently from what we fear. Look not too far ahead, lest you see what is coming before you are ready for the sight. If we foresaw the troubles that are coming, perhaps it would break our hearts; and if we foresaw the happiness which is coming, perhaps it would turn our heads. Let us not meddle with the future but refrain our souls and keep them low, like little children, content with the day’s food, and the day’s schooling, and the day’s play-hours, sure that the Divine Master knows all that is right, and how to train us, and whither to lead us, though we know not, and need not know, save this, that the path by which He is leading each of us—if we will but obey and follow, step by step—leads up to Everlasting Life.
All Saints-Day Sermons.
IV. OUT OF THE DEEP OF LONELINESS, FAILURE, AND DISAPPOINTMENT
My heart is smitten down, and withered like grass. I am even as a sparrow that sitteth alone on the housetop
—Ps. cii. 4, 6.
My lovers and friends hast Thou put away from me, and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight
—Ps. lxxviii. 18.
I looked on my right hand, and saw there was no man that would know me. I had no place to flee unto, and no man cared for my soul. I cried unto Thee, O Lord, and said, Thou art my Hope. When my spirit was in heaviness, then Thou knewest my path.
—Ps. cxlii. 4, 5.
Gracious is the Lord, and righteous, yea, our God is merciful. I was in misery, and He helped me.
—Ps. cxvi. 5, 6.
It is sorrow—sorrow and failure—which forces men to believe that there is One who heareth prayer, forces them to lift up their eyes to One from whom cometh their help. Before the terrible realities of danger, death, disappointment, shame, ruin—and most of all before deserved shame, deserved ruin—all arguments melt away; and the man or woman, who was but too ready a day before to say, “Tush, God will never see and will never hear,” begins to hope passionately that God does see, that God does hear. In the hour of darkness, when there is no comfort nor help in man, when he has no place to flee unto, and no man careth for his soul, then the most awful, if most blessed of all questions is, But is there no One higher than man to whom I can flee? No One higher than man who cares for my soul, and for the souls of those who are dearer to me than my own soul? No friend? No helper? No deliverer? No counsellor? Even no judge? No punisher? No God, even though He be a consuming fire? Am I in my misery alone in the universe? Is my misery without any meaning and without hope? If there be no God, then all that is left for me is despair and death. But if there be, then I can hope that there is a meaning in my misery; that it comes to me not without cause, even though that cause be my own fault. Then I can plead with God, even though in wild words like Job; and ask, What is the meaning of this sorrow? What have I done? What should I do? I will say unto God, “Do not condemn me; show me wherefore Thou contendest with me. Surely I would speak unto the Almighty; I desire to reason with God.” Oh, my friends, a man, I believe, can gain courage and wisdom to say that only by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. But when once he has said that from his heart, he begins to be justified by faith; for he has had faith in God. He has trusted God—and more—he has justified God. He has confessed that God is not a mere force or law of Nature; nor a mere tyrant and tormentor; but a Reasonable Being who will hear reason, and a Just Being who will do justice by the creatures He has made.
Westminster Sermons.
The deeper, the bitterer your loneliness, the more you are like Him who cried upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” He knows what that grief, too, is like. He feels for thee at least. Though all forsake thee, He is with thee still, and if He be with thee, what matter who has left thee for a while? Ay, blessed are those that weep now, for whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth; and because He loves the poor, He brings them low. All things are blessed now but sin; for all things excepting sin are redeemed by the life and death of the Son of God. Blessed are wisdom and courage, joy and health, and beauty and love and marriage, childhood and manhood, corn and wine, fruits and flowers; for Christ redeemed them by His life. And blessed, too, are tears and shame, blessed are weakness and ugliness, blessed are agony and sickness, blessed the sad remembrance of our sins, and a broken heart and a repentant spirit. Blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms, where souls await the resurrection day, for Christ redeemed them by His death. Blessed are all things, weak as well as strong. Blessed are all days, dark as well as bright, for all are His, and He is ours; and all are ours, and we are His for ever.
Therefore sigh on, ye sad ones, and rejoice in your own sadness; ache on, ye suffering ones, and rejoice in your own sorrows. Rejoice that you are made free of the holy brotherhood of mourners; rejoice that you are counted worthy of a fellowship in the sufferings of the Son of God. Rejoice and trust on, for after sorrow shall come joy. Trust on; for in man’s weakness God’s strength shall be made perfect. Trust on; for death is the gate of life. Endure on to the end, and possess your souls in patience for a little while, and that, perhaps, a very little while. Death comes swiftly, and more swiftly still perhaps, the day of the Lord. The deeper the sorrow, the nearer the salvation:—
The night is darkest before the dawn;
When the pain is sorest, the child is born;
And the day of the Lord at hand.
National Sermons.
Thou who art weary and heavy laden; thou who fanciest at moments that the Lord’s arm is shortened that it cannot save, and art ready to cry, God hath forgotten me, take comfort, and look upon Christ. Thou wilt never be sure of the love of God, unless thou rememberest that it is the same as the love of Christ; and by looking at Christ, learnest to know thy Father and His Father, whose likeness and image He is, and see that the Spirit which proceeds alike from both of them is the Spirit of humanity and love, which cannot help going forth to seek and to save thee, simply because thou art lost. Look, I say, unto Christ; and be sure that what the good Samaritan did to the wounded traveller, that same will He do to thee, because He is the Son of Man, human and humane.
Art thou robbed, wounded, deserted, left to die, worsted in the battle of life, and fallen in its rugged road, with no counsel, no strength, no hope, no purpose left? Then remember that there is One walking to and fro in this world unseen, but ever present, whose form is as the form of the Son of Man. And He has time, as He has will, to turn aside and minister to such as thee! No human being so mean, no human sorrow so petty, but that He has the time and the will and the power to have mercy on it, because He is the Son of Man. Therefore He will turn aside even to thee, whoever thou art, who art weary and heavy laden, and can find no rest for thy soul, at the very moment, and in the very manner which is best for thee. When thou hast suffered long enough, He will stablish, strengthen, settle thee. He will bind up thy wounds, and pour in the oil and the wine of His Spirit—the Holy Ghost, the Comforter—and will carry thee to His own inn, whereof it is written, “He will hide thee secretly in His own presence from the provoking of men; He will keep thee in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues. He will give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways;” and He will give thee rest at last in the bosom of the Father, from which thou, like all human souls, camest forth at first, and to which thou shalt at last return, with all human souls who have in them the Spirit of God and of Christ, and of eternal life.
Discipline and other Sermons.
We all like comfort. But what kind of comfort do we not merely like, but need? Merely to be comfortable? To be free from fear, anxiety, sorrow? The comfort which poor human beings want in such a world as this is not the comfort of ease, but the comfort of strength. The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give help—help to the weary, lonely, heavy-laden heart which has no time to rest. We need not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong helping arm. For we may be in that state that smiles are shocking to us, and mere kindness—though we may be grateful for it—of no more comfort to us than sweet music to a drowning man. We may be miserable, and unable to help being miserable, and unwilling to help it too. We do not wish to flee from our sorrow: we do not wish to forget it. We dare not. It is so awful, so heart-rending, so plain-spoken, that God, the master and tutor of our hearts, must wish us to face it and endure it. Our Father has given us the cup—shall we not drink it? Oh! for a comforter who will help us to drink the bitter cup—who will give us faith to say, with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”—who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it is meant to teach—who will give us the temperate will to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life! If we had such a comforter as that, we should not care if he seemed at times stern, as well as kind; we could endure rebuke from him if we could only get from him wisdom to understand the rebuke, and courage to bear the chastisement. Where is that comforter? God answers: That Comforter am I, the God of Heaven and Earth. There are comforters on earth who can help thee with wise words and noble counsels, can be strong as man and tender as woman. But God can be more strong than man, more tender than woman likewise; and when the strong arm of man supports thee no longer, yet under thee are the Everlasting Arms.
All Saints-Day Sermons.
. . . You are disappointed. Do remember if you lose heart about your work, that none of it is lost. That the good of every good deed remains, and breeds, and works on for ever; and that all that fails and is lost is the outside shell of the thing, which perhaps might have been better done, but better or worse has nothing to do with the real spiritual good which you have done to men’s hearts, for which God will surely repay you in His own way and time.
Letters and Memories.
Don’t be downhearted if outward humiliation, disappointment, failure, come at first. If God be indeed our Father in any real sense, then whom He loveth He chasteneth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And “till thou art emptied of thyself, God cannot fill thee,” though it be a law of the old Mystics, is true and practical common sense. Go thy way, though the way to true light is a long ladder.
Letters and Memories.
As for any schemes of mine, it is a slight matter whether they have failed or not. But the failure of a hundred schemes would not alter my conviction that they are attempts in a right direction; and I will die in hope, not having received the promises, but beholding them afar off, and confessing myself a stranger and a pilgrim.
So I am content to have failed. I have learnt in the experiment priceless truths concerning myself, my fellow-men, and the City of God, which is eternal in the heavens, for ever coming down among men, and actualizing itself more and more in every succeeding age.
Letters and Memories.
We have hope in Christ for the next life as well as for this—hope that in the next life He will give us power to succeed where we failed here; that He will enable us to be good and to do good, and, if not to make others good (for there we trust all will be good together), to enjoy the fulness of that pleasure for which we have been longing on earth—the pleasure of seeing others good, as Christ is good and perfect, as their Father in Heaven is perfect.
All Saints-Day Sermons.
There are many who have in them, by grace of God, the divine thirst for the higher life; who are discontented with themselves, ashamed of themselves; who are tormented by longings which they cannot satisfy, instincts which they cannot analyse, powers which they cannot employ, duties which they cannot perform, doctrinal confusions which they cannot unravel; who would welcome any change, even the most tremendous, which would make them nobler, purer, juster, more loving, more useful, more clear-hearted and sound-minded; and, when they think of death, say with the poet—
’Tis life, not death, for which I pant,
’Tis life whereof my nerves are scant,
More life, and fuller, that I want.
To them we can say, for God has said it long ago—Be of good cheer. The calling and gifts of God are without repentance. If you have the divine thirst, it will be surely satisfied. If you long to be better men and women, you will surely be so. Only be true to those higher instincts; only do not learn to despise and quench that divine thirst; only struggle on, in spite of mistakes, of failures, even of sins, for every one of which last your Heavenly Father will chastise you, even while He forgives; in spite of all disappointment struggle on. Blessed are you who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled. To you, and not in vain, “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that is athirst, Come. And whosoever will, let him drink of the water of life freely.”
Water of Life—Sermons.
The heart and soul of man wants more than “a religion,” as it is written, “My soul is athirst for God, even the Living God.” They want a living God, who cares for men, forgives men, saves men from their sins; and Him I have found in the Bible, and nowhere else, save in the facts of life, which the Bible alone interprets.
Letters and Memories.
What was Christ’s life? Not one of deep speculation, quiet thoughts, and bright visions; but a life of fighting against evil; earnest, awful prayers and struggles within, continual labour of body and mind without; insult and danger and confusion and violent exertion and bitter sorrow. This was Christ’s life—this is the life of almost every good and great man I ever heard of. This was Christ’s cup, which His disciples were to drink of as well as He; this was the baptism of fire with which they were to be baptised of as well as He; this was to be their fight of faith; this was the tribulation through which they, and all other great saints, were to enter into the kingdom of heaven. For it is certain that the harder a man fights against evil the harder evil will fight against him in return; but it is certain too that the harder a man fights against evil, the more is he like his Saviour Christ, and the more glorious will be his reward in heaven.
