Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

Is conscience burdened with a sense of guilt, the guilt of sins "long past and gone," or of sins recent and fresh? Beware of its poison in this state of mind. For I may seek restoration-yea, restoration by the blood of Christ, through the Spirit of Christ-earnestly, diligently seek it, and yet seek it upon ground far too selfish. I may seek it almost entirely FOR MY OWN PEACE, comfort, and enjoyment, and with very poor, low, inadequate views of that matchless goodness, benignity, compassion, tenderness, grace and love, against which I have sinned. I may seek it rather for the quieting of a disturbed and angry conscience, than with the upright, filial, penitent desire of once more enjoying the favour of God, and walking with him as a child. I may seek it under a practical forgetfulness, that nothing less than such a restoration would deserve the name of restoration at all-and that the cross of Jesus is but the way to a Father's bosom.

You cannot, dear friends, too highly value the private means of grace-secret prayer, reading the Word, quiet meditation. And yet there may be a selfish resting in these very things, and a stopping short of God Himself in the use of them. For as conscience would be wounded if these things were utterly neglected, so may it be, in a sense, quieted in the doing of them— forgetting that they are but means to an end, not the end itself.

You can scarcely too much esteem the public means -the worship of God on the Lord's Day, the ministry of the Gospel, whether on that day or in the week— and yet there is no small danger of a selfish use of them. There is a danger of resting in these things, and not in God Himself—their great end. Yea, there is a danger of too exclusively considering them as channels of enjoyment, and forgetting that they are also tests of obedience; that my attendance on them is not MERELY for my own spiritual good-precious as that must ever and ought ever to be, in my eyes-but

chiefly and especially FOR THE DIVINE GLORY; that this is my highest, my chiefest aim, my loftiest purpose; that in waiting on Him, in all these things, I humbly do it, that I may declare my allegiance to Him, my subjection to his pleasure, my submission to his will, before the world, before sleepy professors and slumbering saints.

I am not ignorant, of the difficulties which a residence in a great city often throws in a man's way, of the claims of family duty, nor of the obstacles which mere exhaustion creates in frames of perishing clay. All that I can suggest is, let not selfishness give the answer to the question which they may propose, as to What is the will of God in these matters?

Before you decide, let it be duly remembered that your example is a talent; that as your presence is a stimulus to others, so your absence is a depression.

Before you decide, let it be asked, Is there no blessing to be expected in a week-day service? Are there no blessings connected with united prayer? Is the business of Christ's kingdom upon earth of no importance? Are there no sympathies to be stirred up in reference to the city in which I live, the world in which I dwell? Am I never to mingle with my poorer brethren, in habits of social regard and affectionate intercourse ?

And yet, dear readers, supposing that all this were duly acted out, it forms but a very small and partial developement of the grand principle which I plead for, and which, I pray, may be the great prevailing principle of your lives and of mine-which is nothing short of a supreme love to God in Christ, shewing itself in a real delight in Him, and in ALL honest, filial, unreserved aims to obey and please Him in ALL THINGS, Col. i. 9, 10.

This is holiness-this is happiness.

And in order to this, our very dwelling place must be Calvary. It is only there, it is only in the Son of

his love, we can truly see God, rest in Him, love Him, delight our souls in Him.

There and only there may you and I live. There may we tell Him all our wants-thence may He communicate all his grace, in ALL his means, in ALL our paths, every day, and through every day. Such is GodGod in Christ, our God-that in all real contact with Him there is blessing. In prayer and in praise; in repentance, bitter as it sometimes is; in self-denial, however much it may try us; in every real attempt to serve Him, to spread his Name among sinners, to stir up his saints to a greater spirituality. There is blessing in every sacrifice that we make-in every cross that we endure. Then in ALL these things may we seek that blessing.

There and only there may you and I die. Yea, there, and only there-whence alone springs up the glorious hope of seeing and delighting in God for ever.

J. H. E.

I'VE HAD NO SABBATHS!

[A Clergyman who visited the Driver of a London Omnibus just before his death, says, "On speaking to him of his preparation for another world, he looked in my face with a touching expression which I shall never forget, and said faintly, 'Sir, I've had no Sabbaths!'"]

I'VE HAD NO SABBATHS! I have not known

A call to rest, in the Church bells' tone;

In the drought of the summer, 'mid dust and heat;
In the storms of the winter, through blast and sleet;
From morn, till night on the city lay,

I urged my steeds on the public way;

As the long week circled they wrought my will,
And the seventh day came, and I drove them still.

Alike we laboured, those brutes and I;

They lived to suffer, to work, to die;

[merged small][ocr errors]

A being scorning time's stint and bound,
Yet together we traversed the same dull round :
Save only my wearier toil and task

Had a briefer respite than theirs might ask;
While more of pity and care they knew,
Than our thrifty masters esteemed my due;
For if one worn driver through toil were dead,
There lacked not another to drive instead,
Since a man for the bread he must eat was sold,
While replacing the horses cost gold-dear gold!
Yet well I knew when the world was blest,
In the calm and hush of its Sabbath rest;
For joyous crowds through the streets went free
From the yoke and service that still galled me;
And blent with clatter of hoofs, and roll

Of the jarring wheels, came the Church bells' toll.
Oh yes! I knew 'twas a holy day;

I saw the thousands who thronged to pray,
Where open Churches a good half score
Looked down on the road that I journeyed o'er,
And called to worship—in which my share
Was to drive the worshippers duly there;
Aloud they called through the smoke and din,
To a rest my weariness might not win;
There was heaven's own pity in each bell's tone,
But I did not know it, and so drove on.

I had a Home; but in vain for me
It rang and echoed with childhood's glee :
I did but go to it faint and worn

At the verge of midnight, to sleep till morn;
Nor sat by the hearth, for my coming swept,
Nor looked on my children save when they slept.
And well it happened if home I came

Uncursed with the drunkard's guilt and share.

Oh! maddening drink are the draughts that flow To kill fatigue and to stifle woe!

And mad are they who for drunken greed

Will give the bread that their babes should feed;
And yet God's pity be theirs who first
From shere exhaustion acquire such thirst!

The day of my labour is gone, is past,
The dull death shadows fall thick and fast;
The night when no man can work draws nigh,
When the slave that never might rest, may die !
Yes die, and pass from the world away,

And never be missed from its whirl and fray :
Another to toil where he toiled, be found,
And the wheels roll on in their endless round;
Nor the steeds pause once for the driver's fall!-
Oh God! I would that to die were all !

But my soul is filled with a shuddering dread,
A fear of the judgment that waits the dead;
You come to soften my dying pain
With hope for the world where we live again;
And point to a future of endless cheer,
Whose blossoms of promise first budded here,
When the seventh day pauses of rest and peace
Came bidding the land from its turmoil cease.
If this be true :-if that rest were given,
A sacred pledge of repose in heaven;
A brief space left us wherein to care
For the deathless life that our spirits bear :
Then woe for the harvest awaiting me
In the misty fields of eternity!

For the hopeless gathering of thorn and weed,
And the ripened growth of that bitter seed,
Those poison germs of unholy birth,
That were sown by my lifelong toil on earth!

Oh speak! and tell me yet once again
Of Him who suffered life's weary pain,

« ForrigeFortsæt »