I cried out for mercy, and fell on my knees, And confessed, while my heart with keen sorrow was wrung; 'Twas the labour of minutes, and years of disease Fell as fast from my soul as the words from my tongue. And now, blest be God and the sweet Lord who died! All hail, then, all hail, to the dear Precious Blood, That hath worked these sweet wonders of mercy in me; May each day countless numbers throng down to its flood, And God have His glory, and sinners go free. FABER. SERVICE, SEPARATION, CONSECRATION. FIRST, as to service. Nothing in our service for Christ will fill the void which a loss of communion with God brings with it. To sit at His feet, hear His voice, and learn more and more of the depths of His loving heart, till our own goes out in sweet response, must ever be the highest privilege of the saint of God. And wonderful as it seems, the blessed Lord values this love of ours, and it must grieve His heart when He sees the least lukewarmness on our part with regard to it. He will not allow our work to take the place that belongs of right to Him. Where He finds it to be so, He often puts us aside from work, to teach us that, after all, our doings are at best, like our righteousness, but filthy rags, never to come between us and our Lord. Secondly, as to separation and strangership. How much of our daily life is lived in God's presence ? There is not one of us that would not be obliged to confess to God, if He inquired of us, that this world is not uncongenial to us, as it ought to be. We do not suffer from the uncongenial nature of the atmosphere, as a plant out of its true sphere. Alas, we have become acclimatised! We have lived so much in the spirit of the things around us that we have become hardened. Is not this the real and true state of the case ? We can face this world now, because we have been under its frosts and winters so much, that we have settled down-are we not settled? are we not dwellers on earth rather than visitors? The Lord make us rather visitors here, by making us dwellers there! I fear this is where most of us are. But, is not this the purpose of God, that we should so dwell there, that we should be only visitors here, and that we should visit here in all the grace, blessedness, meekness, strength, and power of Christ? You know well what the separateness of Christ was. Look at His path as a man down here in this world of sin and sorrow. Look at that beautiful, wonderful, isolated, separated pathway through this world. Trace it from the manger, where He was ignominiously laid at His birth, because "there was no room for Him in the inn," down to the cross. Look at the separateness of it, the holiness of it! Mark what He says "As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world." Think of that! Blessed God, is it true that I am not only united to the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven, but I have as distinct a mission on this earth as He had from Thee! Oh, it is wonderful! It is in this question of Nazariteship that we are feeble. I believe that is the point of our departure; there is not this distinctness, there is not this divine, thorough, comple separateness to God. And lastly-Consecration. Many Christians when they come to die, put everything very definitely into His hands. They commit to Him very fully their souls' salvation. They give into His care their bodies to be guarded in the dust, and "raised up again at the last day" (John vi. 39, 44). They hand over to Him all their affairs, the charge of their families, their spheres of work, their businesses —simply everything; and they do so in simple and childlike confidence, knowing that He is more than equal to the charge. But why should we wait for death to teach us this lesson of entire confidence in Him? We should in life commit all just as definitely and confidently to His care and keeping, thus "living unto the Lord" as really as "dying unto the Lord." Every question as to what should be done or left undone is to be settled not according to the Christian's own individual likes or dislikes, but "unto the Lord." He is to act in every matter, from the greatest to the least, as far as he is able to "understand what the will of the Lord is" (Eph. v. 17), in accordance with it, remembering the "account of himself to God" which "every one of us" must eventually give (Rom. xiv. 12). He will try to anticipate as far as possible the judgment which Christ will then pass upon "the things done in the body" (2 Cor. V. 10). Reader, watch your communion with God. Failure in that will leave you worldly-minded, and thus render consecration to God impossible. There's not a grief, however light, Thou, who hast trod the thorny road, There's not a secret sigh we breathe, Aud every cross grows light, beneath Life's woes without,-sin's strife within, But for that love which died for sin,- All human sympathy but cheers, ANONYMOUS. O Saviour! I have nought to plead The need will soon be passed and gone, And lasts for evermore! G |