Give Me That Old Time Gospel

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Deliverance in Trouble

"Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me." Psalm 50:15

How varied are our days of trouble! Sickness, with its hours of restlessness and languor. Bereavement, with its rifled treasures and aching hearts. Loss of substance; the curtailment or forfeiture of worldly possessions; riches taking to themselves wings and fleeing away; or, severer than all, the wounds from friends; abused confidence; withered affections; hopes scattered like the leaves of autumn!

 But "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Tried one! He leaves not your defenseless head unsheltered in the storm. "Call upon Me!" He invites you into the pavilion of His presence! Better the bitter Marah waters with His healing, than the purest fountain of the world, and no God! Better the hottest furnace flames with one there "like the Son of God," than that the dross should be allowed to accumulate, and the soul left to cleave to the dust! He, "the purifier of silver," is seated by these flames, tempering their fury! Yes, He gives the special promise, "I will deliver you." It may not be the deliverance we expect; the deliverance we have prayed for; the deliverance we could have wished. But shall not the most severe trial be well worth enduring, if this be the result of His chastening love; "You will glorify Me." "Glorify Him!" How? By a simple unreasoning faith; by meek, lowly, unmurmuring acquiescence in His dealing; these dealings endearing the Savior and His grace more than ever to our hearts.

 The day of trouble led His saints in all ages to glorify Him. David never could have written his touching Psalms, nor Paul his precious epistles, had not God cast them both into the crucible. To be teachers of the Church of the future, they had to graduate in the school of affliction. If He is appointing similar discipline, let it be our endeavor to glorify Him by active obedience, as well as passive resignation; not abandoning ourselves to selfish, moody, sentimental grief; but rather going forth on our great mission; our work and warfare; with a vaster estimate of the value of time, and the grandeur of existence. "Give glory to the Lord your God before He cause darkness; and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains; and, while you look for light, He turned it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness!"

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Pitying Love

"Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him." Psalm 103:13

"Abba, Father!" is a Gospel word. A father bending over the sick bed of his weak or dying child; a mother pressing, in tender solitude, an infant sufferer to her bosom. These are the earthly pictures of God. "As a father pities." "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you!"

 When tempted in our season of overwhelming sorrow to say, "Never has there been so dark a cloud, never a heart so stripped and desolate as mine," let this thought hush every murmur, "It is your Father's good pleasure!" The love and pity of the most tender parent is but a dim shadow compared to the pitying love of God. If your heavenly Father's smile has for a moment been exchanged for the chastening rod; be assured there is some deep necessity for the altered discipline. If there be unutterable yearnings in the soul of the earthly parent as the lancet is applied to the body of his child; infinitely more is it so with your covenant God as He subjects you to those deep wounds of heart! Finite wisdom has no place in His ordinations. An earthly father may err; is ever erring; but "as for God His way is perfect." This is the explanation of His every dealing: "Your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these things!"

 Trust His heart when you cannot trace His ways. Do not try to penetrate the cloud which "He brings over the earth," and to look through it. Keep your eye steadily fixed on the rainbow. The mystery is God's, the promise is yours. Seek that the end of all His dispensations may be to make you more confiding. Without one misgiving commit your way to Him. He says regarding each child of His covenant family, what He said of Ephraim of old (and never more so than in a season of suffering) "I do earnestly remember him still." While now bending your head like a bulrush; your heart breaking with sorrow; remember His pitying eye is upon you. Be it yours, even through blinding tears, to say, "Even so Father!"
 

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The Blessed Hope

"That blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ."  Titus 2:1

What a bright rainbow for a stormed-wreathed sky! Hope is a joyous emotion! Poetry sings of it; music warbles its lofty aspirations; but alas! how often does it weave fantastic visions then vanish! "In the morning" the flowers of life are flourishing and growing up; "in the evening" a mysterious blight comes; they lie withered garlands at our feet! The longing apparitions of the whole life seem realized; one wave of calamity overtakes us, and washes all away!

 But, there is one "blessed hope" beyond the possibility of blight or decay; "The hope of the glory of God," the "Hope which makes not ashamed;" "the glorious appearing of the great God and Savior!"

 If we long on earth for the return of an absent friend or brother, separated from us for a season, by intervening oceans or continent; if we count the weeks or months until we welcome him back again to the parental home, how should the Christian long for the return of the "Brother of brothers," the Friend of friends: "I will come again," is His own gracious promise, "To receive you unto Myself!" Oh happy day! when He shall be "glorified in His saints;" when His people will suffer no more, and sin no more. No more couches of sickness, or aching hearts; or fevered brows; no more opened graves, or bitter tears; and, better than all, no more guilty estrangements and traitorous unholy hearts! It will be the bridal day of the soul. The body slumbering in the dust will be reunited a glorified body to a redeemed spirit. The grave shall be forever spoiled; death swallowed up in eternal victory. "So shall we be forever with the Lord."

 Reader, do you "love His appearing?" Are you looking with eager expectant attitude of those who are "looking for, and hastening unto the coming of God." "Yet a little while, and He that shall come, will come!" If you are a child of the covenant, having conscious filial nearness to the Throne of grace, you need not dread the Throne of glory! True, He is the "great God," but He is "our Savior." It is a "Kinsman Redeemer" who is ordained to "judge the world in righteousness." Yes! turn your eye oftener towards this bright Rainbow spanning a glorious future; for remember, it is "to them who look for Him," that He shall "appear the second time without sin unto salvation!"

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A Gracious Removal

"The righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace! They shall rest in their beds." Isaiah 57:1-3

How this thought reconciles to earth's saddest separations! The early (what we are apt to think the too early) graves of our "loved and lost," have saved them from much sorrow, much suffering, much sin! Who can tell what may have been brooding in a dark horizon? The fairest vessel; the life freighted with the greatest promise; might have been made shipwreck on this world"s treacherous sea. My God knows what is best. If He plucked His lily soon, it was to save it some rough blast. If He early folded His lamb, it was to save it having its fleece soiled with earthly corruption. If the port of glory was soon entered, it was because He foresaw the threatening tempests that screened from our limited vision; "So He brought them to the haven where they would be!"

 Yes! the quiet haven! The storms of life are over! That shore is undisturbed by one murmuring wave. "He shall enter into peace!" the rest which "remains!" Did the ransomed dead, at the hour of their departure, sink into blank oblivion; inherit everlasting silence, sad indeed would be the pangs of separation. But, "weep not, she is not dead, but sleeps." Yes! weep not! She is not dead but lives! At the very moment earth's tears are falling, the spirit is sunning in the realms of everlasting day, safely housed, safely home! The body "rests in its bed." The grave is its couch of repose! We bid it the long "good night" in the joyful expectancy of a glorious reunion at the waking time of immortality; the "morning without clouds," whose "sun shall no more go down."

 Child of sorrow! mourning over the withdrawal of some beloved object of earthly affection. Dry your tears. An early death has been an early crown! The tie sundered here links you to the throne of God. You have a brother, sister, a child in heaven! You are the relatives of a ransomed saint! We are proud when we hear of our friends being "advanced" in this world. What are the world's noblest promotions in comparison with that of the believer at death, when he graduates from grace to glory? When he exchanges the pilgrim warfare for eternal rest?

 Often, in your hours of sadness, contrast the certainty of present bliss, with the possibilities of a suffering, sorrowing, sinning future; the joys in possession, with the evils which might have been in life. You may now, like the Shunnamite of old, be gazing with tearful eye on some withered blossom, but when the question is put, "Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?" in the elevating confidence that they have "entered into peace," and are "resting in their beds," be it yours joyfully to answer, "It is well."

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Unveiled Mysteries

"You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." John 13:7

Much is baffling and perplexing to us in God's present dealings. "What!" we are often ready to exclaim, "could not the cup have been less bitter; the trial less severe; the road less dreary?" "Hush your misgivings," says a gracious God; "arraign not the rectitude of My dispensations. You shall yet see all revealed and made bright in the mirror of eternity!"

 "What I am doing" -it is all my doing, my appointment. You have partial view of these dealings; they are seen by the eye of sense through a dim and distorted medium. You can see nothing but plans crossed, and gourds laid low, and "beautiful rods" broken. But I see the end from the beginning. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

 "Later you will understand!" Wait for the "later" revelation! An earthly father puzzles not the ear of infancy with hard sayings and involved problems. He waits for the manhood of being and then unfolds all. So it is with God! We are now in our infancy; children lisping in earthly infancy a knowledge of His ways. We shall learn the "deep things of God." in the manhood of eternity! Christ now often shows himself only "behind the lattice," a glimpse and He is gone! But the day is coming when we shall "see Him as He is!" when every dark hieroglyphic in the Roll of Providence will be interpreted and expounded! It is unfair to criticize the half finished picture; to censure or condemn the half developed plan. God's plans are here in embryo. "We see," says Rutherford, "the broken links in the chain of His providence. Let the Molder work his own clay in whatever frame He pleases." But a flood of light will break upon us from the sapphire throne; "In your light, O God! we shall see light." The "need be," muffled as a secret now, will be confided to us then, and become luminous with love.

 Perhaps we may not have to wait until eternity for the realization of this promise. We may experience its fulfillment here. We not infrequently find, even in this present world, mysterious dispensations issuing in unlooked for blessings. Jacob would never have seen Joseph had he not parted with Benjamin. Often would the believer never would have seen the true Joseph had he not been called on to part with his best beloved! His language at the time is that of the patriarch "I am indeed bereaved!" "All these things are against me!" But the things he imagined to be so adverse, have proved the means of leading him to see the heavenly king "in His beauty" before he dies. Much is sent to "humble us and to prove us." It may not do us good now, but it is promised to do so "at our latter end."

 I shall not dictate to my God what His way should be. The patient does not dictate to the physician. He does not reject and refuse the prescription because it is nauseous; he knows it is for his good, and takes it on trust. It is for faith to repose in whatever God appoints. Let me not wrong His love or dishonor His faithfulness by supposing that there is one needless or redundant drop in the cup which His loving wisdom has mingled. "Now we know in part, but THEN shall we know even as also we are known!"
 

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The Choosing Place

"I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction." Isaiah 48:10

The Furnace of Affliction! It is God's meeting place with His people. "I have chosen you," says He, "in the furnace of affliction. I will keep you there, until the purifying process is complete; and if need be, in a 'chariot of fire' I will carry you to heaven!" Some fires are for destruction, but this is for purification. He, the Refiner, is sitting by the furnace regulating the flames, tempering the heat; not the least filing of the gold but what is precious to Him! The bush is burning with fire, but He is in the middle of it; a living God in a bush; a living Savior in the furnace! And has this not been the method of His dealing with His faithful people in every age. First, trial; then blessing. First, difficulties; then, deliverances. Egyptian plagues– darkness, brick kilns, the Red Sea, forty years of desert privations; then Canaan! First, the burning fiery furnace; then the vision of "one like the Son of God!" Or, as with Elijah on Carmel, the answer is first by fire, and then by rain. First, the fiery trial, then the gentle descent of the Spirit's influences, coming down like "rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth."

 Believer! be it yours to ask, "are my trials sanctified?" Are they making me holier, purer, better, more meek, more gentle, more heavenly minded, more Savior like? Seek to "glorify God in the fires." Patience is a grace which the angels cannot manifest. It is a flower of earth; it blooms not in Paradise; it requires tribulation for its exercise; it is nurtured only amid wind, and hail, and storm. By patient, unmurmuring submission, remember, you, a poor sinner, can thus magnify God in a way the loftiest angelic natures cannot do! He is taking you to the inner chambers of His covenant faithfulness. His design is to purge away your dross, to bring you forth from the furnace reflecting His own image, and fitted for glory! Those intended for great usefulness are much in the refining pot. "His children," says Romaine, "have found suffering times happy times. They never have such nearness to their Father, such holy freedom with Him, and such heavenly refreshment with Him, as under the cross!" Beloved! "think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you . . . but rejoice!"

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Mourning Ended

"The days of your mourning shall be ended." Isaiah 9:20

The believer has "mourning days." The place of his sojourn is a valley of tears. Adam went weeping from his paradise, we go weeping on the way to ours. But, pilgrim of grief! your tears are numbered. A few more aching sighs; a few more gloomy clouds; and the eternal sun shall burst on you, whose radiance shall never more be obscured! Life may be to you one long "Valley of Baca" a protracted scene of "weeping!" but soon shall you hear the sweet chimes wafted from the towers of the new Jerusalem, "Enter in to the joy of your Lord!" "The Lord God shall wipe away all tears from off all faces!"

 "The days of your mourning!" It is a consoling thought that all these days are appointed; meted out; numbered. "Unto you it is given," says the apostle, "to suffer!" Yes! and if you are a child of the covenant, your mourning days are days of special privilege, intended to be fraught with blessing. To the unbeliever, they are pledges of everlasting woe; to the believer, they are preludes and precursors of eternal glory! Affliction to the one is the cloud without the Rainbow, to the other, it is the cloud radiant and lustrous with gospel promise and gospel hope!

 Reader! are you now one of the many members of the family of sorrow? Be comforted! Soon the long night-watch will be over; pain, sickness, weakness, weariness. Soon the windows of the soul will be no more darkened. Soon you shall have nothing to be delivered from, your present losses and crosses will turn into eternal gains, the dews of the night weeping, (nature's tear-drops) will come to sparkle like beautiful gems in the morning of immortality! Soon the Master's footsteps will be heard, saying, "The days of your mourning are ended," and you shall take off your sackcloth, and be girded with gladness.

 Up to that moment, your life may have been one long DAY of mourning! but once past the golden portals, and the eye can be dim no more; the very fountain of weeping will be dried! The period of your mourning is counted by DAYS of your eternal rejoicing by eras and cycles! "Why are you then cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? hope in God!" I will gaze through my tears on this celestial rainbow, and sing this "song in the night," which the God, Who is to wipe my tears away, has put into my lips: "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away!"

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The Abiding Friend

"I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Hebrews 13:5

No human friend can say so. The closest and dearest of earthly links may be broken, yes! have been broken. Distance may part, time estrange, and the grave separate. Loving earthly looks may only greet you now in mute smiles from the portrait on the wall. But here is an unfainting, unvarying, unfailing Friend. Sorrowing one! amid the wreck of earthly joys which you may be even bewailing, here is a message sent from your God, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you!" Your gourd has withered, but He who gave it you remains! Surrender yourself to His disposal. He wishes to show you His present sufficiency for your happiness. As often your heart in silence and sadness weaves its plaintive lament, "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not!" think of Him who has promised to set "the solitary in families" (Psalm 68:6) and to "give unto them a name and a place better than of sons or of daughters!" Alone! you are not alone! Turn in self-oblivion to Jesus. It is not, it cannot be "night," if He, "the Sun of your soul," be ever near! In the morning, He comes with the earliest beam that visits your chamber. When the curtains of night close around you, He, to whom "the darkness and the light are both alike," is at your side! In the stillness of night, when in your wakeful moments, the visions of the departed flit before you like shadows on the wall, He, the sleepless Shepherd of Israel, is tending your couch, and whispering in your ear, "Fear not, for I am with you!"

 Your experience may be that of Paul, "All forsook me!" But, like him, also, you will doubtless, be able to add in the extremity of your sorrow, "Nevertheless, The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me!" He can compensate by His own loving presence, for every earthly loss. Without the consciousness of His friendship and love, the smallest trial will crush you. With Him in your trial, supporting and sustaining you under it, (yes, coming in the place of those you mourn), you will have an infinite and inexhaustible portion, in the place of a finite and mutable one. Many a cloud is there without a Rainbow in Nature; but never in Grace. Every sorrow has its corresponding and counterpart Comfort. "In the multitude of the sorrows that I had in my heart, your comforts have refreshed my soul" (Psalm 94:19). If in the midnight of your grief your earthly sun appears to have set forever, an inner, but not less real sunshine, lights up your stricken heart. The stream of life may have been poisoned at its source, but blessed be His name if it has driven you to say, "All my springs are in YOU!" "The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore will I hope in Him!"

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Unwilling Discipline

"He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." Lamentations 3:33

In our seasons of trial, when under some inscrutable dispensation, how apt is the murmuring thought to rise in our hearts; "All these things are against me!" Might not this overwhelming blow have been spared? Might not this dark cloud which has shadowed my heart and my home with sadness, have been averted? Might not the accompaniments of my trial have been less severe, "Surely the Lord has forgotten to be gracious." No, these afflictions are errands of mercy in disguise! "He afflicts not willingly." There is nothing capricious or arbitrary about your God's dealings. Unutterable tenderness is the character of all His allotments! The world may wound by unkindness; trusted friends may become treacherous; a brother may speak with unnecessary harshness and severity; but the Lord is "abundant in goodness and in truth." He appoints no needless pang. When he appears like Joseph to "speak roughly," there are gentle undertones of love. The stern accents are assumed, because He has precious lessons that could not otherwise have been taught!

 Ah! be assured there is some deep necessity in all He does. In our calendars of sorrow, we may put this luminous mark against every trying hour, "It was needed!" Some unfruitful branch in the tree required pruning. Some wheat required to be cast overboard to lighten the ship and avert further disaster. Mourning one! He might have dealt far otherwise with you! He might have cut you down as a fruitless, worthless cumberer! He might have abandoned you to drift, disowned and unpiloted on the rocks of destruction. Joined to your idols, He might have left you "alone" to settle on your lees, and forfeit your eternal bliss! But He loved you better. It was kindness, which blighted your fairest blossoms, and hedged up your way with thorns. "Without this hedge of thorns," says Baxter, "on the right hand and on the left, we would hardly be able to keep the way to heaven."

 We, in our blind unbelief, may speak of trials we imagine might have been spared, chastisements that are unnecessarily severe. But the day is coming when every step of the Lord's procedure will be vindicated; when we shall own and recognize each separate experience of sorrow to have been an unspeakably precious and important period in the history of the soul. Yes! child of God. The messenger of affliction has an olive-branch in one hand, a love-token plucked from the bowers of paradise; and in the other, a chalice mingled by One too loving and gracious to insert one needless ingredient of sorrow! Remember, every drop of wrath in that cup was exhausted by a surety-Savior. In taking it into your hand, be it yours to extract support and consolation from what so mightily sustained a greater Sufferer in a more awful hour, "This cup which YOU give me to drink, shall I not drink it?"

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Death Vanquished

"I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades." Rev. 1:18

An enthroned Savior speaks! "I am the Living One". Others have passed away, but I ever live, and ever love! I am now living! A personal Savior; "Christ your life!" Are you stooping over some treasured house of clay which the whirlwind has made a mass of ruins? I roused the whirlwind from its chamber. I appointed the startling dispensation. I ordered the shroud, and prepared the grave! Let not "accident," "chance," or "fate," enter into the vocabulary of your sorrow. I am the Lord of death as well as of life. I have the keys of "Hell and of the grave" suspended at my belt. The tomb is never unlocked but by Me. Let others talk of the might of the King of Terrors. He has no might but by my permission.

 More than this, mourning one! I was "DEAD." I myself once entered that gloomy portico! I sanctified and consecrated it by my presence! I was a tenant of the tomb. This now glorified body was once laid by human hands in a borrowed grave! Can you dread to walk the Valley trodden by your Lord?; to encounter the "last enemy," which He fought and conquered. Death! It has been converted by Him into a "parenthesis in endless life."

 "I am He that was DEAD"; "I Am He who lives." What more could the Christian desire than this twofold assurance? On the Day of Atonement of old, the blood was sprinkled alike on the mercy seat; the voice of blood arose from the floor below, and the mercy seat above. So it is with the voice of our Elder Brother's blood. It cried first from earth beneath and now from Heaven. His dying love, is now ever living, imperishable and immutable as His own being!

 As the Rainbow in the material firmament can never cease to appear, so long as the present laws of nature continue, and there is a sun in the heavens; so the Rainbow of the Everlasting Covenant, and all its blessings, can only fail when Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, ceases to shine, and ceases to be! With such a Rainbow over-arching the future, one limb resting amid the cloud-lands of life, the other melting its hues into the deeper shadows of the Valley of Death, "I will fear no evil, for You, O SAVIOR GOD, are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me."

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The Greatest Gift

"Since God did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us all things?" Romans 8:32

These are amazing words! God; the Infinite, God; identifying Himself (so to speak) with the experiences of human sorrow; silencing every murmur with the unanswerable argument "I spared not my own Son. I gave my greatest gift for you; will you not cheerfully surrender your best to Me? Can you refuse after this unspeakable gift of My love, to trust Me in lesser things? The greater gift may surely well be a pledge for the bestowment of all needed subordinate good!"

 He promised to give "all things"; these "all things" are in His hand. They will be selected and allotted by His loving wisdom; crosses as well as comforts; sorrows and tears, as well as smiles and joys. Mourning one, this very trial which now dims your eye, is one of these "all things." Trust His faithfulness. He would as soon wound the Son of His love as wound you!

 "Won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us all things?" There is a "blessed impossibility," after the bestowment of the Gift of Gifts, that He will inflict one unnecessary trial, or withhold one needed benefit. Think of His love when He offered His Isaac on the altar. It is the same at this hour infinite and immutable. Yes! We may well be reconciled, even to the denial of earthly blessedness, because ordered by Him who gave Jesus! Lying meekly in the arms of His mercy, be it ours to say in filial confidence, "Lord, anything with Your love; anything but Your frown!"

 "All things." The whole range of human needs and necessities is known to Him. The care He invites me to cast upon Him is "all my care"; the need "all my need!" This is His own special promise. "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." (2 Corinthians 9: He will give me nothing and deny me nothing, but what is for my good. Let me not question the appointments of infinite wisdom. Let me not wound Him by one dishonoring doubt. Let me lean upon Him in little things as well as in great things. After the pledge of His love in Jesus, nothing can come wrong that comes from His hands! If tempted at times to harbor some unkind misgivings, let the sight of the cross dispel it. Looking to the Rainbow in the cloud gleaming with the words, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me!" be it mine to say:

Lord, though You bend my spirit low,
Love only will I see;
The very hand that strikes the blow,
Was wounded once for me.
 

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Sleeping and Waking

"Those also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." 1 Thessalonians 4:14

Or, as these words have been rendered: "Those who are laid asleep in Jesus." We bid an earthly friend "Good night" in the pleasing expectation of meeting next morning. The saints are "laid asleep" in the grave of Jesus, in the sure and certain hope of meeting Him in the morning of immortality!

 Child of God! weep not for those who have "departed to be with Christ." It is with them "far better." Do not think of them "gone." That is a word taken from the vocabulary of death, and which, it is to be feared, is often employed with many in the heathen sense of annihilation. Seek not "the living among the dead." Think rather that the last sigh was scarce over on earth, when the song was begun in Heaven! The Spirit winged its arrow-like flight among ministering seraphim. Hear that voice stealing down in the soft whisper of Heaven's music, and saying, "if you loved me you would rejoice, because I said, I go unto my Father!"

 The body, the casket of this immortal jewel– the soul, is left for a season to the dishonors of the tomb. But it is only for a brief "night-watch." That dust is precious, because redeemed. Body as well as soul was purchased by the life-blood of Emmanuel. Angels guard these slumbering ashes; and the day is coming when God shall "send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other." Oh, if there be "joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents," what shall be the joy of those blessed beings over the myriads of rising dead, hastening at their summons to their crowns and thrones!

 Christian mourner! "Your brother shall rise again." Wish him not back amid the storms of the wilderness. Be thankful rather that the wheat is no longer out in the tempest and rain; but safely garnered, eternally housed. Would you, if you could, weep that blessed one back from glory? Would you ask him to unlearn Heaven's language and be once more involved in the dust of battle? No, rather "rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Death is not an eternal sleep. "Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." Jesus is now whispering in your ear the glorious secret hidden from ages and generations, and which was left to Him, as "the Abolisher of Death," to disclose: "Your dead shall live; together with My dead body shall they arise." He is pointing you onward to that hour of jubilee, when the summons shall be addressed to all His sleeping saints: "Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust!"

 Oh happy day! when I shall see my Savior God in all the glories of His exalted Humanity; and with Him, the once "loved and lost," now the loved and glorified, never to be lost again! "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with you." Not one shall be wanting. In concert with those whose tongues are now silent on earth, we shall then unite in the lofty anthem, sung by the ingathered Church triumphant, "O death, where is your sting! O grave, where is your victory! Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ."

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Invisible Harmonies

"We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to them who are  called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28

We are apt to, "limit the Holy One of Israel", and to say, "Some things have worked together for our good." God says, "All things!" Joys, sorrows, crosses, prosperity, health, sickness; the gourd bestowed, and the gourd withered; the cup full, and the cup emptied; the lingering sick-bed, the early grave! Often, indeed, would sight and sense lead us to doubt the reality of the promise. We can see, in many things, scarce a dim reflection of His love. Useful lives taken; blossoms permanently plucked; spiritual props removed; benevolent schemes blown up. But the apostle does not say, "We see," but "We know." It is the province of faith to trust God in the dark. The uninitiated and undiscerning can not understand or explain the revolutions and dependencies of the varied wheels in a complicated machine; but they have confidence in the wisdom of the Engineer, that all is designed to "work out" some great useful end. Be it ours to write over the mysterious dealing, "This also comes from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." Let us "be still and know that He is God." "We have a wonderful advertisement of a Physician from the Spirit of Truth," says one, "who heals all your diseases. He requires but one thing, to take all He has prescribed, bitter as well as sweet!" He will yet vindicate His own rectitude and faithfulness in our trials; our own souls will be made better for them; He himself will be glorified in them. "Doubt not my love," He seems to say, "the day is coming when you shall have all mysteries explained, all secrets unraveled, and this very trial demonstrated to be one of the 'all things' working together for your good. Men see not the bright light in the clouds, "but it shall come to pass that at EVENING TIME it shall be light!"
 

[Soldier4Christ]

The Unchanging Name

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever." Hebrews 13:8

All is changing here. Life is a kaleidoscope, made of shifting forms; new scenes, new tastes, new feelings, new associations; and alternation of cloud and sunshine, tempest and calm. Its joys are like the airy bubbles on the stream, tinted with sunlight; we touch them; they are gone! We have to tell of vacant seats in our sanctuaries; vacant seats at our home-hearths; the music of well known voices hushed. Often just when we imagine we have at last obtained a stable footing, the scaffolding gives way, the props on which for a life time we had been leaning fails, and we feel ourselves out amid the pitiless storm.

 But is there nothing stable amid all this mutability? Nothing secure and abiding amid these fleeting shadows? Yes! Jesus is without any variableness. Nineteen hundred years have rolled by since He left our world. The world has changed, but He is to this hour the same. We can follow Him through all His wondrous pilgrimage of love on earth. We can behold Penitence crouching at His feet, and sent away forgiven. Sorrow tracking His footsteps with tears, and sent away with her tears dried and her wounded spirit healed. Pain and sickness pleading with pallid lip and wasted feature; and Disease, at His omnipotent mandate, taking wings to itself and fleeing away! And He who is now on the heavenly throne is "that same Jesus." His ascension glories have not altered His changeless heart, or alienated His affections. In Him we have a Rock which the billows of adversity cannot shake. The spent fury of the chafing waves may reach us; no more; and this only endearing the security and value of the abiding Refuge!

 How often does God rouse the storm to drive us from all creature confidences, to the stable One! How often does He poison and pollute the stream to lead us to seek the everlasting Fountainhead! "We may have lost much; but if we have found You, O blessed Jesus, we possess infinitely more than we have forfeited. We can glory in the persuasion that nothing can ever separate us from Your love."

A look may alienate us from our best earthly friends; an unintentional word may estrange, the grave must sunder. But "the Lord lives, and blessed be my Rock, and let the God of my salvation be exalted." What You have been "yesterday"; yes, from everlasting ages; You are to this day, and You shall be forever and ever! We can look to the rainbow of your promises and behold all of them in You "yes and amen!" You are addressing us from your throne in glory; that throne spoken of in Revelation as encircled with "the rainbow of emerald" (the emblem of perpetuity), and saying, "Fear not, I am He that lives and was dead, and behold I am alive forever more!" "Because I live, you shall live also!"

[Soldier4Christ]

Strength for the Day

"As your days so shall your strength be." Deuteronomy 23:25

Believer! have you not felt it so? Have you not found plants distilling balm, growing beside sorrow's path? supports vouchsafed, which were undreamed of until the dreaded cloud had burst, and the day of trial had come? Trouble not yourself regarding an unknown and veiled future; but cast all your cares on God. "Our sandals," says a saint now in glory, "are a proof against the roughest path." He whose name is "the God of all grace" is better than His word. He will be found equal to all the emergencies of His people; enough for each moment and each hour as they come. He never takes us to the bitter Marah streams, but He reveals also the hidden branch. Paul was hurled down from the third heavens to endure the smarting of the "thorn", but he rises like a giant from his fall, exulting in the sustaining grace of an "all-sufficient God."

 The beautiful peculiarity in this promise is, that God proportions His grace to the nature and season of the trial. He does not give an 'advance  supply of grace', but when the needed season and exigency comes, then the appropriate strength and support are imparted. He does not send the rainbow before the cloud, but when the cloud appears, the rainbow is seen in it! He gives sustaining grace for a trying day, and dying grace for a dying day.

 Reader! do not morbidly brood on the future. Live on the promise! When tomorrow comes with its trials, Jesus will come with tomorrow and with its trials too. Present grace is enough for present necessity. Trust God for the future. We honor Him, not by anticipating trial, but by confiding in His faithfulness, and crediting His assurances, that no temptation will He send greater than we are able to bear. Even if you should see fresh storm-clouds returning after the rain, be ready to say, "I will fear no evil, for You are with me!" Insufficient you are of yourself for any trial, but "your sufficiency is of God." The promise is not "Your grace," but "My grace is sufficient." Oh, trust His all-sufficiency in all things. Jehovah Jireh, "the Lord will provide." See written over every trying hour of the future, "So shall your strength be!"