The Lord's Shut-ins
From Words of Cheer for Christian Pilgrims
By Theodore Cuyler, 1896
Just why the loving Master confines some of his choicest and best people in rooms of suffering, and cripples others in body or in purse - we cannot always tell. One thing is very clear, and that is that he does not mean to cripple their usefulness. To speak for Christ or to work for Christ is often easy and pleasant; but to bear for Christ either pain, or poverty, or confinement, with courageous patience, is more eloquent than many a pulpit discourse. No portion of Paul's wonderful career was productive of more solid results - than the years of his imprisonment at Rome. He styled himself an "ambassador in chains," and he preached the kingdom of God to those around him, until there were many converts in "Caesar's household." He wrote seven of his thirteen epistles while he was the prison chaplain under the eyes of Nero's jailers. One of these was the letter to Philippi, which is the epistle of gratitude for divine mercies and of exultant joy under sharp afflictions.
If the cages of birds are sometimes covered up in order to make them sing, the old hero was caged to furnish to the world one of its most melodious epics of sublime faith in Jesus. Satan afterwards clapped John Bunyan into a prison, and lo, out of the windows of the Bedford jail - floated the transcendent allegory of the "Pilgrim's Progress"! The service of Jesus Christ is not limited by any stress of circumstances. A sick chamber has often been made a chosen spot for glorifying God. The celebrated Halyburton of Scotland welcomed scores of visitors to his sickroom where they stood around his bedside and listened to words which seemed to be inspired by a glimpse of heaven from the land of Beulah. None of his previous sermons equaled his discoursings from that bed of suffering. "This is the best pulpit," said he, "that I was ever in. I am laid on this bed for this very end - that I may commend my Lord." He called it a shaking hands with the King of Terrors. After a night of agonizing pain he said to his wife, "Jesus came to me in the third watch of the night, walking upon the waters; and he said to me, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and I have the keys of death." He stilled the tempest in my soul, and there is a great calm. I have ripened fast under the bright sun of righteousness.'' After his voice failed him in the last moments - he continued to clap his hands in triumph.
It is not only by such joyful testimonies to the sustaining power of divine grace, or by cheerful patience, that the prisoners of Jesus Christ have preached and are preaching his precious gospel. There are many ways of doing good open to invalids. During the years that the wife of Charles Spurgeon was confined to her sickroom, she conceived the plan of providing commentaries and useful books for poor ministers and village preachers. She told me that over one hundred thousand such volumes had been secured in response to her appeals. When I visited her last summer in the beautiful old home at Westwood, I found that she was cheering the lonely hours of her widowhood, by continuing this labor of love.
Some of Charlotte Elliott's sweetest hymns, in England - and some of the best productions of Mrs. Paull, in our own land, have been written during periods of confinement in the chamber of an invalid. A large-hearted lady, shut in from her former activities out-of-doors, spends much of her time in folding and addressing little leaflets of awakening or of consoling truth - to those who may be profited by them.
In many a house there is a room whose silent influence is felt all over the dwelling. The other members of the family come there to inquire after the sufferer - to bring some choice fruit or pleasant gift, to read aloud, or watch with her through the lonesome night. From that room steals forth an influence which makes everyone gentler and tenderer and more unselfish. Perhaps this may be one of the reasons why God permits some of his children to suffer; they not only grow purer by the chastening - but become evangelists of blessing to others. Paul in his prison prompted many besides Onesiphorus to deeds of sympathy for him, and he evoked such deeds of kindness from his spiritual children at Philippi, that he writes to them that their love "has blossomed out afresh." That is the literal rendering of the message sent by the old, sunny-souled prisoner of Jesus Christ.
The Master takes great delight in many of his shut-ins. They are weaving bright crowns for themselves, to be worn in that land in which none shall say "I am sick," and neither shall there be any more pain!
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