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Day 1
Sovereignty
“The Lord Reigneth”—Psalm 93:1.
No bow of promise in the “dark and cloudy day” shines more radiantly
than this. God, my God—the God who gave Jesus; orders all events,
and overrules all for my good! “When I,” says He, “bring
a cloud over the earth.” He has no wish to conceal the hand, which
shadows for a time earth’s brightest prospects. It is He alike who
“brings” the cloud, who brings us into it, and in mercy leads
us through it! His kingdom ruleth over all. “The lot is cast into
the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.” We are
tenants at will; but, blessed thought, at God’s will. He puts the
burden on and keeps it on, and at His own time will remove it!
Beware of brooding over second causes. It is the worst form of atheism!
When our most fondly-cherished gourds are smitten; our fairest flowers
lie withered in our bosom; this is the silencer of all reflections, “The
Lord prepared the worm!” When the temple of the soul is smitten with
lightning—its pillars rent: “The Lord is in His holy temple!”
Accident, chance, fate, destiny, have no place in the Christian’s
creed. He is no unpiloted vessel left to the mercy of the storm—no
weed left to the sport of the fitful waves. “The voice of the Lord
is upon the waters!” There is but one explanation of all that befalls
him: “I will be dumb, I will open not my mouth, because You did it.”
Death seems to the human spectator the most capricious and wayward of
events. But not so. The keys of death and Hades are in the hands of this
same reigning God! Look at the parable of the fig-tree. Its prolonged
existence, or its doom as a cumberer, forms matter of conversation in
heaven; the axe cannot be laid at its root until God gives the warrant!
How much more will this be the case regarding every “Tree of Righteousness,
the planting of the Lord?” It will be watched over by Him, “Lest
anyone hurt it.” Every trembling fiber He will care for; and if made
early to succumb to the inevitable stroke, “Who knoweth not in all
these things, that the hand of the Lord has wrought this.” Be it
mine to merge my own will in His; not to cavil at His ways, or to seek
to have one jot or tittle of that will altered; but to lie passive in
His hands; to take the bitter as well as the sweet, knowing that the cup
is mingled by One who loves me too well to add one ingredient that might
have been spared!
Who can wonder that the sweet Psalmist of Israel should seek, as he sees
it spanning the lower heavens, to fix the arrested gaze of a whole world
on the softened tints of this Bow of Comfort: “The Lord reigneth,
let the earth rejoice.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
2
A Loving Purpose
“The Lord hath pleasure in the prosperity of His servant”—Psalm
35:27.
What is “prosperity?” Is it threads of life woven into a bright
tissue? a full cup; ample riches; worldly applause; an unbroken circle?
No, these are often a snare; received without gratitude; dimming the soul
to its nobler destinies. Often spiritually it rather means God taking
us by the hand into the lowly Valleys of Humiliation; leading us as He
did his servant Job of old, out of his sheep, oxen, camels, health, wealth,
children, in order that we may be brought before Him in the dust, and
say, “Blessed be His name!”
Yes! The very reverse of what is known in the world as Prosperity (generally)
forms the background of which the Bow of Promise is seen. God smiles on
us through these rainbows and teardrops of sorrows! He loves us too well.
He has too great an interest in our spiritual welfare to permit us to
live on in what is misnamed “Prosperity.” When He sees duties
languidly performed, or coldly neglected; the heart deadened, and love
to Himself congealed by the absorbing power of the present world, He puts
a thorn in our nest to drive us to the wing, and prevent our being grovelers
forever!
I may not be able now to understand the mystery of these dealings. I may
be asking through the tears, Why this unkind wrest on my earthly happiness?
Why so premature a lopping of my boughs of promise? Such a speedy withering
of my most cherished gourd?” The answer is plain. It is your soul
prosperity He has in view. Believe it, your true EBENEZERS will yet be
raised close by your ZAREPHATHS (the place of furnace). His afflictions
are no arbitrary appointments. There is righteous necessity in all He
does. As He lays His chastening hand upon you, and leads you by ways you
know not, and which you never would have chosen; He whispers the gentle
accents in your ear, “Beloved I wish above all things that you would
prosper, and be in health.”
Rest in the quiet consciousness that all is well. Murmur at nothing which
brings you nearer His own loving Presence. Be thankful for your very cares,
because you can confidently cast them all upon Him. He has your temporal
and eternal “prosperity” too much at heart to appoint one superfluous
pang, one redundant stroke. Commit therefore, all that concerns you to
His keeping, and leave it there.
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
3
The Safe Retreat
“A man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind and a covert from
the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land”—Isaiah 32:2.
“A man!” This first word forms the key to the precious verse.
It is “The man Christ Jesus!” And when and where is He thus
revealed to His people as their hiding-place? It is, as with Elijah of
old, in the whirlwind and the storm! Amid the world’s bright sunshine,
in the tranquil skies, uninterrupted prosperity, they seek Him not! But
when the clouds begin to gather, and the sun is swept from the firmament;
when they have learned the insecurity of all earthly refuges, then the
prayer ascends, “My heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the ROCK that
is higher than I.” The Earthquake, the Tempest, the Fire, and then
“the still small voice!”
Sorrowing believer, you have indeed a Sure Covert; a Strong Tower which
cannot be shaken! The world has its coverts too. But they cannot stand
the day of trial. The wind passes over them and they are gone! But the
louder the hurricane, the more will it endear to you the abiding Shelter;
the deeper in the clefts of this ROCK, the safer you are.
A Man! Delight often to dwell on the humanity of Jesus; you have a brother
on the throne! A “living Kinsman;” one who “knows your
frame;” and who, by the exquisite sympathies of His exalted Human
Nature, can gauge, as none other can, the depths of your sorrow.
An earthly friend comes to you in trial, he has never known bereavement,
and therefore cannot enter into your woe. Another comes; he has been again
and again in the furnace; his heart has been touched tenderly as your
own; he can feelingly sympathize with you. It is so with Jesus. As Man,
He has passed through every experience of suffering. He has Himself known
the storm from which He offers you shelter. He is the ROCK, yet “a
Man!” “Mighty to save;” yet mighty to compassionate! “Immanuel,
God with us!” He is like the Bow in the material heavens, which,
while its summit is in the clouds, either base of its arc rests on earth;
or like the oak which, while it can wrestle with the tempest, yet invites
the most feeble bird to fold its wing on its branches!
Mourner! Go sit under your “Beloved’s shadow with great delight.”
Hide in His wounded side! The hand which was pierced for you is ordering
your trials; He who roused the storm is the hiding-place from it; and
as you journey on—gloomy clouds mustering around you; let this bright
Bow of comfort ever arrest your drooping eye; “In all things it behooved
Him to be made like unto His brethren…For in that He himself hath
suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
4
The Reason For Chastisement
“Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth”—Hebrews 12:6.
What! God loves me when He is discharging His quiver upon me! emptying
me from vessel to vessel! causing the sun of my earthly joys to set in
clouds? Yes! O afflicted, tossed with tempest; He chastens you because
He loves you! This trial comes from His own tender, loving hand; His own
tender, unchanging heart!
Are you laid on a sickbed; are sorrowful months and wearisome nights appointed
unto you? Let this be the pillow on which your aching head reclines. It
is because He loves me!
Is it bereavement that has swept your heart and desolated your dwelling?
He appointed that chamber of death. He opened that tomb; because He loves
you! As it is the suffering child of the family which claims a mother’s
deepest affections and most tender solicitude, so have you at this moment
embarked on your side the most tender love and solicitude of a heavenly
Father. He loved you into this sorrow, and will love you through it. There
is nothing capricious in His dealings. LOVE is the reason of all He does.
There is no drop of wrath in that cup you are called to drink. “I
do believe,” says Lady Powerscourt, “He has purchased these
afflictions for us as well as everything else. Blessed be His name, it
is part of His covenant to visit us with the rod.” What says our
adorable Lord himself? The words were spoken, not when He was on earth,
a sojourner in a sorrowing world, but when enthroned amid the glories
of heaven. “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten” (Revelation
3:19).
Believer! rejoice in the thought that the rod, the chastening rod, is
in the hands of the living, loving Savior, who died for you! Tribulation
is the King’s Highway and yet that highway is paved with love. As
some flowers before shedding their fragrance require to be pressed, so
does your God think it suitable to bruise you. As some birds are said
to sing their sweetest notes when the thorn pierces their bosom, so does
He appoint affliction to lacerate, that you may be driven to the wing,
singing, in your upward soaring, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart
is fixed!” “Those,” says the heavenly Leighton, “He
means to make the most resplendent, He has most often His tools upon.”
“Our troubles,” says another, “seem in His Word to be ever
in His mind.
Perhaps
half the commands and half the promises He gives us there, are given us
as troubled men.” Be it ours to say, “Lord, I will love You
not only despite Your rod, but because of your rod.” I will rush
into the very arms that are chastening me! When your voice calls, as to
Abraham of old, to prepare for bluer trial, be it mine to respond with
bounding heart, “Here I am!” and so read in the Bow which spans
my darkest cloud, “He chastens because He loves!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
5
Immutability
“I the Lord change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed”—Malachi
3:6.
The Unchangeableness of God. What an anchor for a storm-tossed sea! “Change
is our portion here!” Scenes are altering. Joys are fading. Friends!
some of them are removed at a distance; others have gone to the longest
home of all! Who, amid these checkered experiences, does not sigh for
something permanent; stable-enduring? The vessel has again and again slipped
its earthly moorings. We long for some secure and sheltered harbor.
“I change not!” Heart and flesh may faint; yes, do faint and
fail—but there is an unfainting, unfailing, unvarying God: all the
changes in the world around cannot affect Him. Our own fitfulness cannot
alter Him. When we are depressed, downcast, fluctuating, our treacherous
hearts turning aside “like a broken bow”, He is without one
“shadow of turning.” “God who cannot lie,” is the
superscription on His eternal throne; and inscribed on all His dealings.
“I change not!” For whom does He span the darkened sky with
His bow of comfort? It is for “the Sons of Jacob,” His own covenant
people. Those clothed like Jacob of old, in the garment of the true “Elder
Brother,” through whom they have obtained their spiritual inheritance.
Precious name! It forms a blessed guarantee that nothing can befall me
but what is for my good. I cannot doubt His faithfulness. I dare not arraign
the rectitude of His dispensations. It is covenant love which is now darkening
my earthly horizon. This hour He is the same as when He “spared not
His own Son!” Oh, instead of wondering at my trials, let me rather
wonder that He has borne with me so long. It is of the Lord’s unchanging
mercies that I am not consumed. Had He been man, changeful, vacillating,
as myself, long ere now would He have spurned me away, and consigned me
to the doom of the cumberer. But, “My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” He is without any
variableness. Yes! in this dark and cloudy sky I will lift up mine eyes
to the covenant token, and sing through my tears, “Happy is he that
has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.”
“And
it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow
shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
6
Divine Sympathy
“I know their sorrows”—Exodus 3:7.
Man cannot say so. There are many sensitive fibers in the soul the best
and most tender human sympathy cannot touch. But the Prince of Sufferers,
He who led the way in the path of sorrow, “knows our frame.”
When crushing bereavement lies like ice on the heart; when the dearest
earthly friend cannot enter into the peculiarities of our grief, Jesus
can, Jesus does! He who once bore my sins also carried my sorrows. That
eye, now on the throne, was once dim with weeping! I can think in all
my afflictions “He was afflicted;” in all my tears, “Jesus
wept.”
Israel had long groaned under bondage. God appeared not to “know”
it. He seemed, like Baal, “asleep,” yet at that very moment
was His pitying eye wistfully beholding His enslaved people. It was then
He said, “I know their sorrows!”
He may seem at times thus to forget and forsake us; leaving us to utter
the plaintive cry, “Has God forgotten to be gracious,” when
all the while He is bending over us in the most tender love. He often
suffers our needs to attain their extremity; that He may stretch forth
His succoring hand, and reveal the plenitude of His Grace! “You have
seen the end of the Lord, the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy”
(James 5:11).
And “knowing” our sorrows, is a guarantee that none will be
sent but what He sees to be needful. “I will not,” says He,
“make a full end of you, but will correct you in measure” (Jeremiah
30:11). All He sends is precisely meted out—wisely apportioned. There
is nothing accidental or fortuitous: no redundant thorn; no superfluous
pang. He “puts our tears in a bottle” (Psalm 56:8). Each one
is counted; drop by drop; tear by tear; they are sacred things among the
treasures of God! Suffering believer, the iron may have entered deeply
into your soul; yet rejoice! Great is your honor. You are partaker with
Christ in His sufferings. Look upwards to this bright Bow encircling your
dark sky! Jesus, a sorrowing, sympathizing Jesus, “knows” your
aching pangs and burning tears, and He will “come down to deliver
you!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
7
A Gracious Condition
“If need be”—1 Peter l:6.
What a blessed motto and superscription over the dark lintels of sorrow!
“If need be!” Every arrow from the quiver of God is feathered
with it! Write it, child of affliction, over every trial your God sees
meet to send! If He calls you down from the sunny mountain-heights to
the dark glades, hear Him saying, “There is a need be.” If He
has dashed the cup of prosperity from your lips, curtailed your creature
comforts, diminished your “basket and your store,” hear Him
saying, “There is a need be.” If He has ploughed and furrowed
your soul with severe bereavement; extinguished light after light in your
dwelling; hear Him therefore stilling the tumult of your grief—“There
is a need be.”
“Yes! believe it, there is some profound reason for your trial, which
at present may be indiscernible. No furnace will be hotter than He sees
to be needed. Sometimes indeed, His teachings are mysterious. We can with
difficulty spell out the letters, God is love!—we can see no “bright
light;” no luminous Bow in “our cloud.” It is all mystery;
not one break is there in the sky! No! “Hear what God the Lord speaks.”
“If need be.”
He does
not long leave His people alone, if He sees the chariot-wheels dragging
heavily. He will take His own means to sever them from an absorbing love
of the world; to pursue them out of self; and dislodge usurping clay-idols
that may have vaulted on the throne which He alone may occupy. Before
your present trial He may have seen your love waxing cold. Your influence
for good lessening. As the sun puts out the fire, the sun of earthly prosperity
may have been extinguishing the fires of your soul. You may have been
shining less brightly for Christ, effecting some guilty compromise with
an insinuating and seductive world. He has appointed the very discipline
and dealing needful; nothing less could have done!
Be still, and know that He is God! That “need be,” remember,
is in the hands of Infinite Love, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power. Trust
Him in little things as well as great things, in trifles as well as emergencies.
Seek to have unquestioning faith. Though other paths, doubtless, would
have been selected by you had the choice been in your hands, be it yours
to listen to His voice at every turn in the road, saying, “This is
the way, walk in it.”
We may not be able to understand it now but one day we shall come to find
that AFFLICTION is one of God’s blessed angels; a ministering spirit,
“sent forth to minister to them who are heirs of salvation.”
There would be no Bow in the material heaven but for the Cloud! Lovelier,
indeed, to the eye, is the azure blue; the fleecy summer vapors, or gold
and vermilion of western sunsets. But what would become of the earth if
no dark clouds from time to time hung over it; distilling their treasures,
reviving and refreshing its drooping vegetable tribes?
Is it otherwise with the soul? No. The cloud of sorrow is needed. Its
every raindrop has an inner meaning of LOVE! If, even now, afflicted one,
these clouds are gathering, and the tempest sighing, lift up your eye
to the divine scroll gleaming in the darkened heavens, and remember that
He who has put the Bow of promise there, saw also a “need be”
for the cloud on which it rests!
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be in the cloud.”
Day
8
Presence and Rest
“My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest”—Exodus
33:14.
Moses asked to be shown “the way.” Here is the answer: The way
is not shown; but better than this, God says, “Trust Me”; “I
will go with you!”
Afflicted one! hear the voice addressing you from the cloudy pillar. It
is a wilderness promise which “the God of Jeshurun” speaks to
His spiritual Israel still. He who led His people of old “like a
flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron,” will manifest towards you
the same Shepherd-love. The way may be very different from what we could
have wished; what we would have chosen. But the choice is in better hands.
He had His own wise and righteous ends in every devious turning in it.
Who can look back on the past leadings of God without gratitude and thankfulness?
When His sheep have been conducted to the rougher parts of the wilderness,
He, their Shepherd, has “gone before them.” When their fleece
was torn and footsore and weary He has borne them in His arms. His presence
has lightened every cross and sweetened every care. Let us trust Him for
an unknown and checkered future. Other companionships we cherished may
have failed us, but One who is better than the best, goes before us in
His gracious pillar-cloud. With Him for our portion, take what He will
away, we must be happy; we can rise above the loss of the earthly gift,
in the consciousness of the nobler possession and heritage we enjoy in
the Great Bestower.
He may
have seen meet to level clay idols, that He, the All-Satisfying might
reign paramount and supreme. He may have seen meet to take earthly “presences”
away, to give us more of His own, and to lead us to breathe more earnestly
the prayer “If THY presence go not with us, carry us not hence.”
He will not suffer us to rear tabernacles on earth, and to write upon
them, “This is my rest.” No! Tenting time here—resting
time yonder! But “Fear not,” He seems to say, “You are
not left without a friend or without solace on the way Pilgrim in a pilgrim
land! ‘My presence shall go with you.’ ”
In all your dark and cloudy days; in your hours of faintness and depression;
in sadness; in life and in death! And when the journey is ended, the Pillar
needed no more, ‘I will give you rest’. The earnest of Grace
will be followed with the fruition of Glory!
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
9
The Giver and the Taker
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
blessed be the name of the Lord”—Job 1:21.
Noble posture this; to kneel and to adore! To see no hand but ONE! Sabeans,
Fire, Whirlwind, Sword are all overlooked. The Patriarch recognizes alone
“The Lord” who gave and “The Lord” who has taken.
What is the cause of so much depression, overmuch sorrow, ungospel murmuring
in our hours of trial? It was what Rutherford calls “Our looking
to the confused rollings of the wheels of second causes;” a refusal
to rise to “the height of the great argument,” and confidently
to say, “The will of the Lord be done:” a refusal to hear His
voice, His own loving voice, mingling with the accents of the rudest storm;
“It is I!”
“Is there evil in the city, and the Lord has not done it?” Is
there a bitter drop in the cup, and the Lord has not mingled it? He loves
His people too well to entrust their interest to any other. We are but
clay in the hand of the Potter—vessels in the hand of the Refiner
of silver. He metes out our portion. He appoints the bounds of our habitation.
“The Lord God prepared the gourd.” “The Lord God prepared
the worm.” He is the Author alike of mercies and sorrows, of comforts
and crosses. He breathes into our nostrils the breath of life; and it
is at His summons the spirit returns “to the God who gave it!”
Oh, that we would seek to regard our own lives and the lives of those
dear to us as a loan. God, as the Great Proprietor, who, when He sees
meet, can revoke the grant or curtail the lease, “He gave!”
All the mercies bestowed; by Him continued; by Him withheld.
And how often does He take away, that he may Himself enter the vacuum
of the heart and fill it with His own ineffable presence and love! No
loss can compensate for the want of Him, but He can compensate for all
losses. Let us trust His love and faithfulness as a taking as well as
a giving God. Often are sense and sight tempted to say, “Not so,
Lord!” But Faith, resting on the promise, can exult in this Bow spanning
the darkest cloud, “Even so, Father, for it seems good in your sight!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
10
Deliverance in Trouble
“Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver thee, and thou 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 suffered
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!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
11
Pitying Love
“Like as a father pitieth his children,
so the Lord pitieth them that 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 solicitude,
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 Him when you cannot trace Him. 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 bow. 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!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be in the cloud.”
Day
12
The Blessed Hope
“That blessed hope, and the glorious appearing
of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ”—Titus 2:13.
What a bright bow 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 aspirations of the whole life seem realized; one wave of calamity
overtakes us, and washes all away!
But, there is “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 till 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 traitor 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 the
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 Bow 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!
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
DAY
13
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
57:1-2.
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 were 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” (he has entered) “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 reversion.
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.”
“It shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that
the bow shall be in the cloud.”
Day
14
Unveiled Mysteries
“What I do you know not now,
but you shall know hereafter”—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 shall I do?” 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?”
And “You shall know!” Wait for the “hereafter” 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 nonage; 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 former work his own clay in what 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 till 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 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!”
“It shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that
the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
15
The Choosing Place
“I have chosen thee 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, there; I will keep you there,
till 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, straits; then,
deliverance: Egypt—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 that 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!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
16
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” protracted scene of
“weeping” but soon shall you hear the sweet chimes wafted from
the towers of the new Jerusalem, “Enter into 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 earnests of everlasting woe; to the believer, they are preludes and
precursors of eternal glory! Affliction to the one is the cloud without
the Bow, 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
teardrops) 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 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 tears for the former things are passed away!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
17
The Abiding Friend
“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”—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 sunder. 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” (2 Timothy 4: 16,17)! 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 for a finite and mutable
one. Many a cloud is there without a Bow 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 for ever, 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 THEE!”
“The
LORD is my portion, says my soul, therefore will I hope in Him!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
18
Unwilling Discipline
“He doth 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 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 redundant 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 pilotless 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
Richard Baxter, “on the right hand and on the left, we should 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?”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
19
Death Vanquished
“I am he who lives and was dead; and, behold,
I am alive evermore, Amen;
and
have the keys of hell and of death”—Revelation 1:18.
An enthroned Savior speaks! “I,” says He, “am He who lives!”
(or, “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 that
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,”
“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 girdle. The tomb is never unlocked but by
Me. Let others talk of the might of the King of Terrors. He has not 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 convened 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
above; 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 Bow 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 Bow 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 Bow over-arching the future, one limb resting amid
the cloudlands of life, the other melting its hues into the deeper shadows
of the Valley of Death, “I will fear no evil, for Thou,” O SAVIOR
GOD, “are with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
20
The Greatest Gift
“He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all,
how shall He not with him also freely 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!
“How shall He not give?” There is a “blessed impossibility,”
after the bestowment of the Gift of Gifts, that He will inflict one unnecessary
trial, or withhold one needed boon. Think of His love when He offered
His Isaac on the altar. It is the same at this hour, infinite, 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 wants 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 9:8). 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 Bow 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.
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
21
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.” Think not 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, 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 lifeblood of Immanuel. 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! “Thy 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. You would not, surely, if you could, weep that blessed one back
from glory. 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 thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! Thanks
be to God, who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
22
Invisible Harmonies
“We know that all things work together for good to them that 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
sickbed, 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 love. Useful lives taken, blossoms permanently plucked;
spiritual prop 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 cannot
understand or explain the revolutions and dependencies of the varied wheels
in a complicated machine; but they have confidence in the wisdom of the
Artificer, 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 Lady Powerscourt, “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 mysterious 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!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
23
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 prop on which for a lifetime 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 changed 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. Our best earthly friends, a look may alienate;
an unintentional word may estrange, the grave must sunder. But “The
Lord liveth, 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
bow 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 for ever more!” “Because
I live, you shall live also!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
24
Strength for the Day
“As your days so shall your strength be”—Deuteronomy 33:25.
Believer! have you not felt it so? Have you not found plants distilling
balm, growing beside sorrow’s path? Succors and supports vouchsafed,
which were undreamed of till 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 seventh heaven 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 forestall or
advance a supply of grace, but when the needed season and exigency comes,
then the appropriate strength and support are imparted. He does not send
the bow before the cloud, but when the cloud appears, the bow 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
the morrow comes with its trials, Jesus will come with the morrow 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 clouds returning after the rain, be ready to say—“I will
fear no evil, for Thou art with me!” Insufficient you are of yourself
for any trial—but “your sufficiency is of God.” The promise
is not “Thy 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!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I see a cloud over the earth, that
the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
25
The Grave Spoiled
“I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be your plagues:
O grave, I will be your destruction”—Hosea 13:14.
Christian! the grave is lit with Immanuel’s love. The darkest of
all clouds—that which rests over the land of Hades—has the brightest
bow in it. These gloomy portals are not to hold your loved and lost for
ever. The land of forgetfulness, where your buried treasures lie, is not
a winter of unbroken darkness and desolation. A glorious springtime of
revival is promised, when the mortal shall put on immortality, and the
corruptible shall be clothed with “incorruption.”
The resurrection of the body! It is the climax of the work of Jesus—its
culminating glory. St. Paul represents a longing Church as “waiting
for the adoption, (to wit), the redemption of the body.” It was the
preeminent theme of his preaching; “He preached unto them Jesus and
the resurrection.” It was the loved article in his creed, which engrossed
his holiest aspirations, “If by any means I might attain to the resurrection
of the dead.” It was the grand solace he addressed to other mourners.
It is not when speaking of the immediate bliss of the departed spirit
at the hour of death, but it is when dwelling on the “last trump”—the
dead “rising incorruptible,” and “caught up,” in their
resurrection bodies, “to meet the Lord,” that he says—“Wherefore
comfort one another with these words.”
Blessed day—the Easter of creation! the dawn of the Sabbatic morn!
the Jubilee of a triumphant Church! Christian mourner! go not to the grave
to weep there. Every particle of that moldering dust is redeemed by the
oblation of Calvary; and the great Abolisher of death is only awaiting
the ingathering of the elect to give the commission to His archangels
regarding all His saints, which He gave of old regarding one, “Loose
him and let him go!”
And who can image forth the glory of these resurrection bodies, reunited
to their companion spirits, fashioned like their Lord’s? Every sense,
every faculty, purified, sublimated, instinct with holiness; emulous with
ardor in His service, eager to execute His will; retaining it may be,
the personal identities of earth, the old features worn in the “nether
valley;” now, reunited to death-divided friends in ties which know
no dissolution; no accents of sorrow trembling on their tongues! The Lamb,
in the midst of the throne, “leading” them and “feeding”
them; climbing along with them, step by step, in the path of life, and
saying at each ascending step in the endless progression, “I will
show you greater things than these!” Meanwhile He has Himself risen
as the pledge of this resurrection of all His people. The Great Sheaf
has been waved before the throne as the Earnest of the mighty harvest.
“Christ the firstfruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at
His coming.” “Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first
resurrection!”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
26
Everlasting Love
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
there with loving kindness have I drawn you”—Jeremiah 31:3.
Believer! are you tempted now to doubt His love? Are His footsteps lost
amid the night shadows through which He is now conducting you? Remember
He had His eye upon you before the birth of time; yes, from all eternity!
What appears to you now some sudden capricious exercise of His power or
sovereignty, is determination and decree of “everlasting love.”
“I have loved you,” He seems to say, “suffering one, into
this affliction; I will love you through it; and when My designs regarding
you are complete, I will show you that the love which is “from everlasting,
to everlasting!”
Child of God, if there be a ripple now agitating the surface of the stream,
trace it up to this fountain-head of love. God is faithful. He cannot
deny Himself. He must have some wise end to subserve, if some dark clouds
are now intercepting those gracious beams. “For a small moment I
have forsaken you; but with great mercies will I gather you. In a little
wrath I hid my face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness
will I have mercy on you, says the Lord your Redeemer. For this is as
the waters of Noah unto me: I swore that the waters of Noah should no
more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with
you, nor rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be
removed but my kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the covenant
of my peace be removed, says the Lord that has mercy on you” (Isaiah
54:7-10).
God sets His bow in the dark sky; and as if it were not enough that His
people should look upon it and take comfort in its many and varied promises,
He himself graciously becomes a party in gazing on the covenant pledge;—“And
the bow shall be in the cloud, AND I SHALL LOOK UPON IT, that I may remember
the everlasting covenant” ( Genesis 9:16). He puts himself (so to
speak) in mind of His own everlasting love! In His saints’ dark and
cloudy day, when they imagine that their eyes are alone resting on the
tokens of covenant faithfulness, the eye of a covenant keeping God is
resting upon them to. “I will look upon my own promises” He
seems to say, “They shall be memorials to Myself of my purposes of
unchanging mercy.” Nor is this love merely a general indiscriminate
affection. The motto verse speaks of each individual member of the Covenant
family, “I have loved you.” “O my Father, says Madam Guyon,
“it seems to me sometimes as if You did forget every other being
in order to think only of my faithless and ungrateful heart.”
Let us seek to view our trials as so many cords of loving kindness, by
which our God is seeking to draw us, yes, and will draw us nearer Himself.
Who knows what mercy may be bound up in what may seem to us dark and mysterious
dispensations? We are apt to misname and misinterpret His ways. We call
His dealings severe trials. He calls them “loving kindness.”
Drooping saint, let your eyes rest on the rainbow over arching the throne
of God, spanning from eternity to eternity; and read for your comfort
the gracious declaration: “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting
to everlasting upon them that fear Him.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
27
Inviolable Attachment
“There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother”—Proverbs
18:24.
Close is the tie which binds brother to brother, the companions of infancy,
sharers of one another’s joys and sorrows; cast in the same human
mould; having engraved on their heart of hearts the same hallowed associations
of life’s early morning.
But the time for separation at last comes. The birds must leave the parent’s
nest, and try their pinions beyond their native valley. The world’s
call to work and warfare is imperious. The old homestead, like a dismembered
vessel, is broken to pieces; and the inmates, like the vessel’s planks,
strew far apart the trough of life’s ocean. The world’s duties
sever some; unhappy estrangements at times, may sever others; death, at
some time, must sever all.
But there is One whose friendship and love circumstances cannot estrange,
distance cannot effect, and death cannot destroy. The kindest of earth’s
relatives may say to us regarding this true Elder Brother, as Boaz said
to Ruth, “It is true that I am your near kinsman: however there is
a kinsman nearer than I.” He is brother, yes more than a brother;
Friend, Counselor, Portion, Physician, Shepherd, all combined! Happy for
us, when the old avenues of comfort are closed up, to hear Him, whose
faithfulness is unimpeachable, saying, “I will not fail you or forsake
you!” Happy for us when the old moorings give way, to have One safe
Anchorage, that cannot be removed or shaken. “I shall now go to sleep,”
said a remarkable saint, who, driven about with storm and tempest, at
last found the safe Shelter, “I shall now go to sleep on the Rock
of Ages!”
Tried believer! He has never failed you and never will. With Him are no
altered tones, no fitful affections. The reed may be shaken, but the Rock
remains immutable. He is himself the true “Bow in the cloud.”
The promises of Scripture, like the varied hues in the natural rainbow,
are manifold. But all these promises are “In Him” (2 Corinthians
1:20). Yes, and it is in the “cloudy day” that this Divine encircling
bow most gloriously appears. Never should we have known Christ as the
“Brother, born for adversity,” unless by adversity. It is trial
that unfolds and develops His infinite worth and preciousness. When the
love of earthly friends is buried in the grave, the love of the Heavenly
Friend shines forth more tenderly than ever. As Jonathan of old, wandering
faint and weary in the wood, found honey distilling from a tree and was
revived by eating it; so, faint and weary one, wandering among the tangled
thickets, the deep glades of affliction, seat yourself under your “Beloved’s
Shadow with great delight,” and let His “fruit be pleasant to
your taste!” This “Tree of Life” distills a balm for every
broken, wounded, bleeding heart; every faint and downcast spirit. Yes,
Jesus will make, in this hour of your loneliness and sorrow, His own life-giving,
life-sustaining words and promises, “sweeter also than honey and
the honeycomb.” Though now exalted on the Throne, “inhabiting
the praises of eternity,” He still manifests the Brother’s heart
and the Brother’s tenderness. “He is not ashamed to call them
brethren.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring my cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
28
The Supporting Presence
“When you pass through the waters I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you:
when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
neither shall the flame kindle upon you”—Isaiah 43:2.
What a diversity of afflictions in this trial-world! “Waters,”
“streams,” “floods,” “flames,” “fires!”
The Christian is here forewarned that he will encounter these in some
one of their innumerable phases; whether it be loss of health, loss of
wealth, loss of friends, baffled schemes, or blighted hopes.
But, blessed thought, these trials have their limits. The floods will
not “overflow,” the fires will not “burn,” the flames
will not “consume.” God will “stay His rough wind in the
day of His East wind.” He will say, “Thus far shall you go,
and no farther.”
And, better still, JESUS will be in all these trials, and prove sufficient
for them all. We shall hear in the midst “of the great fight of afflictions”
the sound of our Master’s footsteps. He Himself has passed through
these flames, braved these floods, and bowed His guiltless head to these
storms. He comes to us as He did to His disciples in the very midst of
the tempest, and says, “Fear not, it is I, be not afraid.”
Believer! what is your experience? Is it not that of the triumphant Israelites?
“They went through the flood on foot; THERE did we rejoice in Him”
(Psalms 66:6). “THE FLOOD!” the very scene of your trial, you
were able to march boldly through it, unappalled by the threatening waves;
yes, with your lips vocal with praise! How this moral heroism, this strange
“rejoicing?” It was because the God of the Pillar-cloud was
at your side. Your rejoicing was “in Him.” He made you “more
than conqueror.” You may have many adversaries ranged against you:
“Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.”
But there is ONE in the midst of fires and flames and floods mightier
than all; and with Him at your side, you can boldly utter the challenge
to the heights above and the depths beneath, “Who shall separate
me from the love of Christ?” “Oh, Sirs!” says Thomas Brooks,
“there is in a crucified Jesus something proportionable to all the
straits, wants, necessities, and trials of His poor people.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
29
Fellow - Feeling
“We have not a high priest which cannot be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities”—Hebrews 4:15.
“As the appearance,” says Ezekiel, “of the Bow that is
in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness
round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the
Lord!”
What an elevating truth. The Sympathy of the God-man-Mediator (the true
Bow in the cloud), JESUS in our sorrows! What a source of exalted joy
to the stripped and desolate heart! What a green pasture to lie down upon,
amid the windy storm and tempest, or in the dark and cloudy day!
The sympathy of man is cheering and comforting; but “thus far shall
you go, and no farther.” It is finite, limited, often selfish. There
are nameless and numberless sorrows on earth, beyond the reach of all
human alleviation.
The sympathy of Jesus is alone exalted, pure, infinite, removed from all
taint of selfishness. He has Himself passed through every experience of
woe. There are no depths of sorrow or anguish into which I can be plunged
but His everlasting arms are lower still. He has been called, “The
great sympathetic nerve of His Church, over which the afflictions, and
oppressions, and sufferings of His people continually pass.”
Child of
Sorrow! a human heart beats on the Throne! and He has your name written
on that heart. He cares for you as if none other claimed His regard. As
the Great High Priest, He walks in the midst of his Temple lamps (His
golden candlesticks,) replenishing them, at times, with oil; trimming
them, if need be, at others; but all in order that they may burn with
a steadier and purer luster.
“He was IN ALL POINTS tempted.” Blessed assurance! I never can
know the Sorrow into which the “Man of Sorrow” cannot enter.
Ah rather, in the midst of earth’s most lacerating trials, let me
listen to the unanswerable challenge from the lips of a suffering Savior,
“Was there ever any sorrow like unto my sorrow?” Yet He refused
not to drink the cup of wrath! He shrunk not back from the appointed cross!
“He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem;” and even when
He hung upon the bitter tree, He refused the vinegar that would have assuaged
the rage of thirst and mitigated physical suffering. Are we tempted at
times to murmur under God’s afflicting hand? “Consider HIM that
endured...lest you be weary and faint in your minds.” Shall we hesitate
to bear any trial our Lord and Master sees meet to lay upon us, when we
think of the infinitely weightier Cross He so meekly and uncomplainingly
carried for us?
Afflicted one! Have your eye on this radiant Bow in your cloud of Sorrow.
You may, like the disciples on the Transfiguration mount, “fear to
enter the cloud,” but hear the voice issuing from it, “This
is my Beloved Son: hear Him.”
Jesus speaks through these clouds! He tells us our cares are His cares;
our sorrows His sorrows. He has some wise and gracious end in every mysterious
chastisement. His language is, “Hear the rod and who has appointed
it” (Micah 6:9). He has too kind and loving a heart to cause us one
needless or superfluous pang.
Oh that we may indeed hear the voice out of the cloud, and seek that the
trials He sends in love may be greatly sanctified. Let us not dream that
affliction of itself is a pathway to Heaven. Clouds do not form the material
rainbow. These glorious hues come from the sunbeams alone. Without the
latter, we could discern nothing but blackened heavens and dismal rain
torrents.
It is not because those clad in “white robes” had “come
out of great tribulation” that they were enjoying the beatific Presence;
but because they had “washed their robes, and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation. 7:14). We have only reason to
glory in affliction when it has been the means of bringing us nearer the
Savior, and leading us to the opened Fountain.
Jesus! my only hope thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart;
Oh! Could I catch a smile from thee.
And drop into Eternity!
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
30
A Speedy Coming
“Yet a little while, and He shall come and will not tarry”—Hebrews
10:37.
“A little while,” and the unquiet dream of life will be over,
and the “morning without clouds” shall dawn. A few more tossings
on life’s tempestuous sea, and the peaceful haven shall be entered.
A few more night-watches, and the Lord of love will be seen standing on
the heavenly shore, as once He did on the shores of an earthly lake, with
an eternal banquet of love prepared for His “Children.” Yes!
“He comes!” that is the Church’s “blessed hope.”
It is the voice and presence of her “Beloved” which will turn
“the shadow of death into morning.” The dead; the ransomed dead;
shall “hear His voice and come forth;” those “asleep in
Jesus” God is to “bring with Him.” His final invitation
is not, “Go, you blessed, to some bright paradise of angels prepared
elsewhere for you;” but “Come share my bliss; be partakers in
My crown;” “Enter into the joy of your Lord!” Paul’s
heaven was described in two words; “With Christ.” John’s
heaven was made up of two elements; of likeness to Jesus, and fellowship
with Jesus. “We shall be like Him,” “we shall see Him as
He is.” In his sublime apocalyptic visions, when “the door was
opened in heaven,” the first object which attracts his arrested gaze
is, “One who sat upon the throne;” around whom was “a rainbow
like unto an emerald” (Revelation 4:2,3).
Our happiness will not be complete till we are ushered into the full vision
and fruition of Jesus. We are nourished in this far off land from “the
King’s country;” but we shall not be satisfied until we see
the King himself. Jacob received full wagon loads from Joseph, but he
could not rest till he had seen him with his own eyes: when he did so,
the aged man’s spirit “revived.” We receive manifold pledges
of covenant mercy from the true Joseph, in this “house of our pilgrimage;”
but we long to “behold His face in righteousness.” We shall
only be “satisfied” when we “awake in His likeness!”
“Come! Lord Jesus, come quickly!” “He will not tarry!”
Each sun, as it sets, is bringing us nearer the joyful consummation. Time
is hastening with gigantic footstep, to the advent throne. The sackcloth
attire of a now burdened creation will soon be exchanged for the full
robe of light and beauty that is to deck a “Sabbath world.”
Happy day! when “the Bow,” in a nobler sense, “shall be
seen in the cloud;” not the Bow of Promise, but He in whom all the
promises blend and center; “Behold, He comes with clouds!” Seek
ever to be in an attitude of watchfulness. Like the mother of Sisera,
let faith be straining its ear for the murmur of the chariot wheels; that
when the cry shall be heard; “Behold, it is He!” we may be able
joyfully to respond; “Lo! this is our God, we have waited for him!”
“Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He comes shall find
watching: Verily I say to you, that he shall gird Himself and make them
sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.”
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
Day
31
Eternal Joy
“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Sion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads:
they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing
shall forever flee away”—Isaiah 35:10.
Believer! leave your “Bow in the cloud” behind you; and with
your eye on the “Rainbow round about the throne” (Revelation
4:3), think of the glad return of God’s ransomed ones to Zion; every
teardrop dried, every pang forgotten!
Once wanderers “in the wilderness, in a solitary way;” prisoners
“bound with affliction and iron;” mariners struggling in a tempest
(Psalms 112:4,10,23); mark the termination of their checkered history.
God is not only represented as succoring their fainting souls, shivering
in pieces their chains, and enabling them to buffet the angry surges;
but He leads the pilgrims to the “city of habitation;” He rescues
the captives from “darkness and shadow of death.” He brings
the storm-tossed seamen to their “desired haven,” and puts the
“everlasting song” into the lips of all, “Oh that men would
praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children
of men!” (Psalms 112:7,14,30)
Sorrowing one! tossed on life’s stormy sea, soon will that peaceful
haven be yours. From the sunlit shores of glory, each and all of your
trials will be seen to be special proofs of your Heavenly Father’s
faithfulness, circled with a halo of love! You may now be going forth
“weeping,” bearing your precious seed, but you shall “doubtless
come again with rejoicing, bringing your sheaves with you.”
As some seeds require on earth to be soaked in water before they germinate,
so is immortal seed often here soaked in tears. But, “they that sow
in tears shall reap in joy.” Though “weeping may endure for
the night, joy comes in the morning!” “You are,” says Rutherford,
“upon the entry of Heaven’s harvest; the losses that I write
of are but summer showers, and The Sun of the new Jerusalem shall quickly
dry them up.” The “song of the night” shall then blend
with the song of the skies, and inner, glorious meanings will be disclosed
to sight, which are now hidden from the eye of faith! “Sorrow and
sighing shall forever flee away!” “No sickness, no sorrow, no
pain,” said an aged saint now entered on these glorious realities;
“but this is only your negative. What, O God! must be your positive?”
“Songs,” “everlasting joy,” “joy and gladness.”
It will be song upon song, joy upon joy, gladness upon gladness! These
songs of Heaven will be “songs of degrees,” The ransomed will
be ever graduating in bliss, mounting “from glory to glory,”
each song suggesting the keynote a louder and loftier. Reader! are you
mourning the loss of those who “are not,” the music of whose
voices is hushed for the forever of time, and who have left you to travel
companionless and alone the wilderness journey? a few more fears, a few
more tears, and you shall meet them in the daybreak of glory! No, more;
they have but anticipated you in an earlier crown. If they have left you
behind for a little season to continue your night-song; think with bounding
heart of that eternal day, when, looking back on the clouds floating in
the far distance in the nether valley, you shall be able to join in the
anthem said to be sung by the four and twenty elders as they gaze on the
throne encircled by the “RAINBOW OF EMERALD:” for “they
rest not day and night, saying, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD ALMIGHTY”
(Revelation 4:3,8).
Lord of our souls! Thou Savior ever dear,
Be still our RAINBOW in the clouds of life;
In Your pure sunlight melt each rising tear.
Our Arc of Triumph in the scenes of strife.
Radiant with mercy, calm the sinking heart,
And beam through sorrow’s night and suffering’s gloom,
A deathless Iris that will not depart,
But shine with hues unfading o’er the tomb!
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud and I will look upon it, that
I may r
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