SUNDAY BEADING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8360, 13 September 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY BEADING.

THE SECRET OF A QUIET HEART. [BY THE REV. A. MACLAREN, D.D.] You and I have one treasure, whatever else we may have or not have ; and that is ourselves. The most precious of our possessions is our own individual being. v\ e cannot " keep" that. There are dangers all round us. We are like men travelling in a land full of pickpockets and highwaymen, laden with gold and precious stones. On every side there are enemies that seek to rob us of that which is our true treasure, outown souls. We cannot keep ourselves. Slippery paths and weak feet go ill together. The tow in our hearts and the liery sparks of temptation that are flying all round about us, are sure to come together and make a blaze. We shall certainly come to ruin if we seek to get through life, to do its work, to free its difficulties, to cope with its struggles, to master its temptations, in our own poor, puny strength. So we must look for trusty hands, and lodge our treasure there, where it is safe. And how am 1 to do that? By humble dependence upon God revealed, for our faith's feeble ringers to grasp, in the person and work of His dear Son, who has died on the cross for us all; by constant realisation of His Divine presence and implicit reliance on the realities of His sustaining hand in all our difficulties, and His shielding protection in ail our struggles, and His sanctifying spirit in all our conflicts with evil. And not only by the realisation of His presence and of our dependence upon Him, nor only by the consciousness of our own insufficiency, and the departing from all self-reliance, but, as an essential part of our committing ourselves to God, by bringing our wills into harmony with His will. To commit includes to submit. And, oh! brother, if thus, knowing your weakness, you will turn to Him for strength, if the language of your hearts be

Myself I cannot save, .Myself I cannot keep, But strength in Thee L surely hare, Whose eyelids never sleep. And if thus, hanging upon Him, you believe that when you fling yourself into necessary temptation, and cope with appointed heavy tasks, and receive on your hearts the full blow of sent sorrows, He will strengthen you and hold you up ; and if with all your hearts you bow, and you say, " Lord ! keeping me is Thy business far more than mine ; into Thy hands 1 commit my spirit," be sure that your trust will not be disappointed. What a grand picture of a peaceful heart comes out of this letter and its companion one to the same friend, written a little before, but under substantially the same circumstances! They are both full of autobiographical details, on which some critics look with suspicion, but which seem to me to bear upon their very front the token of their own genuineness And what a picture it is they give ! He is "Paul the aged;" old, if not in yearsand he probably was not an old man by years— yet old in thought and care and hardships and toils. He is a prisoner, and the compulsory cessation of activity, when so much was to be done, might well have fretted a less eager spirit than that which burned in his puny frame. He is alone, but for one faithful friend; and the bitterness of his solitude was increased by the apostacy of some and the negligence of many. He is poor and thinly clad ; and he wants his one cloak " before winter." He has been before the Emperor once, and, though he "was delivered from the mouth of the lion," then he knows that he cannot expect to put his head into the lion's mouth a second time with impunity, and that his course is run. He lias made but a poor thing of life; he has disappointed all the hopes that were formed of the brilliant disciple of Gamaliel, who was bidding fair to be the hammer of these heretical Christians. And yet there is no tremor nor despondency in this, his swan song. It goes up in a clear burst of joyful music. _ It is the same spirit as that of the Psalmist: "There be many that say. Who will show us any good? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us." And serenely he sits there, hi the midst of dangers, disappointments, difficulties, and struggles, with a life behind him stuffed full of thorns and hard work and many a care, and close before him the martyr's death, yet he says, with a flash of legitimate pride, " I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have trusted, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." My brother, you must have Paul's faith if you are to have Paul's serenity. A quiet committal of yourself to God, in all the ways in which 1 have already described that committal as carried out, is the only thing which will give us quiet hearts, amidst the dangers and disappointments and difficulties and conflicts which we all have to encounter in this world. That trust in Him will bring, in the measure of its own depth and constancy, a proportionately deep and constant calm into our hearts.

For even though my faith brought me nothing from God, the very fact that I have rolled my care off my shoulders on to His, though I had made a mistake in doing it, it would bring me tranquility, as long as I believed that the burden was on his shoulders and not on mine. Trust is always quiet. When I can say. "I am not the master of the caravan, and it is no part of my business to settle the route ; I have no responsibility for providing food, or watching, or anything else. All my business is to obey orders and to take the step nearest me and wait for the light," then I can be very quiet, whatever comes. And if I have cast my burden upon the Lord, I am not delivered from responsibility, but I am delivered from harrassment. I have still tasks and duties, but they are all different when I think of them as His appointing. I have still difficulties and dangers, but I can meet them fill with a new peacefulness if I say, " God is Master here, and I am in His hand, and He will do what He likes with me." That is not the abnegation of will; it is the vitalising of will. And no man is ever so strong as the man who feels It is God's business to take care of me; it is my business to do what He tells me."

That is the only armour that will resits the cuts and blows that are sure to be aimed at you. What sort of armour do you wear? Is it of pasteboard painted to look like steel, like the breastplates and helmets of actors upon the stage of a theatre ? A great deal of our armour is. Do you get rid of all that make-believe, and put on the breastplate of righteousness, and for a helmet the hope of salvation, and, above all, take the shield of faith ; and trust in the Lord whate'er betide, and you will stand against all assaults. Paul's faith is the only recipe for securing Paul's serenity. And then, further, note how this same quiet committal of himself .the loving hands of his Father—whom he had learned to know, because he had learned to trust His .Souis not only the armour against all dangers and difficulties in life, but is also the secret of serene gazing into the eyes of close death. Paul knew that his days were nearly at an end ; he was under no illusion as to that, for you remember the grand burst of confidence, even grander than this of my text, in this same letter, w'th which he seems to greet the coming of the end, and exclaims, with a kind of hallelujah in his tone, " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. And there is nothing left for me now, now when the struggles are over and the heat and the dust of the arena are behind me, but, panting and victorious, to receive the crown." He knows that death is sure and near, and yet in this same letter he says, "I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion, and the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and save me into His everlasting Kingdom." Did he, then, expect to escape from the headsman's block ? Was he beginning to falter in his belief that martyrdom was certain ? By no means. The martyrdom was the deliverance. The striking off of his head by the sharp axe was the "saving of him into the everlasting Kingdom." His faith, grasping Jesus Christ, who abolished death, changes the whole aspect of death to him; and instead of a terror it becomes God's angel that will come to the prisoner and touch him and say, " Arise!" and the fetters will fall from off his feet, and the angel will lead him through "the gate that opens of its own accord," and presently he will find himself in the city. That is to say, true confidence in God revealed in Jesus Christ is the armour not only against the ills of life, but against the inevitable ill of death. It changes the whole aspect of the " shadow feared of man,"

Now, I know that there is a dam-pi. • urging the reception of the Gospel of J ,a Christ on the "round of its preparing i.« 1"' death. And I know that the main real r for being Christians would continue infu force if there were no death ; but I t, l also that we are all of us far too ant ignore that grim certainty that lies'-',,- 10 for us somewhere on the road. And. if ? have certainly to go down into the comm darkness, and to tread with our foot !?" path that all but two of God's favour it have trod, it is as well to look that fa 4 • the face, and be ready. I do not WaD " l frighten any man into being a Christian 1 l 0 I do beseech each of you, brethren to i to heart that you will have to grapple witf the last enemy, and I ask you, as you 1, . your own souls, to make honest -m k of t j v ° question: Am I ready for that siiirmi< l ! Uii when it comes, because I have conimitte] my soul, body, and spirit into His, hand and I can quietly say, " Thou wilt notleav my soul in the grave, nor wilt Thou suit!.' 5 Thy servant to see corruption ?" *