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Part 2
Do not shrink from being alone. Much of a true man's true life must be so spent. David Brainerd thus writes, My state of solitude does not make the hours hang heavy upon my hands.
Oh, what reason of thankfulness have I on account of this retirement? I find that I do not, and it seems I cannot, lead a Christian life when I am abroad, and cannot spend time in devotion, in conversation, and serious meditation as I should do. These weeks that I am obliged now to be from home in order to learn the Indian tongue are mostly spent in perplexity and barrenness, without much relish of divine things, and I feel myself a stranger at the throne of grace for want of a more frequent and continued retirement. Do not suppose that such retirement for divine converse will hinder work.
It will greatly help it. Much private fellowship with God will give you sevenfold success. Pray much if you would work much, and if you want to work more, pray more.
Luther used to say, when an unusual press of business came upon him, I must pray more today. Be like him in the day of work or trial. Do not think that mere working will keep you right or set you right.
The watch won't go till the spring is mended. Work will do nothing for you till you have gone to God for a working heart. Trying to work yourself into a better frame of feeling is not only hopeless, but injurious.
You say, I want to feel more and to love more. It is well, but you can't work yourself into these. I do not say to anyone who feels his coldness, go and work.
Work, if done heartlessly, will only make you colder. You must go straight to Jesus with that cold heart and warm it at his cross. Then work will be at once a necessity, a delight, and a success.
Do not skim it or read it, but study it, every word of it. Study the whole Bible, Old Testament and New. Not your favorite chapters merely, but the complete Word of God from beginning to end.
Do not trouble yourself with commentators. They may be of use if kept in their place, but they are not your guides. Your guide is THE interpreter.
The one among a thousand, Job 33.23, who will lead you into all truth and keep you from all error. Not that you are to read no book but the Bible. All that is true and good is worth the reading, if you have time for it.
And all, if properly used, will help you in the study of the Scriptures. A Christian does not shut his eyes to the natural scenes of beauty spread around him. He does not cease to admire the hills or plains or rivers or forests of earth, because he has learned to love the God that made them.
Nor does he turn away from books of science or true poetry, because he has discovered one book truer, more precious and more poetical than all the rest together. Besides, the soul can no more continue in one posture than the body. The eye must be relieved by variety of objects and the limbs by motion.
So must the soul by change of subject and position. All truth is precious, though not all divine. In so far then as time allows or opportunity presents, let us seek and search out by word concerning all things that are done under heaven.
But let the Bible be to us the book of books, the one book in all the world, whose every wisdom is truth and whose every verse is wisdom. In studying it, be sure to take it for what it really is, the revelation of the thoughts of God given us in the words of God. Were it only the book of divine thoughts and human words, it would profit little, for we never could be sure whether the words really represented the thoughts.
Nay, we might be quite sure that man would fail in his words when attempting to embody divine thoughts, and that therefore if we have only man's words, that is, man's translation of the divine thoughts, we shall have one of the poorest and most incorrect of all books, just as we should have in the case of Homer or Plato done into English by a first-year's schoolboy. But knowing that we have divine thoughts embodied in divine words, through the inspiration of an unerring translator, we sit down to the study of the heavenly volume, assured that we shall find in all its teachings the perfection of wisdom, and in its language the most accurate expression of that wisdom that the finite speech of man can utter. Every word of God is as perfect as it is pure.
Psalm 197, Psalm 12, 6. Let us read and reread the scriptures, meditating on them day and night. They never grow old, they never lose their sap, they never run dry. Though it is right and profitable, as I have said, to read other books, if they are true and good, yet beware of reading too many.
Do not let man's book thrust God's book into a corner. Do not let commentaries smother the text, nor let the true and the good shut out the truer and the better. Specially beware of light reading.
Shun novels. They are the literary curse of the age. They are to the soul what ardent spirits are to the body.
If you be a parent, keep novels out of the way of your children. But whether you be a parent or not, neither read them yourself, nor set an example of novel reading to others. Don't let novels lie on your table or be seen in your hand, even in a railway carriage.
The light reading for the rail has done deep injury to many a young man and woman. The light literature of the day is working a world of harm, vitiating the taste of the young, innervating their minds, unfitting them for life's plain work, eating out their love of the Bible, teaching them a false morality, and creating in the soul an unreal standard of truth and beauty and love. Don't be too fond of the newspaper, yet read it that you may know both what man is doing and what God is doing, and extract out of all you read matter for thought and prayer.
Avoid works which jest with what is right or wrong, lest you unconsciously adopt a false test of truth and beauty, namely ridicule, and so become afraid to do right for right's sake alone, dreading the world's sneer and undervaluing a good conscience and the approving smile of God. Let your reading be always select, and whatever you read, begin with seeking God's blessing on it. But see that you relish for the Bible.
Be above every other enjoyment, and the moment you begin to feel greater relish for any other book, lay it down till you have sought deliverance from such a snare, and obtained from the Holy Spirit an intenser relish, a keener appetite for the Word of God. Jeremiah 15, 16, Psalm 19, 7-10 7. Take heed to your steps. Beware not merely of falling, but of stumbling.
Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, like men in an enemy's country, or like travelers climbing a hill, slippery with ice and terrible with precipices, where every step may be a fall, and every fall a plunge into a chasm. Beware of little slips, slight inconsistencies, as they are called. They are the beginning of all backsliding, and they are in themselves evil, as well as hateful to God.
8. Keep your garments undefiled. Revelation 3, 4 Beware of small spots, as well as larger stains or rifts, and the moment you discover any speck, however small, go wash in the fountain, that your garments may be always white, and so pleasing in the eyes of Him whose you are and whom you serve. 9. Crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts.
Galatians 5, 24 Mortify your members which are upon the earth. Colossians 3, 5 Remember the Lord's words to His church. Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.
Stand aloof from the world's gaiety, and be jealous of what are called harmless amusements. I do not condemn all amusements, but I ask that they should be useful and profitable, not merely harmless. Dancing and card playing are the world's devices for killing time.
They are bits of the world and the world's ways which will ensnare your feet and lead you away from the cross. Let them alone. Keep away from the ballroom, the opera, the oratorio, the theater.
Dress, finery, and display are deadly snares. Put away levity and frivolity, all silly conversation or gossip. Remembering the apostles' words, neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting, which are not convenient.
And let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Flee youthful lusts, if you be young men or women.
Flee all lusts, whether you be young or old. Shun light company, and take no pleasure in the conversation of vain persons. Abstain from all appearance of evil.
Be thou a Christian in little things as well as great. Dread little sins, little errors, little omissions of beauty. Beware of false steps, and if betrayed into one, retrace it soon as discovered.
If persevered in, the consequences may be months of sorrow. That cherished sin twill cost thee dear. Remember, as a French writer remarks that, sooner or later, every crown of flowers becomes a crown of thorns.
Redeem the time. Much of your progress depends on this. Be men of method and punctuality.
Waste no moments. Have always something to do, and do it. Use up the little spaces of life, the little intervals between engagements.
I knew a friend who, one winter, read through some five or six octavo volumes by making use of the brief interval between family worship and breakfast. Pack up your life well. Your trunk will contain twice as much if well packed.
Attend, then, to the packing of each day and hour. You may save years by this. How many have slipped and fallen through idleness? How many begin a score of things and end nothing, dawdle away their morning or their evening hours, sleep longer than is needful, trifle through their duties, hurrying about from work to work, or from book to book, or from meeting to meeting, instead of being calm, methodical, energetic? Thus life is loitered away, and each son sets upon twelve wasted hours and an uneasy, dissatisfied conscience.
Be punctual and regular in all duties and engagements. Keep no man waiting. Be honest as to time, both with yourselves and others, lest you get into a state of chronic flurry and excitement, so destructive of peace and progress, so grieving to the spirit, whose very nature is calmness and rest.
These may seem small things, but they are the roots of great. Resist beginnings. Seize time by the forelock.
Live while you live. Watch your steps. Count your minutes.
Live as men who are pressing on to a kingdom and who fear not only open apostasy, but the smallest measure of coming short, the slightest stain upon the garment of a saint, the faintest slur upon the name of a disciple. Watch against special sins or things that have the appearance of evil or things that lead into evil and discredit that worthy name by which you are called. 1 Thessalonians 5.22 James 2.7 If you have a bad temper, watch against that.
If you have a rude way of speech, a cold, distant, repulsive manner, or are ill to please, look well to these and be courteous. 1 Peter 3.8 If you are covetous in disposition or shabby in your dwellings or niggardly in your givings, take care. The love of money is the root of all evil.
If you are slovenly in your dress or untidy in your person or unpolite in your demeanor, set yourself to rectify these blemishes. If you are lazy, luxurious, given to the good things of this life or selfish, disobliging, unneighborly, rude, blunt, unbrotherly, look to your pattern and see if these things were in him. If you are fickle and frivolous and flippant, greedy of jokes, carried away with immoderate laughter, be upon your guard.
If you are romantic and sentimental, take care lest the indulgence of such a temperament should land you in peevishness, self-pity and a cowardly avoidance of the common duties of life. If you are censorious, captious, fault-finding, proud, domineering, supercilious and sulky, get the unclean spirit cast out forthwith. If you be a gossip or a gadabout or a busybody in other men's matters, take care, for at such crevices Satan creeps in.
If you be secretive and cunning with a certain littleness or slyness in your nature, which never lets you forget your own interests, beware. Christ was not such. Paul was not such.
Be frank, open, manly. Remember the summing up of David's picture of the blessed man in whose spirit there is no guile. Psalms 32.2 Be not Jacob a man of guile, but Israel a noble prince, an Israelite, indeed, in whom is no guile.
John 1.48 Walk straight up along the path of life, like a forgiven man, with God at your side. Genesis 5.24 Genesis 6.9 And with the joy of the Lord for your strength. Nehemiah 8.9 Ecclesiastes 9.7 Doing heartily your daily work, whether sacred or common, with an unshaded brow and an earnest but cheerful face.
In short, watch against your old self at every point. Do not evade these remarks by saying that some of the things spoken of are trifles and beneath notice. Nothing should be too small for a Christian to notice, either of right or wrong.
Remember the Master's words about denying self, every part of self. Be not a servant of self, or a worshipper of self, or a lover of self. 2 Timothy 3.1-2 In any form.
Take up your cross and follow your Lord. Matthew 16.24 As it is written, Even Christ pleased not himself. Romans 15.3 8. Put away boastfulness and love of praise.
God's aim in all His doings of grace is to hide pride from man, to hinder boasting, to keep the sinner humble. All that the old Christian can say is, By the grace of God I am what I am. And the youngest has no other confidence or boast.
All confidence in the flesh, Philippians 3.1-3, all trust in self, all reliance on the creature, are set aside by that great work of the divine substitute who did all for us and left us nothing to do out of which it would be possible to extract a boast. 2 Corinthians 12.9 Galatians 6.14 Isaiah 41.16 Isaiah 45.25 The sinner's first act of believing is his consenting to be treated as a sinner and simply as such, indebted for nothing to himself in any shape or in any sense, but wholly to God and to His free love in Christ Jesus our Lord. This was the laying down of all pride and boastfulness.
Then he knew the meaning of the words Glory ye in His holy name. 1 Chronicles 16.10 For the name in which he then began to glory was the name revealed in Exodus. Exodus 34.6 The name that assured him of the love of that God with whom he had to do.
Self was set aside and Christ came in to do and to be all that self had hitherto been supposed to be and to do. What things before were gained to us, these we then counted loss for Christ and we ceased forever to glory in the flesh or to be debtors to anything but the blood and righteousness of the Son of God. We learn to say God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Galatians 6.14 We ceased to work for salvation for we had got it without working. And we had got it not in order that we might indulge in sin because grace abounded, but in order that having our legal bonds all loosed and our prison opened we might henceforth serve God with our whole heart and soul. We thus became debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh Romans 8.12 for the flesh had done nothing for us and we owed it nothing but debtors to God and to his love not to self or the old man for these had brought us only sin and evil but to Jesus Christ and his precious blood not to law for it only condemned us and held us in bondage but to that free spirit Psalm 51.12 that good spirit Nehemiah 9.20 that spirit of life which makes us free from the law of sin and death Romans 8.2 thus everything that could cause pride was swept away at the outset and that not by law but by the very necessity of the case by the very nature of that salvation which was brought to us not through anything which we either could or could not do but through the love and work and blood of another let us fling away self-esteem and high-mindedness for it is the very essence of unbelief as the prophet told Israel hear ye and give ear be not proud for the Lord hath spoken Jeremiah 13.15 be meek be poor in spirit be humble be teachable be gentle and easy to be entreated putting away all high thought and lofty imaginations either about what we are or what we can do content to take the obscurest corner and the lowest seat and this not to indulge in a false lowliness or in the pride that apes humility feeding our vanity with the thought that we are martyrs and puffing up our fleshly mind with the idea of our wonderful condescension or by brooding over our supposed wrongs and trials let us be truly humble as was the Son of God content to live unknown and to do our work unnoticed as a work not for the eye of man but of God put away all envy and jealousy of others as well as all malice and evil speaking Ephesians 4.31 love to hear of a brother's prosperity don't grudge him a few words of honest praise nor try maliciously to turn the edge of it by an envious butt or a grave silence or a wise shake of the head unless you have very special reasons for disallowing the eulogy remember that Solomon's wicked man is one that winketh with his eyes and speaketh with his feet and teacheth with his fingers Proverbs 6.13 Proverbs 10.10 have a care of detraction and backbiting speak of a person's faults only to himself and to God be not censorious or uncharitable in thought or word inconsistent Christians are often more censorious than the world for they need to apologize to themselves for their inconsistencies by detracting from the excellencies of those who are more consistent than themselves and by trying to believe that good men are no better than others some love to speak and show their pride in this way both in private and in public if you are young and newly led out of your former ignorance beware of this snare remember Paul's advice not a novice that is, one newly converted lest being lifted up with pride he fall into condemnation and the snare of the devil 1 Timothy 3.6 if you have gifts use them quietly and modestly not ostentatiously do not be forward to tell your experience or give your opinion or to take rank above your seniors do not think that all zeal or wisdom is confined to you and a few about you do not condemn others because they don't go quite along with you in all things nor speak of them as cold and dead and unspiritual do not think that no one cares for souls but yourselves that no one can state the gospel or pray like you or that God is not likely to bless anyone so much as you be lowly and show this not by always speaking evil of yourselves to others or by using the conceited phrase in my humble opinion as some do in order to show their humility but by not speaking of yourselves at all keep self in the background and don't say or do anything that looks like baiting your hook for a little praise some love to rule and manage so did Diotrephes 3 John 9 they are not happy unless they are at the head of everything the originators of all plans the presidents of societies the speakers at meetings beware of this love of preeminence as ruinous to your own soul and injurious to the church of God if God puts work into your hands do it and do it faithfully through good report and bad report bear to be contradicted and spoken against do not fret when things go wrong with you or your schemes nor get petted like a spoiled child when you don't get your own way nor fling up everything in disgust when you happen to be thwarted do not take yourself for Solomon or suppose that wisdom will die with you Job 12 2 if called to preside or manage do it and do it with energy and authority as one who has a trust to fulfill but mind not high things Romans 12 16 seek not great things for thyself Jeremiah 45 5 he that is greatest among you let him be as the younger and he that is chief as he that doth serve Luke 22 26 all of you be subject one to another 1 Peter 5 5 in honor preferring one another Romans 12 10 yet be discriminating do not call error truth for the sake of charity do not praise earnest men merely because they are earnest to be earnest in truth is one thing to be earnest in error is another the first is blessed not so much because of the earnestness but because of the truth the second is hateful to God and ought to be shunned by you remember how the Lord Jesus from heaven spoke concerning error which thing I hate Revelation 2 6-15 1 Timothy 6 4-5 true spiritual discernment is much lost sight of as a real Christian grace discernment between the evil and the good the false and the true beloved believe not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets are gone out into the world 1 John 4 1 this discernment which belongs to everyone who is taught of God is the very opposite of that which is called in our day by the boastful name of liberality spiritual discernment and liberal thought have little in common with each other abhor that which is evil cleave to that which is good Romans 12 9 the liberality which puts bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter Isaiah 5 20 is a very different thing from the charity which thinketh no evil 1 Corinthians 13 5 truth is a mighty thing in the eyes of God whatever it may be in those of men all error is more or less whether directly or indirectly a misrepresentation of God's character and a subversion of His revelation Revelation 22 18 19 9 watch against Satan he is above all others your enemy he the old serpent the dragon the liar and murderer from the beginning it is with him that you are to fight for we wrestle not against flesh and blood that is earthly foes men like ourselves but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places Ephesians 6 12 the world tries to bewitch and beguile us but it is the God of this world the prince of this world the prince of the power of the air that so especially lays snares for us making use of the world's beauty and pleasure and vanity for leading us captive at his will oh how as one has written are thou entrenched oh Satan how art thou entrenched in thy beautiful deceptions thou hast played thy part well in these last days thou art all but the holy one thou consummate deceiver it is this that gives to the ballroom and the dance and the theater and the voluptuous music their special power to harm for these are Satan's baits and nets by means of which he allures the unwary and leads back the believer to unbelieving ground disarming our watchfulness dazzling our vision reviving our worldliness and perhaps for a season lulling us wholly asleep we know that through his successful wiles perilous times are to come when many while lovers of self traitors heady high-minded lovers of pleasure are still to have the form of godliness 2 Timothy 3 1 through 4 and we know that the last days are to be like the days of Noah and Lot Luke 17 26 through 32 days of reveling and banqueting and luxury let us be wary lest standing as we do on the edge of these days we be drawn away into the sins of an age led captive by Satan at his will resist the devil and he will flee from you fight the good fight of faith against him and his hosts watch unto prayer be sober be vigilant because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour 1 Peter 5.8 in these last days he will lay his snares more cunningly than ever to deceive if it were possible the very elect he is coming down having great wrath because he knoweth he hath but a short time Revelation 12.12