Part 68

And the Lord wants my body as "a living sacrifice." He asks for it when it is thoroughly alive! We so often deny the Lord our bodies until they are infirm and sickly, and sometimes we do not offer them to Him until they are quite "worn out." It is infinitely better to offer them even then than never to offer them at all. But it is best of all to offer our bodies to our Lord when they are strong, and vigorous, and serviceable, and when they can be used in the strenuous places of the field.

And so let me appoint a daily consecration service, and let me every morning present my body "a living sacrifice" unto God. Let me regard it as a most holy possession, and let me keep it clean. Let me recoil from all abuse of it--from all gluttony, and intemperance, and "riotous living." Let me look upon my body as a church, and let the service of consecration continue all day long. "Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit?"

NOVEMBER The Sixth

PEACE IN TRIBULATION

JOHN xvi. 25-33.

Here is a strange medley of experiences! I am to enjoy the gift of peace, and yet I am to be smarting under tribulation!

When the Holy Spirit is my guest I am to enjoy the gift of peace. "These things I said unto you that ye might have peace." The life of the soul is to move without jar or discord. It shall be like a quiet engine-house, in which every wheel co-operates with every other wheel, and there is no waste or friction in the holy place. "All that is within me" blesses God's holy name.

And yet, while peace reigns within, there may be tribulation without! "In the world ye shall have tribulation." Here is a peace which is not broken by the noise and assault of brutal circumstance. The most tempestuous wind cannot disturb the quiet serenity of the stars. When the world stones me, not one grain of its gritty dust need enter the delicate workings of my soul. That was the peace of my Lord, and it is my Lord who says to me: "My peace I give unto you!" So "be of good cheer," my soul! Thy Lord has "overcome the world," and thou shalt share His victory.

NOVEMBER The Seventh

REJECTED LOVE

ISAIAH lxiii. 7-14.

If I refuse the friendship of the Holy One I inevitably invite His hostility. "But they rebelled, and vexed His holy Spirit: therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them."

And so, if I reject the forces of grace I do not turn them from my gate, I convert them into foes. Malachi teaches me that rejected sunshine becomes like a burning oven. The Epistle to the Hebrews teaches me that rejected love becomes "a consuming fire." Holiness nourishes virtue, it withers vice. If I offer my Lord a tender aspiration, His breath wooes it like the balmy air of the spring; if I come before Him with the weeds of ignoble dispositions, He blights them as with the nipping of the frost.

And is it not well, for thee and me, that our Lord is thus fiercely hostile to our sins? Is not this "consuming fire" the friend of my soul? May I not pray: Burn on, burn on, pure flame, until all the refuse and rubbish of my life are utterly consumed; burn on, burn on, until fierce flame becomes mild light, flinging its genial radiance over a transfigured desert?

NOVEMBER The Eighth

THE ORGAN OF SPIRITUAL VISION

1 CORINTHIANS ii. 9-16.

Our finest human instruments fail to obtain for us "the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

Art fails! "Eye hath not seen." The merely artistic vision is blind to the hidden glories of grace. Philosophy fails! "Neither hath ear heard." We may listen to the philosopher as he spins his subtle theories and weaves his systematic webs, but the meshes he has woven are not fine enough to catch "the deep things of God." Poetry fails! "Neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." Poetic imagination may stretch her wings, and soar, but she fails to enter the guest-chamber of the Lord, and take an inventory of "the things prepared." All these gracious ministries fail to reach life's glorious and purposed end.

"But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit." When art, and poetry, and philosophy all pitiably fail, the Spirit unveils to us the bewildering feast. And so the unlearned has the same ultimate advantage as the learned, and the cottager has equal privilege with the monarch. The greatest things are not the perquisites of culture, but the endowments of humility and holy faith. The poor man has access to the "many mansions," and finds a place at the King's feast.

NOVEMBER The Ninth

THE HOLY SPIRIT AS EMANCIPATOR

2 CORINTHIANS iii. 4-18.

In the Holy Spirit I experience a large emancipation. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." I am delivered from all enslaving bondage--from the bondage of literalism, and legalism, and ritualism. I am not hampered by excessive harness, by multitudinous rules. The harness is fitting and congenial, and I have freedom of movement, and "my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

And I am to use my emancipation of spirit in the ministry of contemplation. I am to "behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord." My thought has been set free from the cramping distractions devised by men, and I am now to feast my gaze upon the holy splendours of my Lord. It is like coming out of a little and belittling tent, to feast upon the sunny amplitude of the open sky! I can "cease from man," and commune with God.

And the contemplation will effect a transformation. "We are changed into the same image from glory to glory." The serene brightness of the sky gets into our faces. The Lord becomes "the health of our countenance," and we shine with borrowed glory.

NOVEMBER The Tenth

NEVERTHELESS!