Part 73

For how else can we cast out evil? Satan cannot cast out Satan. No one can clean a room with a filthy duster. The surgeon cannot cut out the disease if his instruments are defiled. While he removed one ill-growth he would sow the seed of another. It must be health which fights disease. It will demand a good temper to overcome the bad temper in my brother.

And therefore I must cultivate a virtue if I would eradicate a vice. That applies to the state of my own soul. If there be some immoral habit in my life, the best way to destroy it is by cultivating a good one. Take the mind away from the evil one. Deprive it of thought-food. Give the thought to the nobler mood, and the ignoble mood will die. And this also applies to the faults and vices of my brother. I must fight them with their opposites. If he is harsh and cruel, I must be considerate and gentle. If he is grasping, I must be generous. If he is loud and presumptuous, I must be soft-mannered and self-restrained. If he is devilish, I must be a Christian. This is the warfare which tells upon the empire of sin. I can overcome evil with good.

NOVEMBER The Twenty-ninth

TRANSFORMING OUR FOES

MATTHEW v. 38-48.

"Love your enemies."

It must be the aim of a Christian to make his enemy lovely. It is not my supreme business to secure my safety, but to remove his ugliness. He may only annoy me, but he is destroying himself. He may injure my reputation; but far worse, he is blighting his own character. Therefore must I seek to remove the greater thing, the corrosive malady in his own soul. I must make it my purpose to recover his loveliness, and restore the lost likeness of the Lord.

And only love can make things lovely. Revenge can never do it. Even duty will fail in the gracious work. There is a final touch, a consummate bloom, to which duty can never attain, and which is only attainable by love. All love's ministries are creative of loveliness. Wherever her finger rests, something exquisite is born. Love is a great magician: she transforms the desert into a garden, and she makes the wilderness blossom like the rose.

But where shall we get the love wherewith to make our enemy lovely? From the great Lover Himself. "We love, because He first loved us." The great Lover will love love into us! And we, too, shall become fountains of love, for our Lord will open "rivers in the high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys."

NOVEMBER The Thirtieth

THE SPRING AND THE RIVER

"With the Lord there is mercy." --PSALM cxxx.

That is the ultimate spring. All the pilgrims of the night may meet at that fountain. We have no other common meeting-place. If we make any other appointment we shall lose one another on the way. But we can meet one another at the fountain, men of all colours, and of all denominations, and of all creeds. "By Thy mercy, O deliver us, good Lord!"

"There is forgiveness with Thee." That is the quickening river. Sin and guilt scorch the fair garden of the soul as the lightning withers and destroys the strong and beautiful things in woodland and field. The graces are stricken, holy qualities are smitten, and the soul languishes like a blasted heath. But from the fountain of God's mercy there flows the vitalizing stream of His forgiveness. "There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." It is the mystic "river of life, clear as crystal." "Everything shall live whither the river cometh."

"With Him is plenteous redemption." Salvation is not merely a recovered flower, it is a recovered garden. It is not the restoring merely of a withered hand; "He restoreth my soul." God does not make an oasis in a surrounding desert; He makes the entire wilderness to "rejoice and blossom as the rose."

DECEMBER The First

A FAITHFUL FRIEND

PROVERBS xxvii. 1-10.

"A faithful friend is a strong defence."

He is a gift of God, and therefore a "means of grace." The Lord's seal is upon his ministry. How we impoverish ourselves by separating these precious gifts from their Giver? We desecrate many a fair shrine by emptying it of God. We turn many a temple into just a common house. When we think of our friend let us link him to our Father, and fall upon our knees in grateful praise.

He is God's minister in his encouragements. When he cheers me, it is "the Sun of righteousness who rises with healing in His wings." All radiant words are just lamps for "the light of life." All genial speech carries flame from the altar fire of heaven.

And he is God's minister in his reproofs. He uses a clean knife: there is no poison on the blade. And when he does surgeon's work upon me, it is clean work, healthy work, the relentless enemy of disease. Some men cut me, and the wound festers. There is malice in the deed. My friend wounds me in order that he may give me a larger, sweeter life.

DECEMBER The Second

THE LORD AS A FRIEND

JOHN xv. 8-17.

"Ye are my friends!"

In my Lord's friendship there is the ministry of sacrifice. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This great Friend is always giving His blood. It is a lasting shame when professed Christians are afflicted with spiritual anæmia. And yet we are often so fearful, so white-faced, so chicken-hearted, so averse from battle, that no one would think us to be "the soldiers of the Lord." We need blood. "Except ye drink my blood ye have no life."

And in my Lord's friendship there is the privilege of most intimate communion.