Milo

December 10

“If I am in distress, it is in the interests of your comfort, which is effective as it nerves you to endure the same sufferings as I suffered myself. Hence my hope for you is well-founded, since I know that as you share the sufferings you share the comfort also.” (2 Cor. 1:6, 7.)

ARE there not some in your circle to whom you naturally betake yourself in times of trial and sorrow? They always seem to speak the right word, to give the very counsel you are longing for; you do not realize, how ever the cost which they had to pay ere they became so skillful in binding up the gaping wounds and drying tears. But if you were to investigate their past history you would find that they have suffered more than most. They have watched the slow untwisting of some silver cord on which the lamp of life hung. They have seen the golden bowl of joy dashed to their feet, and its contents spilt. They have stood by ebbing tides, and drooping gourds, and noon sunsets; but all this has been necessary to make them the nurses, the physicians, the priests of men. The boxes that come from foreign climes are clumsy enough; but they contain spices which scent the air with the fragrance of the Orient. So suffering is rough and hard to bear; but it hides beneath it discipline, education, possibilities, which not only leave us nobler, but perfect us to help others. Do not fret, or set your teeth, or wait doggedly for the suffering to pass; but get out of it all you can, both for yourself and for your service to your generation, according to the will of God.—Selected.

Once I heard a song of sweetness,
  As it cleft the morning air,
Sounding in its blest completeness,
  Like a tender, pleading prayer;
And I sought to find the singer,
  Whence the wondrous song was borne;
And I found a bird, sore wounded,
  Pinioned by a cruel thorn.

I have seen a soul in sadness,
  While its wings with pain were furl’d,
Giving hope, and cheer and gladness
  That should bless a weeping world;
And I knew that life of sweetness,
  Was of pain and sorrow borne,
And a stricken soul was singing,
  With its heart against a thorn.

Ye are told of One who loved you,
  Of a Saviour crucified,
Ye are told of nails that pinioned,
  And a spear that pierced His side;
Ye are told of cruel scourging,
  Of a Saviour bearing scorn,
And He died for your salvation,
  With His brow against a thorn.

Ye “are not above the Master.”
  Will you breathe a sweet refrain?
And His grace will be sufficient,
  When your heart is pierced with pain.
Will you live to bless His loved ones,
  Tho’ your life be bruised and torn,
Like the bird that sang so sweetly,
  With its heart against a thorn?

—Selected.

10 DECEMBER (PREACHED 1770)

Caution in speaking of experiences

‘And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean.’ Mark 9:9–10
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Mark 9:33–37

One reason for secrecy is on account of their fellow disciples, lest they should be grieved and discouraged, as they probably would have been, for they, as well as we, had a mixture of self and were often contending who should be the greatest. I have found such an evil in my heart, that when persons on whom I could depend have been speaking of comforts and manifestations beyond the line of my experience, I have felt for the time an anger and enmity against them, and a repining of spirit against the Lord. Besides, I knew not but they would have absolutely disbelieved the relation. It was perhaps upon one or both these accounts, that when St Paul had been caught up into the third heavens, he kept it a secret in his own breast for fourteen years, and it would probably have died with him, if he had not seen his duty to mention it for the sake of the Corinthians. We have cause to be glad that their conduct made it necessary for him to relate it. From whence I would observe in general that there is a wisdom and caution to be used in speaking of our experiences—perhaps not all things, nor to all persons. We should endeavour to suit what we tell them of ourselves to what we judge is their state and attainment, lest we discourage when we would comfort and offend when we would instruct. So there are depths of Satan in a way of temptation which are not so fit to be told to young converts, unless we know they are led something in the same way.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak’ (1 Corinthians 8:9).

SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 13 [2/4]

December 9th

The offence of the natural

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Gal. 5:24.

The natural life is not sinful; we must be apostatized from sin, have nothing to do with sin in any shape or form. Sin belongs to hell and the devil; I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought. It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural standpoint that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the centre of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh”—it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said—“If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself” i.e., his right to himself, and a man has to realize Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.
The natural life is not spiritual, and it can only be made spiritual by sacrifice. If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us. There is no royal road there; each of us has it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of performing.

December 9

“For this our light and transitory burden of suffering is achieving for us a weight of glory.” (2 Cor. 4:17.) (Weymouth.)

IS achieving for us,” mark. The question is repeatedly asked—Why is the life of man drenched with so much blood, and blistered with so many tears? The answer is to be found in the word “achieving”; these things are achieving for us something precious. They are teaching us not only the way to victory, but better still the laws of victory. There is a compensation in every sorrow, and the sorrow is working out the compensation. It is the cry of the dear old hymn:

“Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee,
E’en tho’ it be a cross that raiseth me.”

Joy sometimes needs pain to give it birth. Fanny Crosby could never have written her beautiful hymn, “I shall see Him face to face,” were it not for the fact that she had never looked upon the green fields nor the evening sunset nor the kindly twinkle in her mother’s eye. It was the loss of her own vision that helped her to gain her remarkable spiritual discernment.
It is the tree that suffers that is capable of polish. When the woodman wants some curved lines of beauty in the grain he cuts down some maple that has been gashed by the axe and twisted by the storm. In this way he secures the knots and the hardness that take the gloss.
It is comforting to know that sorrow tarries only for the night; it takes its leave in the morning. A thunderstorm is very brief when put alongside the long summer day. “Weeping may endure for the night but joy cometh in the morning.”
—Songs in the Night.

“There is a peace that cometh after sorrow,
  Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;
A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow,
  But calmly on a tempest that it stilled.

“A peace that lives not now in joy’s excesses,
  Nor in the happy life of love secure;
But in the unerring strength the heart possesses,
  Of conflicts won while learning to endure.

“A peace there is, in sacrifice secluded,
  A life subdued, from will and passion free;
’Tis not the peace that over Eden brooded,
  But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.”

9 DECEMBER (PREACHED 1770)

Urge the testimonies of Scripture

‘And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.’ Matthew 17:9
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Corinthians 2:1–16

The account of the Transfiguration closes with the former verse [And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only]. But this verse seems to belong to the subject, and I shall employ our present opportunity in some observations upon it. It contains an injunction of secrecy for a limited time, after which they were freely to declare what they had seen. May we humbly enquire why our Lord was pleased to forbid them to speak of it till he should have risen from the dead? It may afford us some instruction for our own conduct. I conceive there might be several reasons. One reason: on account of the people. They daily saw Jesus conversing among them as a common, yea, as a poor man. The scribes and Pharisees traduced him and treated him as an impostor. Now the doctrine and miracles of our Lord in public were suited to convince the unprejudiced that he was indeed a teacher sent from God—but his transfiguration was a point which, if it had been mentioned, must have depended on the testimony of the three disciples. Who would hardly have been believed [them], when they could only say and not prove! Afterwards, when he had declared his power and glory by rising from the dead, and sent down his Spirit to confirm the words of his servants, the case was different. The disciples might enlarge upon our Lord’s public works and urge the testimonies of Scripture concerning him. But they were directed not to take notice of this; having no such proof as the world would call for to offer, their bare assertion of such an extraordinary event might bring their sincerity into suspicion. It seems still a good rule, when conversing with unawakened people with a view to their good, to keep to such things as we can plainly prove from the Scripture. And there may be some kinds of experiences which, for this reason, it would be improper to lay before worldly people, because, not being able to understand them, they would be more prejudiced against anything else we could say.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘… But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word’ (Isaiah 66:2).

SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 13 [1/4]