Milo

September 23

“He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his inner being shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38.)

SOME of us are shivering and wondering why the Holy Spirit does not fill us. We have plenty coming in, but we do not give it out. Give out the blessing that you have, start larger plans for service and blessing, and you will soon find that the Holy Ghost is before you, and He will present you with blessings for service, and give you all that He can trust you to give away to others.
There is a beautiful fact in nature which has its spiritual parallels. There is no music so heavenly as an Aeolian harp, and the Aeolian harp is nothing but a set of musical chords arranged in harmony, and then left to be touched by the unseen fingers of the wandering winds. And as the breath of heaven floats over the chords, it is said that notes almost Divine float out upon the air, as if a choir of angels were wandering around and touching the strings.
And so it is possible to keep our hearts so open to the touch of the Holy Spirit that He can play upon them at will, as we quietly wait in the pathway of His service.—Days of Heaven upon Earth.
When the apostles received the baptism with the Holy Ghost they did not rent the upper room and stay there to hold holiness meetings, but went everywhere preaching the gospel.
—Will Huff.

“If I have eaten my morsel alone,”
The patriarch spoke with scorn;
What would he think of the Church were he shown
Heathendom—huge, forlorn,
Godless, Christless, with soul unfed,
While the Church’s ailment is fullness of bread,
Eating her morsel alone?

“Freely ye have received, so give,”
He bade, who hath given us all.
How shall the soul in us longer live
Deaf to their starving call,
For whom the blood of the Lord was shed,
And His body broken to give them bread,
If we eat our morsel alone!”
—Archbishop Alexander.
“Where is Abel thy brother?” (Gen. 4:9.)

23 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED 22 SEPTEMBER 1782)

A claim on our gratitude

‘Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.’ Judges 5:18
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 2 Corinthians 1:3–11

As it respects us, who under God owe our safety to the exertions of those who make jeopardy of their lives for us, I address your sensibility—perhaps you will allow me to say, your gratitude. Perhaps what is entreated of you as a favour might be justly claimed as a debt. In a state of war, at home we enjoy hitherto the same—the security, the blessings—as in a time of profound peace. We read indeed of abounding desolations and calamities which have overwhelmed multitudes of our fellow creatures, but we only hear of them, and therefore, alas, are too little affected by them, and therefore perhaps too faintly consider how much we are indebted to the bravery and the sufferings of those who hazard their lives for us.
Of the hardships and dangers peculiar to what we call the military line, I am no competent judge; of those to which our seamen in the King’s service are exposed, I know something more than I could have learnt merely from description. Both the one and the other are called to wake when we sleep, to hunger and thirst while we live in plenty, are separated from their families, relatives and homes, many of them to return no more. They endure hardships of which few of us can properly conceive, from the changes of climates and seasons, and such like; for us they receive wounds not to be healed without much pain and length of time, and often wounds which admit no cure. When a war is ended, how many do we see deeply scarred or grievously marred, and see them perhaps reduced to beg their bread, being disabled from procuring it by honest industry. But a large number never return to tell their mournful tale. We only hear of the event from the cries and distresses of their widows and orphans. Have not those who thus venture for us, a claim upon our sensibility and gratitude? All I ask for them is that they may be furnished.
FOR MEDITATION:
While Joshua led the armed bands
The armed bands had quickly failed,
Of Israel forth to war;
And perished in the fight;
Moses apart with lifted hands
If Moses’ prayer had not prevailed
Engaged in humble prayer.
To put the foes to flight.

SERMON: JUDGES 5:18 [2/4] [FOR THE BIBLE SOCIETY AT ALDGATE]

September 22nd

The missionary’s Master

Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. John 13:13.

To have a master and to be mastered is not the same thing. To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less—“One is your Master, even Christ.”
Our Lord never enforces obedience; He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.
“Ye call me Master and Lord”—but is He? Master and Lord have little place in our vocabulary, we prefer the words Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer. The only word to describe mastership in experience is love, and we know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we use the word obey. In the Bible obedience is based on the relationship of equals, that of a son with his father. Our Lord was not God’s servant, He was His son. “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience …” If our idea is that we are being mastered, it is a proof that we have no master; if that is our attitude to Jesus, we are far away from the relationship He wants. He wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.

September 22

“And the Lord said … Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” (Luke 22:31, 32.)

OUR faith is the center of the target at which God doth shoot when He tries us; and if any oter grace shall escape untried, certainly faith shall not. There is no way of piercing faith to its very marrow like the sticking of the arrow of desertion into it; this finds it out whether it be of the immortals or no. Strip it of its armor of conscious enjoyment, and suffer the terrors of the Lord to set themselves in array against it; and that is faith indeed which can escape unhurt from the midst of the attack. Faith must be tried, and seeming desertion is the furnace, heated seven times, into which it might be thrust. Blest the man who can endure the ordeal!—C. H. Spurgeon.
Paul said, “I have kept the faith,” but he lost his head! They cut that off, but it didn’t touch his faith. He rejoiced in three things—this great Apostle to the Gentiles; he had “fought a good fight,” he had “finished his course,” he had “kept the faith.” What did all the rest amount to? St. Paul won the race; he gained the prize, and he has not only the admiration of earth today, but the admiration of Heaven. Why do we not act as if it paid to lose all to win Christ? Why are we not loyal to truth as he was? Ah, we haven’t his arithmetic. He counted differently from us; we count the things gain that he counted loss. We must have his faith, and keep it if we would wear the same crown.

22 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED 22 SEPTEMBER 1782)

Deliverance comes from God

‘Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.’ Judges 5:18
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Judges 5:1–18

War, with all its calamities, is the effect of sin. Relief and deliverance from those calamities are to be ascribed to the will and the mercy of God. He ruleth over the nations of the earth. He is the God of battles, the God of victory, and to him it is equally easy to save by many or by few. His favoured people Israel were often brought low by their iniquities, but when they were humbled, he pitied and delivered them. Sometimes he wrought salvation by his own Almighty Arm. When he destroyed Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea and the army of Sennacherib, the people had only to stand still and see the mighty works of the Lord. At other times he commanded and animated them to attempt their own deliverance, but the success was from himself. We have an account of Barak being commissioned for such a service when Israel had groaned under the yoke of Midian. The tribes were all called upon, the army raised, the battle fought, the victory complete, their liberty restored, their enemies destroyed. This chapter is a hymn of praise to God who made them conquerors. The indolence of some of the tribes is reproved, the zeal and activity of others commended. And particular notice is taken of Zebulun and Naphtali who at such a time cheerfully hazarded their lives in the common cause. I would accommodate this passage to the present occasion. A noble design has been formed to furnish the navy and army with Bibles; it has been graciously supported, encouraged by the approbation of many of our officers, and received with thankfulness by many of our sailors and soldiers. I am appointed to recommend it today to this respectable auditory and I recommend it under this consideration, that is, in behalf of those who hazard their lives for us, even unto death, to defend us from our enemies.
FOR MEDITATION: [for the Fast Day, 27 February 1778]
When Moses’ hands through weakness dropped,
A people, always prone to boast,
The warriors fainted too;
Were taught by this suspense,
Israel’s success at once was stopped,
That not a numerous armed host,
And Am’lek bolder grew.
But God was their defence.

SERMON: JUDGES 5:18 [1/4] [FOR THE BIBLE SOCIETY AT ALDGATE]