BY THE LATE PROFESSOR JAMES MILLER, F.R.S.E., PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, ETC., ETC.*
(Continued from page 337.)
III.—THE SOUL IS REFRESHED AND INVIGORATED, ab extra, FROM ABOVE, FROM GOD—AS WELL AS BY EXERCISE OF THAT “BETTER PART” WHICH IS THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD—AND MUST IN THE END PREVAIL.
Can the soul of man be refreshed, as his body, by sleep? The soul never sleeps. At death, severed from the body, which is to rest in the grave for a time, the spirit of the saint is at once with the Lord. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, . . . yea, from henceforth.” “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” And if the soul sleep not in death, need we feel surprise that it sleeps not in half-death—the sleep of the ordinary night?
Can the soul be refreshed by absolute and inert repose, conscious and wakeful though it be? Were blank, dark absence of all thought and intelligence possible, as most probably it is not, it would bring no refreshment to the soul so seeking for its rest. Moving again, it would start the same as when it ceased to work. As already stated, its restoration is not ab intra, and by repose, as in the case of muscle or brain; it is ab extra, and it must seek it. Like the material heart, it cannot cease from its appointed labour. The ceaseless muscular heart cannot be refreshed by absolute rest, and as little can the ceaseless immortal soul; but, while there is no rest for the material heart, there is both rest and refreshment for the spiritual heart, or soul of man. These come by changing the kind of work; and this it has the power to do—in a degree beyond what pertains to any other portion of the human being.
This kind of rest and refreshing is illustrated in the ordinary operations of the mind. The hard student of science, for example, after hours of intense mental labour, seeks refreshment for his mind—how? Not by absolute mental inactivity, for he knows that cannot be: he may sleep, but that refreshes only the instrument through which his mind brought its activities to bear. To refresh the mind itself, he turns it to another occupation—touching other chords and keys than those yet thrilling with their former strain.
No doubt, sleep and cessation from all voluntary mental labour are essential to the brain-worker—the student—in proper time and proportion, else the machine with which the work is done will very soon be thrown into sad disorder. Such rest and refreshment are essential to the material organ; and they come in sleep; but the immaterial spirit linked with that organism has quite another law. Seeking refreshment for itself, it changes its work. Ceasing to serve man, it takes to serving God; ceasing from the grovelling pursuits of earth, it has to do with the things of heaven; ceasing to look within its own narrow microcosm, it looks up to those eternal “hills whence alone can come its aid.”
And how is this change to be made? Obviously the preliminary essential is, that there must be “the seed,” “the law”—the new, regenerate, spiritual soul. That alone is capable of making the change. The carnal heart will neither seek nor serve God. It owns and works for another master. But, once renewed, “born again,” the soul, by heaven-born instinct, hungers and thirsts, and turns to the alone source of supply. “As a new-born babe, it desires the sincere milk of the word, that it may grow thereby.” And having once “tasted that the Lord is gracious,” it knows no other food to satisfy or refresh. The bread that he eats and toils for sustains the earthly frame of man, and the wine that his own hands have made makes glad his heart. In like manner, by prayer in faith, the soul “openeth the mouth wide;” and through that the soul is “filled,” fed, and nourished, and refreshed by the bread of heaven, by the water of life, procured for man by another, even at the price of His own blood, and given forth abundantly as a free gift. Jesus is the food of the renewed soul—a crucified and risen Jesus. “I am the living bread—if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever” (John vi. 51). The renewed soul feeds on Him at all times, but especially on the Lord’s day—in all the ordinances of the sanctuary, but pre-eminently in that of the Supper. These are the feasts and the feasting days: the Master of the feast is specially present then. The hungry soul is satisfied; and—more—ere it departs it takes up many baskets full of the fragments, to be used as sustenance by the way.*
Yes, it is time to assert in plain terms that all begins and centres in the blessed Saviour. He is all in all. He has purchased the dead soul for Himself, and the Father hath foreordained that it shall be given to Him.† The Spirit quickens the purchased soul, implants the “seed,” inbreathes the “law,” in virtue of that purchase. The soul, so renewed, in its first act cleaves to its Saviour by a given faith; and the Spirit who gave the faith, whom the Father sends in Jesus’ name, “takes of the things of Christ,” and by these the soul is nourished and sustained.
And the Comforter proceeds not from the Father alone—”When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (John xv. 26). “He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you” (John xvi. 14). And this is no limited store of blessing. For, “all things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you” (verse 15). All things! The implanting of grace in the renewed soul, the maintaining and nourishing it, and the carrying it on to ultimate perfection, all is the work of Father, Son, and Spirit, the Triune Jehovah. But Christ, through His finished work, is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, All in All.
It is thus, and thus only—by active feeding on Christ—that the soul can be truly refreshed from the tear and wear of its earthly toils—can be invigorated in the prosecution of its constant warfare—can be restored, after its taint and tarnishing through infirmity and sin.
And at what times, and in what way, come these refreshings? At all times, when asked in faith and in Jesus’ name. During every hour, every minute of this constant warfare, the warring soul may receive succour and strength from on high. Ask! Pray! “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee” (Jonah ii. 7). This is the simple means. This lets in a flood of light on the injunction, “Pray without ceasing.” Ever in the spirit of prayer. Set words are not essential, far less much speaking. Words even are not essential; there may be no time for them in the hot turmoil of the striving. “Look up!” That is enough, if the look be from the soul, and in faith. The blessing is sure.
The redeemed of the Lord wander in the wilderness, in a solitary way. Hungry and thirsty, their soul faints in them. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivers them out of their distresses. “He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalms cvii. 2, etc.)
“The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish” (Proverbs x. 3). But the soul must seek the gift. “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him” (Lam. iii. 25). “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat” (Proverbs xiii. 4). And the diligent soul must desire as well as seek. “He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness” (Psalms cvii. 9).
Prayer, praise, meditation; daily “searching of the Scriptures,” faithful feeding on the written Word; every appointed means of grace God will bless to sustain the “longing,” “hungry,” “diligent” soul.
But are there any set times—special times—of refreshing from the Lord, wherein special means are to be used by the seeking soul, and special blessing is promised? Yes, Ordinances. God has ordained such times and ways of seeking, His Sabbath and His Sanctuary. Six days have the soul and body of man laboured in earthly things; and at the end of this burthen of work, the soul—tarnished and tainted, dusty and dull—stands sorely in need of refreshment. How is this to be obtained? By rest on the seventh day; and that after the example of the Creator Himself: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” (Ex. xxxi. 17). And after the example of the Redeemer too: “There remaineth therefore a rest (Sabbatism, or keeping of Sabbath) to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he (the Redeemer) also hath ceased from his own works, as God (the Creator) did from his” (Heb. iv. 9, 10). And in what consisted this refreshing rest? Sleep? “He slumbers not, nor sleeps.” Man renewed after the image of God, seeking such refreshment as was experienced by that God who created and redeemed him, must take for his Sabbath, the rest of God, namely, the contemplation of His works, in creation, and providence, and redemption; the contemplation and enjoyment of Himself. It is a spiritual exercise. He holds communion with God, he contemplates, and he serves Him.
(To be continued).
* Professor Miller was in his day Surgeon in Ordinary to Queen Victoria, and to H.R.H. Prince Albert, for Scotland.
* A peculiar character of Christ-feeding this! The disciple fed by Him finds not only pressing and present wants supplied, but, besides, there are always fragments to be gathered up after the feast is over. It is the same now as it was 1,800 years ago on the hillsides of Galilee (Matt. xiv. and xv.)
† “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me. . . . I pray for them. I pray not for the world; but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them” (John xvii. 6, 10).