II.
(Continued from p. 391).
THE way by which some Christians try to reach their end is a difficult one indeed; but it is none of God’s appointing. There is no waymark of His upon it but what bids them leave it. The erratic traveller, less mindful of the place he makes for than of the objects by the way, choosing to forsake the beaten track, tries every defile, and plunges into every thicket, meets a thousand dangers that were not in his path; sometimes swamped, sometimes benighted, always impeded, and not really advancing till he regains the road. If Christians choose to travel forward thus, it is no wonder that their way is difficult, but it is not religion makes it so. Such is not the path the Saviour’s previous footsteps have trodden into smoothness, and lighted with the lamp of His own Spirit. His is a way of uprightness, straight, erect, uniform. Theirs is the way of compromise, of equivocation, of spiritual dishonesty. It is neither the broad road of the world nor the narrow road of the Gospel: and since there is no other, it is no road at all, but a trackless and inextricable wilderness. They who stray into it never know where they are; they ask directions of everybody, and see not which way to turn; all is hazard and uncertainty. What wonder if the ground be rugged and the walk uneasy “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” But the lamp of God is fixed where He lighted it; it sheds a steady blaze on the heavenward track, wherein they who walk can never be in darkness. But it is a lamp that cannot be removed; men cannot take it down and carry it with them wherever they choose to go. In their dubious wanderings through the ways of indecision they may see it perhaps, just see it at a distance, mercifully shining to direct them back again: but many a trackless mile must be passed over before it beams full again upon their steps. “God is not mocked.” He has said that men must separate at the outset—at the gate, and His people must walk apart: His people do not believe it. He reads in many an awakened bosom this resolution: “I will walk with God, but I will not separate from the world.” Sometimes He lets them try, but there is anger in His acquiescence: “Ephraim is wedded to idols, let him alone.” “The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart.” There was a straight way from Egypt into Caanan—there was nothing to prevent: sooner must the Red Sea part its waters than Israel’s steps be turned aside: hosts of armed enemies could not have said to him, Go round. It was his faithlessness which sent them into the wilderness. If anyone who thinks he has entered by the gate of life does not find within it a way of pleasantness and peace, does not see a lamp upon it always burning to direct his steps, finds himself in a labyrinth of uncertainties instead of a straight path, I entreat him to consider whether God has at any time seen in the secrecy of his heart a resolution such as I have named. Is it in acquiescence with God’s plan, or in some one of his own devising, that so much of darkness and difficulty has been met with?
These remarks are not inapplicable to those mazes of doctrinal error in which some erratic spirits continually involve themselves, because they will not walk simply in the beaten track. The way of salvation is plain and straightforward, long tried and safely trodden by the saints who have gone before us. But because it is so, the spiritual adventurer does not like it. Like the vagrant stragglers of an advancing army, they cannot content themselves with a steady progression; they must be hither and thither with endless bustle and disturbance, though the end of all is only to return and rejoin the main body on the road. The world esteems them lost—it is mistaken; their head is turned, as the expression is, but their hearts are right with God; they have left all for Christ. The sober Christian sees them depart with pain, and vainly cries after them to return; yet does he not despair of them; he knows that mercy will not let them lose themselves. But when, with weariness and fatigue and many hurts, they come back again, and find themselves just no further on their way to heaven than if they had walked simply forward with the company whose sobriety they despised, let them never say they got their hurts and dangers and fatigues on the straight path to heaven. This by the way. Our subject is rather with the practical difficulties of a religious course, arising out of the position of a child of God in an ungodly world.
What is his position?
The same exactly as his Saviour’s was. “Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” It is enough for the disciple that he be made as his master, and the servant as his lord”; “Heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ”: “Crucified unto the world, and the world unto us.” Jesus was a holy being, dwelling for a short season among sinful creatures, in the dominions of that prince of this world, between whose seed and Himself there had been enmity from the beginning. How was it to be expected that such a One would live in such a world? Doubtless, had he consulted His own feelings, he would have withdrawn Himself from all contact with creatures of a character and destiny so unlike His own. He would have spared Himself their insults and reproaches, the sight of their sufferings, and the disgust of their sins, by living secluded till the hour of expiation came. This He did not; He could not thus have accomplished the Father’s will or fulfilled the purposes of His existence here. It is difficult to understand the delusion of those mistaken ones who have thought to follow Christ by a life of solitude and abstraction—soldiers that hid themselves in the day of battle, labourers that took shelter from the heat and burden of the day. In our time there is not much temptation to seclusion; but if anyone, under the influence of a perfervid piety, feels disposed to leave the station in which Providence has placed him on account of the obstacles it opposes to his principles, he should well consider, before he recedes, whether they are difficulties or impossibilities; if the latter, he must fly from them. God places no man in a situation in which he cannot live a holy and religious life; therefore, come there how he may, he is not where God would have him be, and must withdraw at any sacrifice; but if the former, Christ never fled from difficulties, never shunned obloquy, nor hid Himself from opposition. Or when the newly-awakened spirit feels the ties of natural connection become onerous by reason of uncongeniality of sentiment, much is to be considered before those ties are severed. We must leave all for Christ, but then we must be sure it is for Christ; we must be sure it is not to lighten our own cross, by flying from the influence we might have resisted, and escaping the opposition we might have borne with. No earthly ties or earthly duties can be pleaded in excuse for sin. It is impossible; because God never places any man in such an opposition of claims, that one or other of His laws must needs be broken. There is a first commandment, and the second is like unto it; they can never stand in competition. Perhaps we mistake our social duties, calling by that name some sinful compliances which stain our conscience, whilst we want courage to refuse them. Perhaps the temptation to sin arising from our new connections does not so much proceed from without as from within; we fear their censures when we should only bear with them; we desire their approbation when we know it to be against the mind of God. Thus is it our feelings rather than our connections that require to be changed. If no duty binds us to them, and no bonds of providential appointment unite us, we may better show our honest fear of sin, and willingness to part with all for God, by removing from the temptation, than presuming on our power to overcome it. But we must not break the ties of nature when we need only loosen them. We must not cease to love where we should only love indifferently; and in all cases we must be sure it is the fear of sinning against our principles, not the fear of disgrace and difficulty in maintaining them, that induces us to abandon our position in life, and hide ourselves from the legitimate intercourse of society. This did not Christ. “I spake openly to the world; in secret have I said nothing.”
On the other hand, Christ never wilfully exposed Himself to temptation.
Pure and sinless as He was, and all-powerful to resist it as He knew Himself to be, Jesus did not go of His own choice into the wilderness to try His strength against the tempter. Wherever that event is mentioned, it is distinctly said, “He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness,” an expression peculiar to those passages, as if on purpose to distinguish that act from every other of His life, and show us that He, even He, went as He was led to meet His Father’s enemy, and listen to the language of seduction. What a lesson, what a reproof! We, predisposed as we are to sin, incapable of resisting it as we know ourselves to be, do we go boldly and without necessity where Satan keeps his court, where he spreads his blandishments, where he knows we must meet him, and either defeat his wiles or be seduced by them? Do we venture to say that if our own principles are good there is no risk to us in any company, in any place—can we walk side by side with the enemies of God, and sit in the councils of sinners, without any danger of being seduced from our allegiance to God? Jesus was not thus bold, though He might have been. If we set one step into the wilderness of temptation without the leading of the Spirit, for the fulfilment of some known command, we follow not in the footsteps of our Lord. God took Him there that He might in all things be more than conqueror. God may take us there; and if He does, it will be to conquer too. But of those who go thither unbidden to break a lance with the enemy for pastime, or, knight-errant like, to free the world from his enchantments, let no one think he does as Jesus did.
Next of the choice our Saviour made of His companions.
We all have companions, associates, friends; individuals, more or less numerous, with whom we pass our time, and hold a more intimate converse than with the world at large, exclusively of our domestic ties. Of these ties there is but one that admits of any choice, and that may be indissolubly formed before we have the light of truth to form it by. I include all voluntary intimacies. The choice that Jesus made was so contrary to what men thought it should be, as to be an occasion of scandal and reproach: “The friend of publicans and sinners.” The charge was false; Jesus never chose profligacy or immorality for His companions; He endured their presence to accomplish His purpose of calling sinners to repentance; but He abode not with them; He lived not in their intimacy. Men did not know, or would not know, that it was converted sinners, sanctified publicans, Jesus took for His companions; He changed their hearts when He chose them for His own, and made them holy when He received them into His bosom. The favourite disciples, the family of Lazarus—all whom He particularly loved in earthly fellowship, whatever they had been before, became, by His influence, like-minded with Himself. Thus were they fittest and the only fit; they were servants of His God and children of His Father: “My God and your God, my Father and your Father.” He saw in them the crown of His rejoicing, the fruit of His Spirit, the companions of His eternity. With such only did Jesus hold the intercourse of friendship. Calling to mind once more that interesting incident we have several times referred to, of His loving one whom He did not convert, we cannot but observe that this man did not become one of His familiar friends—He had none but those who were the children of His Father. He had intercourse with others in the common walks of life; in the streets, in the market-places, in the synagogues, wherever He could obtain a hearing from them; He sat as a guest at their tables, but still, as we shall presently observe, for the same purpose. Neither the Pharisee who mistook the way of life, nor the Sadducee who despised it, nor any subject whatsoever of the kingdoms of this world became the companion of the holy Jesus, “save only the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
(To be continued.)