THE world judgeth merely by outward appearances, and, therefore, may easily be mistaken. They see the chastisement which is upon the flesh, and thence conclude a man miserable; but they cannot discover that divine teaching which is upon the spirit, which truly rendereth him incomparably blessed. The men of the world are incompetent judges of the estate and condition of God’s children. The godly man’s happiness or misery is not to be judged by the world’s sense and feeling, but by his own; it lieth inward, save only so far as by the fruits it is discernible, and the world’s faculty of judging is only outward, made up of sense and reason; therefore, said the Apostle: “The spiritual man judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man;” that is, he is able to judge of the condition of the men of the world, but the men of the world are not able to judge of his condition, because it is above their faculty. The natural man thinks the spiritual man, under affliction, to be miserable; but the spiritual man knows the natural man, in the midst of his greatest abundance and bravery, to be miserable indeed. Therefore may the saints in their troubles think it, with Paul, a very small thing to be judged of man’s judgment, I. Cor. iv. 3. This is but man’s day of judging; so the word signifieth; God’s day is coming when things and persons shall be valued by another standard. Christ in His day shall judge not after the sight of the eyes, that is, not as things appear to sense and reason; nor after the hearing of the ears; that is, according to the report of the world; but with righteousness shall He judge; that is, He shall judge of things and persons as they are, and not as they appear. Moreover, this is also another comfort: “We have the mind of Christ,” I. Cor. ii. 16, the judgment of Christ, by virtue whereof we are enabled, in our measure, to judge of things and persons, as Christ Himself judgeth.—Case’s Correction, Instruction: The Rod and the Word.
The Volume of the Book.
Rev. v. 9.
Behold the Volume of the Book,
Before His Father’s throne:
Who can within its pages look
And make the writing known?
One, only One, in earth or heaven,
The royal right can gain:
The worthiness to Him is given,
Because He once was slain.
From every nation, tribe, and tongue,
The ransomed host shall come,
And join the Hallelujah-song
In His eternal Home.
O be it mine by grace divine
With Him to live and reign;
And help to raise the song of praise
To Him who once was slain.
WILLIAM WILEMAN.
Healing of the Conscience.
By the Late DAVID DICKSON, Irvine.
(Continued from page 56).
Let us consider but one of the passages of our Lord’s exercise (John xii., 27, 28). “Now” (says he) “is my soul troubled”: wherein, behold the perplexity of His mind, smitten with the horror of the curse due to us coming upon Him. Then comes forth, “What shall I say?” wherein, behold reason standing mute and altogether silent, He only lets forth the confession of His perplexity. Presently after this, He subjoins, “Father save me from this hour”; wherein, behold holy nature, trembling and shrinking to fall into the wrath of the Father, and according to the principles of holy nature, testifying the simple abhorrence of His soul from such an evil as is the wrath of God His Father, which, had it not been for love to save our souls, He would not have yielded His human nature to endure or bear it. Therefore He, considering that we were but lost for ever, if He should not suffer wrath for us, He repeats the sum of the covenant of redemption agreed upon, “But for this cause came I unto this hour.” And last of all, He shuts up His speech and exercise in the triumphing voice of victorious and untainted faith, “Father, glorify thy name”; and here He rests: wherewith the Father is so well pleased, as that from heaven He speaks to the hearing of the multitude standing by, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
Among the deepest degrees of the sufferings of Christ in His soul, we reckon that desertion, whereof Christ on the cross gives an account, crying out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” By which speech, He does not mean, that then the personal union of the natures was in Him dissolved, nor yet that God had withdrawn His sustaining strength and help from the human nature, nor that the love of the Father was taken off Him, nor that any piont of the perfection of holiness was taken from Him; but His true intent is to show, that God for a time had taken away sensible consolation and felt joy from His human soul, and so justice might in His sufferings be the more fully satisfied. And this is the forsaking of Him here given us to understand. In which desertion, Christ is not to be looked upon simply as He is in His own person, the Son of the Father, in which He is always well pleased; but as He stands in the room of sinners, surety and cautioner, paying their debt; in which
respect, He behoved to be dealt with as standing in our name, guilty, and paying the debt of being forsaken of God—which we were bound to suffer fully and for ever, if He had not interposed for us.