
PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 



OF 



PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 



BY 



JVTfs. Alexander Ppoudfit. 

BV 4501 .R45 

Reid, William, 1814-1896 

The paths of the Lord 



THE 



PATHS OF THE LORD. 



BY / 

REV. WILLIAM REID, 

EDINBURGH, 
AUTHOR OF "THE BLOOD OF JESUI 



"I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not ; I will lead them 
in paths that they have not known : I will make darkness light before 
them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and 
not forsake them." — Isaiah xlii. 16. 




PUBLISHED BY THE 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
28 CoBNHiLL, Boston. 



OBO. C. RAND & AVERT, 
8TKRE0TYPERS AND PRINTERS 



PREFACE 



When two equal forces are directed at right angles 
upon a given movable object, tbat object will move 
in the direction of neither force, but in a direction in- 
tennediate to both. So is it with us when acted upon 
by the carnal heart and the gospel of the grace of 
God. That gospel may be clearly preached or writ- 
ten ; but it generally happens that, on account of our 
natural blindness and opposition, it has to take an- 
other than the direct course in reaching our hearts 
and in saving our souls. We propose to show the 
way by which sinners, on account of their ignorance, 
have to be brought to know the truth of the gospel 
as a personal experience; and, by the Spirit and 
providence of God, to enjoy its sanctifiying and sav- 
ing power. 

The sin-crisis, as described in this work, must be 

experienced either before or after conversion ; and it 

is an experience which will make us " walk softly " 

henever it comes. I believe that all who are saved 

cvre more or less convinced of sin previous to conver- 

III 



IV PREFACE. 

sion, for Jesus says, " I came not to call the righteous 
but sinners to repentance ;" but in the case of some, 
it may be so blended with the experience of the love 
of God in Christ, that it is not strong, or very dis- 
tinctly recognized. It is, however, the conscious sin- 
ner that Jesus saves ; or else, if there be no conscious- 
ness of sin and danger, salvation is an unmeaning 
term, and conversion is a piece of unintelligible mys- 
ticism. 

In the case of those who have had no religious 
education, and who, at the same time have run greed- 
ily in the ways of the world, conviction of sin is gen- 
erally overwhelming, — the sin-crisis comes before 
conversion ; while in the case of those who have had 
a thorough religious training, conviction may be very 
feeble and gradual before conversion, and the sin- 
crisis may take place months and even years subse- 
quent to conversion, and generally on the back of 
some declension from the "first love" and zealous 
service of conversion times. But let no perishing 
sinner hanker after the mere accidents of conversion 
and salvation. On the contrary, be in earnest to 
have Christ in you the hope of glory, and leave the 
manner of his entrance entirely to himself. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

THE PATH OF PEACE, ...7 

II. 
THE PATH OF PURITY 21 

III. 
THE PATH OF STRENGTH, 29 



IV. 

THE PATH OF COMFORT, 43 

V 



VI CONTENTS. 

V. 

THE PATH OF SERVICE, 55 

VI. 
THE PATH OF LIGHT, 73 

VII. 
THE PATH OF LIFE, 105 

VIII. 
THE PATH OF GLORY 122 




THE PATHS OF THE LOED. 




CHAPTER I. 

THE PATH OF PEACE. 

p^HE Apostle Peter writes, that there 
are " given unto us exceeding great 
and precious promises;" and that 
blessed passage in Isaiah forty-second 
and sixteenth contains some that are 
" exceeding great and precious." Only lis- 
ten to your Shepherd's voice, and you must 
wonder at the gracious words which proceed 
out of his mouth: ''I ivill bring the blind by 
a ivay that they knew not ; I will lead them 
in 2^ctths that they have not hnoivn. I will 
make darkness light before them, and crooked 

. 7 



8 THE PATH a OF THE LORD. 

tilings straight. These things will I do unto 
them, and not forsake them.'*^ How exceed- 
ing great and precious to our souls are such 
promises as these ! How cheering in this 
wilderness to hear "the voice of my Be- 
loved," saying, " Lo, I am with you alway ! " 
Our gracious Redeemer is ever near. The 
good Shepherd goeth before his sheep, and 
leadeth them forth by " the right way," 
though it may be " by a way that they knew 
not." 

My Christian friends, let me recall to your 
remembrance that he brought you by a way 
you knew not, w^hen he made you '* his peo- 
ple, and the sheep of his pasture." In your 
spiritual ignorance, you wished to be brought 
to Jesus by a way of your own, and you had 
the whole way pictured out ; and it seemed 
quite amazing to you that the Lord should 
set your way entirely at naught. You 
thought that your way of being brought to 
Jesus and to enjoy peace was the right way ; 



TJIE PATH OF PEACE. 9 

and yet God had no pleasure in it. You 
professed to renounce the deeds of the law, 
and to put on the righteousness of Christ, — 
to acknowledge the necessity of regenerat- 
ing grace, and to live by faith on the Son 
of God. But, though your profession was 
right, your practice was wrong ; for, on ac- 
count of the blindness of your heart, you 
missed the narrow way, — "the new and 
living way," — and walked in the Avay of 
anxiety rather than in the way of divine 
peace. Some of you struggled hard to make 
for yourselves a religious way into the pres- 
ence of the holy Jehovah. You would fain 
have formed a pavement of glistering good- 
ness by which to come near the great and 
mighty God. In order to do this you would 
be correct in your conduct ; you would be 
devout and "instant in prayer ; " you would 
strive to have good hearts and holy thoughts ; 
you would make vows and resolutions ; you 
would peruse the Scriptures with great dil- 



10 2'HE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

igence, and be constant and earnest in your 
attendance on all the duties and ordinances 
of religion. How many poor souls are 
continually building at this tower of Babel, 
whose top, they imagine, will reach to heav- 
en ! And yet, w^hen the Lord comes down 
to bring them to himself, the first thing he 
does is to confound them, and stop the build- 
ing of the tower! He first confounds all 
such Babel-builders, whom he means to teach 
a more excellent way. When you were 
arrested by the Lord, was it not very diffi- 
cult to stand still and see your religion all 
leveled by the divine Spirit, who alone can 
bring blind sinners into the King's high- 
way ? You confessed yourselves lost ; but, 
that you might be made thoroughly to feel 
it, the good Spirit was commissioned to ac- 
quaint you with your true condition. Your 
sins were set in order before you, — you 
were made to feel that they formed moun- 
tain barriers between you and your God. 



THE PATH OF PEACE. 11 

Your conscience felt burdened, and all hope 
of salvation was cut off. The sorrows of 
death compassed you ; and the waves of 
wrath appeared ready to overwhelm your 
soul. Ah, how mysterious and strange was 
all this ! Yet this is God's way, that he 
may lay sinners in the dust. He leads to 
such views of sin as to show them that it 
deserves infinite punishment; and in their 
mental anguish they are brought to descend, 
as it were, into the very depths of the " hor- 
rible pit," and to lie there crying, individu- 
ally, " God be merciful to me, a sinner ! " 
And when by the mercy of God they are 
saved, they can sing with intelligence that 
awful, joyful song, " I will glorify thy name 
for evermore ; for great is thy mercy toward 
me, and thou hast delivered my soul from 
the lowest hell." 

The Holy Ghost, although called the 
Comforter, gives no comfort to carnal hearts. 
On the contrary, he leads the lost one to 



12 THE PATHS OF TEE LOItD. 

Sinai, and makes him hear the thunders of 
Jehovah, and gaze upon the flashing hght- 
nings of his vengeance, and listen to the 
awful curses of his broken law. He can 
give you no comfort in your sins ; and it is 
more than likely that he will so convince 
you of sin that your conscience will be 
lashed into a fearful storm, and the fierce 
tempest of the Almighty will appear to 
sweep over your soul. And when you 
stand " trembling and astonished," and 
know not which way to turn, he will take 
you by your right hand, and leaxi you to 
the cross of Calvary ; and while he reminds 
you, even there, that " our God is a con- 
suming fire," he will bid you " behold the 
Lamb ;" and, as you look, you will hear a 
voice from that crucified One, speaking 
peace, and sa^'ing, " I, even I, am he that 
blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own 
sake, and will not remember thy sins." " I 
am the way ; no man cometh to the Father 



THE PATH OF PEACE. 13 

but by me ; " and '' Him that cometh I will 
in no wise cast out." This is the new and 
living waj, — the only way of salvation, yet 
a way we knew not, and never should have 
known had we been left to ourselves. 

And, before going further, let me solemn- 
ly ask you, my dear reader, what is your 
experience of this way ? Have you been 
brought to God by his own w^ay, of convic- 
tion of sin and application of the blood of 
Jesus ? Happy are you if the Lord is your 
Shepherd ! Oh, what a blessing it is to be 
made to cease from man and from self, and 
to lie passive in the wilderness before the 
good Shepherd, and allow him to bring us 
to himself in his own blessed way, of con- 
viction, pardon, and peace! Oh, how de- 
sirable it is to be washed in the blood of 
atonement, and clothed in the spotless right- 
eousness of Immanuel ! This is God's meth- 
od, — God's holy way of saving sinners ; 
and truly it is a way w^e knew not, — a way 



14 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

we never should have known, had not he 
who commanded the hght to shine out of 
darkness shined into our hearts, to give the 
hght of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ. 

But Jesus is given to be a leader to his peo- 
ple to the end of time, — yea, even through- 
out eternity, — for it is written, "They 
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
more ; neither shall the sun light on them, 
nor any heat : for the Lamb which is in the 
midst of the throne shall feed them, and 
shall lead them to living fountains of waters ; 
and God shall wipe away all tears fi'om their 
eyes." 

When the Lord brings lost sinners to 
himself in his own gracious way, it is that 
they may remain with him as the sheep of 
his pasture, and follow him wheresoever he 
may lead them. Conversion is the begin- 
ning of grace, — not the end. Conversion 
is the gate of the narrow way ; and even 



THE PATH OF PEACE. 15 

after we are converted, we have the whole 
way to glory before us ; and being ignorant 
of it and under the necessity of traveling in 
it, we must be daily following the Captain of 
our salvation, who says, in his great love, 
''Iivill lead them in paths that they have not 
hiowny The Lord's ways are very diifer- 
ent from our ways. When he called us by 
his grace, he himself knew what he would 
do ; but we knew it not. And seeing that 
we are " blind " as to the way in which we 
are yet to walk, may we not expect to be 
led in many " paths " of which we have 
never thought ? But although his ways are 
not our ways, yet his ways are always best. 
The experience we shall receive in these 
ways of his will prove salutary to us, and 
(by his grace) glorifying to him. 

When Israel came out of Egypt, they 
were taking what would certainly have been 
the shortest, and, to the eye of man the 
safest, way to go to Canaan ; but it was not 



16 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

God's way, and therefore they had to give 
it up. They were taking that course by 
which they would have altogether escaped 
the, Red Sea; but "the Lord spake unto 
jNIoses, saying, Speak unto the children of 
Israel that they turn.^^ They were on their 
way northward, to pass by the sea ; but the 
Lord commanded them to move southwards, 
and encamp between the sea and their ene- 
mies ! This might have appeared to many 
among them a strange and dangerous pro- 
cedure ; but " the foolishness of God is wiser 
than men." For though they were shut in 
by impassable rocks on either hand, faced by 
the rolling waves, and closely pursued by an 
armed host, they were quite safe ; for they 
had gone into that difficult and trying po- 
sition at the command of God^ and he was 
in the midst of them, to open up for them a 
way of escape ; and he led them in those 
very paths which more fully showed them 
his grace and power, — accomplished the 



THE PATH OF PEACE. 17 

complete overthrow of their enemies, " and 
manifested forth his glory." " This cometh 
from the Lord, who is wonderful in counsel 
and excellent in working." And surely, 
my dear friends, when we are at any time 
in perplexity and know not what to do, this 
may teach us to be still, and know that he 
is God. The sorrowing disciples of our 
Lord would not have felt his visit, on the 
evening of that day on which he rose from 
the grave, to be so refreshing, had it not 
been for the circumstances in which they 
were then placed. Their hearts were not 
only sorrowfiil, but they were fearful lest 
they should be arrested and murdered as 
their Lord had been. The narrative is full 
of instruction. It runs thus : " Then the 
same day, at evening, being the first day of 
the week, when the doors were shut where 
the disciples were assembled for fear of the 
Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, 
and saith unto them, Peace be unto yoo. 



18 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

And when he had so said, he showed unto 
them his hands and his side. Then were 
the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord." 
They feared the Jews ; but instead of a visit 
of infuriated Jews, they had a visit of the 
risen Jesus, speaking in words of love, and 
saying, " Peace be unto you," and showing 
unto them " his hands and his side," to as- 
sure them, at once, that he indeed was their 
crucified Lord, and that he had " made 
peace by the blood of his cross." " Then 
were the disciples glad when they saw the 
Lord." If you will follow the Lord fully, 
he will doubtless lead you into circumstances 
of trial and perplexity, where, like Paul in 
Adria, you will be "driven up and down," 
and for many days you may neither see sun 
nor stars, " and have no small tempest," in 
order to try your faith, and show you his 
salvation. 

When brought to Jesus, the Lord's deal- 
ings with us ever after are such as to make 



THE PATH OF PEACE. 19 

US cease from our oavr ways, and allow our- 
selves to be led in his. His paths frequently 
cross our paths, — in fact, his paths run quite 
contrary to our natural hearts ; and that is 
the reason why there is so much difficulty 
felt in submitting; to the will of God. But 
what can ive sinful creatures know of " the 
way of holiness ? " Nothing at all, unless 
taught by God himself. How frequently 
does it happen that the inward experience 
we have from God is not the experience we 
thought we should have ! Some of you 
thought you should have nothing but peace 
and joy, sunshine and calm, and summer all 
the y^ar round, when you believed in Jesus 
and connected yourselves with the people of 
God. But, oh, how different has it been ! 
how checkered has been your experience ! 
You will find out, by and by, if you have 
not found it out already, that your souls can 
enjoy peace only by a full surrender of your- 
selves to Jesus, to be led as poor blind chil- 



20 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

dren through this great wilderness, " where 
there is no way." Like Israel of old, you 
must submit to be led by Israel's God. 
" He led them forth by the right way^ that 
they may go to a city of habitation. He 
saved them for his name's sake, that he 
might make his mighty power to be known." 

Thy way, not mine, O Lord, however dark it be ! 
Lead me by thine own hand, choose out the path for 

me. 
Smooth let it be or rough, it will be still the best ; 
Winding or straight, it matters not, it leads me to thy 

rest. 
I dare not choose my lot : I would not, if I might ; 
Choose thou for me, my God, so shall I walk aright. 
The kingdom that I seek is thine ; so let the way 
That leads to it be thine, else I must surely stray. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PATH OF PURITY. 

/^^^HE Lord frequently leads his people 
IjfcfJ in paths that they have not known, 
to make them holy. " This is the 
will of God, even your sanctifica- 
tion." The Lord led Israel in 
paths that they had not known, when he 
led them about " for the space of forty years 
in the wilderness." He might have taken 
them into Canaan in a few days, but they 
were not ready to enter upon their inheri- 
tance. Theirs had been, in Egypt, the life 
of slaves, and they were not fit to meet the 
enemy in battle, nor to be put in possession 
of the land, and to have it as their own. 
There must be a wilderness education, to 

21 



•22 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

teach them their entire dependence upon 
Jehovah, and to discover the dreadful cor- 
ruption which lay concealed in their hearts. 
When he was preparing them for immediate 
entrance into the land of promise, he said, 
" Thou shalt remember all the way which 
the Lord thy God led thee these forty years 
in the wilderness, to humble thee^ and to prove 
thee, and to knoiv what was in thine heart, 
whether thou wouldst keep his command- 
ments or no. And he humbled thee.^^ 

How much corruption does a season of 
leading through the wilderness bring forth 
to view ! It is not by the joys of first love 
that we know whether we will walk before 
God to the praise of the glory of his grace, 
but by a few years of " the wilderness." 
The " wilderness " reveals the wickedness, 
the rebelliousness, the perverseness, tlie dis- 
contentedness, the godlessness, and deceit- 
fulness of the human heart. It is the^^e that 
the Lord " humbles us and proves us," and 



THE PATH OF PURITY. 23 

brings out what is in our hearts. When 
your soul was breathing after hoKness and 
likeness to Jesus, you may have prayed 
earnestly that the Lord would show you the 
hatefulness of sin and the vileness of self, 
and you may have been waiting to see 
whether something like a revelation from 
heaven would not be made to you ; and you 
may have felt, in some measure, disappointed 
that you had not obtained such deep views 
of sin as you longed to have, that you might 
with more intensity abhor yourself, and de- 
part from iniquity. A period of wilderness- 
experience was given you, and you were 
brought into circumstances which were most 
trying and provoking to the carnal heart. 
The Lord removed his hand, to some extent, 
from restraining your corruptions, and then 
you had the answer to your prayer by " ter- 
rible things." You began to see that that 
awful catalogue of sins mentioned by the 
Saviour might have been, in a great meas- 



24 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

ure, filled up out of the hateful contents of 
your heart, for out of your heart were pro- 
ceeding " evil thoughts, adulteries, fornica- 
tions, murders, thefts, covetousness, wicked- 
ness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blas- 
phemy, pride, foolishness." You thought 
that your heart was comparatively good be- 
fore this experience was given you, and you 
may have deplored the evil-heartedness of 
others ; but now you see that within your 
own heart there were lying asleep a swarm 
of loathsome reptiles, which needed only to 
be roused to make them trail their slimy 
coils over your conduct, and sting yourself 
and all around you. There was within you 
a stagnant pool, which needed only to be 
stirred by some trouble, offense, or tempta- 
tion, to give such evidence of its putridity as 
to disgust yourself and all who came within 
your reach. My dear friend, if the Lord 
has thus allowed your corruptions to come 
out and disfigure your fair profession, and. 



THE PATH OF PURITY. 25 

upon mature reflection, to make you loathe 
yourself, then give him thanks, though the 
experience came not in your way, but in a 
way you little thought of; and though it 
was hard to bear, and has made you say 
and do things of which you are now ashamed, 
and for which you may have to mourn all 
your days, if it has made your soul " like a 
weaned child," that is most blessed, for that 
is " the end of the Lord." 

The experience of that accurate spiritual 
anatomist, President Edwards, is peculiarly 
instructive : — "When I look into my heart, 
and take a view of my wickedness, it looks 
like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell ; 
and it appears to me that were it not for 
free grace exalted to the infinite bight of 
all the fullness of the great Jehovah, and the 
arm of his power stretched forth in all the 
glory of his sovereignty, I should sink down 
in it beyond the sight of every thing but \hQ 
eye of sovereign grace, that can pierce even 



5S6 THE PATES OF THE LORD. 

to such a depth. And yet it seems to me 
that my conviction of sin is exceedingly 
small and faint, and amazing to see that I 
have no more sense of it. I have greatly 
longed, of late, for a hroken heart, and can 
not bear the thought of being no more hum- 
ble than other Christians. I consider that 
their humility would be vile self-exaltation 
in me. Others speak of longing to be 'hum- 
bled in the dust ; ' but I always think that I 
ought ' to lie infinitely low before God,' and 
such is often my expression in prayer. And 
it is affecting to reflect how ignorant I was, 
when a young Christian, of the bottomless, 
infinite depth of wickedness, pride, hypoc- 
risy, and deceit, in my heart." Lord, what 
is man ? A mass of corruption ! 

Ah ! you thought, when the sun shone 
brightly, and the fragrance of summer was 
wafted around your path, that your old sins 
were completely eradicated, or at least so 
far subdued that they would never again 



THE PATH OF PURITY. 27 

vex, distract, and pollute you ; but you have 
been taught a very different lesson. You 
neglected prayer, or reading, or meditation, 
or watchfulness, and your old sins began 
immediately to show their hateful and loath- 
some forms. And to intensify the trial, 
" the old serpent," at such times, attacks 
the sin-deluged soul with his fiery tempta- 
tions, and with remorseless malignity en- 
deavors to hurry the hardened one into open 
sin, and heaviness is experienced " through 
manifold temptations." And added to this, 
we may by our sins have separated between 
us and our God, so that he may have hid his 
face from us, and have "withdrawn him- 
self." How dreadful is such a case! We 
are ready in such circumstances to exclaim, 
" All these things are against us ; " but they 
are not so in reality, for they are among the 
"all thincrs" that 'work tog;ether for our 
good; and " the good Shepherd" is thus ful- 
filling in our experience his own gracious 



28 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

promise, ^'I ivill lead them in paths that they 
have not hnoivn.''^ 

I walk as one who knows that he is treading 

A stranger soil ; 
As one round whom a serpent-world is spreading 

Its subtle coil. 

I walk as one but yesterday delivered 

From a sharp chain ; 
"Who trembles lest the bond so newly severed 

Be bound again. 

I walk as one who feels that he is breathing 

Ungenial air ; 
For whom, as wiles, the tempter still is wreathing 

The bright and fair. 

My steps, I know, are on the plains of danger, 

For sin is near ; 
But looking up, I pass along, a stranger. 

In haste and fear. 



3j*;c 



s^ 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PATH OF STRENGTH. 

HE Lord also leads his people in 
paths they have not known, in order 




to confirm them in the faith ^ and 
make them steadfast in his covenant. 
The God of all grace, who hath 
called us unto his eternal glory by Christ 
Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, 
make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, set- 
tle you." Thus prayed the Apostle Peter. 
He well knew how it is that the Lord con- 
firms his people. He was himself led in 
paths he had not known. He was full of 
fire and fervor, burning with love to Jesus, 
and, decided in his adherence to his gracious 
Lord ; he would go with him to prison and 



29 



30 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

to death ! — he would never deny him ! — 
he would never forsake him ; though all 
should forsake him, yet would he abide 
faithful ; he would stand by his Redeemer, 
should he have to stand alone ! — and we all 
know what he did. How unlike his profes- 
sion were his deeds ! He never thought 
that he needed to be taught his own weak- 
ness in such an unlooked-for way. He was 
truly led in paths that he had not known, 
to drive out of him his self-confidence, and 
teach him where his real strength lay, — to 
make him " strono- in the Lord and the 
power of his might." Jesus said to him, 
" When thou art converted, strengthen thy 
brethren ; " and his writings — his two Epis- 
tles — have been eminently useful for ac- 
complishing this great and desirable end. 
And Peter's experience is that of thousands. 
It may be yours, beloved reader. You may 
have been led in paths you never expected 
to be led in, to deliver you from self-corn- 



THE PATB OF STRENGTH. 31 

placency, self-sufficiency, self-exaltation, and 
self-confidence. You may have prayed for 
steadfastness and consistency, and all the 
time you may have never felt your need of 
God's special interference on your behalf; 
but the Lord, in some unexpected way, has 
answered your prayer, by showing you first 
your own utter weakness and helplessness. 

The wintry storms that beat upon the 
forest make the trees thereof take a firmer 
hold of the soil ; so the Lord, by permitting 
the storms of trouble and temptation to beat 
upon the soul, makes his people strike then* 
roots deeper and deeper into clefts of " the 
Rock of Ages," and to become more ground- 
ed and settled in the faith of the gospel. 
The Lord frequently confirms his people's 
faith by permitting them to witness the falls 
of others, or by experience of their own un- 
even and wayward walk. A holy minister 
of Jesus Christ has said : " The falls of pro- 
fessors into sin make me tremble. I have 



32 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

been driven away from prayer, and burdened 
in a feai'ful manner, by hearing or seeing 
their sin. This is wrong. It is right to 
tremble, and to make every sin of every pro- 
fessor a lesson of my own helplessness ; but 
it should lead me more to Christ." I must 
say that I have been frequently .nade to 
tremble for myself when I heard or read of 
the fall of some who had occupied a promi- 
nent position in the church of Christ ; and 
it has made me cling to Jesus with more 
earnestness and simplicity of faith. I have 
no doubt you have been also made to trem- 
ble for yourself, when you saw those who 
had long professed to be followers of the 
Lamb turning back or falling into sin. It 
takes very much to make us know that we 
are " without strength," and to cleave to 
God as our strength. 

Conjoined with the inward teaching of 
his Sph'it, we need the outward teaching of 
his providence. Our gracious God deals 



THE PATH OF STRENGTH. 33 

with us in love in all lie does for us, and in 
all he permits to happen to us. Many think 
they are established in the faith, when they 
are not rooted and built up in Christ ; and 
they must be taught by bitter experience 
that they are deceiving themselves, and 
walking in the light of their own fire, and 
delusively trusting in themselves that they 
are righteous, and despising others. If 
nothing else will bring them to a sense of 
their true condition, God will let Satan loose 
upon them ; then will then- hearts be lashed 
into a dark tempest, and their iniquities, like 
the wind, will carry them away to the re- 
gions of doubt and darkness, fear and de- 
spondency, if not into open rebellion, and, 
perhaps, even back for a season to the 
dreary world, to which they thought they 
had bidden an eternal farewell. Some pro- 
fessors are permitted for a time to follow the 
ways of their own hearts, and others are 
allowed to embrace dangerous errors and 



34 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

soul-distracting views of divine things, that 
they may eventually embrace the truth as it 
is in Jesus more cordially, and walk in the 
truth more consistently. Satan is some- 
times permitted to fill the mind with dread- 
ful and tormenting doubts with regard to 
the whole scheme of salvation, and the 
very foundations seem as if they would be 
destroyed. Atheism, infidelity, perplexing 
thoughts about God and Christ and the 
great salvation fill the soul ; and those who 
are thus exercised do indeed find trouble 
and sorrow. Those only who have been led 
by paths that they have not known, through 
the mire and marshes of skepticism, to build 
on the " sure foundation," can sympathize 
with the desolateness and self-crushing which 
result from such leadings. But the end of 
all this is our confirmation. And when we 
have such experience, it tends to drive us 
out of ourselves and make us build more 
firmly on the unchanging and everlasting 



THE PATH OF STRENGTH. 35 

foundation, " Jesus Christ, the same yester- 
day, to-day, and for ever." 

Not a few of the most eminent Christians, 
as well as able divines, have been allowed to 
get bemazed in perplexity and doubt about 
one or other of the precious doctrines of 
Jehovah's Word ; and they have been led 
to examine the Scriptures more thoroughly 
on that very account ; and the result has 
been their entire conviction of the truthful- 
ness of all the utterances of the God of truth ; 
and some of them have been so fully im- 
pressed with the truth of the great things of 
God's law, that they have written for the 
confirmation of the faith of others. One 
who was once tossed upon the billows of 
tormenting doubt with regard to the son- 
ship and divinity of our blessed Lord, thus 
writes: — "He consciously stood upon a 
gulf, the depths of which were enveloped in 
the shadow of death. Arianism had been 
his next resting-place ; and that he had suf- 



36 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

ficient self-distrust to regard as a break 
merely in the fall to deeper and more dead- 
ly error. He at length turned to the point 
from which he ought to have set out, and 
with a firm resolution to rest satisfied with 
nothing short of a complete investigation, 
he examined and classified every passage of 
Scripture which seemed to pertain to the 
subject. Thus was the present work orig- 
inated ; * and it eventually proved perfectly 
adequate to his own conviction. Nothing 
short of the discomfort and perplexity here 
described would have induced him to offer 
his aid to the researches of others." Thus 
did the Lord lead this servant of his in paths 
that he had not known — painful, perplex- 
ing paths — to a well-grounded belief of one 
of the cardinal doctrines of revelation, and 
to the production of an unparalleled work 
on the divine sonship of Jesus, for the con- 
firmation of his church ! How truly may 

* Treffrey on the Eternal Sonship. 



THE PATH OF STRENGTH. 37 

the Lord say to us, " My thoughts are not 
your thoughts, neither are your ways my 
ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens 
are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts 
than your thoughts ! " 

But it is not Hkely that many have been 
troubled in such a way as was the minister 
just referred to, or led by the paths of doubt 
regarding the doctrines of grace ; but you 
may have been led by paths that you found 
perplexing and painful, to bring you to a 
settled " peace in believing." Though you 
may not have doubted God's sincerity, you 
may have frequently doubted your own. 
Though you believed that all he has said in 
his Word of Jesus and of his own love and 
grace was true, yet you may have had many 
sad questionings whether it was true to you. 
There are some who have this experience 
for years ; and they are sorely tried and 
tempted. Sometimes they have hope, at 



38 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

other times fear. Sometimes tliey think 
they observe the streaks of the dawn of day, 
but at other times they are enveloped in the 
darkness of midnight. One who was long- 
in this unhappy state once said to me, " I 
find now that though it was a painful way 
by which the Lord led me to Jesus, it was 
the best way ; and my. experience is, that a 
great fight is the precursor of a great vic- 
tory." That Christian is now a simple be- 
liever in Jesus, and has no doubt of being 
" accepted in the Beloved." But the way 
to that confirmed faith and settled peace lay 
through the region of difficulties, fightings, 
questionings, and fears. If you are thus led 
by God (and I do not say that you must be 
thus led, — some may be, others may not), 
rest not satisfied till you see the end of the 
Lord ; for he is " very pitiful, and of tender 
mercy." "A bruised reed shall he not 
break, and the smoking flax shall he not 
quench. The Lord raiseth them that are 



THE FATH OF STRENGTH. 39 

bowed down." It is well to examine our- 
selves whether we be in the faith. And the 
Lord sometimes leads us to engage in this 
exercise by unlooked-for means. Our strong, 
clear views of Jesus as a Saviour become 
beclouded by sin ; oar joy, peace, hope, love, 
and zeal lose much of their intensity ; and 
we begin to fear lest we may have been de- 
ceiving ourselves. You may be sometimes 
writing bitter things against yourself, and 
saying, " Ah ! surely I am not a child of 
God at all ; for where is my zeal for his 
glory ? where my holiness, my love to Jesus, 
my faith, my works, and labors of love? 
Were I his, surely I would hate and shun 
sin far more than I do ; I would live more 
believingly, walk more tenderly, pray more 
fervently, work more devotedly, and speak 
more guardedly ; I would not have these 
dark clouds coming over me, these unbe- 
lieving thoughts rising up within me, these 
cold damps overspreading my soul, and 



40 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

these dreadftil corruptions weltering within 
me." Ah ! dear soul, be encouraged ; the 
Lord may be leading you, in all your blind- 
ness, in paths that you have not known. 
The unconverted do not know auo;ht of 
those struggles through which you have 
passed, or may be even now passing. They 
know nothing of " the new man" laboring 
for the ascendency. The Lord may be 
graciously leading you to a confirmed faith 
and a more devoted service. But oh, take 
care that you do not rest in this experience, 
but press on tow^ard the mark ! Christian 
experience is mere shifting sand. Christ is 

" THE ROCK." 

Dear reader, if you have been led in paths 
of confirmation which you have not known, 
then give God all the praise, and say to him, 
" I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. 
The Lord is my rock and my fortress, and 
my deliverer ; my God, my strength, in 
whom I will trust ; my buckler, and the 



THE PATH OF STRENGTH. 41 

horn of my salvation, and my high tower. 
I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to 
be praised ; so sliall I be saved from mine 
enemies." 

Pray also that God's Spirit may give you 
a fuller discovery of your own unspeakable 
sinfulness and vileness in his holy eyes, and 
so lead you that you will be made much 
holier than you now are, and more thorough- 
ly rooted and built up in Christ, and stab- 
lished in the faith. May he even now de- 
scend upon you, "• to the end he may stablish 
your hearts unblamable in holiness before 
God, even our Father, at the coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." 

Jesus, while this rough desert-soil 
I tread, be thou my guide and stay ; 

Nerve me for conflict and for toil ; 
Uphold me on my stranger-way. 

Jesus, in heaviness and fear, 

'Mid cloud, and gloom, and shade I stray, 
For earth's last night is drawing near ; 

Oh cheer me in my stranger way. 



42 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

Jesus, in solitude and grief, 

When sun and stars withhold their ray. 
Make haste, make haste to my relief; 

Oh, light me on my stranger-way. 

Jesus, in weakness of this flesh, 

When Satan grasps me for his prey ; 

Oh, give me victory afresh. 

And speed me on my stranger-way. 

Jesus, my righteousness and strength, 
My more than life, my more than day ; 

Bring, bring deliverance at length, — 
Oh, come and end my stranger-way. 




^^c^ 



i/; 





IV. 

THE PATH OF COMFORT. 

S tlie sufferings of Christ abound in 
us, so our consolation also aboundeth 
by Christ ; for whether we be af- 
flicted, it is for your consolation 
and salvation ; or whether we be 
comforted, it is for your consolation and sal- 
vation. And our hope of you is steadfast, 
knowing that as ye are partakers of the 
sufferings, so shall ye be also of the con- 
solation." The Church may expect much 
trouble and sorrow here ; but if tribulation 
abound, consolation will also abound. The 
words of Jesus are very explicit : " In the 
world ye shall have tribulation ; but be . of 

43 • 



44 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

good clieer, I have overcome the world." 
" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted." The comfort is sm-e ; but 
Ave must be willing to go to the wilderness 
for it. The Lord says of his spouse, " I will 
allure her and bring her into the wilderness, 
and speak comfortably to her ; " or, as it is 
in the margin, " I will speak to her heart.'^ 
It is said in Lamentations, " Though he 
cause grief, yet will he have compassion 
according to the multitude of his mercies ; 
for he doth not afflict from his heart.^^ But 
though the affliction comes not from his 
heart, yet the consolation does, and it goes 
to the heart ; for he says, " I will speak to 
her heart.'^'' Jesus, the consolation of Israel, 
came to our world in the fullness of time, and 
during all the period of his terrestrial sojourn 
he was " the Man of Sorrows." He knew 
such sorrow as none of us can know. He 
agonized in the garden of Gethsemane, and 
expired amid the anguish, darkness, and 



THE PATH OF COMFORT. 45 

soul-crushing sorrows of Calvary. But 
when enduring those sorrows, he was on his 
way to the eternal joys that are at God's 
right hand. And his experience as the 
Captain of our salvation must be expected 
by us if we are his followers. 

We have a great fight of afflictions to 
endiu^e before we enter the "joyous city." 
God sets a kingdom before us, and promises 
to give us that kingdom, with all its unspeak- 
able immunities and " pleasures for ever- 
more ; " but " we must through much trib- 
ulation enter into the kingdom of God." 
And if at any time, while on our way to 
that kingdom, we expect consolation with- 
out tribulation, we expect what is not in ac- 
cordance with the experience of our Lord or 
his people, or the promises of his blessed 
Word. Where does the Word promise us 
comfort of which we have not a feeling of 
need ? The very' idea of consolation implies 
sorrow. And when we pray for much joy 



46 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

and comfort at a time when every thing is 
going well with us, we are virtually praying 
for sorrow. The comfort gets into the soul 
only by those openings which are made by 
grief and sore affliction. Mary was weep- 
ing at the sepulcher when the gentle, famil- 
iar voice of Jesus pronounced her name, and 
sent a thrill of wondrous joy tln-ough her 
whole soul ; and the disciples were together 
mourning and weeping over the sad event 
of his crucifixion, when he stood in their 
midst, and said, " Peace be unto you," and 
by his presence filled their hearts with "joy 
unspeakable." It was after the Jews had 
experienced much sorrow, and expected to 
be all massacred by the decree of wicked 
Haman, that they " had joy and gladness, a 
feast, and a good day," on the reversal of 
that decree. It was when Shadrach, Me- 
shach, and Abednego were waUving in the 
midst of the burning fiery furnace, that a 
fourth One was seen with them, " like the 



THE PATH OF COMFORT. 47 

Son of God." And if we are to have much 
consolation, we must lay our account with 
being cast into " the burning fiery furnace." 
The heat of " the furnace of affliction" will 
be the measure of our consolation. If we 
are to be greatly comforted, we must be 
greatly afflicted. The Lord will lead us by 
" paths that we have not known," into try- 
ing, difficult, heart-rending, soul-vexing cir- 
cumstances, that we may be made to feel that 
all earthly sources of consolation are broken 
cisterns, and that all real consolation must 
be found in him. All true and lasting con- 
solation must flow from himself. And when 
the soul is first brought to have "joy un- 
speakable," it is after being brought very 
low by the convincing Spirit. The Spirit 
turns us to Jesus to produce both wounding 
and healing. The very fact of a Comforter 
being promised, implies that there will be 
need of his comfort in the church of God. 
A comforter sent supposes " an afflicted peo- 



48 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

pie" to be comforted. Let us not, then, 
mistake our afflictions for calamities, for they 
are not so ; they are the vessels by which 
the Lord pours "the oil of joy" into the 
spirits of liis dear afflicted children. When 
you see no possibility of deliverance from 
your difficulties and afflictions, then the 
Lord will draw near, saying, "J know their 
sorrows^ and am come down to deliver them; 
comfort ye, comfort ye my people." '•' Man's 
extremity is God's opportunity." When 
you know not what to do, nor how to hold 
out any longer under the pressure of a com- 
plication of trials, sorrows, griefs, anxieties, 
and afflictions, he will interpose and grant 
you real and suitable consolation. 

When speaking of the Lord's dealings 
with his own people in leading them by a 
way they had not know^n, another has given 
utterance to the following descriptive and 
expressive language : — 

" They were living to themselves ; self. 



THE PATH OF COMFORT. 49 

with its hopes, and promises, and dreams, 
had still hold of them ; but lie began to ful- 
fill their prayers. They had asked for con- 
trition, and he sent them sorrow ; they had 
asked for purity, and he sent them thrilling 
anguish ; they had asked to be meek, and 
he had broken their hearts ; they had asked 
to be dead to the world, and he slew all 
their living hopes ; they asked to be made 
like unto him, and he placed them in the 
furnace, sitting by ' as a refiner of silver,' 
till they should reflect his image ; they had 
asked to lay hold of his cross, and when he 
reached it to them it lacerated their hands ; 
— they had asked they knew not what, nor 
how ; but he had taken them at their word, 
and granted them all their petitions. They 
were hardly willing to follow on so far, or to 
draw so nigh to him. They had upon them 
an awe and fear, as Jacob at Bethel, or Eli- 
phaz in the night-vision, or as the aspostles 
when they thought they had seen a spirit, 
4 



50 THE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

and knew not that it was Jesus ; — they 
could ahiiost pray him to depart from them, 
or to hide his awfulness. They foimd it 
easier to obey than to suffer, to do than to 
give up, to bear the cross than to hang upon 
it ; but they can not go back, for they have 
come too near the unseen cross, and its vir- 
tues have pierced too deeply within them. 
He is fulfilling to them his promise, ' And I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.' 
Now their turn is come at last, and that is 
all. Before, they had only heard of the 
mystery, but now they feel it. He has 
fastened on them his look of love, as he did 
on Mary and Peter, and they can not choose 
but follow. Little by little, from time to 
time, by flitting gleams, the mystery of his 
cross shines out upon them. They behold 
him as lifted up, and the glory which rays 
forth from the wounds of his holy passion ; 
and as they gaze upon it, they advance, and 
are changed into his likeness, and his name 



THE PATH OF COMFORT. 51 

shines out through them, for he dwells in 
them. They live alone with him above in 
unspeakable fellowship, wilhng to lack what 
others own, and to be unlike all, so that they 
are only like him. Such are they in all 
ages who follow the Lamb whithersoever he 
goeth. Had they chosen for themselves, or 
had their friends chosen for them, they would 
have chosen otherwise. They would have 
been brighter here, but less glorious in his 
kingdom. They would have had Lot's por- 
tion, not Abraham's, if they had halted any 
where, — if he had taken off his hand and 
let them stray back. And what would they 
not have lost ! What forfeits in the morn- 
ing of the resurrection ! But he stayed 
them up, even against themselves. Many 
a time their foot had well-nigh slipped ; but 
he in mercy held them up. Now, even in 
this life, they know all he did was done well. 
It was good for them to stand alone with 
him on the mountain and in the cloud, and 



52 TUE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

that not their will but his was done on 
them." 

The Lord knoweth how to deliver the 
godly out of temptations and troubles ; there- 
fore fear none of those things which thou 
shalt suffer. Do not be in anxious haste to 
extricate yourself from trouble, when you 
are led into it by following Jesus. Though 
the tempest rage, and the sea roar with the 
fullness thereof, be not afraid ; Jesus is in 
the ship, and it is in no danger of sinking. 
Your enjoyment of himself, the wonder- 
working Immanuel, will be all the greater 
that you have seen him speak the winds 
and waves to silence, and produce " a great 
calm." Do not be seeking after a short- 
hand method of consolation ; there is no 
way of procuring it but by waiting patiently 
for the Lord's interference. Give yourself 
wholly into the hands of God, for good or 
for evil, for health or sickness, for sorrow or 
joy, for affliction or consolation ; and you 



THE PATH OF COMFORT. 53 

will soon be able to say, with holy Paul, 
" We rejoice in hope of the glory of God : 
and not only so, but we glory in tribula- 
tions also ; knowing that tribulation worketh 
patience ; and patience, experience ; and 
experience, hope ; and hope maketh not 
ashamed, because the love of God is shed 
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost 
which is given unto us." '' Now our Lord 
Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our 
Father, who hath loved us and hath given 
us everlastiyig consolation and good hope 
through grace, comfort your hearts and 
stablish you in every good word and work." 
Amen. 

Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat, 
Until the chaff be pui-ged from the wheat, 
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear. 
The riches of the flour will scarce appear. 
So, till men's persons great afilictions touch. 
If worth be found, their worth is not so much ; 
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet 
That value which in threshing thej' may get. 



64 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

For, till the bruising flails of God's corrections 
Have threshed out of us our vain affections, — 
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us 
Are by thy sacred Spirit winnowed from us, — 
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures, — 
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures, — 
Yea, till his flail upon us he doth lay, 
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away, 
And leave the soul uncovered, — nay, yet more. 
Till God shall make our very spirit poor. 
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire : 
But then we shall; and that is my desire. 




■^ -r "v*H' 






THE PATH OF SERVICE. 

)F you would be Christ's at all^ you must 
make up your mind to be Christ's al- 
to getlier. He said, when on earth, "If 
any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross 
and follow me." Neither father nor mother, 
wife nor children, brethren nor sisters, houses 
nor lands, must be allowed to come between 
you and entire devotedness to Jesus. He 
would have you to be wholly his, and to be 
unreservedly devoted to his service, — will- 
ing to be any thing, do any thing, and go 
any where for the advancement of his cause. 
He would have you be in that woman's con- 

55 



56 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

dition, of whom he said, " She hath done 
what she could. ''^ 

You desire this. You pray for it, and 
pant after it, and you think that you are 
quite wilKng to be thoroughly consecrated 
to Jesus ; but you feel as if you could not 
attain to it. There may be hindrances to 
entu'e consecration lurking about you, of 
which you are unconscious ; and the Lord 
has to bring you by an unlooked-for way, 
and lead you in paths you have not known, 
to make you aware of these hindrances, and 
to make you part with them, and serve him 
with your Avliole heart and life. Holiness, 
in one of its aspects, is just devoted service. 
But your mind may be too much occupied 
with self or the world, and all the time you 
may be unconscious of it ; and if so, you 
will likely get self crushed by some very 
humbling circumstance, and have the world 
very much swept away from you, before you 
discover those secret sins which mar your 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. 57 

service. Or, you may have your mind un- 
duly set on those tliat are dear to your 
heart, and they may have to be removed, — 
it may be to a sick-room, or to the silent 
grave. 

Temporal losses, afflictions, difficulties, 
bereavements, crosses, disappointments, and 
many other apparently adverse providences, 
are but love-tokens of the great Shepherd 
of Israel, and unmistakable indications of 
his holy and gracious determination to make 
his people devote themselves unreservedly to 
his ennobling service, that in promoting his 
glory they may obtain the highest possible 
happiness. 

The Lord also leads his people " in paths 
they have not known" with reference to the 
hind of service in which they are to be em- 
ployed. The wild youth of Bedford is ar- 
rested, convinced, converted, and, Avithout 
much human learning, becomes one of the 
greatest preachers of his time. As the poet 



58 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

is born, not made, so is tlie preacher ; and 
Bunyan appeared to be a real Heaven-sent 
preacher, for his ministry was one of power. 
But yet the Lord led him away into Bedford 
jail, where he lay "mouth stopped" for a 
dozen of years, that he might construct his 
immortal allegory, the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
Some have thus been led into the writer's 
seclusion by God, even when, to the eye of 
human wisdom, they should have been in 
the preacher's pulpit. There are many liv- 
ing examples of this peculiarity in the lead- 
ings of the Lord. Let us be willing to 
preach or print, as God may judge best. 
" The foolishness of God is wiser than 
men." 

More than sixty years ago, two gay young 
men — one of them an officer in the British 
navy — were converted to Christ, and were 
led to Calvary, and formed into soldiers of 
the cross ; and all Scotland now reveres the 
memory of the Haldanes, and speaks of them 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. 59 

as the pioneers of that blessed tide of evan- 
gelism which has been gradually rising in 
that "land of the mountain and the flood" 
for more than half a century. 

Twenty years ago the name of William 
Burns was known throughout a great part 
of Scotland, in connection with the revival 
of religion and the awakening and conver- 
sion of souls. Five years later he could not 
preach at all. God appeared to shut his 
mouth, so that he had no power or liberty 
to preach the gospel in his native land ; and 
he was led to China, where the Lord has 
again graciously opened his lips, and enabled 
him to speak to the Chinese, in their own 
tongue, of " the wondeiiul works of God ; " 
and the same power of the Holy Spirit is 
accompanying his preaching in the " Celes- 
tial Empire," and the same effects are vis- 
ible as when he first proclaimed " the un- 
searchable riches of Christ " in this country. 
The mouths of many who once were sue- 



60 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

cessful in winning souls appear to be closed. 
Is it not time for such to consider the pro- 
priety of waiting upon the Lord for another 
sphere of labor ? Why not follow " the 
leadino;s of the Lord ? " 

Robert M'Cheyne proposed to go out as a 
missionary to the heathen ; but the Lord 
did not permit him, but led him to St. Pe- 
ter's Church, Dundee, and through his in- 
strumentality greatly revived his work in 
that large and populous town, and, by his 
preaching ot Jesus, converted many souls. 
And by the beautiful " Memoirs and Re- 
mains," he is still speaking with spirit-mov- 
ing power in the minister's study and at the 
believer's fireside. Reader, be satisfied with 
the Lord's arrangements with reference to 
your service, for they are always the best. 
Be any thing, do any thing, and go any 
where, as the Lord may teach and lead 
you. 

Dr. Kitto was once a poor slater boy ; but 



THE PATH OF SFAiVWE. 61 

by a fall from a roof he was led into the 
work-house, injured and deaf, and was led 
out to a literary life devoted to the elucida- 
tion and illustration of the Holy Scriptures. 
Reader, perhaps, in a spiritual sense, you 
need a fall, to make you mighty in the Scrip- 
tures, and useful in expounding them to 
others. 

George Miiller, of Kroppenstaedt, when 
converted to Christ, about thirty-five years 
ago, determined to qualify himself as a mis- 
sionary to the Jews ; hwt the Lord led him 
to Bristol, to become a blessing to Gentile 
orphans, and an example of " the life of 
faith" to the Christian church. Besides 
preaching the gospel and engaging in other 
labors, he now supports, in that city, an in- 
stitution for the maintenance and education 
of about eight hundred orphans, without 
having a penny of his own, and without ask- 
ing any one for money, — simply by prayer 
and faith ; and the Lord, who has led him 



62 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

into tliis service, has sustained him in it for 
about twenty-five years ; and He is still his 
" hope and confidence." He has received 
for his orphans, as the result of prayer to 
Grod, since the commencement of the work, 
about £150,000. Reader, shrink not from 
any service for the Lord, though it may 
appear secular. If done for Christ's sake, 
every deed is sacred. According to the 
" holy George Herbert," even " di'udgery " 
becomes " divine " when undertaken from 
love to Jesus. 

Mrs. Judson, in her narrative of the cap- 
tivity of her husband, and her own efforts 
and sufferings on his account, has the fol- 
lowing : — "A review of our trip to, and 
adventures in, Ava, often excites the in- 
quiry. Why were we permitted to go ? 
What good has been effected f . . . . Two 
years of precious time have been lost to the 
mission — unless some future advantage may 
he gained — in consequence of the severe 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. (58 

discipline to which we ourselves have been 
subject. But all that we can say is, It is 
not in man that walketh to direct Ms steps.'''' 
She appears to have seen no reason why 
they should have had to pass through such 
a painful ordeal ; but I believe that both she 
and Dr. Judson know it now ; and I tliink 
I know it too, — at least in one of its phases. 
It so happened that the writer's wife's uncle 
was unintentionally the originating cause of 
Dr. Judson's imprisonment. This is men- 
tioned in the narrative as follows : — "A 
report was in circulation that Captain Laird, 
lately arrived, had brought Bengal papers 
which contained the intention of the Eng- 
lish to take Rangoon, and it was kept a 
secret from his majesty. An inquiry was 
instituted. The three Englishmen, Gouger, 
Laird, and Rogers, were called and exam- 
ined. It was found that they had seen the 
papers, and they were put in confinement. 
Next followed the examination of the Ameri- 



64 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

can missionaries, and, though they were not 
immediately arrested, they were so in a short 
time thereafter, on the suspicion that they 
were in the pay of the EngHsh, and proba- 
bly spies. The English and the Americans 
were, consequently, thrust into the same 
fearful prison at Ava ; and, subsequently, 
tied two and two, they were driven on to- 
gether, over the burning sands, to the prison 
of Oung-pen-la, at a distance of some miles. 
Mr. Judson was then laboring under fever, 
and could ill bear such a fiery ordeal. The 
temperature was above one hundred degrees. 
The sand and gravel were like burning coals 
to the feet of the prisoners, wdiich soon be- 
came perfectly destitute of skin, and in this 
wretched state they were goaded on by their 
unfeehng drivers. Mr. Judson's debilitated 
state, in consequence of fever, and having 
taken no food that morning, rendered him 
less capable of bearing such hardships than 
the other prisoners. When about half way 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. 65 

on their journey, as they stopped for water, 
Mr. Judson begged of the lamine-woon to 
allow him to ride his horse a mile or two, as 
he could proceed no further in that dreadful 
state. But a scornful, malignant look was 
all the reply that was made. He then re- 
quested Captain Laird, who was tied with 
him^ and who was a strong, healthy man, to 
allow him to take hold of his shoulder, as he 
was fast sinking. This the kind-hearted 
man granted for a mile or two, but then 
found the additional burden unsupportable." 
It thus appears, from Mrs. Judson's account, 
that Dr. Judson and Captain Laird were 
tied together in this horrid march to Oung- 
pen-la ; and, doubtless, they were close to 
each other, if not chained together, when 
there. And could the godly missionary be 
so near a godless merchant and not seek his 
spiritual welfare, by unfolding to him the 
value of the pearl of great price ? No, all 
the severe tri£|,ls of the missionary did not 



G6 THE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

make liim forget to devote himself to his pe- 
cuHar work of winning souls, even when in 
" the inner prison, with his feet fast in the 
stocks." He conversed with his fellow-pris- 
oner, and in his ph3^sical captivity showed 
him the faithful saying that " Christ Jesus 
came into the Avorld to save sinners," and 
deliver from the more dreadful yoke of a 
spiritual bondage. It does not appear that 
the truth had taken immediate effect on 
Captain Laird's mind ; but the seed of the 
Word had found a lodgment in his heart, 
and, if he w^as not then converted, that 
truth afterwards sprang up and bore fruit 
unto holiness. For, when he was thrown 
into prison, he was in good worldly circum- 
stances ; but when he was liberated, he found 
that almost his entire property, to tlie value 
of X 30,000, had been destroyed (and he 
had no good reason to expect that any com- 
pensation would be granted), and he who 
had been successful in business, and con- 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. 67 

nected with tlie Burmese nobility by mar- 
riage, and on terms of familiarity with the 
Burman court, found himself emerging from 
the horrors of captivity to endure the equal- 
ly mortifying horrors of misfortune. To a 
man who had spent the best period of his 
life in the prosecution of successful commer- 
cial enterprise, and who had been the archi- 
tect of his own fortune, sucli a reverse of 
circumstances and loss of position must have 
come with the keenest poignancy. Then, 
when he was a ruined man, did he have the 
favoring circumstances for meditating on 
what his devoted fellow-prisoner had taught 
him in the horrid dungeons of the cruel 
Burman despot. He became, eventually, 
an altered man ; and the tcme and matter 
of his letters to his relatives in Scotland 
became completely changed. He wrote 
"beautiful letters," we are told, — letters 
full of the "great salvation," and of solemn 
warning to those near and dear to him, tell- 



68 THE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

ing them plainly and affectionately that it 
would profit them nothing although they 
should gain the whole world, if they lost 
their own souls, and imploring them to be 
reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. 
He wrote with the utmost respect for Dr. 
Judson, and ascribed the great change that 
he had experienced to the kind instruction 
in divine things which he had received from 
his lips in the dark days of their " sore 
bondage." I do not believe that Dr. Jud- 
son ever knew that he had been the means 
of leading him to turn to the Lord, nor do 
I know whether he had any intercourse 
with him after the period of their liber- 
ation. It is not likely. After his death, 
when his friends wrote to Dr. Judson, ask- 
ing if he could give them any particulars 
about their relative's last days, he replied 
that he could not ; but he said that the last 
time he was in Rangoon, he saw a funeral 
passing along the street, and on inquiring 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. 69 

whose it was, he was iiifbriiied it was that 
of his former fellow-prisoner, Captain Laird. 
" Why ivere tve permitted to go ? what good 
has been effected?'''' are questions which ap- 
peared to stagger faith at that time ; but 
now that the missionaries have ceased from 
their labors and gone to their reward, these 
questions appear, to some extent, to have 
their answer m the narration we have just 
given. And as there may be many of God's 
beloved servants passing through fiery trials 
for the endurance of which they may not be 
able to see any immediate result, such as 
would seem to be intended by them, we 
would kindly counsel them not to be too 
hasty in concluding that the period occupied 
in passing through such trials has been 
"time lost to the mission" for God their 
Saviour, which they have given themselves 
to prosecute. Heavy trials, severe afflic^ 
tions, crushing circumstances, the alienation 
of friends, distressing misapprehensions of 



70 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

the cliurch, the bitter persecution of the 
world, embarrassing pecuniary troubles, and 
all that tends to depress the mind, lacerate 
the feelings, burden the soul, and incumber 
the circumstances, may be experienced by 
those that are dear to God and devoted to 
the spiritual welfare of souls ; and they may 
be apt to say. If the Lord be for us, and if 
we are to be employed in his service, and 
used for the promotion of his cause and 
glory, why are these things permitted to 
come upon us, and wherefore are we kept in 
" the depths " of trouble ? But let God's 
dear people learn to be still, and know that 
he is the all- wise God, and that he never 
does any thing with them without having a 
purpose to serve by it. In such painful cir- 
cumstances, when we can get no light upon 
the way God is taking with us, let us sub- 
mit cheerfully to all his arrangements, and 
listen with child-like meekness to his salu- 
tary teaching, when he says, ^' I will bring 



THE PATH OF SERVICE 71 

the blind by a way they knew not ; I will 
lead them in paths that they have not 
known ; I will make darkness light before 
them, and crooked things straight. These 
things will I do unto them, and not forsake 
them." 

" Holy brethren," have you not been led 
to engage in service of which you little 
thoucrht ? And have not some of you been 
led — much against your feelings, incHna- 
tions, early prejudices, and to your worldly 
disadvantage — to engage in some depart- 
ment of the Lord's work ? All of us who 
have come through certain departments of 
deep Christian experience have been led to 
do many things quite opposite to Avhat we 
intended to do ; and we ha\'e had a rich 
blessing in yielding to the evident leadings 
of the Lord. Endeavor to know God's will 
by studying his Word, observing his provi- 
dence, and considering the promptings of his 
Spirit within you when asking counsel at 



72 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

the throne of grace ; and, liaving ascertained 
his will with reference to your service^ do it 
at all hazards, and at any sacrifice. He 
gave his Son for you, and jou must hold 
yourselves in readiness even to die for him, 
if you would show yourselves truly and 
wholly devoted to his service and the pro- 
motion of his glory. " Ye are not your 
own ; for ye are hought with a price : there- 
fore glorify God in your body and in your 
spirit, which are God's." 



e^' 



^ rx^Ati Ll^^>n 6^1 




VI. 

THE PATH OF LIGHT. 

ROVIDENCE is an admirable ex- 
positor of revelation. The Bible, 
."^^ like the sun, remains stationary ; 
and we, like the earth, in being 
moved round it, are enlightened. 
Or, to employ another figure, the Bible, 
hung up, like some well-painted portrait, 
upon the great wall of Time, follows us with 
its lustrous eye in all our movements. We 
are instructed in divine truth, and enlight- 
ened " in all spiritual knowledge and under- 
stanchng," by being put upon an ever shift- 
ing plane of observation by the providence 
of God. Just as an ever-varying landscape 
is exhibited to the passengers in a railway 

73 



74 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

train as it proceeds on its iron-pathway, so 
an increase of spiritual knowledge is com- 
municated to us as we are passing along the 
way of life. The Lord has graciously given 
a revelation of himself, and promises like- 
wise to give the Holy Spirit to make it 
known ; but he has also ordained the cir- 
cumstances in which its A^arious parts are 
likely to make the deepest impression ; and 
it is made "spirit" and "life" to the soul 
only through that particular medium. We 
well know that at certain times, when all 
is running smooth, we may read much 
of the Word of God, and yet but a small 
part, if any, of it fixes itself in our minds, 
or passes like a transfusion through our 
souls, and no good impression whatever is 
made upon our hearts ; but as the beauties 
of the verdant hills are brought out by the 
overpassing clouds, so the truths of Holy 
Scripture are brought out by the trying- 
providences which pass over us. Luther 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 75 

placed " temptations " or trials amon«^ those 
things which made a minister, by opening 
to him the hidden mysteries of divine truth. 
And, verily, the reformer was right. Af- 
flictions, temptations, and trials are abso- 
lutely necessary to the formation of that 
pure perce]Dtive state of mind which enables 
a minister or a private Christian to appre- 
hend the real spirit and bearing of the Word 
of God. Trying providences are frequently 
employed as instruments of conversion. No 
providence, however peculiar, can change 
the heart, — that is the work of the Spirit 
of God ; but providences may be used as 
preparatory to the great change. It w^as so 
in the case of the late Dr. Chalmers, of un- 
dying memory. He began his ministry in 
an unconverted state, but was led by afflict- 
ive dispensations, and the circumstance of 
writing on Christianity for the press, to see 
the truths of the gospel clearly. " During 
the autumn of the same year" (1807), says 



76 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

Mr. Anderson in his " Reminiscences," " he 
was attacked with a severe illness, and his 
long confinement under this proved a most 
momentous season of his life. Recent be- 
reavements in his father's family, and his 
own affliction, now led him to look at hu- 
man life in a very different aspect from 
viewing it merely as a gay, thoughtless 
scene, or without comparing it in his mind's 
eye with the magnitude of eternity. This 
was the first stage of the most eventful pe- 
riod of his life, and he came out of it an 
altered man." It was then that his mind 
was opened to understand the doctrines of 
free grace ; and ever after he preached the 
faith which once he destroyed. And the 
providences of God, especially his afflictive 
dispensations, have been rendered useful to 
many others in less prominent spheres, in 
placing them within the influence of " the 
grace of Grod that bring eth salvation.'^'' 

That remarkable Christian, Mrs. Mary 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 77 

Winslow,* was led by tlie providence of 
God in sucli a manner as by his grace to 
become acquainted with the glorious gospel 
of Christ. She was at a ball one evening. 
She received much attention, and her pride 
was gratified. She was then just married, 
and surrounded with every thing that could 
give earthly happiness. But she was un- 
happy, and her unhappiness remained with 
her until she knew the Lord Jesus. " On 
returning from the ball," says she, " I took 
a hasty review of the evening I had passed, 
as I lay upon my sleepless pillow. The 
glitter, the music, the dance, the excitement, 
the attention, the pleasure, — all passed be- 
fore me. But, oh ! I felt a want I could not 
describe. I sighed ; and, throwing my arjn 
over my head, whispered to myself these 
expressive words, ' Is this all ? ' I felt at 
the moment that if this were all the happi- 

* Life in Jesus ; or, Memoirs of iJ/?'S. Afary Winslow. By 
her son, Octavius Winslow, D. D. 



78 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

ness the world could bestow, then was there 
a lack I knew not how to supply, and a void 
I could not fill. I had reached the very 
summit of earthly bliss, and found it to fall 
short of what my heart craved and my soul 
required. From this time I grew more 
fond of retirement, and less inclined to min- 
gle with the gay world. I felt that what I 
had been pursuing in the early part of my 
life was not happiness. I turned from it 
with a sensation of loathing, and sought in 
solitude what I had never found in the brill- 
iant and crowded walks of life. I thought 
that there must be a state where real happi- 
ness was to be found. In this condition I 
continued for years, striving to keep the 
law and shape my course by 'the whole 
duty of man.' I endeavored to walk so as 
to please God ; but again and again my best 
resolutions were broken. These feelings I 
concealed from all around me, for I would 
not for the world have breathed a hint that 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 79 

I was uiiliappy, to the dearest friend. I saw 
every one around me apparently happy in 
the possession of tlie world, which had lost 
its charm for me. I now sought peace of 
mind in domestic enjoyment. I was encir- 
cled by my children, possessed of a husband 
who anticipated my fondest wish, and my 
heart could sigh for nothing of earthly bliss 
I did not possess, — and still I was unhajopy. 
I was a sinner^ and this secret conviction 
beclouded every prospect and imbittered 
every clip." Such leadings of the Lord are 
very useful : they bring us to see the point 
and truthfulness of those portions of Scrip- 
ture which set forth the vanity and unsatis- 
fying nature of all earthfy things. The ex- 
perience described in the book of Ecclesiastes 
must be reached by ladies and gentlemen 
who have been born to all the pleasures, 
comforts, and abundance which the carnal 
heart could desire, before they are likely to 
search the Scriptures with a desire to obtain 



80 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

lasting happiness, and realize the spiritual 
joys described in " the Song of Songs." 
They must be made to say of the things of 
time, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,''^ 
before they will say of Jesus, " He is alto- 
gether lovely, — he is all our salvation and 
all our desire." In fact, every soul that is 
brought to Christ must, in some degree, feel 
the emptiness of earth's wells of enjoyment 
before the truth concerning a satisfying por- 
tion in Jesus be truly and vividly appre- 
hended. How many are at all times labor- 
ing and heavy-laden, like Mrs. Winslow, — 
seeking rest and finding none ! There are 
far more restless, unhappy, thirsting, long- 
ing souls in the gay world than we think. 
Many of the sons and daughters of fashion, 
as they flit from scene to scene, and seem to 
be reveling amid the most satisfying joys of 
earth, are unhappy when alone, sad at heart, 
and miserable. Such was Mrs. Winslow's 
condition. " I was unhappy," she says ; 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 81 

" at times miserable ; ray weary soul thirst- 
ed for what it had not, and yet I could not 
answer myself and say what that one thing 
was." 

But so great was the pressure of her 
mental disquietude, that %er health gave 
way. Looking narrowly one day into the 
meaning of the opening verse of the sixty- 
third Psalm, I was struck to find the lan- 
guage so accurately describe a circumstance 
of frequent occurrence in the case of sincere 
and earnest inquirers. " My flesh longeth 
for thee ! " says the exiled mourner. What 
is the exact meaning of that striking ex- 
pression ? It signifies, " grows pale." His 
countenance, naturally ruddy (1 Sam. xvi. 
12), became pale from the intensity of his 
inward longing after God. How forcible ! 
His whole being was so intensely exercised 
that his inward condition of earnest desire 
for the presence of God might be read from 
his altered and emaciated bodily appearance. 



82 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

This experience is not peculiar to the royal 
psalmist ; many an inquirer has been so in- 
tensely occupied with the thoughts which 
prey upon the mind of the tempest-tossed, 
that the pallor of waning health has made 
its appearance #n the fair, fresh, and ruddy 
cheek of joyous youth, to the grief of affec- 
tionate and anxious friends. It was so in 
the case of Mrs. Winslow ; and her hus- 
band, thinking that her unhappiness and 
consequent unhealthiness arose from the sol- 
itude of their rural residence, was led to 
leave his ancestral home at Romford, in 
Essex, for a residence in London, which 
was the providence that brought her into 
contact with the gospel of Christ. She was 
still blind with reference to the way of 
peace ; but the Lord was leading her to 
Calvary, where Jesus made peace by the 
blood of his cross. He was, in truth, ful- 
filling his own gracious promise, " I will 
bring the blind by a way they knew not; 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 83 

I will lead them in paths that they havje not 
known ; I will make darkness light before 
them, and crooked things straight. These 
things will I do unto them, and not forsake 
them." 

She heard, for the first time in her life, 
the precious gospel of peace. " This," 
she writes, " was what I wanted to know 
for many years, that Jesus Christ came into 
the world to save poor sinners. I was a 
sinner, and wanted to be saved. Oh, how 
eagerly I listened and drank in every word ! 
I had been in vain trying to work out my 
salvation ; but my work always fell short, 
and left me as poor and miserable as ever. 
Now was held out to me the hope that I 
might be saved by the work of another, — 
the work of Jesus Christ." But still she 
had great questionings about the way in 
which a sinner could be justified. Never- 
theless, the truth that a sinner could be 
saved had been lodged in her mind. And 



84 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

the truthfulness of God her Saviour, when 
he says, ^'Ask and ye shall receive^^ had also 
been deeply impressed upon her mind, as 
she searched the Scriptures during the quiet 
hours of night, as she watched by the side of 
her sick child. She fell on her knees, and 
pleaded this promise. " I did not wrestle 
so much," she says, " for my salvation, as 
to know lioio I could be saved as a helpless 
sinner that could do nothing. I arose from 
my knees, and again took my Bible. I read 
and compared Scripture with Scripture ; 
but the one part appeared to contradict the 
other, and ni}^ mind was left in darkness 
and perplexity. Again I carried the prom- 
ise to the throne of grace, and again wres- 
tled with the Lord. I returned to my Bible, 
but it w^as yet a sealed book. The third 
time I ventured near the Lord, still plead- 
ing his own gracious promise, '•Ask and ye 
I shall receive.^ In an instant, light broke in 
; upon my soul ! Jesus stood before me, and 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 85 

spoke tliese blessed words, '/ am thj salva^ 
tion!^ I liailed the glad. tidings ; my heart 
and soul responded. Jesus was with me ! 
He had himself spoken, — I had seen the 
Lord and heard his voice ; my soul was 
saved, my burden was gone ; the grave- 
clothes in which I had been so long con- 
fined fell off; my spirit was free, and I 
seemed to soar toward heaven in the sweet- 
est, richest enjoyment, my heart filled with 
a joy unspeakable. I arose from my knees 
to adore and praise and bless his holy name. 
Oh, what a night was that ! never, never to 
be forgotten ! I had seen Jesus ! It was 
no vision of the bodily senses that I saAV ; 
but I had no more doubt that I was a re- 
deemed and pardoned sinner — that I had 
seen Christ and held communion with him 
who died that I might live — than I had of 
my own existence. It was with difficulty I 
could refrain fi'om calling up the whole 
house to hear what the Lord had done for 



86 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

my soul. It has since been evident to my^ 
self that when the Holy Ghost gave me the 
promise to plead, he also gave me a measure 
of faith to credit God for its fnlfinment ; 
and J in answering the prayer of simple faith, 
Christ came into my soul with a full and 
free salvation. 'I am thy salvation!^ This 
was good news indeed, fresh from heaven. 
Christ was mine, heaven was mine ; all care 
and sorrow had vanished, and I was as hap^ 
py as I could be in the body. I had found 
what I had long sought. I had been in 
search of real happiness for years, and in 
one night I found it all in Jesus. God's 
richest treasury had been thrown open to 
my view ; and in him I found all I wanted 
for time and eternity." How very wonder- 
fully the providential and spiritual leadings 
of the Lord wrought to produce that state 
of mind which made her thirst for higher 
enjoyments than those which this world can 
supply ; and how graciously the Lord opened 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 87 

lier eyes, and made her find " all in Jesus ! '* 
" Blessed is the people that know the joyful 
sound ; they shall walk, O Lord, in the light 
of thy countenance." 

It is thus that the Lord leads his ran- 
somed people to a saving knowledge of him- 
self, and to obtain spiritual illumination on 
those passages that contain the gospel of 
Christ in all its fullness and freeness. It is 
an all-important period in our life, when we 
are led clearly to apprehend the divine 
method of justification by faith alone, — 
free, full, and everlasting salvation entirely 
by the perfect work of Jesus, and not by 
our own imperfect works. But after " being 
justified freely by his grace, through the re- 
demption that is in Christ Jesus," and after 
drawing near to God, " with a true heart, 
in full assurance of faith," we need to be 
divinely instructed in other truths, that we 
may not be always engaged hi laying the 



88 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

foundation, but that we may be building 
upon it and going on to perfection. 

Mrs. Winslow had made proof of the 
truthfulness of God, and she nmst also make 
proof of his faithfulness as a covenant-keep- 
ing God. Her beloved husband was seized 
with a severe illness. Soon after, she her- 
self became dangerously ill. Her illness led 
to her husband giving up his commission 
in the army, which was the cause of much 
disappointment to her, for " she looked for- 
ward to the army as the future profession of 
her sons. But greater trials were before 
her. Some years after Captain Winslow's 
retirement from the army, his ample fortune 
became seriously impaired through ill-ad- 
vised and disastrous investments. It was 
this circumstance — an important link in 
the chain of events, evolving God's purposes 
of love — that suggested a removal to the 
United States of America, as offering wider 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 89 

scope for a family composed almost entirely 
of boys, and a place of residence more favor- 
able to resources now sadly crippled." Mrs. 
Winslow, accompanied by her family of ten 
children, crossed the Atlantic, and her hus- 
band was to follow\ But she was to find in 
the home of her adoption trials more severe 
than any she had yet experienced. Her in- 
fant daughter sickened and died ; and, before 
her corpse was buried, the melancholy intelli- 
gence reached her that her beloved husband 
was no more ! " Deep calleth unto deep at 
the noise of thy water-spouts ; all thy waves 
and thy billows are gone over me." Into 
that mournful class of Scripture passages 
she now saw as she had never done ; but 
she also became more fully acquainted with 
that class which speaks of the faithfulness of 
God. A widow with a large family, and in 
reduced worldly circumstances, a stranger 
in a strange land, — what was she to do? 
The first consolation which entered her 



90 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

striken heart was communicated by New- 
ton's hymn, so apphcable to her own case : 



I asked the Lord that I might grow 
In faith and love and every grace ; 

Might more of his salvation know, 
And seek more earnestly his face. 

*Twas he who taught me thus to pray, 
And he, I trust, has answered prayer ; 

But it has been in such a way 
As almost drove me to despair. 

I hoped that in some favored hour 
At once he'd answer my request ; 

And by his love's constraining power 
Subdue my sins and give me rest. 

Instead of this he made me feel 

The hidden evils of my heart ; 
And let the angry powers of hell 

Assault my soul in every part. 

Yea, more, — with his own hand he seemed 

Intent to aggravate my woe ; 
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed, 

Blasted my gourds, and laid me low. 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 91 

Lord, why is this ? I trembling cried ; 
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death ? 
" 'Tis in this way," the Lord replied, 
"I answer prayer for grace and faith. 

" Those inward trials I employ 

From self and pride to set thee free ; 
And break thy schemes of earthly joy, 
That thou may'st seek thy all in me." 

The Christian Avidow was in some meas- 
ure comforted, and could now trust in the 
Lord. She could cast her burden on the 
Lord, and repose in peace upon his faithful 
Word. One night, which she spent in 
prayer, was a memorable one. Toward the 
dawn of day a voice seemed audibly to utter 
these words in her ear and heart, — "/ will 
he a Father to thy fatherless children.'''' 
^' Years have passed since then," she writes, 
" and the Lord has not for one moment for- 
gotten his promise. But I take the promise 
to extend beyond this poor dying world. 
I believe he designs to be their Father to all 



92 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

eternity, and tliat I shall meet all, all ray 
children in heaven ! How often have I 
gone and pleaded this promise before him, 
and have always found my faith increased ! 
And still my faith holds out ; for He is faith- 
fid that hath promised.'^'' Thus was she led 
to know the power of those exceeding great 
and precious promises which contain com- 
forting assurances based upon the unchang- 
ing faithfulness of God. And as years passed 
away, she found that the providence of God 
wonderfully assisted her in obtaining fresh 
and impressive knowledge of the truths of 
God's holy Word. 

And so it is with all God's people. They 
are led by a way they knew not, to obtain 
a deep, personal, refreshing acquaintance 
Avith his " treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
edge " which are hid in Christ. It is com- 
paratively easy to acquire a natural knowl- 
edge of divine things from human systems ; 
but God only can impart a spiritual knowl- 



THE PA TH OF LIGHT. 93 

edo;e of clivine tliino;s. " The natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, 
for they are foohshness unto him ; neither 
can he know them, because they are spirit- 
ually discerned." By the teaching of the 
Spirit of God, the simple peasant will enter 
more fiilly into the pith and marrow of di- 
vine thino's than could the m'eatest scholar 
or most learned theologian by the utmost 
efforts of his unaided mental powers. This 
was seen in the case of the accomplished 
and talented Hewitson and the young peas- 
ant he met at Leamington. " My inter- 
course," he writes, — "my intercourse with 
the young man soon gave me ground to 
conclude that if my theoretic knowledge of 
gospel truths was greater than his, he, un- 
like myself, had experienced their sanctify- 
ing power. Truly his was the better por- 
tion." But after he had been taught these 
truths by the leading and enlightening of the 
Spirit of God, the change soon became obvi- 



94 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

ous to otliers, and they felt that he now pos- 
sessed a somethmg Jiew and indescribable, 
— a something of which they, in turn, knew 
nothing. When he returned to his village- 
home for the summer, " his relatives at once 
marked the great change." The very night 
he arrived, he spoke to all the family most 
solemnly on the concerns of eternity ; and 
the whole villao;e soon saw that he was an- 
other man. He had been known hitherto as 
the great scholar and the exemplary divinity- 
student ; but now they " took knowledge of 
him that he had been w^ith Jesus." " That," 
said he one day soon after his return, laying 
his hand upon the open Bible, — " that shall 
henceforth be my daily study ; I desire to 
converse through it daily with God ! " " The 
purpose was not unaccomplished. The Bi- 
ble may be said to have thenceforth become 
his library. No longer regarding it as a 
mere hieroglyphic to be curiously examined 
by the eye of the scholar, he came to it with 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 95 

the heart of a child to Hsten to the voice of 
his Father. And out of it he learned that 
living, fresh divinity which impregnated 
with its savor his whole ftiture conversation 
and correspondence and ministry." * And 
how blessed were the discoveries he made 
in the field of Scripture ! He was led by 
the Spirit and dealings of God to discover 
there many spiritual truths which he had 
never before perceived ; and among others 
that which bathes all the rest in noontide 
radiance, — the coming and the kingdom of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ! 

It requires much experience of the deal- 
ings of God to make us receive the higher 
and more distino-uishino; truths of Christi- 
anity, — especially those that are unpopular, 
and which we have been taught to reject ; 
but, if we would be fresh and fruitful Chris- 
tians, we must lay aside all prejudice, and 

* Memoir of the Rev. W. H. Hewiston. By the Rev. John 
Baillie. 



96 THE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

allow the Lord to teach us from the foun- 
tarn of inspiration " all the counsel of God.'' 
There is an an impetuosity about the young 
Christian which frequently renders him im- 
patient of those truths of God's Word which 
run directly counter to his own preconceived 
notions. The doctrine of Jehovah's su- 
premacy and absolute sovereignty is so re- 
pugnant to the notions of fallen human 
nature, that it is not likely to be received 
with spiritual apprehension and cordiality 
for a considerable period after conversion. 
But it is a blessed experience to be brought 
to submit wilhngly to the most humbling 
truths. It is a happy thing to be shown by 
the Spirit that God is on the throne, and 
that we must lie low in the dust at his foot- 
stool, and be dealt with by him according to 
his own sovereign will. It is no easy matter 
to submit with adoring complacency to such 
sentiments as these : — " No man can come 
to me except the Father who hath sent me 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 97 

draw him," — "So then it is not of him 
that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of 
God that showeth mercy," — "Blessed be 
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who hath blessed us with all spirit- 
ual blessings in heavenly places in Christ ; 
according as he hath chosen us in him be- 
fore the foundation of the world, that we 
should be holy and without blame before 
him in love; havmg predestinated us unto 
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to 
himself, according to the good pleasure of 
his will, to the praise of the glory of his 
grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in 
the Beloved, in whom we have redemption 
through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, 
according to the riches of his grace." 

The following excerpt from a young man's 
letter forms a very appropriate illustration 
of this part of our subject: — "I must con- 
fess, with much sorrow and shame, that I 
have been half an infidel in my time ; but by 
7 



yg THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

a chain of circumstances, the end of which the 
God of all grace manifestly held in his own 
hand, I was brought under the ministry of a 
living evangelical servant of Christ, and re- 
ceived many good impressions. About the 
same time I was brought into contact with 
a book on the ministry, which proved the 
turning and determining point of my life. 
I shut myself out from society for a consid- 
erable period, and gave myself to prayer 
and the study of God's Word. I was also 
led by a manifest providence to speak to 
others of the gospel of Jesus. But, in my 
zeal, I did not at all times think and act 
wisely. I earnestly desired to see sinners 
coming to Jesus ; and I preached almost ex- 
clusively those truths which I deemed en- 
couraging, and could not bear to hear others, 
because I thought they would discourage 
poor sinners who were seeking salvation. I 
am still of opinion that it requires much 
spiritual wisdom and discrimination to preach 



* THE PATH OF LIGHT. 99 

the higher trutlis of the Christian system ; 
and also that the great thing needed by the 
world is the gospel that ' Christ died for our 
sins, according to the Scriptures.' But al- 
though a man holds such views, he need not 
feel irritated when he comes in contact with 
these sublime doctrines. At the time I re- 
fer to, I felt annoyed when I heard them 
preached, when I met with them in books, 
and even when I came upon them in the 
Word of God ! I bless the Lord I can now 
receive them without irksomeness, and re- 
joice in them as one that finds great spoil. 
I was attending the Divinity Hall when 
I was delivered from my fruitless warfare 
with the truth. I was hearing a course of 
lectures on the subject of my aversion, and 
felt so terribly annoyed that I shut my note- 
book and wrote nothing ; but sat in suUen- 
ness, with a heart boiling with opposition to 
the solemn truths which were treated of. I 
said to my room-mate, when we got home. 



100 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

that I believed such teachmg was enough to 
flood the land with infidelity ; and I stoutly 
averred that no honest man could hold such 
views and preach an unfettered gospel. He 
was better acquainted with the truth than 
I was, and reasoned the matter with me, 
bringing forward the most cogent arguments 
to prove his side of the question ; but after 
a time he found it was useless, for he saw 
that I was determined to hold to my own 
opinions. The point to be settled must be 
settled practically^ for I would have nothing 
to do with it theoretically. And thus, in the 
gracious providence of God, it was settled. 
I must hear a minister holding these views 
preach the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent 
down from heaven. Nothing short of that 
w^ould convince me. I saw it announced 
by placards that Dr. Winslow, of Leaming- 
ton, would preach in town at such places. I 
had read some of his papers in a religious 
periodical, and one which gave an account 



THE PATH OF LIGHT. 101 

of a revival liad particularly interested me. 
I was therefore ready to hear him, and ac- 
cordingly repaired to the chapels where he 
was expected to preach. In the forenoon he 
preached from Matt. iv. 16, but appeared to 
be much straitened, and did not make a 
very favorable impression. I went, how- 
ever, to hear him again on the afternoon of 
that same Lord's day, and heard him preach, 
with evident power and demonstration of 
the Spirit, from Psalm Ixxii. 6. He brought 
out fully the highest doctrines of the Chris- 
tian system, but in such a way, and with 
such accompanying power of the Holy Spirit, 
that I felt my prejudices and opposition en- 
tirely subdued. I was a new man from 
that day. I had been converted for a con- 
siderable time, but this was a kind of second 
conversion. The light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God had shined into my 
heart more fully than before, and I lay in 
the dust, saying, ' Woe is me, for I am un- 



102 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

done, .... for mine eyes have seen the 
Kmg, the Lord. of hosts.' I could never 
forget the solemnity of that afternoon ; and 
ever since I have preached with joy all the 
doctrines of God's holy Word." 

And with reference to the spiritual knowl- 
edge of all the truths of G-od^s Word, the 
particular background of providence suited 
to each is necessary to a saving and refresh- 
ing view ; so that, when we are led into 
any very difficult or trying circumstances, 
instead of concluding that the Lord hath for- 
saken us, and hath forgotten to be gracious, 
w^e should rather conclude that the Lord is 
leading us into these new circumstances to 
give us new discoveries of his own truth and 
glory. The instructions of God's Word be- 
ing intended to correspond with the fore- 
seen circumstances of all his people, we must 
have the circumstances, whether joyous or 
sorrowful, before these instructions can be- 
come " spirit and life " to our souls. Deep- 



THE PATH OF SERVICE. 103 

ly-tried friend, you have no difficulty in un- 
derstanding my meaning, for you know that 
God's Word has been the sweetest when 
your cup has been the bitterest, and that the 
bitterness of your trials procured for you all 
that sweetness. Let us, then, " trust in the 
Lord for ever." " The Lord is my shep- 
herd, I shall not want ; " though he lead me 
through the valley of Baca, I shall always 
find there some refreshing Elim with its wells 
of water and overshadowing palms. 

We limit not the truth of God to ourpoor reach of mind, 

By notions of our day and sect, crude, partial, and con- 
fined. 

No, let a new and better hope within our hearts be stu-red ; 

The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth 
from' his Word. 

Who dares to bind to his dull sense the oracles of Heaven, 

For all the nations, tongues, and climes, and all the ages 
given ; 

That universe how much unknown! that ocean unex- 
plored ! 

The Lord hath yet more light and tnith to break forth 
from his Word. 



' 104 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

Darkling our great forefathers went the first steps of the 

way; 
'Twas but the dawning, yet to groAv into the perfect day. 
And grow it shall ; — our glorious sun more fervid rays 

afford : 
The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth 

from his Word. 

The valleys passed, ascending still, our souls would 
higher climb, 

And look down from supernal hights on all the bygone 
time. 

Upward we press, — the air is clear, and the sphere- 
music heard ; 

The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth 
from his Word. 

O Father, Son, and Spirit, send us increase from above ; 

Enlarge, expand all Christian souls to comprehend thy 
love; 

And make us to go on to know, with nobler powers con- 
ferred, 

The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth 
from his Word. 



cK. 




VII. 

THE PATH OF LIFE. 

)RAVELERS tell us that outside the 
walls of Floriau, a suburb of Val- 
etta, in the Island of Malta, there 
is a convent where the monks, as 
they die, are carried down to the 
vaults and stuck up in niches in the wall ; 
and there, arrayed in all the habiliments of 
their order, they are kept in their erect po- 
sition by a chain going round their waists ; 
while the stone has, it is said, the singular 
property of preserving them for a considera- 
ble period from decay. The sight must be 
a sickening as well as a solemnizing one. 
What a mockery of living monkery, to stick 
up the dead monks there ! Yet these dead 

105 



106 TEE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

men shall live. They now have all the ap- 
pearance of life, in the ghramering light 
which falls upon them ; but, though dressed 
and standing erect as when alive, they are 
in reality dead^ and are kept in their present 
position merely by artificial means. 

And it is sad to think that this mimicry 
of continued life forms a too appropriate 
illustration of the state in which even true 
Christians are sometimes found. The breath 
of the divine life — the life of God in their 
souls — appears to have been extinguished. 
They are still clothed in all the habiliments 
of their Christian profession, but they are 
now only bound to the jpresei'ving Rock by 
the strong chain that keeps them in their 
erect position ; and their existence is artifi- 
cial, not vital, — at least they are not con- 
scious of vitality. Their spiritual life is sus- 
pended ; but they shall yet live. Sueh 
was the experience of the psalmist, when he 
penned the following mournful lines : — 



THE PATH OF LIFE. 107 

Lord God of my salvation, 

1 cry day and night unto thee. 
Let my prayer come before thee : 
Incline thine ear unto my cry ; 
For my soul is full of troubles, 

And my life draweth nigh unto the grave. 

I am counted with those who go down into the pit , 

I am as a man who hath no strength, 

Laid low among the dead ; 

Like the slain Avho lie in the grave, 

Whom ttou rememberest no more, 

And they are cut off from thy hand. 

Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, 

In darkness, in the shadow of death. 

Thy wrath lieth hard upon me. 

And thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. 

I am shut up, and I can not come forth ; 

Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction. 

Lord, I have called daily upon thee, 

I have stretched out my hands unto thee. 

Lord, why castest thou off my soul ? 

Why hidest thou thy face from me ? 

While I suffer thy tensors I am distracted. 

But the Lord does not forsake his people. 
He despiseth not his prisoners. The very 



108 TEE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

next psalm commences witli tlie exclamation 
of deliverance experienced: "I will sing of 
the mercies of the Lord for ever." So sud- 
den is the change from death, with its 
mourning, to life, with its joy and song. 

It is certainly the most trying of all God's 
dispensations to Imve his Spirit withdrawn, 
and to be in that condition when we are 
compelled to say, " He hath made me to 
dwell in darkness, as those that have been 
long dead: therefore is my spirit over- 
whelmed within me, mt/ heart ivithin me is 
desolated But it is such an experience that 
teaches us that the divine life within us is 
not a lamp which we can trim, oil, and keep 
burning, but which must be trimmed by the 
High Priest of our profession, and made to 
burn brightly by having a continued supply 
of the oil of divine grace communicated by 
^' the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." And it 
is such an experience that will lead us earn- 
estly to pray for Jehovah's quickening grace. 



THE PATH OF LIFE. ]09 

This melancholy, death-like state of soul, is 
commonly brought on by indulging in known 
sin, and retaining an unpurged conscience. 
The conscience must be kept in a healthy 
and thorough working condition ; for it be- 
ing to our spiritual existence what the stom- 
ach is to our physical constitution, if it is 
not kept in a state of health and vigor, our 
whole spiritual constitution must become 
disordered and unhealthy. It was indul- 
gence in known sin that brouo;ht David the 
king into the dead and dangerous condition 
of soul which produced that hardness of 
heart, unbelief, and forgetfulness of God, 
which led to his numbering the people, and 
to the consequent terrible infliction of the 
judgments of God. And as long as he con- 
tinued in the sullen, carnal, unconfessing 
state, his " moisture was turned into the 
drought of summer." But as soon as he 
confessed his sin, in the thoroughly penitent 
and ingenuous manner recorded in the fifty- 



110 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

first psalm, his conscience was cleared ; and 
the first burst of returning life formed itself 
into the joyous exclamation, " Oh, the bless- 
edness of transgression forgiven ! sin cov- 
ered ! " 

There are few, we believe, who under- 
stand what Bunyan means by his " Valley 
of the Shadow of Death ; " but it has a ter- 
rible meaning to those who pass through it ; 
and as " the path of life " lies right through 
it, if we would have "life more abundantly" 
we must, at one time or other, walk through 
its dangerous and solitary gloom. I believe 
Bunyan meant, by " The Valley of the 
Shadow of Death," that experience of true 
Christians which is commonly known by 
"walking in darkness," — having to grope 
their way under the hidings of God's coun- 
tenance, while their own minds are filled 
with confusion, and they are so perplexed 
with the temptations oT Satan that they are 
at their wit's end. It is difficult to walk in 



THE PATH OF LIFE. \\\ 

it, for the way is narrow, the darkness is 
dreadful, and there is " a deep ditch on the 
one side, and a quag on the other." When 
God's countenance is withdrawn, when the 
mind is confused, when Satan is suggesting 
blasphemies and every pollution and wicked- 
edness, when the breathings of the Spirit 
are not realized, when the Word becomes 
powerless and the heart gets out of living 
fellowship with Jesus, how apt we are to 
depart fi'om that narrow way and fall into 
the " quag " of outward sin, as did King 
David ; or into the deep ditch of erroneous 
doctrines, as did many in the churches of 
Galatia ! Those only who know " the hard- 
ships and adversities of the Christian life," 
are acquainted experunen tally Avith " The 
Valley of the Shadow of Death," and can 
enter with sympathetic feeling into the fol- 
lowing : " Owing to bodily weakness, you, 
as well as myself, are more exposed to the 
fiery darts which Satan is ever seeking to 



112 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

cast throiigli the arrow-slip of imagination 
into the citadel of the heart — doubts, fears, 
anxieties, misgivings, despondencies — than 
if you were enjoying vigor of bodily health 
and buoyancy of animal spirits. Invalids, 
and especially those laboring under diseases 
which have the effect of depressing the mind, 

— an effect not to be removed wholly by 
any thing but the removal of the cause itself, 

— these seem to be the forlorn hope of the 
Redeemer's army, set forward to the endur- 
ance of greater spiritual hardships, and to 
more desperate encounters with the enemy 
of souls, than other soldiers of the cross. 
But ' this is the victory that overcometh the 
world, even our faith ; ' and our faith over- 
comes hy identifying us with the So7i of Crod. 
Faith stands in the battle-field and cries, 
* Jesus, the Son of God, anointed Saviour, 

— he wdio knew no sm, — was made sin for 
me ; and I am the righteousness of God in 
him ! ' This is at once the armor, the war- 



THE PATH OF LIFE. IIB 

cry, the battle, tlie victory, and the triumph. 
Resisted in this gospel-spirit, Satan is turned 
to flight, and the believer remains master of 
the field." * Or, to quote the experience 
of another : "I thought, when I began to 
read a volume of precious Christian experi- 
ence, that I was to be quickened by it, as I 
had been by another some time ago ; but I 
have read half through it in a miserably low 
tone of spirit. This train of thought passed 
through my mind, and produced darkness 
and unbelief : ' You act as if you could 
command the life-giving grace of the Holy 
Spirit. Besides, your expectation is pre- 
sumption. How can you expect to have 
this volume blessed to your spiritual edifica- 
tion, when a fortnight ago you had such a 
blessed time of brokenness of heart and 
weeping joy over a similar one, and you 
have been hardening your heart, going back, 
and sinning against the love of God ever 

* Rev. W. H. Hewitson. 



IM THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

since ?" You would live upon religious stim- 
ulants^ and not on Christ, the bread of life ; 
and your life is that of an occasional spirit- 
ual excitement, followed by corresponding 
collapse.' Here Satan seemed to say, ' Read 
on, and get your much-loved stimulus. I 
wish you great elevation and much joy.' 
And sin and unbelief shut me up to be de- 
rided by him ; for I felt none of the breath- 
ing of the Spirit within me, and I was 
ashamed to look to Jesus, it was so hke 
making Christ the minister of sin. I had 
wept joyfully and with a deeply-humbled 
spirit over the former volume ; but although 
I read truth equally momentous and impres- 
sive, and longed far more for the blessing 
than I did then, there was no feeling, — the 
Lord was silent toward me. Not a tear 
would come, and I felt conscious none could. 
How dreadful this experience of ' conscious 
death /^ .... 

" Oh, how vitalizing to the soul is unin- 



THE PATH OF LIFE. 115 

terrupted communion with God ! What 
freshness, energy, and liveliness it would 
insure ! I would then grow in grace, and 
would no longer be so pale-faced, spiritually, 
as I have lately been. Angels will surely 
wonder at my present emaciated appear- 
ance ; and devils — the more knowing and 
surgeon-like of them — may have predicted 
the day when I am likely to expire ! I feel 
no spiritual life within me ; but surely I am 
not to be left to perish utterly ! Oh, dread- 
ful thought ! die eternally ! But if I would 
live, I must eat ; and if I would eat that 
which is good, I must come to God for it, 
grudOTuo; neither the distance nor the diffi- 
cult traveling in the present Cyimean state 
of the roads. My state is wretched, but be- 
fore it can be bettered I must come to my 
Father's house, where ' there is bread enough 
and to spare,' — otherwise ' I perish with 
hunger.' At present I seem to be trying to 
live, like the tuneless birds of winter during 



116 THE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

a protracted snow-storm, upon tlie precari' 
ous and accidental provision of spare and 
slender crumbs around the doors of a house 
where the inmates are feasting daily on 
nourishing and ample fare. 

" Spiritual freshness and vigor of soul can 
not be obtained in such circumstances. I 
remember once saying to an honest country- 
man, who, after a day of hard labor, had 
walked five miles to hear a sermon, and 
who had to walk the same distance return- 
ing, — ' You have come a long way ; you 
will be very tired before you get back.' 
His answer was an unfinished sentence, but 
very significant, — ' But when there is the 
desire, sir.' I quite understood him : ' When 
there is the Spirit-imparted desire in a man's 
soul for the bread of life, ten miles of road 
are reckoned nothing by him.' Had I but 
this desire^ I would think nothing of travel- 
ing ten miles in spirit before God at the 
tlu'one of grace, to obtain a fresh, invigor- 



THE PATH OF LIFE. 117 

ating supply of ' the bread of life.' I have 
a weak frame, and I have sometimes short- 
ened my devotional exercises out of compas- 
sion for my fragile system, — for there is 
nothing so wearing as prayer in certain 
states, as sickly people know too well ; but 
I fear I have been injured in spirit by listen- 
ing too frequently to the carnal advice of 
nature, — ' Spare thyself.' But now that I 
am better I feel no more desire than for- 
merly, and am as apt to shrink from intense 
and continued application of spirit in wait- 
ing upon God. If I could travel comfort- 
ably by a first-class express train, or send a 
cheap message by telegraph, and have little 
or no trouble, I should have bread from 
heaven in great abundance all the year 
over. But having to submit to the old pro- 
cess of walking for it in the present state of 
affairs, alters the case very materially, and 
leaves me destitute of a sufficient supply to 
support life. Create within me a clean 



118 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

heart, O God; and renew a right spirit 
within me. Give me the heart that will 
make me wilHng to travel any distance for 
the precious bread of life. This desolateness 
of soul is hard to bear. Lord, quicken me 
by thy almighty Spirit. Oh for a softened 
heart, a spiritual mind, a soul filled with the 
life of God ! Hear me speedily, Lord; my 
spirit faileth. Hide not thy face from me, 
lest I he like unto them that go down into 
the pit. Say unto my soul, I am thy salva- 
tion.''^ 

The path of life is indeed a path we nat- 
urally know not, and which we should never 
know but for the Lord's gracious leadings. 
We are to be followers of Jesus in this as 
well as in every thing else ; and his path of 
life lay through the valley of the shadow of 
death. He who is emphatically the Life 
passed through the mental anguish and suf- 
fering of the garden of Gethsemane and the 
cross of Calvary, and lay under the gloom 



THE PATH OF LIFE. 119 

and darkness of the grave, before he became 
" the Livmg One to the ages of ages," pos- 
sessed of a " resurrection life," which is not 
subject to decay or death : and we, too, be- 
ing reckoned as one with him, must " know 
the fellowship of his sufferings, and be made 
conformable unto his death," if we would 
" know him and the power of his resurrec- 
tion," and '' walk in newness of life, not 
after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 

It was when the beloved disciple fell as 
dead at Immanuel's feet, when he beheld 
his glory as the risen and reigning One, that 
he had to make the following blessed record : 
" He laid his right hand upon me, saying, 
Fear not ; I am the first and the last, and 
the living One ; and I was the dead One, 
and, behold, I am the living One to the ages 
of ages. Amen ; and have the keys of the 
unseen and of death." And he not only, 
b}^ this, showed him the path of life, but he 
opened the unseen and showed him the path 



120 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

of the church's life. And whoever reads 
the book of Revelation will have no diffi- 
culty in perceiving that it lies directly 
through the midst of the valley of the 
shadow of death ; but on the further verge 
of that path shines " the bright and morning 
star," which ushers in the period of resur- 
rection life and eternal glory, — and " there 
shall be no night there." 

Wherefore, brethren, fear not, when pass- 
ing through the most painful spiritual expe- 
rience. Jesus lives, and he says to us, "I 
am the Resurrection and the Life ; he that 
believeth on me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live." Your bitter experience will 
be made effectual by the grace of God in 
expelling levity, vain confidence, self-suffi- 
ciency, and self-exultation ; and while the 
exuberance of feeling and activity which 
characterize the babe in Christ may leave 
you, a mellowness of genuine Christian ex- 
perience will be produced, and a deep-flow- 



THE PATH OF LIFE. 



121 



ing tide of spiritual life will remain, which 
will augment in depth and volume as it 
moves noiselessly onward to the great ocean 
of '' life everlasting." 




^^'^^^Sj^i)^^'^^^— 



VIII. 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 

f^^HE Lord of Glory gives us this as 
the last revelation of himself: " I am 




the root and the offspring of David, 
the bright and Morning Star." How 
full of meaning ! How deeply in- 
structive ! In the Apocalypse our Lord has 
given us an epitome of the history of his 
church's course through this evil and rebel- 
lious world, from the times of his immediate 
followers " till the day of redemption," when 
" the holy city, New Jerusalem, descends 
from lieaA^en," illumined by " the glory of 
God," and when " the nations of them that 
are saved shall walk in the light of it, and 
tlie kings of the earth shall bring their glory 

122 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 123 

and honor into it." Here, as we have al- 
ready said, the attentive reader will iind 
that the church's path lies directly through 
the midst " of the darkness of this world ;" 
and in such circumstances she needed to 
have her thoughts directed to the coming 
glory and the Morning Star. But why 
should David be mentioned ? Why should 
the exalted Jesus say, " I am the root and 
the offspring of David," at the same time 
that he says, " I am the bright and Morning 
Star ? " The two references are most ap- 
propriate to the circumstances. The Lord 
Jesus speaks as the anointed, rightful, but 
rejected King, giving his faithful followers 
intimation both of danger and deliverance. 
He is David's Lord and David's son, — and 
he has a right to sit on " the throne of his 
father David," swaying the scepter of right- 
eousness " from sea to sea, and from the 
river to the ends of the earth." But the 
world has rejected him, and " the god of 



124 TEE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

this world hath blinded the minds of them 
who believe not, lest the light of the gospel 
of the glory of Christ should shine unto 
them." David's experience is typical of 
the experience of David's Lord. 

There never was a man so tried and per- 
secuted as was the anointed David, save 
"the man Christ Jesus." He was hunted 
"like a partridge upon the mountains" 
by Saul, the God-rejected and condemned 
prince, simply because he was God's ap- 
proved and anointed king. His path to the 
glory of royal and actual dominion was 
often dark and crooked, but his God fulfilled 
his gracious promise in his experience, and 
"made darkness light before him, and crook- 
ed things straight ; " and, after living for 
years the life of a compulsory outlaw in the 
kingdom God had given him, and even after 
beino; forced to retire from it altoo;ether, and 
to reside for a time elseAvhere, he was event- 
ually seated upon the throne of Jehovah as 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 125 

ruler over liis people. In the deepest sor- 
rows of persecution and rejection, he could 
still trust in his God, because he knew that 
he was his chosen Kino;, — his anointed 
Sovereign ; and he could even then ad- 
dress his enemies in the language of tri- 
umphant expostulation, — "O ye sons of 
men, how long will ye turn my glory into 
shame ? how long will ye love vanity, and 
seek after leasing ? But know that the Lord 
hath set apart hiin that is godly for himself ; 
the Lord will hear when I call unto him." 

Jesus, " the King of glory," was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and 
truth, and his disciples beheld his glory, the 
glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. 
They saw his glory on the mount of trans- 
figuration, when Moses and Elias — repre- 
sentatives of his risen and translated church 
— appeared with him, and his awe-struck 
followers fell down before him, and heard 
him approved of God, as his beloved Son, 



126 THE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

in whom he is well pleased, and wlioin he 
had set over his holy hill of Zion. But 
" he came unto his own, and his own re- 
ceived him not." " He is despised and re- 
jected of men." Thej would not have him 
to reign over them ; but, at the instigation 
of " the prince of this world," " their father 
the devil," they took him by wicked hands 
and crucified him, — thus showing at once 
their enmity to God, and their determination 
to pour the utmost shame, ignominy, and 
contempt upon his chosen King. But, not- 
withstanding all their rage and opposition, 
" He must reign till his enemies be made 
his footstool." Although rejected by man, 
he is not rejected of God. On the contrary, 
he has been exalted to the throne of his 
Father in heaven, " crowned with glory and 
honor," and he has received " a name which 
is above every name, that at the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, and things in earth, and things un- 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 121 

der the earth, and that every tongue should 
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glori) 
of God the Father r"* Now Jesus' word to 
his disciples is, "Ye are they who have con- 
tinued with me in my temptations, and I 
appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father 
hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat 
and drink at my table in my kingdom, and 
sit on thrones." The glorified Head is in 
heaven, the suffering members are on earth, 
and, if they would enter into the kingdom, 
they must do it "through much tribula- 
tion," for they can not otherwise " know 
the fellowship of his sufferings," and be 
made " conformable unto his death." " The 
disciple is not above his master, nor the 
servant above his lord ; it is enough that 
the disciple be as his master, and the servant 
as his lord. Ye shall be hated of all men 
for my name's sake, but he that endureth 
to the end shall be saved." Jesus was de- 
spised, hated, oppressed, rejected, and cruci- 



128 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

tied ; this was his j^a^A of glory, and it must 
be ours also. And the book of Revelation 
teaches us this truth with unmistakable 
clearness. " I am the bricrht and Morning 
Star" is therefore a cheering assurance to 
those who have to experience the rejection, 
persecution, opposition, or neglect of the 
world during the night-period of the church's 
history. The Apocalypse, till near its close, 
contains the '' lamentation, mourning, and 
woe " of a dark and cloudy night ; but 
eventually the Morning Star appears as the 
harbinger of day ! 

This, then, is the exhortation, which ought 
to speak with solemn power to the con- 
sciences and hearts of all the professed fol- 
lowers of the exalted Jesus, — " If ye then 
be risen with Christ, seek those things which 
are above, where Christ sitteth on the right 
hand of God. Set your affection on things 
above, not on things on the earth. For ye 
are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 129 

God. When Christ, who is our life, shall 
appear, then shall ye also appear with him in 
glory. '*^ Strange though it may seem to the 
men of this world, the only path of glory is 
the path of self-renunciation, unworldliness, 
and shame. It is to be feared that even 
true Christians frequently and grievously 
mistake the essential heavenliness of the pres- 
ent dispensation in so far as they are con- 
cerned, and, consequently, they greatly err 
in many respects, and procure for themselves 
much chastisement, mental anguish, and 
sorrow, which otherwise they might avoid. 

Even with regard to the tilings of time, 
we should be willing to take God's path of 
prosperity. In obedience to God, Noah ex-, 
pended his all upon the construction of thei 
ark ; at the command of God, he forsook all I 
and entered it, but he came out of it thel 
monarch of the world ! The Lord's way' 
with his servant Job appeared very dark, 
but he eventually " made darkness light 



130 THE PATHS OF THE LORD, 

before him." The Sabeans fell upon his 
oxen and asses ; a great fire from heaven 
burnt up his sheep ; the Chaldeans carried 
away his camels ; his sons were buried under 
the ruins of his eldest son's house ; he him- 
self was delivered into the hands of Satan, 
and was heavily tried in body, soul, and for- 
tune; but all tended to his spiritual good, 
and terminated in his temporal prosperity. 
He was brought low by afflictions, and was 
constrained to confess unto the Lord, in the 
very depths of humility, " Behold, I am 
vile ! what shall I answer thee ? I will lay 
my hand upon my mouth." " I have heard 
of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now 
mine eyes seeth thee : wherefore I abhor 
myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 
" Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as 
he had before." " So the Lord blessed the 
latter end of Job more than the beginning." 
" Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and 
ye have seen the end of the Lord, that the 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 131 

Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." 
It was a very mysterious and unpalatable 
way that the Lord took to show Job his 
love and pity. He stripped the patriarch 
of all he possessed, and gave him up to his 
adversary. Yet this was the Lord's way. 
And he still shows us, in these last days, 
his pity and tender mercy in a similar way. 
He sweeps away a man's earthly substance ; 
deprives him of his relatives ; allows his 
former friends to suspect and vex him ; per- 
mits some messenger of Satan to buffet him ; 
some continual '-' thorn" to lacerate his finer 
sensibilities, and allows the world to go en- 
tirely against him. All this is hard to bear, 
and it is difficult, in such circumstances, to 
say, " The will of the Lord be done ; " but 
" hght is sown for the righteous," and, sooner 
or later, it will spring up, and yield " the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness," to the glory 
of God. It was a time of darkness to Joseph 
when he was sold by his brethren to the 



132 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

Midianites, and carried down to Egypt, and 
there was no sign of light arising to dispel 
that darkness for many a day ; in fact, the 
darkness deepened as that holy youth was 
cast into the state-prison under the stigma 
of an abominable sin. But the Lord, whom 
he feared and served, was watching over 
him, and he " made darkness light before 
him, and crooked things straight," and be- 
stowed upon him unexpected prosperity and 
glory. In that oppressed but honorable 
man lay concealed the first lord of the treas- 
ury, the premier of Egypt. 

" Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, 
But trust him for his grace ; 
Behind a frowning providence 
He hides a smiling face." 

Such cases clearly evince the watchful 
providence of God, and show us very clearly 
that, if it would be for their good and his 
glory, he is able to bestow upon his people 
the most abundant portion even of the good 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 133 

things of this world, and, consequently, they 
give point to such exhortations as, " Trust 
in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou 
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be 
fed." Nevertheless, believers are not to 
set before themselves the attainment of an 
earthly inheritance as the result of their at- 
tachment to Christ. God will certainly be 
no man's debtor, for he who says, " Owe no 
man any thing," must act out his own prin- 
ciple, and therefore Jesus' words shall be 
fulfilled : " There is no man that hath left 
house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or 
mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for 
my sake and the gospel's, but he shall re- 
ceive an hundredfold now in this time: 
houses, and brethren, and sisters, and moth- 
ers, and children, and lands, with persecu- 
tions, and in the world to come eternal life." 
Here is the principle upon which he will 
act ; but it is not the principle for our con- 
duct. In the very same chapter in which 



134 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

the above occurs, we find our Lord saying 
to the young ruler who " had great posses- 
sions," " One thing thou lackest." And 
what was that one thing but such faith as 
would produce the true Christian principle, 
— the world-renouncing spirit? "Go thy 
way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to 
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
heaven, and come, take up the cross and 
follow me." One would think it was " the 
cross " Jesus was imposing upon him^when 
he commanded him to sell his all and give 
the proceeds to the poor ; but no, it was 
after he had said this that he adds the other 
command, " Take up the cross and follow 
me," clearly teaching us that the world-re- 
nouncing spirit is the law of discipleship, and 
is not to be considered, in the proper sense 
of the term, a cross which we must bear for 
Christ. " If any man will come after me, 
let him deny himself, and take up his cross 
and follow me ; for whosoever will save his 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 135 

life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his 
life for my sake shall find it." He sums up 
the matter in another place in these words : 
" Whosoever he be of yoii that forsaketh not 
all that he hath, he can not be my disciple." 
In the face of such declarations as these, to 
entertain the idea of making the best of 
both worlds is to ignore the law of disciple- 
ship, and introduce a principle at variance 
with the spix'it of the gospel. The only path 
to glory is the path of faith. But you may 
ask me. Ought we not to provide for our- 
selves and for our families ? Certainly ; 
" provide things honest in the sight of all 
men ; " for " if any man provide not for 
his own, and specially for those of his 
own house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
worse than an infidel." Christianity no- 
where enjoins us to neglect the use of means 
for the support of ourselves and our house- 
holds ; but, on tlie contrary, it commands 
us " to work and eat our own bread." But 



136 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

it peremptorily forbids the lieaping up of 
wealth, and the aggrandizement of self. 
" Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon 
earth," is just as binding upon us as, " Thou 
shalt not kill." The teaching of Incarnate 
Wisdom on this point is very plain, and very 
precious. In the same sermon in which he 
teaches his disciples to pray, " Give us this 
day our daily hread^'' he unfolds and illus- 
trates the duty of ceasing to be actuated by 
a spirit of unnecessary anxiety with refer- 
ence to the things of time, and of placing 
entire dependence on our heavenly Father 
for the supply of all our wants. " Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you." The Apostle Paul, who was 
baptized into the spii'it of him " who, though 
he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, 
that we through his poverty might be rich," 
says, in one of his epistles, " Be careful for 
nothing, but in every thing by prayer and 



THE PATH OF QLORY. 137 

supplication, with tlianksgiving, let your re- 
quests be made known unto God." We 
are to be anxious about nothing, but prayer- 
ful for every thing. The whole matter is 
found in the fourth petition of the Lord's 
prayer : " Give us this day our daily bread." 
But how many professing Christians there 
are now whose utterance of these blessed 
words is a mockery of heaven ! They have 
much goods laid up for many years, that 
they may be saved the trouble of daily 
dependence upon their heavenly Father ! 
Jesus teaches us to ask for "daily bread," 
— nothing more ; and how can we do so if 
we have " much goods laid up for many 
years ? " Some are in possession, it may be, 
of hundreds and thousands of their Lord's 
money for which they have no use what- 
ever, and yet they come to the throne of 
grace and say, " Give us this day our daily 
bread ! " Surely the very word " our," in 
the Lord's prayer, should teach such per- 



138 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

sons to consider tliat, if they have abun- 
dance, they ought " to distribute to the neces- 
sity " of their poorer brethren. The Lord 
teaches us not to say " my daily bread," but 
" our daily bread," thus associating all dis- 
ciples into one family, with our Father in 
heaven at the head of it. You, perhaps, 
" hide your Lord's money," because you 
have not sufficiently thought of your poorer 
brethren in Christ, whose prayers you might 
be instrumental in answering by communi- 
cating to them of your abundance. Oh, 
surely it is a searching thought to consider, 
that by withholding what it is in " the power 
of your hand " to bestow, you may intercept 
the free current of your heavenly Father's 
bounty, and may thus permit some who are 
very dear to him to live in straitened cir- 
cumstances, or compel others wdio have a 
talent for publicly serving him in the king- 
dom of his Son to confine their usefulness to 
far narrower limits than they might do were 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 139 

tliej to receive your encouragement, sympa- 
thy, and assistance. Knowing that these 
things are so, what weight and point does it 
give to the apostoHc injunction ! ^ " Charge 
them that are rich in this world that they 
be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain 
riches, but in the hving God, who giveth us 
richly all things to enjoy : that tliey do good^ 
that they he rich in good works, ready to dis- 
tribute, willing to communicate ; laying up in 
store for themselves a good foundation against 
the time to come, that they may lay hold on 
eternal life." (1 Tim. vi. 17-19.) 

But while it is the duty and privilege of 
the rich to " do good, to be rich in good 
works, ready to distribute, willing to com- 
municate," it is equally the duty of the poor 
as well as the rich to " trust in the living 
God.^^ Many sorrows shall the believer ex- 
perience " who trusteth in man, and maketh 
flesh his arm, and Avhose heart departeth 
from the Lord." But happy is he who has 



140 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

been convinced that "it is better to trust in 

the Lord than to put confidence in man ; " 

for " blessed is the man that trusteth in the 

Lord, and whose hope the Lord is ; for he 

shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and 

that spreadeth out her roots by the river, 

and shall not see when heat cometh, but her 

leaf shall be green ; and shall not be careful 

in the year of drought, neither shall cease 

from yielding fruit." (Jer. xvii. 7, 8.) .There 

is too much " confidence in man " and too 

I little "• trust in the living God " manifested 

; by many who profess " to live and walk by 

I faith ; " and much suffering to themselves, 

; and not a little injury to the cause of Christ, 

/ are the inevitable consequences. 

The path of glory is the life of faith ; but 
we are such unbelieving, distrustful crea- 
tures, that we forget this great fact, and too 
often become assimilated to the world in the 
management of our temporal matters, and 
" pierce ourselves through with many sor- 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 141 

rows." It takes much discipline to teach 
us that, instead of having a moderate attach- 
ment to the things of this world, we are not 
to love them at all ; and that instead of 
trusting to our own forethought, plans, and 
efforts, we are confidingly to trust in God, 
and depend upon the evolutions of his gra- 
cious providence for the prosperity of all our 
lawful undertakings for the support of our- 
selves and our families. If you who are the 
true people of God will dare to live as your 
worldly neighbors do, you may expect to be 
taught " a more excellent way," and to have 
your prayers for grace to " overcome the 
world," answered " by terrible things in 
righteousness." If you have been shown 
from the Word of God that you ought to 
conduct your outward affairs on Christian 
principles and for the glory of God, — not in 
accordance with "the trade spirit" maxims 
of the world, or for the gratification of self, 
or the improvement of your worldly circum- 



142 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

stances, and you " turn away your ear" and 
refuse to listen to the voice of Heavenly 
Wisdom, you may expect that the God of 
all grace, who loves you too w^ell to allow 
you to incnist your consciences with a coat- 
ing of worldliness, will permit your own 
" wickedness to correct you, and your back- 
slidings to reprove you," that he may bring 
home to your heart the painful but salutary 
lesson " that it is an evil thing and bitter 
tliat you have forsaken the Lord your 
God." If you backslide in heart or life 
from the heavenliness, dcvotedness, and 
Avorld-renouncing spirit of " first-love," and 
begin to build again the things you have 
professedly destroyed ; if you indulge again 
in the unchristian conduct of calling up be- 
fore your mind's eye dreams of ambition, 
pleasure, distinction, honor, or worldly great- 
ness ; if you let in so much of the atmos- 
phere of the world into your heart that 
your spiritual affections become chilled, your 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 143 

prayers cold and formal, your Christian en- 
ergies relaxed, and your life like a light in a 
November fog, ^ you may expect that you 
will be led back to the real path of glory 
through some soul-crushing ordeal and heart- 
rending experience, which will make the 
most delicate feelings of your mental nature 
quiver, and expose your folly in the most 
humiliating manner. Those Christians who 
are most thoroughly separated from the 
world, are mostly likely to be truly happy, 
vigorous, and useful in the service of their 
Lord and Master, for there is nothing more 
enfeebling than the love of the world. " The 
least deviation from the line of righteous- 
ness will take your strength away, and leave 
you at the mercy of the meanest foe." 

If there is one thinp: more than another 

o 

with reference to the Christian life which 
the disciples of the Lovd need to be warned 
against, it is an infringement cf the evan- 
gelical precept "Owe no pmii any thing." 



144 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

Dear Christian reader, beware of breaking 
that commandment, for if you allow your- 
self to be beguiled by Satan into violation 
of this precept, you will at once weaken 
your spiritual nature, and procure for your- 
self anxieties the most distracting, and an- 
guish of soul the most intolerable ; while 
you run a tremendous risk of ruining your 
influence for life, and wounding your Sav- 
iour in the house of his friends. On no 
account dare to deviate from the path of 
rectitude, by incurring responsibilities which 
you can not meet. Do not allow yourself 
to be entangled in worldly affairs by trust- 
ing to the considerate assistance of friends. 
You will get many friends to take an inter- 
est in your welfare as long as you do not 
require their assistance ; but you will find, 
in "the evil day," after "your foot has been 
snared and taken," that single-handed and 
alone you will be compelled to battle with 
your difficulties, and extricate yourself the 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 145 

best way you can ; and sooner or later you 
will certainly be made to acknowledge that 
you " have changed your glory for that 
which doth not profit," and " committed 
two evils," since you " have forsaken God, 
the fountain of living waters, and hewed out 
for yourselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that 
can hold no water." . 

And if you have been taught from the 
Word, and have experienced the blessedness 
of living by faith and prayer for a consider- 
able time, and yet, through returning world- 
liness, pride, the necessities of friends, or 
false humanity, have allowed your circum- 
stances to become involved, you may expect 
much to humble you before man, and much 
more to lay you in the dust before the Lord. 
He is certain to bring you by a way you 
knew not, before he makes darkness light 
before you, and crooked things straight. 
'' Be not deceived : God is not mocked ; for 
whatsoever a man sow^eth, that shall he also 

10 



146 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

reap." If you sow in unbelief, you may 
prepare to reap in anguish. The reaping 
time will come to the Christian who will not 
live by faith with reference to temporal 
things. You have been sowing for many 
months or years a large amount of responsi- 
bility ; but the harvest comes, and darkness 
that may be felt settles down upon youi' 
mind. Accounts pour in upon you from 
every side, and, being penniless, your mind 
is placed upon the rack, and becomes so 
dreadfully confounded, burdened, and per- 
turbed, that you can neither profitably think, 
read, pray, nor work ; and instead of hav- 
ing your face shining with the spiritual peace 
of former days, and radiant with the smile 
of heavenly enjoyment, care begins to depict 
in your countenance the lineaments of anxie- 
ty and incipient hopelessness. You wander 
lonely along the highway of the world, con- 
sciously degraded, filled with distracting 
thoughts respecting your own unhappy cir- 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 147 

cumstances, incapable of spiritual progress ; 
and, like a ship becalmed in a tropic sea, 
you are compelled to lie motionless upon the 
great ocean of life, scorched by a flaming 
sun, and in danger of being stifled by the 
oppressive atmosphere in which you are 
forced to breathe. You attend the house of 
God, — you meet with devoted Christian 
brethren, — you continue to drag along your 
former profession in the accustomed ruts of 
duty, — you still endeavor to do something 
for your Lord ; but every where, and in all 
circumstances, your liabilities crowd in upon 
your mind and mar your devotions, prevent 
your spiritual improvement, enervate, bur- 
den, and distract you. It is reported of a 
late notable defaulter, of position in society, 
that when Christian friends told him of the 
progress of the Lord's work, it seemed to 
give him a strange and unaccountable pain 
and uneasiness ; he felt more pained than 
pleased by the information ; and when the 



148 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

terrible crash and exposure came, lie said, 
" I am glad it has happened, for I have en- 
dured a hell in my own mind in connection 
with it for the last six years ; I have not a 
word to say in extenuation of my conduct ; 
I am guilty of enormous sin against both 
God and man." This was a dreadful con- 
dition for an outstanding professor of relig- 
ion ; does it not speak \^ith a trumpet-voice 
of warning to all Christian disciples of every 
rank and age ? 

How gracious is our Saviour in pointing 
out so plainly the path of safety, faith, and 
glory. He would have us to be '^ without 
carefulness." His command is, '' Live not 
in careful suspense" (Luke xii. 29, 30), 
" for all these things do the nations of the 
world seek after ; and your Father know- 
eth that ye have need of these things ; but 
rather seek ye the kingdom of God, and 
all these things shall be added unto you." 
When burdened with care, and anxiaus 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 149 

about your fiiture prospects, there is no 
surer or speedier way of being relieved than 
" casting all your care upon hhn, for he 
careth for you." His own blessed command 
is, " Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he 
shall sustain thee ; he shall never suffer the 
righteous to be moved." * Let your con- 



* " There is a way by which all excess of anxiety may be re- 
moved, and the heart be left with all its tender afFection, and 
yet with no more solicitude than such as the blessed in heaven 
raig-ht feel without a diminution of their happiness. It is to 
cast care on God. That is the true and only effectual way to 
dispose of care. He caii take the burden, however huge or 
heavy. You do not doubt that; but you ask, ' Will he ? May 
I cast it on him? I — such a one as I — cast my cares — the 
whole multitude and burden of them — on such a being as 
God? I know the government of the mighty univeroo, and 
the providence which extends to the minute equally as to the 
magnificent, reaching low as to the fall of a sparrow and the 
numbering of the hairs of the head, does not distract or bur- 
den him. I know he can take a large charge and not feel it. 
But will he ? will such greatness stoop to such littleness, such 
holiness come down to such vileness ? ' Yes, it will, for con- 
descension is one characteristic of greatness ; and ' the blood 
of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." But why 
do I reason ? Does not the Holy Ghost say by David, ' Cast 
thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee ? ' and by 



150 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

versation be without covetousness, and be 
content with such things as ye have, for he 
hath said, " I will never leave thee nor for- 
sake thee." With such a promise there is 
no reason why God's people should despond 
in the midst of the darkest providences, or 
why they should, through impatience, adopt 
unscriptural means for promoting their world- 
ly interests. With a Father in heaven ever 
ready to help us, there is no need for rush- 
ing into debt or using doubtful expedients to 
rectify circumstances which have, through 
ignorance and without sinfulness, become 
involved. 

Many of God's children are taught, b}^ 

Peter, ' Casting all your care upon him ? ' and by Paul, ' Be 
careful for nothing ? ' And does not Immanuel himself say, 
' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest ? ' No longer ask if you may, but use your 
privilege. Here Is your authority. The Lord says you may 
do it, — nay, more, — commands j'ou to do it. It is your duty 
as well as your privilege. So far is it from being presumption 
to cast your care on God, it is a sin not to do it. ^^ — Practical 
'Thoughts, by William Kevins, D. D. 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 151 

bitter and dear-bouglit experience, that they 
should be separated from the world, botli in 
principle and practice, and live as " strangers 
and pilgrims" here; and happy should we 
be if what we have now written were used 
by the divine Spirit to warn and instruct 
any of our dear readers who have not suf- 
ficiently realized the truth that the path of 
faith is the only path of glory. Whatever 
lukewarm professors may say to the con- 
trary, " affliction and poverty are the dis- 
tinctive features of the saints of God under 
the new dispensation ; affluence and exemp- 
tion from great suffering were probably those 
of the saints of the former economy. The 
character of the gospel economy is unique. 
It is the dispensation of suffering^ the econ- 
omy of the cross. The sufferings of the old 
dispensation were more in type and shadow 
and symbol. But, of the new is the great, 
the dark filling up of the outline of the pic- 
ture. The Son of God suffered, — the 



152 THE J'ATIJS OF THE LOUD. 

Son of God died ! And Christianity de- 
rives all its efficacy, and tlie Christian dis- 
pensation all its character, and the Christian 
all his glory, from this single, this wondrous 
fact : " Unto you it is given, in the behalf 
of Christ, not only to believe in his name, 
but also to suffer for his sake." " Whoso- 
ever doth not bear his cross and come after 
me can not be my disciple." Such is the 
nature of Christ's religion, and such the 
terms of his discipleship, — suffering and 
self-denial. By those who are not initiated 
into the mysteries of tlie kingdom of grace, 
this is a truth hard to be understood. To 
them it is inexplicable how one, whose per- 
son is loved by God, whose sins Christ has 
forgiven, whose life appears holy, useful, and 
honored, should be the subject of divine 
correction, and, perhaps, in some instances, 
should, more than others, seem smitten of 
God, and afflicted. But to those who are 



THE PATH OF OLOJiY. 153 

students of Christ, who learn at the feet of 
Jesus, this is not an insoluble problem." * 

" When God saves a soul he tries it. He 
never gives faith without trying it. The 
way to Zion is through the valley of Baca. 
You must go through the wilderness of 
Jordan if you are to come to the Land of 
Promise. Some believers are much sur- 
prised when they are called to suffer. They 
thought they would do some great thing for 
God ; but all that God permits them to do 
is to suffer. Go round every one in glory, 
— every one has a different story, yet every 
one has a tale of suffering. One was perse- 
cuted in his family, by his friends and com- 
panions ; ano'ther was visited by sore pains 
and humbling disease, — neglected by the 
world ; another was bereaved of children ; 
another had all these afflictions meeting in 
one, — deep called unto deep. Mark, all 
are brought out of them. ' These are they 

* It is Well. By Octavius Winslow, D. D. 



154 'rHE PATHS OF THE LOUD. 

which came out of great tribulation.' It was 
a dark cloud, but it passed away ; the water 
was deep, but they have reached the other 
side. Not one of them blames God for the 
road he led them, — 'Salvation' is their 
only cry. Is there any of you, dear read- 
ers, murmuring at your lot ? Do not sin 
against God. This is the way God leads all 
his redeemed ones. You must have a palm 
as well as a white robe. No pain, no palm ; 
no cross, no crown ; no thorn, no throne ; 
no gall no glory. Learn to glory in tribu- 
lations also. ' I reckon that the suflPerings 
of this present time are not worthy to be 
compared with the glory that shall be re- 
vealed in us.' " * 

" Beloved, think it not strange concern- 
ing the fiery trial which is to try you, as 
though some strange thing happened unto 
you ; but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are par- 
takers of Christ's sufferings, that when his 

* M'Clieyne's " Sermons.''^ 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 155 

GLORY shall be revealed, ye may be glad 
also with exceeding joy." Until his glory 
be revealed, we must not aspire to any glory 
here, but follow in his footsteps, arming our- 
selves likewise with the same mind. Our 
only safe attitude is that of coming up from 
the ivilderness leaning upon our Beloved. 
This is not our rest, — our " rest is glory." 
(Isa. xi. 10.) This is the place of our 
Lord's rejection, and we could not wish that 
the world, which crowned our divine Master 
with thorns — the symbols of earth's evil 
condition — and nailed him to the ignomin- 
ious cross as an accursed one, would crown 
us with wreaths of laurel, and cherish and 
love us as its truest friends and chosen com- 
panions. He lived, for the greater part of 
his sojourn here, in a lowly, obscure, and 
mean condition ; and, after he entered on 
his public ministry, he could say, " The 
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air 
have nests, but the Son of man hath not 



156 THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

where to lay his head." And if he who, 
" though he was rich, yet for our sakes be- 
came poor," lived in such circumstances, it 
would surely be most unbecoming in us, his 
professed friends and followers, to aim at 
being great, rich, honored, or renowned. 
" Let this mind be in you which was also in 
Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, 
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, 
but made himself of no reputation., and took 
upon him the form of a servant, and was 
made in the likeness of men ; and being 
found in fashion as a man, he humbled him- 
self., and became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the cross." 

Oh ! to be so thoroughly possessed of the 
lowly and self-abnegating mind of Christ, 
that we could enter personally and enthusi- 
astically into the apostle's triumphant but 
self-renouncing experience, when he says, 
'' I am crucified with Christ ; nevertheless, 
I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 157 

and the life which I now live in the flesh, I 
live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave himself for me." 

We have no bright prospects here, but 
we have the brightest prospects for " the 
world to come." We shall be with om' 
beloved Saviour in his kingdom, and be sat- 
isfied with the spiritual refreshment which 
shall be given us in his glorious presence. 
And even our trials here shall prepare us 
for higher enjoyment there : " for our light 
affliction, which is but for a moment, work- 
etli out for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory, while we look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the 
things which are not seen : for the things 
which are seen are temporal ; but the things 
which are not seen are eternal." 

These are the crowns that we shall wear 
When all thy saints are crowned ; 

These are the palms that we shall bear 
On yonder holy ground. 



158 7' HE PATHS OF THE LORD. 

Far off as yet, reserved in heaven, 

Above that vailing sky, 
They sparkle, like the stars of even. 

To Hope's far-piercing eye. 

These are the robes, misoiled and white. 
Which then Ave shall put on, 

When, foremost 'mong the sons of light. 
We sit on yonder throne. 

That city with the jeweled crest, 
Like some new-lighted sun ; 

A blaze of burning amethyst, — 
Ten thousand orbs in one ; — 

That is the city of the saints, 
Where we so soon shall stand. 

When we shall strike these desert-tents, 
And quit this desert-sand. 

These are the everlasting hills. 
With summits bathed in day ; 

The slopes down which the living rills. 
Soft-lapsing, take their way. 

Fair vision, how thy distant gleam 
Brightens time's saddest hue ! 

Far fairer than the fairest dream. 
And yet so strangely true ! 



THE PATH OF GLORY. 159 

Fair vision, how thou liftest up 

The drooping brow and eye ! 
With the calm joy of thy sure hope 

Fixing our souls on high. 

Tbj light makes even the dari^est page 

In Memory's scroll grow fair ; 
Blanching the lines which tears aud age 

Had only deepened tlieie. 

With thee in view, the rugged slope 

Becomes a level way, 
Smoothed by the magic of thy hope, 

And gladdened by thy ray. 

With thee in view, how poor appear 
The world's most winning smiles ; 

Vain is the tempter's subtlest snare, 
And vain hell's varied wiles. 

Time's glory fades ; its beauty now 

Has ceased to lure or blind ; 
Each gay enchantment here below 

Hast lost its power to bind. 

Then welcome, toil and care and pain 1 

And welcome sorrow too ! 
All toil is rest, all grief is gain, 

With such a prize in view. 



IGO THE PATHS OF THE LORD. 



Come, crown and throne ! come, robe and palm ! 

Burst forth, glad stream of peace ! 
Come, holy city of the Lamb ! 

Rise, Sun of Righteousness ! 

When shall the clouds that vail thy rays 

For ever be withdrawn ? 
Why dost thou tarry, day of days 1 

When shall thy gladness dawn ? 

Songs of Faith and Hope. 



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