CHAPTER V.
THE CONTRAST.
“WHO SHALL
DELIVER ME FROM THE BODY OF THIS DEATH?
I THANK GOD, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.”
There
are Christians of two classes in the world — not to mention others at
present — both fond of the apostolic saying placed as a motto above,
but very different in experience and position.
They of the one class repeat only the first part
of the text — the question — leaving off the answer to it. That
gives the key to their experience. They of the other class repeat both question
and answer, with intelligent zest. Those of the first class have come to
the full and painful understanding of sin dwelling in them as a body of death.
Chained to them as a Roman soldier was chained for years to the Apostle Paul;
and as dead bodies have been chained to living men. They have come to feel
the bondage of sin, but they have not yet come to know the joys of deliverance,
and the sweet liberty of the children of God.
Not that they are not Christians. Not that they
have never been converted to God. They have been truly converted, or the
name Christian, would be a misnomer for them. But they have learned only
that their sins are forgiven through faith in the atonement of Jesus. They
have not yet learned that Jesus through faith in his name is the deliverer
from the power of sin, as well as from its penalty. They believe in the blood
of Jesus as their sacrifice for sin, but they are struggling by
resolution, with Jesus to aid it — it may be — to free them
from the bondage of sin.
Perhaps they have come along so far as to see
and feel that resolution, even in the strength of Christ, is a poor deliverer,
that it fails ever and anon. And yet they see nothing better, and so they
cry out, Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?
And there they stop. There their experience stops.
So far they have come, but no farther. While they, of the second class referred
to, ask the question, indeed, Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death? but answer it in the same breath by finishing the quotation, in the
apostle’s exulting words: I thank God, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
They have learned that there is deliverance now
here in this life through faith in Jesus. While the others sigh and groan
in their bondage as if there was no deliverance this side the grave. They
have learned experimentally, they know, that Jesus Christ our Lord, through
faith in his name, does actually deliver the trusting soul from the cruel
bondage of its chains under sin, now in this present time; while the others
have learned — not that Jesus does deliver — but that their own
resolutions in Jesus’ name, do not deliver them; and not knowing that
Jesus can do it, they turn with a sigh toward death as their deliverer from
the power of this death, as if death was the sanctifier or the sanctification
of the children of God.
They of the one class, if asked for the truest
and most graphic delineation of the Christian’s condition in life here
in this world of temptation and sin, will point to the seventh chapter of
Romans, and say, “There you have it. That, of all others, describes
our state and our struggles here below — a law in our members warring
with the law in our minds. We see the right but do the wrong. We would do
good but evil is present with us. We resolve, but soon, alas, sin overcomes
us. Then we resolve, no more in our own strength, but now in the strength
of the Lord. And yet, notwithstanding this fortifying of resolution by
acknowledging its weakness and looking to Christ for aid to keep it from
breaking — alas, it is soon broken, all the same as
before.”
They of the other class, if asked for the inspired
symbol of their condition, would point us to the eighth chapter of Romans,
and say: “There you have it. Once, indeed, we were in the seventh, but
thanks be to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us deliverance
from the body of death, we have now found our way out of the bondage of the
seventh, into the sweet liberty of the eight. The chain is broken by the
power of Christ. We are freed from the dead body of sin. We are now linked
by the three-fold cords of faith, hope and love, to the living Saviour as
our deliverer from present corruption, and from all the power of
sin.
The dead body is dropped. The living Jesus, sweet
Jesus, precious Jesus, gracious Saviour, constant Friend, mighty Deliverer,
has taken its place — ever with us.
Once, indeed, we were in the seventh, but then
we were at best only as servants in our own Father’s house; but now
we have — through faith in Christ — received the spirit of adoption,
and have become in the fullest and happiest sense, sons and daughters of
the Lord God Almighty. Then we feared before Him as servants in presence
of a Master, but now we dwell in love with Him as children with an affectionate
Father, and as the bride with a loving bridegroom.
Our bondage is gone — freedom has come. Our
sighs have given place to joys — our fears to hopes. Our vain struggles
to a sweet confidence in the strong arm and loving heart of
Jesus.”
Now how shall this contrast be made more
striking?
The grand difference between the two classes is,
that the one has and the other has not found Jesus, as a present Saviour
from the present power of sin. The one still sighs in the bondage of the
sad and sorrowful problem, Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?
While the other now exults in its blessed solution,
giving thanks to God for triumphant deliverance already wrought, through
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
This — but this also involves another grand
difference which must not be overlooked in the contrast.
They of the one class have a Saviour in Jesus
it is true — but he is a Saviour afar off — up in heaven, as they
think of him, and not with them now here upon earth. While they of the other
class have Jesus ever with them — a very present help in every time
of need — a friend which sticketh closer than a
brother.
His faith stood then only in the teachings of
his mother. The living faith which is the vital union between Jesus and the
soul he had not.
Falling in company with Universalists on his way
westward from New York, his traditional faith was soon shaken from its sandy
foundation, and then the legitimate fruits of his new notions about universal
salvation were quick to ripen, and most abundant in fruitage, though, alas,
their fruits were not very fair to the eye nor very sweet to the
taste.
Bitterly did he rue it
afterwards.
He fell into loose habits and loose company. The
Sabbath was turned into a play day, or a work day, as best suited to his
pleasure or his purse, and vice ceased to be contraband even. His feet were
on slippery steeps, and swiftly sliding, when suddenly the Lord arrested
him by a casualty from which he was saved alive by a singular — miracle,
shall I say? Almost a miracle it certainly was.
At work on a frame, then in course of erection,
his foot slipped — he tottered — reeled — fell, he was at
work on the second story — and falling he was caught by a joist below.
He fell backwards and the small of his back came upon the timber. He was
taken up alive, but with little hope of his living a single
hour.
His agony was awful, and as he recovered from
the first stunning effects of his fall, his returning sensibilities seemed
more and more alive to suffering every moment.
Nothing relieved him. The severity of his pain
constantly grew greater for many hours. At last in the madness of despair,
he sent for a quantity of whiskey, and drank enough, as he hoped, to drown
his suffering, and let him die in insensibility — but it failed to
intoxicate. Strangely enough, it gave the relief which all the physician’s
medicines and skill had failed to give, and he began to
recover.
With the thought of recovery came also a review
of his past life. Remembrances of his home and his mother came upon him,
and now his life of dissipation, with the opiate of Universalism, which had
lulled his fears of God and Eternity, was to him like a dream when one awaketh.
He felt it to be all wrong, all false. He saw his delusion, and most bitterly
lamented his folly and sin.
Weary nights and days he prayed and struggled
for peace and pardon. Sleep seldom visited his eyes. Fears were his daily
food. His cries prevented the dawn of the morning. His sins grew heavy —
a load too great to be borne.
At last, one night, overborne with weariness,
he fell into a troubled sleep, and in his sleep he
dreamed.
He thought he had fallen into a ditch, not very
deep. It seemed to him at first easy to make his escape, but when he attempted
it, he sunk down deeper and deeper with each successive struggle, until at
last he found himself sinking in the mire over his head, and just about to
be drowned in the filthy waters of that horrible place.
Just then, lifting up his eyes, he saw stooping
over him, the bending form of a strong man, with his hand outstretched to
save.
“Oh that he would save me!“ thought
the young man, and he ceased to struggle to save himself. Then the hand of
the rescuer grasped him firmly, and lifted him easily out of the mire, and
placed him upon the bank of the ditch, and in a moment he had stripped him,
washed him, and clothed him anew — and just then the troubled dreamer
awoke from his sleep.
“Ah!” said he to himself, “I see.
I see. l can never save myself — all my struggles are in vain, and worse
than in vain. l do but sink deeper and deeper. Jesus must save or l must
perish.”
And Jesus did save. His feet were taken from the
horrible pit and the miry clay. He was washed and clothed, and made happy
in a sense of sin forgiven, and the hope of Heaven.
His spirits rose, and his health returned —
that is to say, the health of his body, from the waist upward. From the small
of his back downward he was paralyzed and shrivelled away. From his waist
upward he grew fat and fair.
He applied himself to sewing for employment and
for a living, and soon acquired skill to earn a fair maintenance, with something
to give to the poor and to the treasury of the Lord.
He as happy until by and by thoughts of his desolation
began to grow upon him. Others, God had set in families; to him this was
denied. None would ever love him as he longed to be loved. He should never
have wife or children bound to him by the tender bond of matrimonial or filial
affection. His heart yearned for the endearments which he felt in his soul
he was created to enjoy. And as the certainty pressed upon him that he could
never enjoy them, his heart sunk within him and seemed to he withering away
like his limbs.
“ Alas! “ he thought, “must it
be so? Yes, it must indeed. None could ever love me as the bride loves her
husband. l can never have one to love and cherish, as the bridegroom loves
and cherishes the chosen companion of his life.”
Again he became intensely wretched. His troubled
soul denied him the embrace of even “tired nature’s sweet restorer,
balmy sleep,” until at last, in sheer exhaustion, he fell into wakeful
slumbers, and dreamed again as before. In his dream he seemed to be entangled
in logs and trees, lying criss-cross over the ground in utter confusion,
as they are sometimes found in our forests, where the hurricane has done
its work, and made what is called a windfall — no tree left standing,
but all blown down, one over the other, in all conceivable
positions.
In the distance, he saw Jesus standing, and at
once began struggling to make his way over the logs to the Master, but could
not. He was foiled in every attempt, and at last gave up in despair; and
then, looking up, there was Jesus standing with outstretched arms, before
him. And 0, so lovely and so loving. The Saviour clasped him in his arms,
and spoke words of endearment, assuring him that he would be ever with him;
would never forsake him, but love him freely, as the bridegroom loves the
bride, and cherish him as his beloved forever.
He awoke, and behold it was a dream, and yet not
all a dream. Thenceforth the longing of his soul for one to love him, and
be beloved, was satisfied. Evermore Jesus was with him, the bridegroom of
his heart:
THE INQUIRER
AND HER WISH.
But let her tell her own story. The opportunity
was given; it was in the parlor of one of their number, and ladies only were
present. She spoke with a pathos that touched every heart — ”l
have been many years a Christian; l would not give up my hope of heaven for
a world. It is founded upon the precious blood of the Son of God. I have
committed my soul to him, and I believe he will not forsake me in the hour
of death, or condemn me at the judgment. And sometimes I feel him very near
to me, and then I am very happy. No tongue can tell how sweet my peace is
at such times. It passes all understanding. But then again my heart wanders
from him, and I try to get back to him. I pray, and repent of my wanderings,
and resolve to keep my heart more diligently, and promise the Lord if he
will only restore me l never will wander again; but alas for me! too often
all my resolutions and promises, and cries and struggles, are vain, and I
am forced to give up and live on, conscious that l am left by the Saviour,
so that I could repeat, with some sense of its bitterness, the agonized cry
of the dying Redeemer himself, in the hour of his darkness: Eloi, Eloi, Lama
Sabachthani! My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Now I have come here to learn from you, dear friends,
if you will teach me, how to live so as to have my Saviour ever with
me.
I am like a wife who tenderly loves her husband,
and longs for his society, and would fain make his home so agreeable to him
that he would never leave it for the club or the theatre, or the opera or
a party, or any other place, however fascinating; but who, for want of wisdom
or skill, so fails as ever and anon to be forsaken by him for a time, and
for times that seem wearisome and long to her; and who is utterly at a loss
how to change her own course so as to win and secure the constant presence
of her husband at home.
Once I had a father — noble man — he
is now reaping in heaven the reward in glory of a life of singular devotion
to Jesus upon earth. He was a wonder to me. He seemed to have the presence
of Jesus from morning till night, and from year’s end to year’s
end, always from my earliest recollections. I do not remember ever to have
heard him make the complaint made by so many, and alas! made so often by
me — of the absence of Jesus. His face kindled up in a moment at the
mention of Jesus, and all his prayers and all his words and ways showed that
he was full in the faith of that assurance, “Lo, I am with you alway,
to the end of the world.”
My ease was so different that I often wondered
at it.
One day, shortly before he took his triumphant
departure to heaven — I was then about eighteen — I asked him,
saying father, how is it? I frequently wander away from my Saviour, and find
it hard to return. You seem always to have Him present with you. Do you never
get away from Him?
“Never, my dear child, never; never so but
what I can get back in one minute.”
I shall never forget his words or his looks; and
I have come now to meet you here, and learn, if l may, how to live always
in the faith of the presence of Jesus as my beloved father
did.”
This secret of living in the faith of an ever
present Saviour — loving, tender, watchful, faithful — is the secret
learned by those of the eighth chapter class, and this is the secret of their
zest in repeating the triumphant answer to the sad question, Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
And this is the secret which they, of the class
of the seventh chapter, have not learned, and therefore it is that they still
sigh in their bondage and groan under the weight of the body of
death.
It is quite remarkable, however, that while these
last point to the seventh of Romans as the exposition of their state and
condition, they always clip this graphic chapter at both ends to make it
suit their experience. It opens with the beautiful representation of the
matrimonial relation as that between Christ and his followers, and closes
with the exultant note of deliverance from the very state of bondage to which
these sighing ones point as their own.
A moment’s thought should make them see that
they are not honoring the Bridegroom Deliverer when they point to this hopeless
bondage; this struggling, sighing, groaning condition; this slavery to sin;
this wedded state with a Body of Death as the Bridegroom — as the state
and condition to which he has introduced them. A poor bridegroom, surely,
he must be, who holds his bride as a slave, sighing and groaning for liberty,
and crying out, Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death!
And a poor bride must she be, whose heart goes
abroad for its pleasures away from the embraces of her groom; so fascinated
by the contraband delights of the world, that even when she would be true
to her home and her spouse, she is always haunted by thoughts and desires
after others!
Perhaps there is no more striking example of the
contrast between the two classes, than that which is presented in the Bible
between the two states of the apostles themselves, before and after the
Pentecostal baptism.
Like the twelve found at Ephesus by the apostle
Paul, if the question had been asked them before the day of Pentecost, Have
ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? The appropriate answer would
have been: We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.
And like Apollos, before he was taken by Aquilla and Priscilla, and instructed
into the way of the Lord more perfectly, they had as yet only the baptism
of metanoia conversion — a change of heart — and not yet a heart
filled with the faith of a present Saviour, wrought in them by an indwelling
Holy Ghost.
Those two disciples, on their way to Emmaus —
0, how pensive! how sad and sorrowful is the thought of a Saviour, absent
from them. They thought it should have been He that would have delivered
Israel. But alas! he was dead — he was gone, and Israel was not delivered.
A Saviour passed away, mighty in word and deed, hut gone not with
them.
0, how different from Pentecost onward. A Saviour
ever with them. Mighty in word and deed, and always present. Always directing
them where to go; always, in every moment of trial, putting words into their
hearts which all their adversaries could not gainsay nor resist; always,
in every temptation, making a way of escape; always hearing their cries unto
Him; always giving power to their words, spoken in weakness; always gladdening
their hearts, even in dungeons and in the stocks, and in the fires and under
the scourge.
Paul and Silas, with their bodies lacerated, bloody,
sore and stiff in their gore from the terrible scourge laid upon them each
forty strokes, save one — thrust into the inner prison, and their feet
made fast in the stocks; were yet happier there in their prayers and praises
to a present Saviour, than the eleven were in their liberty and in their
safety, with all the assurance that Jesus was risen from the dead which their
own eyes, from seeing him, and their own hands, from feeling the print of
the nails and the print of the spear could give them, while yet their faith
was not sufficient to see and feel and know that he was present with them
in invisible reality and power.
To know that Jesus is with us, and that He will
keep us by His own power, and wash us in His own blood, and lead us by His
own hand, and uphold us from falling, or lift us when fallen, and watch over
us day and night — our Shield, our Friend, our Shepherd and King, our
God and Saviour! 0, this is the crowning happiness of the Christian’s
heart and the Christian’s life in this the house of his pilgrimage!
Give me rather to stand with the three in the furnace seven times heated,
and the Son of Man with me there; or with Daniel in the den of lions, and
Jesus with me there; yea, a thousand times rather, than to recline or walk,
or feast, in the palace of a king, if the King of kings be not with me
there!
From this contrast of the two states and stages
of experience, as they affect the Christian in his own heart and life —
giving to his course the cast of sadness and l sighing under bondage in the
one case, and of exultant joys in the glorious liberty of conscious deliverance
in the other — we must now pass to these things as they affect the Christian
in the power of his usefulness as a soldier of the cross, and as a worker
together with God in the spread of His gospel. But this must form the subject
of another chapter.