Such a pulpit never startles the people with the horrors of an undone eternity. No strong meat, but only pap, flour and water, mostly water. The church prayer-meeting is attended only by a few gray heads who have been in the habit of going there for twenty years, not because they expect any arousing time or rapturous experiences, but because they feel only a few will be there, and they ought to go.
The minister is sound. The membership sound. The music sound. If, standing in a city of a hundred thousand people, there are five or ten conversions in a year, everything is thought to be "encouraging." But Christ says that such a church is an emetic. "Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth."
My friends, you had better warm up or freeze over. Better set the kettle outside in the atmosphere at zero, or put it on the altar of G.o.d and stir up the coals into a blaze. If we do not, G.o.d will remove us.
Christian men are not always taken to heaven as a reward, but sometimes to get them out of the way on earth. They go to join the tenth-rate saints in glory; for if such persons think they will stand with Paul, and Harlan Page, and Charlotte Elizabeth, they are much mistaken.
When G.o.d takes them up, the church here is better off. We mourn slightly to have them go, because we have got used to having them around, and at the funeral the minister says all the good things about the man that can well be thought of, because we want to make the funeral as respectable as possible. I never feel so much tempted to lie as when an inconsistent and useless Christian has died, and I want in my final remarks to make a good case out for the poor fellow. Still, it is an advantage to have such a man get out of the way. He is opposed to all new enterprises. He puts back everything he tries to help. His digestion of religious things is impaired, and his circulation is so poor that no amount of friction can arouse him.
Now, it is dangerous for any of you to stay in that condition. If you cannot be moved, G.o.d will kill you, and He will put in your place those who will do the work you are neglecting.
My friends, let all arouse! The nearness of our last account, the greatness of the work to be done, and the calls of G.o.d"s word and providence, ought to stir our souls. After having been in the harvest field so long it would be a shame in the nightfall of death to go home empty-handed. Gather up a few gleanings from the field, and beat them out, that it may be found that Ruth had at least "one ephah of barley."
CHAPTER LXVII.
THORNS.
The Christian world has long been guessing what Paul"s thorn in the flesh was. I have a book that in ten pages tries to show what Paul"s thorn was not, and in another ten pages tries to show what it was.
Many of the theological doctors have felt Paul"s pulse to see what was the matter with him. I suppose that the reason he did not tell us what it was may have been because he did not want us to know. He knew that if he stated what it was there would have been a great many people from Corinth bothering him with prescriptions as to how he might cure it.
Some say it was diseased eyes, some that it was a humped back. It may have been neuralgia. Perhaps it was gout, although his active habits and a spa.r.s.e diet throw doubt on the supposition. Suffice to say it was a thorn--that is, it stuck him. It was sharp.
It was probably of not much account in the eyes of the world. It was not a trouble that could be compared to a lion or a boisterous sea. It was like a thorn that you may have in your hand or foot and no one know it. Thus we see that it becomes a type of those little nettlesome worries of life that exasperate the spirit.
Every one has a thorn sticking him. The housekeeper finds it in unfaithful domestics; or an inmate who keeps things disordered; or a house too small for convenience or too large to be kept cleanly. The professional man finds it in perpetual interruptions or calls for "more copy." The Sabbath-school teacher finds it in inattentive scholars, or neighboring teachers that talk loud and make a great noise in giving a little instruction.
One man has a rheumatic joint which, when the wind is northeast, lifts the storm signal. Another a business partner who takes full half the profits, but does not help earn them. These trials are the more nettlesome because, like Paul"s thorn, they are not to be mentioned. Men get sympathy for broken bones and mashed feet, but not for the end of sharp thorns that have been broken off in the fingers.
Let us start out with the idea that we must have annoyances. It seems to take a certain number of them to keep us humble, wakeful and prayerful. To Paul the thorn was as disciplinary as the shipwreck. If it is not one thing, it is another. If the stove does not smoke, the boiler must leak. If the pen is good, the ink must be poor. If the editorial column be able, there must be a typographical blunder. If the thorn does not pierce the knee, it must take you in the back. Life must have sharp things in it. We cannot make up our robe of Christian character without pins and needles.
We want what Paul got--grace to bear these things. Without it we become cross, censorious and irascible. We get in the habit of sticking our thorns into other people"s fingers. But G.o.d helping us, we place these annoyances in the category of the "all things that work together for good." We see how much shorter these thorns are than the spikes that struck through the palms of Christ"s hands; and remembering that he had on his head a whole crown of thorns, we take to ourselves the consolation that if we suffer with him on earth we shall be glorified with him in heaven.
But how could Paul positively rejoice in these infirmities? I answer that the school of Christ has three cla.s.ses of scholars. In the first cla.s.s we learn how to be stuck with thorns without losing our patience. In the second cla.s.s we learn how to make the sting positively advantageous. In the third cla.s.s of this school we learn how even to rejoice in being pierced and wounded, but that is the senior cla.s.s; and when we get to that, we are near graduation into glory.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
WHO TOUCHED ME?
There is nothing more unreasonable and ungovernable than a crowd of people.
Men who standing alone or in small groups are deliberate in all they do, lose their self-control when they come to stand in a crowd. You have noticed this, if you have heard a cry of fire in a large a.s.semblage, or have seen people moving about in great excitement in some ma.s.s-meeting, shoving, jostling and pulling at each other.
But while the Lord Jesus had been performing some wonderful works, and a great mob of people were around Him, shoving this way and that way, all the jostling He received evoked from Him no response.
After a while I see a wan and wasted woman pressing through the crowd. She seems to have a very urgent errand. I can see from her countenance that she has been a great sufferer. She comes close enough to put her finger on the hem of Christ"s garment, and the very moment she puts her finger on that garment, Jesus says: "Who touched me?"
I would like to talk to you of the extreme sensitiveness of Jesus. It is very often the case that those men who are mighty, have very little fineness of feeling; but notwithstanding the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was the King of glory, having all power in heaven and on earth, so soon as this sick woman comes up and puts her finger on the hem of His garment, that moment all the feelings of His soul are aroused, and He cries out: "Who touched me?"
I remark that poverty touches Him. The Bible says that this woman had spent all her money on physicians; she had not got the worth of her money.
Those physicians in Oriental lands were very incompetent for their work, and very exorbitant in their demands. You know they have a habit even to this day in those countries of making very singular charges. Sometimes they examine the capacity of the person to pay, and they take the entire estate.
At any rate, this woman spoken of in the text had spent her money on physicians, and very poor physicians at that. The Lord saw her poverty and dest.i.tution. He knew from what a miserable home she had come. He did not ask, "Who touched me?" because He did not know; He wanted to evoke that woman"s response, and He wanted to point all the mult.i.tude to her particular case before her cure was effected, in order that the miraculous power might be demonstrated before all the people, and that they might be made to believe.
In this day, as then, the touch of poverty always evokes Christ"s attention. If you be one who has had a hard struggle to get daily bread--if the future is all dark before you--if you are hara.s.sed and perplexed, and know not which way to turn, I want you to understand that, although in this world there may be no sympathy for you, the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ is immediately moved, and you have but to go to Him and touch Him with your little finger, and you arouse all the sympathies of His infinite nature.
I also learn that sickness touches Him. She had been an invalid for twelve years. How many sleepless nights, what loss of appet.i.te, what nervousness, what unrest, what pain of body, the world knew not. But when she came up and put her finger on Christ"s garment, all her suffering thrilled through the heart of Christ instantaneously.
When we are cast down with Asiatic cholera or yellow fever, we cry to G.o.d for pity; but in the ailments of life that continue from day to day, month to month and year to year are you in the habit of going to Christ for sympathy? Is it in some fell disaster alone that you call to G.o.d for mercy, or is it in the little aches and pains of your life that you implore Him?
Don"t try to carry these burdens alone. These chronic diseases are the diseases that wear out and exhaust Christian grace, and you need to get a new supply. Go to Him this night, if never before, with all your ailments of body, and say: "Lord Jesus, look upon my aches and pains. In this humble and importunate prayer I touch thee."
I remark further that the Saviour is touched with all bereavements. Perhaps there is not a single room in your house but reminds you of some one who has gone. You cannot look at a picture without thinking she admired that.
You cannot see a toy but you think she played with it. You cannot sit down and put your fingers on the piano without thinking she used to handle this instrument, and everything that is beautiful in your home is suggestive of positive sadness.
Graves! graves! graves! It is the history of how many families to-night!
You measure your life from tear to tear, from groan to groan, from anguish to anguish, and sometimes you feel that G.o.d has forsaken you, and you say, "Is His mercy clean gone forever, and will He be favorable no more?"
Can it be, my afflicted friends, that you have been so foolish as to try to carry the burden alone, when there is an almighty arm willing to be thrust under you? Can it be that you have traveled that desert not willing to drink of the fountains that G.o.d opened at your feet? Oh, have you not realized the truth that Jesus is sympathetic with bereavement? Did He not mourn at the grave of Lazarus, and will He not weep with all those who are mourning over the dead?
You may feel faint from your bereavements, and you may not know which way to turn, and all human solace may go for nothing; but if you would this night with your broken heart just go one step further forward, pressing through all the crowd of your perplexities, anxieties and sorrows, you might with one finger move His heart, and He would say, looking upon you with infinite comfort and compa.s.sion, "Who touched me?"
I remark that all our sins touch Him. It is generally the fact that we make a record only of those sins which are sins of the action; but where there is one sin of the action there are thousands of thought. Let us remember that G.o.d puts down in His book all the iniquitous thoughts that have ever gone through your souls. There they stand--the sins of 1820; the sins of 1825; all the sins of 1831; the sins of 1835; the sins of 1840; the sins of 1846; the sins of 1850; the sins of 1853; the sins of 1859; the sins of 1860; the sins of 1865; the sins of 1870; the sins of 1874. Oh, I can"t think of it with any degree of composure. I should fly in terror did I not feel that those sins had been erased by the hand of my Lord Jesus Christ--that hand which was wounded for my transgression.
The snow falls on the Alps flake by flake, and day after day, and month after month, and after a while, at the touch of a traveler"s foot, the avalanche slides down upon the villages with terrific crash and thunder. So the sins of our life acc.u.mulate and pile up, and after a while, unless we are rescued by the grace of our Lord Jesus, they will come down upon our souls in an avalanche of eternal ruin.
When we think of our sins, we are apt to think of those we have recently committed--those sins of the past day, or the past week, or the past year; those sins that have been in the far distance are all gone from our memory.
You can"t call a half dozen of them up in your mind. But G.o.d remembers every one of them. There is a record made of them. They will be your overthrow unless you somehow get them out of that book.
In the great day of judgment, G.o.d will call the roll, and they will all answer, "here!" "here!" "here!"
Oh, how they have wounded Jesus! Did He not come into this world to save us? Have not these sins been committed against the heart and mercy of our Lord Jesus? Sins committed against us by an enemy we can stand; but by a friend, how hard it is to bear! Have we not wounded the Lord Jesus Christ in the house of His friends?
Since we stood up in the presence of the great congregation and attested our love for Christ and said from this time we will serve the Lord, have we not all been recreant? Have we not gone astray like lost sheep, and there is no health in us? Oh, they touch Christ; they have touched Him on the tenderest spot of His heart.
Let us bemoan this treatment of our best friend. It seems to me Christ was never so lovely as He is now--the chief among ten thousand and the one altogether lovely. Why can"t you come and put your trust in Him? He is an infinite Saviour. He can take all the iniquities of your life and cast them behind His back. Blessed is the man who has obtained His forgiveness, and whose sins are covered!