Old Wine and New Part 7

'Twas thy G.o.d the battle won; Jesus vanquished them by dying.

Pa.s.s the stream--before thee lies All the conquered land of glory; Hark! what songs of rapture rise!

These proclaim the victor's story.

Soldier, lay thy weapons down, Quit the sword and take the crown; Triumph! all thy foes are banished, Death is slain, and earth has vanished!"

[1] Preached to soldiers in camp, 1863.

XI.

LOVE TESTED.[1]

Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?--John xxi. 17.

Were the dear Lord to appear personally in our midst this morning, addressing one after another by name, and putting the same question thus pointedly to all, who would answer in the negative? Who would frankly confess so base an ingrat.i.tude? Who of all this a.s.sembly would, by the acknowledgment of so flagrant an impiety, write himself down with the reprobate? However negligently or wickedly men live, few are willing to admit that they are utterly wanting in love to him who loved them to the death.

But is love to Christ indeed so common? With a few exceptions of unbelief so blasphemous as to shock ordinary irreligion, are all men truly his friends? Are they so taken with his teaching, so enamoured of his virtue, so captivated by the beauty of his character, that they are ready to forsake all to become his disciples, and prove the sincerity of their attachment by the cheerful endurance of the severest sufferings? Do they generally accord to him his claims, practically observe his requirements, and devote all their energies to his service?

Do they so believe in him as the one only Mediator between G.o.d and man, the one only name under heaven given among men by which they can be saved, that they renounce all others and cling with the tenacity of a death-grasp to his cross?

Let us ask ourselves the question. Let us enter solemnly into conference with our own hearts. Let every one bring his consciousness, his recollection, the facts of his life, to the test. "Do I truly love the Lord Jesus? Will my love bear the ordeal of a faithful and impartial scrutiny? Is my conduct, public and private, such as to put the matter beyond all doubt and controversy? Should my crucified Friend come visibly into the church, take me by the hand, look straight into my eyes, and say, as he did to 'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?'

could I answer as promptly, as honestly, as emphatically, as the apostle did--'Lord, thou knowest that I love thee'!"

No superfluous or unprofitable inquiry is this, my dear brethren; but a matter of infinite moment, addressing itself immediately to each individual soul. Had Jesus deemed it a question of little consequence, think you he would have put it thrice in so searching a manner to St.

Peter? Does not the repet.i.tion seem to imply a danger of mistake and self-deception? Yet the question obviously supposes the apostle might know with certainty whether he really loved or not. And if he, why not we? I will not put it to your consciousness, in which any man may be deceived; but the manifestation and fruits of love furnish certain practical tests, quite easy of application and far less liable to mistake; so that no soul, well instructed in the principles of Christianity, need remain in ignorance of so vital a matter.

Here, however, before we proceed any farther, a word of explanation and caution seems necessary. The pa.s.sion of love, as we all know well enough, is innate. We naturally love our friends and all that is pleasing and attractive to us. But to this general rule love to Christ Jesus is certainly an exception. So fallen and sinful are we, that we cannot love that which is holy, perfect, divine, without the enlightening and purifying Spirit of grace from above. So blinded is our sight, so depraved and perverted our moral taste, that Christ is to us as a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness, and there is no beauty that we should desire him. His sublime purity we cannot appreciate; his beauty of holiness we cannot endure. We must be regenerate, quickened together with Christ, raised from a death in trespa.s.ses and sins to a new life in righteousness. Possible it may be, indeed, for the infant, consecrated to Christ in baptism, to "lead the rest of his life according to this beginning;" from the very font, daily increasing in G.o.d's Holy Spirit more and more, until he come to Christ's everlasting kingdom. But if, as commonly happens, the fact prove otherwise--if there has been a defection from baptismal grace--there must be a return to the bond of the covenant, and a renewal by the power of the Holy Ghost, or there can be no true love to Christ. And those who now sincerely and supremely love him may know precisely when and where the blessed restoration took place, and the Sun of righteousness arose upon them with healing in his wings. And others, not baptized in childhood, may have a vivid recollection of the place and the moment in which they first discovered the light of the glory of G.o.d in the face of Jesus Christ, and the Redeemer began to be unspeakably precious to their souls. Love to Christ, therefore, is not natural, but supernatural--not the result of self-culture, but the product of divine grace--a new and heavenly principle shed abroad in the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost. The test of which let us now apply; and may G.o.d help us to do so with honest and faithful heart!

"Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will think of him with pleasure. Love produces tender thoughts of the beloved. You cannot cease to think of them even when long absent. Can those who love the Saviour ever forget him? Will not their meditation of him always be sweet? How is it with you? Can you say with the psalmist--"The desire of our soul is unto thy name, and to the remembrance of thee"? Do you think often of Jesus, and dwell with delight upon his love? Do you meditate sweetly of him in the night-watches? Is the thought of him ineffably pleasing and joyful to your soul?

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will delight in communion with him.

Love finds its greatest happiness in the presence of the beloved. Long absence is painful, and hopeless separation is intolerable. Every opportunity of communion with Christ, therefore, the saints value as a high privilege and seize with eager joy. The word in which he speaks to them is their sweetest music; the closet in which they meet with him is their highest Pisgah; the table at which he feeds them is the very antepast of heaven. Is this your experience? Do you love to speak with Christ in prayer? Do you joyfully listen to the messages of his grace, and read with pleasure the epistles of his love? Do you feast with a keen relish upon the heavenly manna and the new wine of the kingdom which he provides for you in the

"Rich banquet of his flesh and blood"?

Can you appeal to him in the language of the psalmist--"Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honor dwelleth"? and when deprived of its privileges, do you exclaim with him--"My soul longeth, yea even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living G.o.d; when shall I come and appear before him?"

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will constantly aim and study to please him. With regard to any undecided course of action, you will not ask, "How will this please others?" but, "How will it please Christ?" Him whom your soul loveth, whatever the effect upon your neighbors, you will never be willing to displease. You would rather offend every friend you have on earth than the heavenly "Friend that sticketh closer than a brother." "Ye are my friends," saith he, "if ye do whatsoever I command you." And again he saith, "If any man love me, he will keep my words." Hearty obedience is the best proof of love. If you truly love him, your obedience will be prompt, earnest, constant, uniform, unquestioning and uncompromising. Try yourselves, my brethren, by this criterion. Is the word of Christ the supreme law of your life? In all things, do you seek his pleasure, and rejoice to do his will? Are his commandments grievous to you, or do you find his yoke easy and his burden light? Do you esteem his service a hard bondage, or the blessed freedom of the sons of G.o.d? Is it your meat and drink to do his will, as it was his to do the will of his Father? He is now challenging your affection, as Delilah challenged that of Samson: "How canst thou say, I love thee, when thy heart is not with me?"

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will rejoice even in suffering for his sake. What was it but love stronger than death to him who died for them that made the apostles glory in tribulations, sing hymns of praise at midnight in their dungeons, wear their chains and manacles more proudly than princes ever wore their jewels, and welcome the scourge and the cross which completed their conformity to the divine Man of sorrows?

And why did Ignatius chant so cheerfully among the lions, and Polycarp pour forth his thanksgiving so joyfully as he stood unbound in the flames? And why did so many Christians, in the early persecutions of the Church, rush to the tribunal to confess their faith in Christ, hastening to share the fiery coronation of their bishops and their brethren? There is but one answer to these questions; and if you love Christ as they loved him, you will be ready to make any sacrifice or endure any suffering for his glory. Like Moses, who "esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt," you will "choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of G.o.d than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." Like the Hebrew captives in Babylon, you will prefer the company of the king's lions to the society of his courtiers, and the sevenfold heat of the Chaldaean furnace to the perfumed breezes that regale the royal gardens. Hard sayings are these to ears like yours? Have you no sympathy, then, with the Prince of sufferers? Are you not ready to take up your cross, and follow him to Calvary? If not, how can you say, "We love him because he first loved us"?

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will love those who are the special objects of his love. Love to him is one half of his religion; love to his followers is the other half. The latter is the fruit of the former, and the best evidence of its reality. "By this," saith our Saviour, "shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." And did he not pray for his little flock, that they might love one another as he had loved them? And does not his most loving apostle plainly tell us that this is the proof of our having pa.s.sed from death to life? And does not St. Paul a.s.sure us that it is "the bond of perfectness" and "the fulfilling of the law"--more important than faith, knowledge, miracles, the grandest eloquence, the largest beneficence, and even martyrdom itself? How can you love Christ, and not love Christians? If you love the Father, will you not love his children? If you love the Master, will you not love his servants? Truly loving your Monarch, can you fail to love your loyal fellow-subjects?

What proof give you, then, of your love to the brethren? Do you prefer their society to that of the world? Do you delight to converse with those who delight to converse with Christ and to converse with you about him? Is it a great pleasure to you to do them kind offices, supply their temporal needs, promote their spiritual well-being, and cheer and comfort them in the manifold sorrows of life? Is their interest as dear to you as your own, their reputation, and the salvation of their souls? If not, how can it be said that you love them as you love yourself? And, failing in this, where is the proof of your love to him who laid down his life for us all?

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will sympathize with him in his grief for those who love him not. Over the Jews who rejected him Jesus wept upon Olivet, and for the Romans who crucified him he prayed upon his cross. And when his loving heart broke beneath the burden of its anguish, think you he ceased to grieve for a guilty and ungrateful world? As he looks down from his mediatorial throne upon the mult.i.tudes who everywhere spurn the gospel of his grace and seek death in the error of their way--despising the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of G.o.d--does he not still weep and pray for the perishing neglecters of so great salvation, and seek those who can weep and pray with him, in whose tears and intercessions he can pour forth the full measure of his loving sorrow for the undone? And, loving him, will you not respond to his compa.s.sionate lamentations, feeling as he feels for the impenitent ingrates who are despising their own mercy and trampling upon the precious blood of their redemption? How is it with you, dear brethren?

Am I saying what sounds strange to you, if not absurd and preposterous?

Have you never wept for the wicked as Elisha did when he foresaw the cruelties of Hazael, or as St. Paul did when he told his brethren of the enemies of the cross of Christ? Have you never said with David--"I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law"? Tell me not that you love Christ, while you have no sympathy with his love for sinners--no self-sacrificing zeal to save them, pulling them out of the fire!

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will look for his glorious appearing and long for his eternal fellowship. This was the one great gladdening hope of the apostles and all the early Christians. Before his departure, their dear Master had promised them that he would come again, and receive them unto himself; and with perfect faith in his word, they joyfully waited and watched for his return in the clouds of heaven. And still the expectant bride is on the outlook for her absent Lord; and often we hear her from behind the lattice of her chamber-window calling--"Make haste, my Beloved! and be thou like the young hart upon the mountains of spices!" What Christian soul does not respond to the sweet words of Milton? "Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth; put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty; take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all things sigh to be renewed!" What saint of Jesus does not thrill to the eloquent strain of Edward Irving? "Blessed consummation of this weary and sorrowful world! I give it welcome; I hail its approach with joy; I wait its coming more than they that watch for the morning! O my Lord, come away! hasten, with all thy congregated ones! My soul desireth to see the King in his beauty, and the beautiful ones he shall bring along with him!" Verily, "herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world." But were he this very day revealed from heaven in flaming fire, should we take lute and timbrel and go forth to welcome him to his ransomed world, or fly to the rocks and mountains to hide from his presence and escape from his wrath? In a great earthquake which shook a vast city, when the people said it was the day of judgment and sought where they might take refuge from their Judge, a certain poor man began to cry out--"Oh! is it so? is it so? Then whither shall I go to meet my Lord? on what mountain shall I stand to see my Saviour?" Oh! to greet the Redeemer in his glory--who that loves him does not leap for joy at the expectation? "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of G.o.d;" and the saints in their redeemed bodies "shall be caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Again the happy bride looks forth and cries--"The voice of my Beloved! behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!" And you, my dear brethren, if you truly love your Saviour, so far from dreading him as your judge, will hail him as your friend; when the sound of his chariot-wheels, heard from pole to pole, shall gladden the graves of his beloved; and the voice of rejoicing and praise, rising from the tabernacles of the righteous, shall roll its thunder-chant through all the realms of joy!

Take, then, these _criteria_, and test your love to Christ. Surely the result will be worth the examination. For what transcendent importance, everywhere in Holy Scripture, is given to this divine principle! and in all ages, especially all Christian ages, what fine things have been said and sung of love! Not to recite the sublime statements of St. John and the inspired raptures of St. Paul, with which you are all familiar; the great bishop of Hippo calls it "that sweet and sacred bond of the soul, having which the poorest is rich, wanting which the richest is poor;" while the golden-mouthed orator of Antioch declares it "the grandest mastery of the pa.s.sions, and the n.o.blest freedom of the redeemed man." The prince of schoolmen, the Angelical Doctor, writes: "Divine love surpa.s.seth science, and is more perfect than understanding; for we love more deeply than we know, and love dwelleth in the heart, while knowledge remaineth without." The greatest military chieftain of modern times remarked to his friend in St. Helena: "I have conquered nations by the sword; Jesus Christ overcame the world by love." A more heroic spirit--St. Catherine of Sienna--says: "Love was the cord that bound the G.o.d-man to the cross; the nails could not have held him there, had not love bound him fast."

The martyr-monk of Florence--Savonarola--cheering his fellow-sufferers in the kingdom and patience of Jesus, a.s.sures them that love to the dear Lord "plucks the sting of death and disinherits the grave," and that he who thus conquers Satan in his final a.s.sault upon the soul "has won the battle of life." And here is the n.o.ble testimony of Thomas a Kempis: "Nothing is sweeter or purer than love; nothing is higher, or broader, or fuller; nothing more pleasant, or more excellent, or more heroic, in earth or heaven. Weary, it is not tired; oppressed, it is not straitened; alarmed, it is not confounded; sleeping, it is ever watchful; like a living flame and burning torch, forcing its way upward and overcoming all things." Finally, Eloquence takes wing, and soars with her sister Song; chanting in the strain of Sir Walter Scott--

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove; And men below, and saints above; For love is heaven, and heaven is love!"

or with Charles Wesley from his fire-chariot at the gates of pearl--

"By faith we are come to our permanent home; By hope we the rapture improve; By love we still rise, and look down on the skies, For the heaven of heavens is love!"

In conclusion, let me repeat what I said in the outset. The question of our Lord is a plain matter of fact, about which there need be no uncertainty; and every one of us, with careful self-examination, may be able to answer it at once. I have heard some honest Christians sing:

"'Tis a point I long to know; Oft it causes anxious thought; Do I love the Lord or no?

Am I his, or am I not?"

Discard that verse, my brethren! Its theology is worse than its poetry.

For a filial love, or a conjugal love, about which the wife or the child is uncertain, you would not give a farthing. Do not the anxious thought and the longing to know indicate at least some small degree of love? Not loving at all, you would care nothing about it, you would be quite indifferent to the question. Dim indeed the spark may be in your bosom; but bless ye the Lord that it is not utterly gone out, and answer his gracious inquiry with this better verse:

"Lord, it is my chief complaint, That my love is still so faint; Yet I love thee, and adore; Oh for grace to love thee more!"

So praying, the breath of the Holy Spirit will soon blow the spark into flame; and when the Master asks once more, "Lovest thou me?" with bounding heart you will reply: "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee!"

[1] Preached in London, Eng., 1866.

XII.

MANIFOLD TEMPTATIONS.[1]

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, may be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.--1 Pet. i. 6, 7.