Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Cracious Thoughts.

Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.

I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil.-JER. 29: 11.

NE of the most marked features of the religion of the Bible is the light in which it represents the Divine Being. Paganism represents Him as a stock or stone, carved into the similitude of a man, or a bird, or a four-footed beast, or a creeping thing, without intelligence, and even without life. Some, under the pretence of exalting His majesty and greatness, represent Him as occupied only in certain great creative and conserving acts, and not at all concerning himself with the little affairs of human life or destiny.

Men are prone to conclude either that there is no God, or that He knows nothing about our behavior in this world, or that He is wholly indifferent to what we do, or say, or think. But the holy Book assures us that He is an infinite and living Intelligence, who is with everything that He has made, not only as an unconcerned spectator, but as a loving Father, in sympathy with His creatures, consulting each one's good, and so

minute in His attentions as to keep count of the very hairs of our heads. So far from retiring from His works to dwell apart in the secrecy of His own unapproachable Godhead, uncaring for such worlds as ours or such beings as we, there is nothing done, nor said, nor thought, nor felt by man but He knows it, and notes it, and thinks of it, and orders His dealings with reference to it.

God does think of us. This He himself affirms in the text. The same is also attested in Nature, which is one vast volume of divine thoughts, in every one of which, if rightly read, we find marks and tokens that we have been thought of, and that our interests are not unconsidered. In the very framework of the heavens above us; in the adjustment of the sizes, spheres, and motions of the planets and stars; and in the arrangement of the relations of the celestial orbs to the world which we inhabit, references to us, as well as to other beings, can easily be traced. This mysterious ocean of air which envelops the earth, at the bottom of which we live, in all its currents, changes, adaptations, and never-ceasing operations, the mighty sea of waters, in their varied distribution and multiform offices,-the mountains and rocks, and lands and streams,-the trees, and fruits, and flowers,—the night and day, the rains and dews,-the seasons and laws of seedtime and harvest,-the beasts of the field and the birds of the air,-the links of kindred and the ties of home,—the relations of the elements, the course of things, and the constituents, pursuits, and very

[ocr errors]

burdens of life,—all are freighted with evidences in every part of the great machinery of creation that God has thought of us, and never ceases to have a very particular regard to us. "Many,' says the Psalmist, "many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to usward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee. They are more than can be numbered."

And God's thoughts to usward are all benevolent,-"thoughts of peace and not of evil.”

This we do not always realize. There is so much disappointment, disaster, affliction, trial, and suffering that we are often doubtful and misgiving. We are in a constant war of good and evil, which surges first one way and then another. If we have peace one day, we are disturbed the next. There is not a rose but in plucking it we are pricked with its thorns. Hence we are often hurried into very mistaken estimates of the economy under which we are placed. Trouble comes or adversity overtakes us, and we conclude that God is thinking of us other thoughts than thoughts of peace. When Jacob finds Joseph gone and Benjamin about to be taken, he says, "All these things are against me." But it is not so. Even these adversities are connected with "thoughts of peace and not of evil." Joseph is taken just that he might be the instrument of saving Jacob and all his house, and that the promises might not fail. When Israel was pursued by Pharoah, and the strong warriors of Egypt were pressing upon

their rear, while the mountains hemmed them in on either side, and the Red Sea was in their front, they felt as if God had led them there just to destroy them. But it was not so. It was to destroy their adversaries and to vouchsafe to them the sublimer salvation. When they were in the wilderness, without food or water, and ready to perish of hunger and thirst, they supposed in their anguish that God meant to do them evil,-that His thoughts toward them were bitter. But they were nevertheless "thoughts of peace,"-the preliminaries of marvellous miracles to save them at the last, and to fill them and all the after-church of God with joy. When David was being driven about in the mountains as a fugitive from the powers which thirsted for his blood he thought God had "forgotten to be gracious." But it was a mistake, as he himself afterward acknowledged, and was glad that he had been afflicted.

The same mistake is frequently made by penitents. When the Spirit enters the heart, and makes it feel its guiltiness before God, and distresses it on account of its sins, and makes it fear the wrath it has deserved, it can hardly think otherwise than that the Almighty's thoughts are thoughts of resentment and severity. But it is quite the contrary. The men of Nineveh, in sackcloth and ashes, were thinking that God was about to destroy them in the very hour that His thoughts toward them were peace. When the prodigal resolved to return to the parent he had wronged he was busy thinking how he should

placate that parent's wrath, and taxed all his disturbed and distressed wits to make out a speech of confession and self-abasement to modify the supposed anger of his father. But that father meanwhile was only thinking how he might welcome the returning sinner, and day by day was on the house-top looking for him and making ready in his heart for his joyous reception.

And so, O conscience-stricken one, terrified and alarmed at your sinfulness and neglect of your Maker: you wonder how He can be otherwise than angry with you. You doubt if there can be any mercy for you. But while you are thus wrestling with your guilt and the imagined wrath of God, His thoughts abound in mercy and pardoning love. You are thinking Him harsh, unwilling to forgive, and requiring to be pleaded with and bribed by sacrifices and good works; whereas He is full of joy at your willingness to accept His forgiveness, and cherishes toward you only "thoughts of peace."

So in Christian experience and life. You repent, and yet feel that your penitence is not worthy to be called repentance; that everything about it is so poor and superficial as to look more like mockery than reality. You love God, and often have great comfort in thinking of Him; but it is so faint and feeble, as compared with the warmth of affection and interest toward other objects, that you feel as if God could not accept such a cold and unworthy devotion. You are so dissatisfied with yourself, and ashamed, and full

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »