The Bible abounds in parables. Jotham’s fine parable of the trees electing a king to rule over them (Jud. 9), our Lord’s three-fold parable in Luke 15, and many others, delight the mind with their vividness and simplicity, whilst their spiritual meaning instructs us in many ways.
Only yesterday I learned a lesson on such lines. We were striking a tent, at the close of a month’s Gospel-work, and some one called my attention to two of the ornamental tops of the side poles. The paint on the one was faded, on the other fresh and good. The latter had had its place inside the tent—sheltered from the sun, the rain, and wind. The other had been exposed to all these.
My friend said to me, “The weather would not affect a human being as it has affected these tops. It is the man who is always indoors that gets faded and sickly; whereas the one who is out in all weathers, like the farmer, is fresh and ruddy.”
I asked myself why this should be so. The answer resolved itself into one word—LIFE. In the painted pole-top there was no principle of life to enable it to withstand the elements; in a living person there are latent powers of resistance.
It is just the difference between reality and profession. A living fish must swim against the stream; a dead one floats with it.
The elements beat upon godly King Hezekiah. The storm broke upon him fiercely when Sennacherib, King of Assyria, took all his fenced cities, and Hezekiah had to strip even the gold from the pillars in God’s temple, melt down the silver found in it, and empty his own house of all its treasures in order to buy off the invader.
Nor did he succeed with such tremendous sacrifice, for Sennacherib sent three of his generals with a mighty host to attack the capital itself. With proud and bitter taunts and shameless insolence they threatened Jerusalem and demanded its surrender. Hezekiah rent his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord to pray. He was heard. The angel of the Lord visited the Assyrian camp that night, and with his breath slew 185,000 of them. The enemy was silenced and his power broken.
And still the elements beat upon poor Hezekiah. “Death’s threatening wave” laid him low. In answer to prayer he was raised up again. In response to the raging of the elements, in answer to the discipline he said: “What shall I say? He has both spoken to me, and Himself has done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt Thou recover me, and make me to live … the living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day” (Isa. 38). Doubtless he referred to physical life, but there is a spiritual interpretation, which I believe is the essential meaning in the mind of the Spirit.
Unlike King Hezekiah, the mere lifeless professor can only maintain his show when shielded from the elements. He is a sheltered plant. He cannot stand the sun of persecution or the wind of affliction. And alas! there is every provision made for such. Both Ritualism and Rationalism—each resulting in a worldly religion, in which the persecution of the Cross has ceased—affords covering ground for the lifeless.
It is said that a youth, who was covered with gold-leaf and took part in a religious procession in an Italian town, died, in consequence of the adornment closing up the pores of his skin, and hindering the activity of healthy life. It is the same with Ritualism. It covers the Cross with gold or silver and studs it with precious stones, and calls it the crucifix. Life is smothered under forms. The Cross is connected with life and with the rough blasts of persecution; the crucifix becomes the emblem of a showy and fashionable religion. It may look very pious for a person, adorned with costly laces and jewellery, to wear a beautiful crucifix, but there is no cross in that. Marble reredos, altar, vestments, alb, stole, incense, the majestic peals of the organ may please eye and ear, but there is no cross in them.
Rationalism, on the other hand, is very ensnaring. It invites the intellect to work in the things of God, and, in result, the Cross of Christ is whittled away. His atonement becomes but a sublime example. Christ is reduced to the mere status of a man, and the Bible is torn to shreds! There is no life in that—death, only death.
And at the best I cannot admire the brains that expend themselves in the things of God—either in the line of music and millinery, or in the direction of Higher Criticism.
More godliness lay behind a simple Geneva gown than in all the ecclesiastical adornments of the present day, and still more godliness marked the Apostle Paul, who wore not even a Geneva gown, and who would have trembled at the innovation, as pointing in the direction of the surrender of vital truth, against which surrender he so strenuously protested in his letter to the Galatian assemblies.
Reader, is your religion meant for Sundays and high-days? Do you patronize religion only when she walks in silver slippers? Or do you take up the Cross daily and follow HIM, even though the sun of persecution should shine hot and the winds of adversity blow?
These are searching questions in these downgrade days, when men with backbone are the exception rather than the rule.
May your spiritual life be expressed by nothing short of a holy passion. It was said of Him prophetically, who is our Exemplar and Lord, “Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows” (Ps. 45:7). The path of reality and life is the path of gladness. The saints of God should know none other.
“Should we to gain the world’s applause,
Or to escape its harmless frown,
Refuse to countenance Thy cause,
And make Thy people’s lot our own,
What shame would fill us in that day,
When Thou Thy glory wilt display!”