The Boyertown Visitation.
No humane heart, let alone a Christian heart, could learn without sorrow what happened at Boyertown, Pa., a few days ago;-how much more when one's affections have become blended with the afflicted people of that community by blessed seasons of labor in Christ among them, and loving Christian fellowship with many of them. Therefore, though at a distance from them, one weeps with them all, and the heart rises up for them to God, who alone can reach the depth of such sorrow as theirs, and give the needed comfort. He alone can meet the need in such a way that it may be said again, " Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness" (Judges 14:14).
May all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity among the afflicted cover themselves well with the shield of faith, that they may "be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (one)," for it is at such times and under such circumstances that the devil plies his wiles with greatest intensity. He would make us question God's love and concern for us in the face of such a calamity. He would suggest, Is not God almighty ? Could He not have prevented this ? Why then allow it ?
If the heart remains firm in the assurance of His unchanging and unchangeable love toward us who believe (see Rom. 5 :8-10), these questionings are easily and profitably answered. We know God is almighty-that He can do all things, and prevent anything. He were not God if He could not. But the certainty of His perfect and unchanging love, as also of His absolute power, is just what makes the last question most searching with us:" Why then allow it ?" O beloved friends, let the Why be serious. Let the desire to know why be deep; nor let us be afraid of it even in the midst of flowing tears. The Lord allowed Lazarus to die; then came to the sorrowing friends to bring fruit to the glory of God out of their sorrow. He is at home among sorrowing people, for He knows what sorrow is, beyond any who ever trod this earth. Was ever sorrow like His sorrow, when, alone, forsaken, our load of guilt upon Him, He hung upon the cross, giving Himself up to that for our ransom ?
Do you believe, dear friends, that He was also at home that Monday night in Rhoades" Opera House, where, under the plea of furthering His cause, people were seeking their own pleasure? Could you connect such pleasure-seeking with His holy name? "Lovers of pleasure" while "having a form of godliness" is one of the things which God hates most, which mark "the last days," with their "perilous times." See 2 Tim. 3. God bears it in patience with those too ignorant of Him to know right from wrong ; but those who have had great privileges have corresponding responsibilities. What dreadful calamities we recall in connection with Sunday-school and church pleasure-making ! what dreadful happenings also in connection with the pleasure-making of the openly ungodly! Were they worse than others ?Nay, but a warning to all. Christ "died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again."No Christian therefore is in his right place if he is out of that path.
God is patient-amazingly so; He suffers long; He endures what no created being, endowed with His power, could or would endure. This emboldens the foolish; so in mercy He reminds them from time to time that if He is patient, He is not indifferent. He asserts He is sovereign, to yet turn fools to wisdom before it is too late to change. He warns His own to awake out of sleep and arise from among the dead, that Christ may give them light, and they may know what the will of the Lord is (Eph. 5). He reminds the ungodly that though He is a Saviour now, He will certainly be a Judge toward those who have despised or neglected His grace.
A double danger attends such seasons of sorrow as this, as Heb. 12:5, 6 shows:"My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him." To make such a visitation a mere accident of circumstances is to "despise" the chastening of the Lord:to murmur and lose courage is to "faint "under it. Neither can produce "the peaceable fruits of righteousness." Such fruits are produced only in those "who are exercised " by the trial.
That the day of the manifestation of all things will reveal that good has grown out of this great calamity we have not the shadow of a doubt. What will be the measure of it, and who they are that will participate in it, depends on the godly exercise in individual souls. God grant a rich measure of it, and thus turn the sorrow of this awful night into the joy of the morning which has no more evening.
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Prov. 23:6,7.
An unbeliever from India and scoffer of Christianity declared he had never seen any Christian converts in India. A returned missionary from the same country asked him if he had ever seen any tigers there. Oh yes; he had hunted and shot many of them. Said the missionary, " I was in India, and never saw a tiger; but, thank God, I saw many Christian converts. We each saw what we were looking for." And so it is:those who seek for good, find it; and those who seek for evil, find it too:but oh, how vast the difference in the moral effects on both!
Paul knew this when he wrote to the Philippians to think on whatsoever things were true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report (Phil. 4:8).
Solomon knew this too when he wrote, in the words of our text, " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
And they overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony (Rev. 12:11).
Having accomplished the work of our redemption on the cross, our Lord has gone on high, and there carries on His priestly work on our behalf -a work without which a holy God could not possibly continue with us, a sinful and erring people; nor we, once out of communion with God, ever be restored. We read, therefore, " It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us" (Rom. 8:34). We have a figure of this in the intercession of Moses in Ex. 32:7-14.
The past work of our Saviour gives us our perfect title to heaven; the present work of our Priest enables God to go on with us clear through our wilderness journey, spite of our failures and sins, and, in restoring the soul, renews its communion with God when lost, as seen in the case of Peter when he denied his Lord.
The devil is now also in heaven, doing all in his power to counteract the work of our Priest; he is "the accuser of our brethren . . . which accused them before our God day and night" (Rev. 12:10).
The effect of Christ's priestly work is to lift up and cheer our souls by applying to them suited portions of the word of God, and also to enable us to confess our sins, if any are upon our conscience. The effect of the devil's anti-priestly work is to shut us up in our pride, to make us morbid at the remembrance of our sins, to discourage us, and to check all joy and fruitfulness. God may see fit sometimes to let him have a measure of power over us (as in the case of his dear servant Job) for our good, for the breaking up of self-will in us, or anything which stands in God's way of blessing and using us; but whatever that measure may be, we have two effective weapons against him-" the blood of the Lamb," which keeps our conscience free and our place before God ever intact and sure; then, "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God," and which he cannot resist. With these we overcome. With these the weakest saint is stronger than Satan. Sheltered from all coming wrath beneath the blood of Jesus, whose present activities now at the right hand of God carry us through all the ills of the way, and thrusting at Satan with such words of God as apply to our need, we are ever victorious.
O ye saints of God who may be in the fiery furnace, forget not that God has found in the blood of the Lamb, under which you are, a value which far surpasses all the guilt of your accumulated sins; and that His Word, changeless as Himself, is His -sword in your hand before which your arch-enemy flees as the dust before the wind.
Besides this, " the word of the testimony " of God's people is what keeps up the conflict with Satan, which finally ends in complete victory on our side- his being cast out of heaven, then into the bottomless pit. Let us therefore " be strong and of a good courage " (Josh, i:9).
The Seventh Day.
We have received several papers of late relating to the significance of the Seventh Day. Some of them seem to misapprehend the teaching which makes the Sabbath Day the type of the Eternal Rest, and not of the Millennium.
The said teaching holds that the six working days only are types of dispensations:that, as in those six days God made all things, so, in the six dispensations which they typify, God will have completed all the work of the New Creation. Then, as on the seventh day, or Sabbath, He rested from the work of creation, so He will rest from the work of the new creation in His eternal rest, of which the Sabbath is the type. The Seventh day not being a working day cannot illustrate a dispensation, inasmuch as every dispensation is a phase of God's workings with man.
The leading difference between this teaching and the one which makes the Seventh day the type of the Millennium being clearly seen, we do not think the pursuance of the subject of any further profit. Our contributors will therefore kindly find in this the reason why their articles do not appear.
"Turn not from it (the word) to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest." Josh. 1:7.
The whole land of promise lay before the people. It was a free gift to them, and hence the exhortation to be strong and of a good courage, for their future success depended upon their loyalty of heart to the written Word. Obedience expresses in a word what the Lord required, and this is expressed in the words "Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left. " Great were the privileges of God's people of old, and greater are our privileges now; but the responsibilities are accordingly great ; hence the importance of having our hearts continually exercised as to the due place the word of God is to have with us, and our whole-hearted obedience to it. There can be no margin for our own thoughts, plans, or wills. There ought to be no deviation to the one side or the other. God's word was supreme. It is not too large, and we need every part of it. The soul that loves the truth responds, "Order my steps in Thy Word." Oh, how we ought to value such a gift from God as our sacred volume – the peerless word of God ! a book that meets our deep need as we go through life, which guides us in a path that honors God, and that opens to us our heavenly inheritance. What earnest Bible readers and students, then, believers ought to be! May our love for it, in all its various parts, be intensified day by day to our journey's end, as well as the path marked out by it for us God's heavenly people. A. E. B.