Read Ebook: Memoranda Sacra by Harris J Rendel James Rendel

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It is not a standstill life: no one can stand still who lives with God. If God is the fountain of your life, there will be no green mantle on the surface telling how long you have been in one place. Neither in earth nor in heaven do we stand still or stay where we are. Take up the anchor and the ship follows the tide, and in God the tide always sets one way. You cannot stand still without anchoring to the creature. There must be fresh discoveries of truth and duty every day; and fresh inquisition made into the heights and depths of Redeeming Love. Abandonment to God must mean advancement in God.

They who love God cannot love Him by measure, For their love is a hunger to love Him still better.

Neither in earth nor in heaven is the Life to be an intermittent one. Some have said that the pool of Bethesda was connected with one of those intermittent springs that one sometimes comes across, and have explained by that means the periodical disturbances in the waters. There is one of these springs pointed out on the road from Buxton to Castleton in Derbyshire, but it showed no signs of anything extraordinary when I was there. However, whether Bethesda is of this nature or not, it is certain that the spiritual life of many believers is too much of the character of an intermittent spring. I want to tell you that there should be no such word as "revival" in the dictionary of the Christian Church: we want "life," not "revival." You hear people saying of certain religious movings--"They are having quite a revival"; alas! and were they dead before? Indeed, I am sure this intermittent fountain expresses only too accurately the lives of many of us. The best that God can do with us is to make us an occasional blessing--a sorrowful thing to confess when there are suffering ones around waiting and watching the surface of our hearts to see whether there is any moving of the water. I think, therefore, to tell you the secret of the intermittent spring. Every such spring is fed from an inner chamber in the rock in which the rains accumulate; but it is only as long as the water is above a certain level that the outward flow is maintained. If the inner chamber be kept full, the outward supply will be constant. And we know, apart from our figure, that when the inner life is renewed day by day, the outward is no longer an intermittent spring, but an overflowing cup.

Neither in earth nor in heaven has a Christian a right to go below "par" in his spiritual life. I have been trying to imagine what it would be in heaven if angels were to neglect the influx of vital force that comes from the throne of God and of the Lamb; if at any time they were to feel not up to singing-mark or service-mark, what a strange heaven it would presently be; and what strange music with notes wanting,--sometimes in the air and sometimes in the bass. We know, however, that the real character of their life and service is not intermittent, but is expressed in the words, "They rest not day nor night, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts.'"

It is not a life for which the world is too strong, and which cannot therefore be kept pure. It is not figured by a little brook, as Kidron, defiled with all the impurities of a city, and that an oriental city. And yet how many lives there are of which we have to say, "The world is too strong for them"; well-intentioned people, but feeble in grace, and who have received but little of the Life of God. The cup was indeed put into their hands, but they were afraid to drink deeply, though the voice by their side was saying, "Drink abundantly, O beloved."

They drink down to the level of forgiveness, and, perhaps, grace; but not down to glory and the receiving of the Spirit; they do not realise that "he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst"; they do not overcome the world; one has almost to make a fresh text for them,--"This is the defeat wherewith they are worsted, even their little faith."

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of Thee; And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

If one travels on the continent, one can see the ruins of the ancient Roman aqueduct; but the Rhine and the rest of the rivers of God flow on still, full of water.

Let names and sects and parties fall, That Jesus may be all in all.

As we learn to live the life of dependence upon the Lord, we must not be surprised if a great deal of our early theology drops off: it does not always sit down with us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Instead of Solomon's pools and aqueducts there is given to us a pure river of water of life, gleaming as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; and I think we may say of those who receive the life of God in this immediate and wonderful manner, that "not even Solomon, in all his glory, was so well supplied as one of these."

Finally, we may say, that the Life is one of absolute dependence, and is conditioned on the sovereignty of God and of the Lamb. Grace and the Holy Ghost are the portions of the dependent soul: they only flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb. I am amazed to find how much of true religion may be resolved into that one word "dependence." I can remember the time when I could not enter into the Psalm, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters, nor in things too high for me"; nor sing the verse, "I would be treated as a child, and guided where I go." Now it is, I hope, different. Moreover, we are sure that this spirit of dependence is one of the main features of the angelic life; we cannot imagine it otherwise; for the source of the river is the throne.

We sang in our hymn the lines--

I know Thou hast my heart, And I have heaven;

but we can only sing the second line where we have said or sung the first.

HEART ENLARGEMENT

"I will run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou shall enlarge my heart."--Ps. cxix. 32.

If we were to study the names of the different sects and parties that make up the "Ishmael" of God, we should find them to be singularly unsuggestive of such a thing as the existence of a spiritual life; nor could we easily infer from the nomenclature of so-called Christendom that "there is a spirit in man, and that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding." Now, this is a very curious fact; for one would have expected that about the first thing suggested by the appellations of Christian bodies would have been some phase or other of the inward life.

But we are not going to spend our time to-night in discussing sects, or deploring their divisions, although we cannot altogether refrain regret when we contemplate the seamless robe of Christ rent into more than twain, and dabbled in blood worse than Joseph's coat was when his father said, "Some evil beast hath devoured him"; and although it does seem to us sometimes, as we contemplate the havoc of schisms and strife of sects, as if some convulsion from beneath had shaken down the towers of the New Jerusalem, and streams from the nether fires had coursed down the channels of the river of life. What we want to do is to think a little about the true Broad Church; not that branch of Christianity which commonly goes under the name, and which makes one of the instances referred to of the unsuitableness of names applied to religious schools and parties, but the spiritual Broad Church, which is the church of enlarged hearts. The school we want to belong to is the school of spiritual free-thinkers, who are at liberty to learn all that God has to teach them. The true Broad Church is that in which an enlarged obedience to God's commandments is brought about by an enlarged experience of His love; and His commandments and His love are both of them exceeding broad.

All true spiritual life must widen the soul; the more we live with Jesus, the more impossible will it be for any of us to be narrow. Our littleness takes refuge with God, and His greatness makes its abode with us; we bring Him our unworthiness and He imparts to us His righteousness; we offer to Him our hearts barren of sympathy and deficient in affection, and presently we find the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that is given to us.

Thus, when acquainted with God we cannot be really narrow; they might as well call the Lord Jesus Christ narrow. We want to be as broad in our sympathies and in our views as He was; and neither broader nor narrower.

How very little we possess, both in outward and inward things. This is one of the points in which we are disposed to agree with the saying that the circumference of our circle is very near to the centre. We can grasp very little. Our hands are small and the world is large.

"Tell me how I can make my broad acres more broad," is the request of the rich man. "Tell me how I can make my narrow holding less narrow," is the cry of the poor. But a life in God makes us rich, for "all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present or things to come;--all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth." "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My sake and the Gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life."

And Madame Guyon says, "Have I not infinitely more than a hundredfold, in so entire a possession as Thou my Lord hast taken of me, in that unshaken firmness which Thou givest me in my sufferings, in a perfect tranquillity in the midst of a furious tempest that assails me on every side, in an unspeakable joy, enlargedness, and liberty which I enjoy in a most strait and rigorous captivity?"

How trifling is our knowledge! Yet fewer people will assent to the lack of knowledge, for many think they know a good deal. As in the times of Socrates, it is only the wise man who knows he knows nothing. And yet how little we know! We know but little of things in this world, with all our sciences and study, and we know much less about God, and glory, and immortality, and the spirits which live outside the tent of this mortal flesh, or of any of those things which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." And with all our books of theology and treatises on spiritual life, we are almost obliged to say that "all is less than nothing and vanity." But we believe that for those whom God enlarges, there is an unspeakable increase in the perceptive powers of the soul: they are taught things that no one else knows anything about, and that are hidden from the wise and prudent. There is knowledge for the simple and lowly ones; for those who, in the spiritual strength they have derived from God, run in the way of His commandments. Looking into the Father's face, and into the Saviour's heart, the soul can say, "This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." And with the knowledge there comes the aspiration that we, "being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints," and to beseech for all souls, "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." And again it is said, "Ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things." Is this a little knowledge? All things are possible to you in possession and in perception.

And although for each one of us there will be a Gethsemane, "a place of tears," as there was for the Master, yet we shall come through with our will unbroken, because it will be the will of God strong within us.

How small is our capacity for loving or forgiving. Many think they have capacity for an infinite love, and would be able to exhibit it if they could find a worthy object. But I believe our love is a strictly measurable quantity, and dependent on the state of grace we are in. Only those who have the Spirit within them, energising them, can truly love at all. Again, we fall at the Lord's feet, and tell Him we have no power even to be civil to some people, much less to love them; scarcely power to put up the weapons of revenge against some; and even to those whom, like the publicans and Pharisees and sinners, we love because they love us, we have not been able to make an adequate return for the love they have lavished upon us. Then God teaches us that there lies in Him the power of enlarging the human affections, and He enlarges our hearts that we, "being rooted and grounded in love,"--not only in the experimental realisation of His love to us, but also in the experimental living out of our love to Him, and to all that He has made and given us,--are able to "run the way of His commandments." For that is His new commandment, "that we love one another." Our practical state will depend on the enlarging of our hearts. We talk of large-hearted people, but they are not so by nature in the sense God wishes. It needs a Divine operation and a definite Divine experience to enable us to live out the law of the New Testament.

To do more we must be more; get a new master, be a new man; get a new experience, and you will be a new Christian.

All writers who have spoken of the advanced spiritual life have taught that there is an enlargement of the soul, and they use the strongest language possible.

So we find Madame Guyon saying:--

And Philo:--

So in Dr. Cudworth's sermon, which was printed some time ago:--

We conclude, then, that self can never measure the length and breadth of the Divine love, and run in the way of His commandment. We need God to make us understand God; we must be in union with Him in order to obey Him. Distances on the earth may be measured by a foot-rule or a surveyor's chain, but to measure the spaces between the stars we must have a base-line in the sky. Only by being partakers of the Divine nature can we live out the Divine life; and no man knoweth the Father save the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal Him.

HE RESTORETH MY SOUL

"So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My lambs.

"He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My sheep.

"He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved because He saith unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me? And he saith unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep."--JOHN xxi. 15-17.

The whole story contained in these verses carries us back in thought to the time when Peter denied the Lord. They contain the first recorded words which passed between Christ and Peter since the latter had said, "I know not the man," and the Lord had "turned and looked upon Peter." He had his special token of lovingkindness at the Resurrection in the message which the woman brought: "Tell His disciples and Peter," in the witness given to himself, "The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon," and in his participation in the blessing when the Lord stood in the midst and said, "Peace be unto you"; but these are, I think, the first recorded words addressed directly to Peter.

Peter had professed to be faithful above others; and now the Lord asks him, "Lovest thou Me more than these?" and the question thrice repeated can scarcely fail to remind us of the triple denial.

If we consider what must have been the state of Peter's mind after he had denied the Lord, we shall see that the circumstances recorded indicate a crisis in his life-history. How the enemy must have come in like a flood! what desolation of spirit he must have experienced during those lonely moments that followed the look of the Lord, when he went out, and wept bitterly! the enemy was come against him in full force, and legions of evil spirits had arisen to destroy his faith for ever.

One would say to him, "Thou hast sinned against special warnings; the Lord said to thee particularly that Satan had desired to have thee that he might sift thee as wheat. A little later on He said, 'Pray that ye enter not into temptation;' and a sin against special warning is more than twice a sin; and it was that sin which of all others thou didst think to be so great that it was impossible for thee to commit it."

Then another spirit would say, "Thou hast sinned against special promise; for thee the Saviour prayed; but now it is clear that thou hast outsinned the Mediator's grace and the Intercessor's prayers"; and at the thought black despair and utter hopelessness would enter his soul, as if to make it their eternal abode.

Then a third spirit would suggest the thought, "I said, 'I know not the man!' Dost remember, Peter, how He Himself said, 'I will declare unto you, that I never knew you;' and again, 'Whosoever denieth Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father in Heaven!' No word of Christ shall be broken; yea, thou thyself hast in past time established thyself on the faithfulness of His truth!"

It was as if a judgment-seat were already set up in his soul, and the spirits were pleading him outside mercy; not one would speak in his behalf. Even the promises and the threatenings were against him; the first saying, we strengthened him; and the second, we warned him. Then some voices would testify against him on a side where one would think nothing would have been said, "Thou hast injured the faith; thou hast weakened the brethren; thou hast been infidel against love, and for such there is no repentance; thou hast sold thy Lord at a cheaper rate than Judas!"

"Dost thou remember, Peter, that tree which the Lord cursed, because, when He had a right to expect fruit from it, it bore none? Was there ever a time when the Master expected so much from thee as this? and now He has come, and found 'nothing but leaves.'"

Then, perhaps, one ray of hope would gleam into his darkened soul--"But the Lord did pray for me, and He never prayed in vain. He said, Father, I know that Thou hearest Me always; and He prayed for me."

Another bitter shaft enters his heart: "Dost thou remember, Peter, how the Lord said of His own followers, 'I have kept them in Thy name, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition'? Thou hast not only made vain the Lord's prayers, but denied the Lord's faith, and caused Him to appear before heaven and earth as a false witness. Would He speak like that now, if He were beginning His intercessory prayer again? Would He not have to say, 'None of them is lost, except the Sons of Perdition, the Denier and the Betrayer'? So that even Christ's words failed to meet his case."

"And now, Peter, the high priest is asking Him of His disciples and His doctrines; what thoughts must be in His mind about thee when He takes up His testimony concerning those for whom He has lavished His life! The question will wring His heart anew into great drops of blood."

"Moreover, thou hast sinned against the strongest light and the highest privilege; it was given to thee to be with Him at the most solemn and sacred times: thou wast with Him at the transfiguration in the Holy Mount; and if ever heaven could strengthen earth, thou shouldst have been a strong man. Thou wast with Him at times of special Power, when only two or three were privileged to see the grace and glory flow down upon the suffering and the dying. Will not the greatness of thy privilege be the greatness of thy condemnation? He always chose thee to be with Him in special times when He went apart for prayer: to whom much is given, of them will much be required. Oh! how hast thou fallen!" and the spirits away in the darkness would say, "Thou art become even as one of us."

Then he would remember how in his own family, almost in his own flesh, he had received special mercy; and that work of healing would rise up to condemn him. Sin against mercy is sin without mercy; a thousand times thou art condemned, having sinned against such light and privilege and grace.

Then some spirits would whisper, "Dost thou remember how when many were leaving the Lord, because His doctrines were hard to receive and His steps hard to follow, He asked the question, 'Will ye also go away?' Who was it that answered so readily, 'Lord, to whom shall we go?' Would it not have been better to have denied Him at the first than to have waited till the light had grown as clear as it has been, and to have deserted Him when He needed thee most? Better to have denied Him then, when evidence was feeble, than to disown Him, known as thou hast been privileged to know Him!"

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