Breviaries. Duty Difficult, but Delightful. "MY YOKE IS EASY, AND MY BURDEN IS LIGHT.”—Matthew xi. 30. Notwithstanding this statement of our Lord's that the Christian life is an easy yoke and a light burden, it cannot be denied that, considered in itself, the daily following of Jesus is a work of no little difficulty. Let this first take our attention. I. THE DIFFICULTY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. (a) The New Testament representations of this life show that it is hard. It is spoken of as a battle, a race, a striving to enter a strait gate, a toilsome journey along a narrow way, a daily cross-bearing. Here Jesus calls it a yoke, a burden. (b) Christ's own life was a struggle. How fierce, who shall say (c) The lives of the New Testament saints were Paul's, Peter's, Stephen's. hard. (d) Present-day Christian life is not easy. The conventional, the carnal, the hollow, the false meet every soul with temptations. II.-THE TRUTH OF CHRIST'S DECLARATION. Notwithstanding all the difficulty of a daily imitation of Christ, yet are His words true,-"My yoke is easy," &c. (a) They are made true by love. It is a positive delight to carry out the hardest practicable command of one supremely loved. The thought of difficulty does not enter the mind. Affection can lighten any load. Many have felt it an easy thing to give up life itself for human love. As in the realm of your daily life the magic touch of love's tender hand banishes your pain, and trial, and care, so is it also in the realm of the religious life. (b) The words are made true by grace. "He hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee," &c. (2 Cor. xii. 9.) (c) The words are made true by the vision of faith. (See Romans viii. 18, and Acts vii. 55-57.) By the love that binds the Christian to the Lord, by grace vouchsafed according to our need, and by the vision of faith, the vision of the heavenly glory, the vision of the Son of Man, as He stands at God's right hand, surely His yoke becomes easy and His burden becomes light. MORETON-IN-MARSH. J. KIRK PIKE. D Heaven: a Garden. "THE PARADISE OF GOD."-Rev. ii. 7. THIS Persian word, derived from the Sanscrit, pictures an ornamental garden. From the lips of Christ, and afterwards of Paul, it obtained its highest significance, as describing Heaven itself. So reading the word we are led to reflect that-I.-Heaven is not merely a state, but A PLACE. Men try to be too sublimely immaterial when they deny the thought of locality to human conceptions of Heaven. Dr. Chalmers says we "make it a lofty aerial region, floating in æther, suspended on nothing." Are we not wrong then? For (1) is it not probable that God is the only pure Spirit? (2) Do not all human instincts, and all Scriptural revelations point to a place? Clearly the word of our text warrants this. II.-Heaven is a place of SURPASSING BEAUTY. Not only this word, but all the imagery of the New Testament, leads us to imagine Heaven as a world where our yearning after the beautiful will not be destroyed, but satisfied; where the loveliness of earth will find its fulfilment and crown. Do stars and flowers die because we pass away? III.-Heaven is a place of ApproPRIATE LABOUR. The word has a backward look. In the primal Paradise man was put "to dress it and to keep it." God ever works, angels work; God's servants shall serve, &c. IV.-Heaven is a place of God's SPECIAL HABITATION. It is a most sacred reminiscence of Paradise that the Lord God was there amid the trees of the garden. The central glory of Heaven is the felt presence of God. EDITOR. Heaven: a Temple. "THE TEMPLE OF MY GOD."—Rev. iii. 12. THESE words are sufficient to bring before us a very vivid conception of some of the chief aspects of Heaven. I.-The place. On earth, as necessary results of our forgetfulness of God, our profanity, our crass secularity, we are obliged to have Temples. These are necessary because of evil, and are, in some sense, necessary evils. Heaven has " no Temple❞ in it, because it is all Temple. For by Temple, we understand (a) a special structure of God. (b) A special residence of God. (c) A special meeting-place with God. (d) A special scene of worship of God. All this Heaven is. II. THE WORSHIP. There are false Temples, crowded with false deities. This is the true Temple, filled with the true God. So that, noting the worship of Heaven, we observe (1) its object. The cry, the instinct, the constraining impulse there is, "worship God." (2) Its nature. The worship is (a) unanimous, none there have a dumb devil. (b) Constant. No intermittent, spasmodic sentimentalisms. "They worship day and night." (c) Joyous. They sing. "Is any among you merry, let him sing," and their hallowed mirth compels song. (d) Perfect. For it is symbolised by music, and ideal music is the appropriate and harmonised utterance of all the varied emotions of the soul. EDITOR. Heaven: a City. "THAT GREAT CITY, THE HOLY JERUSALEM."-Rev. xxi. 10 THIS figure of Heaven suggests-I.—ITS RELATION TO GOD'S EMPIRE. What the Metropolis is to a country, Heaven is to the universe. (a) The central influence of the kingdom. (b) The dwelling-place of its chiefest and strongest. (c) The residence of its Sovereign. II.-ITS MARVELLOUS CONSTRUCTION. (a) Heaven is a vast city-a city, not a mere hamlet for a bandful of the elect. (b) Heaven is a secure city. Its walls, its gates, &c. "Nothing can hurt or destroy." (c) Heaven is a magnificent city. Nothing impoverished, no bye-ways of shame, no lurking places of misery; its very streets are of gold. III.-ITS FAMOUS POPULATION. The population is (a) immense in number; "a great multitude," &c. (b) Honourable in occupation. Jerusalem a city of priests; Athens, of sages; Rome, of soldiers; London, of shopkeepers; Heaven, of saints, who serve God day and night. (c) Holy in character. This the glory of the population; they are robed in white. Their moral lustre is their beauty. EDITOR. Burden-bearing. "BEAR YE ONE ANOTHER'S BURDENS," &c.-Galatians vi. 2. THEN men-good men-have their burdens; that they have them is well known and certain. These are of different kinds. I. There is the burden of responsibility. This is not the same in all persons, or in the same person at all times. Learning, education, light, physical condition, and such like must be taken into consideration. II.-There is the burden of fear-the fear that comes of unbelief. How Jesus warned His disciples against this. III.-There is the burden of guilt. Some men do not feel this. A sight of the Cross of Christ the only way to be rid of it. These burdens not the ones here referred to. The burden referred to in the text is made up of the trials, sorrows, and disappointments which are incident to the present life and is (1) Universal. None in any station of life are exempt from it. "Man is born unto trouble," &c. In attempting to flee from it we often flee into it. (2) Variable. It becomes more or less heavy according to the spirit in which we receive it. Compare Gen. xlii. 36 with 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18. (3) Useful, not in itself considered, but as overruled and sanctified by God. "It is good for me that I have been afflicted." (See Heb. xii. 11.) We must bear one another's burdens. This implies acquaintance with one another which should be true of members of the same church. "How can we bear," &c. (1) By prayer (Acts xii. 5.); (2) By sympathy (John xi. 19; Heb. ii. 18, and iv. 15, 16.) (3) By active benevolence (1 John iii. 17), " and so fulfil," &c. (a) The law of love to Christ (Matt. x. 42); (b) The law of resemblance to Christ (John xiii. 14, 15); (c) The law of obligation to Christ (John xiv. 15). PENZANCE. Now; a New Year's Word. "Now."-2 Cor. vi. 2. J. W. SAMPSON. THE time-view contained in this word is I.-THE ONLY CERTAIN POSSESSION OF ALL MEN. The past is gone; the future may never come; the present, certainly, is in their hands. II. THE ETERNITY OF FOOLS. They dream it is abiding. (1) They look for all results "now"; (2) They judge all by what appears "now." They throw their whole fortune on to the gambling table of "now." III. THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE WISE. They use it for (1) Decision for God; (2) For culture; (3) For blessing others. EDITOR. Pulpit Handmaids. DAVID AND THE BOOK OF PSALMS.* A STUDY FOR PREACHERS. 1 Sam. xvi. to xxxi. 2 Sam. i. to xxiv. 1 Kings i. and ii. PERHAPS ten volumes on the Book of Psalms might be written with greater ease and less thought than three. render the work less accessible to those But voluminousness would whose financial resources are In perusing the limited, and whose time for study is curtailed. work I am now concluding, my readers will probably discover much that many will deprecate, and a little that some may approve. First: There is MUCH THAT MANY WILL DEPRECATE. Among the things that will be deprecated by the many, in all likelihood are the following :— (1.) The low estimate I have formed of David's moral character. In orthodox expositions, in popular discourses (oral and written), in religious literature of the current type, David is held up as the " man after God's own heart," as a paragon amongst the kings of the earth, as an illustrious champion of the right, and as a peer in the realm of sainthood. when I carefully peruse his history as given in Scripture, I find that their David is a mere fiction, a creature of their imagination, and not the veritable man whose true and full biography is sketched nowhere but in the First and Second Books of Samuel (commencing at chap. xvi. of the First Book); 1 Kings, chaps. i. and ii.; and 1 Chronicles, chaps. xi. to xxix. But As an example of this, a minister possessing a very extensive library, with considerable Biblical intelligence, of rigorous orthodox notions, and who has lived upwards of seventy years in the world, had a long conversation with me a few months ago, on the character of David. To him he was not only a model saint, a hero of heroes in all moral greatness, but the type of Christ, the pulsations of whose heart were ever Divine. I * Dr. Thomas's concluding remarks in his exegetical and homiletical work on the Psalms, consisting of three volumes of the Homilistic Library. |