Grace Gems for SEPTEMBER 2005

Grace Gems for SEPTEMBER 2005 The panacea for the world's evils (John Angell James, "Christian Missions" 1828) The secret of the world's moral renovation, and the panacea for the world's evils, lies compressed in that one expression of the apostle Paul, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners!" O blessed hurricane! (Charles Spurgeon) "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word. It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I could learn Your statutes." (Psalm 119:67, 71) In seasons of severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to, and is therefore compelled to cast himself on God alone. When no human deliverance can avail, he must simply and entirely trust himself to the providence and care of God. Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God—and God alone! When a man is so poor, so friendless, so helpless that he has nowhere else to turn—he flies into his Father's arms, and is blessedly clasped therein! When he is burdened with troubles so pressing and so peculiar, that he cannot tell them to any but his God, he may be thankful for them; for he will learn more of his Lord then, than at any other time. Oh, tempest-tossed believer, it is a happy trouble that drives you to your Father! This city has so aroused My anger and wrath! (John Angell James, "The Crisis—or, Hope and Fear Balanced, in Reference to the Present Situation of the Country" Sunday Morning, Nov. 28, 1819) "From the day it was built until now, this city has so aroused My anger and wrath that I must remove it from My sight!" Jeremiah 32:31 Let us devoutly acknowledge both the source and the justice of our calamities. The origin of the evils that afflict us, is often to be found in the sins which disgrace us. Sin is the only thing in all the universe which God hates, and this He abhors wherever He discovers it. With our limited understanding, and feeble powers of moral perception, it is impossible for us to form an adequate idea of the evil of sin, or the light in which it is contemplated by a God whose understanding is infinite, and whose purity is immaculate. That law which men are daily trampling upon, equally without consideration, without reason, and without penitence, is most sacred in His eyes, as the emanation and the transcript of His own holiness. He is also omnipresent and omniscient. There is not a nook or corner of the land from which He is excluded. Of every scene of iniquity He is the constant, though invisible witness. The whole mass of national guilt, with every the minutest particular of it, is ever before His eye! His justice, which consists in giving to all their due, must incline Him to punish iniquity—and His power enables Him to do it! He is the moral governor of the nations, and concerned to render His providence subservient to the display of His attributes. And if a people so highly favored as we are, notwithstanding our manifold sins, escape without chastisement—will not some be ready to question the equity, if not the very exercise of His administration? His threatenings against the wicked are to be found in almost every page of holy Scripture. Nor are the threatenings of the Bible to be viewed in the light of mere unreal terrors, as clouds and storms which the poet's pencil has introduced into the picture; the creatures of his own imagination, and only intended to excite the imagination of others. No! They are solemn realities, intended to operate by their denunciation as a check upon sin; or if not so regarded, to be endured in their execution as a punishment upon our sins! Scripture gives us many examples in which this has happened. It has preserved an account of the downfall of nearly all the chief empires, kingdoms, and cities of antiquity; and that, not as a mere chronicle of the event, but as a great moral lesson to the world. Scripture carefully informs us, that sin was the cause of their ruin! Volcanoes terrify with their eruptions, and submerge towns or cities beneath their streams of lava! Earthquake's convulsive throes bury a population beneath the ruins of their own abodes! Hurricanes carry desolation through a country! Famine whitens the valleys with the bones of the thousands who have perished beneath its reign! Pestilence stalks through a land, hurrying multitudes to the tomb, and filling all that remain with unutterable terrors! Wars have been agents in the unparalleled scenes of bloodshed and misery! Scripture proclaims that these are to be regarded as a fearful exposition of the evil nature of sin, written by the finger of God upon the tablet of the earth's history! Visit, in imagination, my countrymen, the spots where many of these cities once stood, and you shall see nothing but desolation stalking like a specter across the plain, lifting its eye to heaven, and exclaiming, amidst the silence that reigns around, "The kingdom and the nation that will not serve You, shall utterly perish!" As you stand amidst the moldering fragments of departed grandeur, does not every breeze, as it sighs through the ruins, seem to say, as a voice from the sepulcher, "See, therefore, and know that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against the Lord!" Let us devoutly acknowledge both the source and the justice of our calamities. The origin of the evils that afflict us, is often to be found in the sins which disgrace us. "From the day it was built until now, this city has so aroused My anger and wrath that I must remove it from My sight!" Jeremiah 32:31 "The Lord your God pronounced this disaster against this place. The Lord has brought it about, and has done as He said. Because you sinned against the Lord and did not obey his voice, this thing has come upon you." (Jeremiah 40:2-3) I kill ("The Death of Eminent Ministers, a Public Loss" A funeral sermon by J. A. James, Nov. 6, 1825) 'Chance' has nothing to do with death! Not the outcast infant of a day old, exposed by its unnatural mother to perish by the tiger or the vulture; nor even the sparrow that dies of hunger in its nest—passes out of life without the knowledge of God. "Don't be afraid!" said Christ, "I am the first and the last, the living one. I was dead, but now I am alive forever! I have the keys of the unseen world and of death!" What consolation is there in this sublime declaration! The key of death is never for a moment entrusted out of His hands —and never can be wrested from them! Every time a human being dies, it is by an act of His power, in turning the key which unlocks the gates of death! Our life is under the constant and strict observation of His omniscient eye! He determines the moment when to take the key from His belt, and throw the portals of immortality back on their mighty hinges! O, what comfort does this impart to us, in reference to our own lives—to know that exposed as we are to all the accidents and diseases of this 'world of changes', and enveloped as we are in darkness as to the consequences of the next step, and the events of the next hour—that we cannot die by a random stroke, or by a blind chance! The key of death must be turned by Him who is infinitely wise, and powerful, and good! "See, I am the only God! There are no others. I kill, and I make alive! I wound, and I heal, and no one can rescue you from My power!" Deuteronomy 32:39 That one majestic, inconceivable, and expressive word (J. A. James, "The Death of Mrs. Sherman" May 28, 1848) "And this is the promise that He Himself made to us: eternal life." (1 John 2:25) In the infinite comprehensiveness of this one promise are included all that the omniscient mind of the Father in the exercise of His love has contrived in eternity; all that the incarnate Son has obtained by His sacrifice upon the cross; and all that the Divine Spirit has revealed upon the page of Scripture; and all which is contained in that one majestic, inconceivable, and expressive word—HEAVEN! I do not need flamboyant descriptions and eloquent representations of the celestial state, to raise my desires and hopes. It is enough to know that it is GLORY, first prepared, then promised, and ultimately bestowed by Jehovah—as the concentration of His infinite beneficence and the full manifestation of His boundless benevolence! Heaven is . . . the absence of all evil, natural and moral; the possession of all possible good; a glorified body united with a perfect soul, and all this in the immediate presence of God! There we shall see God! We shall not only see Him—but love Him! We shall not only love Him—but serve Him! We shall not only serve Him—but enjoy Him! We shall not only enjoy Him—but hold such communion with Him as will assimilate us to the all-perfect source of our felicity! The objects of our contemplation, our situation, our companions, our personal constitution, our constant exercises of holy intellect, heart, and volition—will be so many distinct sources of bliss! Perfect knowledge, perfect holiness, and perfect love must of necessity open the fountain of perfect joy! No secondary concern will call off our unwearied attention from the service of God; no sin or pain will interrupt us in it; nor will death ever dismiss us from it. The business and the blessedness of that happy state are the same—our supreme delight will be our constant employment. Every sense will be an inlet, every faculty a capacity, and every energy a pulsation—of the purest bliss! Heaven will be "life" . . . life in perfection, the life of the soul, the life of God, the life of eternity! But to describe it, how vain and arrogant the attempt, when even to conceive of it is impossible! "In Your presence is fullness of joy! At Your right hand there are pleasures for evermore!" Neither language nor thought can go beyond this! Mind cannot conceive more. God Himself can tell us no more, than that heaven consists in His presence, and the enjoyment of His favor—forever and ever! "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love Him!" (1 Corinthians 2:9) The base cares and the petty enjoyments of the present world (John Angell James) Sin is raging all around us! Satan is busy in the work of destruction! Men are dying! Souls are every moment departing into eternity! Hell is enlarging her mouth, and multitudes are continually descending to torments which knows no mitigation and no end! How astounding is it sometimes to ourselves, that, the base cares and the petty enjoyments of the present world should have so much power over us, as to retard us in our heavenward course, and make us negligent and indolent, heedless and forgetful. Time is short! Life is uncertain! Death is at hand! Immortality is about to swallow up our existence in eternal life—or eternal death! Heaven expanding above us! Hell is yawning beneath us! Eternity is opening before us! It is by faith (J. A. James, "The Death of Mrs. Sherman" May 28, 1848) It is by faith, as an operative principle of universal obedience to the gospel of Christ, that the believer "purifies his heart" and adorns his character with "the beauties of holiness," through the power of the Divine Spirit. It is by faith that he overcomes the world . . . the dread of its frown, the desire of its smile, its evil maxims, its corrupt principles. It is by faith that he . . . quenches the fiery darts of the wicked one, is delivered from the wiles of the devil, and bruises the serpent's head. It is by faith, as a pilgrim and stranger upon earth, he nourishes the desire for, and indulges the expectation of, that country which God has promised to those who love Him. It is by faith that he rises superior to the love of life, vanquishes the fear of death, and while this monster puts his most horrid form of mischief on—he smiles at his terrors, and, swelling into rapture, exclaims, "O death, where is your sting!" Essential to eminent usefulness (John Angell James) A revived church is the best hope of a lost world. A revived ministry the best hope of a dormant church. Under 'a great show of outward profession', there is a lamentable deficiency of vital godliness in our churches. Much of the prevailing benevolence and activity of the church, are a mere substitute for spiritual religion—rather than the expression of vital godliness. In our churches, it is easy to perceive . . . how much more welcome is the 'humorous'—than the serious; how much more anxious the audience is to be 'entertained' —than to be edified; how much greater homage is paid to the 'talent' of the preacher —than to his piety! In fact, our public meetings sometimes assume rather the character of 'religious amusements'—than pious worship! It ought never to be forgotten that a church meeting, if rightly understood, is a company of people brought together to carry out the design for which the Son of God expired upon the cross! Surely the frame of our minds, and the tone of the sermons, and the spirit and tendency of the whole worship service, ought to be in strict harmony with such a purpose. Yet many of our church meetings have rather lowered, than elevated the tone of our piety, and thus enfeebled our real strength for carrying on this great work. Eminent piety is essential to eminent usefulness! It is eminent piety alone, which will enable us to take a clear and impressive view of the object to be sought, and supply the energies necessary for obtaining it. It is eminent piety alone, which will purify our motives, and produce that spirit of profound humility, self-denial, dependence, and entire consecration—which are necessary to qualify us for the work. It is eminent piety alone, which will keep up the spirit of faith and

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Grace Gems for SEPTEMBER 2005

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